Business

Mixpanel shows iOS 10 adoption up past 73%

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With iOS 9 adoption at 22.3%, that means that more than 95% of iOS users are at iOS 9 or later. Those are numbers that Android can only dream of.

Twitter, with no buyer in sight, confirms layoff of 9% of its workforce

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To me, Twitter is infrastructure, a mechanism used by a majority of the tech space, ubiquitous and valuable. Like Wikipedia, I can’t imagine my day-to-day workflow without Twitter.

Seems likely Twitter will shrink in value until it either becomes small enough to support its existing revenue model, or becomes just too much of an irresistible bargain for some other company.

The question is, will that eventual Twitter resemble the existing Twitter.

Apple said to develop car operating system in BlackBerry country

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Mark Gurman and Gerrit De Vynck, writing for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. has dozens of software engineers in Canada building a car operating system, a rare move for a company that often houses research and development projects close to its Cupertino, California headquarters, according to people familiar with the matter.

Many of the engineers working in Canada were hired over the past year and about two dozen came from BlackBerry Ltd.’s QNX, a leading automotive software provider, the people said. They asked not to be identified discussing details of a secret project.

And:

The most notable Apple hire from QNX was its chief executive officer, Dan Dodge. Since joining Apple’s Project Titan car initiative early this year, he’s taken on a larger role overseeing the car operating system, splitting his time between Canada and California, the people said. Another notable addition is Derrick Keefe, who left QNX last year after more than a decade as a senior engineer, one of the people said.

They are all busy skating to where the puck is going to be.

Transcript of Apple’s earnings call, and one vexing question

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Shoutout to the community-minded Jason Snell and Serenity Caldwell for capturing the transcript of the earnings call, as they do. Thank you both.

On the call, one particular question that is getting a lot of discussion:

Steve Milunovich, UBS: Some investors are antsy that Apple’s not acquired new profit pools or introduced a financially-material new product in recent years. The question is: A, does Apple today have a grand strategy for what you want to do? I know you won’t tell us what it is, but do you know what you want to do over the next three to maybe five years? Or is it more a “read the market and quickly react”? And B, do you have any sense of — we’re kind of in a gap period where the technology and, arguably, what we’d call the next job to be done, haven’t yet aligned, and maybe in a couple years we will see this flurry of new products and it’ll sort of match what people want to do, but it’s not quite here yet.

And Tim’s response:

We have the strongest pipeline that we’ve ever had and we’re really confident about the things in it, but as usual, we’re not going to talk about what’s in it.

Steve’s followup:

But in terms of your approach, I guess, to new products? Do you have a strong sense of where the technology’s going and where you’re going to play, or is it still enough up in the air that you’re willing to react fairly quickly, which, arguably, your organization allows you to do for the size of the company you are?

Tim:

We have a strong sense of where things go, and we’re very agile to shift as we need to.

Everyone, including Apple’s competitors, wants to know what Apple has up its sleeve. On one level, there’s doubt being expressed as to whether Apple has anything significant up their sleeves at all (as always, Apple is doomed). And on another level, there’s curiosity as to the specifics of what’s coming.

Why ask? Either way, Tim is not going to tell you. And in my opinion, it’s foolish to read anything into Tim’s answer. I believe that Apple has much more in the works than a car and TV content, more than anyone outside the company has seen. I believe that Apple, behind the scenes, is rapidly skating to where the puck is going to be, not reacting to existing market conditions.

Thanks again to iMore, Serenity, and Jason for pulling together this transcript. It makes excellent reading.

Read, search, annotate PDFs with PDF Viewer, free on the iOS App Store

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This is a no-brainer. PDF Viewer is built by the team behind PSPDFKit, the top mobile PDF framework incorporated into apps like Dropbox, Box, HipChat, Evernote and Ulysses and used internally by companies such as IBM, SAP, United Airlines, BMW, Audi and many more. In short, these folks really know the ins and outs of PDF.

PDF Viewer is free on the iOS App Store. Here’s the iTunes link. Go get it.

UPDATE: PDF Viewer was just added to the “New Apps We Love” list in the iOS App Store. Well that didn’t take long!

