This week we released Andy Affleck’s new book Take Control of Podcasting. If you’ve ever wanted to create your own podcast—or improve your existing podcasting skills—this book is just what you need. It covers macOS, iOS, and iPadOS. Congratulations to Andy!
Tuesday’s Apple Event introduced new Apple Watch and iPad models, as well as the Apple One subscription bundle. All these things had been rumored and were not especially surprising (though certainly welcome). What was surprising, though, was Apple’s announcement that iOS 14, iPadOS 14, watchOS 7, and tvOS 14 would be shipping the following day. Never before has Apple given so little notice—in past years, we’ve always known at least a week ahead of time when new operating systems would ship.
We had been planning to publish version 1.1 of Josh Centers’s Take Control of iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 the same day the operating systems shipped, but that was under the assumption that we’d know about it more than 24 hours in advance. We’re now on track to release that update on Monday—along with a new version of Take Control of Notes that has been updated for both Big Sur and iOS 14/iPadOS 14.
As for watchOS 7, we were going to release an update to Jeff Carlson’s Take Control of Apple Watch next week to cover the changes, but then we learned about new hardware features in Series 6 (and SE) models, which will also have to be included in the book. Jeff has ordered a Series 6 watch and so have I, and with any luck, that updated book will ship the week of September 28.
But wait, there’s more! Much much more. Glenn Fleishman has sent me three revised manuscripts for books on Wi-Fi, Apple ID, and iOS/iPadOS security, so I’m working my way through those and we will release some or all of them later next week. Josh is working on updates to his Apple TV and Apple Home Automation books. Rosemary Orchard is close to finishing a revision of her Shortcuts book. Michael Cohen is revising his Pages book. In fact, the list goes on (and on and on). I’m working on several updated books of my own, too.
All that to say: we are deep into our busiest season of the year. Because we’re going to be publishing so many books in quick succession—there could realistically be two dozen more releases before the end of the year—we’re going to be sending out a lot of email. Certainly far more than the two or three messages per month we usually do. I know lots of email can be overwhelming, and I apologize in advance for the additional volume. I do hope you’ll find all the great new books worth it, though!
As predicted, progress on my Take Control to-do list has slowed way down. Last week I had 85 items on it, and this week that number is unchanged (although I did both find and fix a couple of new bugs, so two steps back, two steps forward).
That’s all for this week. I have books to publish, books to edit, and books to write. And bugs to fix. And royalties to compute. And children, who are kind-of-but-not-really in school. Sleep? Not so much.
See you next week.