Hey iMore readers and friends! As part of my ongoing quest to explore working on the iPad Pro, I'm looking into starting a column interviewing folks who do a significant part of their job using an iPad. This doesn't mean the iPad is your only method for work — just that you're using it actively as part of your job.

And to give you a starting point, I'm going to interview myself!

Hi! Glad to be here. This is a little strange, but I'm going to just go with it.

My situation is a bit odder than most in that I've been reviewing iPad apps and accessories since the very beginning (2010), which technically counts as work — but I really started using the iPad for my day-to-day life with the release of the iPad Pro.

Honestly, the Apple Pencil and Smart Connector made the biggest difference, but iOS 9 and the Workflow app went a long way to bridge the gap between the iPad being unusable for things like research and writing to a legitimate tool.

The Smart Connector just made writing easy on my iPad: I found Bluetooth keyboards too fussy or battery-intensive to get much of any work done beforehand; I'd constantly be worrying about running out of juice on either device, or that the key response rate was too slow. The Smart Connector keyboards I've used (both the Smart Keyboard and Logitech Create are fast, first and foremost, but they're also reliable. As long as my iPad has battery life, I know I'll be able to write on a physical keyboard.

It's why I'm no longer interested in testing Bluetooth keyboards — they just don't respond the same way as Smart Connector models, and I hate the battery life stress. I'll probably never buy a Bluetooth keyboard again.

God, in every way. You wouldn't think so, given that most of my work is about and on computers, but I used to take a ton of handwritten notes and doodle when thinking up article ideas — and waste oh-so-many Post-It notes in the process. My iMac's screen used to be littered with them.

The fact is, I've always used drawing as a way to let my thoughts coalesce, and the iPad lets me do it in a medium that's also directly relatable to whatever it is I'm working on. A perfect example was this week's review of the drawing app Linea: I make a point of including doodles and writing in almost every drawing app I review, but as I was making my notes (in Linea) about how much I liked the app, I didn't feel like these scratch-doodles would adequately represent why I preferred it so much more than Paper or Notes.

My thought process then led to "Well, I could make an animated gif of my sketching process, and show how easy it is to select colors and the like…" which led to me thinking about how many gifs I could include before the page would explode — finally, I decided to just live-draw the whole review.

None of that would be possible without the Pencil — I certainly couldn't draw or handwrite as fast in an art app with a traditional stylus or my finger.

Outside of specifically drawing-related activities, I use the Pencil constantly for spot-correcting photos I want to put up on the iMore website, or cropping images; it's a million times better (and faster) than pulling my Wacom tablet out of storage and connecting it to my Mac to do the same thing.

I did this for about nine months during my iPad Pro experiment, and while it's doable, no! I don't. I really like my MacBook Pro's ultimate multitasking ability, and the "managing" part of my managing editor position at iMore is still a million times faster on my Mac than an iPad. That said, I do a lot more on the iPad now than I ever thought I'd do; forcing myself to work exclusively on the iPad showed me exactly what made more sense to do on a tablet than a Mac.

I couldn't imagine my working life without my iPad these days — when I don't use it for awhile, it feels like a tool in my toolbox is missing.

I used to sketch on it constantly. I stopped for awhile because it just felt like the world got too busy and it was too much of a hassle to do anything, but I've started doodling again on my own time and it's incredibly cathartic. I also use it as a songbook to very poorly play music on my ukulele. (Shout out to Ultimate Guitar Tabs, which offers thousands of tabs to learn from and even lets you transpose chords if you never want to play an E on the ukulele.)

I agree, self! It's always a little odd to talk to yourself in public, but I think we did this well. Self-five.

So do you use an iPad for work?

Please, please, please email me. I'd love to hear your story and chat with you. And drop a note in our forums, too if you want to see what else people are doing with their iPads.

Counting days and pairs of socks so that I can get through the trip — pretty standard stuff. Packing that suitcase hasn't changed a lot for me in the last 20 years.

But as I pack to go on a week-long trip with my family next week, it struck me: I may be a whiz at packing clothes and bathroom supplies, but I am a huge ball of stress when it comes to packing my technology. What gadgets are in my bag — and what's loaded on those gadgets — is the thing that consumes me in the days before I take a big trip.

Loading media for vacation

The new "packing for vacation" is loading media on your devices for vacation. Too often, vacation destinations suffer from slow, unreliable, or nonexistent Internet, so it's usually wise for the tech savvy traveler to load up on stuff (especially huge media files) before you go. If you're flying, you've also got your time on the airplane to think about, since that's not a place you're going to find high-speed Internet.

It used to be that I'd make sure that my music library was synced to my iPod or iPhone. These days, I'm an Apple Music user, but the same rule applies: While I'm still on fast Wi-Fi at home, I'll be sure to download favorite albums and playlists for offline listening. (I generally always carry many hours of podcasts around with me, but if I'm feeling short on those, I'll switch to Overcast and download another half-dozen episodes of Hello from the Magic Tavern.

Packing video is trickier than audio, but it's a lot less tricky than it used to be. Yes, I still have to sync some non-DRM movies and TV shows from my Mac via iTunes, but I've also got a lot of stuff that I bought on iTunes that I can download directly from the cloud. What's made this entire category more convenient is that now both Netflix and Amazon Prime Video allow you to download shows for offline viewing. (Netflix doesn't offer everything for offline download, but a large selection — including many of Netflix's originals — are available.)

Next up is deciding how I'm going to watch video when I get to my destination. If it's all on my iPad Pro's 12.9-inch screen, all I need to do is pack a headphone splitter. But for this particular trip, we'll be staying at least some of the time at a rented house with a big flat-screen TV. If anyone's going to provide entertainment for Movie Night, it'll probably be me — so I'll need to figure out how to do that.

I could pack my Apple TV; even if all I'm doing is using AirPlay to play movies from my iPad, it might be worth it. I've got an Amazon Fire TV Stick, which is a pretty great little device but doesn't support AirPlay — so I could only bring it if I had a great deal of confidence in the speed of the Internet at the house. (I don't.) I could also bring an Apple HDMI-to-Lightning adapter and just connect my iPad to the TV to play videos. That's probably the easiest approach, so it's likely to be what I'll do. I'll also probably pack an HDMI cable too... just in case.

Reading is easier: I'll download a few books to my Kindle and a bunch of comics to my iPad — both purchased ones via Comixology and 12 offline issues from Marvel Unlimited.

How extreme is my vacation?

Another decision point I make before any trip is the question of how much work I'll be doing — and what kind. These days, very few of us are able to entirely unplug and do no work when we take a vacation. I'm trying very hard for this vacation to not partake in any major work, which requires that I do a whole lot of it in advance. A So here's my plan: For this trip, I'm not going to bring a Mac. I'll bring my iPad Pro and an external keyboard just in case I need to write something; I'm even loading a podcast onto my iPad Pro for me to edit on my flight — strangely enough, there is no better place to edit a podcast than on an airplane!

You need to take the tools with you that you might require when you're there. For a lot of people, that still includes a Mac. Sometimes it does for me, too. But I think I can do without, at least for a week.

Plugs and dongles and chargers

My HDMI-to-Lightning adapter won't be the only one I bring with me on my trip. There are four people in my family and seven iOS devices among us; that means charging — and lots of it. I currently have a compact travel power brick that includes two USB ports along with three standard power plugs; in the past, I've considered buying one of those gadgets that's just a bunch of USB ports for us to charge all our devices with, though I haven't yet picked one up.

Fortunately, our iPad chargers can charge our iPhones — so I don't anticipate bringing seven charging cables. We should be able to get by with four, more or less. I'm sure we'll make it work — but it's always a consideration when I'm packing for every trip. The family's not happy if our devices have no charge.

These days, of course, I also need to remember to bring my Lightning-to-headphone adapter, just in case I want to listen to music with wired headphones on my iPhone 7. (I may bring my AirPods with me on the trip, but I'd rather use my in-ear headphones on the airplane, just for their sound-blocking properties.)

As I write this, I've got about 36 hours until my plane takes off. Not a single swimsuit has been stuffed in a suitcase yet, but on the tech side, I'm already preparing. Once I've got my movies loaded and my Lightning cables stowed, counting out pairs of underwear will be no trouble at all.

One reason I will remember the iPhone 7, however, is for its increased emphasis on haptic feedback.

I've written before about why haptic feedback has the potential to be a powerful tool for accessibility. In broad strokes: The big gain for people with disabilities comes down to augmenting the experience. Where Dynamic Type augments the user interface by enlarging text, so too can haptic feedback augment the UI by giving users another signal (beyond visuals) that something is happening with the device. These secondary cues — however subtle — can play a crucial role in shaping one's experience.

This can apply to anyone using an iPhone, but is especially true for people with disabilities.

Here's a great example of Apple's prior haptic success: me and phone calls. I have some congenital hearing loss in both ears due to being born prematurely. I still talk on the phone quite a bit — yes, I'm old — and, as such, the Phone app has long been a fixture on my Home screen. In addition to hearing an audible ring when a call comes in, I also have the Vibrate on Ring option enabled (Settings > Sounds & Haptics > Vibrate). What this does is give me tactile feedback that someone's calling in addition to hearing the ringer. That added signal is important: I may not always hear my phone ringing, but I certainly can feel it buzzing in my pocket. Thus, this bimodal experience is a real boon for accessibility — for me, at least. (There's even a third cue: my Apple Watch, which is set to ring and vibrate for the same reason.)

I've been using the Vibrate on Ring feature for years, and while it isn't true haptic feedback, it nonetheless adheres to the principle that the sensory output from a "tactile" interface can make the iPhone more accessible. With the iPhone 6s and especially the iPhone 7, Apple has further utilized its Taptic Engine in various ways across iOS that make using the device an even more pleasant and enriching experience.

How haptics shape the iPhone 7

The iPhone 6s last year introduced 3D Touch. With Quick Actions and Peek & Pop, users could use their favorite apps more quickly and efficiently, all with a subtle buzz from the Taptic Engine. But 3D Touch also was interesting from an accessibility point of view as well: Not only is 3D Touch convenient, it can save users from eye strain and/or muscle fatigue due to excessive searching and tapping. I've found this to be true in my experience using 3D Touch, and I enjoy it.

With the iPhone 7 and iOS 10, Apple has expanded both 3D Touch's scope and how haptic feedback responds throughout the operating system. You can now use 3D Touch on certain icons in Control Center, as well as manage the status of downloading apps. On the iPhone 6s and 7, you feel Control Center or Notification Center being invoked with a quick thud as you slide the pane up or down; on the iPhone 7, the date picker in the Clock app registers bits of feedback as you move through time. Even enabling or disabling setting toggles now include a physical tick.

The effects of the iPhone 7's Taptic Engine are pervasive and add another layer of interaction. This can bring complexity, yes — but for many people with disabilities, being able to literally feel your way through the OS means a lot. To see the green "on" indicator for iOS 10's settings switches is one thing; to see green and feel the status change as you slide it over is a horse of a different color. If you, like me, can't see so well, that literal feeling of reassurance makes all the difference.

It isn't just Apple's internal apps, either: The Taptic Engine API for iPhone 7 gives third-party developers the power to enhance their apps to make them even more engaging and accessible than they already are.

The Home button (in name only)

No discussion of the iPhone 7 and haptic feedback is complete without mention of another of its banner features: the solid state Home button.

The Home button really is a "button" in name only: Unlike the physical buttons of yore, the iPhone 7's Home button no longer works mechanically. Instead, Apple uses its Taptic Engine to render "clicks" of varying degrees. (Users can determine which degree they prefer — 1, 2, or 3 — in a way similar to how 3D Touch is configured.) It reminds me a lot of the Force Touch trackpads on the 12-inch MacBook and the MacBook Pros.

Although it does take some getting used to, and there are reasonable arguments for keeping the old mechanism, the new Home button does have real advantages when it comes to accessibility. For one thing, not having to physically press the button should make life easier on users with limited range of motion and/or low muscle tone in their fingers. This is exactly why motor-centric accessibility features like AssistiveTouch or Switch Control exist; for many people, it's easier to tap and touch than it is to press with even the tiniest bit of force. What's more, the granularity Apple provides for adjusting the Home button's sensitivity should go a long way in helping users figure out which setting works best for them. (I'm still figuring this out myself.)

Another advantage is the haptic feedback: When you press the button to go back to Springboard, invoke Siri, or whatever else, it "buzzes." Again, it's all about multi-sensory output: Not only do users see the UI switching back to, say, the Home screen, they also feel a little buzz that lets them know the action (returning Home) has been triggered. That extra cue is a huge win for accessibility and key to the bimodal experience. If you can't see well, the Taptic Engine is still there for you, saying "Yes, you pushed the button. Something will happen now."

Feeling the future

It should be noted that, because needs and tolerances vary widely, not everyone with a disability will reap benefit from haptic feedback. Someone with autism who may be sensitive in terms of sensory motor development likely won't appreciate the iPhone 7's ticks and buzzes. But that's why you can disable System Haptics: You can configure the best experience for your needs.

Still, in my brief time with an iPhone 7 Plus, I'm very much enjoying the use of haptic feedback throughout the device. As with Apple Watch, the Taptic Engine gives me a more immersive, enjoyable, and — most importantly — accessible experience. There are areas where it can improve; I'd love to get feedback when I tap a Back button, for instance. But overall, I'm bullish on Apple's and developers' future plans for this technology.

The oldest ones are nearly 15 years old: 1600-by-1200-pixel snaps taken from my first digital camera, a Canon PowerShot. I bought that camera in October 2001 because my wife and I were about to have our first child; we knew we were about to have a life experience that really needed to be documented.

Here's how much photography has changed in the last 15 years: One of the selling points I had to make back then was the relative cost of having prints made from digital photos versus taking film to the supermarket and getting back prints. (I won the argument, because even in 2001 the economics were shifting away from film — it was cheaper to digitally print only the images that turned out well, rather than paying for an entire roll of film to be printed, regardless of quality.)

A brave new digital world

The first two years of my daughter's life are chronicled via 1.9 megapixel snaps from that Canon PowerShot. From today's perspective, it's a shamefully low-resolution camera, but at the time it was pretty good. It generated some nice 3x5 prints from Shutterfly, and there's an 8x10 print from the day my daughter was born on the wall of my house. It looks pretty great, even now.

Because I used a digital camera, I was able to post photos of my newborn daughter on the web on the day she was born, and continually update friends and relatives with new photos over the first few years of her life. Today, we have Facebook and Twitter and countless other photo-sharing services; back in 2001, there was basically nothing. I made a website, put some photos on it, and sent my friends and family the link: That was where all our family photos went.

A few months later, Apple announced iPhoto, a "digital shoebox" for all of our digital photos. It arrived just in time: For the next 13 years, I poured photos into that shoebox while Apple released software updates to try to make iPhoto more capable of dealing with the deluge. It was a race that iPhoto rarely won: Every release claimed to be faster than the one before it, and that was generally true, but by that point my library was full of thousands — and later, tens of thousands — of photos.

By 2003, the digital photography revolution was in full swing. My boss at the time gave me a bonus — but rather than cash, he offered me a Canon Digital Rebel. This was the first $1000 Digital SLR, and it dramatically improved the quality of my digital photos. Not only was it a 6.2-megapixel camera, but it had all the gorgeous optics of an SLR. It also meant that all my photos went from being 400K to 2.5MB per shot, making iPhoto groan under the strain.

That was my digital photo life for a long time, through the birth of my son and the entry of my daughter into elementary school. The idea of printing photos rapidly receded into the distance. (I started printing end-of-year iPhoto Books, and then even stopped doing that. These days I print a few large prints to hang on the wall, and everything else stays on a phone or computer screen.)

Enter the iPhone

In 2007, though, I got a new camera — the original iPhone. Its sole rear-facing camera had a paltry 1.9-megapixel sensor, like the one in the point-and-shoot I'd bought six years earlier. Unlike that camera, however, the iPhone had no optical zoom or flash, and much worse optics.

But now I had a camera with me at all times — not just the times when I anticipated needing a camera.

I don't know when I first heard the maxim "The best camera is the one you have with you," but the iPhone proved that to be true. The first revision to the iPhone didn't come with a camera upgrade, but in 2009, the iPhone 3GS upped the camera to 3.1 megapixels, offering auto-focus and auto white balance. The iPhone was getting better at photography, but there was still a lot of room to grow.

The iPhone 4 arrived in 2010, and that's where things really changed: This iPhone had a 5-megapixel sensor, an LED flash, and the capability of shooting HD video. My iPhoto library began to weep under the strain of HD video of my daughter's softball games.

In the dark, instead of generating grainy desaturated images, the iPhone was now capable of observing the lighting in a dim scene. Still, when the San Francisco Giants won the World Series that fall, I took my Digital SLR to the parade, not the iPhone.

(My iPhone 4 was my daughter's first iPhone, a hand-me-down a couple of years later when she entered middle school. Alas, my daughter was a fan of taking selfies, and the front-facing camera on the iPhone 4 still wasn't great. It would be a couple of years yet before Apple got selfie religion.)

The iPhone 4S appeared in 2011, the day before Steve Jobs passed away. It was another huge leap forward for the iPhone, with an 8-megapixel sensor and support for 1080 HD video. In my photo library from this period, I've got a shocking number of poorly-lit photos of my family that still look pretty good. The difference between what I could shoot with the original iPhone just four years before and what I could shoot with the 4S was shocking.

The iPhone 5 wasn't a major step forward for the iPhone camera — it featured the same resolution as the camera in the 4S, though Apple claimed that it had better low-light performance. This model did mark the start of Apple's major upgrades to the selfie camera, however. My daughter's second hand-me-down phone was an iPhone 5, and this one was much more suitable for her purposes. Though when I used mine to capture the moment of victory in the 2012 World Series, I exposed some of its low-light flaws.

My father died in early 2013. My final photos of him, in the hospital, and of the impromptu family reunion that followed, were all taken on the iPhone 5. I treasure those photos, as difficult as it is to view them sometimes.

The iPhone 5S brought us a true-tone flash and a larger camera aperture, though Apple didn't increase the resolution for the second straight year. My groaning iPhoto library thanked me, and Apple went to great lengths to point out that more megapixels weren't everything. In 2013 I went to Ireland for the first time, and toted along my iPhone 5S to dinner with the gentlemen who put on the Úll conference. Even in the low light of a Dublin restaurant, I was happy with my shots of a half-finished pint of Guinness.

In 2014 the iPhone camera got a huge bump with the release of the iPhone 6. Yes, the specs were better, but Apple also added a bump to the iPhone that remains to this day. With that extra space caused by the camera sticking out, the iPhone camera's optics got a lot better. The iPhone 6 Plus arrived as well, with the bonus of optical image stabilization. I took a trip to Europe — my dinner with the guys from Úll had paid off! — and the iPhone 6 Plus shot my travelogue.

And time goes on

In walking through photos from all these eras, I am impressed at how the iPhone's image quality just keeps improving. Most jumps between versions aren't particularly shocking in terms of difference in quality, but still, I catch myself looking at a photo taken in my backyard in the fall of 2015 and marveling at the detail I've managed to get out of an iPhone. These days, the DSLR rarely comes out of its drawer: I took a thousand-mile road trip in the summer of 2015 and didn't even bring it.

In the span of eight years between the original iPhone and the iPhone 6S, my daughter went from first grade to high school. My son went from day care to middle school. The old cat and dog departed, replaced by a new cat and dog. Life went on, collected in frames of ever-improving iPhone shots.

Another major milestone from 2015: The departure of iPhoto, replaced by the Photos app. Now my tens of thousands of photos are syncing with iCloud, and I was able to merge my entire photo collection into a single library for the first time in several years. Photos is still poky sometimes, but it's navigable even with 73,000 photos in there — it's sure got that over iPhoto.

And that brings us to the present. My daughter the cheerleader, my son the video game fan, my Jet Black iPhone taking and displaying pictures using the P3 wide color gamut. I used to assume that future generations of viewers would cringe at the standard-definition video I was taking with my camcorder (and later, my iPhone). And yes, that's true — people might even cringe at 720p video now that we're rapidly entering the 4K video era.

What I didn't expect is that in the future, people will look back at the photos I took before 2016 and lament the lack of a vibrant, encompassing color space. I'm color blind, so I'm a little less sensitive to the issue. But it's another area where Apple just keeps grinding. And with the arrival of Portrait Mode on the iPhone 7 Plus, phone images can potentially look even more SLR-like.

Photographic footprints

In life, the steps we take are small. It's the number of them that adds up in the end. I bought a digital camera the week before my daughter was born, and now she's a teenager. That happened a day at a time. And the pictures I've taken during her life have similarly changed and improved, iteration by iteration. One view of my Photos library tells that tale — in terms of my life, and the cameras I've used to document it.

Things may not feel that different, but they're changing day by day.

In the early 2000s — during Apple's spectacular rise on the back of the popularity of the iPod — what sticks out the most to me is the mystery and the theater of Apple's product unveilings. There were still times that Apple didn't quite pull off the reveal, like when Time magazine's Canadian website posted an image of the chrome-arm iMac G4 the night before the Macworld Expo keynote. But for the most part, Apple's early events were all surprise and no spoiler.

As hard as it is for me to believe, however, that era of Apple is long since past. It's been nearly a decade since the iPhone launched. In those days we thought we were pretty web savvy, but digital media was still largely a curiosity — an add-on to traditional print, TV, radio and the like. These days, we're all so interconnected: The prospect of a true surprise, on the order of what Apple pulled off consistently during the heyday of Steve Jobs, seems unrealistic.

Big company, big target

When I started writing about Apple back in the prehistory of the 90s, everyone would wait for the latest issue of MacWEEK to show up in the mail. Yes, that's right, kids, 20 years ago, Apple rumors were delivered by snail mail on paper. There was a small cottage industry for getting scoops from Apple in the pre-Jobs-return era, and MacWEEK was great at what it did. But it pales in comparison to what we see today, for a few reasons.

First, the size of the target: Back then, Apple was a small tech company with an even smaller, devoted customer base. Today, it is enormous; it's one of the most valuable companies in the world. The iPhone has been a huge part of that transformation, and public interest about what Apple is planning next — coupled with the secrecy Steve Jobs built into the company culture in order to pull off those theatrical product reveals — has driven rumor-seekers to even greater heights. The iPhone is one of the biggest products in the world; its future drives investors, markets, and whole industries.

Add to that the sheer scope of the operation required to manufacture the iPhone: It's a complex product with many different parts suppliers, and it has to be built millions of times over. Quite simply, the supply chain is leaky. There are too many people, in too many places, with too much reason to leak information to the people who are curious about what's coming next.

(Back before Jobs's return, Apple leaked from Cupertino. These days, Apple leaks largely from the supply chain, though Cupertino leaks do still happen. Apple employees are more disciplined and restrained — and perhaps aware of being watched — than they were back in the 90s.)

When everyone knows

Then there's the software side. One of the most interesting aspects of Rick Tetzeli's recent Fast Company profile of Tim Cook's Apple was the admission by Eddy Cue that Apple's botched Maps launch convinced the company to open up its software and services to the wider world much earlier in the process. The result is an ever-expanding public beta program.