John Gruber on iMessage’s stickiness

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John Gruber, reacting to this post from Lauren Goode about iMessage stickiness:

There’s a split between iPhone users who are primarily part of the Apple ecosystem (iCloud, Safari, Apple Mail, …) and those who are part of the Google ecosystem (Google Drive, Google Calendar, Chrome, Gmail, …).

iMessage is an exception. With iMessage you get to connect both with iPhone users in the Google ecosystem and iPhone users in the Apple ecosystem. For a lot of us here in the U.S., that’s just about everyone we know. It’s no coincidence that two of Google’s major Android initiatives this year are Allo and Duo, their answers to iMessage and FaceTime. I don’t think it’s going to work.

And:

As an iOS/MacOS exclusive, iMessage is a glue that “keeps people stuck to their iPhones and Macs”, not the glue. iMessage for Android would surely lead some number of iPhone users to switch to Android, but I think that number is small enough to be a rounding error for Apple. Apple wins by creating devices and experiences that people want to use, not that they have to use.

Both Lauren Goode’s original and Gruber’s reaction posts are interesting and worth reading.

Everything you need to know about AT&T’s deal with Time Warner

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An explainer from the Washington Post on the AT&T Time Warner deal. Two points that stick out:

AT&T, the nation’s second-largest wireless carrier, is buying Time Warner, the storied media titan that owns HBO, CNN and TBS. In an unprecedented step, the deal is going to combine a gigantic telecom operator — which also happens to be the largest pay-TV company — and a massive producer of entertainment content.

It means that for millions of Americans, AT&T will control both the pipes of distribution and much of the shows, movies and other content that travels through the pipes. It’s hard to overstate the significance of this move, both in terms of scale and in terms of the ripple effects this will have on Hollywood, the cable industry, the cellular industry and the broadband industry.

In other words, AT&T may be about to own a huge trove of some of the most recognizable names in media. This is a big moment, because anytime you watch anything owned by Time Warner, that’ll be money in AT&T’s pocket. It’ll put AT&T in direct competition with companies such as Netflix and Amazon, giving it a big incentive to use its content and distribution platform as leverage against them. And it could spur a frenzy of other acquisitions, driving even more consolidation in the industry.

And:

The deal is already drawing loud protests from politicians on both ends of the ideological spectrum, at a time when national conversations about inequality have made critiquing large businesses a matter of populist appeal. U.S. lawmakers are already calling for an antitrust hearing on the issue.

The reaction from business analysts seems mixed; while many agree that buying up content is a natural move for telcos in an era of rapid convergence, some, such as Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson, say it has only a 50-50 chance of succeeding with regulators.

This is far from a done deal. And Apple is still there, waiting in the wings.

New York Times in 2001: “Apple introduces what it calls an easier to use portable music player”

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Matt Richtel, writing for the New York Times when the original iPod was announced:

Apple Computer introduced a portable music player today and declared that the new gadget, called the iPod, was so much easier to use that it would broaden a nascent market in the way the Macintosh once helped make the personal computer accessible to a more general audience.

And:

But while industry analysts said the device appeared to be as consumer friendly as the company said it was, they also pointed to its relatively limited potential audience, around seven million owners of the latest Macintosh computers. Apple said it had not yet decided whether to introduce a version of the music player for computers with the Windows operating system, which is used by more than 90 percent of personal computer users.

And:

Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, disputed the concern that the market was limited, and said the company might have trouble meeting holiday demand. He predicted that the improvement in technology he said the iPod represented would inspire consumers to buy Macintosh computers so they could use an iPod.

Think they’ll sell any? I love the reference to that “relatively limited potential audience”.

The iPod turns 15: a visual history of Apple’s mobile music icon

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The iPod turned 15 yesterday. The Verge takes you on a visual tour of all of them, from the FireWire port, rotating click wheel first version through the so-called sixth generation with the A8 chip and 8MP iSight camera you can still buy today.

Siri versus Google Assistant

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Marques Brownlee put together the video below, taking Siri and Google Assistant, side by side, through their paces. The set of questions Marques chose were wide in range, but not necessarily definitive. They poked at the boundary of what each assistant did well and poorly, without digging further to find the cliff for each.

