Business

Why 2016 is such a terrible year for the Mac

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Jason Snell, writing for Macworld:

The Mac Pro and Mac mini have languished for several years with nary an update. And MacBook Pro users were hungry for a new model—and fueled by constant rumors all year of brand-new laptops that were just over the horizon.

Then we finally got the new MacBook Pro, and it’s loaded with a lot of cool stuff, but…the reaction wasn’t quite what Apple might have expected from the hungry crowd of Mac users.

And:

Apple’s Phil Schiller told the Independent that he was surprised by the negative reaction to the announcements. Maybe Schiller wasn’t aware of the undercurrent of concern and anger among Mac users who feel that Apple has deprioritized the Mac, and that the lack of updates to the Mac Pro becomes more frustrating with every passing day.

And:

Some of that concern and anger is reasonable, and some of it isn’t. But even the less reasonable reactions are Apple’s fault for letting it get to this point. The longer you go without Mac updates, the more time customers have to combine their anger and frustration with wishcasting about the product that will solve all their problems and make everything better.

First, this is a great read. Definitely resonated with me, felt like Jason really captured the feeling of the community as a whole.

Second, at the heart of this is managing expectations. No matter your reaction to the new MacBook Pro or your particular need for a Mac Pro, Apple let this pot simmer way too long. I do think Apple has ignored the needs of developers by not keeping up with the Mac Pro. I’m curious what their in-house developers are using to build iOS, macOS, Xcode, Swift, and all the other tools used to create the Apple ecosystem. Are they living with the Mac Pro of yesteryear? Are they using MacBook Pros? Some skunkworks machine?

The MacBook Pro that ships to the public is one thing. But the tools that create the rest of the tools are fundamental to Apple’s success. I’ve never understood Apple not keeping developers in the fastest gear possible.

Apple iPhone grabs 104% of smartphone industry profit In Q3

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How did they do it? Volume! (where’s that rimshot emoji?)

OK, not really. Here’s why:

BMO Capital Markets analyst Tim Long estimates that Apple accounted for 103.6% of smartphone industry operating profits in the third quarter. Its share is over 100% because other vendors lost money in the business, resulting in Apple having more smartphone profit than the industry netted overall.

That’s mind-boggling.

Explaining Thunderbolt 3, USB-C, and everything in between

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Glenn Fleishman, writing for TidBITS, does an excellent job walking through the various standards that ultimately connect to the new MacBook Pro via USB-C. Bookmark the link, pass it along.

One point worth highlighting:

This may all seem confusing initially, but it should pass quickly because everything on the market for USB and DisplayPort over USB-C today should work with Thunderbolt 3. The main group that will be disappointed are those who buy Thunderbolt 3 peripherals and expect them to work with a 12-inch MacBook, which doesn’t extend USB-C support to Thunderbolt. We can hope that Apple makes Thunderbolt 3 standard across the entire Mac line.

In addition, there appears to be a compatibility issue with support for older Thunderbolt 3 peripherals. Read about it in this post.

Thunderbolt 3/USB-C adapters, cables, and hubs for new MacBook Pro

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Joe Rossignol did a great job pulling together this list of USB-C dongles and hubs. Bookmark the link, pass it along.

Before you buy, read this caveat. In a nutshell, make sure any hub or adapter you buy is compatible with the new MacBook Pro.

Also, at the high end, OWC has announced this monster 13-port USB-C hub, shipping in February. If you’ve got the need, and the $279 to spend, you can preorder the dock here.

New MacBook Pros will not work with some older Thunderbolt 3 chips

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Pluggable:

The version of OS X on the new MacBook Pros (late 2016) will not work with existing Certified Thunderbolt 3 docks and adapters (released prior to November 2016). These existing devices use Intel’s Thunderbolt 3 chipset (Alpine Ridge) in combination with the first generation of TI USB-C chipset (TPS65982). Apple requires the 2nd generation TPS65983 chipset for peripherals to be compatible.

