Apple Watch is a huge success. I think HomePod will follow a similar path.

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Apple Watch shipments beat expectations, topping 18 million in 2017, up by more than 54% on 2016. The Series 3 was the key growth driver, as total shipments of the latest version of Apple’s Watch were just under 9 million, making up nearly half of all shipments in 2017. Apple’s Q4 performance was impressive in itself, as shipments grew by more than 32% over Q4 2016 to 8 million, the highest ever number of shipments in a single quarter, not just for Apple, but for any wearable vendor.

I recognize that these are vastly different products, but Apple’s success with Apple Watch after much skepticism from the market reminds me strongly of the imminent rollout of HomePod.

The early watchOS experience is quite different from what we’ve got today. Complications (the hot spots on the watch face that update with things like notifications, current weather, etc.) and Activities integration are but two major changes that rolled out over time and significantly changed Apple Watch’s usefulness.

What’s critical to me is that those changes rolled out as free software updates. And they work on the original hardware. I have on my wrist a Series 0 Apple Watch (the very first publicly available model) and it works with the latest rev of watchOS. It can be a bit slow at times, but other than that, it works perfectly.

The point is, Apple Watch at birth was almost nothing like what we have today. And I believe the same thing will be true for HomePod. Yes, there are limitations on what we can get from Siri today, limitations on what and how we connect to HomePod. But I believe a year or two will bring a sea change of improvements and functionality. And I believe those changes will continue to work on the existing hardware.

Eddy Cue on not carrying a wallet and keys and Apple Music for Artists

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Eddy Cue took the stage for an Apple Music Q&A at Variety’s Pollstar conference:

Eddy Cue, Apple senior vice president of software and services, says the goal is for everyone to have nothing in their pockets.

Well, other than an iPhone, he said, laughing.

Demonstrating the seemingly small but life-changing tech Apple is known for, Cue explained how he goes to work without even carrying keys or a wallet. “Not having keys to anything is really nice,” Cue said. “It’s simple, but it’s a big deal.”

And:

“Anytime you want to purchase something, the number of clicks, the number of things you have to do, you see dropoff,” Cue said. “Depending on how many there are, there are always huge dropoffs. With Apple Pay, you see something you want, you basically do the face ID and you’re done. It’s very easy to complete the transactions.”

And:

“For us, one of weirdest things in the music industry is the lack of transparency,” Cue said. “One of things that we want to do, specifically when we think from an artist point of view, we want to make information available to them as we have, so they can see what is actually happening,” Cue said. “Obviously it’s great for live because you can see where your fan base is, but it’s great for marketing. You can see the effects of what you’re doing basically in near-real time,” such as being on an A-list playlist.

Eddy also talks about the live concert experience and bringing that to more people. Interesting post.

As HomePod launches, Spotify cuts off support for some speakers and receivers

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Chris Welch, The Verge:

Spotify is removing itself from a number of home audio speakers and receivers from the likes of Onkyo, Denon, Marantz, Bang & Olufsen, Pioneer, and Yamaha. Some devices are losing Spotify integration completely, while others will require firmware updates if users want to continue receiving built-in access to their music. The products in question were once all able to independently play Spotify over the internet — no smartphone required.

And:

[Spotify] announced this change was coming months and months ago. But at that time, things were still working as normal for users who would ultimately be impacted by the move. Over the last few weeks, the cutoff has actually occurred, and Spotify is getting a slew of complaints in its support forums about the lost functionality.

Curious timing. Is this strategy shift by Spotify related to Friday’s HomePod release? I can’t quite connect the dots, but hard to believe this is unrelated to HomePod, or to this Wall Street Journal report:

Apple Music is on the verge of overtaking Spotify AB in U.S. paid subscribers, a sign that the music-streaming world’s dominant force is facing growing competition ahead of its hotly anticipated public stock offering.

Interesting.

Apple’s emoji crackdown

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Jeremy Burge, Emojipedia:

WhatsApp used Apple emojis on Android for years, and only recently created its own emoji set for use on Android and the web. Slack, too, offered Apple emojis on all platforms until today.

Whether these changes were due to pressure from Apple, or a growing realisation that this might not be the right way to go about cross-platform use, we don’t know for sure.

