This particular wave of thinking started with this AppleInsider article, Analyst says Apple may forego Lightning-to-3.5mm adapter for new iPhones. From the article:
Apple will probably stop bundling a Lightning-to-3.5 millimeter adapter with this fall’s new iPhones, according to a Barclays memo obtained by AppleInsider.
Head to the main Loop post for some thoughts on all this. […]
First, if you haven’t already, take a look at this Mark Gurman article which started it all, titled Apple Plans Combined iPhone, iPad & Mac Apps to Create One User Experience.
At the core of the article:
Apple is developing the strategy as part of the next major iOS and macOS updates, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss an internal matter. Codenamed “Marzipan,” the secret project is planned as a multiyear effort that will start rolling out as early as next year and may be announced at the company’s annual developers conference in the summer. The plans are still fluid, the people said, so the implementation could change or the project could still be canceled.
True? Not true? It’s a rumor (from last December), but one that got a lot of traction.
Yesterday, John Gruber posted the piece linked in the headline, Scuttlebutt regarding Apple’s cross-platform UI project, which brings some new, well, scuttlebutt to bear:
This “Marzipan” rumor got a lot of people excited. But Gurman’s report is so light on technical details that the excitement is based mostly on what developers hope it could mean, not what’s actually been reported. The less specific the rumor, the easier it is to project your own wishes upon it. And, oddly perhaps, we haven’t seen any additional rumors or details about this project in the four months since Gurman’s original report.
I’ve heard a few things, from first- and second-hand sources. Mostly second-hand, to be honest, but they’re all consistent with each other.
Click over to Daring Fireball to read said scuttlebutt. Interesting and, because it’s John Gruber, there’s a level of credibility that takes it beyond typical rumormongering.
34 days until WWDC.
Zac Hall, 9to5Mac:
There are a lot of little tweaks in macOS that I rely on to make a Mac feel like my own. Placing frequently accessed folders on the right side of the Dock, turning off auto-correct, and turning up mouse and trackpad tracking speed are all in this category for me.
A rather hidden but critical example is Hot Corners. My Mac just feels broken with Hot Corners disabled, and my workflow is severely slowed. Here’s how it works.
First thing first, I couldn’t agree more. Hot Corners, part of Mission Control, is an incredibly valuable part of the Mac interface. I expect most of the folks reading this are aware of this longstanding Mac feature. But if you have never taken the time to set this up, or if you are critical support for other, less knowledgable or just plain newer Mac folks, jump on over to Zac’s article and pass the knowledge along.
One thing that really appeals to me about Hot Corners is a bit of science, wrapped up under the title Fitts’ Law. From the Fitts’ Law Wikipedia page:
This scientific law predicts that the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the ratio between the distance to the target and the width of the target. Fitts’s law is used to model the act of pointing, either by physically touching an object with a hand or finger, or virtually, by pointing to an object on a computer monitor using a pointing device.
If you have to wheel your mouse all the way across the screen to home in on a link, button, or menu title, Fitt’s law kicks in. But wheeling over to a corner is super easy, requires almost no steering. And that’s why Hot Corners is so powerful. You have four easy to get to places on your screen, each of which can be assigned some specific function.
Read Zac’s piece, set up Hot Corners if you haven’t already. It’s worth it.
Apple will hold their quarterly earnings call with investors and analysts today at 2p PT, 5p ET. A few links worth noting:
To listen to the 2Q 2018 conference call live, tune in to Apple’s official earnings call stream.
This article from Quartz does a nice job stepping through a variety of earnings issues, each with its own trend chart. Very easy to read, with charts that are simple enough to grasp at a glance. One chart I’d search for is a bit less than half-way down, called “Apple’s non-iPhone revenue, by quarter”. Take a look at the Services line. It’s been trending up for a long time. Services has become an important buffer for Apple growth. If that line continues to trend up, that should help take the heat off any issues with iPhone sales numbers.