There’s a lot to learn watching this. First, it’s clear that Siri holds her own against Google Assistant, despite all the naysaying out there. Neither is perfect, both are useful.

My sense is that both assistants are tree driven, able to answer questions that are within their tree of knowledge. But one cliff for both assistants is context. For example, Marques asked Siri:

Who is the President of the United States?

[Read the main post for the video and thoughts on both]

Some handy iOS Safari tips

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Jeff Benjamin pulled together this list of tips for 9to5mac. While you might know most of these, odds are, you won’t know all of them. Nice collection.

Apple’s TV boss: ‘Television needs to be reinvented’

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Eddy Cue, speaking at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit (via Business Insider):

“I do think television needs to be reinvented. Today, you live with a glorified VCR,” Cue said. “The problem is the interface.”

“It’s really hard to use [a cable box or satellite TV]. Setting something to record, if you didn’t watch something last night, if you didn’t set it to record, it’s hard to find, it may not be available. There may be some rights issues,” Cue said.

“It’s great to be able to tell your device, ‘I wanna watch the Duke basketball game, I don’t care what channel it’s on.’ I just want to watch the Duke basketball game. Today you got to bring in the TV, go through the guide, find which sports programs or whatever — it’s just hard to do.”

The state of television is in flux. Unlike the music industry, which moved to online purchases and then streaming, the dominant TV business model has yet to emerge. Apple is exploring all sides, trying to find their place in the emerging model. Apple TV, as currently implemented, is a portal. But Apple is also dipping its toes in the waters of original content.

Netflix has definitely found success with original content that is not dependent on cable companies for distribution. HBO has original content but is straddling the lines of the a la carte (HBO Now) and the more traditional bundle (as part of a cable package). Hulu and Amazon have their own approaches. Sports and more traditional programming add another wrinkle.

All of this adds up to a mish-mosh of standards. What’s needed is a unifying force to make it possible to watch all this content on demand while, at the same time, making the content universally and intelligently searchable and schedulable.

Seems to me that Apple TV is well placed to be that unifying portal, but an irresistible force is needed to bring all these disparate elements together.

Band of thieves swipe $13K in iPhones from busy Apple store

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Apple Insider:

As reported by The MetroWest Daily News, police said the Apple Natick Collection outlet was the scene of a speedy burglary on Tuesday perpetrated by a group of seven unidentified individuals. Described as a “pack,” the suspects are believed to be teens or young men and women.

And:

Wearing hoodies, the roving gang can be seen entering the mall at around 7:15 p.m., making a beeline straight for Apple. Once inside, the suspects gathered around display tables at the store’s entrance —iPhones are usually placed prominently on the sales floor to lure in passersby —ripped 19 iPhones from their security tethers and scrambled out. The heist was over in less than a minute.

This is not the first time this has happened. Apple is removing the tethers from the tables, replacing them with a software “kill switch” that disables the phones when they move out of range.

Watch a fully-autonomous Tesla drive through the city and find a parking spot

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[VIDEO]: The Verge:

The self-driving software is not finished and has yet to be approved by regulators, but the four-minute clip is nonetheless impressive, showing a Tesla leaving a garage, driving across town, and finding its own parking spot — all autonomously. There is someone sat in the driver’s seat, as per current legal requirements, but they never touch the wheel. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who posted the clip to Twitter, notes that the car is even smart enough to driver past a disabled parking spot, knowing it’s not allowed to park there.

Add to that, this Elon Musk tweet:

When you want your car to return, tap Summon on your phone. It will eventually find you even if you are on the other side of the country.

The video (click through to the main Loop page) is mesmerizing. Are we ready for this?

Nintendo announces next generation Nintendo Switch system [VIDEO]

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Introducing Nintendo Switch! In addition to providing single and multiplayer thrills at home, the Nintendo Switch system also enables gamers to play the same title wherever, whenever and with whomever they choose. The mobility of a handheld is now added to the power of a home gaming system to enable unprecedented new video game play styles.

Nintendo Switch (formerly known by the code name Nintendo NX) is a gaming system that embeds a portable system into a dock, making it easy to switch between console and portable without exiting your game. I look forward to taking this system for a spin, playing the next-gen Zelda title on the road.

