Apple

Steve Jobs once said that Apple almost went bankrupt because it focused too much on making a profit

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Reddit:

In light of all the recent price hikes to Apple’s products I was reminded by a quote I read once from Steve Jobs. He was talking about why Apple started failing and almost went bankrupt before they brought Steve back into the company.

And the quote:

What happened at Apple, to be honest, over the years was the goal used to be to make the best computers in the world. And that was goal one. Goal two, we got from Hewlett-Packard actually which was “we have to make a profit”. Because if we don’t make a profit we can’t do goal one. So, yeah, I mean we enjoyed making a profit, but the purpose of making a profit was so we can make the best computers in the world. Along the way somewhere those two got reversed. The goal is to make a lot of money and well, if we have to make some good computers well ok we’ll do that… ’cause we can make a lot of money doing that. And, it’s very subtle. It’s very subtle at first, but it turns out it’s everything. That one little subtle flip… takes 5 years to see it, but that one little subtle flip in 5 years means everything.

To be clear, I’m not posting this as a comment on the current state of Apple. To me, Apple then and Apple now are two completely different beasts. But I did appreciate the quote, thought it worth sharing.

Losing health data when upgrading an iPhone

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From this tweet by Ryan Jones:

https://twitter.com/rjonesy/status/1059802579734011911

And this from the linked post by Michael Tsai:

The Health app can’t import its own data, so you need to use (and trust) a third-party app. Also, chances are you’re going to use iCloud (or some even less secure means) to transport the export file, so why not just include it (optionally) in the iCloud backup. This is a pattern we see from time to time with Apple. You run into the limits of Apple’s idealized solution and then it’s sort of your fault if something goes wrong with the more pragmatic solution that you resort to. But it’s also sort of Apple’s fault for only solving part of the problem that it was in the better position to address.

If you are at all invested in your health data, read the whole post.

What can you connect to the new iPad Pro with USB-C?

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Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:

The new 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro features a USB-C port instead of a Lightning port. However, just because a device features a new port, it does not mean anything with a USB-C connector will suddenly work with the iPad Pro. There are still some limitations but USB-C makes it even easier to connect to external displays, cameras, and other accessories.

Here’s what you can do with your new iPad Pro and its shiny new port.

First things first, nice job by Benjamin Mayo laying all this out. Terrific read.

But I have to say, while I applaud USB-C’s reversibility (like a Lightning plug, there’s no upside down, no wrong way to plug it in) and ubiquity (a wave of adoption, making their way onto devices in the same way as USB-A), I struggle with the wildly different functionality offered by identical looking cables and ports.

Ben covers a few examples, but here’s another one:

https://twitter.com/viticci/status/1060321637076271105

There’s no way to tell from just looking at a cable what functionality it supports. And while you might just try all the cables in your cable drawer until you find one that works, there might be trouble down that road as well. From this Gizmodo post, courtesy of Stefan Arentz:

All cables are not created equal: some will charge most efficiently, others might just fry your battery. Google Chromebook engineer and Caped Cable Crusader Benson Leung has been testing USB-C cables off Amazon, and it’s not just the no-brand products that have been failing.

I’ve had some personal experience with this, especially where USB-C dongles are concerned. Though all those USB-C ports look identical on the outside, some pass through power, others not as much, and some not at all. Yeesh.

Apple says battery can be replaced individually in New MacBook Air with Retina display

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More good news as far as Apple products and repairability:

Big news for repairability and environmental responsibility: the battery can be individually replaced in the new MacBook Air, according to Apple’s internal Service Readiness Guide for the notebook, obtained by MacRumors.

And:

In all other MacBook and MacBook Pro models with a Retina display released since 2012, when a customer has required a battery replacement, Apple has replaced the entire top case enclosure, including the keyboard and trackpad. This is because the battery is glued into the top case in Mac notebooks with Retina displays.

The battery in the new MacBook Air is still glued into the top case, the aluminum enclosure that houses the keyboard and trackpad, but Apple will be providing Genius Bars and Apple Authorized Service Providers with tools to remove the battery and reinstall a new one with no top case replacement required.

Glue is the bane of repairability. I wish Apple would develop a version of the 3M Command strips, the ones that stick to walls, strong enough to hold up a framed picture, but come off by stretching them. They’re even reusable.

Would love to be able to remove a battery by pulling on the adhesive tab to loosen it, replace the battery with the same adhesive strip, all without that gooey mess of melted glue.

UPDATE: Apparently, Apple does use something akin to these Command adhesive strips in some iPhone models, though they are not reusable. More of this! And H/T Gabriel Jordan.