This Bloomberg article walks through some key Apple financial specifics, folding in some links/rumors as well. But what I found most appealing was the Services bar chart as well as these six things to look for from the end of the article:
Analysts are looking for revenue of $61 billion in the fiscal second quarter, or 15 percent year-over-year growth, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Earlier this year, Apple forecast sales between $60 billion and $62 billion for the period.
Fiscal second-quarter iPhone unit sales are expected to be 51.9 million, up from 50.8 million a year earlier, according to average analyst forecasts compiled by Bloomberg.
For the fiscal third quarter, analysts see 39 million iPhones sold, on average, down from 41 million in the same period of 2017.
The average selling price for iPhones will be $740 in the fiscal second quarter and $691 in the third, according to average analyst projections.
Fiscal second quarter services revenue will hit around the $8.5 billion level reported in the holiday quarter. Munster sees 18 percent to 20 percent growth.
Analysts are also looking for growth in Apple’s Other Products unit, which includes the Apple Watch, AirPods and HomePod.
Check your news feed at about 3p PT today. I expect it’ll be full of Apple earnings news.
Ran across this on Reddit over the weekend.
Before you start, be aware this is the slightest bit NSFW, so maybe throw on some headphones.
This is kind of funny, and it certainly makes sense. I tested this on my Mac, my iPhone, and on HomePod. I appreciate the fact that all three handled this back-and-forth in exactly the same way. As you’d expect.
[Giant H/T to Robert Walter]
UPDATE: Sadly, Apple nerfed this and it no longer works. I get it, makes sense, I did enjoy it while it lasted.
[VIDEO] Apple’s deal to buy NeXT was finalized in February 1997, Apple CEO Gil Amelio was ousted in July 1997, and Steve was named interim CEO in September 1997. This interview was recorded on October 2nd, 1997.
Good to have a sense of the sequence as you watch the video (embedded in the main Loop post).
Kirk McElhearn:
Back in the day, with .Mac and MobileMe, it was dead simple to make photo galleries to show off your pictures on the web. In 2012, Apple added photo sharing features to iCloud, which are essentially what we have today as shared albums. I had wondered why you couldn’t create a public album, and I mentioned it on Twitter a few days ago. One person pointed out that it was possible, and showed me where the feature was; it’s not easy to find.
Good tip. Kirk walks through the steps of building and linking to an iCloud-based public photo album.
Chance Miller, 9to5Mac, lays out his take on the best router and mesh alternatives, now that Apple has end-of-life’d their AirPort line.
Before you dig into Chance’s list, take a moment to read through the list of “features to look for” in Apple’s Choosing a Wi-Fi router to use with Apple devices support note.
My biggest concern about a third party solution is trust. If I buy an Apple branded product, I trust that there’s no malware embedded in the firmware/software. I trust that if a vulnerability is found, it will be patched quickly and that patch will make its way onto my device pretty quickly. I trust that if I do run into a problem with that device, I can turn to Apple, an Apple Store, or to the thriving and friendly on-line community to help solve it.
Apple selling a product does not bring the trust of an Apple-branded product. One case in point, the LG UltraFine 5K Display and the Wi-Fi interference problem. The problem was fixed, but the product was sold by Apple as it exited the display business.
My home network is the weakest point in my on-line security and the router the focal point for attempts to break in. Choosing a router I can trust is a critical decision. I hate that Apple has left this market. And no matter how recommended a router may be, I just won’t trust that my interests will come first with that company.
FastCompany:
A lot has changed since the early days when iTunes was mostly populated with The Ricky Gervais Show and an assortment of news podcasts repackaged from radio shows. These days, according to Apple, it is home to over 525,000 active shows, with more than 18.5 million episodes available, including content in over 100 languages. Its podcasts span the globe, covering 155 countries and, per Apple, “29 groupings of localized editorial.” In short, if you feel overwhelmed with podcast content–you’re not alone.
Mind-boggling numbers. The back end of the advertising-dollar gold-rush curve.
