Let’s take a look at some highlights.

1. Transit Directions

Now with iOS 9, select cities (including my hometown in Toronto) include transit directions. You can even ask Siri for help getting around!

Yes, Google Maps for iOS already had this, and there are great apps like Transit, but integration with Maps and Siri makes transit directions much more accessible.

2. Picture-in-Picture

As we wind down the Major League Baseball season with the Blue Jays (hopefully firmly) cemented in first place, and certainly destined for the playoffs, MLB.TV’s At Bat on iOS app now includes Picture in Picture mode so you can stat hunt and game jump while watching or listening to a live feed of your favourite team.

3. Reading List Thumbnails

In addition to picture-in-picture, Instapaper’s iOS 9 update now includes thumbnails alongside any article. For some folks this may just be a little bit of visual flare, but if you use Instapaper to organize photos at all, this is a significant benefit and brings the link saving service in line with Pocket.

4. Ad Blockers for Safari

Yes, some people are definitely not happy with the advent of ad blocker integration in Safari for iOS, but the reality is ad networks have been burdening publishers with code that significantly slows down browsing and chews up battery life on mobile devices. This is no good for users and now we have a way to gain back our time and extend the life of our devices. For publishers, this will hopefully drive them to take control of their revenue opportunities instead of outsourcing to user-hostile third-party services.

A lot more can be said on this subject, and Marco Arment has, including this followup on “good” ads, and now his explanation for pulling his ad blocker from the app store.

I’ll say this: ad blockers on iOS 9 are new, immature software, trying to undo years of bad behaviour from ad networks, site builders, and publishers. Some well-intentioned publishers are going to get caught in the cross-fire of the pretty much all-or-nothing blocking these apps offer, but my hope is that:

1. revenue will not dramatically be affected for well-intentioned publishers because only a small subset of users will take the time and follow the configuration requirements of setting up ad blockers.
2. publishers will use this opportunity to find alternatives to letting third party ad-servers overtake their site with invasive, unrelated ad content, focusing instead on how to drive value to users with sensible advertising content and methods. The opportunity now being  that publishers who move quickly can get a leg up on finding new revenue opportunities that work with their users instead of against them.
3. ad blockers will become mature enough to focus on omitting bad practices without undermining an entire revenue model for publishers.

Until then, here are your current ad and content blocker options (minus Marco Arment’s Peace), as compiled by Dave Mark.

5. Numerous iPad Productivity Enhancements

On relatively new model iPads, you now have the ability to pop in another app on the right, essentially to respond to texts, emails, or tweets, or take a quick note, without having to jump hoops to get back to the app you were in.

On the latest model iPads, split-screen goes a step further, as you can have two apps running side-by-side.

And, on all iPads, the keyboard now includes a number of shortcuts across the top. Plus, with two fingers on the keyboard, the ability to use the keyboard in trackpad mode to more easily navigate text areas and adjust text selections.

App bonus:

Many apps like Dropbox have been updated so they’re searchable in Spotlight Search, and others such as IMDB now support deep linking so a web link will jump straight into the app instead of loading a page in Safari.

iPhone 6 bonus:

iMessage now includes avatars in the list of conversations so you can see who you’re chatting with and not have to read each person’s name. This has been conspicuously omitted since day 1 of iOS 8, seeing as avatars have always been in the OS X version of iOS, and the larger screens easily had the space. This alone is reason enough for fence sitters to upgrade.

Further Reading

Interested in a comprehensive overview of iOS 9, dig into Rene Ritchie’s iOS 9 Review on iMore.

Have something to add?

Reach out on Twitter. Say Yeah is @sayyeahto, and Lee is @smack416

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The post Five reasons why today is a great day to be an iOS user appeared first on Say Yeah!.

Simplicity comes in many forms.

Reducing distractions, including providing too much content or too many calls to action, helps people focus on the task at hand.

And allowing the content that is there to be seen, especially on mobile, is an important balancing act between copy, images, and screen height.

But let’s look at how Apple has taken the wrong approach to these tenets with their new mobile menu at Apple.com.

Reducing distractions

Yes, removing content from an interface simplifies it, allowing the user to focus. But if that content is vital, the choice to omit the content, even temporarily, can be more detrimental than having it on screen at all times.

Where to next?

This is especially vital on Apple’s homepage, because there are really only three links on it:

1. The menu reveal button, which is a nonsensical equals sign.
2. The apple logo, which just refreshes the page.
3. One product hero image which links through to a product you may not be interested in.

