Somewhat buried in Jason Snell’s iPhone 10th birthday celebration writeup was this wonderful picture.
There’s the incredibly intense look on Steve’s face. And the fact that this is one of the last such events where none of the pictures was taken using an iPhone.
Gregg Keizer, Computerworld:
Apple will steal a march on Microsoft this year when for the first time this century shipments of devices powered by its operating systems outnumber those running Windows, research firm Gartner said today.
In 2017, Apple’s combination of iOS and macOS — the former on iPhones and iPads, the latter on Macs — will take second place from Windows on the devices shipped during the year. The gap between the two will widen in 2018 and 2019, with Apple ahead of Microsoft both years.
Not terribly surprising, given the rise of mobile and Apple’s dominance in that space. But still, just a little bit satisfying.
Not clear from the article but, presumably, first place is held by Android.
Family sharing is extremely useful. Use it to share music, apps, photos, and even a calendar. No blood test required.
Nice job laying this out by The App Factor.
This is cool. iFixit pulled together a single page, scrolling gallery of 10 years of iPhone teardowns, from the original iPhone all the way to the iPhone 7 Plus.
Definitely worth a look.
DSL Reports:
AT&T continues to quickly hike the cost of unlimited data in order to drive its dwindling grandfathered unlimited data users to metered plans. Users in our forums say they’re being notified of a $5 bump in the cost of unlimited data starting in March of 2017. The hike would be the second such hike in as many years, after AT&T bumped the cost of unlimited data last February.
Back in the early days of the iPhone, success for AT&T was no guarantee. To help bring customers to the fold, AT&T offered unlimited data plans for a limited time.
These plans have been “grandfathered” since then, but AT&T has made a number of efforts to wean customers off those unlimited plans to more traditional metered data plans. These efforts continue with the coming $5 per month bump.
See the main Loop post for a look at two thought experiments, one from Rob Rhyne (via John Gruber) and the other from Mark Hibber. Both quite interesting.
Gartner:
Advances in various technologies will drive users to interact with their smartphones in more intuitive ways, said Gartner, Inc. Gartner predicts that, by 2019, 20 percent of all user interactions with the smartphone will take place via virtual personal assistants (VPAs).
And:
Apple’s Siri and Google Now are currently the most widely used VPAs on smartphones. Fifty-four percent of U.K. and U.S. respondents used Siri in the last three months. Google Now is used by 41 percent of U.K. respondents and 48 percent of U.S. respondents.
Interesting that Apple has not joined the Amazon Echo and Google Home party. The trend for voice is clearly rising. Though my Apple Watch is always listening, there is a core difference between Siri and Echo/Home. While both are always on, Echo and Home are more traditionally conversational. I ask about the weather and a voice responds, all without my having to tilt my watch to look at the screen or pull my iPhone out of my pocket.
Will Apple go this route?
Short answer:
There was no USB-C back in 2012 when Apple shipped Lightning on iPhone 5. It didn’t exist. The spec wasn’t even finalized until August of 2014.
But there’s more to this article. I especially appreciate the overlay showing the relative footprints of USB-A, USB-C, and Lightning.
Will the iPhone ever move to USB-C?
USB-C would require another port change for customers. Many people weren’t very happy with the last one, and Lightning was 10 years after Dock. It’s only been 5 years since Lightning. And in that time, with hundreds of millions of devices on the market, Lightning has become ubiquitous enough that everyone has it, typically in abundance.
Interesting that the Mac has made the first move, going all-in on USB-C. I wonder if there’s a prototype USB-C iPhone floating around an Apple campus somewhere.
In the just-released Greenpeace report, Clicking Green: Who is winning the race to build a green internet?, Apple simply crushes it.
Through page after page of detailed analysis, Apple comes out on top, and usually by a pretty fair margin. Apple should be very proud of these results.
If you want to cut right to the chase, scroll to page 46 for an alphabetical walk through all company scores. Compare Amazon’s individual category grades (they got an overall C) with Apple (one of the few companies that got an overall A).
Nice job, Apple.
From a blog post that ran on the BBC News site, ten years ago today:
As the hype piled up Jobs told us we were witnessing history and he was going to reinvent the telephone – some doubts crept in.
And:
It is going to be expensive – $499 for the 4gb, $599 for 8gb – when it arrives in US stores in June.