Here’s how to replace the memory on the new Mac mini

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This is a relatively easy thing to do. It’s all screws, no glue or other messy bits to deal with.

If you are considering a Mac mini purchase, check the replacement RAM costs before you order.

UPDATE: As the linked post says, the images are from the 2014 Mac mini, thought the steps are the same. Thanks to Patrick McCarron, here’s a link to another post that accomplishes the same thing, but on the actual 2018 Mac mini.

[VIDEO] The new iPad Pro: An artist’s review

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[VIDEO] If you are considering laying out the bucks for one of the new iPad Pros, take the time to watch Ian Bernard’s video, embedded in the main Loop post. It is a thoughtful, rich piece, told from an artist’s perspective. [H/T Tim

The new iPad Pro and Laptop Magazine’s video transcode test. Wow.

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Lots and lots of numbers in this review, packed with easy to read comparison charts. This iPad Pro comes out on top all the way through.

There’s a battery life comparison (based on continuous web surfing), with the iPad Pro lasting more than 13 hours, compared with the Surface Pro 6 at a bit over 9 hours. Same with GeekBench 4 numbers, with the iPad Pro multi-core at 17995 and the Surface Pro 6 at 13,025.

But scroll down to that video transcoding chart. Whoa. The Surface Pro 6 took 31 minutes to transcode a 12-minute 4K video clip. The MacBook Pro fared a bit better, just under 26 minutes. But the new iPad Pro? 7 minutes, 47 seconds.

That is one blazingly fast machine.

The elephant in the room at last week’s Apple event was Intel

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Though we did include this review in yesterday’s list of the new MacBook Air reviews, I wanted to link to John Gruber’s review separately, for his take on Intel.

The elephant in the room at last week’s Apple event was Intel.

Apple introduced two products based on Intel chips — the new MacBook Air and new Mac Mini — but barely mentioned the company’s name. The word “Intel” appeared on a single slide during VP of hardware engineering Laura Legros’s presentation of the new MacBook Air. She also spoke the word once, saying the new Airs have “the latest Intel integrated graphics”. In the presentation of the new Mac Mini, “Intel” never appeared in a slide and wasn’t mentioned.

And:

Apple is not going to throw Intel under the bus — they’re taking an “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” approach, as they should.

Push is slowly coming to shove here. As John points out, the new iPad Pro simply crushes the Intel-powered MacBook Air in GeekBench score, especially that MultiCore score (18,051 to 7,847).

As products, the Mac and the iPad are still on different tracks, not plug replaceable. But it does seem highly likely (a “when”, not an “if”) that Apple will eventually ship a Mac powered by their own bionic chip.

Apple’s AirPods surge to top of Best Buys’ October best-seller list

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AirPods have long flirted with the top spot on Best Buys’ monthly sales list but this report is the first time they’ve made it all the way to the top.

Why now? Could be the new iPhones, Macs and iPads, combined with the approaching holiday gift-giving season, a bit of a perfect storm.

Number three on that list? Apple’s Lightning-to-3.5mm headphone adapter. Interesting counterpoint.

The T2 chip physically disconnects the mic when your Mac lid is closed

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Interesting snippet from this TechCrunch post:

Buried in Apple’s latest range of MacBooks — including the MacBook Pro out earlier this year and the just-announced MacBook Air — is the new T2 security chip, which helps protect the device’s encryption keys, storage, fingerprint data and secure boot features.

Little was known about the chip until today. According to its newest published security guide, the chip comes with a hardware microphone disconnect feature that physically cuts the device’s microphone from the rest of the hardware whenever the lid is closed.

And from the T2 Security Chip Overview itself:

All Mac portables with the Apple T2 Security Chip feature a hardware disconnect that ensures that the microphone is disabled whenever the lid 
 is closed. This disconnect is implemented in hardware alone, and therefore prevents any software, even with root or kernel privileges in macOS, and even the software on the T2 chip, from engaging the microphone when the lid is closed. (The camera is not disconnected in hardware because its field of view 
 is completely obstructed with the lid closed.)

Good to know.

Rene Ritchie interviews Apple’s Sr. Director of Mac Product Marketing Tom Boger

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[VIDEO] If you watched Apple’s event last week, you’ll know Tom Boger as the person who introduced the new Mac mini.

This is a subset of a longer interview (here’s a link to the longer version, a podcast) that focuses on Apple’s Mac product grid (Steve Jobs famously introduced the Desktop/Portable vs Consumer/Pro grid back in the day) and the MacBook Air’s place in the product line, as well as how Apple decides which parts to make user serviceable.