There’s another wave of complaints about specks of dust causing MacBook butterfly-switch keyboard to stop working. Rene Ritchie walks through some high profile cases, while balancing that with his own (and others) positive experiences.
A good read, and a problem for Apple.
How so? Even if the number of keyboards that do fail are within the to-be-expected failure rates, the butterfly-switch has developed a negative reputation. I suspect that reputation has cost Apple sales as people turn to alternatives, or just don’t pull the trigger on replacing their aging MacBook Pros. But more importantly, this is tarnishing Apple’s priceless brand.
So far, all we’ve got is deafening silence on the issue.
The New Yorker:
We were at the headquarters of Meipai’s parent company, Meitu, Inc. Its first product, in 2008, was a photo-editing app, also named Meitu (“beautiful picture,” in Chinese), which young people seized upon as a means of enhancing their selfies. The company now has a battery of apps, with names like BeautyPlus, BeautyCam, and SelfieCity, which smooth out skin, exaggerate features, brighten eyes.
The apps are installed on more than a billion phones—mostly in China and the rest of Asia, but also increasingly in the West, where Meitu seeks to expand its presence. The company sells a range of smartphones, too, designed to take particularly flattering selfies: the front-facing selfie cameras have more powerful sensors and processors than those on regular phones, and beautifying apps start working their magic the moment a picture has been taken. Phone sales accounted for ninety-three per cent of Meitu’s revenue last year, and the company is now valued at six billion dollars. Its I.P.O., a year ago, was the largest Internet-company offering that the Hong Kong stock exchange had seen in nearly a decade.
This is a fascinating story. What gets me the most is how big the beautified selfie is in Chinese culture. Seems to me this wave has huge potential and has yet to emerge in the US, at least not in the same way. This seems like a massive business opportunity for the company that figures out how to build the right app.
UPDATE: A check of the Top Paid list on the App Store shows this gem at the top spot: Facetune [H/T James Hill]. Interestingly, it is the only app of its kind in the top 50. An indication of how difficult this is to do and get right?
Peter Stas, CEO of Swiss watch firm Frederique Constant, writing on his personal blog:
I feel that the Swiss watch industry still doesn’t understand how much the Apple watch and other smart watches have eaten into the figures, particularly the figures for quartz movements. The Apple Watch Series 3 is the next level, which moves from notifications and fitness tracking to health orientation. I think this is where we will start to see the true benefits of the smart watch and once again Apple is in the lead. They are starting to inform people if their resting heart rate is too high and are even branching out into medical information. Apple has sold 18 million watches and when I go to the US I see more and more people wearing Apple Watches.
To me, the core statement here is this:
The Apple Watch is now in its third generation and who knows what they will bring with the fourth generation. If they start to adapt the case and have something other than just a black screen then the Swiss watch industry could be heading for trouble.
There is still a divide between the factors that drive classic watch sales and the Apple Watch. In my opinion, people buy an Apple Watch for its functionality and appreciate the touches Apple has added that make an Apple Watch fashionable. But people buy classic watches, like Rolex, Tag Heuer, and Vacheron Constantin, for the fashion elements, elegant construction, and appreciate the functional touches that come along with their pricey purchase.
Apple has stayed in their specific groove with Apple Watch. Though there are color, case material, and band options, each Apple Watch looks the same. If Apple steps out of that groove with this fall’s expected Apple Watch Series 4, that could spell real trouble for Swiss watchmakers.
If you haven’t already, first read A tale of two QuickTimes, which we linked to a few weeks ago.
With that unhappiness with losing the old, but still incredibly useful version of QuickTime in mind, check out this post from Dan Moren, which is based on this gem of a find by David Chartier.
Do read both posts for the big picture. This is pretty cool.
Motherboard:
The startup is called Crowdfense and is based in the United Arab Emirates. In an unusual move in the normally secretive industry of so-called zero-days, Crowdfense sent out a press release to reporters on Tuesday, advertising what it calls a bug bounty.