And:
Apple is entering a market where giants like Nokia, Motorola and Samsung are making pretty smart phones. A bit of a contrast to the easier landscape which the ipod entered. Still – as Jobs pointed out – there’s a big market to aim at, with a billion mobile phones sold last year.
Fun looking back. After all, who knew what was coming? Well, Steve did.
BBC News correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones, recalling that day, ten years ago, when the iPhone was first unveiled:
Ten years ago I was running from San Francisco’s Moscone Centre to a nearby hotel to edit a piece for the Ten O’Clock News when my phone rang.
“Have you got your hands on this new Apple phone for a piece to camera?” shouted a producer in London. “If not, why not?”
This appeared to be an impossible demand.
And:
Then I remembered that we had been offered – and turned down for lack of time – an interview with Apple’s marketing chief Phil Schiller. I turned around and headed back to the Moscone Centre. Having located Mr Schiller I asked whether before our interview I might just have a look at the iPhone.
He graciously handed his over – and rather than trying to ring Jony Ive or order 5,000 lattes as Steve Jobs had on stage, I brandished it at the camera for my Ten O’Clock News piece.
And:
The following weekend a Sunday newspaper columnist described me as having clutched the phone as if it were “a fragment of the true cross”, and some viewers complained that the BBC had given undue prominence to a product launch.
Undue prominence? As it turns out, no amount of coverage could fairly have been labeled undue.
Internet History Podcast:
Stop for a minute and imagine how momentous a change the iPod engendered within Apple itself. This was a company that, for nearly 30 years, had been a personal computer company. The blue sky thinking that allowed Apple to make a stand-alone MP3 player—to enter a mature market as an outsider and believe it could dominate—also engendered the sort of fearlessness that made it possible to break with other long-standing Apple shibboleths. The iPod eventually worked with Windows machines, even at the risk of cannibalizing Mac sales. iTunes eventually worked with Windows machines. Apple (gasp) made a Windows app! As Phil Schiller told Walter Isaacson in his Steve Jobs biography: “We felt we should be in the music player business, not just in the Mac business.” It was this conceptual leap, this strategic bravery (just as much as a penchant for good design and reliable manufacturing) that would be responsible for Apple’s success in the 2000s.
Apple was no longer just a computer company. It could be whatever it wanted to be.
And:
“I was actually pushing to do two sizes—to have a regular iPhone and an iPhone mini like we had with the iPod,” Apple’s chief hardware executive Jon Rubenstein says in Dogfight. “I thought one could be a smartphone and one could be a dumber phone. But we never got a lot of traction on the small one, and in order to do one of these projects you really need to put all your wood behind one arrow.”
And:
Jobs himself approved the list of people who could participate in the preparations, and more than a dozen security guards were on post 24 hours a day. Jobs originally decreed that all outside contractors hired to staff the event would have to sleep in the building the night before so that no details could leak out. Cooler heads eventually talked him out of it.
And:
Jobs rehearsed his presentation for six solid days, but at the final hour, the team still couldn’t get the phone to behave through an entire run through. Sometimes it lost internet connection. Sometimes the calls wouldn’t go through. Sometimes the phone just shut down.”It quickly got very uncomfortable,” Andy Grignon, the senior radio engineer for the iPhone remembered in Dogfight. “Very rarely did I see him become completely unglued. It happened. But mostly he just looked at you and very directly said in a very loud and stern voice, ‘You are fucking up my company,’ or, ‘If we fail, it will be because of you.’”
This is a great, great read.
Amazon is following the Netflix strategy, embedding Alexa everywhere it can possibly make sense. There are TVs (of course – think Amazon Fire TV Stick), refrigerators, and all sorts of Amazon Echo-like docks, all using Alexa’s voice recognition technology without requiring the purchase of an Echo.
Add to that the devices that integrate with Alexa’s APIs, making themselves controllable by the user’s Amazon Echo.
To read more about Amazon’s direct challenge to Apple, jump to the main Loop post…
Some thoughts on the plethora of mediocre reviews outside the Apple bubble.
Reuters:
Apple Inc said it was planning to open a retail store in South Korea, its first in the country that is home to its smartphone archrival Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.
The iPhone maker listed hiring notices for 15 positions dated Thursday on its website, including a store leader and business manager. The listings did not specify the exact location or when those who are hired will begin working.