This is absolutely worth a watch/listen. I found Tom’s explanation of where the MacBook Air fits to be interesting, but it still doesn’t click for me. Listen for yourself (video embedded in main Loop post). Nice work, Rene.

It’s not your imagination: Phone battery life is getting worse

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Geoffrey A Fowler, Washington Post:

If you recently bought a new flagship phone, chances are its battery life is actually worse than an older model.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been performing the same battery test over and over again on 13 phones. With a few notable exceptions, this year’s top models underperformed last year’s. The new iPhone XS died 21 minutes earlier than last year’s iPhone X. Google’s Pixel 3 lasted nearly an hour and a half less than its Pixel 2.

Phone makers tout all sorts of tricks to boost battery life, including more-efficient processors, low-power modes and artificial intelligence to manage app drain. Yet my results, and tests by other reviewers I spoke with, reveal an open secret in the industry: the lithium-ion batteries in smartphones are hitting an inflection point where they simply can’t keep up.

In a nutshell, the case being made here is that battery efficiency is growing very slowly, while screen technology (and other) power draw is growing somewhat faster than that.

When a musician on the cusp of fame dies, what happens to all the music on their laptop?

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Jon Caramanica, New York Times:

Lil Peep died of an accidental drug overdose last November at 21. Afterward, attention turned to his computer. First, it went to London, where the files were backed up by First Access Entertainment, the company that helped guide his career.

Then it went to his mother, Liza Womack. In an interview in her cozy Long Island home, sitting on a nondescript couch that belonged to Peep and was shipped cross-country after his death, she calmly recalled walking into an Apple store, handing the laptop to a clerk, and saying: “My son died. This is him. Take this and put it on a new one.”

Sometime after that, in London, the producer George Astasio and Peep’s longtime musical collaborator Smokeasac finally set out to catalog its contents. What they found were Lil Peep’s complete recordings — some finished, some in fragments; some heard and familiar, many not.

This is an interesting story. Lil Peep was just starting to break out. With his death, what would, and should, become of all his songs and song snippets?

Apple devices, ranked by thinness

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From Reddit, a list of the thinnest Apple devices:

  • iPod Nano 7th gen – 5.4mm thick
  • iPad Pro 2018 – 5.9 mm
  • iPod Touch 5/6th gen – 6.1 mm
  • iPad Air 2 – 6.1 mm
  • iPad Pro 10.5inch 2017 – 6.1 mm
  • iPad mini – 6.1 mm
  • iPhone 6 – 6.9mm (thinnest iphone)

If accurate, this makes the new iPad Pro the second thinnest device Apple has ever made.

The folding phone, come to life

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Take a look at the FlexPai folding phone product page. This is the first folding phone concept I’ve seen that made me see a path to the future.

If you scroll about 3/4 of the way down the page, you’ll see the phone folded in half (sort of), showing three displays, with an interior and exterior display as well as one for the spine.

The design feels clunky to me, the folded phone too bulky for my pocket, but I can absolutely see the value of a phone thin enough to fit in my pocket that unfolds into a full size tablet. Best of both worlds.

I can’t help but imagine such a device from Apple. Someday.

New iPad Pro Geekbench scores, compared with MacBook Pro 2018

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Here’s the link to the iPad Pro Geekbench page. Note that this testing was done with the high end, 1TB model.

  • iPad Pro single core score: 5020
  • iPad Pro multi-core score: 18217

Here’s the link to the MacBook Pro 2018 Geekbench page.

  • MacBook Pro single core score: 5344
  • MacBook Pro multi-core score: 22552

Granted, these comparisons are not apples-to-apples, but still, these iPad Pro results seem impressive. They are both top of their respective line machines and, obviously, the iPad Pro is much less expensive.

If my math is right, the MacBook Pro single-core score is about 6.5% faster than the iPad Pro. That’s not much.

The video of Apple’s Brooklyn Mac/iPad Pro event

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[VIDEO] I started watching this again (embedded in the main Loop post), just to see those cool animations at the beginning. I do hope Apple continues down this creative path, even if there’s no direct payoff in the presentation itself.

iPhones are allergic to helium

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Kyle Wiens, iFixit:

This is the kind of tale that you don’t hear every day. Erik Wooldridge is a Systems Specialist at Morris Hospital near Chicago. During the installation of a new GE Healthcare MRI machine, he started getting calls that cell phones weren’t working. Then, some Apple Watches started glitching.

This is just an incredible read. Don’t want to give anything away, just dig in. Great story, well told.

Rene Ritchie hands-on with the new iPad Pro

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[VIDEO] Terrific, densely detailed, hands-literally-on look at the new iPad Pro from Rene Ritchie, part of his excellent Vector series. Lots to absorb here, 5 minutes well spent. Video embedded in the main Loop post.