Other apps such as Signal and Telegram continue to use Apple emojis on Android.

That’s Android. How about using Apple emoji in your iOS app?

Last week app developer Sam Eckert reported that an update to his iOS app BitTracker was rejected by Apple due to lack of compliance with its guidelines for trademarks and copyrights.

Specifically, emoji use in BitTracker was called out as being problematic in both the iPhone app, and a small ? Chart Decreasing emoji used in the watchOS app was also an issue.

Jeremy goes on to show more examples of app rejection, and Apple’s inconsistency in using emoji in their own teaching materials.

At the very least, Apple is sending mixed signals. It’d be good to have a clear sense of what will fly and what won’t in terms of using Apple emoji in your own app.

Android Nougat, which first shipped in August 2016, finally surpasses Marshmallow as most used Android version

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Up until this week, the most used version of Android was Marshmallow, which shipped in October of 2015. That has now changed.

As you can see in this official Android pie chart, Android Nougat (which shipped in August 2016) has just squeaked by, with an adoption rate of 28.5% (as opposed to Marshmallow’s 28.1%).

Here’s the current (as of January 18th) iOS adoption picture:

iOS 11, which shipped this past September, is used on 65% of devices. Fragmentation is still a big issue for Android. If nothing else, those old versions of Android carry the malware susceptibilities that, presumably, have been patched in the most recent version of Android, called Oreo.

The capper? Oreo was released one month before iOS 11 and has an adoption rate of about 1%.

iOS 11, HomePod, and trust

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Last night, we had a nice little gathering to watch the Super Bowl. As everyone got settled in to watch the game, they pulled out their phones, as one does.

Suddenly, an alert appeared on my phone, one I’ve never seen before, asking me if it was OK to share my WiFi password with one of our guests. I tapped OK and they were logged on to our WiFi.

I’d heard about this behavior (I believe it shipped with the very first version of iOS 11), but never encountered it before. It felt a bit like opening an AirPods case near my iPhone. The alert just popped up, took over the screen.

Benjamin Mayo did a writeup of this behavior back in June 2017. If you follow the link, you can see what the alert looks like.

So what does this have to do with HomePod? Fair question.

Imagine that you lived next door to a big guy, a big guy with a beard who loved Heineken and Ozzie. We’ll call him Jim. What’s to prevent Jim from AirPlaying in to your HomePod, blasting Ozzie at top volume any time he liked?

As far as I can tell, you have to be on the same WiFi network as a HomePod in able to AirPlay in. So if Jim is not on my WiFi network, he has no access to my HomePod.

But suppose he comes over for coffee that one time, and I give him access to my WiFi in the scenario described above. Short of my changing my WiFi password, what’s to prevent Jim from Ozzying up my HomePod any time he likes?

There is a pairing process that is required to set up your HomePod, tie it to an Apple Music account. One question is, is that initial iOS device required in order to play music on HomePod? From everything I’ve read, it seems the only requirement for access is being on the same WiFi network as the HomePod.

To bring this all home, a second question is, once someone gains access to your WiFi, do they then have access to your HomePod? Does the scenario at the top give temporary access, say, for one day, or is it permanent access to your WiFi network?

It’s all about trust.

Just to be clear, I’m not worried that this is some sort of security hole. Just as Apple deals with this sort of protocol between other devices, I feel certain that there is a solution in place. I’m just curious about the details.

I’ll dig into this more once I get my paws on my very own HomePod. Meanwhile, if you know the answers to any of these questions, please do ping me.

David Pogue’s glowing HomePod review

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David Pogue, Yahoo:

In a devastatingly effective demo, Apple lines up four of these things: The Google Home Max ($400), Sonos One ($200), Amazon Echo ($100), and the HomePod. They’re volume-matched and rigged to an A/B/C/D switch, so a single song can hop from one to the other. (Apple even installed a halo backlight behind each speaker that illuminated to show you which one was playing.)

The HomePod sounded the best. Its bass, in particular, was amazing: full and deep, but also distinct and never muddy — you could hear the actual pitch of the bass notes, not just the thud. That, unsurprisingly, is where other small speakers have trouble.

