Five Pack

06/21/2024

What you should really know about including...

-Privacy
-ChatGPT
-Elon's concerns
-The feature we're most excited about...

Jerry Beers explains it all in this video ⬇

In this video Five Pack co-founder Jerry Beers breaks down the biggest announcements around Apple Intelligence that you should know about including h...

06/14/2024

wraps up today, and Jerry Beers is diving into announcements for iOS 18 and watchOS 11 that represent delighters and new opportunities existing apps have to engage users.

"iOS 18 will allow users to more freely position icons and even tint them all a consistent color.

They also announced an overhaul of Control Center and are opening it up to developers along with the Lock Screen. That’s right... you can now customize the lock screen camera and flashlight buttons and even launch third party apps with them!

🚨 Key Takeaway: Apps will want to implement ControlKit to allow users to perform actions from the Lock Screen or Control Center.

Another overhaul is the Photos app, which gets a complete redesign. Photos are now organized into sections that you can customize like trips, people & pets, memories, albums, and more.

All of the sections are grouped together on the first page when you open the app. The order of the sections on this page are customizable. This paired with natural language search will completely change the way you look through your photos.

For the watch, live activities are now coming to the watch face. 🚨 Key Takeaway: If you’ve implemented a live activity for your iPhone app, you’ll want to bring that over and make sure it’s working well.

When I’m traveling, I love to go hiking, so the next couple of features are really interesting to me for that.

The maps app now has hiking trails and you can download them for offline mode. Many of the national parks don’t have good cell coverage, so offline maps really come in handy.

The other new feature comes under that same category: messages via satellite. Apple previously announced emergency calls via satellite, so this is an expansion of that. Prediction: The day is coming where we’ll get full data capabilities via satellite, so this is an area to watch.

As the family’s designated iPhone tech support, another small feature that I think will really be helpful is the ability to draw on another user’s screen when they’re sharing it with you, and even to remotely control it to guide them.

Two final features worth mentioning:

Tapback in messages has been opened up to any emoji. You’re no longer limited to the six options that have been built in since tapback was introduced.

Lastly, you can now completely control your iPhone from your Mac. You can see the display and interact with it. You can even drag files from your computer and drop them onto your phone. This will be helpful for testing on a real device, but will also be convenient for using your phone when sitting at your computer."

Coming next week: a deep dive into

06/12/2024

The keynote this year was packed with updates across the Apple ecosystem, but let’s dive in and take a look at some of the changes from the perspective of Five Pack co-founder, Jerry Beers:

"First, I want to point out that Apple didn’t open with a big announcement about . In fact, they were a good portion of the way through the presentation before they focused on it.

But along the way, they did point out places where AI was used to make features better, and how AI has been deeply integrated into the OS and Apple’s apps for a long time. And they did focus on privacy and the fact that much of the AI processing is done on-device. But more on that in another post...

There were several changes announced for visionOS. I didn’t see any huge announcements here, but lots of incremental improvements. This makes sense for the stage the Vision Pro is at.

📸 We did see a pretty impressive feature where you can view your 2D photos in 3D. This is an example of AI being integrated into other features. AI will analyze a photo, determine what the depth map should look like, and generate a different version for the left and right eyes to make it look like a 3D photo.

🏠 We also got new gestures for showing the Home Screen and Control Center. This makes the interaction feel more natural, where it’s just reading what you’re doing with your hands instead of requiring you to push a button.

🖥 Some updates are coming later this year: the virtual display when mirroring a Mac can wrap around you as a panoramic widescreen and ecosystem support for spatial and immersive video coming to Final Cut Pro and products from BlackMagic.

There were a couple of big updates that I didn’t see in the events, but that are highlighted on Apple’s website:

1. visionOS 1 would allow you to put the device into guest mode. The guest would then do a short hands and eyes setup so eye tracking would work. But once they took the device off, their info was deleted, so if you wanted them to use it again, they had to go through that setup again. New in visionOS 2, the device will save the last guest’s data so they don’t have to repeat the setup. This is really helpful if you want to show things to the same guest over and over (maybe a spouse or roommate). I would still like to see named profiles for sharing a device.

2. While Apple announced a feature to use your iPhone from your Mac, they didn’t announce that feature for the Vision Pro. The website has maybe the next best thing: the Vision Pro can act as an AirPlay receiver, so you’ll be able to mirror your iPhone to the Vision Pro and see the screen. I would guess that it’s not interactive though.

I’m still very optimistic about the Vision Pro as a platform and happy with the improvements Apple announced for it. I’ll keep you updated if I find any surprises."

06/06/2024

Apple's WWDC24 is right around the corner, and here are our predictions...

06/04/2024

Google I/O vs. WWDC…. How will Apple respond to Google's AI advancements and what does it mean for you?

That's the question Five Pack co-founder, Jerry Beers, is answering today in less than three-minutes ⬇

10/24/2023

Flutter is a Five Pack favorite for cross-platform development, and this week’s will help you understand why. One of our Flutter devs recommends “Code with Andrea” for tutorials on everything from to to and .

“I poured over these resources once I was feeling comfortable in Flutter and Dart but ready to take my learning to another level. I've referenced the resources around app architecture and the Riverpod state management in particular many times, and architected apps based on their examples.”

To access this email course, visit

Learn how to become a Flutter Pro and build production-ready apps on mobile and beyond.

10/13/2023

Personal ownership isn’t just one of our core values; it’s a daily practice we apply to all of our partnerships.

Listen to Jerry Beers, Five Pack CTO & Co-Founder, demonstrate how personal ownership fosters trust and delivers outstanding results for our clients.

10/10/2023

📚 It’s Tuesday, and you know what that means – time for another addition to Five Pack’s weekly ! Ethan Willis, an iOS and Flutter Developer, recommends https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits

”I love the practicality this book gives […] I was able to establish both personal and work habits that have made my day to day more efficient, productive, and enjoyable!”

Whether you're fine-tuning code, optimizing UX/UI, or brainstorming innovative features, Atomic Habits can help you cultivate good habits along the way. Let us know if you have read it! 👇

Packed with evidence-based strategies, Atomic Habits will teach you how to make small changes that will transform your habits and deliver amazing results.

10/06/2023

Launch Lab helps us transform visionary ideas into tangible software solutions by defining a strategy that mitigates risks while maximizing ROI.

Learn how a prototype developed in Launch Lab empowered our client to glean crucial user insights for refining their product concept.

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