There is no reason for the MacBook to exist with the new MacBook Air

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Reddit:

The baseline MacBook costs more than the MacBook Air and is a downgrade in literally every way. Smaller screen, older generation keyboard, 480p camera, no thunderbolt 3, only 1 port, worse CPUs that are from last generation, no Touch ID.

The MacBook no longer makes sense, and it didn’t even make sense compared to the baseline MacBook Pro.

Jim and I spent some time discussing this on yesterday’s Dalrymple Report. I do find the relationship between the MacBook Air and the MacBook a bit confusing.

Two comments from the linked Reddit thread:

I always thought that the Macbook was replacing the Macbook air, similar to what they did with the iPad

And:

You thought correctly. This new laptop is just a bigger MacBook (Retina). It’s not an Air. Apple is just calling it an Air for marketing purposes. It has the same screen type and Y-series CPU as the Retina, not the U-series as the Air uses.

Instead calling the product lineup the MacBook 12″ and MacBook 13″, they’re calling it the MacBook and the New MacBook Air.

One possible motivation for this move, aside from giving the (MacBook Air) people what they want, is addressed in this thoughtful Op-Ed piece from Ben Lovejoy:

When Apple launched the iPhone X, it did more than just change the design language of the iPhone: it also offered a whole new pricing level. Not just for iPhones, but for any smartphone. It was a move that has significantly boosted the average selling price (ASP) of the iPhone range as a whole.

This is a trick Apple is now repeating with the 2018 MacBook Air

Interesting. Is this ASP ladder-climbing, an effort to raise the price of the entry level Mac? Though I do find the branding a bit confusing between the MacBook and MacBook Air, there’s no doubt that Apple is genius when it comes to product pricing.

Apple passes 100 million active Mac users

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Emil Protalinski, VentureBeat:

Apple CEO Tim Cook announced during the company’s “More in the Making” event in New York City that Apple has hit a new milestone: 100 million active Mac users. He added that 51 percent of Mac buyers are “new to Mac” and noted that in China that figure is 76 percent, highlighting growth in the world’s most populous country.

And:

By comparison, there are about 1.5 billion active Windows PCs.

Consider this point, made on Twitter by Horace Dediu:

40% of all Macs ever sold are still in use.

I wonder if you ignored the first 10 years of Mac purchases, if that 40% number would drop, even to 39%. To me, this says a ton about the impact the success of the iPhone and the evolution of the Apple ecosystem has had on the Mac.

Using a Mac Photos smart album to tell how often you use your iPhone’s telephoto lens

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The iPhone XR, famously, does not have a telephoto lens. David Smith worked out a way to see how often he’s used the telephoto in the past, with his iPhone X:

https://twitter.com/_davidsmith/status/1056924594869862400

In a nutshell, he jumped into Mac Photos and created a smart album based purely on focal length, which eliminated all but images taken with the telephoto lens. Very smart.

iPhone XR: A deep dive into depth

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This is a fantastic look at how smartphone cameras capture and handle depth in photos. This is a fascinating read all the way around.

It’s from the Halide blog, and does get into how the Halide camera app expands on the iPhone XR’s “humans only” portrait mode. But there’s lots of interesting tidbits here.

One in particular stood out for me:

It seems the iPhone XR has two advantages over the iPhone XS: it can capture wider angle depth photos, and because the wide-angle lens collects more light, the photos will come out better in low light and have less noise.

Remember how we said the XR’s Portrait mode is only available on human portraits? When it comes to faces, you never want to photograph a person up close with a wide angle lens, as it distorts the face in an unflattering way.

That means you really have to take portraits on the iPhone XR from medium shot (waist-up). If you want a close-up headshot, kind of like the iPhone XS, you’ll have to crop, which means you’ll lose a lot of resolution. A wide angle lens isn’t always a plus.

Jump to the blog post, check out the images, especially those that compare the iPhone XR and XS side by side. Be sure to read the captions.

Sometimes, the iPhone XR will take nicer-looking Portrait photos than any other iPhone, including the XS and XS Max.

But most of the time, the XS will probably produce a better result.

Short term, the XR is going to give you better results in low light, because of the wider aperture, which lets in more light. But over time, I believe machine learning is going to conquer that physical limitation, and we’ll see new generations of iPhone cameras that produce unbelievable low light images.

Apple iPad and MacBook event, today at 10a ET and 7a PT

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This morning’s Apple event starts 3 hours earlier than most, since it takes place on the east coast, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (I love their URL, bam.org).

You can watch the event on your Apple device, either via the Apple Special Events web page or on the Apple Events app on your Apple TV.

