Liverpool – Champions of England

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The story of my soccer fandom in general and in particular that of Liverpool FC isn’t particularly novel.

Like a lot of Americans, I started watching the Premier League when NBC acquired the rights to stream games back in 2013, and I actively committed to staying neutral – just watching the big games and trying to appreciate the fact that I could watch sports on weekend mornings. In fact, it wasn’t until after Liverpool signed Jurgen Klopp to manage Liverpool in late 2015 that I really found a team that piqued my interest. The style of play that he had a reputation for at Dortmund – a frenetic, ‘heavy metal football’ style of counterpressing – was just what a relative soccer novice like myself was drawn to. Like most Americans, our first reaction when watching soccer is often focusing on the lack of scoring and dismissing the entire enterprise as boring. A team that scored a lot of goals, created disruption and gave up a ton of goals in the process was just what the doctor ordered.

At the time, they weren’t front runners (finished top 8 in 15-16), but were big enough to be on TV a lot. That was kind of the sweet spot for me. My initial decision was very surface level (style of play, TV availability, even uniform colors), but that would quickly change. The more I watched Liverpool and learned about the players and their past, the more I was drawn in. They’ve had so many legendary players wear the shirt and have experienced an amazing number of highs and lows over their 120 year history as a club. I became kind of obsessed with watching old games on YouTube and reading up on legendary managers and players to gain a deeper understanding of the team. The more I learned about the team, I also learned about the city’s long English title drought. The top flight league in England wasn’t even called the Premier League when they last won!

Liverpool have been tantalizingly close over the past few years, nipping at the heels of one of the best teams in the history of the sport (Manchester City was the first team to get 100 points in a top-flight season). In the process, the team has bought and sold a number of players to slowly build their quality and depth, while shoring up their defensive weaknesses. Going into last year, most folks thought that it could be the year that they finally knocked off City and took the crown. They fell one point short. One point!

Missing by that much, 12 months after losing the Champions League final, could have done some teams in. Or it could kick off a run that will be something I’ll surely remember for the rest of my life. Since losing out to Manchester City at the end of the 18-19 season, Liverpool advanced to the Champions League final after being down 3-0 to Barcelona in the semifinals, winning 4-0 at home. It was one of the most remarkable comeback wins you’ll ever see. The fans singing You’ll Never Walk Alone after that game will forever be etched in my mind:

They would go on to beat Tottenham in the final 2-0 and win their first European championship in over a decade.

The 19-20 Premier League season will be remembered for the Covid stoppage and games without the fans but it’s important to not forget the absolutely insane run Liverpool has been on up to this point:

  • 86 points after 31 games (best ever in top-flight history)
  • 1/19 – 2/20: 44 match PL unbeaten streak (2nd best in top-flight history)
  • 10/19 – 2/20: 18 straight PL wins (joint best in top-flight history)
  • Won 2019 Champions League, UEFA Super Cup, FIFA Club World Cup
  • 2019-20 Premier League Champions (earliest title win in top-flight history)

So for me, a relative newcomer to all of this, to feel so much after seeing this team finally win the Premier League helps me to understand what so many lifelong fans must be going through right now. It’s not how we might have wanted, but somehow it’s perfect.

Graham, Cotton, Blackburn Introduce Balanced Solution to Bolster National Security, End Use of Warrant-Proof Encryption that Shields Criminal Activity

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From the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary:

The Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act is a balanced solution that keeps in mind the constitutional rights afforded to all Americans, while providing law enforcement the tools needed to protect the public from everyday violent crime and threats to our national security. The bill would require service providers and device manufacturers to provide assistance to law enforcement when access to encrypted devices or data is necessary – but only after a court issues a warrant, based on probable cause that a crime has occurred, authorizing law enforcement to search and seize the data.

I don’t expect our elected officials to understand every little detail of how something like encryption work, but legislating that companies keep backdoors defeats the purpose of encryption and privacy.

