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Birchtree
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Using an iPad for “Real Work.” No, Not Blogging, my Actual 9-5 Job.

Can I let you in on a little secret? When it comes to “iPads can do real work,” I’m putting my money where my mouth is. I have been using an iPad for 99% of my website and design work at home (including the redesign of this website a few months ago), I have
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My Siri Shortcuts (in iOS 12 beta 1)

I think the most exciting thing Apple announced at WWDC last week was Siri Shortcuts. It looks to me like a brand new way to interact with our iOS devices and I am way into it. It’s as if Workflow and Launch Center Pro had a baby and Apple built that into the operating
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Understanding Shortcuts in iOS 12

I’m seeing a bunch of people saying Shortcuts are a power user-only feature. “No normal person will ever use these!” In their WWDC keynote, I think Apple leaned too hard into what Shortcuts can do for power users, and people lost the message that these are something users will benefit from even if
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Grading Apple on My watchOS 5 Suggestions

Apple doesn’t answer to me, so this is of no concern to them, but I wanted to take a look back at my watchOS requests to see how close Apple came to meeting them. Siri Watch Face I asked for: Let third party devs integrate to it. Apple delivered: ✅ They did exactly this! Watch
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Grading Apple on My iOS 12 Suggestions

Apple doesn’t answer to me, so this is of no concern to them, but I wanted to take a look back at my iOS requests to see how close Apple came to meeting them. Performance I asked for: Performance improvements, especially on older devices. Apple delivered: ✅ Exactly this! iOS 12 is notably faster on
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Work Apps in iOS 12

I failed to mention this in any of my notification articles yet, and that’s a damn shame because I think this would be a great feature. Without further ado, here’s what I want. Apps should be able to be marked as “work” apps. This would simply mean they are an app that is
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Notifications in iOS 12: A Dream

I talked a lot about notifications on Twitter today and I figured it was high time I make a mock up for what I was hoping for in iOS 12. Pardon the hasty design, I did this in less than an hour, but this is a direction I’d be very happy for Apple to
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Summer 2018 Browser Speed Test (Mac and iOS Edition)

The most important feature in a web browser for me is performance. Extensions are nice and UI is relatively important to me as well, but at the end of the day it’s speed that I want more than anything else. I never want to feel like I’m being slowed down by anything besides
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Draft 5 Actions: The BirchTree Collection

Drafts 5 has totally won me over and made me fall in love with url-schemes. They are basically a local restful API that can be used to accomplish quite a bit. Below are 6 Drafts Actions that I have created to make using Drafts even better. All of these apps have actions already, some
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iOS 12 Concept: Notifications

iOS has quite powerful notifications, so much so that some people were saying we wouldn’t even go into apps much anymore, we’d just do everything from notifications when this style was introduced in iOS 10. That hasn’t played out, and I don’t think we should expect it to anytime soon, but
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The iOS "Spring Edition" is Coming Soon (developer beta likely coming today)

Apple is continuing their tradition of having feature-packed spring updates to iOS: In addition to horizontal surfaces like tables and chairs, ARKit can now recognize and place virtual objects on vertical surfaces like walls and doors, and can more accurately map irregularly shaped surfaces like circular tables. This is a really cool addition to
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A Few Months Later: Benchmarking the iPhone 8 Plus and Pixel 2

There has been a lot of talk recently about smartphone performance lately, and whether or not one company is slowing down their phones. For my part, I happen to have an iPhone 8 Plus and Google Pixel 2 in front of me, both of which have been heavily used and each of which I benchmarked
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Apple Trying to Get MacBook Down to $999. Maybe They Should also Try One with iOS.

Apple Said to Release New Entry-Level 13-inch MacBook This Year, Likely Replacing MacBook Air - Mac Rumors Apple's next entry-level MacBook will likely replace the 13-inch MacBook Air, Apple's lowest-cost notebook starting at $999. Apple's long-term aim was for the 12-inch MacBook to
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The Apps Keeping me on macOS (2018 update)

Just under a year ago, I wrote this piece about the apps that were keeping me on a Mac over a Windows or Linux PC. Now that’s a year later and I’m more than a little smitten with the iPad Pro, I thought it would be interesting to see how these apps stand
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What is a computer?

I saw the below two videos today and they both really struck me by how these videos are evangelizing different products, but they’re saying the exact same thing: computers ain’t what they used to be. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YM-lMtBN8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQB2NjhJHvY I think smartphones
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Just how fast is “faster wireless charging” in iOS 11.2?

NOTE: Samsung's "Fast Charge" charging pad does not have any hard numbers I can find that indicates how much power it will provide. The below findings display a notable change from previous testing of wireless charging I've done. I'll update this article if I can get more
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Apple’s removal of the App Store from iTunes screws over users, publishers, and developers

Removing the iOS App Store from iTunes makes a lot of sense. iTunes needs to slim down and become the best media player in the world again, but Apple’s latest decision to remove the App Store without having a replacement ready is madness. I’ve rolled it around my head for days and I’
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Visualizing how far ahead in AR tech Apple is to Google

Google’s AR project, Project Tango, finally has a second phone on the market 🎉. According to the reviews I’ve seen, it’s been noted in all cases that this phone is mercifully more compact than the previous Lenovo Phab 2 Pro. Now the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro not only has a stupid, stupid name,