“We’re excited about opening our first Apple Store in Korea, one of the world’s economic centers and a leader in telecommunication and technology, with a vibrant K-culture,” Apple told Reuters in a statement Friday.
This seems culturally significant, almost personal.
Sonny Dickson:
While it has always been known that Apple considered a variety of ideas when they were deciding to enter the mobile phone market (with ex employees discussing it behind closed doors, as seen in this Cult Of Mac article, not much was known about alternate versions of the iPhone until now.
Much like the first production iPhone, the prototype features many of the same features including an aluminium chassis, multi-touch compatible screen, 2G connectivity and WiFi radios. However, despite carrying a similar design, the phone itself is extremely different from the iPhone we know today.
Check out the video in the main Loop post to see the so-called Acorn OS at work. Fascinating.
Apple, from their press release:
Apple today announced that the App Store welcomed 2017 with its busiest single day ever on New Year’s Day, capping a record-breaking holiday season and a year of unprecedented developer earnings and breakout app hits. In 2016 alone, developers earned over $20 billion, up over 40 percent from 2015. Since the App Store launched in 2008, developers have earned over $60 billion, creating amazing app experiences for App Store customers across iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV and Mac. Those efforts helped kick off 2017 with a remarkable start, making New Year’s Day the highest single day ever for the App Store with nearly $240 million in purchases.
And:
“2016 was a record-shattering year for the App Store, generating $20 billion for developers, and 2017 is off to a great start with January 1 as the single biggest day ever on the App Store,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “We want to thank our entire developer community for the many innovative apps they have created — which together with our products — help to truly enrich people’s lives.”
And:
Customers broke all-time records this holiday season with purchases from the App Store topping $3 billion in December. In the same month, Nintendo’s Super Mario Run made history with more than 40 million downloads in just four days after its release, and was the most downloaded app globally on Christmas and New Year’s Day.
Amazing sales numbers.
Pick a movie, album, TV show, book, etc., and the artwork finder will bring up the associated iTunes artwork.
Play with it, it’s fun.
Jonny Evans takes a short look at some noteworthy USB-C hubs. Of particular note is the HyperDrive kickstarter:
Announced last year, HyperDrive occupies two of your MacBook Pro’s four USB-C slots. In exchange, it provides you with twin USB 3.1 ports, a microSD and an SD slot, a single USB-C port (at 5Gbps), a Thunderbolt 3 port and HDMI video output. You can power two displays at 4K or a single display at 5K with this.
All this for only $69. Seems like a terrific solution, assuming it ships. Here’s the Kickstarter link.
Ev Williams, CEO of Medium:
As of today, we are reducing our team by about one third — eliminating 50 jobs, mostly in sales, support, and other business functions. We are also changing our business model to more directly drive the mission we set out on originally.
And:
We set out to build a better publishing platform — one that allowed anyone to offer their stories and ideas to the world and that helped the great ones rise to the top. In 2016, we made big investments in teams and technology aimed at attracting and migrating commercial publishers to Medium. And in order to get these publishers paid, we built out and started selling our first ad products. This strategy worked in terms of driving growth, as well as improving the volume and consistency of great content. Some of the web’s best publishers are now on Medium, and we’re happy to work with them every day.
And:
However, in building out this model, we realized we didn’t yet have the right solution to the big question of driving payment for quality content. We had started scaling up the teams to sell and support products that were, at best, incremental improvements on the ad-driven publishing model, not the transformative model we were aiming for.
Terribly difficult problem to solve. Medium is a terrific platform, but they face the same problem as the models they aim to replace: How do you convert reader interest and attention into cash?
We are shifting our resources and attention to defining a new model for writers and creators to be rewarded, based on the value they’re creating for people. And toward building a transformational product for curious humans who want to get smarter about the world every day. It is too soon to say exactly what this will look like.
In a world where fake news pays better than real news, this is a truly daunting challenge.
Great post from Jeff Benjamin about the emerging 8K standard from VESA (They created the DisplayPort standard) and HDMI.
One particular point of interest:
One of the biggest takeaways is that HBR3 enables support of 4K at 60Hz using only two DisplayPort lanes. This means that DisplayPort Alt Mode via the USB-C interface can provide full 4K resolution at 60Hz, and still have two high-speed lanes remaining for SuperSpeed USB operation.