Tech companies are already helping when a warrant is provided. As an example, Apple already provides a ton when asked to by law enforcement. Eliminating encryption is a bridge too far.

WWDC 2020 Initial Thoughts

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The WWDC 2020 “pandemic edition” is now behind us, and it was one of the better ones I’ve seen in quite some time. Apple announced a lot in the 2 hour presentation, with iOS and MacOS getting the bulk of the attention this year. What follows is a quick rundown of my thoughts after watching the keynote last night. If you want to dive deep, you should follow MacStories this week. They have a ton of content already.

Overall

  • The presentation style was great – it was tight, dense and well paced. Some of the zooming around campus stuff was kinda cheesy, but I approve of most of the dad humor they use these days. Hopefully this is the future of the keynote, although I doubt it.
  • The Music app seems to be getting way better search, filtering within lists and a redesigned start view that will replace “For You”.

iOS

iOS got a TON of attention this year. I was very impressed with this part of the presentation.

  • The App Library looks fantastic. I’ll be hiding everything but my first screen when iOS 14 is out.
  • The “Smart Stack” suggested widgets on your home screen could be neat … but so could the Siri watch face on the Apple Watch.
  • I hope App Clips catch on. Can’t wait to delete a lot of the parking & other one-off apps from my phone. The restaurant specific pages within an app like Yelp is interesting.
  • Based on the screenshots I saw during the presentation, it appears that the Apple notes texture background is gone!
  • The Siri redesign looks fantastic. I’m interested to see if the Siri enhancements are only skin deep, however. The on-device changes to dictation will hopefully speed things up so my voice command to turn off the lights don’t need to go to space and back.
  • Maps got cycling directions! I hope a basic version works everywhere at launch as I don’t live in a big city. I’m more interested in time/elevation data for when planning a bike ride.
  • Tons of Messages group chat enhancements, pinning convos, threading and mentions. And all on the Mac.
  • Emoji search!
  • 3rd party email and browser support should spur more innovation in those areas.
  • The minimal incoming call UI is much-welcomed.
  • In iOS 14, when apps ask for access to your Photos app, you can give them access only to select photos rather than the entire Photo Library.
  • Dictation is now on-device. I hope this is also for Siri commands in general.

iPadOS

iPadOS got some updates, but nothing like last year. That said, if we can even seen incremental additions yearly that are very iPad-focused, I’m okay with that.

  • Apple Pencil features – shape detection and copy/paste from written text will increase my pencil use by a lot.
  • FaceTime eye correction
  • Doesn’t appear that iPadOS will allow the app library or widgets along with the grid. Why?
  • Adding sidebars and context menus alone will help those in the “desktop replacement” crowd.
  • The search changes look fantastic.

MacOS

The highlights of this part of the presentation was the iPadification of the UI/UX, and the announcement of the ARM … err “Apple Silicon” … transition.

  • The new macOS UI looks really nice. Appreciate Apple brining things together but allowing each platform to do its own thing.
  • Catalyst updates are appreciated, but it still has so far to go. I feel like some developers might just skip the whole thing and put their iPad apps in the Mac App Store once the ARM transition is in flight.
  • Some of the Big Sur Dock icons are … horrific.

WatchOS

  • Finally, you can add multiple complications from the same app.
  • The watch/iPhone wind down functionality integrated with sleep tracking and battery notifications seem to be exactly what I’m looking for. I think the market for sleep apps will probably need to evolve depending on how advanced the native functionality is, but apps that give more data ABOUT your sleep will probably surge. I love Autosleep, but if the built in stuff is better I’ll go with it.

