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Steven Sinofsky – stevesi.eth

25 Sep, 17 tweets, 8 min read

“If you ain’t out on a iPhone 13 Pro nature walk, then where you aaaat?”

I think by now many know the new iPhone has macro and closeup capabilities. They are really cool. But just how cool? I’ll show you some first shots but the real cool is the march of innovation. 1/

2/ When portrait mode came out wrote this on how the phone is a revolution in tools and tools are what come to define the changes in the world we live in. Cinematic mode shows how much this has evolved. ♻️ “Nikon versus Canon: A Story Of Technology Change” link.medium.com/QRaWOdlAQjb

3/ Some shots with the new macro mode.

4/ And some more…

5/ And some more still…

6/ OK, this was a long walk.

7/ Still walking…

8/ So why is this so cool? You might have seen the meme “everything in this 1991 radio shack is now built into an iPhone”.

9/ And if you add the watch then think of how many more things are now in one integrated experience. Photography is just one part of that ad, but digging into it one can see the incredible depth of innovation in one category. Macro, portrait, pano, slo-mo, time lapse, …

10/ This is the premier Nikon film camera from 1971. I marked up all the elements of this image that are part of the iPhone now. Not only would you need a truck to carry this around, but you’d need about $500,000 (3M today).

11/ While pros have lots of needs not met yet by the iPhone, for sure the only one not even possible in the best of talented hands are (in teal) ultra wide angle (“fish eye”) and long range telephoto (100-2000mm). The latter have some physics issues :-)

12/ And that’s not even including the fact that you don’t need a dark room. And it is all right there in your pocket.

This kind of chart tells the story—so many fewer cameras sold while so many more photos and photographers. Now they have almost all the gear!

13/ Cinematic mode deserves a whole other thread and a different kind of nature walk :-) // END

PS/ And 3X is great for my favorite!

PPS/ A doctor just mumbled to me, this is going to be a big breakthrough for dermatologists and telemedicine (and file upload to MyChart). Yikes.

14/ While consistent w/overall approaches when possible, fact that iPhone close-up/macro mode has no UX is super cool. It is incredibly difficult to resist the temptation to have the feature be “modal” or “controllable”. Move close enough and with no futzing you’re in macro mode.

/ From when portrait mode was released a view of how tools are the start of a revolution. Bringing all these photo capabilities that used to take a trunk of gear to the iPhone is itself a revolution. ♻️ medium.learningbyshipping.com/photos-how-too…

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More from @stevesi

Steven Sinofsky – stevesi.eth

@stevesi

20 Sep

iOS and iPadOS 15: MacStories Review // Worthwhile read for a lot of details about releases.

If you’ve been looking at Apple software releases for any time then you know “major”, “minor”, or “incremental” are all the wrong descriptors and upset me! 🙀 1/ macstories.net/stories/ios-an…

2/ What Apple does is “relentless execution” coupled with a “long-term and focused point of view”.

And they do that by releasing Every. Single. Year. At. The. Same. Time.

I guess after all this time, this fact is so taken for granted that we sometimes fail to appreciate it.

3/ This goes back to Apple history and failure to delivery the OS releases reliably. Of course everyone was failing to release software on time back then (even on mainframes). But Apple, much like Microsoft, teetered between betting too big and scrambling something out the door.

Read 18 tweets

Steven Sinofsky – stevesi.eth

@stevesi

17 Sep

@edzitron

"A predominantly remote future will challenge the need for layer upon layer of bureaucracy in American work by rejecting the assumption that 'management' is the only way to grow" @edzitron theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… // Don't agree w/generalized view of "manager bad"...thoughts 1/

2/ Company structure is not a law of nature. Rather it is a product of strategy (intentional or not). The past 100 years have seen different waves of structure from chaotic, centralized, scale, conglomerate, re-engineered, and more. Every one of those had bad managers. A truism:

3/ The pandemic has shown that at a fundamental level what companies should revisit is not "how many managers" or "remote work" but what does a modern product/service execution strategy look like?

IMO, that will drive "the great restructuring" that will happen.

Read 14 tweets

Steven Sinofsky – stevesi.eth

@stevesi

14 Sep

@GeekWire

Study of Microsoft employees shows how remote work puts productivity and innovation at risk geekwire.com/2021/study-mic… via @GeekWire // This is a paper out from a large group of researchers at Microsoft (and others). I have many thoughts on this. 1/

2/ My intention is not to comment on research per se but on how it might be misapplied. Studies of electronic communication in orgs--have been put forth ever since MSFT introduced email. At best this is telemetry and at worst it can be used to imply causality.

3/ I have no doubt that this research accurately captures the flow of information using digital tools around the company for over 60K people. That's a huge amount of work and analysis. Kudos. The challenge from the outset is that it conflates that flow with "collaboration".

Read 26 tweets

Steven Sinofsky – stevesi.eth

@stevesi

9 Sep

With early success in a product there's often a strong desire (or rush) to "make it a platform". Having an app is great and making it a platform is better.

How Microsoft and Apple worked *together* to create Macintosh is a huge lesson on building a platform. 1/

2/ Apple saw the value of having VisiCalc on Apple ][ and IBM saw that for PCs with 1-2-3.

The common thread is that platforms benefitted from a third party betting their future business on the platform. It was existential for the platform to have companies doing that.

3/ Conversely, third parties came to realize that betting their business on a platform can create a stronger relationship--an influencer relationship--with the platform. Bill Gates saw that potential with Macintosh.

Read 12 tweets

Steven Sinofsky – stevesi.eth

@stevesi

8 Sep

I know it is difficult to believe, but there was a time when key tech leaders and influencers of the world were dead set against the graphical interface.

In 1985, less than a year after Macintosh was unveiled the naysayers were out in full force... 1/

2/ About 2M Apple ][ had been sold in total. About 3.5M IBM PCs (8086). About 8M Atari, TRS-80, C64 all combined. This was early. ~20M computers sold, worldwide, total.

Dr Dobbs, InfoWorld, Byte magazines were supreme. We're in "Halt and Catch Fire" S1. Joe MacMillan reads IW.

3/ If a hobbyist magazine printed a story you didn't like you probably just ranted at your user group meeting thursday night.

If it really bugged you, then you'd write a letter to the editor. Maybe they would print it a few weeks later. Then a few thousand people would see it.

Read 8 tweets

Steven Sinofsky – stevesi.eth

@stevesi

6 Sep

Incompatible Files, Slipping, Office 97 RTM— new post in “Hardcore Software” …rdcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/045-incompat… // “Reviews” were a key part of the early days of the PC era. In the context of shipping Office 97, this post looks at how reviews were changing as the industry matured. 1/11

2/ From the earliest days through Windows 95, personal computer reviews were primarily done by “tech enthusiasts” and aimed at same. Basically hobbyists reviewed products for hobbyists. That was the industry. Here’s BYTE giving Office 97 ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ across the board.

3/ Such enthusiast outlets were our key constituency as most all sales were driven through retail channel and most retail customers were buying magazines like these by the pound (at the peak, an issue of BYTE or PCMag was hundreds of pages, mostly ads). So victory.

Read 11 tweets

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