And:
Crowdfense’s director Andrea Zapparoli Manzoni told me that he and his company are trying to join that market, purchasing zero-days from independent researchers and then selling them to law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
And:
“When I think about government agencies I don’t think about the military part, I think about the civilian part, that works against crime, terrorism, and stuff like that,” Zapparoli told me in a phone interview. “We only focus on tools aimed at doing activities of law enforcement or intelligence, not aimed at destroying or deteriorating the functionality and effectiveness of the target systems—but only aimed at collecting intelligence.”
And:
The company has a budget of $10 million for this “bug bounty.” Its backers, for now, are also secret.
The mind reels. Unless I misread this piece, no part of their plan is to share any discovered vulnerabilities with Apple. This is straight, help us break the system, not make it better.
“Vetting customers is the most delicate part of our whole activity,” Zapparoli said.
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that your customer list will remain a secret as well. This whole thing is chilling to me.
Michael Simon, Macworld:
The Spotify executives on stage never actually mentioned Apple Music by name, but it was impossible not to catch the vibe. Throughout the hour-long presentation, Spotify barely talked about its Premium service, which boasts some 70 million users to Apple Music’s 40 million. Instead, the focus was on Spotify’s other 90 million customers, the ones who don’t pay.
And:
As it stands, the only “free” tier of Apple Music involves listening to either Beats 1 or whatever songs are in your music library. Otherwise, you’re completely locked out.
Spotify sees things differently. While its Premium tier offers the same $10-a-month access to tens of millions of songs as Apple Music, Spotify also lets non-paying customers in the door, with restrictions on playback and interspliced ads. It’s a gateway to Premium for sure, but more importantly, it’s the main advantage Spotify has over Apple Music. And it just became irresistible to tens of millions of users.
And:
Spotify’s isn’t going after Apple Music users with a better premium offering, it’s basically offering a free sample that doesn’t have an expiration date.
There’s a subtle strategic difference between offering a free trial period and a free, ad-supported tier. Apple Music’s free trial period has no “lock in” in it. Once you reach the end, you’re either in (you find the service worth the money and you sign up) or you’re out (possibly heading over to Spotify). There’s no stickiness to keep you in the fold.
With Spotify’s focus on making their free tier more attractive, they’ve achieved “lock in”. If you hate the ads, pay the monthly fee and get an even better experience, ad free.
My two cents? I think Apple should copy this move, adopt a free tier. Of course, that will likely put a dent in their services revenue, but if this helps grow their user base, that should make up for any shortfall there.
One more thing:
The only real advantage Apple has with Apple Music (other than it being the default music app on hundreds of millions of iOS devices every year) is HomePod compatibility. I half expected Spotify to launch a competing speaker at its event, but as I listened to the executives talk about the new features, it became clear that hardware isn’t their game.
When people question Apple’s HomePod move, this has to be part of the discussion.
Titillating headline, but read on:
Authorities in Florida showed up to a funeral home and tried to unlock a dead man’s cell phone using his finger.
And:
Largo Police Lt. Randall Chaney told the Tampa Bay Times that the detectives were trying to gain access to and protect data relevant to their investigation into Phillip’s death, as well as another investigation Phillip was involved in related to drugs.
And:
There is no expectation of privacy after a person passes away, so the move to access the iPhone by detectives was legal, but not necessarily appropriate or ethical, Charles Rose, a professor at Stetson University College of Law, told the Tampa Bay Times.
“While the deceased person doesn’t have a vested interest in the remains of their body, the family sure does, so it really doesn’t pass the smell test,” he told the newspaper. Even though a deceased person can no longer claim their property for themselves under their Fourth Amendment rights, whoever inherits the property at stake, such as family, can exercise those rights, he said.
I’ve long wondered about the legality of physically forcing someone to unlock their iPhone using their finger or their face. Does that legal status change when someone dies?
And what about FaceID? Will it work on a dead person whose eyes are open? Can attention detection tell if someone is dead?
UPDATE: Couple of good comments from JLMoran. Sounds like neither TouchID nor FaceID will work on a dead person, at least not without some extra trickery.
