Business

Dr. Drang, from a longer piece on the responsibility shifts between Apple Senior VPs:

To me, Ahrendts’s five years in charge of Retail has been similar to Ive’s time as Chief Design Officer. The Apple Stores look better than ever, but they don’t work as well as they used to. No one I know looks forward to going to an Apple Store, even when it’s for the fun task of buying a new toy. No doubt a lot of this is due to Apple’s success and the mobs of people milling about, but Ahrendts didn’t solve the problem of efficiently handling the increased customer load.

Interesting take. Whether this is Ahrendts doing or a result of Apple’s massive growing pains, I do think there’s something to this.

And do head over to the original article and tap on that tiny asterisk after the phrase “milling about”, for a nice Yogi Berra quote.

Zack Whittaker, TechCrunch:

Apple is telling app developers to remove or properly disclose their use of analytics code that allows them to record how a user interacts with their iPhone apps — or face removal from the app store, TechCrunch can confirm.

In an email, an Apple spokesperson said: “Protecting user privacy is paramount in the Apple ecosystem. Our App Store Review Guidelines require that apps request explicit user consent and provide a clear visual indication when recording, logging, or otherwise making a record of user activity.”

This is all about GlassBox. From their web site:

Imagine if your website or mobile app could see exactly what your customers do in real time, and why they did it? This is no longer a hypothetical question, but a real possibility. This is Glassbox, an innovative customer experience solution to help your organization manage the results of big data analytics. Glassbox is the first Enterprise analytics platform that analyses every digital customer interaction. Can your website afford not to have a brain?

And here’s a link to the TechCrunch article laying all this out.

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

A recently published Apple patent application suggests that a future HomePod could feature support for 3D hand gestures, Face ID, and much more.

And:

Interestingly, the HomePod could have LEDs woven into the fabric to provide visual feedback for the hand gestures. The LEDs could also be configured to display alphanumeric characters through the fabric that change depending on time of day.

And:

As for Face ID, the patent explains that the HomePod could identify users in the vicinity of the speaker using “facial recognition,” as well as measure the distance of users to the speaker. This could allow for biometric authentication of Personal Requests, multiple user profiles, and more on a future HomePod.

Facial recognition is one of those technologies that has huge potential for misuse, if it falls into the wrong hands. I believe it is vital for Apple to keep its emphasis on privacy. I count on my information to stay MY information. That’s part of my agreement with Apple, and why I am so comfortable exposing so much of my life to Apple.

As to the HomePod, I’m really looking forward to seeing what comes next.

Engadget:

After AT&T decided to start rolling out “5G Evolution” branding on phones and networks that use 4G LTE Advanced technology, competitors have had to make decisions on how to respond. While T-Mobile mocked it with a sticker, Verizon (Engadget’s parent company) fired off a letter. So what is Sprint going to do? It has filed a lawsuit in federal court, seeking an injunction to prevent AT&T from using 5GE tags on its devices or advertising.

5GE is enhanced LTE, not 5G. That 5GE branding is consumer-hostile, at the very least.

From the AT&T Mobility Wikipedia page:

In 2017, AT&T began to similarly use the trademark 5G Evolution (5G E) to refer to LTE networks upgraded to support higher data speeds via LTE-Advanced and LTE Advanced Pro features, such as 4×4 MIMO antennas, 256-QAM, and three-way carrier aggregation. AT&T promotes these services as having a theoretical top speed of 400 Mbit/s. The suite is supported on certain high-end Android smartphones offered by the carrier, such as the LG V30 and the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S9, and the iPhone XR and XS. In late 2018, AT&T began to deploy software updates to display a “5G E” network indicator when connected to such a network.

This is a bad look, AT&T. Pull that 5GE from the status bar before your brand takes an even bigger hit.

Terrific, thoughtful piece about Angela Ahrendts’ departure and Deirdre O’Brien’s appointment.

One highlight (of many):

Across the U.S., retailers struggle to make ends meet. Since Ahrendts began at Apple in 2014, legendary brands like Sears, Bon-Ton, Toys R Us, RadioShack, and countless others have filed for bankruptcy. Mall operators face the challenge of repurposing massive vacant anchor stores. Yet Apple stores are consistently filled to the brim. The same success that has allowed Apple to thrive amidst a sea of store closures has become a lightning rod for retail woes.

It’s true that making an appointment at an Apple store often means days of waiting for an available slot, and walk-ins are almost impossible. Since 2014, Ahrendts has guided the launch of the Apple Watch, iPad Pro, AirPods, HomePod, and yearly iPhone models. Each of these products have led to growing customer demand even as Apple increases its store footprint globally. This strain on resources would’ve occurred no matter who was at the helm. Simply increasing the number of Apple stores worldwide brings with it a new list of problems long enough to fill another article.

Great read.

One highlight:

Deirdre was part of the team that planned and launched Apple’s very first online and retail stores. She has been a part of Retail’s exciting expansion and every product launch since. She knows the value of the deep human connections that retail experiences make possible — and she knows this is where Apple shows its heart and soul.

Good letter. Follow the headline link to read the whole thing.

Kashmir Hill, writing for Gizmodo, in the latest of her six part series on dumping Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and, this week, Apple from her life. Fascinating read.

