Apple

Damage

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Shawn posted this last night, but this hits very close to home for me, wanted to add my 2 cents.

Matt Gemmell:

No company has done as much damage to the perceived value of software, and the sustainability of being an independent developer, as Apple.

Not that other companies wouldn’t have done the same thing — they would have. It’s just that Apple was the successful one.

It’s resolutely the fault of us as consumers, and it’s actively encouraged by the App Store.

This is a scorcher. At its heart, this is about the iOS App Store’s race to the bottom, price-wise, and the difficulty of making a living as a developer in a “pennies for your work” market.

Matt does an excellent job laying out all the details. A core argument:

Has Apple created a huge market, in terms of potential customers? Absolutely. It’s just done so at the expense of its platform-invested developer community. Judging by the company’s value and income, it was a very wise move, and you can justify it on that basis if you choose. But don’t ignore the reality of the situation. Apple is not a benevolent entity; your human-centric partner in aesthetics and ethos. If that was ever true at all.

Apple created the App Store. Is it their responsibility to ensure that the people whose work they benefit from, on whose backs they ride, have the ability to earn a living? Are developers in the same “fair trade” category as the miners who dig the rare earths that go into each and every iPhone?

Matt cocludes with this about the Mac App Store, which offers an economic model based on far fewer users and much higher pricing:

For developers who target the Mac, the last segment of the glass-and-aluminium Cupertino hardware line-up to still have plausibly sustainable economics, there’s only one course of action: pray that Apple remains disinterested.

Still chewing on all this. Lots to process. But thought this was worth sharing.

[VIDEO] Tim Cook on Mad Money

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[VIDEO] Video of Tim Cook’s interview on Mad Money from last night (two videos embedded on the main Loop post).

Apple: Two million U.S. jobs. And counting.

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Apple’s job creation web site:

The numbers tell the story. Apple is one of the biggest job creators in the United States, responsible for two million jobs in all 50 states. Last year, we spent over $50 billion with more than 9,000 U.S. suppliers and manufacturers. Since we launched the App Store in 2008, U.S. developers have earned over $16 billion in App Store sales worldwide. And we’re just getting started.

The site breaks the job numbers up as follows:

  • 80,000 Apple employees
  • 450,000 Jobs through our U.S.-based suppliers
  • 1,530,000 U.S. jobs attributable to the App Store ecosystem

The site also breaks the numbers down, state by state.

Apple loves the little red dot

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Straits Times, about the recently unveiled signage above the soon-to-open Singapore Apple Store:

The barricades in front of the upcoming Apple Store at Orchard Road’s Knightsbridge mall came down on Wednesday night (May 3).

But the store has not been unveiled. Instead, three icons – Apple, Love, Red Dot – adorn the tall store’s tall glass doors. It means Apple loves the little red dot, or Apple loves Singapore. There is also the wording Apple Orchard Road – the official name of the Apple retail store – below the icons.

Check out the pictures. I find the signage charming, some insightful localized marketing on Apple’s part.

AirPods, song skipping, and volume

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I love my AirPods. I am happy with the sound quality and I love the convenience and the cleverness of the design. Clearly, a tremendous amount of thought has been put into the many and varied AirPod use cases:

  • Open the case near your iPhone and you are connected automatically.
  • Pull an AirPod out of your ear and the music or video you are playing pauses.
  • Drop the AirPods back in the case and they charge automatically.
  • Double-tap to interact with Siri.

There are two use cases, however, that just didn’t work for me.

  • Skip to the next song (something I do reasonably often)
  • Adjust the volume (either due to a song being mixed loud, or my circumstances/environment changing)

Jump to the main Loop post for thoughts on solutions, what I settled on.

Google reports a big gain in Android Nougat adoption, um…

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Android Police:

Google has updated the developer dashboard for May, giving us an overview of the Android device ecosystem. Nougat continues to inch upward at a respectable rate—it’s now over 7% of devices.

True, that is significant growth for Nougat, absolutely, but compare to iOS 10 adoption, which last reported (back in February) at 79%.

Apple Pay growth not just steady, it’s phenomenal

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More users, more iPhones/Apple Watches, more places that accept Apple Pay, fueled by Apple finding more ways for a merchant to take advantage of Apple Pay. I expected steady growth, surprised by that blossoming transaction volume.

The Microsoft Surface Laptop, creeping in on Apple’s territory

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Michael Tsai pulled together some coverage of Microsoft’s new Surface Laptop.

There’s this bit from Bloomberg:

Microsoft has already cracked the professional and creative markets with inventive tablets and a desktop that turns into a virtual drafting table. Now it’s chasing another category many believe is Apple’s to lose: the $1,000 laptop for everyone.