And:

The real shock was the Google Home Max, a massive, 12-pound machine that’s supposed to be all about the sound; it sounded like cardboard compared with the HomePod and Sonos.

Heh. Like cardboard. Nice.

I’ve yet to read a review that didn’t place HomePod on top of the heap. David Pogue’s comments about hearing “the actual pitch of the bass notes, not just the thud”, jibes with what I’ve heard from people who’ve spend quality time with a HomePod.

Friday. Can’t wait.

How to transfer your iPhone or Mac Photo library to an external drive

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I think it’s incredibly important to backup your photos onto some form of removable media, tuck it away somewhere safe. This is in addition to your Time Machine or cloud backup.

Personally, I periodically backup all my photos to a single removable drive and store the drive in a safe deposit box.

All that said, this is a terrific article, with detail on prepping for backup, locating all relevant files, importing/moving as needed, and more. Worth reading and passing along.

What Google Assistant thinks about HomePod

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Here ya go:

https://twitter.com/davehamilton/status/960271158213009409

I asked Siri what she thought about Google Max and Amazon Echo and got a lot of generic responses. Interesting that Google created such a specific, tailored response to HomePod.

Apple looking into limited reports of incoming call delays on iPhone X

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Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

The Financial Times today highlighted a limited number of reports from users experiencing delays with incoming phone calls on the iPhone X. Apple later confirmed to MacRumors that it is “looking into these reports.”

And:

The report, which links to a few discussions on the Apple Support Communities, notes that hundreds of customers have complained that the iPhone X’s display experiences delays in turning on for up to 10 seconds during incoming phone calls, preventing these users from tapping the Accept or Decline buttons.

Sounds like a very small pool of people have this issue, but it also sounds like this has been around a while (here’s a Reddit comment on this from two months ago) and is still not solved.

HomePod inventory tightening

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While HomePod is still available for delivery this Friday, supply for in-store pickup is disappearing.

I logged in to the Apple Store HomePod page to check stock this morning and found this message on every zip code I checked:

I checked both Space Gray and White. Add to that this post by Benjamin Mayo for 9to5Mac, who notes that shipping estimates have slipped to February 13th in the UK. This is the first sign we’ve seen of tightening HomePod supply.

The best wireless chargers for iPhone X and iPhone 8

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Jason Cross, Macworld:

Wireless charging isn’t always a great substitute for plugging in, but it’s a very convenient way to keep your phone topped off through most of the day. A wireless charger on your desk means no more plugging and unplugging throughout the day and a full charge when you head home from work. A wireless charger next to your bed makes it easy to grab and go in the morning, or just pick up your phone to “check one thing” without fussing with the lightning cable.

We’ve tested a big heap of wireless chargers, and these are some of our favorites.

Be sure to check out the second page, which talks about competing standards (iPhones only support Qi), 5W vs. 7.5W performance, and more.

Of course, you can wait for Apple’s announced AirPower charger. All we know about the ship date is “2018”.

Surface Pro 4 owners are putting their tablets in freezers to fix screen flickering issues

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Tom Warren, The Verge:

Hundreds of Surface Pro 4 owners have been complaining about screen flickering issues on their tablets. A thread over at Microsoft’s support forums shows that the problems have been occurring for more than a year, and most devices affected are out of warranty. Dubbed “Flickergate,” a website to report the issues claims at least 1,600 Surface Pro 4 owners have experienced the screen flickering problems.

And:

Some owners have even started freezing their tablets to stop the screen flickering temporarily. “I get about half an hour’s use out of it after ten minutes in the freezer,” says one owner. Another user posted a video showing how the flickering stops as soon as the Surface Pro 4 is placed in a freezer.

Hardware is hard.

Apple earnings: The Six Colors charts

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Apple’s results in glorious chart form. Terrific resource.

If I had to pick two charts on which to focus, check out the very first one, “Apple Q1 2018 revenue by category”, and the second from the last chart, “Services revenue (4-quarter moving average)”.

One key to Apple’s continued success is diversity. The growth of that Services pie-wedge in the first chart helps reduce Apple’s dependence on iPhone sales. And that beautiful growth curve in the Services revenue chart shows that Apple is steadily moving in the right direction.

Apple earnings call transcript

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First things first, big thanks to Jason Snell and his mighty typing fingers for this transcript. A service to the community.