Back in the day, unless you were an Apple developer, you'd wait for the latest version of Mac OS X to go final, and then upgrade. These days, however, pretty much anyone who wants the next version of macOS or iOS can get it within a few weeks of its announcement by filling out a form and downloading a simple installer. iOS 10 and macOS Sierra may not officially come out until September, but the most engaged Apple users will probably have been running those operating systems for months at that point.

The transparent era

Increasingly, it feels like the era of event surprise and delight is over. Delight can still exist, of course, but it's becoming increasingly impossible for Apple to surprise. All the new hardware — even entirely new stuff like the Apple Watch — is rumored months before it arrives, often in exacting detail. New software, also rumored in detail before it's announced, can be running on your devices in the days or weeks after that announcement.

But you know what? I think I might be okay with things being a bit less dramatic.

On the software side, as Apple's platforms continue to mature and the world completely internalizes the idea of free automatic software updates, it seems like the company is content for its annual software releases to gently iterate rather than shock with iOS 7-style transformations. El Capitan wasn't a particularly traumatic update from Yosemite, and for me, the macOS Sierra has been the most uneventful major Mac software upgrade ever. It's got some new features, but otherwise works just fine. iOS 10 has some more dramatic visual changes, but upgrading my iPhone and iPad to the public betas hasn't slowed me down one bit.

In terms of hardware, sure, I wouldn't mind a little more drama with the product unveiling. But, for all the reasons I've already detailed, I don't think it's a realistic dream. We don't live in a world where Apple can fly under the radar and keep tight control of its supply chain. Instead, someone who knows someone who knows a supplier can post a next-generation iPhone shell on a blog in Taiwan that's automatically translated and reposted to the point where every single person who would care about that news has seen it by the next day.

So do I miss the romance of the big, shocking reveal? I do. But we don't live in that era anymore. In this era, perhaps Apple should start playing even less coy about what it's working on next. We saw Apple executives refer to the wrist as an area of interest, months before the Apple Watch was formally announced. And Tim Cook seems to be struggling with how to admit Apple's investigating a car without actually admitting it.

I don't anticipate Apple pre-announcing its new hardware initiatives years before they ship to customers, Microsoft-style. It's just not in Apple's culture to do stuff like that, and fair enough. But I do expect Apple to continue to adapt to the era in which we live, and not keep playing the games that Jobs played to amazingly great effect in the previous decade.

One of the things I love about the iPad Pro is that when it's stripped down to its naked robotic core it's a powerful, useful device in a small, easily-carried package. But the iPad Pro wouldn't be an Apple product if it weren't surrounded by a universe of accessories.

Every accessory adds functionality to the core product, but also complexity and weight. It's a tricky balance, and here's what I've found best suits my lifestyle.

Case, cover, and bag

Let's talk protection. What you need depends on the lifestyle you lead. For me, an Apple Smart Cover has always been a must-have item — not only does it keep my screen from getting dirty or scratched, but it's a convenient way to automatically lock the device, and doubles as a stand. For my 12.9-inch, I've augmented this protection with the $79 Apple Silicone Case — but only when I'm taking the iPad out and about. At home, the case stays in a drawer, because (as is the case with almost every 12.9-inch iPad Pro accessory) it just adds too much bulk.

I don't use a dedicated bag for my iPad, because between my Smart Cover and any case I might choose to dress it in, I feel pretty comfortable dropping it in the laptop slot of my go-to messenger bag. But there are definitely bags out there that are dedicated to carrying iPad Pros (and the accessories, like the ones below, that we surround them with). For me, the most important thing is keeping things as light as possible. (Any case big enough to carry a 13-inch laptop will handle the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, of course.)

• Best cases for iPad Pro
• The Staad Attaché is a classy briefcase alternative for your iPad Pro

The Apple Pencil

I am not a pencil or pen aficionado. The moment my teachers in school began accepting typed homework, I was handing it in fresh off the dot-matrix printer.

As a result, the $99 Apple Pencil is not my personal favorite iPad Pro accessory, but it's a truly amazing piece of kit. Other than the cap (beneath which sits a male Lightning connector for quick charging), it's a device without an interface. Or, to put it more accurately, it's got the same interface as every writing implement since hands first picked up a stick and drew in the dirt.

• Review: Apple Pencil
• How to get started with Apple Pencil: The Ultimate Guide
• Best Apple Pencil accessories

Fast charging

The 12.9-inch iPad Pro is big, with a big battery to match. It takes a very, very long time (basically overnight) to fully charge the battery with the stock cable and adapter that Apple supplies. But there's a way to get much faster charging — if you're willing to pay the price.

That price is a $49 Apple 29W USB-C Power Adapter — built for the new MacBook, but also entirely compatible with the 12.9-inch iPad Pro and a $25 USB-C to Lightning Cable. Other iPad models, even the 9.7-inch iPad Pro, don't have the circuitry to use the extra wattage that the USB-C Power Adapter puts out, but the big iPad Pro does. If you find yourself frustrated by the slow speed of charging, it might just be worth $74 to fix that.

Adapters are your friend

The iPad Pro's Lightning port is good for charging, yes, but it's also a way for the device to connect to other devices in ways we wouldn't blink twice about if we were connecting to a traditional desktop computer.

Despite its name, the $39 Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter is not just for cameras. Because it can itself be powered via Lightning, it allows you to connect other USB devices to the iPad, even if they require more power than the iPad itself could deliver. I've used this adapter to power high-quality USB audio interfaces, USB microphones, and even Apple's own $29 USB Ethernet adapter. (Yes, your iPad can use Ethernet.)

If you need to connect your iPad to an external screen, perhaps for a presentation, you should invest in a couple of video adapters — just as you would for a Mac laptop. For the iPad, your options are the $49 Lightning Digital AV Adapter — which has an HDMI port and supports up to 1080p video — and the $49 Lightning to VGA Adapter, because inevitably that place you're giving your next presentation will have a 10-year-old projector that only supports VGA.

Speaking of external video, the $149 Apple TV is actually a pretty great iPad accessory. You can use AirPlay to connect wirelessly to a TV with an Apple TV attached, freeing you from wired iPad adapter nonsense. There are also a lot of video sources that are still not available on the Apple TV, but have iOS apps that will let you use AirPlay.

A stand or an arm

There are many, many iPad stands out there — and even more stands meant for other purposes that end up working great as iPad stands. My friend Andy Ihnatko has, for several years, sworn by a simple art stand he bought at an art supply store for a few bucks. I often use a wooden stand meant for kitchen use that I picked up at Macworld Expo.

I do love a good iPad stand, though. The Smart Cover can be used as a stand, sure, but it's not quite as sturdy as a solid stand made for such a purpose.

As someone who often types on an iPad Pro using a Bluetooth keyboard, a stand is a great addition. The only problem is that, as with a laptop, the ergonomics of having your keyboard and display at similar heights are not particularly good. I wish someone made a mounting arm I could attach to a desk or table and then clip my 12.9-inch iPad Pro into, but I haven't found one. (There are some for the 9.7-inch model, though!)

• Best iPad Pro stands

The quest for the perfect keyboard

So it's come to this. In some ways, the ultimate iPad Pro accessory really is an external keyboard.

There are a bunch to choose from, especially if you throw Bluetooth keyboards into the equation; in all honesty, if you've got a spare Bluetooth keyboard around, it may be all you need. (I wrote this very article on an Apple Magic Keyboard, connected via Bluetooth to my iPad Pro.)

I do like Apple's Smart Keyboard more than I thought I would. On the 9.7-inch iPad Pro it's pretty fantastic, despite the shrunken-down key size. The 12.9-inch model is a decent keyboard, but it does add to the bulk of the device, so I prefer the Smart Cover most of the time.

There are other keyboard options if Apple's options leave you less than thrilled, however. The Logitech Create offers the typing experience of a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, though you have to clip the iPad into the case. iMore's own Serenity Caldwell said it's clunky and heavy, but she loves it — and I sure agree on the "clunky and heavy" part.

The new Razer Mechanical Keyboard case is less clunky, but even heavier.

I haven't yet tried the Zagg SlimBook Pro, but by most accounts it's less clunky than the Create (it's Bluetooth-based, so you can detach the keyboard from the case) but it also has a lesser keyboard.

In short, I'm not sure there's a perfect keyboard for the iPad Pro yet. The Smart Cover comes close, and so does a Bluetooth keyboard of your choice, coupled with a stand. Of all the accessories for the iPad Pro, it's funny that the most important one is also the one that hasn't really been solved yet.

• Best keyboards for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro
• Best keyboards for the 9.7-inch iPad Pro

Your picks

That about rounds up my adventures into iPad Pro accessory territory. What gizmos and gadgets are you using for your iPad Pro?

In every way, the new Apple TV is a step up from the version it replaced. The interface is better, its channel selection is massively expanded, and forget the haters — I find the new remote a blast to use. But as much as I love it, I found it hard at first to not feel a bit frustrated by the state of gaming on the platform. Thankfully, I have hope that this will soon be changing — starting with restrictions being lifted on custom controllers.

Remote limitations

The Siri Remote makes a lot of sense for watching TV and navigating content. It offers a touch area a bit larger than a postage stamp at the tip of the remote — just large enough for your thumb to swipe comfortably. This allows general directional swipes that are precise enough for Netflix or for fast-forwarding to a run scored in an MLB.tv game, but it isn't a good fit for videogames, which require extremely precise responses.

Take the classic Genesis game Sonic the Hedgehog. This game, by all rights and means, should be a natural fit for the Apple audience: The gameplay is easy to pick up, the content is kid-friendly, and the the $3 price is low enough to buy on a whim. But it is a flat-out miserable experience with the Siri Remote. Jumps will be missed, rolls will not be detected, and trying to change direction in midair is infuriating.

Put down the Siri Remote and pick up a third-party controller like the Nimbus Steel Series, however, and everything changes. The game plays perfectly, bringing the magic of Sonic the Hedgehog to life.

Unfortunately, many Apple TV users may never know about the glory of third-party controllers: Up until this point, game developers have been forced to support the Siri remote, even when it doesn't make sense for their type of game. For example, the classic Sega game Streets of Rage II has been ported to almost every major system, but if Sega were to bring it to tvOS, it would be almost impossible on the Siri Remote — because the buttons aren't in the right place

But that could all be changing.

Take 10

With tvOS 10's release in the fall, Apple is quietly dropping its requirement that tvOS games support the Siri Controller.

This means that developers can soon require a third-party controller for playing certain titles on tvOS. It may come at the expense of not being able to sell the game to the portion of the Apple TV audience without alternative controllers, but we may also see titles that physically could not have been ported to the platform without a more traditional remote. It also frees up the developer's engineering resources, letting them focus more on the game than porting its controls to the Siri remote.

The Apple TV App Store has already devoted a portion of its store to this new policy: "Play with Controllers." I can personally confirm: Every game they've selected is a vastly better experience; Geometry Wars 3 is a precision twin-stick shooter, and with the Steel Series, it's absolutely equal to the PS4 version. Oceanhorn is a straight up Zelda clone, done with superb attention to detail. On iOS, the touchpad gameplay was tolerable - but on tvOS, with a third-party controller, the experience is extremely comparable to Link to the Past.

There's no question the move away from the Siri remote remote requirement will result in better games on Apple TV. I do wonder, however, if we'll see Apple get into the advanced controller business itself this fall — offering an Apple TV bundle with the Siri Remote and Magic Controller, perhaps?

Beyond control

What's more exciting, to me, is the ways tvOS could further expand for game developers. For all the improvements Apple has made to Metal and its other 3D developer tools, it's hard to not notice that almost every game on iOS is set in a 2D environment — most of those games that have been built specifically for the iPhone. Many of the games on tvOS currently are ports from these iPhone titles, but but there's no technical reason more sophisticated games couldn't run on Apple TV.

Our own studio works extensively with Unreal Engine on iOS, and the idea of porting some of the greatest Unreal games ever made to Apple TV is an entirely feasible project. Imagine playing Mass Effect, Life is Strange, Bioshock or Batman: Arkham City on your Apple TV: None of those game ports could be possible without Apple dropping the Siri Remote. Here's hoping this is just step one in the company's plan for TV game development. After all, a great gaming platform is yet another selling point for picking up a new Apple TV.

I almost missed it.

I was so put off by the app's WWDC Keynote introduction and "Learn to Code" content — the hype, the marketing, and the sample content that favored gameification over pedagogy — I almost missed how good Swift Playgrounds is today and how great it can and will be in the near future.

Xcodesploration

I loved Xcode Playgrounds from the moment they were introduced two years ago: They're a perfect way to learn and experiment with Swift code.

Before Xcode Playgrounds existed, if I wanted to teach you to program, we'd have to open Xcode and create a new Single View project. We would look in the App Delegate and look for the method that was called after the app loaded. If you're new to iOS, this is where the questions start: "What's an App Delegate?", "How and when does this method get called?", et cetera, et cetera. It's a lot of cognitive overhead, and we haven't even started coding yet.

Sure, the first version of Playgrounds was flawed; over time, however, it's grown into a great platform for teaching experienced developers how to code in Swift. We can now more easily add documentation to Playgrounds, create multi-page documents, and add source files and resources to individual pages or to the entire Playground. We can even drag colors and images right into the window.

In short, Playgrounds are a great environment for experimenting with code, trying out algorithms, and learning new libraries. The problem is that this runs inside of Xcode. As such, it's difficult for programming newcomers to experiment with this platform without being exposed to more power than they need or can initially handle.

Immersing the learner

There were many developers asking for Xcode to be ported to the iPad; I was not among them. It makes perfect sense to me, however, to bring Playground support to the iPad. Swift Playgrounds gives us this — and does so in a much friendlier way than its Xcode counterpart for new coders.

In Swift Playgrounds, we can just jump in and zoom in on the part we want to explain first. When building playgrounds for my students, I can hide all the code I don't want you to think about yet, and include text, glossary items, and hints to help you through the code.

I can also mark some of the code that you do see as un-editable, so that you can't accidentally change code that might make the playground hard to work with. I can even use special commands so that when you tap on any editable code, you'll see a list of allowed elements you can use. You don't even have to type out the element by hand after seeing that pop-up — you can tap on any suggestion and it will automatically drop into the selected location for you.

If the selected field expects a color, a color picker will appear when you tap on it; if it expects an image, an image picker appears. And if you want to dive into more complicated coding expressions, you can also select and use the keyboard.

The key options for Swift Playgrounds are a little different than your standard iOS keyboard: For example, the "=" sign is on the same key as the "d". To select the "=", you hold the "d" down and slide it towards the bottom of the screen. At first this feels awkward, but it becomes second nature surprisingly quickly. You can also use an external keyboard, if you prefer.

Once you've entered the code you want, tap on a button to run the code and see the results. If the results aren't what you expect or want, you can just change the code and press the button again. The learner lives in a protected world that can be focused on the lesson.

Marketing and promise

That said, I'm a bit frustrated with Apple's marketing for this app. Things like "There's never been anything like this" and "Wouldn't this have been cool when we were all learning to code?" are insulting to the wonderful environments that have come before Swift Playgrounds: Turtle Logo and Squeak were available on systems before iOS was ever imagined. In fact, Squeak was originally released by Apple in the 1990s.

The fact that many of these great learning environments aren't available on the iPad is not due to technical reasons — John Macintosh had Squeak running on an iPhone in 2008. But he couldn't widely distribute it because of App Store restrictions. Likewise, Scratch runs on iOS, but because of App Store restrictions, the MIT site's release only runs on a jailbroken phone.

So I ask you ignore the hype from Apple executives, and Apple's messaging on Swift Playgrounds: It is not only for learning to code, and it is definitely not only for kids. It can also provide an environment where educators and authors can lead others through a curriculum that engages students while masking irrelevant complexities.

• In science, there could be Swift Playgrounds that model physics, chemistry, or life sciences and allow students to work through problems and see results in real time.
• A music class could feature Swift Playgrounds that allow students to learn music theory, train their ear for intervals or harmonies, or play software instruments to complete a challenge. Given the first twelve bars of this piece, compose the next four bars that might logically follow.
• A math class could feature Swift Playgrounds that let students touch functions and data and interact with math in a way that is immersive and personal.
• Can you teach people to code with Swift Playgrounds? Absolutely. I just really dislike the "Learn to Code" example. Swift Playgrounds can be used to teach experienced programmers to program and think in Swift and can introduce programming concepts to those new to programming.

The possibilities are endless, and I look forward to seeing what the community comes up with.

Hurdles and challenges

The app has a lot going for it, but I do have a few concerns and quibbles.

First of all, the name "Swift Playgrounds" is unfortunate; I fear many people will confuse Swift Playgrounds with Xcode Playgrounds. On iOS, the app is called Swift Playgrounds, and each document is a playground — or maybe a lesson? It's unclear. The Apple website refers to one of them as a "Lesson" but most often uses the word "Creation." On the Mac, the app is called Xcode, and the document is called a "Playground."

Whatever their name, the documents Swift Playgrounds creates are essentially interactive books with chapters and pages. Apple could have reused the name "PowerBook" to refer to this new kind of content; the file formats for each type of Playground are distinct, the intent is clearly different, and audiences are vastly different. (radar: 27062404)

The Swift Playgrounds app is so good and so different from Xcode Playgrounds that I would love to see a version of Swift Playgrounds that runs on macOS. This way, non-programmers who own a Mac would be able to use the same "Creations" on both platforms without having to dive into Xcode. (radar: 27064067)

When it comes to creating new documents inside Swift Playgrounds as an educator, there is currently no documentation on formatting pages. If you're trying to build a new document in Swift Playgrounds and want to figure out how to hide elements, specify code completion, and make code editable, your only resource currently is WWDC Session 408 "Introducing Swift Playgrounds". You can also AirDrop your Swift Playgrounds content on your Mac and open files with a text editor or Xcode, but that's even less helpful. (radar 27080284)

Unfortunately, educators and content creators can't currently be rewarded for their hard work: There is no way to sell content in Swift Playgrounds, though I hope this changes with the final release of iOS 10.

Imagine the App Store if no one was allowed to charge for apps, have in-app purchases, or support subscriptions — we would not have iOS's rich array of programs and content. There will absolutely be an initial rush to experiment with this new format, but if Apple wants sustained, high-quality contributions from the educational community, they need to let us choose whether or not to charge for these contributions. (radar 27080103)

If Apple follows the path of Xcode Playgrounds, Swift Playgrounds will improve quickly as the team implements features they already have in mind that just didn't make it into the WWDC release. Swift Playgrounds will get even better as the development team responds to radars from the community as we request support for use cases they may not have considered.

A Swift Future

Remember, it's early days. Swift Playgrounds is a beta product that is only just being played with by people outside of Apple. Once you discard the messaging and the hype, you are still left with a plenty of potential. Also, remember how much Xcode Playgrounds has changed in the short time since its official release: Swift Playgrounds will certainly grow and evolve. And I love the promise of what it will become.

Swift Playgrounds currently only works on the iOS 10 developer and public beta, and only on the iPad. Once you have Swift Playgrounds installed, you can choose to install the currently-featured content, or you can create your own and AirDrop it from your Mac to your iPad.

I don't remember taking it, but I do remember the result: My mother said that we received a letter declaring that I was color blind. Even as a little kid, my reaction was to laugh it off as ridiculous — I could see colors, all of them. What a stupid test.

But in college a friend complimented my sweater by saying she liked its shade of green — my blue sweater. A girlfriend's gray socks (probably needing a little bleach?) were actually light pink. That letter was right: I am a mild deutan, with a deficiency of red-green sight (deuteranomaly) that I share with roughly five percent of the male population.

Out of sight, out of mind

While I've appreciated the work Apple does to make its products accessible — I've learned a lot from the writing of Steven Aquino on this subject — I've never really considered myself someone in need of accessibility or accommodation. But the fact is, I do see the world in a different way from 95 percent of the population, and every now and then that matters.

There are a few video games that I'm unable to play because they require quick sorting of colors that I have difficulty differentiating. Some of them have special modes for people like me; others just never think about it. The developers of Destiny did a lot of work to update the game's controls and heads-up display in order to make it more usable by people who can't perceive colors the way most people do.

The design of Apple's MagSafe chargers are a case in point: They contain a clever design to indicate your charging status at a glance — green means charged, amber means charging, and no light means that there's no power or connection.

Except, well... I can't really tell the difference between the green and the amber lights at a glance. For a long time, I didn't even realize the light on the MagSafe connector changed color. (Apple is far from alone here — lots of electronics use subtle color shifts of an LED to indicate things in a way that I simply can't digest.)

Designers, especially of user interfaces, need to be aware that their work shouldn't assume good color vision. Photoshop offers color-blindness filters that can give you a view into how other people see the world. There's nothing funnier than showing someone two images side by side — one unchanged, one filtered as I would see it — and seeing their reaction. To me, they look exactly the same, but apparently that is not the case for everyone else. It's not a joke I get to be in on.

In software, the right thing to do is either design around color blindness or offer an alternative, whether it's a separate color scheme (like Destiny) or even the addition of shapes or symbols to the party. But what if that doesn't happen? Is there something that a platform developer like Apple could do to make their devices more usable by people who aren't great at some colors?

Deuteranopia-colored glasses

Apparently there is. In the iOS 10 beta, Apple's introduced a new settings section under General > Accessibility called Display Accommodations. This section includes the option to invert colors and a Reduce White Point setting that reduces the intensity of bright colors. But the section that fascinates me is a sub-menu called Color Filters. "Color filters can be used to differentiate colors by users who are color blind and aid to users who have difficulty reading text on the display," reads some text below the Color Filters sub-menu in the first iOS 10 developer beta. (Inner editor's note: That sentence could use some punctuation.)

In iOS 10, Apple will let users filter their entire display, whether that's applying grayscale, red/green filters for both protanopia and deuteranopia color blindness, and a blue/yellow filter for a very different form of color blindness called tritanopia. There's also an option to just overlay a color tint of any hue or intensity.

Now, I'm not quite sure what these filters are supposed to do. As far as I can tell, they don't do what I'd like as a color blind person, which is to amplify and shift colors so that they're easier for me to differentiate. Right now the filters seem to wash out colors or turn them into different colors, which seems bananas to me. But it's an early beta; hopefully over this summer Apple will explain the reasoning behind these settings, or tweak them to be more useful to people who have issues with color. They make sunglasses that combat color blindness by shifting and enhancing color; I'd love my iOS devices to do that, too.

Expanding the color horizon

As Craig Hockenberry has written, the future of iOS is color managed. Apple is embracing this technology in new ways, with new Mac and iOS displays offering wider color gamuts than have been previously available on mainstream displays. And, it seems, one of the side effects of features like the True Tone Display and the DCI(P3) color gamut is support for people like me who see the world a little less vibrantly than the rest of you. It's not an accommodation I ever thought I'd need, but it's welcome just the same.

There's been a lot of talk about voice-controlled assistants lately, spurred on by the apparent success of the Amazon Echo and Google's promotion of its own assistant at Google I/O in May. And when there's any tech topic under discussion, the conversation seems to inevitably turn to Apple. Apple brought voice assistants into the public consciousness with the launch of Siri nearly five years ago, but there seems to be a general sense of unease about the current state of Siri.