Why is this of note? Take the recently released LG UltraFine 4K Display, for example. That display takes advantage of DisplayPort Alt Mode, but the remaining downstream USB ports are forced to use antiquated USB 2.0 due to the lack of bandwidth. HBR3 would solve such an issue.
And:
To be fair, this isn’t exactly new, as DisplayPort 1.3, which was ratified in September 2014, also includes HBR3. VESA thereafter rolled HBR3 into DisplayPort 1.4. Unfortunately the Thunderbolt 3-enabled MacBook Pros and the 12-inch MacBook still rely on the HBR2-laden DisplayPort 1.2 for external display connectivity.
Fascinating stuff.
Wall Street Journal:
Apple Inc. headlines a growing list of investors in SoftBank Group Corp.’s $100 billion technology fund, which is expected to include Foxconn Technology Group Ltd. and the family office of Oracle Corp. Chairman Larry Ellison, the Japanese telecommunications giant said Wednesday.
Apple separately said it plans to invest $1 billion in the Japanese telecom giant’s fund. “We believe their new fund will speed the development of technologies which may be strategically important to Apple,” said Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet. She added that Apple has worked with SoftBank for many years.
The trio joins a list of investors that includes Qualcomm Inc. and Saudi Arabia’s government, which plans to invest $45 billion over a five-year period, SoftBank said Wednesday. SoftBank will invest $25 billion in its fund, it added.
Lots of reasons for Apple to do this. They’ll be cementing partnerships with Foxconn, Qualcomm, and others and the fund itself could prove quite lucrative. But can’t help but wonder if this is part of a larger deal with the incoming Trump administration, who’ve long hawked Trump’s agreement with Softbank Chief Executive Masayoshi Son to invest $50B to bring jobs to the US.
Bloomberg:
He wants to construct a Lucas museum to house and display his art collection—much of it proudly lowbrow, such as works by the sentimentalist Norman Rockwell; original Flash Gordon comic book art; Mad magazine covers; and memorabilia from his own Star Wars films. According to an early plan for the museum, his trove of Star Wars material includes 500,000 artifacts from the prequels alone. Lucas refers to such works as “narrative art,” the kind that “tells a story.” He believes they’ve been unfairly ignored by snooty critics and curators, and he wants his museum to rectify that.
Lucas has offered to build his museum in a major American city for free. Including construction costs, an endowment, and the value of the artwork, his organization says the total value of his gift is $1.5 billion. “It’s an epic act of generosity and altruism,” says Don Bacigalupi, the museum effort’s president. “George Lucas, as with any person of great resources and great success, could choose to do whatever he wants to do with his resources, and he has chosen to give an extraordinary gift to the people of a city and the world.”
But so far, Lucas hasn’t found a permanent home for his museum. The monumental project has brought him almost as much grief as Jar Jar Binks.
I suspect he’d find a taker if he’d be willing to bend a bit more, take some design guidance and help with curation.
BBC News:
An American couple, whose daughter was killed by a driver allegedly using FaceTime on his iPhone, have launched a lawsuit against Apple.
The lawsuit alleges that the firm should have introduced a feature that disabled use of the video-chat application while driving.
It points to a patent for such a feature for drivers filed by Apple in 2008.
And:
The driver involved in the crash – Garrett Wilhelm – drove his SUV into the back of the Modisette family’s vehicle while travelling at high speeds.
The lawsuit documents state that he told police he was using FaceTime at the time of the crash and that the application was still active when police found his phone at the scene.
Mr Wilhelm is facing a jury trial on manslaughter charges in February.
Is Apple responsible for a user using their cell phone while driving? If this lawsuit goes forward, will this be the precedent that triggers a wave of similar lawsuits?
Tricky legal ground. Does the existence of the patent distinguish this case from a more traditional driving when texting crash? Does a patent bring with it responsibility to implement?
Tim Culpan, Bloomberg:
Apple Inc. wants to be able to open its own stores in India. India’s government wants Apple to make iPhones locally. And so the horse-trading begins.
And:
To open single-brand stores, foreign companies must buy 30 percent of their components in-country. Round one of the Apple-India tussle ended with victory for the visitor when officials announced a three-year grace period on that stipulation back in June.
Now round two is underway, with Apple seeking tax concessions, including lower import and manufacturing duties.
