Business

Apple puts their money where there mouth is, posting detailed privacy labels for every one of their iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS apps, all in one easy to navigate alphabetic listing.

Take a look. Click/tap an entry’s down-arrow for more details.

John Gruber:

I’m sure some will claim to find this ad campaign to be a sick burn. I find it cringey, and kind of hard to watch. It’s neither parody nor sequel. It’s an attempt at comedy from writers who have no sense of humor. The concept isn’t actually anything beyond “Let’s hire Justin Long as our new pitchman, that’ll show them.” One gets the feeling, early on, that there was an uncomfortable phone call to Justin Long from his agent that began, “Before you say ‘no’, at least let me tell you how much money they’re offering.”

Read Gruber’s entire take. I couldn’t agree more.

And you can watch all 5 spots here.

Sarah Perez, TechCrunch:

Kosta Eleftheriou, a co-founder of the Fleksy keyboard app later sold to Pinterest in an acqui-hire deal, has been calling attention to Apple App Store issues like fake reviews, ratings and subscription scams, as well as malicious clone apps, after his own app, FlickType, was targeted by scammers. Now, the developer is taking the next step in his App Store crusade: he’s filing a lawsuit against Apple.

Kosta started the ball rolling with this widely read Twitter thread from January:

https://twitter.com/keleftheriou/status/1356011069395755009

More on the lawsuit:

The suit, which the developer claims was filed Wednesday in California Superior Court in Santa Clara county, alleges that Apple enticed developers to build applications for its App Store — the only place iOS applications can be legally sold — by claiming it’s a safe and trustworthy place, but doesn’t protect legitimate app developers against scammers profiting from their hard work.

What’s more, the suit says, Apple is disincentivized to do so because scammers are generating revenue for Apple via their use of subscriptions, which involve a revenue share with Apple.

This is a major ramp-up from a Twitter complaint, no matter how much publicity it got. A story worth following.

Here’s a link to the lawsuit.

Jean-Louis Gassée:

No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary.

And:

Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.

More examples of the mighty falling:

Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later.

Turning to Apple:

The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.

There’s much more to this post, including discussion of Apple and the cloud, as well as Siri and AI. Most important is Jean-Louis’ take on Steve Jobs’ legacy of robust, flexible, functional organization, where Apple focuses on projects, pulling resources from the various functional areas (Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, etc.) to staff the project teams.

A fascinating read.

Apple:

Apple’s newly completed renewable projects, part of the company’s planned $4.7 billion Green Bond spend, are bringing clean energy to local communities while reducing carbon emissions. In 2020, Apple funded 17 Green Bond projects that will avoid an average of 921,000 metric tons of carbon emissions annually, which is equivalent to removing nearly 200,000 cars from the road. The projects will generate 1.2 gigawatts of renewable energy globally, with Apple adding over 350 megawatts of newly installed renewable energy over the last year in Nevada, Illinois, Virginia, and Denmark. Apple’s Green Bond issuances are among the largest in the private sector.

Big fan of this slice of Apple. I think Lisa Jackson and her group are undersung heroes. See also: Apple tops list of companies with biggest solar energy capacity.

Putting their money where their mouth is.

Dan Goodin, Ars Technica:

FaceTime users are getting bombarded with group calls from numbers they’ve never seen before, often as many as 20 times in short succession during late hours of the night.

Griefers behind the pranks call as many as 31 numbers at a time. When a person receiving one of the calls hangs up, a different number will immediately call back. FaceTime doesn’t have the ability to accept only FaceTime calls coming from people in the user’s address book. It also requires that all numbers in a group call must be manually blocked for the call to be stopped.

If this is happening to you:

A user can also turn off FaceTime in iOS settings or in the macOS app, but that prevents users from receiving wanted calls as well. Last, people can uncheck their phone number under the FaceTime setting “where you can be reached.” Once again, however, this will prevent wanted calls that are initiated using the user’s number.

They’ve found a hole in the system. Hopefully, Apple will roll out a fix before this grows much larger.

Apple:

Apple today was honored with historic first Academy Award nominations for its feature films since the Apple TV+ global launch of Apple Original Films just over a year ago. The widely acclaimed “Wolfwalkers” was nominated for Best Animated Feature and the epic war film “Greyhound,” starring and written by Tom Hanks, for Best Sound. Including today’s nominations, Apple has been honored with a total of 81 awards wins and 329 nominations to date.

Rooting hard for Wolfwalkers. It’s an excellent film. I enjoyed Soul, which seems pre-ordained to win, but I really connected with the Wolfwalkers story. And come on, doesn’t Pixar have enough Oscars?

If you’ve not heard the news, Apple is discontinuing the HomePod, though they are keeping the HomePod mini.

Apple, via the headline linked TechCrunch post:

HomePod mini has been a hit since its debut last fall, offering customers amazing sound, an intelligent assistant, and smart home control all for just $99. We are focusing our efforts on HomePod mini. We are discontinuing the original HomePod, it will continue to be available while supplies last through the Apple Online Store, Apple Retail Stores, and Apple Authorized Resellers. Apple will provide HomePod customers with software updates and service and support through Apple Care.

The fact that Apple pulled the plug without a replacement in place makes me think we’re not getting a new version, that the HomePod mini is the HomePod for all of us. Though that doesn’t mean we won’t see another evolution in the HomePod line. Still chewing on this.

Interestingly, you can still order a HomePod on the Apple Store, as long as you like white. Space Gray is sold out.

I’m wondering about the potential for future price discounts as that inventory dries out. Worth holding out for that? And there’s also the potential for a HomePod appearance on Apple’s official refurbished site.

Last, but certainly not least, here’s Rene Ritchie sharing his thoughts on why Apple killed the OG HomePod. Lots of great food for thought here.

Most interesting to me was the question of Apple eventually dropping support for this HomePod over time. Given that there is no line-in, no direct Bluetooth support, is it possible that this speaker might eventually no longer work?

Sami Fathi, MacRumors:

In the iOS and iPadOS 14.5 beta, an updated section in the “Location Services” menu of Apple’s Privacy settings states that Apple will collect data from users, such as when a specific app is opened near a point of interest, to determine how crowded the location is, and whether that specific business is open.

And:

Google Maps already offers a similar real-time feature called Live Visit Data that informs users of how busy a specific store or business is at a particular time. Google provides this data by gathering aggregated and anonymized data from users who have opted in to Google Location History.

I love the idea of adding more crowd sourcing data to Apple Maps, to supplement things like red-light cameras, radar traps, accidents, and real-time traffic flow.

Even better, I’d love Apple Maps to dump their relationship with Yelp in favor of impartial crowd-sourced reviews (as used by Google Maps).

Sami Fathi, MacRumors:

The full-size Space Gray HomePod is currently unavailable from Apple in the United States for purchase and delivery, as first spotted by French site Consomac.

Yup. Just checked. Though there is some inventory available in my local Apple Store, I can’t order a space gray HomePod for delivery from Apple.

I can order a white HomePod, and apparently Apple is still shipping space gray outside the US.

What can this mean? Much ado about nothing? The language on Apple’s site says “Currently unavailable”. And the iMac Pro, which MacRumors reported as officially as end-of-lifed, is still available to order.

Normally wouldn’t care about stuff like this, but there’s rumored to be an Apple Event in our near future, so my antennae are up.