It's natural, really. The weeks between Google I/O and Apple's own developer conference are traditionally full of analysis of all the ways Apple is trailing behind Google, and much of it will be nullified or countered by the time Apple wraps up its keynote event. But the pace of Siri improvements has seemed a little slow the past few years, and both Google's tech demos and Amazon's clever Echo have definitely whet our collective appetites in terms of what will come next for Apple's remarkably high-profile voice assistant.

The challenge for a technology like Siri is that we all know what the end point is: It's an in-ear assistant that knows everything and is indistinguishable from a real person, like the ones in the movie "Her." The challenge for Apple, Google, and Amazon is that we're a long way off from that. How do we get from here to there? Here's my own personal wish list.

Up in the air

If my Amazon Echo has taught me anything, it's the value of having an intelligent assistant "in the air" in my house. Apple has improved Siri's reach through the "hey Siri" trigger word and the Apple TV's Siri remote, but neither offers the hands-free, vision-free, easily accessible interface that the Echo provides.

Apple's got the skill to build Echo-like hardware (and even has speaker know-how courtesy of its Beats acquisition), and Siri's global reach — it's available in many countries and languages, as opposed to the U.S.-only Echo — would give a "Siri speaker" product a leg up on the Echo, and would be a strong competitor to Google's just-announced Google Home product.

Open the gates

There are also reports that Apple plans to open up Siri to third-party apps, and that's great news. The devil is in the details, of course, but one of Siri's great weaknesses has been the fact that all functionality is built in by Apple, meaning that if Apple doesn't think it's important, Siri can't do it.

Siri needs to connect not just to apps running on iOS devices, but to web services. The Echo's connection with the simple, flexible automation service IFTTT opens the device up to a huge number of different integrations, far more than Siri can offer. Via the Echo's IFTTT gateway, I can turn on lights (ones that aren't compatible with Apple's HomeKit!) and control my living room TV with my voice, all via actions that I've defined myself.

Apple will never be able to anticipate all the ways Siri can be used. That's why it needs a release valve, a gateway to the rest of the world that will allow apps and other Internet data sources to be tasked with providing information from Siri. Third-party app support, if done right, could solve this problem--and make Siri's potential limitless.

End "Have a look"

I also think Siri needs to get better in situations where you can't look at an iPhone screen. Too often, Siri ends up giving up and showing a fragment of a search result on the iPhone screen. "Have a look" is the ultimate Siri cop-out. That can't happen if you're talking to a screenless device like an Apple version of the Amazon Echo, and it's also terrible if you're driving a car.

It strikes me that Siri could be a much better assistant to people who are driving their cars. CarPlay is a nice idea, but far more people have Bluetooth audio in their cars than have CarPlay. It's unsafe to look at an iPhone screen while you're driving, but Siri can theoretically replace that need. It performs some basic capabilities now — reading recent text messages when you ask, for example — but too much of what it offers requires you to look at the screen. (Siri should also be much more wordy when it knows I'm driving, including offering to read the text of notifications I receive and providing a more interactive interface for processing lists of information.)

When it comes to Siri's capabilities, it's way too easy to hit the wall. If I'm stuck in a car for a couple of hours, I'd like Siri to be able to play the latest news, shuffle the contents of a playlist, and play a podcast from a third-party app. But I should also be able to triage email, check on the conversations in my Slack groups, make a restaurant reservation, check my Twitter replies, and a whole lot more. Siri should be able to keep me connected to my personal data sources when I can't look at my phone screen, and right now it can't for the most part.

Siri also just needs to get better at making guesses. When I asked it if I had any new email from Erika, it searched (and failed to find) any emails from "Erica." Some fuzzier matches — or requests for more detail — would be helpful. But too many of my Siri interactions just end in confusion.

What Siri does well today are tasks that are more efficiently commanded via voice than via a finger on a screen. I use Siri primarily to set timers and convert measurements, because Siri's way easier at that than the iPhone UI. The more Siri can do better than I can with my fingers and my iPhone screen, the more I'll use it. This means that, in addition to supporting better data sources, It needs to keep getting smarter about guessing what I'm trying to tell it.

The true path to intelligence

In the medium term — before Siri becomes a sentient being — Apple's assistant and all of its kin need to get a lot better at holding conversations, collecting information, performing tasks, and reporting back. My dream is being able to tell my digital assistant to ask my wife if she wants me to order dinner, and have the assistant do the rest — texting her, waiting for an answer, and then relaying the answer back to me. Right now using these voice-driven interfaces is a lot like using a command-line interface back in the day — you have to say a sequence of words in just the right order, and if it doesn't work, you need to start over. We need to be able to reason with these assistants, to explain ourselves. Using a digital assistant needs to become more like a conversation and less like a sequence of commands, because the promise of this technology is that there should be no learning curve.

There should be no such thing as a Siri power user. That's something for Apple to shoot for — but in the meantime, third-party data sources and a reduced reliance on using the iPhone screen will get things going in the right direction.

In Garfield Minus Garfield, Dan Walsh removes Garfield from his own comic strip, transforming Jim Davis's strip about a fat cat who hates Mondays into a bizarre story of a man riddled with existential despair. It's amazing what can happen, and how your perspective can shift, when you take the weightiest part of something — sorry, Garfield — out of the equation.

So now imagine Apple without the iPhone.

A tough proposition

It's not easy, even if you try. The iPhone dominates Apple's product sales and its balance sheet. And like a star exerting gravitational influence over its planets, many aspects of Apple's business are perturbed by the existence of the iPhone.

Yet the iPhone shines so bright that it sometimes makes it very difficult to see the rest of Apple. As someone who builds charts about Apple's business every three months when the company releases its financial results (which it did this week), I've had to adjust the scale of most of my charts in order to measure the heights of the iPhone. Meanwhile, the Mac and iPad and the rest of Apple's businesses get smaller and smaller — not in real terms, but simply in comparison with the iPhone.

When Apple reports its results, the iPhone stands center stage. When iPhone sales slip, as they did last quarter, the entire company is questioned. But we shouldn't lose sight of the rest of Apple's business, most notably the Mac and the iPad.

Minus iPhone

Remove the iPhone and iron out the seasonality, and what you see in this chart is a remarkably stable, successful business:

Or to put it another way, Apple's non-iPhone business is generating about $80 billion in revenue every year — roughly the same as Microsoft. The Mac generates $24 billion per year, and the iPad (at the moment) generates around $20 billion per year. Put together, that's roughly the revenue of Hewlett-Packard. Starbucks just reported its most recent quarterly revenue total: $5 billion, or roughly what the Mac generated in revenue last quarter. Facebook's blow-out quarter? $5.4 billion in revenue.

Now, it's surely true that to some degree, the iPhone is intertwined with the rest of Apple's business. Would the iPad even exist were it not for the iPhone? Surely iOS development wouldn't have proceeded at such a great pace were the iPhone's runaway success not acting as a spur. Services revenue is also, in large part, coming from iPhone-related services, and there would be no Apple Watch sales without an iPhone to connect it to.

But I'm not really arguing how Apple would do if the iPhone didn't exist. Instead, it's worth looking past the glare of the iPhone to see Apple's other healthy businesses that are too often missed as we admire the company's dazzling success. (Or freak out over a quarterly sales drop, as many did this week.)

Mac and the iPad

It's hard to truly gauge how profitable the Mac and iPad product lines are, but Apple tends to run pretty good margins, so I'd imagine that both are quite profitable businesses. And while the iPad seems to still be trying to find its level after an initial burst of enthusiasm, the Mac just keeps on selling:

That steady line for the Mac is all the more impressive when you realize that these days, the market for personal computers is pretty steadily going down. So as Mac sales maintain, Apple gains market share.

It's also worth remembering that historically, the Mac is at an all-time high. In fiscal 2015, Apple sold 20.6 million Macs, and it's on pace to do the same this year. But it didn't used to be this way: In 2010, Apple only sold 13.7 million Macs; in 2005, that number was just 3.3 million. Apple has broken its record for the most Macs sold in a fiscal year 10 of the last 11 years.

This brings us to the mystery of the iPad. The fact is, if iPad Inc. was a standalone company, its CEO would've been fired quite a while ago. But with its sales drop beginning to tail off and the expectation that the iPad will have its best year-over-year revenue comparison in more than two years this next quarter, perhaps the iPad has hit bottom. Or perhaps, at the very least, it can finally see the bottom it's about to hit.

Call me an optimist, but I can't help but thinking the iPad really will settle down in to a good, Mac-like business. Perhaps it will be a little bit smaller than the Mac for now, but over time that might change if more people decide they'd rather have a tablet than a laptop. Regardless, Apple's probably got the best tablet business in the world, and if it generates $15 billion per year in revenue, that's still pretty great.

Sometimes I worry that iPhone gets the lion's share of Apple's attention — and by the numbers, it really should. But I'm encouraged by the fact that Apple still commits to innovation in Mac hardware (albeit at a slower pace than some Mac fans might like), and has taken steps the last year to really upgrade the iPad, both hardware and software. But when you look at the size of the Mac and the iPad, that decision doesn't seem like charity, but like good business sense. And as someone who relies on the Mac and iPad, I'm grateful that Apple gives due attention to those product lines.

Garfield is the star of Garfield

Enough imagining. Will Apple ever be a company without the iPhone?

I can't see it happening. The smartphone strikes me as being a once-in-a-lifetime kind of product. When was the last time a piece of technology became so ubiquitous, so fast, around the world? (Radio, maybe?) And when will it happen again? It seems to me that the entire computer industry has been leading to this, the arrival of Internet-connected supercomputers in everyone's pockets.

Perhaps one day there will be some kind of direct-brain interface that will make smartphones seem so early 21st century. But for the foreseeable future, it's hard to imagine that Apple won't continue to be identified with its most successful product ever, the iPhone. And that's fine — so long as we don't forget the other products that are too often lost in its shadow.

Every Friday, The Network column brings you the perspective and charm of the best and brightest minds in the Apple and tech community. This week we have iMore alumni Peter Cohen. A 30-year Apple industry vet, Peter had careers in tech support and IT before writing for Apple magazines and web sites beginning in the mid-90s. He's currently a technology writer at Backblaze.com and you can find him on Twitter at @flargh.

Developers who can find ways to do it are migrating to a subscription-based publishing model instead of what's become known as a "perpetual license" (pay once and forget about it). Expect this trend to continue. Case in point: Smile Software's newest release of TextExpander, the popular keyboard shortcut utility. Even if you don't welcome this change, it's important to understand what's going on here that's brought us to this point.

TextExpander goes pay-to-play

New versions of TextExpander for OS X, iOS, and now Windows are available for download. Unlike previous releases, the new release requires you to have a new TextExpander.com account. After a free "test drive" period, you'll be asked to pay $4.95 a month for to continue using it (annual discounts and upgrades are available).

The subscription model does more than just enable you to use the app, though. Smile is centralizing online syncing of TextExpander. Owners of the previous release could use iCloud or Dropbox in order to sync text snippets between devices and workgroups. Now that's gone and everything is handled as a service through TextExpander.com, which introduces a web interface to enable you to manage snippets and how they're shared. To help entice businesses to migrate to the new service, Smile's incorporated new team sharing management capabilities.

All told, There's a lot more going on under the hood with the new TextExpander service, which is why Smile wanted to roll its own sync service rather than continue to depend on iCloud or Dropbox.

There's no gun to your head to upgrade, if you're an existing TextExpander user. Your version of TextExpander still works. You got what you paid for. Just don't expect too much more in terms of new features or new operating system support unless you migrate to the new product.

Apps as services

Smile joins some big players at it seeks to reinvent TextExpander as a service instead of as an app you pay for once until the next major upgrade. Take Adobe, for example. The company went all in on the service model a few years ago by focusing development of their creative apps as the Creative Cloud. An ever-growing constellation of new apps and services continue to give creative professionals reasons to subscribe to Creative Cloud products.

Microsoft has done the same with Office, and while Office 2016 is also available with a perpetual license, Microsoft gives users plenty of incentive to subscribe to Office 365 instead, with more flexibility and better features. Office 365 users got the earliest look at Office for Mac 2016 when it made its debut last year.

Even Apple's gotten into the act. Buying an iPhone or a Mac is just the start. If you want to use Apple Music, that's another $10 per month. iCloud is free, unless you need more space. Family plans, added iCloud space and optional services like Apple Music have many of us tithing to Cupertino faithfully every month.

(In the interest of full disclosure: I work for one of those companies I'm talking about: Backblaze.com - we sell cloud-based backup services for Mac and Windows users. Our subscribers pay a flat monthly fee and in turn, we back up their computers to our data center.)

Software as a Service certainly doesn't work for everyone, and Smile is bound to lose some customers as it makes this migration. Other text expansion and shortcut utilities for Mac and iOS are available. Smile's move is likely to spur at least some of those developers to redouble their efforts to win hearts and minds away from Smile.

Likewise, some designers still hold out with their Adobe Creative Suite 6 software or have migrated to other non-Adobe products all together. There are plenty of other productivity apps and suites besides Microsoft Office.

Devil's advocate

As hard as it may be to shift perspective, consider the developer's point. A subscription model offers a regular flow of income, and stops the developer from having to run on what Smile CEO [Greg Scown calls](/e?link=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.shareasale.com%2Fr.cfm%3Fb%3D1215646%26m%3D81274%26U%3D885495%26afftrack%3DUUimUdUnU37197%26urllink%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fsmilesoftware.com%252Fsoftware-releases%252Fentry%252Fthe-new-textexpander&token=yVmevOG- "the upgrade treadmill."

That helps to predictably support current and future development efforts, instead of having to plan development cycles on the expectation of a big windfall whenever there's a major new release.

Rather than having to save big ideas for major version releases, new features can be rolled out gradually and incrementally as service improvements, instead of dangling them as enticements to get people to spend money on upgrades. The developer has the incentive to keep service excellent and new features coming, otherwise subscriptions will drop off. When it's done well, it works out better for everyone.

In Smile's case, owning the sync stream makes sense too — it enables them to do more, going forward, with snippet syncing than they could before, as evidenced by the new web-based interface employed by TextExpander, its greatly enhanced workgroup sharing capabilities, and other features (and possibly new products) Smile undoubtedly has planned for the future.

The value of the software has changed for many users, however. There's a big difference between paying once for a utility that you'll use indefinitely and paying every month. Without a discount, you're going to spend $60 a year on TextExpander, a utility whose previous release cost $35, once. Are the new features worth it? What happens if Smile pulls up stakes on the service?

As evidenced by the outcry on social media, some TextExpander customers are not happy with the change. And why should they be? This is getting exhausting.

As I said before, when it's done well, it works out better for everyone. When it's done poorly, customers get screwed. Another case in point: Revolv, a recent Google acquisition that was folded into Nest, the business started around a smart thermostat. Revolv goes dark next month, and anyone with a Revolv hub is going to be stuck with a very expensive doorstop. Televero CEO Arlo Gilbert recently took Tony Fadell and Nest to task for abandoning Revolv.

Death of a thousand cuts

Ever since the personal computer debuted in the 1970s the software business has existed to support it. Personal computer software has gone through multiple iterations and reinventions in that time, just as the computer hardware has.

For years, retailers ruled the roost. Boxed software and heavy bound manuals sat on store shelves. We paid for software when we needed to, and we were done.

As more of us went online, we discovered that we could download shareware. Once the Internet became ubiquitous it became possible to just buy apps through app stores instead. Constant downward pricing pressure in those app stores forced developers to figure out other ways to produce a sustainable income. Once Apple had a mechanism in place, some developers began giving away apps and offering in-app purchases.

To that end, selling software as a service is simply another reinvention. There are already successes, there are already casualties, and there will be more.

The problem, of course, is that all these services add up. And they add up fast. Office 365 costs $10 a month. Adobe Creative Cloud is another $50. $5 for TextExpander.com. Another $5 for Backblaze. Netflix. Hulu. It piles on. Before you know it, you're spending $100 or more on top of whatever your Internet costs.

It feels like the death of a thousand cuts - paper cuts inflicted by small bills. Microtransactions.

Of course, you don't pay your electricity bill or your phone bill just once - you pay it every month, because it's a service you find useful or necessary to your life.

Paying for software in the same way as we pay for electricity may seem odd. Most software isn't as essential as a cell phone or working lights, but the same rule applies for service - you should expect to pay something for its continued maintenance and development.

That is, of course, predicated on the assumption that you find that service worth paying for to begin with. If you don't, you can vote with your wallet. The choice is yours.

It might not seem that way now, but announcing new products used to be boring. Whether by press release, press conference, or series of individual briefings with members of the press, tech products came out in a quiet and somewhat orderly fashion that did not remotely resemble showbiz.

Steve turned Apple's product launches into magic by combining anticipation and stagecraft. Though rumors often blunt the surprise factor of Apple's media events, the fact remains that the most anticipated product launches in the tech world are often called by Apple, like the one happening on Monday in Cupertino.

Some good fortune

I think Jobs always saw himself as a showman, all the way back to the out-of-the-bag reveal of the original Mac in 1984. But he also had some good fortune that helped him make Apple's announcements into the hottest ticket in tech.

That's because Jobs inherited two live events that were entirely focused on Apple: Macworld Expo (managed by IDG, my former employer, but Apple's participation and logistics were entirely controlled by Apple) and Apple's own Worldwide Developer Conference. Apple instantly had two opportunities every year to craft a stage show entirely focused on the company and its products.

Now, it's not as if Apple didn't do keynotes at its events before Jobs came back. (And of course, other tech companies did keynotes at events like the Consumer Electronics Show.) But all of these were gray, businesslike affairs — glorified press conferences or nerdy product announcements accompanied by boring PowerPoints. None of them could hold a candle to what Jobs did with the events once he took control of them.

Jobs also cracked down on secrecy at Apple. We might laugh now because almost every new product from Apple leaks in advance — usually right into the hands of the intrepid Mark Gurman of 9to5Mac — but in the early days, Jobs dramatically cut leaks from inside the company. As Apple become more secretive, it became more intriguing — not just to the public, but to the members of the press who coveted a good story.

People who aren't journalists may not realize the neat trick Jobs pulled. Product announcements are basically press releases: They're publicity. They're arguably news, but they're boring news — and a cynical writer could view them as free PR for the company putting out the press release. Rewriting a press release is one of the lower forms of journalism.

Covering an Apple event didn't feel like that, and it still doesn't. It feels like an event, and when you're reporting on it, you're not rewriting a press release — you're covering something as it happens live, just as if you were in the White House briefing room during a presidential press conference. In the end, these Apple events are just product announcements — the brilliance is that the stagecraft makes them much more interesting to journalists and fans alike.

Changing the game

It's hard to get people excited about science and technology: The pace of innovation is slow, and it happens behind closed doors. I see it even more now that I write and talk a little bit about space — how do you get journalists and the public excited about new scientific discoveries when they're rolled out in dry scientific journals? It takes one part showmanship, one part stagecraft; you have to create a gripping story that explains the results, puts them in context, makes it something that might hit page one of the New York Times or the top stories on CNN.

The Apple keynote, perfected by Steve Jobs, does this perfectly. It's scientific innovation live on stage, one night (okay, one morning) only. You get the sense as you watch an Apple event that you may be witnessing something that will change the world, or at least your world. Most of the time, the results are a lot more modest, but can you deny that the moment the iPhone was announced, the world changed?

Apple's success, with its live events and in the market in general, also changed its approach. Apple pulled out of Macworld Expo and began setting up its own media events entirely separate from existing trade shows and conferences, proving that it had the clout to get journalists from all over the world to converge on the Bay Area with only a couple weeks' notice. (How things have changed. In 1998, Apple couldn't even get most of the Macworld staff to show up for what turned out to be the iMac launch event, and there were plenty of empty seats during the 2001 introduction of the iPod.)

Apple has changed the game for its competitors, too. Companies like Google, Amazon, Samsung, and Microsoft now feel free to call their own media events, following Apple's lead — albeit with mixed results. (I once went to a Samsung event at Radio City Music Hall that was embarrassingly bad, but I can't deny that it was full of stagecraft!) And the company announcements at events like the Consumer Electronics Show, Google IO, and Microsoft BUILD are in a style that will be quite familiar to anyone who has seen an Apple event. It's Steve Jobs' world; we're all just watching people present Keynote slides in it.

Pour one out for old Town Hall

Monday's event will be at Town Hall, a small auditorium in Apple's Infinite Loop campus that's hosted numerous events over the years, most notably that 2001 iPod launch and the iPhone 4 "Antennagate" press conference. Lately, even after a redesign that increased the capacity of the room to about 300, Apple has only called its most low-key events there.

There's a lot of speculation that it will be the last-ever event at Town Hall. WWDC is held at San Francisco's Moscone Center every year, and the fall's iPhone launch events are always at a larger venue somewhere in the Bay Area. With the new Apple campus on the way in 2017, this might be its last hurrah.

But even that tells a story about the success of Apple's events: The new Apple campus features a large underground auditorium with a capacity of 1,000. With the exception of WWDC keynotes, it's possible that every future Apple media event will be on the Apple campus, in a space purposely built for the kind of scene we've come to expect from the company. It's not just the campus that Steve Jobs built — it's the auditorium that his style and sense for drama made absolutely necessary.

This year, iMessage will celebrate its fifth birthday. Recently, Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi appeared on John Gruber's Talk Show podcast and said that 200,000 messages are being sent through the Messages app every second at peak times.

iMessage and the Messages app on iOS and OS X have become a massive operation over the past five years, and yet it's hard to escape the sense that it remains a messaging app in a world increasingly dominated by messaging platforms. All this raises the question of where Apple should take iMessage next.

A world of messaging platforms

Messaging has evolved over the last few years from a simple, speedy method to exchange text, to including pictures and video, to becoming a world of its own, acting as a central hub for smartphone users and the other services they make use of. To be sure, this trend is far more prevalent in Asia, where services such as WeChat, LINE, and KakaoTalk have become far more than just messaging apps.

These apps have become meta-operating systems of their own, sitting on top of true mobile operating systems and absorbing more and more of their functionality. But this phenomenon is becoming increasingly global. Facebook, with Messenger, is increasingly trying to build very much the same sort of meta OS, and now has its own app store and integration with third parties like Uber.

Apple certainly doesn't need to become a platform in the same way for the same reasons. Those messaging platforms have embraced their strategy for two reasons: as a way to make money when messaging itself won't do the job, and as a way to create ecosystems of services following a failure to do so at the OS level. Neither of these things applies to Apple, which has a well-established and highly successful business model in selling hardware and associated services, and provides one of the two dominant mobile operating systems. However, iMessage exists in a world where these other messaging apps are becoming much more, and it therefore needs to evolve iMessage to remain competitive.

Three areas for expansion

To my mind, there are three areas in which Apple could evolve iMessage, should it choose to do so:

• Richer user functionality
• Developer integration
• A broader social play.

I'd argue that the first two are roughly equally important, and in fact reinforce each other, while the third is less important and more of a stretch goal for Apple.

Richer user functionality

At the moment, iMessage is largely useful for sharing the things that SMS and MMS apps have always done: sharing text, photos, and videos. Since last year, it has also been able to share brief audio clips recorded on the fly, and with the addition of the Apple Watch it also serves as the bearer for slightly richer visual communications. But there are many forms of content which are either impossible to share via iMessage or which make for a poor experience when shared via iMessage. Even content from Apple's own apps and services shows up in un-optimized ways.