That’s one side of the coin. Me, I found this bit telling:

https://twitter.com/RobJDavey/status/859533318924251136

Click on the image to bring the animated GIF to life. Watch the flex on the screen, note the hand required to keep the screen from pushing over backwards.

Apple and the Hackintosh

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Andrew Cunningham, Ars Technica:

Thanks to more modern PCs, a wider install base for Intel Macs, and dedicated enthusiast communities and forums like TonyMacx86, it’s not too hard for anyone comfortable with PC building to assemble a Hackintosh using off-the-shelf parts. Community-developed apps and tools streamline the process of creating install media and setting up drivers, and while you’re probably going to have to do a little bit of Terminal work getting everything to function perfectly, most major setup problems are easy enough to overcome for anyone who has been building and maintaining their own PCs for a while.

And:

At this point I should mention this article is in no way intended to be an install guide or an endorsement of Hackintoshing. Today, as has always been the case, installing macOS on non-Apple hardware is a violation of Apple’s licensing agreement.

And:

Apple has done surprisingly little to shut down the Hackintosh community. When companies attempt to commercialize PCs running Mac software, as a long-gone company called Psystar briefly did back in 2008, Apple shuts them down swiftly and decisively. But macOS itself doesn’t do more than a surface-level check for genuine Apple hardware—the underlying hardware needs to be close-ish and special bootloaders spoof things like the model, firmware information, and serial number. These OSx86 enthusiast communities have existed for years without so much as a cease-and-desist. Contrast this with Apple’s much more stringent approach to iOS jailbreaking: the company releases new updates to disable old jailbreaks pretty quickly, at least in part because these jailbreaks rely exclusively on serious security flaws to work in the first place.

There is so much more to this article, well worth the read. But it is interesting that Apple has allowed the Hackintosh universe to survive and even to flourish.

Also interesting is the thought of what form Apple’s coming Mac Pro will take. Will Apple build an upgradeable tower, one designed to last longer than a generation? Given Apple’s reluctance to update a machine with relatively low sales numbers, I think they’d do well to build something that they can release into the wild, let the user community update and upgrade with third party parts, with a nice long extendable life span.

A win for the “Pro” community (not sure of a better label here), a win for the small army of parts suppliers who will seize on the opportunity to sell parts and supplies, a win for the communities who will benefit from product produced using these ultra-powerful machines.

KGI: Apple likely to announce ‘home AI’ Siri Speaker at WWDC, positioned as high-end Amazon Echo competitor

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Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:

KGI’s Ming-Chi Kuo has published an industry report today claiming that Apple will likely announce a Siri Speaker product (branding unknown, Kuo calls it ‘Apple’s first home AI product’) at WWDC in June. The device will compete with the Amazon Echo and go on sale in the second half of the year.

Kuo says Apple’s product will feature ‘excellent’ sound with seven tweeters and a subwoofer, and will be positioned as a more premium product than the Echo … with a higher price tag to match.

KGI’s report is not definitive about the launch timeline. It says that they believe Apple has a more than 50% chance of announcing the Siri Speaker product in June. This leaves some wiggle room in case plans change or the launch is pushed back.

Will I be able to order stuff from Amazon on the Siri Speaker? Send roses? Order pizza? Will Siri evolve from the current model, or will this be the existing Siri capabilities in my kitchen/living room?

If I say “Hey Siri”, who will get the call, my Apple Watch or my Siri Speaker? Will they expose settings to let me customize the experience?

If true, this will be interesting to watch.

Teens split video time 34% to YouTube, 27% to Netflix, 14% to live TV

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Hulu came in at 4%, Amazon at 3%. From the article:

In a recent survey of US college students, commissioned by LendEDU, only 8% of respondents said they didn’t have a Netflix account. This doesn’t mean young people actually pay for Netflix, as 54% said they use a friend’s or family member’s account. But at 92%, that is still an astonishing level of audience penetration.

Very interesting numbers. This is an audience that Apple covets. Going to be interesting to see how they progress in this space.

Apple’s strong earnings, possible supercycle

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Apple will announce earnings for 2017Q2 this afternoon at 1:30 PT.

Interested in specifics? Start with this MacRumors post.

Apple projected their revenues to be between $51.5 billion and $53.5 billion. Analysts project revenues between $51.7B and $55B.

From this CNBC article:

Apple investors are excited by the prospect of a “supercycle” in its next fiscal year, driven by the next generation of iPhones, and it appears the market for people who want to upgrade their devices could be over 300 million.

In a note released Monday, former Apple analyst turned venture capitalist Gene Munster, estimates that there will be an install base of more than 300 million iPhones this fall that are more than two years old.

The iPhone 6s will turn two in September after being released in 2015. So this more than 300 million figure cited by Munster means people on the 6s or below may be looking to upgrade to new models.

Read the rest of the piece, but the numbers make the case that we’ll see a possible iPhone upgrade supercycle this fall.