Check the Emojipedia chart. Apple switched from a realistic gun to a water pistol in 2016. Two years later, we see the same move by Twitter, Samsung, and now Google.
A year after Apple made their move to a water gun, Facebook shifted to a more photo-realistic image.
And, interestingly, Microsoft went the opposite direction, moving from a sci-fi ray-gun to a hand gun.
So that leaves Facebook and Microsoft, sticking to their guns. But:
A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to Emojipedia that a toy squirt gun will now be replacing the gun emoji design on Facebook platforms.
Microsoft. Last gun standing.
UPDATE: From Microsoft:
https://twitter.com/Microsoft/status/989269615887900673
[H/T Adam Hunter]
[VIDEO] Last week, I tweeted about the process of grabbing multiple app icons, all in one stack, dragging them from one page to another.
Jeff Benjamin, 9to5Mac, did me one better, building an excellent how-to video (embedded in the main Loop post) that shows this technique, along with a bunch of related techniques. You might know most of these, but there’s this one bit you might not know. Check the recurring theme in Jeff’s video where he holds a stack with one hand, then uses the other hand to slide pages, rather than dragging the stack to the edge of the screen to force the page change. Jeff’s way is so much faster.
If nothing else, pass the link along to your iOS newbie friends.
Visual Capitalist:
In the past, marketers would make judgement calls on your likely income and family structure based on where you lived, and you’d receive “targeted” mail and calls from telemarketers. Loyalty programs and the emergence of web analytics pushed things a little further.
Today, the steady march of technological advancement has created a vast data collection empire that measures every aspect of your digital life and, increasingly, your offline life as well. Facebook alone uses nearly one hundred data points to target ads to you – everything from your marital status to whether you’ve been on vacation lately or not. Telecoms have access to extremely detailed information on your location. Apple has biometric data.
Also watching your every move are web trackers. “Cookie-syncing” is one of the sneaky ways advertisers can follow you around the internet. Basically, cookie-syncing allows third parties to share browsing information at such a large scale that even the NSA “piggybacks” off them for surveillance purposes.
And:
While web trackers and companies like Apple and Google are collecting a lot of personal and behavioral data, it’s the whales of the data ecosystem – data brokers – who are creating increasingly detailed profiles on almost everyone.
The goal of data brokers, such as Experian or Acxiom, is to siphon up as much personal data as possible and apply it to profiles. This data comes from a wide variety of sources. Your purchases, financial history, internet activity, and even psychographic attributes are mixed with information from public records to create a robust dossier. Digital profiles are then sorted into one of thousands of categories to help optimize advertising efforts.
Spend a few minutes browsing through the chart at the top of the article to get a sense of the overall data flow at work here. Shadow profiles. Chilling stuff.
Motherboard:
Law enforcement agencies across the country are buying or have expressed interest in buying GrayKey, a device that can unlock up-to-date iPhones. But Grayshift, the company that makes the device, has attracted some other attention as well.
Last week, an unknown party quietly leaked portions of GrayKey code onto the internet, and demanded over $15,000 from Grayshift—ironically, the price of an entry-level GrayKey—in order to stop publishing the material. The code itself does not appear to be particularly sensitive, but Grayshift confirmed to Motherboard the brief data leak that led to the extortion attempt.
The mind reels. If some organization comes up with a golden key that unlocks all iPhones, that golden key will find its way into nefarious hands. This is living proof of that.
The first thing that struck me about Jean-Louis’ Amazon-centric Monday Note was this quote from Amazon’s shareholder letter, regarding memos:
“We don’t do PowerPoint (or any other slide-oriented) presentations at Amazon. Instead, we write narratively structured six-page memos. We silently read one at the beginning of each meeting in a kind of ‘study hall.’ Not surprisingly, the quality of these memos varies widely. Some have the clarity of angels singing. They are brilliant and thoughtful and set up the meeting for high-quality discussion. Sometimes they come in at the other end of the spectrum.”