It’s not clear to me if this impacts all older docks/adapters, but before I made a purchase, I would verify that the dock or adapter in question is compatible with the new MacBook Pros. Even if you don’t have a 2016 MacBook Pro on order, you might order one at some point. Consider it an effort at future-proofing.

Wherefore art thou Macintosh?

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Horace Dediu, on some remarkable business achievements of the Mac over time:

  • The product is in its 32nd year of market presence. A longevity that in unmatched by any other PC maker.

  • Apple reached a top five position in the ranking of PC vendors. This was achieved for the first time only this year, far along in the evolution of the market.

  • With about $23 billion in revenues per year, Apple places among the top four PC vendors in terms of revenue.

  • With an estimated $5.5 billion in operating margin Apple is the most profitable PC vendor, capturing over 60% of the available PC hardware profits.

  • The product has retained an average selling price of over $1200 for at least a decade. At the same time the average pricing of Personal Computers has more than halved.

Then, following some charts to lay out his thesis, Dediu gets to the heart of the matter:

Mobile has been foreseeable as a disruption to computing a decade ago–at least to some of us.

And so what do you with the Mac?

To answer this we have to ask what exactly is the purpose of the Mac in the age of the Mobile device?

And:

The same way keyboard shortcuts are hard to learn but pay off with productivity, touchbar interactions are fiddly but will pay off with a two-handed interaction model. They are not something you “get” right away. They require practice and persistence for a delayed payoff. But, again, that effort is what professionals are accustomed to investing.

This is a leap forward and a big deal. For 32 years the UX model of the Mac has been two-handed typing with one handed gesturing. Now we have the option of two-handed indirect manipulation: one hand on the touchbar and one hand on the touchpad. Imagine you’ve been playing guitar with one hand for years and then someone lets you use your left hand. Holy cow.

This is a great read. Be sure to look at that third chart, the one that contrasts Mac, Windows, and iPhone sales.

How Steve Jobs became a billionaire

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Lawrence Levy, ex-Pixar CFO, in an excerpt from his new book To Pixar and Beyond:

It started with Pam Kerwin, a Pixar Vice-President who was general manager of various business operations within Pixar. She was a little older than me, in her early-forties, with striking red hair and a sweet demeanor that quickly made others feel at ease around her. Her office was just down the hallway from mine, and she was one of the few people who invited me to say hello and give me the lay of the land.

“I don’t envy you,” Pam jumped in after some pleasantries, “I don’t think you really get what you’re up against.”

“Up against?” I asked.

“You’re Steve’s guy.”

I must have given Pam a terribly puzzled look, because I wasn’t sure what she meant.

“Pixar and Steve have a long history,” she went on. “Not a good one. You don’t know it yet but Pixar lives in fear of Steve.”

This quote should give you a sense of the tone of the book. But if you can live with that, I found this excerpt riveting, a fascinating insight into the business side of both Pixar and Steve. Looking forward to reading the book.

Apple patents foldable iPhone

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Patently Apple:

Today we were surprised to find that Apple was granted their first patent covering a foldable and/or bendable future iPhone that was never published before as a patent application under Apple’s name. Apple must have kept it secret by filing it under their engineer’s names and not under Apple to avoid detection. As another example of this tactic, here’s an Apple engineer who filed a patent under his own name and Apple isn’t yet shown on the filing publicly. When filed like this, no one can do a search on Apple patents and find it. It stays ‘hidden’ on purpose until it’s granted because at that point Apple has to take possession of it. In this patent, Apple reveals the possible use of carbon nanotubes to facilitate their new smartphone form factor.

Fascinating.

Mobile/tablet internet usage exceeds desktop for first time

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StatCounter:

Internet usage by mobile and tablet devices exceeded desktop worldwide for the first time in October according to independent web analytics company StatCounter

Its research arm, StatCounter Global Stats finds that mobile and tablet devices accounted for 51.3% of internet usage worldwide in October compared to 48.7% by desktop.