Latest Apple Park drone footage

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[VIDEO] Beautiful footage (embedded in the main Loop post). Apple Park is getting very close to completion.

iPad vs Chromebook, a battle for the education dollar, not even close.

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Brian Foutty, SwiftTeacher.org, on the differences between an iPad and a Chromebook in the classroom:

The iPad’s camera is the BIGGEST curricular differentiator. The ability to use the iPad’s camera to take high quality pictures or video to record evidence for a presentation in Keynote or Explain Everything is invaluable in the classroom.

And:

When I taught math, my students would use the camera to take video to track the trajectory of a football being thrown one day and a pumpkin being dropped from 45 feet the next day. Students would then use the Venier Video Physics app on another day to chart the paths of the football and the pumpkins. The app generates mathematical equations.

And:

Having a small, lightweight, and maneuverable device (think iPad) with a great camera is what made it possible for me to provide my students an interesting, engaging, and memorable educational experience. And this is but one of many examples that my colleagues and I are doing in my district on a weekly basis.

Camera, powerful processor tip the scales to the iPad.

More from Brian:

The iPad’s microphone is also a key asset of the iPad. The microphone allows students to record their thoughts, questions, and observations as part of class notes using Notability or class projects using Explain Everything, a voice recorder app, or a student feedback app such as Recap. Audio gives the students yet another vehicle to express their ideas and their learning in order for teachers to keep them involved and engaged in learning. Combining the microphone, the camera, and iMovie gives teachers a really powerful curricular tool to engage students in a way that allows students to create content both academically and creatively that results in deeper, more meaningful learning experiences for students.

And:

As I previously mentioned, my district did, at one point, decide to purchase Chromebooks, which we still have because of their light use and another reason I will mention later. When my district received our Chromebooks, we unboxed them, deployed them, and that was it. We, as teachers, had to figure it out without any support or help other than internet research. Google’s direct support of Chromebook is non-existent because they did not manufacture the product. Let’s not forget that Google’s top business is Search! They collect data about our use and sell it to advertisers.

And finally, on affordability:

Many Chromebooks are cheap(er). Many of them are plastic and not well made, but that cheapness comes at a cost: durability and residual value. The conventional wisdom (in education) has been that Chromebooks cost schools less money to deploy. I do not believe this conventional wisdom to be actual wisdom or even true. The new iPad definitely renders this argument for choosing Chromebook completely null and void.

This is a great piece, from an educator with real world teaching experience, on the myriad advantages of the iPad.

Apple extends repair coverage for 1st gen Apple Watch w/swollen batteries

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9to5Mac:

Apple has extended its service coverage for Apple Watch (1st gen) models experiencing expanded/swollen battery problems to three years, covering customers for service for an additional two years beyond the complimentary 1-year Limited Warranty that it provides with the device.

The issue with swollen and expanded batteries on first-gen Apple Watch models has been documented online by users experiencing the problem— here on Apple support forums, for example, and here on Reddit— but appears to not be widespread or something that has made mainstream media headlines.

Good to know.

Apple Watch helps college student after rollover crash

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[WARNING: AutoPlay]

ABC2 News:

“She kept going, and then I heard a crunch, and I was like ugh, now my car’s going to be in the shop for like two weeks this sucks. The next thought I had was you’re upside down.”

College student Casey Bennett was stuck in his car, had the wherewithal to press and hold his Apple Watch side button to place a call to 911. Great story.

Musical.ly syncs up with Apple Music

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[VIDEO] Recode:

Musical.ly lets its users create and share their own music videos, using snippets of songs. Starting on Friday, Apple Music will be the service that supplies the songs, replacing U.K.-based provider 7digital, according to people familiar with the companies’ plans.

If you’ve never experienced Musical.ly, check out the video embedded in the main Loop post. Some of these are very good. I can see the attraction, the fun of putting one of these together. Good connection for Apple.

A quick glimpse of Apple’s self driving car tech

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Bloomberg:

The white Lexus RX450h SUV emerged from an Apple facility this week and was kitted out with an array of sensors, according to a person who saw the vehicle and provided photos to Bloomberg News. The sensors included Velodyne Lidar Inc.’s top-of-the-range 64-channel lidar, at least two radar and a series of cameras. The sensors appear to be products bought off the shelf from suppliers, rather than custom-made, according to an industry expert who saw the photos.

Picture and animated GIF embedded in the Bloomberg piece.

Recode: Apple in talks to launch its own money transfer service

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Recode:

The company has recently held discussions with payments industry partners about introducing its own Venmo competitor, according to multiple sources familiar with the talks. The service would allow iPhone owners to send money digitally to other iPhone owners, these people said.

Not sure I see the logic in offering a Venmo-type service if it is not universal. When I need to send someone money, I never want to check to see if they have an iPhone first.

Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou to meet with Trump

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Nikkei Asian Review:

Chairman Terry Gou of key iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry, also known as Foxconn Technology Group, is set to meet U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington on Thursday, according to people familiar with the plan.

The sources did not disclose details of the first-ever encounter between the two. But with Trump’s persistent pledge to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., and Gou’s dogged determination to acquire the memory chip business of embattled Japanese conglomerate Toshiba, the two will likely exchange their views on related issues.

A lot at stake here. Trump wants Apple to build in the US. Lots of resistance to that, both in terms of logistics and financial impact.

Building a Hackintosh without the benefit of tonymacx86

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Jeff Benjamin, 9to5Mac:

In a previous article, posted shortly after Nvidia announced its new Pascal Mac drivers, I briefly discussed my plans to build a new Hackintosh. I’ve been planning and working on the machine for over a week, and I’m finally at the point where I can share the results of my journey.

This isn’t my first Hackintosh build, but it’s the first build where I decided to go about it without the assistance of the excellent tools over at tonymacx86. I’ve been long interested in building a Hackintosh using just the Clover EFI Bootloader, and that’s exactly what I did for this build.

Going about it this way allowed me to learn more about the process, and helped me to see that the entire premise, while tedious at times, is actually fairly straightforward. In this initial post, I’ll talk about some of my reasoning behind my hardware choices, and share some initial experiences and benchmark results.

If you are interested in building your own Hackintosh, I would certainly start my journey with tonymacx86. It’s just too great a resource to ignore. But I get Jeff’s logic. Now you can follow along with Jeff, learn as he learns.

Google’s ingenious tool to fight patent trolls, a tool Apple could use

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TechCrunch:

Google and Intertrust today announced the launch of PatentShield, a new program that aims to help defend startups from patent litigation — in return for a stake in those companies.

The basic idea here is to give startups that join the program ownership of a selection of patents from Google’s and Intertrust’s portfolio that they can then use as a deterrent against potential patent litigation from established players in their fields. Google is seeding the program with a selection of its own patents and Intertrust, which itself has built up a patent portfolio around media streaming, IoT, security and other areas, will also give these startups access to some of its own patents and its intellectual property team.

If a startup gets sued, it can then choose patents from the PatentShield portfolio to defend itself by countersuing its opponents.

This truly is ingenious, a terrific use of Google’s patent portfolio. The cost to Google is relatively small, and it gives a big club and shield a startup can use to defend itself against patent trolls. There is potential for misuse, certainly, a chance for a startup to turn bully. Time will tell if that becomes an issue.

The benefit to Google is immense, leveraging existing patents to bring in a steady trickle of startup equity. Smart business. I think Apple should do the same thing. A perfect act of benevolence that’s well in Apple’s wheelhouse.

CNBC: Fluent survey shows “Customer excitement for the Apple Watch has plateaued”

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CNBC:

According to a new survey, individuals who did not already own Apple’s smartwatch were unenthusiastic about buying one anytime soon, while just 8 percent of those surveyed said they planned to make the purchase.

A total of 1,339 consumers were polled by consumer marketing firm Fluent for the survey.

“Customer excitement for the Apple Watch has plateaued since hitting the market in 2015. Only current owners think it’s a great product, but nearly half of them don’t plan on upgrading,” a Fluent spokeswoman said in an email.

I think it’s hard to draw these sorts of conclusions about a market that is so young and still growing, still finding its way. Add to that that the Apple Watch is a secondary device, designed to augment the iPhone, at least for most people. Apple Watch sales are gravy for Apple, enhancing iPhone sales numbers, helping add value to the ecosystem.

As to upgrading, I’d say give that time, time for the Apple Watch and watchOS to evolve, to give people a reason to upgrade to the latest and greatest. Currently, a faster processor doesn’t mean much for most Apple Watch users. But over time, as watchOS gains capabilities, that need will change.

The Fluent survey may be factually correct, but I don’t agree with the tone of the analysis. Personally, I see a lot of headroom for Apple Watch growth and I do plan on upgrading in the next cycle.

Apple delays release of first original series ‘Carpool Karaoke’

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Reuters:

A premiere party for “Carpool Karaoke” scheduled for March in Los Angeles was postponed without explanation days before it was to take place. This week, the company again postponed its launch party, which had been rescheduled for Monday.

To me, this is not original content that will make or break Apple’s approach to a cable cutting alternative. Perhaps they are pushing this back to somehow intersect with WWDC.

Video of Steve Jobs’ 2006 visit to the Cupertino City Council

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[VIDEO] This is amazing to watch. My imagination, or do they keep calling him “Mr. Job”? Watch the video in the main Loop post, and watch another video, linked in the post, to a return visit 5 years later. Big change in Steve. Sad to see.