Fascinating. OK, back to the topic at hand:
Amazon now has 100M Prime subscribers and is a respected, if not feared, supplier of video content, some of which is home-grown and recognized as world-class. Amazon has the means — and the need — to envelop its Prime subscribers in its Everything walled garden. An Amazon Fire TV set finishes the job the Alexa-powered Echo devices started. After a hard day’s work, you come home, ask your Amazon TV to turn the AC on, order dinner from the nearest Whole Foods store, and watch the latest Harry Bosch episode.
I do agree that Amazon’s focus on Fire TV sets is an important chess move and step toward their own walled garden. But, as I’ve said before, they are missing a critical element, a phone with wide adoption. If Amazon ever found a way to ship a phone that competed well with iPhone or, if it was Android-based, ate significantly into the Samsung/Google/etc. marketshare, that’d be trouble for Apple.
In addition, a Fire TV set solves the “Input 1” problem, the default connection that comes up when you turn the TV on. Not important? Think of the billion (or billions — some say three) that Google is rumored to pay Apple to be its default search engine on the iPhone.
Fascinating point. What comes on when you turn on your TV? For me (and, I’d argue for most folks), my TV defaults to whatever input I was watching last. But a TV that makes it super easy to watch Amazon video content with some frictionless combination of built-in seamless UX and tightly integrated remote? That’d have value, I think.
Apple TV is still a second class citizen for me. Or, at best, a peer to my cable package that requires me to keep two remotes handy and switch inputs regularly. I would love a more integrated solution.
Jean-Louis always keeps me thinking. Note his use of mutatis mutandis. Had to grab the dictionary for that one.
Christian Zibreg, iDownloadBlog:
Downloading watchOS software to your Apple Watch is a tremendously slow process.
It can take anywhere between half an hour to an hour or more to send a watchOS software update to your wrist. Because it’s such a sluggish experience, I try to update my watch only when I’m positive I won’t be using it for a few hours, like right before I’m about to hit the bed.
And:
I’ll let you in on a secret: sliding the Bluetooth toggle to the OFF position in Settings → Bluetooth on your iPhone will speed up watchOS software updates dramatically.
But timing matters here. Follow the link for the details. This is an interesting tip. Of course, you can just let the update happen overnight. But personally, I find the details fascinating, worth the read.
This is from 2014, but just came across it yesterday. A fascinating stroll through Apple’s advertising history. Check out the address on that first ad:
Apple Computer Company
770 Welch Road, Suite 154
Palo Alto, California 94304
Popped that address into Apple Maps and I see that it is now the Palo Alto Endoscopy Center. It’s a block away from the Stanford Apple Store on some prime Stanford real estate.
[VIDEO] The first ad pushes the speed and elegance of the iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X Portrait Lighting. Android is not mentioned by name, but pretty sure that’s what’s meant by “your phone” (all lower case).
The second ad is about security against malware, this time comparing “your store” (all lower case) with the App Store. The exploding malware nose icon was a pretty good bit.
Both ads are embedded in the main Loop post.
Deadline:
Apple just won an auction for world screen rights to Songwriter, the Murray Cummings-directed documentary that shows singer Ed Sheeran as he finds the handle on writing and performing his distinctive songs. Deal is low to mid-seven figures for world rights, and Apple will make it an event release that includes a theatrical component along with release on Apple’s multiple platforms. The film made its world premiere in Berlin, and tonight the docu is making its North American premiere in the Tribeca Film Festival.
I read that as $1-$5 million. Another brick on the content pile. It will be interesting to see the platform Apple is planning to turn this investment into revenue. Will this content be a draw to extend Apple Music? Will they build a separate Apple Video platform? When will the curtain be pulled back on all this investment?
[VIDEO] Ouch. Pretty, pretty good. Video embedded in main Loop post.
The Guardian:
Google has unveiled a new messaging system, Chat, an attempt to replace SMS, unify Android’s various messaging services and beat Apple’s iMessage and Facebook’s WhatsApp with the help of mobile phone operators.