Speaking of the Apple Special Events web page: Each time you reload the page, you’ll get a different version of the event invite artwork. What does it all mean? Guess we’ll find out soon.

iOS 12.1 hits today, brings Group FaceTime and new emoji to iPhone and iPad

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Apple:

iOS 12.1 will be available Tuesday, October 30, bringing Group FaceTime and more than 70 new emoji to iPhone and iPad. FaceTime changed the way people communicate and share important moments, and now with Group FaceTime, it’s easy to chat with more people than ever before — from 2 to 32 people. iOS 12.1 also brings Depth Control in real-time preview and Dual SIM support to iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR customers.

Here’s a link to the new emoji sets.

I do love the new emoji. They are beautifully rendered, no doubt. But I do wish Apple would take the “Add to Favorites” model used on the Mac’s Character Viewer to allow me to mark specific favorite emoji to make them easier to find. The more emoji we add, the harder an individual emoji is to find.

There is a Frequently Used section on my iOS emoji keyboard, but emoji fall off that view as others are used. And the ever-changing view of the Frequently Used emoji makes it hard to develop any sort of muscle memory.

Lots of interesting nuggets in Daring Fireball’s iPhone XR review roundup

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Lots of discussion of the camera in this Daring Fireball review rollup. Specifically, the absence of the telephoto lens on the iPhone XR.

As you read this (and, if you are considering the XR, you should), think about how you use your current iPhone camera. If you have an iPhone with a telephoto lens, do you ever use it? When you bring up your camera, do you ever tap the 1x (the 1x turns into a 2x) to switch cameras? Note that in low light, you’ll likely get digital zoom, not the telephoto, but wanted to set the stage for reading the Daring Fireball piece.

Seems to me, this is an overlooked part of the camera interface. If you live your life in the wide angle lens, you won’t miss the telephoto if you move to the iPhone XR.

Another interesting bit from the rollup was something I alluded to in this post from earlier this morning. From this Rene Ritchie iPhone XR review for iMore:

Less fine is the sudden loss of Z-axis asymmetry thanks to the shoved down Lightning port on iPhone XR.

Rene is referring to the image embedded in the post showing the Lightning port not being aligned with the screws. It’s “shoved down” to make room for the LCD display. And as John Gruber points out, once you see it, you can’t unsee it. No big deal, but interesting, at least to the design nerd in me.

Accessing the Apple Watch ECG by changing region settings

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Guilherme Rambo, 9to5Mac:

One of the new features of Apple Watch Series 4 is the ability to take an Electrocardiogram of the user’s heart through a series of new sensors on the back of the device and on the revised digital crown. Since this feature requires regulatory approval by health authorities, Apple Watch ECG will roll out to users in the United States first, where Apple was able to get clearance from the FDA.

But if you are outside of the United States?

This limitation is not enforced by hardware, and if you buy an Apple Watch Series 4 in any country, it includes the new sensors. Looking at code within iOS related to the ECG feature, we’ve been able to confirm that its limitation to the US will be based on the software region of the user’s devices (iPhone and Apple Watch).

Read the article for the key to changing your region and for the distinction between region and language. Very interesting.

iPhone XR teardown

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Beyond all the usual teardown detail, there are two things of note worth a look in the iFixit article:

  • In Step 6, you’ll see a modular SIM card reader, much easier to replace and not requiring a logic board swap. Small thing, but interesting.

  • Much more interesting to me, take a look at the image in Step 3. There are two major differences between the iPhone XS, on the top, and the iPhone XR, on the bottom. One difference is obvious: The XR has no antenna band. But can you spot the other difference? It’s quite subtle.

Rather than spoil it here, I’ll post about it in a few minutes, when I get to the Daring Fireball iPhone XR review roundup.

Koss headphones commercial filmed entirely on an iPhone XS Max

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[VIDEO] Amazing to me. If I hadn’t read about this experiment, I would never have known this (embedded in the main Loop post) was filmed on an iPhone.

From the director, via this Reddit thread:

I wanted to share this for anyone interested in the full potential of the iPhone XS Max camera system or interested in hearing the thoughts on the Xs Max potential from someone who shoots video and photos professionally.

I just got my Xs Max a week ago and I was totally blown away by the new camera system. The dynamic range, color saturation, af acquisition and af tracking and over all image quality had me thinking, ‘I wonder if I could actually shoot a commercial with this, and if so could anyone even tell?’

Steven Soderberg who is a filmmaker I idolize shot an entire full length film on an iPhone and I’ve seen a ton of other examples from other filmmakers trying the same thing, so I figured why not! Ha.

Expect more and more of this sort of thing.