Can the MacBook Pro Replace Your iPad?
Brilliant piece by Fraser Speirs.
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iPads in Music Education
iPad and Technology in Music Education
If you are at all interested in learning or making music with your iOS device(s), definitely check out this blog by Paul Shimmons. He updates it constantly with new music app reviews and also notifies readers of any app sales/price drops. If anything, it will give you an idea of the price point for these types of apps: often between $5 and $20.
I’d also encourage you to read this iPad Pro review from Scott Dawson’s daughter. She writes about how the larger screen size is great for reading sheet music. The post includes a video of her playing the piano and using a foot pedal to turn the virtual pages on her iPad.
WordPress Mac App
In addition, WordPress.com is now powered by a new front-end called Calypso which the company has made completely open source.
This site runs on WordPress, as do six other sites that I’ve set up for small non-profits in my local community. It’s really handy to have one central place where I can go to view their stats and make sure all of them have up-to-date plug-ins—a process that used to take forever as I’d have to sign in to each site’s individual admin dashboard.
Intro to Guard & Defer
For some reason, this is the first explanation of Swift 2.0’s new guard and defer statements that makes perfect sense to me! It was written by Nate Cook over at NSHipster and is worth a read if you still find yourself confused about how best to use these new language features.
Women Tech Bloggers
Brent Simmons compiled an awesome list of Apple-related blogs written by women. Everyone should check it out!
[Update 11-17-15: Brent was kind enough to add me to his list without me even asking. Thanks!]
Saving the iPad
Good thoughts from Jared Sinclair on how Apple can elevate the iPad from a position of uncertainty and confusion to a position of strength. Developers have been asking for improvements to the app submission/review process for years in the hope that Apple might take steps to improve the overall economy for pro-style software on iOS. Jared’s suggestion that Apple create a iPad-only fork of iOS is important as well, since the iPad is now the only device in Apple’s line-up without its own specialized version of the operating system.
My mom loves her iPad. I know lots of people that do. They tend to use it for web browsing, reading, and photo viewing. However, if that’s all that Apple wanted the iPad to be, then the iPad Pro would not exist.
Unfortunately, that’s all the iPad ever will be if Apple does not listen to the pleas of what I believe to be the majority of its independent third party developers. If Apple continues to turn a deaf ear to these issues, many talented developers will be forced to throw in the towel, and we will all be worse off because of it.