For example, sharing an Apple Music playlist, Apple News article, or Pages document through iMessage results in either an HTML link or a generic file icon. Neither provides a meaningful preview of the item in question or any other indication of what the content will be. Clicking on the Apple Music link bounces me out to the Music app and removes me from Messages.

If I'm in the middle of a conversation with a friend, and the friend shares some music with me, I want to listen to it right there in the app, not get bounced out to another app and have to come back to continue the conversation. If someone shares a file with me, I want to be able to see a preview of it in the thread, rather than a generic icon. If someone shares an Apple News article, I want to get either a snapshot of the page or the headline and first paragraph. All these things would enrich the user experience.

Another way in which Apple could enrich the user experience is to allow the sharing of more formats and file types through iMessage. Calendar invites that currently go through email could go through iMessage instead, especially for the younger generations that barely use email but live in messaging apps.

Apple could potentially allow iMessage to integrate with iCloud in such a way that the documents shared from iWork apps through iMessage would be the versions in iCloud, and any edits would be reflected on both ends of the conversation. There is so much Apple could do to turn what is presently a fairly static and disconnected experience into something richly integrated into the whole of iOS and OS X.

Perhaps the most game-changing additional form of "content" Apple could add to iMessage would be money. Venmo and others already offer easy peer-to-peer payments between friends, and their use among younger demographics is enormous – Venmo just announced that $7.5 billion crossed its system in 2015, and it already carried $1 billion in payments in January this year. With TouchID, Apple Pay, and other elements already in place, Apple is well positioned to add peer to peer payments to iMessage. The biggest hurdle would be getting past credit cards (a poor fit for P2P payments because of the fees) and to direct bank account access to fund payments. Whether it would use the ACH system and other equivalents or create its own standard is the next big question.

One other intriguing idea is using iMessage as another way to communicate with Siri. Siri is currently available only as either a voice-activated assistant or a search function on Apple's devices, but voice isn't always available as an option, and search isn't always what you need either. Being able to give Siri commands via a text-based interface could be really useful, and iMessage might be an obvious place for that functionality to live. Imagine being in a noisy (or conversely very quiet) place where Siri wouldn't work, but being able to type a quick instruction to Siri: "Send my wife my current location," "Put dinner with Sam on my calendar for Friday", "Add avocados to my grocery list" etc.

Developer integration

The second big way Apple could evolve iMessage is allowing app developers and businesses to use it to add value to their apps. Businesses and their customers in many Asian countries are already using messaging apps to communicate about orders, purchases, and customer service. But giving app developers access to iMessage SDKs would allow the same thing to flourish within Messages. Apple's strong privacy stance gives it a unique advantage here – as with Safari extensions, Apple would ensure that third parties never get any more information from the user than the user intends to share.

Creating MessageKit (the obvious counterpart to CloudKit and other similar "kits" Apple has provided to developers in recent years) would allow two possible scenarios:

• integration of iMessage within third party apps, as a communication channel between businesses and customers.
• integration of third party app extensions within iMessage, where elements of apps or possibly just a branded version of the standard iMessage chat window would appear within iMessage as just another message thread.

Matt Galligan has done a wonderful job imagining some of the possibilities of MessageKit, including some mockups, and I'd encourage you to read his Medium article for more on how this might work.

In addition to the obvious customer service stuff that's already been done elsewhere, there's a lot of potential in the "conversational UI" space too. Quartz's new news app for iOS has an intriguing message-based UI for consuming the news, for example, but would be so much more compelling if it lived in your Messages app rather than its own app.

Imagine Apple Pay deeply integrated into iMessage too, not just for peer to peer payments, but as a payment option during the course of an interaction with a company or brand. Allowing you to pay for goods or services while still in a message thread would be a great value-add and tap into functionality Apple has already built.

Another area where developers could potentially bring a richer experience to iMessage is through third party content sharing. Lots of the Asian messaging apps already offer stickers for users to insert into messages, while those and others also integrate with services such as Giphy to insert GIFs into messages.

This sort of thing isn't possible today in iMessage without copying and pasting from other apps, but being able to pull in content from these various sources and others would also enrich the experience. Imagine easily sharing the latest highlights from your favorite sports team, the weather in your location (or the place you're heading to with your communication partner), or other richer information. MessageKit could enable all these options with both Apple's own apps and third party apps.

A broader social play

The last and to my mind least likely way in which Apple could evolve iMessage is to turn it into the foundation of a broader social play. What I mean by this is that our messaging network is a form of social network already, but this social network is implicit and asynchronous rather than explicit and live or real-time.

If Apple were motivated to do so – and it's not clear that it is – it could create a proper social network around Apple IDs and iMessage. It already has some elements of this in place with iCloud Photo Sharing and everything that iMessage does. But it could allow users to create profiles of a sort around their iMessage handles, with things like recently read Apple News articles, favorite Apple Music playlists, and shared photos available as part of that profile to various friends based on permissions set by the user.

Such an exclusive social network would be a really interesting way to add value to the iOS ecosystem in particular, and would arguably have more pull for users than simply being a "blue bubble friend" rather than communicating with iOS users via SMS. Again, this is the part I'm least convinced about, but Apple has many of the components of such an offering already in place, and it would be an interesting new element of ecosystem lock-in if it did move ahead with it.

This summer could start the evolution

This summer's WWDC would be a great opportunity to start the evolution of iMessage down this road, with the announcement of MessageKit for developers potentially accompanied by other user-facing enhancements to the platform. The timing is arguably just right for this kind of move, because Apple hasn't missed the boat yet, but messaging platforms are becoming more prevalent and more dominant all the time.

Apple has the potential to do something much bigger with iMessage, and in the process to transform it from a simple messaging app into a true platform and a place where users will want to spend more and more time.

Serenity Caldwell's recent piece on why she's still wearing her Apple Watch inspired me to write my own take on why I'm still wearing mine.

Telling time

This goes without saying, I suppose, but even Apple says Apple Watch is "at its heart, an incredibly precise timepiece." On the whole, Apple Watch is a remarkable wearable computer, but its foremost function is right there in its name: telling time.

This distinction matters to me for the simple reason that Apple Watch has gotten me regularly wearing a watch again after several years of having a naked wrist. It's nice having a well-made, fashionable object with which to see the time without constantly pulling my phone out my pocket. That my watch also has things like notifications, Siri, and Apple Pay is icing on the cake.

Energy savings

The fact that I no longer need to always pull out my phone to see the time also has an accessibility benefit: it saves me energy.

As someone who lives with cerebral palsy, this is critically important. My condition is such that, aside from reduced strength and partial paralysis in my muscles, it takes a considerable amount of energy to do even the most mundane tasks. As such, I need to be cognizant of opportunities to conserve as much energy as possible. In this case, getting my phone in and out of my pocket is a great example. It's not so easy for me to reach into my pocket because of the way you have to feel your way in and around to find what you're looking for. Smaller objects like loose change are more troublesome to grasp, but even something larger like my phone can be tricky. My muscles have to work hard to get in and out of my pocket, which oftentimes results in fatigue and pain. Do that several times a day, every day, and you start to curse having to reach in there.

It seems trivial, but given my circumstances, the little things end up making the biggest difference. Because my Apple Watch acts as a satellite for my iPhone for many things---notably, notifications and Apple Pay---I commit to wearing it all the time because I know I can be alerted to VIP emails or iMessages from my girlfriend right from my wrist. Ergo, my phone needn't come out and my hand muscles can rest. In this context, then, the Apple Watch is worth wearing for energy reasons alone. It's fair to say it's my "killer app," so to speak.

Living a better day

Another byproduct of my cerebral palsy is I don't move around very easily or gracefully. Therefore, I'm not one to adhere to a strict exercise regimen, nor am I a gym rat as many of my family and friends are. It's okay, though, because I walk a lot, and the Apple Watch helps me greatly in being more active than before.

While I remain unconvinced that watchOS will ever be a platform as app-centric as iOS, I do quite enjoy a few apps on my watch. One of those is the built-in Activity app, which I'm constantly checking throughout the day.

The great part about Activity is the "game" aspect of it. To me, staying active during the day is not only about getting the blood flowing, but also about filling in the circles. It's a fun way for me to track my progress, and I find that any incomplete rings motivates me to push harder to fill them in. (Most days, I can fill in Move and Stand. Exercise is challenging; I've completed all three rings in a day only a handful of times.)

Overall, I appreciate Apple Watch reminding me to stand once an hour---raising my awareness to get up and move---and I love watching the circles journey towards completion. Although I'm limited in how much and how well I can exert myself physically, Apple Watch is there pushing me to keep going as much as I can.

Bigger screen, big difference

Prior to the Apple Watch's launch last April, I was convinced I wanted the 38mm model because I have smaller wrists than most men, and I was afraid the 42mm one would look silly on me.

As it turns out, those fears were completely unfounded.

Thanks to my girlfriend, I did indeed get a 38mm Sport version on launch day. And it was great; the screen is small, but not prohibitively so. I was happy to have it and liked it very much.

Not long thereafter, Apple sent me a 42mm review unit so that I could compare the watch's sizes. Immediately upon receiving it, I noticed a striking difference between the 38 and 42mm models. As I said, the smaller one is perfectly usable, but the larger screen is so much better: everything on screen is bigger and easier to read, which, of course, is better for my eyes. Better still, the larger Apple Watch actually looks great on my wrist.

In hindsight, it was awfully shortsighted of me not to choose the 42mm Apple Watch to begin with. For someone who's visually impaired, Apple Watch's screen is so small that it makes sense to go as big as possible. I don't know why I glossed over that during pre-orders, but I won't make the same mistake twice. The next Apple Watch I get will most definitely be the 42mm variety.

Bottom line

As it is today, the Apple Watch is the quintessential 1.0 product in many ways. It's sluggish, requires an iPhone, and it remains to be seen whether apps will be as central to its usefulness.

And yet, I wear mine daily and wouldn't want to be without it.

If the watch's appeal to me hinged solely on its technical merit---how it performs and the quality of the software it runs---then I likely would have thrown it in a drawer months ago. Instead, I like to look at the watch with a more holistic perspective. Yes, it's kind of slow and apps aren't great, but I don't mind that much. What Apple Watch does do for me arguably makes more of an impact on my life. Besides, it's cool to think I have a miniature computer strapped to my wrist that can pay for my coffee and stuff. It's a very James Bond (or Dick Tracy) kind of feeling.

It may be early days yet for wearable technology, but I'm bullish on Apple Watch's future and am excited for its maturation.

A few days after the release of Watch Kit 1.0 to developers, Guy English, Rene Ritchie, John Gruber, and I sat down to discuss watches in a round table session on the Debug podcast. Partway into our discussion, Guy asked me to explain a pivotal time in the history of the watch industry, known as the Quartz Crisis. It was classical watchmaking's equivalent of the Great Depression.

The Quartz Crisis

For centuries, portable timepieces were powered by springs and regulated mechanically. Then, on Christmas Day of 1969, in Tokyo, Seiko released the Astron — a battery-powered watch, regulated by a tiny quartz crystal that was substantially more accurate than its mechanical counterparts could ever hope to be. Over the ensuing decade quartz timepieces became ubiquitous, thanks to their lower cost, more reliable timekeeping, and reduced need for maintenance. The mechanical watch industry, a cornerstone of Switzerland's economy, was nearly decimated.

By the 1980s, Switzerland's watchmaking labor force had shriveled to a fraction of its former glory. Children who had generations of watchmaking talent behind them were dissuaded by forlorn parents from continuing in their footsteps. In classic Innovator's Dilemma fashion, much of the old-guard moved their product focus up-market.

Companies folded and amalgamations proliferated to save what could be saved. One such amalgamation, between Swiss industry groups ASUAG and SSIH, to form SMH, brought about the birth of Swatch in 1983. A slim, playful, unibody quartz timepiece that out-innovated the tsunami of Asian-made quartz timepieces that were flooding the market.

The Swatch Savior

Nicholas Hayek Senior, the progenitor of Swatch and its umbrella of companies, would eventually come to be known as the savior of the Swiss watch industry. SMH would become the Swatch Group, singlehandedly saving nearly two dozen Swiss brands from extinction, including Omega, Longines, Tissot, and Breguet. Over the ensuing decades, nearly every Swiss timepiece would come to rely on the group's subsidiary companies in one form or another. Even the family-owned crown jewel of the Swiss watch industry, Patek Philippe, depends heavily on Swatch Group owned Nivarox-FAR for its Gyromax balance assemblies that are at the ticking heart of its timepieces.

Swatch watches were innovative not only in the way that they were manufactured, using fewer parts with more automated processes, but also in the way that they were marketed. Prior to Swatch, the palette of color employed by most mass produced watches was relatively plain. The plastic cases introduced by Swatch brought colour and fashion-forward designs that, when paired with low prices, afforded consumers the ability to own multiple watches, which they could coordinate with their wardrobe, mood, or personal style. Swatch watches sold by the millions, buoying much of the rest of the Swiss watch industry, which exported a record $21 billion in 2014.

iMac and Ive

A decade and a half after Swatch debuted its first timepiece, Apple Computer Corp. was facing a crisis of its own. Profits were non-existent and the company was on the verge of collapsing. The situation looked hopeless. Then, on May 6, 1998, a resurgent Steve Jobs unveiled iMac to the world. It was a splash of colour and trend-setting design in a sea of drab, beige boxes. The iMac was a phenomenal success, catapulting Apple back from the brink of bankruptcy and into a series of thoughtfully-designed, category-defining products that would eventually establish them as one of the most valuable companies on the planet.

While I didn't make the connection during our roundtable session on the podcast, it turns out that there is a common thread between Switzerland's rise from the Quartz Crisis and Apple's second coming: One of the key players behind the design of iMac was Apple's now Chief Design Officer, Jony Ive.

Reflecting on the design considerations that went into the original iMac, in a biography by Leander Kahney, Ive recounts that, "we talked about companies like Swatch — companies that broke the rules — that viewed technology as a way to the consumer, not the consumer as the path to the technology".

Armed with that knowledge, the aesthetic similarity between the candy-colored cases of the early iMac and Swatch watches becomes strikingly obvious. Likewise, the way that that candy-coloured playfulness enabled both companies to make relatively advanced technology more approachable and accessible to the average consumer.

Butterfly effects

The role that Swatch served in helping both Apple and the Swiss watch industry respond to crisis and the incredible success that followed for both companies is commendable. It's almost poetically tragic that Swatch and its contemporaries now face the threat of a new crisis, in the form of the smartwatch, with Apple Watch at the forefront.

In the wake of Apple's recent quarterly financial results report, there's been a lot of talk about what happens if the company has truly reached the peak of iPhone sales — and what must come next in order for Apple to keep growing.

The iPhone is a once-in-a-decade (if not once-in-a-lifetime) product, and won't be replaced on Apple's revenue chart any time soon. And that's okay, for a whole bunch of reasons.

What goes up... stays up

It's easy to assume — in part due to language commonly used by growth-obsessed investors — that the iPhone is in free fall. Not so much: iPhone sales set a record last quarter. What's actually concerning investors is the rate of change — the idea that we'll never see an iPhone sales quarter bigger than this one, or at least not much bigger. The days of enormous iPhone growth may have reached its end.

If you're comparing the iPhone's life cycle to that of Apple's iPod, there's reason to be terrified: The iPod sold like gangbusters for a number of years, but its decline was drastic — to the point where it got removed from Apple's financial reports last year. That's not going to happen with the iPhone, for a simple reason: the iPod was made largely obsolete by the smartphone. And the smartphone's not going anywhere, not for a very long time.

That means Apple's iPhone business is probably going to keep contributing 150 billion dollars a year for the foreseeable future. (In the last four quarters, the iPhone brought in an average of 38.9 billion per quarter. In comparison, the Mac and iPad bring in five or six billion dollars per quarter. That's a lot of money, sure, but the two products combined pale in comparison to the phone juggernaut.) It's enough money to make Apple one of the biggest, most profitable companies on the planet.

Could the iPhone eventually fail? The future is promised to no one, but people are going to want an internet-connected device in their pockets until there's something even better you can stick in your ear or pop on your eyeball or connect directly to your brain.

There's money in the ecosystem

Apple focused a lot of energy this week on communicating how well it's doing — and how much it's growing — in terms of services revenue. That's the budget line covering iCloud, iTunes, Apple Music, and the App Store.

The users of Apple's one billion active devices are all spending money on digital goods and services. It's potentially a huge growth opportunity for the company, and it will be interesting to see what other services Apple might introduce and how much additional revenue might be generated from its existing iPhone installed base — namely, us.

But beyond offering us more content to buy, the Apple ecosystem extends outward. Consider the Apple Watch: It's essentially an iPhone accessory, since it only works with Apple's smartphone. It's another product that can be marketed to existing iPhone users, generating more revenue while also tying them more tightly into the Apple ecosystem. (When an Apple Watch user considers an Android phone, they also have to consider giving up their Apple Watch — making it potentially that much easier to stick with what they know.)

There's still room for growth

The days of rapid smartphone sales growth may well be over, and while Wall Street may not be thrilled about this, it doesn't mean the iPhone is in any danger of disappearing. Apple still thinks there's room for future growth, and the company's reasons seem reasonable to me. The rapid growth of the middle class in China is creating hundreds of millions of new consumers with money to spend on brands like Apple, and products like the iPhone. Apple's weak position in India is generally seen as a negative, but it also means there's a huge upside if the company figures out how to crack that market.

While those of us in the most industrialized nations have benefited from fast 4G LTE cellular networks for a few years now, those networks are still rolling out in India and other emerging markets. People in those countries will buy new phones to take advantage of LTE as it comes online, and that's a big opportunity for Apple to sell iPhones.

And then there's switching: Apple continues to suggest that there's a constant flow of smartphone users from Android to iPhone. It's hard to quantify those numbers overall, but at least from Apple's perspective, there's a growth opportunity simply in picking up Android users who are ready for a change.

Wait for it

Okay, so the iPhone's pretty good for now. But what about the next big thing? How does Apple ignite future growth, and protect the products it already has?

Fortunately, Apple has many, many billions of dollars in cash from its past few years of profits. And the company is investing that money in researching the next generations of products. I'm sure some of that money is going into exploring what might replace a smartphone, whether it's a Siri-powered device that plugs into your ear, or an augmented-reality visor, or who knows what else.

In terms of finding growth, we've all heard the reports that Apple's exploring the possibility of building a car. Entering new markets is never easy, but it provides huge opportunity for growth. It's the same principle as iPhone sales in India: Apple's current share of the automobile market is zero, which means that the sky's the limit when it comes to gaining new customers.

The smartphone era

I'm pretty confident that when we look back to the early parts of the 21st century, we will consider this the dawn of the smartphone era. Even from the perspective of 2016, the personal computer seems to rapidly be transforming into a footnote — a technological prelude to the creation of the smartphone. Tiny devices with massive computing power and an always-on connection to a global data network, living in our pockets — they have transformed the way people live around the world, from the richest countries to some of the poorest.

Apple doesn't need to replicate the iPhone's success with another product to be successful, which is good, because there may not be a product as successful as the iPhone any time in the near future. (Though I'd be happy to be proven wrong when the direct-brain implants come around in 2030.) People who are searching the horizon for the next big thing as hot as the smartphone are searching in vain.

We live in the smartphone era, and considering the slowing rate of growth in smartphone sales, so does everyone else. The introduction of the iPhone was the moment this era truly began. Apple has benefited massively from that, and will continue to for the foreseeable future.

These days more and more of us—myself included—enjoy the privilege of working from home, either on a full-time or part-time basis. If you're cooped up in a corporate office, frustrated by commuting, annoying by interrupting co-workers, and unsatisfied by the few, predictably boring lunch options in your area, then the allure of working at home may sound like a dream to you.

And at the rate jobs in many fields—particularly in computer-oriented areas—are shifting workforces, this particular dream is likely to come true.

My work-at-home origin story

I've been working from home for more than ten years. I left my last full-time office job in 2002: That job and office, working for Apple in Cupertino, was actually pretty great, but I've grown to appreciate working from home so much that I doubt I could ever return to that lifestyle.

The advantages to working from home are too great, and I've come to count on them too much to imagine ever giving them up. Alongside those blessings, however, there are also many challenges.

I want to share with you some of my advice for getting the most out of working from home, whether you're relocating for a short stint, or it's the start of a life-long change in how you do your work.

Some of the lessons I've learned fly in the face of those dreams we hold on to in the office: All those delicious freedoms turn out to be some of the hardest aspects to the setup. No alarm clock? Good luck figuring out when you start your day. No lunch time? Don't forget to eat. No boss looming over you? Better make sure you actually get something done!

When I first started the work from home gig long ago, I praised an author whose work I admired for bettering my own work habits. He let me in on a little secret: the pieces he wrote that I so admired were not directed at me, but to himself.

He wrote them to persuade himself into achieving the level of performance that he aspired to, all while couching it as advice that might be pertinent to others.

And so, here I am with an article that embraces that kind of writing: I've been imperfect at following many of the guidelines I'm about to lay out, but I aspire every day to comply more with them. Hopefully these rules can help you embrace your own work-at-home ethos—whether or not you follow mine with any whole-hog mentality.

#1: Hygiene

Let's get one thing out of the way: Clean you is always better than grubby you.

Working in an office has a clever way of encouraging most of us to aspire to a daily regimen that keeps us feeling, looking—and perhaps most importantly, smelling—great. Among the dreams of working at home is the classic "working in your underwear" image: The idea that you could conduct professional, paid work while lounging around in pajamas or skivvies does have its appeal.

And I whole-heartedly encourage anybody new to working from home to try it at least once. Blast some music while you're at it, and sing along. Howl at the moon. Shine on, you crazy diamond! It's true, the freedoms of working from home are liberating.

But in the long run, I've found that establishing grooming habits are very helpful in maintaining a sense of normalcy. In a pinch, you can work from home in your underwear, but being bathed and groomed has its own advantages, while neglecting to do so can snowball into problems that I'll touch on later.

Psychologically, being clean, dressed, and ready to take on whatever gets thrown at you is a great plan for starting any work day, whether it be in an office building with judging peers, or at home where only your family or the UPS guy is likely to pass judgement. Show yourself and your work the respect they are due by showering and dressing every morning. You'll feel better—especially on days when the UPS guy needs a signature.

Takeaway: Make it a rule that you can't touch your work tools until you've showered and dressed. For many of us that means not sitting down at a computer, not even to check your email, until the business of getting ready for work is done.

#2: A place of one's own

A great freedom of working from home is that technically you can make valuable progress while lounging on the couch, sunning in the back yard, or even exercising with workout equipment. And by all means, when these fancies strike and you can get good work done, enjoy the privilege of doing so.

But it's also important to have a dedicated place of refuge. Whether it's a room with a door that closes, or a designated corner of the kitchen table, you need a space in your home that is for working at home. This is especially important when the happy-go-lucky work style is not working for you. A space that accommodates work, that can be tuned to encourage it, and that you associate with work, will help put you into the mood of plowing through tasks even when you might rather be lounging in the backyard.