Misc

  • tvOS got a lot of polish, especially around the Home integration. I’ve definitely tried to invest in HomeKit stuff around the house and am tempted to get a few cameras now that they’re more integrated with HomeKit.
  • The AirPods features look amazing. I’ll be curious to see how clever it tries to be, however. The accelerometer work to keep the surround sound in sync are mind-blowing. I have gen 1 AirPods Pro but I’m looking forward to getting some pros next year.
  • HomePod 3rd party music support! I hope they allow folks to set a 3rd party as default.
  • For time based shortcut automations a new toggle has been added. Now these kind of automations can be executed automatically without tapping on a notification first.
  • Did anyone else notice the small HomePod icon on one of the slides?
  • iOS 14 adds a new Accessibility feature that allows you to perform different actions by tapping on the back of your iPhone. For instance, you can make it such that when you double tap the back of your iPhone, you are taken to the home screen, or open the camera or even run a shortcut!
  • I heard the word “private” about a million times. I love that privacy has really become ingrained in every decision the company makes. Using ‘approximate location’ for weather apps that only need your zip code should help kneecap a lot of the tracking apps out there.
  • Speaking of privacy, it looks like tracker blocking support for app analytics and things like Google analytics is coming to iOS and MacOS.

How’d my wishlist fare?

About a month ago, I posted a wishlist for WWDC. How’d Apple nerd Christmas work out for me?

On first read, I think I got 5 iOS of the updates, 1 of the iPadOS updates, and 2 of the miscellaneous ones. Some will reveal themselves over time, but I’m still pretty happy with the first glance from yesterday’s keynote.

Craig Federighi on Apple’s WWDC privacy news

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From Michael Grothaus at Fast Company:

“We think we’re showing the way to the industry, to the customer, that they can demand more–they should expect more–about the protection of their privacy, and that we can help move the industry into building things that better protect privacy.”

[…]

“I think the protections that we’re building in, to intimately say that the customer’s device is in service of the customer, not of another company or entity–the customer is the one who is in control of their data and their device–is what’s most compatible with human rights and the interest of society,” Federighi says. “And so that’s what we’re going to keep trying to support–our customers being in control of their privacy.”

Glad this is getting more mainstream attention. The biggest features mentioned in this article are:

  • Approximate location, sharing which quadrant of a worldwide grid you’re in, not your exact location. This is something that’s gotten more attention lately, and I’m really pleased they’re doing this.
  • Cross-tracking prevention. Advertisers and data brokers have used these techniques to build a profile on all of us over the years.
  • Categorized data that’s being tracked, broken up by “type” (up to 31 types!) in the App Store.
  • Better password security notifications
  • Enhanced tracker blocking in Safari
  • Enhanced Safari extension support and security controls around permissions
  • Camera and mic notifications to let users know when either are active
  • Photo selection security

I believe that Apple’s stance on this has moved Google and Facebook in a better direction when it comes to security and privacy. Regardless of your opinion on their products, you should be thankful they’re pushing so hard on this.

Apple, HEY, and the path forward

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From the HEY blog (I really hate that name):

So we got down to it, and worked the weekend to get an update on Apple’s desk Monday morning. Our team did a great job implementing the product changes that Schiller asked for, and first thing this morning, right after we shipped 1.0.2 to our customers, we submitted 1.0.3 to the App Store for approval.

Glad to see some compromises are being made. I do hope this is the beginning and not the end, however. This is an opportunity for Apple to alter their rules to make the App Store better for developers and customers.

Tweaking my Daily Routine

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Working from home for me has been an interesting test of some of my beliefs about how I like to get things done, how much of an introvert I am (very much), and what an optimal schedule stripped of things like a commute, errands and activities might look like. Obviously this won’t be “normal” forever, but I do believe there’s a strong possibility this carries for many months to come.

I’ve been coasting by so far on a fairly busy schedule with some structure, but I’m the sort of person who really thrives in a world that has as much clarity as possible. That’s only amplified when you have 2 school-age children and a puppy at home during the work day, only a few feet and one meltdown away from barging into your office at any moment.

I was thinking recently about how my daily routine has changed lately when I came across this post from Shawn Blanc about how he’s started getting up at 6am to write before starting his work day.