Can’t help but think Apple was a big factor in this transition.

Also:

Despite the rapid growth of mobile devices, desktop is still the primary mode of internet usage in mature markets such as the US and UK.

However, Cullen warned, “Post-Brexit, UK businesses should be aware, as they look to increase trade outside the EU, that India for example has over 75% internet usage through mobile devices.”

Interesting.

Marco Arment on the new MacBook Pro’s four USB-C ports

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Marco Arment:

Having four USB-C ports is awesome.

Having only four USB-C ports is going to hurt the versatility requirement of pro gear, because there’s a very real chance that you won’t have the right dongle when you need it.

This is going to happen a lot, because even though USB-C is the future, it’s definitely not the present. We’ve had the standard USB plug (USB-A) in widespread use for 18 years, and it’s going to take a few more years for USB-C to become so ubiquitous that we can get away without USB-A ports most of the time.

A pro laptop released today should definitely have USB-C ports — mostly USB-C ports, even — but it should also have at least one USB-A port.

I currently have dongles to plug in my existing Time Machine drive (USB-C to USB-B, picture here) and another to plug my Cinema Display into my new MacBook Pro (USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 to Mini Display Port/Thunderbolt 2, picture here). Tap both pics to embiggen.

Will I need more dongles? Undoubtedly. Marco is arguing that the MacBook Pro is too forward thinking and should have been designed for the present. My machine will arrive in a few weeks. I’ll stew in the soup, have a better sense of things once I live in the brave new dongular world for a while.

Jony Ive talks about the MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar

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From the beautifully laid out CNET interview:

“Doing something that’s different is actually relatively easy and relatively fast, and that’s tempting,” says the man who’s had a hand in every major Apple product design — from the colorful iMac and iBook to the iPod, iPad, iPhone and Apple Watch.

“We don’t limit ourselves in how we will push — if it’s to a better place. What we won’t do is just do something different that’s no better,” Ive said in an interview earlier this week to explain the design of the MacBook Pro, a major reboot of Apple’s most powerful laptop line.

And:

Our starting point, from the design team’s point of view, was recognizing the value with both input methodologies. But also there are so many inputs from a traditional keyboard that are buried a couple of layers in. We have that ability to accommodate complex inputs, mainly out of habit and familiarity.

So our point of departure was to see if there was a way of designing a new input that really could be the best of both of those different worlds. To be able to have something that was contextually specific and adaptable, and also something that was mechanical and fixed, because there’s truly value in also having a predictable and complete set of fixed input mechanisms.

Read the interview. Some great insights into the birth of Touch Bar and Jony’s way of thinking. Kudos to the CNET team that pulled this together.

Amazing transformable table

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The Boulon Blanc table quickly transforms from a coffee table to a full-height kitchen or dining room table in just a few seconds. The table is expensive, no doubt (about US$700), but spend a minute watching the video at the top of the kickstarter page.

Terrific design.

[UPDATE] Apple Pay arrives in Switzerland, Swiss bank nightmare becomes reality

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Finews:

The worst nightmare of Swiss banks has become a reality: starting Thursday, a heavyweight outsider begins offering a payment service in their home market. Apple has brought its payment app, Apple Pay, to Switzerland.

In June, finews.ch reported the imminent launch of Apple Pay in Switzerland. The introduction of the service is now being announced by Apple Pay’s partners in Switzerland, for example the kiosk operator Valora. Also on board from the financial world are the Ticino Corner Bank with the Cornercard, as well as the credit card operators Visa, Mastercard and Swiss Bankers.

And:

Apple Pay’s main local competitor, the payment app Twint, which is backed by banks like UBS, Credit Suisse, Zuercher Kantonalbank, Postfinance and Raiffeisen, as well as the retail giants Coop and Migros, will only be available in its new form in the autumn.