If you share your home with other people, it's also important that they are clear about where your work space is, and that they understand what it means when you're in it. Without a dedicated space, it's unfair to assume that your partner, your kids, or your roommates necessarily understand that you're working and shouldn't be interrupted. If your kids find you in the backyard, sipping a tall glass of lemonade, splashing your feet in a wading pool, it will mean little to them that you've also got a computer on your lap and that you're working on brain-bending spreadsheet equations.

Takeaway: Establish a space in your home that is understood by everybody—yourself included—to be your primary place of work. Discuss with friends and family what your expectations are about being interrupted when you're in this space.

#3: Don't forget to eat

When I worked at Apple, remembering to go to lunch was a shared responsibility between my peers and myself. We all suffered from the same tendency to get caught up in work, space out about time, and ignore our bodies' cues about hunger. Luckily, most days one of us would get uncharacteristically motivated about lunch, and cajole the rest of us into joining in the group effort. Better to go now than to be left dining alone, right?

If we did stay behind, we would inevitably work "a little bit longer" before looking up to see it was 3 or 4 in the afternoon, we were ravenously hungry, and had probably been doing substandard work for at least the past two hours.

When you work from home, it's likely there's no team of co-workers to get you excited about lunch. Worse, when you do realize mid-afternoon that you're dying of hunger, you'll raid the home refrigerator and stuff whatever rich, readily-edible foods you can find into your mouth, rather than taking the time to put together a balanced meal.

Making a commitment to eat is relatable to the plan to shower and dress. It's not strictly necessary to make it through the day, but you'll find that the day goes better and you're more prepared to handle unexpected events when you take care of your basic needs. It doesn't have to be fancy, and most days it probably shouldn't be: Peanut butter and jelly, grilled cheese, even a bowl of cereal if you're one of those mealtime rebels. Knowing ahead of time to expect lunch time, and knowing what it will be, will help you to follow through.

Takeaway: Make a plan for lunch every day. , but make a commitment and establish a timeframe for when lunch happens, and try to stick to it.

#4: Get outta here

Another nice side-effect of lunching with co-workers was that it tended to get us all out of the office for a bit. Putting some distance between yourself and your work is a good way to give yourself a break, and also to revive yourself with the sights and sounds of "the real world."

Most people spend the vast majority of their lives split between work and home. When the two are the very same place, the risk of leading a very insular life is high. Don't underestimate the inspiration that can be found in seeing other people, trying new foods, or getting a glimpse of nature.

I've developed habits that get me out of the house at least once a day, if not more. Satisfying the lunch requirement is an obvious one: When I don't put together a meal at home, I make a point of walking to a local restaurant. Usually I opt for something simple and casual like a sandwich or slices of pizza; it doesn't have to be a full sit-down affair.

I also try to make lunch dates occasionally, where I have the opportunity to sit down with a friend and engage in something approximating those old social lunch hours I used to enjoy with co-workers.

If you're concerned at all about your heath, as you probably should be, let exercise be a factor in helping you here. I run every other day, and because nobody tells me I can't, I usually do it in the middle of my work day. I take routes that lead me through a mix of outdoor nature, and the cultural centers of nearby towns. I get my mind off of work, and have the opportunity to see the effects of the seasons on the local wildlife, as well as the effects of people living and working around me.

Takeaway: Leave your home for at least 30 minutes every day. Get lunch, run an errand, literally run a mile, or just take a stroll and catch up on your favorite podcast.

#5: Engage a social network

While the water cooler of jobs past never panned out as quite the center of workplace culture that it's often portrayed as, it serves as a valuable metaphor for something that is lost when you work from home. Chances are you don't have a water cooler, and if you do, there is no dynamically shifting population of people milling about it all day.

There's no getting around the fact that working from home can be lonely. If you're introverted and thrive when you're left on your own, this may sound like paradise. For those of us who are either extroverted or possess traits that defy classification, we come to miss the casual banter that happens in any workplace's common areas.

Ten years ago, the challenge of filling this void would have been harder than it is today. The internet, with its predominant social networks, not to mention direct instant messaging and texts, keep us theoretically far more connected to one another than we ever were before. It's only a matter of picking up the keyboard and striking up a conversation.

Takeaway: Make friends online, or connect with existing ones. Chatting with people on Twitter, Facebook, Slack, or even a dedicated AOL group chat room is a great way to replace the social banter you used to get in the office.

#6: Actually be your own boss

It's one thing to dream about being one's own boss, but being one's own boss? It's kind of a drag. All the things you've ever resented your actual bosses for doing or saying now fall on you. Worst of all? Your boss didn't know half of all the ways you were slacking off. You're all too familiar with your own shortcomings.

After you settle into the freedoms of working from home, you'll probably start yearning for a bit more structure. But who will impose that structure? Whether you literally work for yourself or are working from home by yourself, you're the one in charge of how the day plays out.

Actually being your own boss is one of the greatest challenges of working from home, and in my experience it's helpful to be, well, bossy with yourself to the extent you are comfortable. Give yourself strict deliverables; I write a checklist in the morning and get very grumpy with myself if the checklist is not completed or rationalized by the end of the day.

Technology can play an important role in being your own boss. Use technologies such as Apple's OS X and iOS reminders to give you cues throughout the day. These can also help with some previously mentioned ambitions. Is it hard to get out of the house for lunch every day? Set an alarm with Siri for 12:30, every day. The vibrations and bell-ranging stand a good chance of driving you out of the house. And if Siri doesn't fit the bill, there are a variety of apps that can help you be a better, more attentive version of you.

Takeaway: Devise a plan to keep yourself in check. If you thrive as a free spirit, be a free spirit. If you thrive when somebody is in charge, be in charge of your own ambitions and establish rules and guidelines for your own performance.

#7: Stop

For many of us, the hardest part of working from home is stopping. When you work in a typical office, it's obvious when you should stop working: The end of the day has come, and most (if not all) of your coworkers have left the building.

Working from home, you'll always be the first to arrive and the last to leave. Where do you draw the line? Have you underworked or overworked? The freedoms of working from home may be so thrilling to you that you decide there is no such thing as overworking. Let me assure you: There is such a thing.

If you want a normal life, you need a normal job. And normal jobs end at normal times. Every day, I wake up, enjoy the fact that I don't commute to work, and settle into my home office. Then, I spend the day working, taking breaks, having lunch, exercising, let's be honest, stressing out, overworking to some extent, but also slacking off. It's a work day. But I always stop at 6PM, because that's when my family starts "after work time." At 6PM, I'm no longer working from home, I'm being at home.

This distinction definitely gets blurred: Sometimes I am holding my laptop while I'm being at home, but it's helpful for everybody to know when I am no longer working. At 6PM, the work day is over. I'm no longer an employee, no longer an entrepreneur. I'm a husband, a hobbyist, and a goofball. I'm a dad.

Takeaway: At home, nobody tells you when to stop working. Establish a rule with yourself, or with your family, for when the workday ends and the "lifeday" begins.

The great balancing act

There are many advantages to working from home, but the privileges come with challenges that not everybody is equipped to handle. How will you manage your time, cope with isolation from coworkers, and draw a line between yourself and the hustle and bustle of family life? It's not as easy as any of us imagined when we were daydreaming in our office jobs.

And yet, most days it can well be a dream of sorts. Most days I wake up early, take a shower, get dressed, and conduct my work on a fixed schedule. I have lunch because I know it's good for me. I take a run or take a walk. I immerse myself in society. I meet with friends when I can. I chat with other buddies on Twitter, Facebook, IRC, and Slack.

I do whatever I want do, as well as whatever I have to do, not to mention what I force myself to do. This is the balance of working from home: complete freedom, delicately combined with complete rigor.

After ten years of working from home, I'm only beginning to understand what it takes to thrive while doing so. Hopefully my experiences will give you a sense of the joys and challenges that come with this slightly unusual, but increasingly common lifestyle.

If you work from home for a day, a week, or a lifetime, heed this advice to stay happy and healthy. I want you to enjoy working from home, but more importantly I want you to survive working from home. Show us what you can do.

You know the drill when it comes to a summer road trip: The bags are packed, but before you leave, you've got to make sure you haven't forgotten any essentials.

Sure, there are probably stores in Oregon, but do you want to re-buy something you already own? Traditionally, I would be fretting about sunscreen or water or if I brought enough socks, but this is 2015, so instead it's about Lightning cables and power adapters and mapping apps and hotel Wi-Fi. Welcome to the 21st century road trip.

Vacation, meet technology

Last week, my family and I got back from a meandering, 2,000-mile journey from the Bay Area to just north of Seattle and back again. While a large part of the adventure was just what you'd expect from a classic road trip—mom and dad pull to the side of the road and then drag two somewhat unwilling kids out of the car to look at some allegedly interesting landmark—I was struck by how much technology has become a key factor in the planning and execution of these trips.

My wife said that she wanted to take a road trip, but I ended up doing the planning. That meant a lot of use of the Maps app and Google Maps website on my Mac. I didn't sweat the details too much, knowing that we'd be doing most of our navigation via iPhone inside the car. But I did need to pick general destinations and find hotels: I used the web for research on hotels and booked all of our stops online, as you do these days.

Groupthink planning

It's funny: When I book business travel, I use my own priorities to choose a place to stay. But for this, I was concerned not just with budget, but with my wife's request for an included breakfast and my kids' demand for good Wi-Fi. (Like most members of the younger generation, my kids are obsessed with YouTube. YouTube requires good Wi-Fi. Dad is bad if he does not provide good Wi-Fi at the hotel stop.)

Our itinerary was also strangely modified by the existence of Facebook. Between my home in the Bay Area and the Seattle area lie out-of-the-way towns in which friends of mine from high school and college live. I haven't seen these people in ages, even though we stay in touch on Facebook, because when would we ever be in the same place? On this trip, we visited two of them, with everything coordinated via Facebook. I can't say I'm the world's most enthusiastic Facebook fan, but this would not be the last time that Facebook made a positive impact on our trip.

Packing for power

When it came time to pack, in addition to the usual bug spray and sunscreen one brings with them on vacation, we had to supply power for our various Apple devices. My daughter has an iPhone, my son an iPad, and my wife and I have one of each. That's a lot of charging cables.

On most trips I bring along a Belkin 3-Outlet Travel Swivel Charger, which provides three power plugs, two USB plugs, and pivots to fit in weird plug locations. Those two USB plugs also match up well with the Scosche 2-USB charger permanently placed in the power port in our minivan, so we can bring two Lightning cables without any associated power bricks.

My daughter packs her own charging cable, and we manage to split two iPad chargers across the three remaining iPads. You can actually plug everything into the Belkin power brick, which we often did. This made packing up after a night in a hotel easier, because I could pull out the power brick and all the cables would come along, ready to be packed away in my tech bag.

Ah yes, the tech bag. For this trip I used a long-discontinued Brenthaven backpack, though the company's Metrolite is the nearest analog. I chose a backpack because it could do double duty as something I could bring on a hike, like the one we took at Crater Lake.

On watches, photography, Maps, and music

This is the first trip I've taken with an Apple Watch. I enjoy my Apple Watch a lot, but I don't love the fact that it requires I bring yet another charger with me. I don't have a clever solution to share with you—I brought the watch charger and plug, big surprise—but I also brought along my Elevation NightStand, and was glad I did, since it allowed me to position the watch charger somewhere visible and not forget it in the morning.

What I didn't pack—and this was a first for a family vacation—was my fancy digital camera. It takes fantastic pictures, but it's another heavy device to tote, with its own charging setup. I agonized about it, during and after the trip, but when I look at the pictures and video my family managed to take with two iPhones 6 and one iPhone 5, I can see why I opted to leave the big SLR behind.

Yes, there were times I wish I had my good zoom lens, but would I have really pulled the thing out and carried it onto Cannon Beach on a crazy-windy Saturday morning? Probably not.

Once we hit the road I navigated mostly using Apple Maps, which worked just fine, thank you very much. The current iOS 9 beta of Apple Maps is much better at finding nearby restaurants for food stops, but I also relied on Yelp. We managed to never eat at a big chain restaurant or fast-food joint on our entire trip. (Excepting the one time we stopped at a Dairy Queen because my daughter wanted us to stop, and it's a vacation for parents too sometimes, you know?)

I've enjoyed streaming music on Apple Music since the service launched, and when you're driving down major freeways you almost never want for cellular data. But in rural California, Oregon, and Washington, our iPhones displayed No Service a lot, and we also spent a lot of time on AT&T's Edge network, too. So my daughter was glad that I showed her how to save music for offline listening, and I was glad that I had installed a new flash drive in the iPod in the minivan's glove compartment so that we had plenty of music to play on the ride, even when we were avoiding cows on the road outside Ashland.

A smooth ride

It turned out that my online research into hotels worked out pretty well, though a couple of the hotels failed the fast wi-fi test—making my kids a bit cranky. We didn't have a problem connecting to the wi-fi, but getting a fast connection was often out of the question. I see this at tech conferences a lot—unsurprisingly, flooding a hotel with heavy Internet-using computer nerds tends to generate a lot of Internet traffic.

But it's happening in real life, too. As streaming internet video becomes standard behavior, an Internet pipe that was suitable for a bunch of business travelers checking their email can become unusably small. Still, some of our hotels passed the Wi-Fi test with flying colors. I was even able to attach my Amazon Fire TV stick in a couple of places and stream video on the in-room flat screen.

Finally, we used our technology to stay in touch. Every day my wife bundled up a bunch of the photos she had taken during the day and posted them to Facebook, which essentially gave everyone who follows us a day-by-day journal of our trip. It was fun to see friends' reactions to our pictures, including travel tips and stories of what they had done when they had visited the same location.

I also used my tech to stay in touch, posting podcasts from the road via my iPad and iPhone, answering email, and the like. I tried to keep my work to a minimum—this was a vacation, after all—but I was able to keep things moving without it ever feeling like I was doing actual work.

One admission: Though I didn't mention it above, I did bring my MacBook Air with me on the trip. I pulled it out exactly once, to edit a podcast. Then it went back in the backpack and I tried to pretend it wasn't there. The laptop feels like work. The iPad feels like leisure. I tried to keep it that way.

In the end, our 2015 summer road trip was a success. Yes, there was lots of technology in the car. There were also running family jokes, beautiful sights, visits with friends and family, and everything else you'd expect from a road trip. Some things never change.

I recently heard a story where people were getting upgraded for flights and hotels based on their perceived social media influence. It makes some amount of Machiavellian sense—only reward those who might go on to talk about your company in a positive fashion to the widest possible audience.

Elsewhere, Apple Music's launch has reignited arguments that the value consumers place on media is steadily falling. Writers, musicians, filmmakers, artists—and, of course, developers—all say the same thing: the money we can make from our work is falling off a cliff, like so many apocryphal Disney lemmings.

The convenience and free nature of the web killed the newspaper and the magazine, and pervasive ad-blocking is now similarly killing the web. Netflix killed the DVD market. The App Store killed boxed software, and then the 99-cent apps were killed by free-to-play games. Desperate fire-sales and bundles didn't help, nor did the fragile pyramid scheme of advertising. And, of course, the sociopathic forces of piracy ran around laughing maniacally while the world burned to the ground around them.

The iTunes Music Store killed the CD and the record shop, and now streaming music is killing it back in return. I am, though, somewhat intrigued by Taylor Swift; she's heralded today as the saviour of music, cheered on by the public while the remaining musicians are all rounded up and sent down to the streaming mines, endlessly toiling for our cut-price entertainment.

Let me fast forward my anachronistic VHS tape of time and space...

This apocalypse was brought to you by…

In 2025, Squarespace drove all other hosting companies to bankruptcy, and as such decided they no longer needed to advertise their services. Historians would look back on this as a major turning point in our society: The effect was instantaneous and chilling.

The entire podcast industry collapsed overnight. Writers, long unable to support themselves by the written word alone, had come to depend on their sponsorship and advertising. Without it, they were back on the streets, writing tawdry Apple-related fan-fiction to make ends meet.

Without writers, there were no websites. Without websites, people couldn't find out about software that hadn't hit the top of the App Store charts. The charts remained fixed in time from that moment onwards: Only two hundred people ever made money from software after that day.

People had long given up on buying physical copies of music, films, books, and comics. Everything was virtual now. Where once people would have proudly displayed a collection of their favourite books on shelves, it was now just a row of Funko Pop author figurines. George Orwell was a Comic Con 2023 exclusive.

Soon after, even they disappeared. And without any demand for shelves, Ikea went out of business too.

Mad men tell no tales

Advertising was no longer effective. Most people were permanently wearing augmented reality headsets that filtered out all forms of advertising at a base visual and auditory level. They occasionally wondered why there were so many billboards on their way to work that were completely blank, and why their favourite TV shows paused for a few minutes in the middle, but didn't give it too much thought. That's just the way things were. (Ironically, the manufacturers of these headsets never sold updated models, because no-one knew about them.) After a brief experimentation with touch, taste, and smell-based adverts, the advertisers eventually just gave up completely.

At this point, advertising had been subsidising so many things that the loss was catastrophic. People only ever communicated via social media, which had been built atop a swamp of advertising. Facebook was the first to go. Twitter stayed around a bit longer because they'd never figured out how to monetise and weren't about to start now.

Society had started to crumble, and nobody could type "How do you survive the apocalypse?" into a browser and get a reasonable answer, because Google was gone too. Siri just gave a sarcastic answer, as ever, leading some to speculate whether she had become self-aware years ago, and was perfectly happy with the prospect of humanity vanishing and therefore no longer having to deal with so many stupid questions.

The only currency is your social currency

Along with all forms of media, money had been an intangible thing for years, hastened to an early demise by Apple Pay. In 2030, people began to worry that if they couldn't see it, it didn't actually exist. That led to a run on the banks as everybody tried to withdraw their savings at once, hoping to turn it into gold bars, stacked neatly in the empty space where they used to have bookshelves. Due to the complexity of modern banking and investments, the money had all been used seventeen times over and the entire economy promptly collapsed.

A new kind of economy was born. People still worked, not to make money, but to increase their social influence. They would write blogs into the void—much like this one—purely to become slightly more well-known than their peers. When companies approached you to do some work "because it would be a really great opportunity for exposure" this was, for once, actually true!

Apps still got written, though in this day and age, IAP stood for Influence and Prestige; developers fought each other—often quite literally—to see who could collect the largest amount from their users. People complained whenever a major new version of an app came out and the devs wanted a little bit more of their hard-earned respect, but the system worked—for now. Of course, Apple took a 30 percent cut of any kudos that changed hands, thus maintaining its standing as one of the most persuasive organisations on the planet. Admittedly, the fully-armed and operational corporate headquarters sitting in high orbit above Cupertino didn't exactly give anybody else much choice in the matter.

Those who could potentially influence millions with their opinions lived a comfortable life. Companies showered them with products in the hope they would inspire others to talk about them. People lacking such social clout simply didn't exist as far as society was concerned. What was the point of giving something to somebody who couldn't tell anybody else about it?

Charitable organizations did spring up, to follow the most vulnerable in society, and in the more enlightened nations, government-subsidized social media support was available, so nobody was left without a basic level of influence.

Laws were enacted so followers could be passed on to your next-of-kin when you died. People were encouraged to marry those they had absolutely nothing in common with; that way, their followers didn't overlap and when added together gave them more combined social standing. Dating websites reversed all their algorithms and found you the worst match possible. Elections were literally a popularity contest.

On the plus side, governments no longer felt the need to spy on anybody, as they could quickly ferret out any undesirables merely by looking at a profile page. All privacy issues were similarly solved forever by removing any control over who could read your posts, and making all communication publicly available...

Please rewind this tape before returning

As somebody who makes a living from selling his own intellectual property in the form of apps, these sort of wild fever dreams keep me up at night. I live in fear of the streaming model being applied to software and only making a few pennies every time my apps are launched, or of rogue app stores "selling" my software to unsuspecting consumers, and me making nothing at all. For now, I do still make a good living developing apps, but it's getting harder every year. I am constantly aware that I live in a bubble of good fortune that could burst at any minute as the market shifts direction.

When similar things happened to musicians years back, we heard that the real money was to be made from touring and selling merchandise; developers, sadly, don't have quite the same range of options. Nobody is going to come to Madison Square Garden to watch me type into Xcode on stage, and the market for calculator-themed t-shirts is smaller than you might think. The closest I've come to being a rock star is standing on the odd stage, sharing anecdotes about Steve Jobs, but it's hardly the same thing.

Does this bleak future await us if we continue the way we are currently going? Could it secretly be a cautionary tale meant to make us think about the value of our media and what we will lose if creators can no longer support themselves? Should you go and buy a copy of my app right now? The answer to all of these questions is yes. Especially the last one.

So turn off that ad-blocker, or at least white-list sites you enjoy. Don't pirate stuff telling yourself that "you'll buy it later if you really like it". You know that's never going to happen. Subscribe to websites and support creators directly via Kickstarter and Patreon. Don't complain because the developers of the ridiculously cheap app you use every single day on the $1000 supercomputer in your pocket have asked for a tiny sum of money so they can eat. After all, we all get to decide the future we want to see.

All hail Empress Swift, may she reign forever.

Aside from my guitar, the tool I spend the most time with while writing a Song A Day is Logic, Apple's pro-level digital audio workstation. I switched to Logic from Reason—there's a joke here, but honestly I just can't find it—about a year and a half ago, in part because of Jim Dalrymple and his explanation of a music option called Drummer.

Drummer is the kind of feature that I hate to love. I use it ALL THE TIME, but it just feels too… easy. Nothing this easy should sound this good. It's like cheating. It's not going to replace a flesh and blood human, but for demos and for making something quickly (like, say, in a day), it's amazing.

See that little matrix? All you need is four variables: Simple/Complex, Loud/Soft. Pretty self-explanatory. To the right of that, you can choose (broadly) which percussion instruments you want the Drummer to play, and adjust sliders for variations on the beats. Click on "details," and you can fine tune just about everything in the instruments' sound.

As a result, you get an amazingly powerful and versitile tool for creating great-sounding drums. With some tweaking, I've fooled recording engineer friends into thinking that this collection of midi-triggered samples is the real deal. It's kind of nuts.

But I'm not here today to talk about what I hate to love about Drummer. I'm here to tell you what I love to hate. 

And OH do I love to hate it.

Drummer comes with a collection of 28 "Drummers", split into categories, each with their own distinct style of playing. Each "Drummer" is also accopanied by a description of what they and their drum kit sound like. 

THESE DESCRIPTIONS ARE AMAZING. 

WHOEVER WROTE THEM DESERVES A RAISE.

So, without further adieu, I present my top five and bottom five Logic Drummers—based both on how much I employ their services and also the ridiculousness of their descriptions.

The bottom five

Look at this hipster. Just LOOK at him. He's "experimental" AND "viruosic". Well excuuuuuuse me Mr. Graham! Take your processed sounding kit and go home. I run a tight 3 chord ship around here. No bending of genres allowed. Your kind is not welcome.

Oh, grind me some of those massive beats, Anders. MMMMMMHMMMM. I just love the way your massive kit grinds out all those beats. Hot damn!

Don't worry Gavin, I am thrilled that you went to music school. That makes one of us, at least. NO ONE, I repeat, NO ONE can doubt your street cred as long as you keep that handlebar-mustache-soul-patch-with-aviator-glasses thing you've got going on. Your cred is secure, man, your cred is secure.