Michelle and I had been alternating days to wake up early with the kids and the dog, allowing the other person to sleep in. Sleeping in feels great, but it also has had a unfortunate but predictable side effect: I’ve been staying up later and later playing video games and generally screwing around. This has been fun – I’ve enjoyed playing with friends and having some decompression time at the end of the day. However, I’ve quickly gotten to the point where I’m heading to bed much later than I’d like. This means sleep-in days have helped me stay afloat at a minimum. Instead of getting ahead on my sleep, I’m running up a debt every night and barely paying it down a few days a week.

This also has the unfortunate side effect of making my days chaotic yet again. Because I need to sleep in to just feel refreshed, it means I have very little margin in my morning before meetings begin to do anything other than take a quick shower and head down to join a Zoom call. I didn’t like the way this made me feel, and decided I needed to evaluate how to leverage the benefits of staying at home better.

This week, I tried to make a small modification to my day, similar to what Shawn speaks about in his article. I’m now setting an alarm at 6:30 and getting up every day at that time. I’m able to read, write, and make coffee before the kids even wake up – starving for breakfast, video games, and whatever other chaos they can cause. I can ease into my workday as well – doing a daily review in Things, scanning Slack, Jira and my email before things really get going.

This small change has already made a huge difference in my mood as my days start out way less chaotic than they had previously. I never thought I’d enjoy working remotely but I’ve already decided that my next job, whenever that is, will need to be fully distributed. Going back to a commute, loud offices and those hectic mornings is going to be a rude awakening whenever “normal” happens again.

Apple’s App Store polices are bad, but its interpretation and enforcement is worse

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From The Verge:

The real issue is Apple’s power, of which this whole Kafkaesque series of changing rules is a symptom. We all know the score here: Apple needs to protect the 30 percent cut it takes, and if it allows too many apps to circumvent that cut then some sort of dam may break. From Apple’s perspective, it’s not so much the money for its services bottom line but that if everybody used a different payment system, the experience on the iPhone would genuinely be degraded, if not fragmented. (The money doesn’t hurt, though.)

[…]

There’s a cognitive dissonance to calling Apple a monopolist. After all, people are free to buy an Android phone and well over 80 percent of smartphone buyers on the planet do just that. Apple’s marketshare in the US is significantly higher than it is in the rest of the world, but it’s not that high.

Ben Thompson at Stratechery has been writing about this for years — he recently pulled his 2018 article on this very issue out from behind the paywall. In it, he writes that “I don’t believe the relevant market is smartphones, but rather digital goods and services.” Indeed.

The monopoly Apple has is a monopoly over the iPhone itself, not over smartphones. And that is a very strange way to think about a monopoly. Shouldn’t Apple be free to make whatever rules it wants on the devices it sells? Is it unfair for Apple to demand a cut of all digital commerce on its platforms?

If you aren’t keeping up, HEY is a new email service that has popped up and costs $99/year. They built native apps for all of the major platforms (although wrapping their website in an electron app is hardly a native app, but I digress) with Apple’s iOS being one of those platforms. They did not include a way for users to buy a subscription to their service via in app purchases, instead sending users to the HEY.com site to sign up. Apple rejected the app, saying that they should allow users to buy a subscription in the app. Now customers who signed up for the service can’t use the mobile app and the developers have said they won’t give Apple 30% of their revenue to simply process payment.

This whole thing is such a mess. Incoherent rules and inconsistent enforcement by Apple have created a situation that is bad for consumers and developers.  Ultimately, I think a situation closer to what Google allows (any 3rd party can use their own payment system for anything other than IAP and in all games) as well as allowing for easier side loading on iOS would keep the regulators away and allow for more innovation. Would their services revenue numbers take a hit? Surely. But given most of the big players already have found workarounds, I don’t think it’d be as bad as you’d think.  I also expect more from Apple than essentially rent-seeking.