Way too much in the transcript to unpack it all, but here are just a few highlights:

Apple’s active installed base reached 1.3 billion devices in January, and is at an all-time high for all of our major products. One point three billion devices represents an astonishing 30 percent growth in just two years.

And:

What makes this even more remarkable is that the quarter we’re reporting today was 13 weeks long, while the year-ago quarter was 14 weeks.

Meaning, we did what we did in one less week than last year. No small thing.

The number of paid subscriptions across our services offerings passed 240 million by the end of the December quarter. That’s an increase of 30 million in the last 90 days alone, which is the largest quarterly growth ever.

And:

Apple Pay has reached an important milestone in the U.S. As a result of 50 percent year over year growth in merchant adoption, it’s now accepted at more than half of all American retail locations, which includes more than two-thirds of the country’s top 100 retailers.

And:

It was our best quarter ever for the Apple Watch. With over 50 percent growth in revenue and units for the fourth quarter in a row, and strong double-digit growth in every geographic segment. Sales of Apple Watch Series 3 models were also more than twice the volume of Series 2 a year ago.

Most popular smartwatch in the world. The early reports on HomePod remind me of the early take on Apple Watch. Lots of naysaying but, for Apple Watch, time did tell.

It was the third consecutive quarter of growth for iPad revenue, thanks to the strength of both iPad and iPad Pro.

And, finally, when asked if he considered the impact offering free or discounted battery replacements would have on iPhone purchases, Tim said:

On the battery, Toni, we did not consider it in any way, shape, or form what it would do to upgrade rates. We did it because we thought it was the right thing to do for our customers. And sitting here today, I don’t know what effect it will have. And again, it was not in our thought process of deciding to do what we’ve done.

Good call, excellent results.

YouTube TV now available natively on Apple TV

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Peter Cao, 9to5Mac:

Less than a day after the announcement, YouTube TV is now available on Apple’s tvOS platform. The cable-cutter streaming TV service starts at $35/month, with no contracts, and allows users to stream TV from their iPhone and now, Apple TV.

I love the way YouTube TV shared the news:

https://twitter.com/YouTubeTV/status/959195619507122177

Another solid option for cord cutters.

Strategy Analytics: Apple overtakes Samsung in smartphone shipments and market share

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Strategy Analytics:

According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, global smartphone shipments tumbled 9 percent annually to reach 400 million units in Q4 2017. It was the biggest annual fall in smartphone history. Apple captured first place with 19% global marketshare, nudging Samsung into second position. Xiaomi continued its relentless rise, almost doubling smartphone shipments from a year ago.

In a nutshell, smartphone shipments fell 9 percent year-over-year, Samsung fell with it, Apple held reasonably steady in shipments despite the industry as a whole shrinking, and Apple gained considerable global marketshare.

Here’s the report, see for yourself.

A choir of strangers accompanies David Byrne singing David Bowie’s Heroes

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[VIDEO] So much richness here. There’s an organized performance called Choir! Choir! Choir!, where attendees (total strangers, who come to see the performance) are taught a sequence of vocal parts, then a bit of rehearsal, then they perform.

In the video embedded in the main Loop post, David Byrne (the unmistakeable voice from Talking Heads) sings David Bowie’s classic Heroes, and the crowd sings background. I would absolutely love to attend one of these performances. Bucket list.

HomePod and Apple confirmed supported audio sources

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Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

Apple today updated its HomePod tech specs page with a new Audio Sources section that lists all of the ways in which the speaker can stream audio, setting the record straight on some conflicting information.

Here’s the list, from Apple’s HomePod tech specs page:

  • Apple Music
  • iTunes Music Purchases
  • iCloud Music Library with an Apple Music or iTunes Match subscription
  • Beats 1 Live Radio
  • Podcasts
  • AirPlay other content to HomePod from iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple TV, and Mac

A week from tomorrow!

UPDATE: The question came up about Bluetooth being in the wireless section, but not listed as an audio source. I asked about it on Twitter, the response was, Bluetooth too compressed for the quality HomePod requires. So Bluetooth is used for pairing, but not music transfer.

