Apple updated products and bought Workflow. Google decides Symantec SSL certificates aren’t good enough, and Stack Overflow releases their latest developer survey results.
This is posted a day later than usual because I had an incredibly busy weekend with regards to work and was unable to finish writing this last night. Hopefully that won’t happen again, even if that’s just for my sanity.
Updated Apple Products
Following the trend of the past few years, Apple once again released updates and new products in March. There isn’t a lot to say about them though, as they are mostly minor updates, but a couple were interesting in their own way.
The one that stands out the most is the new red iPhone. I readily admit that I think it looks great. Having more colors in the lineup is a good thing1 and the only downside to it that I can see is that it wasn’t available at the start. Hopefully they’ll decide to keep the color for the new models later this year.
The new iPad is another interesting move. First though, the name. This is the third iPad just called iPad. Seriously, I hope they either stick with it this time and keep it around like they do for MacBooks and iMacs so we’ll start referring to them by model year or just give up on this idea and give them unique names. Because is is just silly. That said, the product itself is a good deal. The cheapest iPad available ($70 cheaper than the old Airs) and quite powerful. If I wasn’t waiting for an updated iPad Pro I would seriously consider upgrading my iPad Air to this one.
Apple buys Workflow
In other Apple news, they bought Workflow. Workflow is an automation app that lets you automate many tasks and makes use of extensive deep linking into other apps. I use it a lot, especially for the writing I do for this site.
Examples are how I collect links for these weekly notes, by having a Workflow that accepts a link or Safari webpage and adds it to my list of subjects. Another workflow then allows me to start a new Weekly Note by setting all the values for the header and importing the subject list in my editor of choice2. It doesn’t sound like much, but as with all automation it saves a bit of time here and there and mostly makes life easier and less stressful. While these examples are fairly simple, there are plenty of more complex tasks you can use Workflow for as well.
However, the more interesting part is probably what this means. Apple has a mixed bag result with acquisitions. Positive examples of apps that they’ve taken over are Siri and TestFlight. Both of these are still around and a valuable part of the iOS ecosystem. Early signs show that this may be the case for Workflow as well, the app is still available and is now free. Workflow showed what is possible with automation in iOS, and hopefully Apple will expand on his instead of treating it as just another acquihire. There is certainly enough space for improvement on the automation side.
For more information on this and far better examples of workflows, I’d urge you to check out Macstories' iOS automation section and read their take on the acquisition.
Symantec’s certificate problem
In a time where free SSL certificates are becoming more commonplace Google decided that one of the largest provider’s, Symantec, can’t be trusted anymore. According to Google, Symantec has improperly issued over 30.000 certificates. The linked article shows a bit of the ongoing discussions there where both parties are bending over backwards to sound polite and not accuse the other of blatantly lying.
Regardless, the plan as it stands now is that Chrome will gradually stop accepting Symantec issued certificates as valid. As apparently about 30% of all SSL certificates are issued by them, this involves a lot of websites. It doesn’t sound like anyone will need to get new certificates immediately, but it might be a good idea to check your renewal date and see if maybe you should go for a different solution. Whether using Let’s Encrypt, AWS Certificate Manager, Cloudflare, or one of the many other solutions.
Stack Overflow Developer Survey
As every year, Stack Overflow did their developer survey. There’s a lot of information in here, and a lot of it is as expected. For example as an English language site most respondents are white men. Also the languages used by people and the ones they want to use are very different. Go is the best paid language, but not even close to the most popular one.
I’m not going to try to digest it for you. The overview is well done, and there’s a lot of information in there. Go have a look.