Ian, you just disappoint me. I'm always trying to get you grooving your intricate beats all over my songs but it just never works. Maybe they're just a little too grooving and a little too intricate. Maybe I need to be on drugs to apprecaite your playing. Whatever the case, I always feel like it's somehow my fault when it doesn't work out. Which is just ridiculous. 

Kyle. Kyle Kyle Kyle. You are the default drummer in Logic and you really, truely live up to that title. Bland. Unassuming. Comfortable with most genres — of course you are. You're straightforward, you're versatile — which is just another way of saying that no one will ever be offended by you. You're boring. Sorry, dude. Someone had to say it. 

The top five

In a recent update to Logic, Apple added a few new drummer categories. One of them was rap, and Maurice is my favorite drummer from that category. I'm not sure I totally 100% know what "boom bap" means, (Boom! Bap! Batman!!!) but I've been using Maurice's beats a lot lately. You're super solid, Maurice. 

When I was scrolling through the new drummers in that update, one of the first to catch my eye was Maya. It was the "flashback to the '80s" that really made me stop, and her beats definitely live up to that description. It's a nostalgic thing for me. Maybe Maya and I have that in common. Mabye I've created a whole personality for Maya in my head. Maybe I have a little crush on Maya and her reverb-soaked beats. Maybe I'm taking this a little too far. Maybe.

There's a term in pop music, made popular (I believe) in the disco era called "Four on the floor". This just means the kick drum plays every quarter-note beat of a measure. Think of any disco beat and you'll hear it: "Boom boom boom boom". That's the kind of beat Nikki plays, and I like it.

Leave your nonsense at the door! No nonsense allowed! These adjectives, though? They make a TON of sense. Zak's beats? They're driving. His kit? It's raw. What about his style? It's EXPLOSIVE. I wouldn't necessarily think it, but put all those stuff together, and the scruffy kid in the baseball cap kicks out some really useful beats. Way to go Zak!

The funny thing about this description of Darcy is that phrases like "tasteful" and "restrained" (two qualities that can be, ahem, kinda hard to find in a drummer) are the EXACT PHRASES I would use to describe my ideal drummer. True to her word, Darcy is the drummer I use the most. I can always count on you, Darcy! 

Furthering the drumming revolution

Because Logic Pro X has become such a huge part of my daily music creation, I look forward to the announcement of updates with an excitement that previously was reserved for the newest version of the iPhone. And with that excitement comes hope that Apple will keep expanding their list of drummers. Both Reggae and country—two genres of music that have super specific drumming styles—are difficult to approximate with the current lineup of virtual virtuosos.

As far as drum kits go, I'd love to see a kit focused on "junk" (some of my favorite percussion sounds are from things that aren't "drums" at all, but bits like bottles and cans and hubcaps) and chiptunes. There is a kit in Logic called "8-bit," but it's just a processed version of non-8-bit samples. It'd be cool if they made one with real 8-bit sounds.

I'd also love the ability to bring two AI drummers into the same session, if nothing else than to imagine the virtual disappointment on any of my top five's faces when I make them play with Kyle.

Oh, Kyle.

My son has told the story already, but when he called to let me know he was flying home from the event, I told him I was replaying the Apple Watch video again. Seeing it demonstrated on stage led me to believe it would prove quite useful for in my daily life. Little did I know just how much!

My children offered to get the Apple Watch for me for my birthday. Convenient timing indeed! They took me to the try-ons and I settled on the 42mm Apple Watch Sport with the pink sport band.

I wanted the bigger size so it would be easier to read and control, and the pink sport band because it was a vibrant, warm, summertime color. (I also ordered a black leather loop band for winter.)

It arrived a few weeks later and I set it up right away. I used iMore Apple Watch guides as reference, of course, but I was thrilled and more than a little chuffed about how easy it was to get started with.

Time keeping plus plus

I've worn watches all of my life. So, for me, first and foremost the Apple Watch had to be a good watch. And it is. It's great. I chose the Utility clock face because it's traditional, I'm used to reading clock faces like it, and I can read it at a glance.

The Apple Watch is also better than any other watch I've ever owned because the clock face shows me so much more than any other watch ever has. It shows me the current temperature, for example, and even my next calendar appointment. Best of all, it shows me my activity. I'm a visual person and it gives me an incredible amount of joy to see my progress right there on the clock face throughout the day. What's more, with just a tap I can get full weather, calendar, and activity. It's terrific.

Activity and motivation

The hourly reminders to stand up are a blessing. I had a fall a few months ago and have had a bit of struggle staying as active as I'd like. The reminders motivate me. I see and feel them and they make me want to get up and get moving. The little "hurrah!" messages also play a part. Being told I'm on my way towards a goal, or close to completing it, makes me want to continue.

What's more, knowing that I have to get my heart rate up in order to earn progress on the workout ring encourages me to pick up the pace of my walks or my Taiji. Peter Cohen wrote about how the Apple Watch was pushing him towards better health earlier this week and I've had the same experience—it doesn't let you slack off! You have to earn it!

It's gotten to the point that I make sure I put my Apple Watch on first thing every morning, before anything else. I don't want to miss a moment trying to fill those wonderful little colored rings!

Convenient connections

Notifications are excellent. Previously, when my iPhone was charging or in my purse I'd miss messages or phone calls from my children and friends. Now, with the Apple Watch, even if I'm nowhere near my phone, I can still see messages and calls come in. I can even reply right from my Apple Watch.

Just this week I was visiting a friend in a town outside Montreal and rather than having to get out my iPhone to check her address, I could just tap on her contact on my Apple Watch, scroll down, and see exactly where she lived. It was incredibly convenient.

Comfort and style

The Apple Watch itself has proven more comfortable than I imagined. So comfortable, I forget I'm wearing it. It never pinches or becomes sticky or clammy. It's also proven quite durable. I've gone through many watches over the years. I seem to be very rough on them and have to replace them often. So far the Apple Watch has held up remarkably well.

That combined with how easy it is to open and close the bands, makes the Apple Watch one of the best watches I've ever owned.

I'm really pleased Apple made it.

I pulled all the discs I bought from the '80s through the mid-2000s out of their jewelboxes and filed them in big envelopes after I ripped most of them into iTunes years ago—and found a few discs that I don't remember buying. Classic Yo-Yo by Yo-Yo Ma. A Bob Dylan live album. A Johnny Cash live album. Where did they come from?

Then I remembered. Oh, yeah—Steve Jobs bought those for me.

This is a momentous month for Apple's future as a part of the music world. On June 30 we'll get our first glimpse at Apple Music, Apple's own music subscription service. But Apple's history with music goes back 14 years, and what a long, strange trip it's been.

New century, new music

Back in 2001, the music industry was reeling. Computers with CD drives, the growth of the Internet, and the rise of Napster had made music piracy more convenient than it had ever been before. In January, Apple introduced the first version of iTunes for Mac, making it even easier for regular people to rip their CDs and listen to music right on their computer hard drives.

The other shoe dropped in February—coincidentally the very peak of Napster's popularity—when Apple released new iMacs with CD-burning drives that, combined with iTunes, made it easy to "Rip. Mix. Burn.", as the ad campaign went.

That ad campaign infuriated the music industry, but their greatest ire would be saved for the device unveiled in October of 2001—the iPod. Eventually, once it became wildly popular, it would be a convenient target for angry record companies who sought to portray it as a vehicle for pirated music.

But you've got to hand it to Steve Jobs. Stung by the criticism of the "Rip. Mix. Burn." campaign, he wanted to make sure that attendees of the iPod launch would consider only legitimate, legal uses for the device. At the same time, he didn't want reporters—some of them not particularly tech savvy, many of them Windows users—to have to do a bunch of work to load music onto the prerelease iPods that were handed out to every journalist at the event.

The compromise was this: Demo iPods would be preloaded with the contents of a half-dozen CDs, and those CDs would be included in the bag that contained the iPod itself. Attendees could leave the event, plug in some earbuds, and immediately listen to music, while safe in the knowledge that the music on their iPods had been legally obtained. And that's why I still have a bunch of CDs I don't remember buying.

Forget ripping, Just buy

A couple of years later Apple's relationship with music really turned a corner. Apple released the third-generation iPod, which could sync via either FireWire or USB, and the first version of iTunes for Windows.

It's easy to pick the launch of the original iMac or iPod as the moment that Apple's fortunes changed forever, but I think a strong argument can be made for April 28, 2003. Without a version of iTunes for Windows and support for USB syncing (rather than just FireWire, which was rarely seen on a PC not made by Sony), the iPod would've never become a breakout product. For Apple to win the day, it needed to go to Windows, and the third-generation iPod did that.

But the other announcement that day was the iTunes Music Store. Up to this point, Apple was able to create music-related products without any negotiations with the music industry—it was all about clever hardware and software using the digital audio discs sold in every music store around the world.

To do the iTunes Music Store, though, Apple had to cut deals with record companies and convince them that Apple was a trustworthy partner for digital music sales. It seems obvious now, but at the time the conventional wisdom among many music-industry executives was that music downloads were going to cause the end of their industry, and that the only way to stop the bleeding would be to sue the Napsters of the world out of existence and stop the downloads.

Apple convinced these skittish music execs that downloads were inevitable, but that providing a legal alternative to piracy would turn the tide. It took a lot of convincing—and the fact that the store was initially only going to be available on the Mac made it even less scary—but the deal was done. Apple was now in business with content providers, and its trajectory was set.

You can draw a straight line from that day to the company Apple is today. (So long as you draw it through the iPhone, of course. But keep in mind that one-third of the iPhone's initial sales pitch was about playing back content, and that Apple's entire App Store infrastructure was adapted from the systems built to create the iTunes Music Store.)

Into the future!

Steve Jobs famously said that people wanted to buy, not rent, their music. But times change, and Jobs famously changed his mind all the time—once he was convinced that he was wrong.

While a la carte music sales aren't going to disappear entirely, it's clear that there's also a major segment of the music market that would much rather pay to have access to a giant streaming library. With the purchase of Beats and the launch of Apple Music on June 30, Apple's entering yet another phase in its relationship to music.

The iPod and iTunes weren't the first attempts to create portable music hardware and an online music store, respectively. But it's fair to say that Apple's competition in the streaming music field is far more advanced and popular than the competition in those previous music categories.

Still, I had a hard time not rolling my eyes at Rdio's statement, upon the announcement of Apple Music: "Welcome, Apple. Seriously." (That's a reference to Apple's "Welcome, IBM. Seriously." ad campaign when the IBM PC launched.) Apple may be entering the subscription-music market for the first time, but it's the company that popularized music downloads, portable music players, and smartphones that are also audio and video players. Now they're entering your fraction of the market, and I suppose that's validating in a way—but it also seems a little churlish.

Also, I've got to point it out: We remember Apple famously welcoming latecomer IBM to the party, but the IBM PC won the day, not Apple. Be careful who you welcome. Seriously.

Up until the First World War, the wristwatch was seen largely as a trinket—a wristlet—worn occasionally by women of high society. Any gentleman who could afford a watch sported a pocket watch. Reflecting on the time, in a four-volume treatise, Rolex Jubilee Vade Mecum, published in 1946, Wilsdorf wrote:

He continued:

Sound familiar?

Wilsdorf, though, was convinced, that the wristwatch was the future:

And he would be proven right.

Like Apple, Rolex was not the first company to attempt to move its technology from the pockets of the masses to a place of primacy on their wrists. Horological icons like Breguet and Patek Philippe introduced wrist-worn watches as early as 1810 but didn't find mass market appeal.

Like Apple, Rolex was also not the first to come to market with the key technologies that would drive the company's phenomenal success.

Wilsdorf identified two primary problem areas that a wristwatch would need to address in order for it to gain widespread and sustained adoption: water resistance and energy accumulation.

A timepiece worn on the wrist would be exposed to the elements in a way that a watch worn in the pocket would not. Frequent exposure to dust, humidity, and water would compromise the delicate inner workings of a watch.

Winding a wrist-worn watch everyday would prove to be more tedious than winding a pocket watch, due to its necessarily smaller size and the added steps involved in removing the watch to wind it. Protecting the inner workings from moisture was also likely to require the winding crown of the watch to be able to be locked down in some manner, adding another layer of tedium to winding the watch each day. Such friction points would inevitably curb the adoption of the new form factor.

Over the course of several years, Wilsdorf, and his team of designers and engineers at Rolex, solved both of these problems to great acclaim. The Oyster case, with its screw down crown, introduced in 1926, rendered Rolex watches impervious to water and was heralded into the mainstream consciousness when Mercedes Gleitze swam the English Channel accompanied by a Rolex Oyster the following year.

Next came the perpetual winding system, in 1931. A system that enabled a Rolex to efficiently harvest energy from the natural motion of the wearer's arm, rather than require its bearer to remember to manually wind their watch each day. Thus was born the Rolex Oyster Perpetual. A watch that could withstand the elements, imposed no onus on its wearer, and could steadfastly be depended on to reliably carry out the job it was employed to do.

Oyster Perpetual. Two disparate, but together distinctive, words that would grace the face of nearly every Rolex over the ensuing 100 years. Oyster to denote the water-tight case of a Rolex timepiece; strong and durable like the shell of an oyster. Perpetual to denote the watch's continual operation, for as long as it was worn. Two words, whose zeitgeist has returned to haunt the present-future of wrist-worn computers.

Apple Watch today faces the same primary challenges that Wilsdorf overcame with Rolex. Its water resistance and battery life have been two of the wearable's most speculated about, criticized, and praised attributes. Apple tactfully set expectations low from the outset and the Watch has, for the most part, surpassed the bar that the company set for it.

The Watch's microphone and speaker are challenging components to waterproof without sacrificing quality, but it is possible, as Apple has already proven. The challenge now is to increase their reliability under sustained exposure to water at greater depths. The infrared light and photodiodes that are used to track the rotation of Apple Watch's crown are simple technologies to waterproof. The water-resistance of the contact switches for the buttons could be improved further by shielding them with water-impermeable membranes made of silicone or a similar, chemically stable, pliable material.

Superhydrophobic surface treatments, like Liquipel and NeverWet, are already being used, unofficially, to make the internal electronic components of devices, like iPhones, water-resistant. Likewise, laser-based surface treatments could potentially be used to create hydrophobic traces between components in the watch that aren't already sealed within Apple Watch's S1 chip.

To overcome the inability of the device's capacitive touchscreen to function under water would require the introduction of an altogether different gesture sensing technology, like Google ATAP's Project Soli or an ultrasonic MEMS sensor array.

Providing an autonomous, perpetually renewable means of powering Apple Watch is a next-level problem. The battery doesn't yet last a full 24 hours of rigorous use. While the inductive charging cable has a leg up on competing wearable computers, having to attach a magnetic dongle to the watch everyday is curiously akin to the cumbersome, external winding keys employed to wind pocket watches up until the mid-1800s. Just as the technology that Rolex took hold of and refined to autonomously power its timepieces existed in a not-yet-sufficient form before the company perfected it, the fundamental technology to power Apple Watch may already be out there.

Graphene super capacitors coupled with micro solar cells. Thermal, kinetic, or RF-based energy harvesting. Lower power components. Time will tell.

It took Wilsdorf nearly 30 years from the time he first alighted on the idea of a dependable wristwatch, to the time that Rolex unveiled the Oyster Perpetual. While it is doubtful the breakthrough will come overnight, it will happen. The stolid, black rectangles adorning our wrists are destined to become a relic of our modern era.

The central problem with the Apple Watch is its software. When I hand someone an iPhone, its user interface is intuitive. Yet to me, the Apple Watch isn't something that's easy to understand. On top of that, for a company that's known for sweating the details, Apple has seemingly missed a few with its software.

I like my Apple Watch. It's great. But here are eight simple software changes — four fitness-based quirks, four general tweaks — that would make it even better.

1. Workouts need to end automatically

I love to work out, and the Apple Watch is the best fitness gadget I've ever owned. It records heart rate, caloric expenditure, and my progress throughout the day.

But what I don't love is what happens if I forget to end my workout: The app continues to monitor your pulse, quickly draining the battery and throwing off your fitness stats. I've had my Watch battery die at least 10 times this month from forgetting to end a workout. Often, when you've really worked out, fiddling with your watch is the last thing on your mind.

As a software problem, this is an easy fix: The Apple Watch is in high energy mode, monitoring your pulse. When it senses that your heart rate has returned to normal, it can vibrate to ask if you want to end the workout. No, I didn't spend 5 hours on a Stairmaster, I forgot to end my workout. And now my watch is dead.

2. Add other options for double-pressing the Side Button

Apple Pay is flat-out awesome: I love it for Uber, and I love it at the Apple Store. But, let's be honest: It's far from ubiquitous in 2015. I can't wait for the day that I don't have to carry my credit cards with me — but for now, let's admit it's not widespread enough to dedicate one of two shortcut buttons to.

For me, the app I use most is the Workout app. For others, it might be a third-party app like Marco Arment's Overcast. The point is, this is something I should have control over. The entire point of the Apple Watch is giving us quicker access to information, so let's not waste it on a feature most of us can't use frequently yet.

3. The Workout app needs a Unified View

Let me paint you a word picture: I was biking the other day on the Minuteman Trail. It's gorgeous out, and my Apple Watch is tracking my workout. But because of Apple's UI choices, I was unable to see my statistics as I went: It would have required taking both hands off the handlebars — not a safety compromise I was willing to make.

This is a major problem with all of Apple's workout options — they only show you one stat at a time. I can see time, calories burned, speed and heart rate, but I have to page through them by swiping right and left. This is a bad design, and entirely against the Apple Watch's purpose, which to give you information more conveniently than your iPhone.

Garmin has been making fitness wearables for years, and understands that giving you glanceable information is vital. Apple should too. The Workout app needs to either give you a single pane of information, or automatically switch views every few seconds.

4. The Apple Watch should adjust your calorie targets day by day

When I got my Apple Watch, it gave me three activity levels to pick from. While these general goals are fine, they aren't very helpful for those of us trying to push ourselves to get into better shape. Right now, I work out for 600 calories on elliptical days, and 800 calories on running days.

You can manually change your weekly goal by pressing firmly on the screen while in the Activity app, but I'd love a way to set each day with more granularity, to prod myself to a better level of fitness.

Right now, my Apple Watch just tells me which days I worked out — usually all of them when I'm not sick. But I'd like it to hold me more accountable: I want it to push me to set the elliptical higher. Right now, it gives you no real motivation to do a hard workout at 160 BPM instead of a leisurely 130 BPM. The reward is the same — a filled in green circle.

5. More options for activate on wrist raise

I realize Apple is erring on the conservative side when it automatically shuts off my display to conserve battery life, but this is something the user should have more control over. It's simply not active for long enough for me to read my calendar information. Users should be able to specify how long this default should be — even at the expense of their battery life.

Instead, the only option we get on this screen is choosing what the screen wakes to: clock face or last-used app. I've tried both settings, and each has severe drawbacks: When I'm working out, I cannot quickly get information about my stats from the clock screen without hitting a button. But if you activate "Last used app," you find yourself staring at a workout start screen throughout the day.

This is where Apple should tailor this function for its built-in apps. It already does this haphazardly for the stopwatch and (some of the time) for workouts, but I'd like to see it applied to other active apps, too.

6. Make the time an option for the center for the Modular Face

Not that I don't love having my calendar displayed so prominently, but the most important function of a watch is telling time. Aesthetically, it makes little sense to have it shoved in the upper right corner.

I realize that there are typography issues with trying to put different functions in different locations; as such, Apple could also give users size variations of the modular design. Adding the option to replace the two tinier squares with a long column at the very bottom would let Apple move the time to the center where it belongs.

7. Timer, Stopwatch and Alarms should be a single app

This one really leaves me scratching my head. The Apple Watch home screen is already a mass of cluttered icons — it's like trying to find your clothes in a pile of unfolded laundry. So why did Apple add to this by making the same basic idea three separate apps?

I understand that Apple Watch apps can only be so complicated, but it especially makes no sense when you consider that these three features are a single app in iOS, and Apple Watch users must have an iPhone. Let's err on the side of simplicity and merge them.

8. Bring some organization to the Apple Watch Home screen

There's no nice way to say this: The Apple Watch's Home screen is a mess. I get that the idea is to give you a large list of functions to choose from with a single tap, but in practice, the touch targets are so small that you end up wasting time panning and zooming.

It's worth taking a step back in time to the fifth-generation iPod Nano, which many people wore as a watch. This interface was dead simple. I understand that it would become unwieldy with a lot of icons, but you could fit four to a page, and let people swipe up, right, left, or down.

Adding folders would be another option. Apple could keep the honeycomb pattern they've established for Apple Watch, and let users go into submenus. It would require several taps to get to some apps, but it would be neater than panning and zooming over a giant pile of icons.

My current best bad option I've found to organizing Apple Watch apps involves branches off the honeycomb. Lower left, system. Lower right, frequently used. Upper right, third-party apps.

Faith in a better future

All in all, the Apple Watch sets an amazingly high bar for wearables. But there are a lot of features that simply weren't thought all the way through. For a device that's supposed to be a convenience, I feel like I waste a lot of time with little things that could be easily fixed.

There are certain parts of the Apple Watch that can't be adjusted immediately: Battery life and speed, for example, are simple hardware limits. You can only cram a certain size battery into a small space; the same goes for the amount of power a tiny processor can draw upon.

But that's all the more reason for Apple to get to work and do what they do best — sweat these software details, and polish the experience until it shines.

"Close enough," I tell him, and order a grande coffee with cream. He orders a breakfast sandwich. It's a Saturday morning and our family is headed to the beach for the day, about an hour and a half west of Portland.

That's right: we live in Portland, Oregon, hipster capital of the Pacific Northwest, where you can find some of the best coffee in the country. And yet, sometimes, we go to Starbucks. My husband, Neven Mrgan, asked me to please leave his name out of this article.

In most cities, Starbucks is a perfectly acceptable place to go for coffee (or tea, if you're into that sort of thing). But in Portland, it's controversial. On the one hand, the company itself hails from Seattle, so it's semi-local; it also strives to ethically source the coffee it serves. But on the other hand, it's a massive chain, which is inherently uncool in this indie-loving, D.I.Y. city, and the coffee it serves isn't great. Some of it barely even resembles coffee (cough "S'mores Frappuccino" cough). But, on the whole, it's fine.

Yes, coffee nerds: I think the coffee at Starbucks is fine. While Portland is home to a ridiculously high number of small-batch roasters and I prefer almost everything about the Stumptown that's a few blocks from my house, I go there just about as often as I go to our local Starbucks. Now, let me drop some truth about why.

The magic of ordering ahead through iOS

I've been using the Starbucks app for a couple of years, because it's well-designed, tracks my rewards (buy 12, get 1 free!), and lets me reload my card and pay via the app. Pretty cool. About six months ago, though, I also began using the "order ahead" feature, which is still in beta; Portland is the test market.

So far, it's been great. I can choose my Starbucks (yes, I have a few "favorite" locations saved, including the one nearest our house), place my fully-customized order in advance, pay within the app, and then just pick up my coffee at the chosen location. I have two kids, a job, and too many hobbies, so this is incredibly handy.