Saving space on mobile

Sure, mobile menus are often a distraction on an already too small screen, but when the header to toggle your menu is the same size as the menu itself, you’re just adding needless clicks.

Apple did make a unique choice here in opting for a horizontal, scrollable menu over a stacked menu which would have taken up the full screen. And, hey, it works, so embrace it. More on that below.

Charming interactions

You can argue that the reveal of a hidden mobile menu can benefit from a nice animation, rather than unceremoniously snapping into place. But when that animation makes your site seem unresponsive due to a long delay between the time you press the open button to the time the menu slides down, you’re just increasing the frustration level for folks who are trying to get to the information that matters to them.

Combine these things together and now you’ve created tedious work for the end user, with no benefit whatsoever.

So how can Apple address these issues?

Given Apple’s choice to go with a long horizontal menu, the simple option  would be to just always show it. This saves time, effort, and provides valuable information on a homepage which has almost no information on it, all within the same space that the current header takes up.

Here’s how this can be done quite easily:

1. Remove the equals sign.
2. Begin the menu with the Apple logo (still doubling as the Home button).
3. Make sure the menu’s spaced in a way that you hint at additional content to the right, so people understand there’s more content they can access.

Like this:

Presto: a simplified menu, half the height of the current one, with all the same content the current full-height menu sports, always showing and ready for action.

And the added benefit: now the mobile menu on Apple.com subtly reflects the menu bar on OSX.

It’s a minor change, that would make a whole world of difference, as this comparison highlights:

The post How to fix Apple’s poorly designed mobile web menu. appeared first on Say Yeah!.

Apple has put a great deal of effort into the Apple Store app (effectively creating an iPhone friendly view of everything under the “Store” link at apple.com), and they’ve long had a somewhat responsive desktop site, which adapted in height and width from 9″ screen sizes to 27″ desktops, but their website has never been smartphone friendly.

Following today’s keynote, that’s changed, with efforts being made across all new product pages and the navigation with a new mobile-optimized (non-responsive) site at apple.com.

The new, smartphone friendly Apple.com

Here’s how the “Mac” landing page at apple.com looks on Desktop along with today’s new smartphone view to the right:

You can imagine if you were looking at the above image at full size on your desktop or smartphone the text would be equally large and legible across both devices. Now, instead of shrinking 4 columns of content down to a narrow smartphone screen, apple.com sports a single column layout on iPhone.

To further accommodate for the smartphone view, Apple simplified the product icons at the top of the page, reducing the size of the main menu and footer, while relying on horizontal scrolling for the main menu and product selector. (However, we do take exception to their choice to hide the main menu, given how it’s been implemented. More on that tomorrow.)

Before today, squint, zoom, or give up.

By comparison, before today, you would have just seen a scaled down, near-illegible view of the multi-column desktop layout on your iPhone, like this:

Going mobile, slowly.

Overall, this a positive initial foray into the substantial undertaking of making Apple.com smartphone friendly.

Sure, the Store and Support links still remain non-smartphone friendly, but those are two completely separate technical systems from the rest of Apple.com and the Store link is already well represented by the Apple Store app.

You’ll note as well that older product pages have not been made smartphone friendly. While today’s iPhone 6 product page reads great on iPhone, all the Mac pages, including the just released Macbook Pros, iMacs, and more remain minuscule on iPhone.

To be sure, these additional product pages are sure to be updated with each successive product release.

Start small and ship.

It’s impressive to see this iterative path being taken by a company who is careful about the changes they make and always sweats the small stuff. Even they were willing to start the march toward a smartphone-optimized site with a partial release, rather than spending hundreds of man hours adjusting old content.

As always, a first step to market is better than no step at all. And now they’ve set the foundation to have a fully optimized site by following the natural course of their product releases, instead of backtracking across years of products, adjusting old code and designs.

More insights are just a click away.

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While I appreciate that iOS 7.1’s update saw the shift key match the colour of the rest of the keyboard when it’s turned on (everything goes white), rather than changing to another shade of grey as in iOS 7.0, Geoff’s absolutely right that this is not clear enough for users to understand when the shift key is active.

Let’s explore this in more detail.

