announced at wwdc

WWDC Recap - many things!

My two biggest takeaways: (having just skimmed it to be honest)

1. the "iPad has proper windows" things is hugely radical. I think more than anything, that has been what made a tablet feel different from a laptop (other than keyboard vs touch, I mean) The iPad really made its mark by being a supreme singletasker; taking the original "fondleslab" idea of smartphones that the iPhone established into a larger device, with the central metaphor that the machine BECOMES the app running on it, in a UX-meaningful way. Getting rid of that... boy is it a step. Like I imagine from a dev PoV, now they have to worry about different window sizes? (unless they just keep the landscape/portrait sizes consistent and scale as needed, I haven't investigated)

Like I'm not sure I like the change conceptually. But maybe the tablet was in a rut. My iPad is: 

• an ebook reader
• a light web-browser
• a platform for this one drawing game I've been doing for years (DrawSomething)
• a very occasional second touch screen for my mac
• a more frequent "Find My" launcher to find my iPhone

and I'm not sure I would ever use it for more than that tbh - the old critique of "ipd is for consumption, laptop is for creation" is somewhat true. Maybe windowing will be a meaningful way of getting beyond that... but for now I'm sticking with laptops.

2. "customize your lock screen" (especially the font of the clock). Wow. This is lowkey one of the most-un-Apple things I've seen. I didn't realize how consistent a locked iPhone looked - how much identity it had - til i saw these samples of the alternate fonts etc, which hit my eyes as "oh that's android" ...and when I think about one friend of mine who changed the system font of her android phone to be serif... every screenshot I see makes me cringe a little. I mean it's the classic "Apple tries to prevent you from doing things in poor aesthetic taste" thing I'm wondering about.