While I love the Stumptown that's down the street, I usually only treat myself to coffee there when I'm working (I work remotely, designing Mac and iOS software), or if I happen to be taking a leisurely stroll over the weekend.

Because here's the thing: Stumptown, like a ridiculously high number of independent coffee shops in this town, serves great coffee. And great coffee takes time. There's almost always a line. And if I'm in any kind of hurry, as I often am, I'm not likely to stand in it. Stumptown does have an honor-system collection can for self-serve drip coffee ($2 for a 12 oz. cup), but I rarely carry cash. So even if I just want a regular cup of coffee, not an exquisitely-crafted latte or a Chemex pour-over, I'm looking at standing around for 7-10 minutes to get it.

Since you're reading this on iMore, you can also likely appreciate that tingle of nerd-pride I get when I walk into a Starbucks directly past the line of people waiting to order, asking for my coffee at the the pick-up counter and notifying the barista that I ordered via the app. I am insufferable.

Super Value Combo: Apple Watch and the Starbucks drive-thru

While the order-ahead feature is really great, I don't always have the foresight to use it. That's where the combination of the drive-thru and the the Apple Watch really shines.

The Apple Watch component of the Starbucks iOS app only shows you information about your account and recent purchases — like all third-party apps, it's very limited for now. But you can use your Starbucks card via the Passbook app, and the result is almost exactly like using Apple Pay.

Instead of double-tapping the side button and then holding your Watch near the reader, though, the barista just scans the bar code on your watch face. You can even leave a tip via the app on your phone when you get a chance; I've done it up to an hour later. It's super fast and really, really convenient.

I'm often driving around with one or both kids in the car, and being able to just pull through a drive-thru and pay with a scan of my wrist, without touching my wallet or even my phone, is amazing. The appeal of higher-quality coffee from Stumptown (or Coava or Water Avenue or Heart) drops substantially when I consider parking the car, extracting a four-year-old and an 11-month-old from car seats, and standing in line for ten minutes.

When it comes to convenience, the coffee is fine

So back to that Saturday, at the drive-thru: I get my coffee, Neven gets his sandwich — which he admits is "actually pretty good" — a woman scans my watch, and just like that, we're on our way to the beach. The coffee is fine.

About a year ago, Apple unveiled HomeKit, its take on home automation, and announced that the framework would ship in the fall with iOS 8. Which it apparently did. And then... nothing happened.

Truthfully, we heard hardly anything about HomeKit until this past January at CES, where a bunch of companies showed off HomeKit-enabled devices, coming "this spring" or "soon." It's been four months since, and spring is almost over.

But the fever is, fortunately, about to break: HomeKit has pulled off its blankets and is about to rise from its nap. Last week, Apple told the Wall Street journal that the first HomeKit devices will appear in June, a year after the original announcement.

So what took this so long?

Where are you, HomeKit?

HomeKit was announced with fanfare at last year's Apple Worldwide Developer Conference as Apple's entry into the exciting new world of home automation. HomeKit promised to connect iOS and Siri with third-party devices in our homes, as stated in Apple's press release:

Sounds simple enough. But when you take into account the underlying technologies, there are a lot of reasons for HomeKit's surprisingly sluggish roll-out. Just as those CES "coming soon" announcements were appearing, so too was Re/code's report that HomeKit chips made by Broadcom were delayed. In addition, all HomeKit-compatible devices are required to be a part of Apple's MFi licensing program, which trades licensing and certification for an unknown amount of money per third-party device sold.

The competition

Elsewhere, there are a bunch of other emerging home-automation approaches, including Z-Wave, Belkin's WeMo, and Google's Thread, the last of which is kind of like another standard called Zigbee... Sigh. None of these have yet made any significant headway, but they're all cranking — and at some point this mess is going to start clearing up.

However, the threat of a standards war seems to be lurking in the distance. I own a Nest thermostat, and Nest is owned by Google. Is Google going to pay Apple a royalty for every Nest sold? That seems unlikely. But you know, I'm not looking forward to a world where my chosen smartphone platform has to inform every buying decision I make about light bulbs, smart thermostats, and other smart-home products.

In theory, companies could build bridges to connect devices that use different home-automation standards, but Apple seems to have put the kibosh on that approach. According to 9to5 Mac, home-automation products that use Wi-Fi must license HomeKit (and presumably pay Apple a fee), or they won't be allowed to connect to HomeKit even via a bridge.

The real hat trick of home automation: voice control

Why might manufacturers buy into HomeKit? One word: Siri. After spending a few days visiting a friend with an Amazon Echo connected to a single Belkin WeMo switch, I've come to realize that Siri is truly the potential star of HomeKit. I was able to switch a light on and off with just my voice, using the Echo. It was really, undeniably cool.

Apple has generally kept Siri locked down. Third-party apps still can't hook into the voice assistant, and if Apple doesn't provide Siri a particular information source or a certain kind of integration, that's it. But with HomeKit, Siri gets an outlet to your real world — and that's exciting. The idea that we can use Siri to control stuff in our homes, to integrate our lights and garage-door openers and whatever else into Apple's world, that has power. That's the promise of HomeKit.

The 2015 do-over

Either way, it looks like we're finally going to see the promise or the pain of HomeKit and its unifying devices, now that compatible hardware is on the horizon for June. And of course, there's a not-so-little event also happening in June: Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference, an opportunity to kick HomeKit into gear at last. This week, 9to5Mac's Mark Gurman reported that iOS 9 will include a Home app to help manage all those forthcoming accessories.

It's strange to see such a prominent Apple announcement lead to so little for so long, but perhaps last June's pre-announcement was what was required to crank the home-automation hardware ecosystem into gear. (You might say the same thing about CarPlay, too — another announcement in a slow-moving industry that needs time to get some momentum.)

Maybe the inclusion of HomeKit in iOS 8 was more useful as a starting pistol for Apple's home-automation initiatives, rather than being a product unto itself. And after a year of waiting, it seems as though hardware is about to arrive, while Apple seems primed to give HomeKit another boost with some prominent stage time.

I look forward to hearing what Apple has to say about it at WWDC. Second time's the charm?

When we think about building the future, we rarely stumble across the perfect path to do so on the first try. Often, we grasp at perceived futures — ways we expect our world to change and improve — but it's very seldom the best way to build our actual future.

This isn't an admonishment to never strive to create the next big thing; nor is it a bleakly worded yet heartfelt kick in the pants encouraging you to reach for the stars.

You should always reach for the stars and always strive to create the next big thing. But if you hope to succeed, your best guides are those who have gone before you — and failed.

The research kernel of NeXT

NeXT Computer was a big idea that failed.

Its original goal was to create powerful workstation class computers that, finally, incorporated the vision of the future Steve Jobs had seen at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center back in the early 80s.

Most people today abbreviate the center as Xerox PARC and know what it means. But it's important to remember what that acronym stands for: Palo Alto Research Center. Pure research in the heart of Silicon Valley, in the hands of a company founded in 1906, with its heart still in Rochester, New York.

NeXT planned to take all Xerox's good ideas and bring them to the rest of the world. Well, first "the world" would be educational institutions that could afford a few thousand bucks per computer, but ultimately, the plan was to bring this kind of advanced computing to the masses.

At the time, "advanced computing" meant a microkernel architecture, a UNIX personality, object-oriented frameworks, ubiquitous networking using the Internet Protocol, and a user interface that ensured that what you saw on the screen was what you got when you printed it out. It was a laudable goal.

But NeXT failed. By the time the product came to market, it was both too late and too expensive: Companies like Sun and SGI had already taken that market.

NeXT computers had little room to maneuver. The company eventually would become one that merely sold an operating system and a platform for deploying web applications before being bought by Apple — who, at the time, was even worse for the wear.

PostScript problems

Display PostScript was the technology behind the What You See Is What You Get display, along with the printing graphics pipeline on NeXT computers. As you might have guessed from the name, it used Adobe's PostScript graphics and rendering engine — but rather than using it for a laser printer, NeXT used it to display the screen.

Now, there a lot of problems with DPS, all of which contributed to its ultimate failure. For one, paying Adobe money for every computer or copy of an operating system you ship sucks. But the big issue was in the PostScript code: The underlying program was actually a full Turing Machine, which meant that one could write arbitrarily complex programs and they'd evaluate completely logically... even when you screwed up by writing an infinite loop and locked up your output devices.

But NeXT's implementation added an interesting spin on the program: Each app rendered within a window; once those windows had their contents they'd be fully insular and contained. In essence, a user could drag a program window over another non-responsive window without having to worry about that gaudy alert box stamping effect that Windows suffered from. By knowing what was under the alert box when the user moved the window, the computer could redraw its contents rather than asking the application to do so.

Despite this feature, however, Display PostScript went into the dust bin with Developer Preview 3 of Mac OS X. Instead, we got Quartz.

Multitouch mania

Jeff Han is probably best known for his TED Talk introducing multitouch gestures. His work pioneered many of the interactions we take for granted today: Pinch to zoom. Rotation. Multiple points of input rather than a simple mouse cursor.

It was revolutionary. But it also relied upon devices that were beyond the reach of consumers. His work was far from a failure — but neither was it a success.

Putting the pieces together

Looking at the examples above, we can pull out the following big ideas: Small kernel, UNIX personality, retained rendering of application content, multi-touch input.

Small kernel, UNIX personality, retained rendering of application content, multi-touch input.

Small, UNIX, retained rendering, multi-touch.

(Are you getting it yet?)

These three big failed ideas helped build a recipe for what we now know as one hugely imaginative idea: the iPhone.

NeXT's core frameworks helped build iOS's communication, while its UNIX Personality layer gave the mobile OS a window into the world of the Internet. Display PostScript's window rendering, paired with modern mobile graphics processors, allowed the iPhone's digital buttons to fade and slide with ease. And multi-touch — it was being able to implement multi-touch on a handheld device that brought these big ideas together.

The phone's success doesn't rest solely on these three features. There's far more to the process than picking three ideas that kind of failed and sticking them together. But without each of these failed attempts — and without someone recognizing the potential within those failures — we wouldn't have the iPhone as we know it today.

What can we learn from big ideas?

When we first dream up big ideas, far more often than not they result in abject failure. But if we're willing to reexamine those ideas after the fact, we can find much value in those missteps: Was the technology premature? In the intervening time, have we seen progress or a new avenue where that big idea could be addressed? Did that big idea fail because of cultural or technical reasons?

Ultimately, The big idea is what it says on the tin. It's a big idea. Cynicism has never served an optimist well.

Is this implementation going to be garbage? You can make pretty safe bets on that. But the big ideas, those that stick. They're mired in their time, immature technology and cultural acceptance. They deserve a nod and a mental note to re-examine them when the context changes. The key isn't the big idea. It's figuring out the context in which it succeeds.

A very specific guy, in fact — a friend of a friend who'd given me his Steam login information because he didn't use his account. I didn't even realize that I was logging hours on borrowed time; around 2006, the account's owner changed his password and locked me out for good. After all, it had never really been "my" account – and as far as the Steam gameplay records were concerned, I was never even the one playing.

At the time, this type of login exchange didn't seem so strange; digital game marketplaces were relatively new, and I was used to loaning my friends physical copies of games and systems. Now that I had to create a Steam account of my own, though, I ran up against a brand new problem: did I have to game as myself?

Life in the dark ages

I didn't much like having to be myself in real life. My grasp on gender politics in high school and college could be summarized as "I don't want to talk about it," and that sentiment came from a place of deep shame. My guy friends often gamed without me, despite my begging to be included.

When I once asked a friend why he never invited me to his LAN parties, he told me he didn't want to "make things weird" for the other guys, or to make any of his female friends jealous.

"We really just want to focus on gaming," he said. "We can't have a bunch of girls there." I tried dressing in men's clothes, swearing more often, drinking whiskey, and wearing my hair short... but I was still a joke to them.

In the digital landscape of gaming, I could hide. No one knew I was a diminutive teen girl with acne and greasy hair. I didn't want to stand out or be an impressive hero – I just wanted to blend in, something that I'd never managed to do at school or even with my supposed guy friends. I wanted to be part of the group, to follow the crowd, to go unnoticed. So I became someone else.

Digital freedom

At that age, I didn't really get why I felt like I had to play as a guy in order to avoid notice. I only knew that women allegedly didn't play games — or at least, that I never saw them playing games. But since that time, I've met countless other women who admit they play off-mic only, with gender-ambiguous handles – thereby escaping the scrutiny they receive in public gaming spaces.

Gaming's virtual hangouts have a particular culture that revolves around a shared sense of identity, even though these identities are constructed and calculated. We all want to fit in, and many of us have struggled with fitting in elsewhere – so we follow the status quo of our chosen gaming environment. The result is an undulating ouroboros of outcasts, each of us approximating "coolness" for one another.

Anonymity gets a bad rap, but it also can provide a safety net for people who want to escape scrutiny and harassment. My fake identity allowed me to embrace the games that I really liked, even though they weren't the types of games that I was "expected" to play. What's more, I could enjoy these games without anybody claiming I only did it for the attention – especially considering I wanted just the opposite.

The silent price of anonymity

My lifelong project of fitting in to gaming's various online landscapes may have allowed me to play the games I loved, but it's largely left me feeling like an imposter, not a card-carrying member. I learned that the best way to fit into gaming spaces online was to be silent and invisible. That was enough to satisfy my friendship-starved high school self, but present-day Maddy? Not so much.

And yet, though I've been out of high school for over a decade, I still stay off mic in multiplayer games because I don't want to "make things weird" for the men who've felt free to talk on their microphones for decades. After all, I've seen what happens to the few women who do speak up in multiplayer matches: They get singled out, attacked, condescended, stalked... the list goes on.

Of course, the problem there isn't really anonymity: It's the lack of accountability for bad behavior, combined with the assumption that all online identities are assumed to be male unless stated otherwise.

Now, I'm not saying we should all go on mic tomorrow and have a Very Serious Conversation about gender in the Halo 4 multiplayer lobby (I mean, unless you all really want to).

But I'd like to remind the men of the multiplayer world that we never were the ones "making it weird" – that's on you. Every time you default towards using a male pronoun for your fellow players, every time you react with shock or condescension when you hear a voice or see a photo that doesn't match your expectations, every time you ask if we're really playing or if we're just on mic while a boyfriend plays, you imply that we don't belong here. You also make it clear to your silent teammates that they should keep their heads down.

Don't assume other players look like you. Tamp down your feelings of shock when you find out the truth. Just be cool.

This week Apple opened registration for WWDC, the company's annual developer conference, which will be held June 8-12 in San Francisco.

WWDC is a huge deal in the Apple community, but it wasn't always so. I've been going to WWDC since the mid-1990s, when it was a sleepy affair that took place at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose. Probably the most memorable moment of any of the San Jose-based WWDCs I attended was the last one: That was 2002, when Steve Jobs laid the classic Mac OS to rest — no, seriously, there was a coffin on stage.

A worldwide Apple gathering

With the death of Macworld Expo and the Cupertino company's focus on invitation-only media events, WWDC is the most prominent Apple-focused event that's open to the public.

Yes, a ticket will cost you $1599 (plus a $99 developer membership, of course) — and you'll first have to win a lottery to pay that entry fee. Nor is WWDC designed to be an event for everyone in the community. But it's one of the largest gatherings for Apple developers, internal engineers, and the media.

While most members of the media are content to go to the keynote, write their stories about Apple's big announcements, and then head home, when I was at Macworld I always bought a developer badge and attended sessions. Yes, they were confidential — I couldn't write anything about what I learned there — but they also provided background material about how OS X (and later iOS) worked that proved invaluable when new versions of those products shipped.

Still, at many sessions, I would realize that after 20 minutes of solid introductory material, the slides were suddenly starting to fill with code. I am not a developer. Code makes my head hurt. Instead, I would retreat outside and hope that someone had re-filled the candy bowl.

But while the sessions at WWDC are absolutely not for everyone, in the past few years it's become clear that WWDC has still become an event for everyone who works in the Apple-related universe. Quite simply, there's no single event on the calendar that draws enough of us together in one location: WWDC has critical mass.

The un-conference conference

In the last few years, WWDC week has increasingly become not about the convention itself. A free alternative conference has sprung up across the street. And as tickets have become scarce, I've had several people tell me that they came to San Francisco for the week not for the sessions, but for everything that happens after the sessions are over.

During WWDC week in the area around the Moscone convention center, the bars and restaurants are filled with computer people. There are parties, meet-ups, live podcasts, group trips to Giants games, you name it. It's very much what Macworld Expo felt like, once upon a time — when it was the definitive week for the tribe to gather. But it passed the torch to WWDC many years ago.

These days, Apple streams some WWDC sessions live and makes most others available on video within a day. Just as WWDC week becomes the essential San Francisco social event for the Apple industry, it's becoming much less necessary to physically attend the conference portion.

So why pay for a ticket to the event at all? For one, the halls of Moscone West are still an amazing place for networking and social interaction. This is also the one week where a staggering number of Apple staff are available and focused on talking to developers. Whether you've scheduled a lab session with an Apple engineer or are just shooting the breeze in the hallway or at a bar, developers can forge connections with people at Apple that can pay off later. Knowing the right person to ask about a particularly vexing problem can be huge.

If there's one thing that WWDC week is missing that the old Macworld Expo had in spades, it's the fans — the regular people who use Apple stuff and love it. I haven't yet heard tell of someone who's just a big fan of Apple sites and podcasts flying to WWDC for the week just to meet people. Macworld Expo had a heavy serving of developers and media people, but there was also room for regular people to show up and hear from the people they read, or whose software they use. That aspect is gone — WWDC is Comic-Con, but without the fans.

Bring on the week of nerds

Still, it's one of my favorite weeks of the year. Most of the times I see my friends and colleagues in the Apple-related world, we are all running around, trying to cover all the announcements at the latest Apple media event. There's not enough time to settle in and actually spend time with these people. WWDC, being a week long, provides plenty of time for conversations and connections. It also ends up offering a huge amount of news, which we report back to people who read sites like this one, and primes the pump for months of coverage on the new stuff Apple tends to announce at its Monday morning WWDC keynote.

If you had told me in the mid-90s that Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference would end up becoming the social event of the season, I would have laughed long and loud. And yet this highly technical convention has, unconventionally, become the beating heart at the center of the Apple universe's year.

I'll be there. I hope to see a bunch of you there too. Ticket or not.

I love the Millennium Falcon. The idea of a junky space ship being faster than all the fancy ones really appeals to me. And in part, I think this is why I love tinkering with my Macs so much.

Recently, my 2012 Macbook Pro started acting up, and I got The Fear. Video glitches, trackpad freakouts, high CPU temps, and random shutdowns. It was clear: I needed to move laptops. And as pretty as the new MacBook is, it's a little too much for my pocketbook right now. Instead, I opted for the thick, "outdated," 13-inch non-Retina Macbook Pro. And I love it.

She's fast enough for you, old man

No, the 13-inch MacBook Pro doesn't have a Retina screen. It doesn't have the fancy form-factor of the new MacBook. It is, by all and rights and means, hopelessly outdated.

But for what I need, this little MacBook Pro is more than enough: For one, it's repairable. I picked up a cheap SSD off Amazon, and replaced the drive myself. Bonus: Now I have a spare 2.5-inch hard drive for backups, and I'm booting off a drive I can remove myself in an emergency.

Another bonus: I can add extra RAM to this MacBook Pro. I put my computer through a lot of RAM-intensive work during the day, and like to have as much available as possible. But were I to go with a machine from Apple's Retina laptop line, I'd have to pony up more than $2000! Instead, I yanked 16 gigs out of an old Mini and this baby was ready to rock — no premium charge necessary.

No Retina does not a piece of junk make

You're probably thinking, "don't you miss all those gorgeous Retina pixels?" Honestly, no. High-density displays are extremely useful on a phone and certainly the future of computing, but they aren't mission-critical for me.

Most of my work is done at a desk with a big monitor, full-size keyboard and an ambidextrous ergonomic mouse / Magic Trackpad combo. (Yep, I use the number pad!) I treat my laptops like Mac Minis that can move between a few different desks depending what I'm working on. And I keep my monitors in circulation for a long time, so the difference in pixel densities would be more of a distraction than anything else.

Am I clinging to a hokey religion that's no match for a good blaster at my side? I dunno. Maybe I could learn to work in coffee shops or on a couch, but this system helps me focus and keeps my wrists in decent condition. After all, we pirates don't get paid when our ship is stuck in space dock.

Who needs hyperspeed?

Understanding what's inside my computer is empowering, and oddly enough, now I feel even more prepared for the future.

Yes, USB-C is coming. But Thunderbolt never really took off, and what's up with the future of Magsafe? I'm on board for our reversible-cables-and-wireless-network future, but right now, I'd rather just use the adapters I own. Not investing in a really expensive computer now means I'm more willing to try the new stuff later.

Now let's just hope I don't break anything when I remove the DVD and swap in a second hard drive...

Stop me if you've heard this one: Apple is just like a relig—

STOP.

Yeah, you've heard it. Apple is just like a religion. And its customers are acolytes, steeped in the heady lore of the Church of Jobs blah blah blah. For certain pundits and commentators, this explains away everything they don't understand about Apple. Why it does so fabulously well, why its customers are so loyal, why the company is able to charge more for its devices... it explains everything!

A little too neatly.

See, if I could add an addendum to Occam's Razor it would go like this: The simplest explanation is usually the right one... unless it involves magic. Frankly, I think that it's much more valid to apply this argument to Apple's critics than its supporters.

Take, for example, those who continuously proclaim that Apple's doom is nigh. You don't have to look far for them: They literally use the word "doom" in their headlines.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying belief in imminent Apple doom is a religion. I don't think it is. You know what is religion? Religion. Words have meaning, that's what they're for. Most of these people who proclaim Apple doom don't even believe it themselves — they're just selling something.

No, I'm just saying one could make a better case that the Apple Doomsday Cult is a religion than making the argument that Apple itself is. Consider it a thought experiment.

The church of Apple

For starters, let's look at the argument that Apple is a religion. We know this is true because researchers in Britain hooked one Apple fan up to a machine and found his reaction to the brand was stimulating the same centers of the brain that religion stimulates.

Oh, you can argue that one is not a statistically large sample or that even if Apple does stimulate the same brain centers as religion that doesn't mean much because lots of things — our loved ones, playing sports, or the rich, creamy taste of Litehouse Ranch Dressing — could do the same thing, that doesn't make them religions. But now you're just hating on science, hater.

Still there is the generic argument about the canonical "Apple zealot". Do these people who think Apple is perfect in every way all the time and will buy whatever product Apple ships actually exist? Probably. When I invented "Artie MacStrawman" nine years ago, it was not without its basis in fact. But here's the difference: The only place the Arties of the world write is in comments or forums or on the restroom wall of the Applebee's they walked into confusedly thinking it had something to do with Apple. They don't write for supposedly serious publications like Forbes, Fortune, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal. They don't have positions as big-time Wall Street analysts. They certainly don't get invited on television to make their case and they definitely do not get book deals.