Unlike traditional texting, or SMS, most modern messaging services – such as Signal, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or Apple’s iMessage – are so-called over-the-top (OTT) services, which circumvent the mobile phone operator by sending messages over the internet.
Chat is a successor to SMS:
Instead of using OTT, it is based on rich communication services (RCS), a successor to SMS (short message standard), which has been used by people all over the world since 1992 and is still the fallback for most.
And:
With Chat, Google is unifying all the disparate versions of RCS under one interoperable standard that will work across networks, smartphones and operating systems. In doing so it hopes to take the surefire nature of SMS – anyone can send anyone else with a phone a message without them requiring a specific account or app – and bring it up-to-date with all the features modern chat demands.
On the potential for Chat killing iMessage, I defer to this excellent comment from The Overspill:
if Google even looks as though it is positioning this as a way to “kill iMessage”, Apple will never support it, and if Apple doesn’t support it then operators are going to wonder why they’re letting Google screw up their golden goose, and they won’t support it after all. Google can preload it on Android phones, but that’s not “killing iMessage”; it’s “providing an alternative to iMessage”, which WhatsApp and latterly Facebook Messenger have done for years without “killing” iMessage.
And John Gruber’s take on the same topic, different article:
It is unconscionable for Google to back a new protocol that isn’t end-to-end encrypted. End-to-end encryption is table stakes for any new communication platform today. Apple should ignore this — if it’s not secure it should be a non-starter.
I agree with all of the above. I don’t see any danger to iMessage. But I do see this meshing with Google/Android’s place in the market. Chat’s penetration will likely be at the base of the pyramid, the larger, lower priced, smaller margin part of the market. Apple’s sweet spot has always been about halfway up the pyramid: smaller, but higher priced, with larger margins.
Note also that here’s another place where Amazon has no seat at the table. With no mobile phone of their own, Alexa can send a text via the Internet, but has to ride on iOS or Android infrastructure when out and about.
In a nutshell, the survey’s top 3:
The survey was implemented by SurveyMonkey.
What I’d really love to see is some detail on people’s thinking on this. What is the positive impact from Amazon? Is it about getting goods so quickly and reliably? Amazon Echo and Alexa? Something else?
And is Google’s positive mostly about search?
I also wonder if Apple would have won this survey hands down 8 years ago, when the iPhone was still exploding but Android hadn’t quite taken off yet. Interesting.
This whole thing started with this tweet from The Economist’s Hal Hodson:
Twitter, a mystery: I’ve been walking around New York a lot the past few days, AirPods in, tunes going, great vibes. Almost every time I cross a street, though, they cut out. Why? Crossing roads is the only time the cut. Can not figure it out
This appears to happen consistently, and to a lot of people. Here’s mystery solved, via a sequence of tweets from The Verge’s Dan Seifert.
First:
I know the exact spot when crossing 5th Ave in front of the library where every pair of Bluetooth headphones will cut out. to the step.
Experience the same in the middle of Grand Central Terminal. to the step.
And then, the answer:
I’ve asked headphones makers why this happens in past and here’s best explanation I’ve received:
BT needs surfaces to bounce off to work efficiently (walls, ceilings, etc). very different from WiFi. in the middle of the street is farthest from large flat surfaces.
Which begs the question, how come my AirPods work in the middle of a field?
You may wonder why this doesn’t happen in an open field?
Bluetooth doesn’t have any other signals to compete with out there, doesn’t need to be at peak efficiency.
Any Bluetooth experts out there want to weigh in here? This is fascinating to me.
Nice writeup by Andrew Orr for The Mac Observer. This is one of those posts that worth scanning now, while you are feet up with a cup of coffee, rather than in a state of panicked response to your phone gone missing.
One note: Ignore the link to “How to Set Your iOS Device Data to Auto-Destruct” on that page. As pointed out in the comments, it’s outdated and no longer accurate.
UPDATE: Outdated link was deleted from the Mac Observer article.