“At the end of the keynote at Apple’s Developer Conference on Monday, there were two areas where I thought Apple clearly decided it was not up to them to tell their users what they should and should not do: Siri Shortcuts and Screen Time,” Carolina Milanesi writes for Tech.pinions.
“Over the years, Apple has been criticized for deciding what was best for their users: color scheme on your Mac, U2 album in your library and slowing down your old iPhone to preserve battery. In all these cases, users did not like that a decision was made for them so how could they appreciate Apple telling them how best to take advantage of Siri, manage their time and parent their children?” Milanesi writes. “Apple thought it was more useful to provide tools to users so they could decide how to do all those things better.”
“Such a change might come from a shift in company philosophy,” Milanesi writes. “I do think, however, it is more likely to have come from the realization that Apple’s users are today as diverse as they have ever been. For Apple to find a middle ground between my mom, my daughter, and [me] is no easy task.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Again, we’d like to see that philosophy extended to privacy:
Apple should allow users to choose whether to cede some degree(s) of privacy in exchange for for more fully-featured versions of Siri, Photos, etc. — MacDailyNews, June 6, 2018
SEE ALSO:
Most people will never use Apple’s ‘Siri Shortcuts’ – June 5, 2018
iOS 12’s Screen Time feature shows how badly Apple’s iPad needs user accounts – June 5, 2018
Apple previews iOS 12 with shared AR experiences, Group FaceTime, Memoji, and much more – June 4, 2018
Apple’s iOS 12 introduces new features to reduce interruptions and manage Screen Time – June 4, 2018
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
I disagree with MDN’s take.
If Apple enabled advanced features in exchange for permission to reduce privacy, it’s engineers will inevitably be less motivated to find the means of providing features without that loss of privacy.
Necessity is the mother of invention. The necessity of providing advanced features without compromising some privacy makes development more difficult but also more likely to find creative ways of achieving that goal.
This is a very good point!
Let’s hope the perceived usability feature gap doesn’t become too wide while Apple maintains their security stance.
Yeah, the MDN take is all kinds of wrong.
I mean, seriously, who wakes up in the morning and thinks “Hey, what I want today is less privacy!”?
More likely wake up and think “I wish it were more convenient”. With Apple staying steadfast with their security policy, developers may need to develop features as if making 3 right turns to go left.
“Slowing down your phone to preserve battery.”
??
Slowing down your phone to keep it from crashing!
I’ll believe this when I can plug an ATA hard drive in my mac.
The ’90s are over, just let that old drive go.
Or just dig that old G4 tower out of the closet, and plug away.
(Did they ever make an ATA drive bigger than 750GB anyway? I never saw one.)
The beginning of the end for Apple. It’s trying to please everybody when it can’t.
Apple sure isn’t trying very hard to please Mac users.