Twint faces another significant disadvantage against Apple Pay: Apple blocks NFC (Near Field Communication) technology in its smartphones for other payment operators. With a 50 per cent share of the smartphone market, that is a serious obstacle. It was already enough to cause the Swisscom payment app Tapit to fail.

In the meantime, Apple Pay can connect with the payment terminals of most Swiss retailers. The Bluetooth technology, which Twint relies on, is not yet widely used in stores.

The banks rolled their own payment app, Apple brought the phones and Apple Pay. Looks like Apple Pay’s tech is proving the winner here.

The Google Pixel has an excellent camera, but not much else

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In the Quartz review, Mike Murphy gives the Google Pixel its due, highlighting the camera, digital video image stabilization, endless photo space, rapid charging as positives, but then read the rest of the article.

Apple’s new MacBook Pro may be the world’s fastest stock laptop

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At the core of the article is Apple’s choice to adopt the speedy PCIe SSD bus technology along with the NVM Express device interface.

By adopting the PCIe/NVMe standard, Apple has been able to deliver higher performance in terms of read/write speeds and latency when compared to traditional SATA-based PC designs.

And:

It’s not a surprise, Handy said, that Apple settled on PCIe, as the price for the controllers are already approaching those of SATA controllers.

“If they both cost the same, then why use SATA?” [industry analyst Jim] Handy said in an email reply to Computerworld.

Interesting.

Goldman Sachs pushes Apple to make rival bid for Time Warner

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The New York Post:

Goldman is trying to persuade Apple to make a rival bid for Time Warner, a source with direct knowledge of the situation said.

“They are freaking out trying to convince Apple to come in,” the source said. Goldman has been left on the sidelines in advising on AT&T’s $85 billion agreement to acquire Time Warner.

And:

Cook’s company has expressed interest in buying Time Warner in the recent past, and there is some belief that judging from his comments this week, he will not let AT&T carry the day.

To me, this would be a dizzying purchase, one that would dilute Apple’s and Tim Cook’s attention, steer focus from their core business. True, there’d be a lot of new elements with which to experiment, but there’d be an awful lot of cleanup to do.

My two cents? Buy Netflix.

Apple and Netflix

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Thoughts on the idea of Apple buying Netflix.

Apple Campus 2 – latest drone footage

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[VIDEO] This is starting to feel like it is edging toward completion. Still lots to do, but noticeably fewer cranes on the site.

A tip of the cap to Matthew Roberts. Looks like he’s polishing his dronecraft with each passing month.

How Apple could have avoided much of the controversy

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Chuq Von Rospach, writing on his blog:

Here’s a basic reality: criticizing and second-guessing Apple is a hobby for many of us, and a profession for more than is probably healthy for the Apple ecosystem. That is a basic reality that isn’t going to change any time soon.

And:

A lot of it boils down to this concept: We demand Apple innovate, but we insist they don’t change anything.

And:

I think these computers are taking some valid criticism, but much of that criticism is ignoring a lot of the positives that these new computers have, including nice improvements in CPU and GPU speed and faster RAM, all indicating nice bumps in overall performance.

But having said that, the fact that so much of the Mac product line is such a cluster and Apple didn’t acknowledge that makes the criticism understandable and deserved. What we got from Apple was good; what we needed from Apple was that and more — and it didn’t happen.

This is a long read. Chuq captures a lot of the thoughts that have been flying around in response to the new MacBook Pro reveal. Thoughtful, and well worth the read. Great job, Chuq.

Apple restores star ratings to iOS 10 Music App

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Kirk McElhearn shows you how to re-enable the star ratings in the Music app (Settings > Music > Show Star Ratings) and how to actual rate your songs (which is more complicated than it used to be).

This change just appeared on the just-released beta of iOS 10.2.

MacBook Pro reviews: The flip side of the coin

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On Friday, we ran a post titled There’s all kinds of love for the new MacBook Pro.

To balance that out, spend some time reading Machael Tsai’s blog post, which gathers a long list of negative comments about the new MacBook Pro and Apple’s Mac direction in general.