Fake videogame records invalidated after 35 years

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This is both arcane and fascinating. I stumbled into this rabbit hole via this Jason Snell post. His enthusiasm for the story made me dig in, then it was off to the races.

If you have any love for the history of video games, take a few minutes to immerse yourself (don’t miss the video, which might be my favorite part).

The Mac, the myth, the legend: how Snow Leopard became synonymous with reliability

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Michael Steeber, 9to5Mac:

Following the news that Apple had refocused their plans for iOS 12 around stability and performance over new features, many were quick to liken the move to a “Snow Leopard release” of iOS. In recent years, the phrase has reached mythological status in the Apple community, a catch-all referring to stable software and “the good ol’ days” of the Mac.

But how did this perception develop? Was Mac OS X Snow Leopard really the gold standard of software releases, an undefeated champion in the halls of computing history?

This is a fascinating look at the history of Apple and software reliability. It pairs well with the Axios story Apple delays iOS features to focus on reliability, performance and Michael Tsai’s response.

Michael Tsai:

I think the real difference is that, with more time between major releases, there was less churn, and there was time for things to settle down before the next major release upended everything again. The last few versions of each cycle got to be really good, and you could stick with them until the next version settled down. Some people stayed with 10.6.8 for multiple whole cycles. (There was also less pressure to update then.) Last fall, if Sierra was buggy for you, the choice was between sticking with a release you weren’t happy with or rolling the dice on High Sierra, which included significant fixes but also introduced new problems of its own.

Nothing is ever rock solid. But there are certainly many shades of grey between rock solid and terribly buggy. And Apple’s reputation is critical to their continued success. Apple cannot allow their brand to tarnish (or at least to become synonymous with terribly buggy). That’d be the ball game.

Apple earnings call today, and the race for $1 trillion

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The tension here, as it usually is, is the balance between past sales and future projections.

Now on to the race to $1 trillion. This is all about market capitalization, or market cap, for short. Market cap is a company’s share price times the number of shares outstanding. Here’s an Investopedia article on the concept.

As of this writing, Apple’s market cap is $860B. That’s based on a price to earning ratio of 18.25. That P/E ratio is on the high end of middling, certainly a reasonable number.

Amazon’s market cap is $696B, with a P/E ratio of 364.98. Yes, you read that correctly. In effect, Apple’s stock is grounded in actual results, while Amazon’s stock is more of a flier, based on growth and the thinking that Amazon is going to eat the world.

And Alphabet? Hot on Apple’s tail with a market cap of $811B and a P/E of 39.09. Right in the middle.

Who will get to $1 trillion first? Might happen this year.

Want to check these numbers for yourself? Go to Google and type “Apple’s market cap” or just “AAPL” and Google will show the relevant details.

Phil Schiller on HomePod

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Sound & Vision is an audio, video consumer products magazine. They had the chance to sit down with Phil Schiller to talk HomePod.

A few tidbits:

We think we can create a new kind of music experience in the home that sounds incredible, and is fun to interact with. That’s what’s driving us with HomePod. And it can also be the hub for your smart home. Voice technologies like Siri are also gaining in popularity with Siri responding to over 2 billion requests each week. This helps us understand how people actually interact with their devices, what they ask, and helps us create a product for the home that makes sense.

The HomePod as hub. That’s as advertised.

Siri, over 2 billion requests each week. That’s a lot of data, and a lot of network traffic. Apple has made a point to design their machine learning architecture to work on device, with zero network connectivity required. It will be interesting to see if Siri evolves in that same direction.

It’s about creating an experience that moves with you throughout the day — so the experience you have at home, is replicated in the car with CarPlay, at work with iPad and Mac, and when you’re out for a run with Watch and iPhone. You can listen to the same music, control your home accessories or ask Siri to do something for you, wherever you are.

This brings to mind Rene Ritchie’s HomePod wish list (posted yesterday). One of Rene’s wishes was for a Unified mesh Siri.

From that writeup:

Right now, there’s a different Siri for different devices, all with different capabilities. Siri on Apple TV is far more limited than iPhone or iPad, but has deep media knowledge and can even handle multi-language queries where, for example, a French speaker asks for a movie with an English title. Siri on Mac can interact with files and persist results but, frustratingly, can’t control HomeKit.