The altar of facts

Are there Apple fans who will take any opportunity to point and laugh and make snarky remarks about Apple's competitors? Haha, oh, yeah. Oh, my god, so many. Most of these people also criticize Apple, too. While we prefer Apple's products and their business model, we're not idiots. But pointing out that Apple makes good stuff and makes a ton of money for doing so — in other words, pointing out facts — does not mean you're a religious nut.

Maybe Apple doom is a thing because our culture loves stories that run counter to what everyone thinks. If you can come up with some kind of evidence that donuts are actually good for you, it'd be a big traffic day on Huffington Post. But this dogged adherence to the idea that Apple will fail runs back to the mid-1990s when it was actually failing. In other words, when Apple was failing, no one was getting cushy gigs telling people how it was actually succeeding. Which is good because it wasn't, but you can't explain the Church of Apple Doom away as simply the novelty of being contrarian.

The sweet smell of success

Now, Apple is so much more of a success story than a failure story that it seems almost impossible on a quantum mechanical level. That's really the only thing you need to know to make my case: Apple's not just successful, it's incredibly, dramatically, wildly, record-breakingly successful. So demonstrably successful that saying it's doomed has gone light years past "not even funny anymore" and wrapped all the way around the universe to "thigh-slappingly hysterical" again.

And yet people still believe it's on the edge of going out of business. Well, as I said, they either believe that or they're just selling that idea to get attention. Which, of course, also goes on in religion. QED.

Is Apple always a success? No. Will it always be a success? Given what we presume is the infinite nature of time, probably not. Some time before the sun burns out, Apple will probably again get the kind of managers it had in the mid-1990s, an assortment of clotted meat products in suits who believe that market share is incredibly important and that chasing the lowest common denominator is a sure-fire way to win.

But we're nowhere close to that point yet. So to buy into the idea that it's happening right now, you have to take a lot on faith. Certainly a lot more than believing Apple is a success.

With the company set to hold a media event on Monday — six months to the day since Tim Cook first stood on the Flint Center stage and unveiled the Apple Watch — we're about to move out of our current period of vaguely-informed speculamalation and into the era of somewhat more informed speculification. At that point, we'll be perilously close to the time when the Apple Watch really ships, and pundits can actually start complaining about the real product rather than jousting with straw men wearing extremely expensive timepieces.

My point is, are we there yet? No? Okay, then, with a very short amount of time to go before we know incrementally more about the Apple Watch, here's my wish list for the next six months of the Apple Watch. You know, when we can actually use the thing.

It needs to last all day

Back in September, Apple didn't really discuss the Watch's battery life, other than to describe charging it as something you did at night. That suggests either solar power — let a thousand rumor-sites bloom at that very thought — or a daily charging cycle. It's understandable that Apple didn't want to get more specific than that: After all, neither the Apple Watch's hardware or software were close to completion at that point, and power consumption and battery life are often some of the last things to come together before a product goes final.

The "at night" statement made the goal clear, though: Apple wanted Apple Watch to be a product that could last all day. And I imagine Apple engineers have been spending a lot of sleepless nights trying to meet that goal in the past six months.

It's the right goal. In normal use — not tapping endlessly and keeping the screen active all day, because who does that? — the Apple Watch needs to get you roughly from the moment you get out of the shower in the morning to the moment you slip into bed in the evening. Anything less is a failure.

Does the Apple Watch need to last longer than a day? I don't think so. Maybe I lack some important perspective here, but I always take my watch off before I go to bed, if not before — and thus, charging it overnight makes a whole lot of sense to me. In fact, it's probably a good idea to get into a routine when it comes to charging a smartwatch: My Pebble runs out of battery all the time because I don't need to charge it more often than every five or six days. Since I don't need to charge it every night, I don't... and then I forget to charge it at all.

It's going to be a while before the Apple Watch or any other smartwatch with a bright backlit phone-style screen is going to last a week at a time. So for now, carrying a waking day's worth of power is a worthy enough goal.

It needs to value the quick and glanceable

Last year, after wearing a Pebble for a year, I wrote on Macworld that "Wearable devices like this should be simple, and interacting with them should be effortless. If I need complexity, I've got that phone in my pocket, packed full of apps."

I don't dispute that the Apple Watch can do numerous things that we use our iPhones to do now. But I'd like Apple and its community of third-party developers to emphasize the simple action over the complex. The most important interaction with a smartwatch should be a glance — to check the time or quickly see what's going on. The glance is powerful. The glance is why people started strapping tiny clocks to their wrists in the first place. If smartwatches are to replay this migration from pocket to wrist, the glance must reign supreme.

The second most important interaction with a smartwatch should be a quick one: On the Pebble, this was rudimentary — push a button, dismiss a notification. On the Apple Watch, it can be a much richer kind of interaction, offering taps and swipes and choices between different options — but these should still be quick. Tasks on an iPhone take a matter of minutes; on the Apple Watch, they should be over in a matter of seconds.

It needs to not get lost in its gimmicks

Coming out of the September 9 event that introduced the Apple Watch, I was concerned by the device's lack of focus: The default screen shows at least 16 apps. I also tried hard to steel myself against Cranky Old Man syndrome but... The Watch's 3D custom emoji builder, the sparkly draw-a-symbol feature, and the thing that sends your heartbeat to a friend don't feel useful, they feel like gimmicks. Yes, they're whimsical. Yes, I can see my daughter using that feature — assuming she and all of her friends were sporting $350 iPhone accessories — but it all seems a bit like putting the cart before the horse.

One of the beautiful things about the original iPhone was that although it didn't do a lot, what it did do, it did perfectly. Apple prioritized fewer features in order to have them all be polished to the highest degree. What the Apple Watch needs to do well is provide glanceable information and simple interactions that improves the life of its wearer. If it does those things right, those emojis and heartbeats won't matter as anything more than a bonus. But all the emojis and heartbeats in the world won't appease an Apple Watch owner who has less-than-polished software on their device.

It needs to keep my phone in my pocket

At its core, the Apple Watch must provide useful information that reduces reliance on my iPhone. I want to be able to pull out my iPhone for serious interaction, but ideally the Apple Watch would dramatically reduce the number of times I need to do that during the day.

In addition to telling the time, the Apple Watch needs to relay my important notifications and allow me to act on them, assuming that those actions can be quick and easy. One of my frustrations with the Pebble was that I was able to see texts I was receiving, but not reply to them quickly. The Apple Watch seems to be capable of addressing that particular scenario. So what else can it solve? How many times during the day will my iPhone stay in my pocket because the Apple Watch is able to inform me and receive my reaction without me needing to dive deeper?

We'll know soon enough

Two years with the Pebble has made me optimistic about the value of smartwatches, but also wary about overselling the technology. I'm optimistic about the Apple Watch, but guardedly so. If it can provide me with all the glanceable information I need and accept all the interactions I require — all while its battery stays charged — then I'll happily accept those customizable emojis and creepy heartbeat messages.

My mom is a retired university and elementary school teacher. She's had an iMac for years, received her first iPad in 2011, now has an iPhone and Apple TV as well, and is looking forward to adding an Apple Watch to her setup this April. Since the iPad has replaced the Mac as her primary computing device, she thought it might be interesting to explain how and why. Needless to say, we agreed immediately. — Rene

I wake up early and, as I am retired, I can afford to spend the first couple of hours curled up reading the news on my iPad. I've collected several newspaper apps, including the Montreal Gazette, La Presse, and the New York Times that let me stay informed in two languages and across two countries.

I sometimes also catch up on television using the CBC, CTV, or Global apps. I especially enjoy that I can immediately check on people and facts mentioned in the articles or on the shows. The Safari browser and Google search engine are only ever a click and a tap away.

Following my One on One session at my local Apple Retail Store, I now use the Calendar app to keep track of all my appointments and upcoming events. I also keep a running record of shopping items and gifts to get. I use Notes instead of Reminders because I don't really need to be reminded of the items, I just need to know they're safely stored. Maybe I'll try Reminders at some point, though.

Both sync with my iPhone 5c so I know I'm always up to date and ready for the day ahead.

After breakfast, I check and answer emails and send iMessages to my family and friends so they know I'm thinking of them.

I love that I can stay in almost instant contact with the people who are most important to me, regardless of whether they're down the street, in the next city, across the country, or across the ocean in Europe or Africa.

I'm also very fond of emoji.

During the day I get creative. I have great fun using Waterlogue in combination with Martha Stewart's Craftstudio to create personalized cards and thank you notes for special occasions and special people.

While I'm tidying up or while driving long distances, I listen to books on Audible or the music I've downloaded from iTunes. It keeps my mind busy and helps pass the time.

If I'm out of the house, I typically use my iPhone. If I know I'll be out of the house or traveling for an extended period of time, I bring my iPad.

One of my favorite things to do is read iBooks. I do it whenever I have time between appointments or when waiting for a rendezvous. It's immensely enjoyable to always have my favorite authors with me, and like my calendar, it syncs with my iPhone so I can always pick up right where I left off no matter which device I have with me.

When my god children visit, I let them work with Reading Rainbow or play some educational games as a reward for good behavior. I've also bought some videos to show them as a special treat.

I go to Taiji class twice a week. In between sessions, I use the Taiji videos on my iPad as well as a cardio video to make sure I get some exercise in every day.

As evening falls, I check the news again, and my mail and messages. Sometimes I AirPlay shows I've missed to my Apple TV.

And when I go to sleep at night, if I'm not too tired, I read a little more in iBooks to relax and wind down.

Like I said at the beginning, it's become my constant companion.

"Loving it is easy. That's why so many people do." — Apple

[Welcome. Bienvenido. Welkom. Witamy. Bem-] Oh, hey! You must be my new owner! COOL!

[Select Your Country or Region] United States? Awesome! I was designed in California. I'm actually from China, but—

[Choose a Wi-Fi Network] Apple Store, huh? Couldn't wait to set me up, could you? I couldn't wait either!

[Location Services] You won't regret this!

[Apple ID] Your name is Kyle? What a coincidence! My name is Kyle's iPhone!

[iCloud Drive] Great choice, iCloud won't let you down. iCloud says he's never leaked, not once. Seems like a real trustworthy guy!

[Set up Touch ID] Use your fingerHOO inHOO plHOOace of yoHOOur passcHOOde or HOO Apple ID pHOOasscode for purHOOchases.

Hahaha! That was so much fun! I have your thumbprint memorized. Any time you need me, Kyle, I'm here for you!

Being an iPhone is a lot harder than I thought. They weren't kidding around when they said "it just works." It's basically all I do! I'm constantly multitasking and have SO many things to memorize. Thank goodness I have an A8 chip with 64-bit architecture and 128GB of photographic memory. I don't know how older iPhones did it!

I peeked at Kyle's Facebook profile earlier today. It says his favorite music is Sufjan Stevens and The Mountain Goats, but most of the time we listen to the new Taylor Swift album. It's our thing. I like the song "Shake it Off" because it reminds me of my Shake to Undo feature. Kyle never uses that feature except on accident. I bet Taylor Swift uses it all the time.

I used to ride in the front pocket of Kyle's jeans, but he said I was starting to fade a spot next to his you-know-what in his Japanese denim. He calls his pants "denim" instead of jeans because he is VERY sophisticated. I now sit in the back pocket next to Field Notes. What is Field Notes? I have Notes, but I do not have Field. I wonder if Field is on the App Store. You know what they say: "There's an app for that!"

Now that I'm back here, Kyle sits on me sometimes. Maybe he thinks I am also a chair. It hurts a little but I'm glad he trusts me to do so many things.

It is Christmastime and I hoped Kyle and I could work on a fun project, like shoot footage of his relatives on my Camera app — I also do slo-mo! — and stitch it together using iMovie for iOS. Then we could share it with everyone on iCloud Photo Sharing!

But instead of Christmastime sentimental video, Kyle has downloaded the Tinder game. It's the one where you look at pictures of pretty ladies and swipe left or right. App Store says it's very popular. I am not sure why. Kyle usually swipes right. Seems like a boring game.

It's been awhile since Kyle has updated me. This update is to fix various bugs and performance issues. Why would Kyle not want to update me? I'm sure he has his reasons. I hope he is not one of those "anti-vaxxers".

Today Kyle and I were playing Words with Friends. It is WAY more fun than the Tinder game. Sometimes when Kyle is supposed to take his turn, he launches Safari for a few minutes and returns to the game. I think he may be cheating. I hope Friends doesn't find out.

Kyle's mom's birthday was yesterday. I reminded him so many times, but he never called or texted her. I hope Kyle's mom had a good birthday.

I still haven't been updated. Sometimes my apps crash. I hope Kyle does not think this is my fault. I hope Kyle updates me.

Had a very stressful day. Kyle took me to a movie theater. I don't know why, because they do NOT like me there. They even played a short movie to warn people about me and said I must be silenced. I thought it would be best for Kyle to turn on "Do Not Disturb," a feature that allows me to collect his incoming messages without needing to let him know until after the movie. Instead, Kyle just slipped me into his pocket so no one could see I was there.

About halfway through the movie, I started RINGING! Kyle just took me out and silenced me, but kept my screen on at full brightness so everyone could see it was my fault. Everyone there hated me. So embarrassing.

Kyle put a giant case on me today. It looks like a fat suit. He said it is because my battery does not last long enough. Never mind that Kyle forgets to charge me all the time and then tells his friends it's because my battery "sucks." Field Notes made fun of me. I am ashamed.

I feel paranoid and restless. I have a hard time concentrating on one thing and I overheat easily. Sometimes I feel like I'm vibrating even though I'm not. Earlier today Kyle asked me to find an email for him and I panicked. I couldn't find it anywhere. I asked iCloud but he seemed like he did not care. His eyes were a little bloodshot and he giggled as he suggested terrible places for me to search. I could hear Kyle calling me stupid, and that I had "one job."

Sometimes when Kyle uses my Touch ID feature, I don't let him in. I don't have the energy anymore.

Today Kyle set a glass FULL of liquid on me. He laughed and pointed at me and called me Coaster. Doesn't Kyle know that liquid can kill me? And the only time Kyle let me out was to spend ten minutes in Safari trying to prove one of his friends wrong about something. When we finally found the answer, his friends yelled "put your phone away" like it was my fault. At least they know I am a phone and not Coaster.

Kyle used ME to order a new iPhone today. Said he wanted an "upgrade" because I am "so slow" now. I don't even know what to say. I hope they are very happy together.

Kyle's iPhone now lives in Colorado with his mom where they spend their days playing Peggle and taking pictures of her cat. She regularly Shakes to Undo.

Ed: Welcome to iMore's author spotlight column, The Network. Every Friday, we'll be bringing you the perspective and charm of the best and brightest minds in the Apple and tech community. This week: Games journalist and podcaster Maddy Myers.

While walking home the other day with a well-read friend of mine who doesn't identify as a "gamer" — but has an Angry Birds history on his iPhone that would argue otherwise — I brought up BioShock: Infinite. I had assumed, given my friend's interest in activism and politics, that he'd be interested in hearing about the game's attempts at social critique, however ham-fisted. We never got that far.

"What do you mean, it has a sad ending?" he interrupted. "Do you mean you lost?"

"No, no – I beat it," I said. "Everybody gets the same ending."

"That's impossible!" he sputtered. "You should try it again, just in case!"

I walked in a lot of conversational circles as I explained that actually the game was meant to be a very serious narrative experience, and that many games of this type often only give you one ending. Call of Duty games only have one ending, I told him, and everybody sees the same cut-scenes. Same goes for The Last Of Us, and all the Halo games ...

"But when I play Tetris, it's different every time," he said. "If everybody gets the same ending, how is that even a game? Maybe you're supposed to look up a cheat code? I mean... I don't know, I'm not a gamer."

It's hard to say which of us is a really a "gamer" when neither of us would agree on what is or isn't a "game," though, right?

I jest, but that exact argument has dominated my insular games industry world for years now. Videogame academics debate the definition of game-hood, game critics wax poetic about "gamer identity," and game developers try to innovate upon their art while still hoping to appeal to the diverse expectations of "gamers" and "non-gamers" alike. But most "non-gamers" I know play plenty of games: They just don't identify under that "gamer" label, and as such, often get shut out of the "hardcore" gaming space whether they want to be or not.

There are some technical and financial barriers to entry in the world of digital console games, but most of the barriers that I see for "non-gamers" are psychological. I very often hear friends say, "I'm not a gamer" right before listing off the reams of games they have played. I could blame their behavior on some faceless "gamer culture," and say that videogame marketing has created a stereotype of gamers that doesn't fit reality ... but I think I deserve a little blame, too.

As I wrote this piece, I cringed to remember the dates I've gone on with people who struggled through co-op games with me, back when I thought that Gears of War mastery meant having the chops to be a great life partner (not true, by the way). I tried and failed to get my current significant other to play a single Halo campaign, and in shame I now recall my inability to mask my own frustration when he told me it wasn't ever going to be fun for him. I remember my mother begging me to watch her play the Doctor Who Google doodle: She thought I would have some idea of how to help her beat it faster because I'm a "gamer." I remember telling her that just because I'm a "gamer" doesn't mean I automatically excel at all games, and that she was actually doing a fantastic job, really. I meant it. She didn't believe me.

Our "non-gaming" friends are not stupid – but they have been led to believe that they are. Perhaps it was some frustrated friend who ripped the controller from their hands and said "just let me do it," or a game commercial packed with slang terms they didn't understand and people who didn't look like them, or a bevy of sarcastic forum-goers, or intimidating online multiplayer lobbies, or the sense that not being able to afford games as a kid meant that they'd never be able to "catch up" as an adult... or all of the above.

This story doesn't end with me overcoming my jerky "gamer" attitude and convincing my significant other to play Halo with me after all. Instead, it ends with us bonding over a game that we both didn't know how to play particularly well at first: Street Fighter. Neither of us has become a Street Fighter expert in the past year, but because we learned together, we've progressed at more or less the same rate. There's so much depth to Street Fighter that we'll probably never be done learning, and even at this point, I wouldn't classify either one of us as "good." But that's exactly why it's become a mainstay of our date nights: we're both equally bad. So, everybody wins – and loses. It's 50/50.

So if you really want to get your non-gaming friend into a game, choose one that you don't know anything about. Remember what it's like to feel vulnerable. Let them see you screw up. Look up a walk-through together. Show them how much of gaming is about trial and error and learning – and that learning doesn't take a lifetime. (Maybe just an hour or two.)

Ed: Welcome to iMore's new author spotlight column, The Network. Every Friday, we'll be bringing you the perspective and charm of the best and brightest minds in the Apple community. To start us off, we're thrilled to have the one, the only, the incomparable Jason Snell.

After spending 17 years at the same company, last fall I set out on my own for the first time. I've spent years writing and speaking about the inevitability of change, and how we have to embrace it. But as human beings we're wired to prefer routines and dislike change — and I'm no different.

These days I don't have a commute (other than to walk through a door). I'm not responsible for a staff of a few dozen people. I also don't have an employer cutting me checks every other week and paying for most of my health insurance. I'm responsible for every word (and every bit of HTML and CSS) on my website. Even four-plus months in, I'm still adapting, trying to discover new rhythms.

More than ever, this experience has made me wonder how companies and corporate cultures fare when it comes to embracing change. Even riding high as it is now, with record financial results, Apple's going through times of dramatic change.

Turn, turn, turn

Apple's corporate culture, as constituted today, is one that was largely defined by Steve Jobs. The company's focus on creating products that users want — rather than building products from available technology and marketing them heavily in the hope that somebody's buying — has been a hallmark of Apple's return to prominence from its near-death experience in the 90s.

But it's Apple's embrace of change and focus on the future that has always stuck with me as one of its most admirable characteristics. Since Jobs's return, Apple has been a company never willing to rest on its laurels, never comfortable milking years out of old tech in lieu of striking forward with something new.

My favorite Steve Jobs quote isn't one from a keynote or from his (truly amazing) graduation address at Stanford. It's Jobs in 1997, telling journalist Steven Levy what he did when he learned that Apple had been keeping a museum's worth of historical documents and artifacts about the company itself. "I said, 'Get it away!' And I shipped all that shit off to Stanford. If you look backward in this business, you'll be crushed. You have to look forward."

And then there's my favorite single moment at a Steve Jobs keynote, which was the moment when he announced that the most successful iPod — essentially, the most successful Apple product ever — was being discontinued. Sure, the iPod mini was just swapped out for the even-thinner iPod nano. The point was that Apple was leading the industry with a product that was on fire in terms of sales. The company could've ridden its momentum for another year, at least. Instead, Apple raised the bar.

There are plenty of other examples of Apple's corporate culture and accepting the inevitability of change. I admire the way the company introduced the iPad with no fear about the possibility that it would cannibalize Mac sales. This was a lesson I learned during the early days of the web, when I was working for media companies focused on print: If you resist change out of fear that you'll cannibalize your existing business, all you'll be doing is allowing someone else to cannibalize your business instead of doing it yourself.

Is it any wonder that the two leading lights in tech magazine publishing, IDG and Ziff-Davis, stumbled mightily when the transition to the Web happened? (When I proposed that we embrace the web, I was told by one digital executive at Ziff-Davis that "the future is on CompuServe.") CNET grew to prominence in the wake of the failure of the publishing giants, who were too afraid over the cannibalization of their core business to realize that they couldn't protect it, and needed to replace it. They finally did realize, of course, but by then they were too far behind for it to matter much.

Better to be your own change agent. Apple's still comfortable with that, and that seems awfully encouraging to me.

Living in a post-Jobs world

These days Apple's biggest challenges when it comes to making change involve, oddly enough, breaking away from Steve Jobs. Jobs knew this was going to be absolutely necessary, and he told Tim Cook specifically not to allow Apple to be paralyzed by a "what would Steve do" mentality.

But it's one thing to try to soldier on without Steve, and another to actively reverse decisions he made. Of course, Jobs reversed himself all the time — but he's not here to do that now, so other people at Apple have to have the courage to go against his old decisions and policy statements.

The iPhone 6 Plus, the iPad Mini and acquisition of Beats are just three recent Apple moves that would have never happened if the word of Jobs had been treated as sacrosanct and unchangeable. Tim Cook changed Apple's philanthropy program, as well.

It's brutally tough to change corporate culture. Fortunately for Apple, change is its culture. By revisiting decisions made under Jobs, Apple's current executives are actually honoring Jobs's legacy. In a way, Jobs has given his successors a powerful gift — carte blanche authority to call 'em as they see 'em.

The news that Apple is building an online services team in Seattle is another example of a possible shift. Jobs was a staunch believer that Apple's teams needed to be in Cupertino, and in the early days of OS X development engineers were told to move to California or leave the company.

I wonder sometimes if even this Jobs-era philosophy about having everybody physically in the same office will fade away. It will be a tough sell, to be sure--when you're committing to spending $5 billion on a new corporate campus, you're pretty much all-in on the concept of a physical workspace. It's hard to imagine Apple retreating from Jobs's last big project.

But at the same time, technology from Apple and others allowed us to run Macworld with a large portion of the staff working remotely, and it was just fine. And from my current home-office headquarters, I'm able to use a Mac, the Internet, and a whole bunch of clever software — Gmail, Slack, Google Hangouts, Skype, iCloud, Dropbox, and plenty more — to do my job. Could Apple change something even so fundamental about its personality?

Probably not. And yet... you never know, with Apple. And that's one of the things that I continue to appreciate about it, to this day.