After I read both annual review of iPadOS by Viticci and macOS by Voorhees (epub versions), I wonder how many of you find it interesting or helpful?
Personally I think iPadOS 14 review could be shorter. Also Both John and Federico have accessibility chapters in the end, but feels like they have wrote these parts just for make impression that they covered all areas in new OS, which is obviously really difficult or either impossible.
I have. not read previous editions from last year or earlier, so maybe if someone here have read several releases of annual review by macstories team, was there something what you wanted to change?
As club macstories subscriber I like what they do, but this years iPadOS review was overhyped, specially when they talked about it in months on connected.
I never read these reviews end-to-end. They are interesting to have around for references, and I copy them off as ePubs to Books just to have them handy. The gold standard in these reviews, some think, were the reviews that John Siracusa used to do of OS X – now succeeded by John Cunningham. See his review on Are Technica.
I tend to agree. I read the whole review and had the same feeling I always have when I read one of Viticci’s pieces: one could cut it by a third without losing any important content. Don’t get me wrong; I mostly enjoyed it. Why bother reading it if I don’t? I also learnt quite a few tips and tricks, so overall it was a good reading experience.
However… I think you can notice that the writing is rushed. From my own experience, good writing needs time. You have to incorporate feedback, both from your inner critic and the outside world, there has to be time for letting texts “ripe”, time in which you do something else to get a bit of distance. And I don’t think that Viticci’s summer workflow allows for such extended times of reflection. From my perspective, there is kind of a harmful path dependency at play: the reviews are successful, people come to expect them (also in a very extensive manner) and there seems to be no alternative.
Regarding the continued (sometimes redundant) coverage of the ongoing writing process in Connected… I listened to the first updates and skipped them in subsequent weeks. That’s what chapter marks are for, after all.
I enjoy the MacStories iOS/iPadOS and macOS reviews. For me their real value lies not in the feature by feature recaps, but in Federico and John’s thoughts on the OSs at a higher level. I think they do a good job synthesizing the year on year changes into a sense of where each OS is going.
I very much agree, Viticci takes the necessary time to do thoughtful comparisons between iOS iterations and I always leave the review with a deeper appreciation of what’s been done between versions, not just learning about the new features.
I really like the thorough overview of both OS’ and always look forward to reading them.
What always impresses me is the attention to detail and the thoughtful look at the future of the OS.
So: hope they keep it up!