Android 4.4’s Current Keyboard

As Geoff pointed out, Android solves this by actually changing the keys on the keyboard. Personally, I find this practice of changing all the keys on the keyboard quite jarring. Particularly because this change happens so frequently (including every time you start a new sentence) in order to highlight the capitalized first letter of the first word before shifting to lower case for the rest of the sentence. Here’s how that shift looks every time you start a new sentence:

iOS 7’s Current Keyboard

However, it’s clear that iOS 7’s more subtle approach is not enough. Here are the current states in iOS 7.1 for lower case, shifted, and caps lock.

The iOS 7.0 keyboard, by comparison:

Neither of these is clear, and both suffer from odd choices, including the removal of the outlined arrow from iOS 7.1, and the lack of clarity between shift and caps lock in iOS 7.0. More importantly, in both cases, there’s a lot of effort required to understand whether or not that shift key is on or off.

Geoff’s Proposed Keyboard

In Geoff’s article, he worked through to this proposal, which maintains Android’s shifting keys and reverses the shading of the shift key to imply it’s a button being pressed to activate it, but still leaving out the hollow arrow for the unpressed key:

Lee’s Proposed Keyboard

I think it would be enough to retain iOS7’s three states: grey, white, and underlined white (for caps lock) along with two visual adjustments. First, some reverse shading to imply the key is pressed down (as Geoff introduced). Second, returning to the use of an outlined arrow to imply off and a filled in arrow to imply on (which is how the shift key looked on previous versions of iOS, as noted by Sean O’Sullivan).

These two visual additions would eliminate the jarring adjustment of all the keys jumping from lower case to uppercase found on Android, while keeping the more easily read all caps letter keys we know and love from our physical keyboards.

Here’s a look at the minimalist approach I’d prefer: inactive grey, with an outlined arrow vs a depressed active white shift key with a filled in black arrow.

But Matt here at Say Yeah is still not comfortable with this, instead preferring more distinction between the white active shift key and the white default keys, which are white and all caps at all times. Matt’s thoughts:

Consistency is fine (white to match the other keys), but not at the expense of clarity. By making the shift key distinctly different from the rest of the keyboard, it becomes obvious what’s happening so you don’t have to think about it.

Previous to iOS 7.1, the shift key lit up in bright blue. Something along those lines is Matt’s preference. Filip Truta agrees, stating in his article The iOS 7.1 Shift Key Is a Disaster:

iOS 6 was spot on, change wasn’t necessary

From Jason D O’Grady:

Above: In iOS 6, the Shift key is gray when disabled and blue when enabled, which is much easier to discern than with the iOS 7 keyboard.

What’s your take on how Apple should solve this notable issue?

The post iOS 7’s woefully unclear shift key and what can be done about it. appeared first on Say Yeah!.

iOS 7.1 (released today) includes a number of seemingly minor adjustments to the latest version of iOS but, overall, they mark a vastly improved iOS 7 experience.

If you’re running an older iPhone, you’ll want to download this release straightaway for the performance improvements. (Just open the Settings app, select “General”, and then “Software Update”.)

And if you have yet to upgrade from iOS 6, this release may be what you’ve been waiting for.

More Responsive

Across the board, animations are snappier. Moving from home screen to folders to launching an app now feels twice as responsive, as if the folders and apps are jumping to attention.

Improved Accessibility

And for those who were getting a little seasick with the animations the Reduce Motion accessibility now includes Weather, Messages, and more.

Complete Details

Lots more to see from Apple on the new iOS 7.1 update page, as well as the full release notes, as follows.

User Interface Refinements

A couple of examples:

1. Refined home screen spacing, with icon labels moving farther away from the icons, along with adjustments to the dots representing the number of pages and the green used for the Messages and Phone app icons. I’m including this more out of curiosity for the nearly unnoticeable subtle refinement (perhaps implemented to accommodate the Accessibility settings for increased text sizes and bold type). And please excuse me for my lack of Inbox 0, nerds.

2. Phone app updates, prioritizing the key actions with larger visual elements for Decline and Accept and better identifying each of the actions with icons and increased contrast:

CarPlay

• iOS experience designed for the car
• Simply connect your iPhone to a CarPlay enabled vehicle
• Supports Phone, Music, Maps, Messages, and 3rd-party audio apps
• Control with Siri and the car’s touchscreen, knobs, and buttons

Siri

• Manually control when Siri listens by holding down the home button while you speak and releasing it when you’re done as an alternative to letting Siri automatically notice when you stop talking
• New, more natural sounding male and female voices for Mandarin Chinese, UK English, Australian English, and Japanese

iTunes Radio

• Search field above Featured Stations to easily create stations based on your favorite artist or song
• Buy albums with the tap of a button from Now Playing
• Subscribe to iTunes Match on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to enjoy iTunes Radio ad-free