From the Nintendo Switch Wikipedia page:

The Nintendo Switch is described as a console/handheld hybrid system, allowing players to alternate between playing on a television via a docking station and playing on the move using a detachable screen. Along with supporting wireless game pad controllers, the system comes with detachable controllers which can either be used in tandem with each other, either connected to the screen or used in each hand similar to the Wii’s Wii Remote and Nunchuck control scheme, or can be used as two seperate sideway controllers for multiple players. The game will also feature wireless multiplayer via multiple systems, for example, allowing four players to play using two Switch systems. Games played on the system are distributed via cartridges and digital downloads.

Enjoy the trailer.

The 32GB iPhone 7 has 8X slower write speeds than 128GB, 256GB models

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iClarified:

A new video confirms previous reports that the 32GB iPhone 7 has 8X slower write speeds than the 128GB and 256GB models.

Unbox Therapy demonstrates a benchmark and real world test of write speeds on a 32GB and 256GB iPhone 7. The benchmark found that the 256GB model was able to write data at 341 MB/s; whereas, the 32GB was only able to write data at 42 MB/s.

The video is embedded below. Feel free to skip to 1:14 in, where the side-by-side test between the 32GB and 256GB iPhone 7’s starts.

Is this a big deal? I’d say, it’s worth keeping in mind if you are on the fence between the 32GB and 128GB iPhone 7.

UPDATE: Turns out this is standard for SSDs. Larger SSDs are faster because of parallel design. Here’s a link to a site that explains this pretty well (H/T Rob Pickering and Robert Davey).

NY Times: Samsung attempted to pay to keep Chinese video of smoking Galaxy Note 7 private

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Sui-Lee Wee, writing for The New York Times:

Zhang Sitong was saving a friend’s phone number on his Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphone when it started to vibrate and smoke. He threw it on the ground and told his friend to start filming.

Two employees from Samsung Electronics showed up at his house later that day, he said, offering a new Note 7 and about $900 in compensation on the condition that he keep the video private. Mr. Zhang angrily refused. Only weeks before, even as Samsung recalled more than two million Note 7s in the United States and elsewhere, the company had reassured him and other Chinese customers that the phone was safe.

And:

“They said there was no problem with the phones in China. That’s why I bought a Samsung,” said Mr. Zhang, a 23-year-old former firefighter. “This is an issue of deception. They are cheating Chinese consumers.”

And:

Samsung initially said the Chinese version of the Note 7 had a different battery and was safe. But last week, after reports in China of phones catching fire, it finally recalled the Note 7 there before it scrapped the phone globally.

Samsung was once the top phone maker in China. Now this. Wow.

Your brilliant Kickstarter idea could be on sale in China before you’ve even finished funding it

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Quartz:

Yekutiel Sherman couldn’t believe his eyes.

The Israeli entrepreneur had spent one year designing the product that would make him rich—a smartphone case that unfolds into a selfie stick. He had drawn up prototypes, secured some minimal funds from his family, and launched a crowdfunding campaign.

And:

One week after his product hit Kickstarter in December 2015, Sherman was shocked to see it for sale on AliExpress—Alibaba’s English-language wholesale site. Vendors across China were selling identical smartphone case selfie-sticks, using the same design Sherman came up with himself. Some of them were selling for as low as $10 a piece, well below Sherman’s expected retail price of £39 ($47.41). Amazingly, some of these vendors stole the name of Sherman’s product—Stikbox.

The perils of designing in public.

Rumors of Apple team-up with e-ink keyboard maker appear to spring from single, questionable source

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Mike Wuerthele, writing for Apple Insider:

Rumors have been flying that Apple is considering teaming up with a company building customizable keyboards with individual E-ink keys, but the claims, including alleged “confirmations,” appear to spring from a single report that may be little more than self-promotion of an upcoming product.

This is in response to an article that appeared in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.

It’s all rumors until Apple actually announces it. But this October 27th Apple Mac event, that’s got to be real. It’s just got to be (I’ve got my sights set on a new MacBook Pro, that’s why).