Additionally, if the argument from Apple is at least partially around providing consistency and clarity for customers, having these Easter egg hunt-style messages in apps like Netflix, Kindle and others (saying things like “you can’t buy content here. Sorry!” due to Apple’s rules around linking to external signups) makes things worse, not better. With WWDC & EU antitrust discussions looming, I’m sure this will be top of mind for the folks in Cupertino over the next few weeks. I hope Apple does the right thing and at a minimum updates their rules to be more clear. If they really want to support their developer community they need to do way more than that, though.

Sanding the Rough Edges of iPadOS

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I recently bought an 11″ iPad Pro to “replace” my aging 2015 MacBook Pro. My work has provided me with a 15” MacBook Pro that’s only about a year old, so there’s no reason for me to buy a new laptop for myself right now – especially when I’m working from home every day anyway. Given that I spend all day at my desk at home, the last thing I want to be doing is working with a traditional computer in my off hours. The iPad Pro is powerful enough for me to do most of my non-work tasks, and I can use it in a way that allows me to use it in different contexts (sitting, propped up at a table while drinking coffee, etc).

I’ve been super happy with the device and find myself using it way more than I did with my previous 9.7” iPad 6th generation. The screen and sound quality quality alone make a lot of media consumption like games and videos way more compelling, and it’s a best-in-class device for reading news, Instapaper and ebooks. I also really enjoy writing on it – whether it’s email for work or IA Writer for blog posts, the immersive writing environment helps me focus on the task at hand way better than I can on a desktop.

The area that the iPad still struggles a bit is the full-on laptop replacement. The recently-released Magic Keyboard is a fantastic companion that folks are raving about, and it seems to solve for about 90% of the things folks were asking for. There’s lots of little rough edges still to be worked out, though. None of it is really surprising as trackpad support is only about 3 months old and the idea of using an iPad as a full desktop replacement is still rather new. Heck, iPadOS is only a year old itself.

With WWDC approaching (you can see my wishlist here, which is somewhat duplicated here), I got to thinking about what Apple could do to make it easier for folks like me to treat the iPad Pro like my primary desktop machine, and not just a really amazing tablet.

External display support

The 11″ size of the iPad Pro is about perfect. It’s portable enough for me to use around the house and travel with (if traveling were a thing people still did!), and yet still big enough to be passable as a screen for most work tasks I have. To take things to the next level though, I’d love to be able to plug it into an external monitor and do more than simply mirror the content. I’d be smitten if I could have 2 apps open on my 24″ external display in split view with something else open on the actual iPad. Even if it’s a little limited in the first round (maybe the screen on the iPad is mirrored, but in the correct aspect ratio), I’d love to see some investment here.

Enhanced global keyboard support

Before I go all-in and buy Apple’s Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro, I want to see how they plan on investing in global keyboard shortcuts for media playback, brightness, homescreen etc. In a perfect world, I’d love to also be able to launch apps or shortcuts from key combos I define. Looks like there’s already some smoke on this rumor, so fingers crossed!

Better keyboard support

Related to the above point, I’d like to see more consistent keyboard support across the platform. Some of this falls to individual app developers, but I’d also like to see more tools for users to tab between split views and invoke (and close) the slideover view. In the same vein, I’d like to be able to switch between apps in slideover with the keyboard.

Key repeat rates are also not customizable currently, and that makes backspacing through sentences difficult. I hope we see some additional customization options for the trackpad & keyboard settings now that those input devices are first class citizens.

Better Safari tab persistence

This is a big one. When I’m typically working I’ll have multiple Safari tabs open as I switch between tasks. It seems like more often than not Safari will try its best to prioritize keeping web apps open even when the user switches to another application, but it doesn’t happen consistently. There are a lot of times where I come back to a form that I was working to add some data to and it refreshes. I’d love some sort of “pro mode” I could opt into if Apple is worried about performance. Let me make use of the insane power & RAM the iPad Pro has!