If this were simply a bunch of curmudgeonly complaints, we’d have skipped the post entirely. But there are a lot of fair complaints in this list, insights that are worth paying attention to.

More detail on the reason the MacBook Pro is limited to 16GB

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A bit more detail on why the new MacBook Pro is limited to 16GB. There’s an email exchange with Phil Schiller, then a Reddit post that talks about the limitation being tied to the choice of CPU. Read the main post for details.

Jason Snell, hands on with the new MacBook Pro and Touch Bar

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Jason Snell, writing for Six Colors:

My first impression of the Touch Bar is that the “keys” looked… like keys. It didn’t feel like I was looking at a screen, but at an extension of the keyboard. That was an intentional choice on Apple’s part. Unlike the display and the keyboard, the Touch Bar’s brightness is not manually adjustable.

Instead, the Touch Bar’s brightness varies based on lighting conditions, using the light sensor. I wasn’t able to try and trick it or confuse it, but the entire time I was using it—in a dark room and in a much more brightly lit one—it seemed to match the keyboard well. This is not a bright, glowing screen above a dark keyboard—it’s an extension of the keyboard.

And:

The trackpad on the 13-inch model is more than half again as big as on its predecessor, and on the 15-inch model it’s doubled in size. As Phil Schiller said on stage Thursday, Apple can make the Trackpad bigger now that it’s a Magic Trackpad rather than an older hinged model because even at large sizes the entire surface is clickable.

And (this next one answered a big question for me):

The trackpads are large enough that Apple has had to build in more palm-rejection intelligence, because when you’re typing on these things, you’re going to inevitably slide your palms across them. In my experience writing this article on a 13-inch MacBook Pro, the palm rejection worked well—I never felt that I had to change my typing approach just to avoid weird mouse movements.

And:

Well, it’s my sad duty to report that the MacBook Pro keyboard has the same key travel as the MacBook. Apple says the stainless steel dome switch beneath each key has been honed to give you a more responsive feel, but to me it feels just like the MacBook’s keyboard.

Plenty of divisiveness on the keyboard feel. Many people like it, many don’t. Your mileage may vary.

Lots more chewy goodness in Jason’s review. Read it.

Steve Jobs on product people being driven out of the decision making process

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[VIDEO] This video is short, less than two minutes long, but, if you haven’t seen it, take the time to watch. Steve Jobs talks about the natural process that drives product people out of the decision making forums.

To me, Steve nails why it is so hard to maintain innovation over the long haul.

How do I use my new lightning headphones with the new MacBook Pro?

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Here’s a puzzling question, posed in this tweet from Rudy Richter:

@pschiller how do I use my Lightning headphones with the new MacBook Pro?

Think about this for a moment. The headphones that ship with the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus end with a lightning connector. The phones also ship with a lightning to 3.5mm adapter that let you plug 3.5mm traditional headphones into a lightning port.

Still with me?

OK, so how do folks plug their lightning headphones into the new MacBook Pro? Is there any dongle that lets you plug in a lightning end and converts it into 3.5mm mini, or USB-C? What’s needed here is the reverse of the adapter that ships with the phone.

An interesting problem. Not sure there’s a solution. If I hear of one, I will definitely update this post.

UPDATE: Got this suggestion, about using the Apple Pencil adapter to solve the problem. Requires an Apple Pencil, so the idea is not for most, I think. But it did lead me to this adapter. Think it would work? Would also require a USB to USB-C adapter, which I suspect most buyers will buy or have.

Apple’s Phil Schiller, Craig Federighi, others sit down to talk MacBook Pro

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This long form piece by Shara Tibken and Connie Guglielmo, for CNET, wraps a sit-down with Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi in an exploration of the history and future of the Mac, sprinkled with observations from other Apple and industry folk.

There’s a lot to absorb here, but it’s well worth the time. It helps that the story design is nicely laid out, a pleasure to explore.

Well done.