Apple wants to get inside your house before it’s built

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Prashant Gopal, writing for Bloomberg:

Tap your phone, and AC/DC’s “Back in Black” blasts. Tap again, and the bath runs at a blissful 101 degrees. Sweet, right? Of course, your dad might view it as a bit over the top. All told, $30,000 worth of gadgets and gizmos were on display here, many run with Apple’s free HomeKit app.

And:

Apple is teaming up with a handful of builders and using these kinds of test beds to inch its way into the market for Internet-connected home furnishings, a nascent field that has attracted rivals like Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Amazon.com Inc.

At the core of this article is Apple’s strategy to bring your home into the Apple ecosystem. If you buy a home “wired” for HomeKit, you are more likely to move to iOS, buy an iPhone to control it all.

If I go down this road, will my house be worth less if I sell to an Android buyer? When I am looking for a house, will Android vs Brillo (Google’s Internet of Things platform) be part of the realtor’s pitch?

Apple plans to launch new Macs at an October 27 event

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Ina Fried, writing for Recode:

Apple is planning to introduce new Macs at an Oct. 27 event, sources confirmed to Recode.

The move had long been expected, given that the company released MacOS Sierra last month but had yet to introduce any new computer models sporting the software. It also comes just in time for Apple to have the new products on sale for the full holiday season.

And:

The Mac event is expected to take place at or near Apple’s Cupertino campus rather than in San Francisco, where the company held many recent events, including the iPhone 7 announcement.

And, finally:

Apple declined to comment.

This was widely rumored, widely expected. It will be interesting to see if the new MacBook Pro ships without a headphone jack.

I suspect Apple will ship a lot of these.

Samsung is setting up Note 7 exchange booths at airports around the world

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The Verge:

Samsung is setting up Galaxy Note 7 exchange booths in airports around the world, hoping to stop customers taking the dangerous device onto flights at the last minute. The first of these new “customer service points” appear to have been introduced in South Korean airports, but Samsung has confirmed the booths are opening in airports across Australia, with reports of the desks appearing in the US as well.

The booths are located in “high-traffic terminals” before security screening, says Samsung, and allow Note 7 owners to swap their phone for an unspecified exchange device. According to a report from ABC7News in San Francisco — where a Samsung exchange desk has appeared at the city’s international airport — employees for the tech company are on hand to help customers transfer their data onto a new phone.

Crazy that this is necessary. I wonder what devices Samsung is offering in trade. If it’s an older Samsung device, there’s still the possibility the phone will be confiscated anyway, as there seems to be some confusion at airports on the name of the actual banned device.

And I somehow doubt Samsung is handing out iPhones, though that would be a great story.

Your phone’s on lockdown. Enjoy the show.

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Janet Morrissey, writing for The New York Times:

The comedian Dave Chappelle used to hate when fans would pull out smartphones during his act, record the performance and then post it on YouTube and social media before the show had even ended. To him, the fans seemed more interested in getting the perfect shot than in appreciating his stand-up routine.

But in late 2015, Mr. Chappelle discovered a technology called Yondr. Fans are required to place their cellphones into Yondr’s form-fitting lockable pouch when entering the show, and a disk mechanism unlocks it on the way out. Fans keep the pouch with them, but it is impossible for them to snap pictures, shoot videos or send text messages during the performance while the pouch is locked.

Read the article. A phone-free show is old school, in the best possible way.

Why Jamaica knows about Apple’s new products before the rest of the world

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Quartz:

Apple’s product launches are notoriously secretive, but the Cupertino, California tech giant is sure to do one thing ahead of a big reveal: file trademark paperwork in Jamaica.

It did this for Siri, the Apple Watch, macOS, and dozens of its major products months before the equivalent paperwork was lodged in the United States. Likewise, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft routinely file trademarks for their most important products in locales far flung from Silicon Valley and Seattle.

And:

The tech giants are exploiting a US trademark-law provision that lets them effectively claim a trademark in secret. Under this provision, once a mark is lodged with an intellectual property office outside the US, the firm has six months to file it with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). When the firm does file in the US, it can point to its original application made abroad to show that it has a priority claim on the mark.

Loopholes. Where would we be without them?