This is a definitely challenge for Apple. To me, a required next step in Siri’s evolution.

More from Phil:

Using advanced software and the A8 chip, HomePod intelligently beams center vocals and direct energy away from the wall while reflecting the ambient reverb and back-up vocals against the wall for dispersion into the room. The end result is a wide soundstage with a feeling of spaciousness and depth.

And:

Every time you move HomePod, it uses the built-in accelerometer to detect a change in its location and continues to make sure the music sounds great and is consistent, wherever it’s placed.

And:

HomePod uses advanced machine learning techniques including deep neural networks (DNNs) optimized for the hardware to detect “Hey Siri” in challenging environments. The detection of “Hey Siri” happens on the device, so nothing is being sent to Apple until that trigger is detected and the Siri waveform lights up. At that time, the request is sent to Apple using an anonymous Siri ID, and of course that communication is all encrypted. We’re able to do this because we designed audio technology, advanced software, and Siri to work together as one system.

Lots of great stuff here. You can see how much Phil loves what he does, how passionate he is about HomePod. Can’t wait for next Friday!

Here’s how HomePod will handle future software updates

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Guilherme Rambo, 9to5Mac:

HomePod runs a special version of iOS, which means it gets new updates alongside iOS. The latest software publicly available for it is iOS 11.2.5, which will likely be the version installed on HomePods delivered on February 9th.

Software updates for HomePod will be managed through the Home app. The app will alert users when a new software update is available and will show an interface similar to the one used for iOS updates. Users will have the option to enable automatic updates, although it’s unclear how those will be managed. Updates can be installed on a single HomePod, all HomePods in the home or to specific stereo pairs (stereo pairing will not be available on HomePods running different software versions).

Interesting to me that there are a number of different update models at work here, all of them involving a satellite piece of Apple gear. Apple TV tends to update directly on device, Apple Watch has its own directly paired iOS device hosted Watch app, and now HomePod, which is part of the Home mini-ecosystem.

Seems to me like an opportunity for Apple to simplify their interface, make it a bit easier for beginners to master.

This 1983 demo says so much about Apple’s past, present, and future

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[VIDEO] Harry McCracken, FastCompany:

On the evening of January 26, 1983, as a technology-smitten Boston University freshman, I attended the monthly meeting of the Boston Computer Society, which included a demo of Apple’s brand-new Lisa system. Though I know that I came away enormously impressed, I don’t exactly recall the event like it was yesterday. Actually, just one element was permanently etched onto my brain cells: the moment when the Lisa’s bitmapped, proportional, user-selectable typefaces flashed on screen. It was a mind-bender given that other PCs–like my beloved Atari 400–were capable only of displaying a single fixed-width font of no elegance whatsoever.

And:

What I didn’t realize until I watched the video is that seeing the meeting all over again wasn’t just an act of personal nostalgia. Between them, the IIe and Lisa, and the way Apple explained them to us BCS members, are full of lessons that remain resonant in the era of the iPhone.

First, read Harry’s article, it’s terrific. Then check the video of the meeting itself, embedded in the main Loop post. It’s a charming time capsule capture of a real moment in time.

The iPad lost years for Apple’s media partners

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Shira Ovide, Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. is revamping its digital bookstore in another attempt to take on Amazon’s dominance. I can’t help thinking: What if?

This is a reference to this article, about Apple remaking the iBooks Store and the iBooks app, simplifying both and making book reading a better experience.

More from Shira:

The missed opportunity was for Apple’s business partners, particularly newspaper and magazine companies, which Apple persuaded to turn themselves inside out to take advantage of the iPad. It turned out that Apple was leading those partners to a dead end.

This is a bit of a curmudgeonly statement, but there is truth at its core. A number of publishers went all in on the iPad, with visions of a simple path from print to digital, with subscriptions intact.

The eighth anniversary of the iPad’s introduction was on Saturday. Allow me to take you on a trip back to that time. Steve Jobs set off on a sales pitch to media companies that he hoped would make the new tablet computer more useful. Jobs was a true believer that the iPad would be an amazing opportunity for books, newspapers and magazines to reimagine their products, capture readers and patch up their ailing business models.

All-in-all, a fascinating read.