Personally, I was gobsmacked by the announcement.

As we posted last night, Apple formally announced that Angela Ahrendts would be leaving Apple this April, naming Deirdre O’Brien as the new senior vice president of Retail + People.

I’ve long been a fan of Angela’s. Hard to know what aspects of Apple Retail success she should get credit for, how much of those plans were in place when she arrived, but that aside, I’ve always appreciated her intelligence and her well spoken representation as the public face of Apple Retail.

Here’s a little publicized interview from a few years back that CNBC just posted, with Angela talking about retail.

And if you are unfamiliar with Deirdre O’Brien, here’s a short backgrounder to fill in a few of the details.

From Apple’s announcement:

In her expanded role, Deirdre will bring her three decades of Apple experience to lead the company’s global retail reach, focused on the connection between the customer and the people and processes that serve them. She will continue to lead the People team, overseeing all People-related functions, including talent development and Apple University, recruiting, employee relations and experience, business partnership, benefits, compensation, and inclusion and diversity.

It is interesting to look at the updated Leadership page, where Deirdre is the only person with a “+” in their title (Senior Vice President, Retail + People). Plenty of “and”, but no other “+”.

Retail and HR are such different spaces, I can’t help but wonder if that + is a stopgap, a temporary assignment until they find someone else to take over one spot or the other. Or, perhaps, that + is simply a typo, and Deirdre is in both camps for the long haul, with an and in her future.

Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:

Security researcher Linuz Henze has shared a video demonstration of what is claimed to be a macOS Mojave exploit to access passwords stored in the Keychain. However, he has said he is not sharing his findings with Apple out of protest.

Henze has publicly shared legitimate iOS vulnerabilities in the past, so he has a track record of credibility.

However, Henze is frustrated that Apple’s bug bounty program only applies to iOS, not macOS, and has decided not to release more information about his latest Keychain invasion.

As Apple explores changes to its bug reporting process, this should join the FaceTime eavesdropping bug as case studies for how information like this flows back to Apple.

CNBC:

Grant Thompson, the 14-year-old who found Apple’s FaceTime flaw, may get a bounty for his discovery.

“I kind of found this one on accident, which is pretty surprising to me that like Apple didn’t get this and a 14-year-old kid found it by accident,” Thompson told CNBC.

And:

[Grant’s mother] said a high-level Apple executive flew to Tucson, Arizona, on Friday afternoon to meet with Grant. The executive, whom she declined to name, “thanked us in person and also asked for our feedback, asked us how they could improve their reporting process.”

“They also indicated that Grant would be eligible for the bug bounty program. And we would hear from their security team the following week in terms of what that meant.

I do hope Apple finds ways to improve their reporting process. Ideally, the new process would help egregious, widely reported bugs quickly find their way to the appropriate team at Apple, perhaps with a more publicly exposed status system that makes it clear the reported bug is valid, with a fix in the works.

The idea of tons of iPhone owners duplicating the work of others by reporting a known bug, all in an attempt to get it to rise to the right team at Apple seems incredibly wasteful to me. No easy fix here, glad Apple is working on this.

Zac Hall, 9to5Mac:

Batteries are consumable, we all know so well now, and that’s proven true for the tiny batteries inside AirPods after two years of daily use. Battery life that once exceeded five hours now struggles to power AirPods through three hours of continuous usage at the same volume.

And:

In practice, I used to never hear the low battery alert during usage. I rarely listened to audio with AirPods for five straight hours before charging in the carrying case without thought. More recently, I’ve heard the bloop sound much more regularly, frequently followed by AirPods dying before I’m ready to recharge.

Yup. I’ve had my AirPods for about two years, and the loss of battery life is noticeable. And, as Zac points out, though I do feel the tug to buy a new set for fresh batteries, a product refresh is rumored to be on the horizon.

I wish Apple offered an inexpensive battery replacement program. Or a trade-in program, replacing aging AirPods with a new set, for a fee. I’d absolutely go for that.

UPDATE: To be clear [H/T, Gabriel Jordan], Apple does have an official AirPods battery replacement program. The cost seems to be $49 per AirPod. So $98 for a battery refresh. Plus tax and shipping. Though there’s an out-of-warranty fee of $69 per. Going to assume that’s for non-battery repair.

No matter, $98+ to refresh the battery is incentive for me to wait and apply that money to the next generation. Just hope it comes soon.

Your twitter feed is no doubt filled with discussion about Facebook and Google misusing Apple’s Enterprise Certificate system and Apple canceling those certificates.

Consider this small quote from Google’s official response to this situation:

The Screenwise Meter iOS app should not have operated under Apple’s developer enterprise program — this was a mistake, and we apologize.

“This was a mistake, and we apologize.” Such simple words to say. Facebook could easily have ended all this discussion with something similar.

Instead, they denied accountability, insisted that they did what anyone would do. They even sent out a company wide internal memo, just to make it clear to their employees that this was all a big misunderstanding.

TechCrunch, who was named in the memo, took the memo apart, brick-by-brick. Brilliantly.

Follow the headline link, read the Facebook memo and TechCrunch’s interstitial comments. There’s some real insight here.