And:
That puts the ball back in Apple’s court, with the world’s largest company able to trade its three major assemblers — Foxconn Technology Group, Pegatron Corp. and Wistron Corp. — off against each other. Whichever of the Taiwan trio is most eager and able to take one for the team in India would secure itself huge brownie points in Cupertino.
According to the Times of India, Wistron looks set to be that company and will fly the Apple flag when it starts “Make in India” iPhone assembly in April.
All very interesting. Presumably, iPhones built in India will stay in India, with US-destined iPhones continuing to come from China. For the moment.
David Williams, Forbes:
Steve Jobs is a hard act to follow, but thus far, Tim Cook is doing a tremendous job. Rather than attempt to match the consumer-facing innovations that Jobs had been known for, Cook is forging the future with his own new advances. Unlike Jobs, he can be soft-spoken and unassuming. Once misdiagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, he has become much more cognizant of the challenges his employees and others may face and has become highly involved in charitable causes. One of his famous leadership quotes is the simple but highly insightful remark that “you kind of want to manage a technology company like you’re in the dairy business. If it gets past its freshness date, you have a problem.” He has definitely been instrumental in keeping Apple’s outlook and consumer products vibrant and up to date.
Not really a top 10 list, more a personal list for Williams, but the sentiment rings true. Also on the list, Elon Musk, Larry Page, Melinda Gates, Rupert Murdoch, and Warren Buffett. Interesting reading.
[VIDEO] This video came out over the holidays, a promotion for the iBooks enhanced edition of Game of Thrones. I’ve been in power-save (vacation) mode, and just stumbled on it this weekend, thought it was worth a post for all you GoT fans.
Vindu Goel, New York Times:
Founded in 2014 by three former senior managers from Apple’s iPod and iPhone groups, Pearl has tried to replicate what its leaders view as the best parts of Apple’s culture, like its fanatical dedication to quality and beautiful design. But the founders also consciously rejected some of the less appealing aspects of life at Apple, like its legendary secrecy and top-down management style.
This story is about trying to create a new company from the seeds of Apple’s approach and culture, but without the deeply compartmentalized secrecy for which Apple is so famous.
Pearly is best known for a product called RearVision, a backup camera add-on for cars without a factory installed system.
Interesting approach to product (building things for older model and lower-tier cars, a retrofit, aftermarket approach), very different from Apple and, also, very different from Nest, a company with which they are often compared. I am a fan of RearVision and look forward to see what new, first-to-market products emerge from Pearl.
[VIDEO] Matt Birchler on putting Google Assistant and Siri through their paces:
The tech narrative is that Siri sucks and Google Assistant is the second coming. I have been using Siri for years, and have been going 100% in on Android over the last few weeks and have given Google Assistant a solid effort. My experience has been a little different than the popular narrative.
Watch the video for the details. Bottom line, I recognize this experience. Siri does a lot really well. To maximize your Siri satisfaction, learn the boundaries, get a sense of what Siri does reliably that fits in your day-to-day workflow.
In my experience, Siri does a lot that’s pretty bulletproof. One example is reminders. If I need to remember something, the first thing I do is figure out an ideal time to be reminded, then pull out my iPhone or “Hey, Siri” my Apple Watch and ask Siri to remind me. If there’s failure here, it is always up front and obvious. And that’s easily repaired.
Where Siri is less reliable, I find another path. If I ask Siri a question she can’t answer, I don’t get frustrated. These are early days still, for Google, Amazon, and Apple’s Siri.
Dan Moren, Six Colors:
At present, there’s certainly not much to recommend the Home to people who already own an Echo or Echo Dot. Most of what the Home can do, the Echo can do just as well, with the exception of translation and Chromecast support.
Those on the fence about which smart speaker to buy have a less enviable decision. Both are attractive, well-made devices in their own way, and both will scratch that itch of a ubiquitous assistant at your constant beck and call. To date, the Echo remains the heavyweight champion of the market, thanks to its deep bench of features and third-party skills, but it would be unwise to underestimate Google’s resources and expertise if the company decides this is a field where it wants to devote its energy.
It’s early days for the always-on, stay-at-home assistant. One thing that is clear: Google Home and Amazon Echo are extensions of their relative ecosystems. If and when Apple builds one, I expect their fixed assistant to favor Apple’s ecosystem, too.
A pity, that. If I were to hire an assistant, I would never hire someone who had to check the branding involved before they could help me with a particular task. The divisions are getting deeper.