Calendar

• Option to display events in month view (pictured above right)
• Country specific holidays automatically added for many countries

Accessibility

• Bold font option now includes the keyboard, calculator, and many icon glyphs
• Reduce Motion option now includes Weather, Messages, and multitasking UI animations
• New options to display button shapes, darken app colors, and reduce white point

Other

• New Camera setting to automatically enable HDR for iPhone 5s
• iCloud Keychain support in additional countries
• FaceTime call notifications are automatically cleared when you answer a call on another device
• Fixes a bug that could occasionally cause a home screen crash
• Improves Touch ID fingerprint recognition
• Improved performance for iPhone 4
• Fixes display of Mail unread badge for numbers greater than 10,000

The post iOS 7.1 is now available for iPhone, marking a significant improvement in usability. appeared first on Say Yeah!.

All new OSX Mavericks is now available for free.

All new productivity apps Pages, Keynote, and Numbers are now free for desktop and iOS 7, including the real-time collaboration tools at icloud.com.

It’s a pretty good day for getting things done!

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If any content is being delivered to the iOS device because of the transaction, then Apple will take its 30% cut.

Further, Apple’s policy states:

Do not use (the In-App Purchase API) to sell real-world goods and services.

In this case, you’re free to manage your own in-app payment processing system and forgo any app store transaction charges from Apple.

The post When does Apple enforce its 30% cut of an App Store transaction? appeared first on Say Yeah!.

From the initial iOS 7 beta:

As reported by MacRumors, today’s iOS 7 Beta 4 corrects these issues, with an updated lock screen sporting a right facing arrow.

Better still, Apple has prioritized the key function of sliding to unlock and prevented arrow fatigue by doing away with the up arrow in exchange for a flat bar to indicate access to the settings panel which slides up from below. Now, the only arrow on the lock screen is next to the action which gets you into your phone.

Finally, to make these interactions even easier for fumbling hands, the slide to unlock text now sits further away from the bottom of the screen, preventing any accidental activation of the settings panel or the camera when you’re moving your thumb to unlock the phone.

Here’s how these welcome improvements look:

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Following Apple’s iOS 7 announcement earlier this week, there’s been a lot of discussion around the default icon set (pictured above, right). Detractors have focused on inconsistencies, concerns around a lack of cohesion between icons, and a general disdain for the colour palette and icon styles. Designer Leo Drapeau’s taken a stab at addressing some of the more moderate considerations with his iOS 7 icon refinements (pictured above, left).

He offers some nice takes on both simplifying some of the icons (Camera, Game Center, Stocks) and differentiating others (Reminders vs Notes), but I don’t agree with his decision to go back to the iOS 6 corner radius (where icons appear smaller inside their rounded corner squares).

The new, larger iOS 7 icons have a beautiful playfulness and resonance with the smaller padding. Resetting them makes them appear less touch-friendly.

Update: Neven Mrgan wonderfully illustrates an issue with the larger icons based on their varying weights:

And yes, you need to scale to ensure lighter weight icons are not overwhelmed by their fuller cousins.

Now back to Leo: I fear he’s lost the plot in the dock, with a more complex Phone icon, under-styled Mail and Safari icons, and a thin, more conservative musical note which almost disappears when compared to the other icons.

For me, there are five concerns that stand out with the iOS 7 icons.

1. Game Center’s reflective bubbles, which are incongruous with every other icon.

2. Music’s vibrant red/orange, which is outside the colour palette of the other icons (or at least appears to be because of the dark to dark gradient, rather than light to dark gradients of the other icons).

3. The Reminders icon, which has no charm, particularly in light of Leo’s wonderful reworking.

4. The overly complex Settings and Compass icons.

5. A Camera icon that shows something that isn’t anything like my iPhone. I’m sure they still aren’t using a floppy disk as a save icon, right? The previous camera icon was a lens. Perfect.

Some minor efforts in finding consistency will resolve most of these issues, but there’s no doubt these new icons better suit the expression and the experience of iOS 7’s overall redesign.

Icons aside, the most important concern stemming from this redesign is found on the lock screen, where ‘slide to unlock’ has lost its arrow, trough, and the block that slides through it from left to right (pictured below).

Certainly some visual cues need to be added so you know how the heck to unlock your phone. I bet 50% of people try to slide up, rather than from left to right:

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