Multitasking improvements

I’d like to see more options available when tabbing between apps. For one, I’d like more than 6 or 7 apps at a time. In addition, I’d like more options around searching for an app and opening it in split screen, slide over or as its own app. A situation I find myself in a lot is working in one app and wanting to change the music to something different. Rather than switching to the app, making the change and then switching back I’d like some sort of keyboard modifier that could open an app in an “active” slide overview instead. I could then make the song change with my document still open and visible, then dismiss the slideover and be on my way.

Apple should also introduce a picture-in-picture mode for videoconferencing. Just like the PIP videos, I should be able to move the video around the screen or even hide it (showing the ‘tab’ to indicate I’m on a video call). I’d love to use my iPad for video calls given how great the camera and screen is, but it’s fairly limiting given it takes over the screen – and can’t even do split screen!

Better Spotlight typing interface

Make it easier to do a lot of the things you can do with Spotlight on the Mac. Instead of the Spotlight search interface taking over the entire screen, emulate what we see on the Mac with an overlay panel that expands when options are available. Seems minor, but a lot of times I’ll be writing and need to do a quick calculation or search and would prefer the entire screen not be taken over.

Make the status bar more useful for iPad users

I should be able to make use of the status bar on the iPad more like what we can do on the Mac. I’d love a persistent calendar widget showing my next appointment, a music widget showing current playing song, or additional controls around Bluetooth, volume, brightness or more.

Multiple audio sources & control

Right now it’s not really possible to have 2 things playing like music and a video. Additionally, a use case from a few days ago really annoyed me that I hope we can see a fix to: I was playing music on my living room speakers via airplay and wanted to turn up the volume on my iPad to better hear the voice in Duolingo. Ideally, an advanced audio settings pane would allow me to adjust my output volume for multiple apps or destinations.

Conclusion

The iPad Pro is an amazing machine that helps me work or entertain myself in ways that work best for me. On top of that, last year’s iPadOS 13 is a really fantastic step in the direction of making iPads true laptop replacements for most folks. If Apple could focus on a number of the refinements that I’ve listed here as part of an iPadOS 14 release, I think I’d be smitten.

The Deathly Tragedy of American Exceptionalism

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From Robert Reich:

With 4.25 percent of the world population, America has the tragic distinction of accounting for about 30 percent of pandemic deaths so far.

Some folks have tried to downplay the extremely high death count numbers in the US by looking at infection rate per 1000 – which does show that some countries like Spain are seeing more infections than we are. However, our death numbers are staggering. I think some of that is attributable to a poor testing strategy – you can have “invisible” infections but it’s much harder to hide deaths. There’s probably some blame to go around for our healthcare system as well, that puts poor folks at a disadvantage relative to those with money.

Our inept leaders and broken unemployment system have handicapped our recovery as well.

We saw some good news last week, relatively speaking, with 2.5 million jobs added but I fear the road to recovery is going to be bumpy.

A detailed timeline of all the ways Trump failed to respond to the coronavirus

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From Cameron Peters at Vox:

In fact, there are many reasons the US death toll is so high, including a national response plagued by delays at the federal level, wishful thinking by President Trump, the sidelining of experts, a pointed White House campaign to place the blame for the Trump administration’s shortcomings on others, and time wasted chasing down false hopes based on poor science.

[…]

Throughout the pandemic, however, much of the Trump administration’s spin — regarding Trump’s own response, China’s role, and more — has been misleading, if not outright untrue. Here’s what Trump and the federal government have — and have not — done to respond to the virus.

A sobering blow-by-blow breakdown of the Trump administration’s failed response to the Covid-19 pandemic. No rational person can blame any leader for allowing the disease to land on their shores – this is a truly global outbreak. However, the absolute lack of action, leadership, planning and coordination once we started to understand what was happening is inexcusable.

On a related note, I think this sort of breakdown is a helpful way to put Trump administration’s incompetence into context. I don’t know about you but at a certain point all of the scandal and drama of the past 3.5 years becomes a bit of a blur at some point.