Jason Snell digs into the transcript of yesterday’s earnings call:

If I had to describe Tim Cook’s attitude during the call, it would be “optimistic.” But only because he referred to his optimism eight different times over the span of an hour. (Maestri added another three on his own.) Then again, when your company just broke a 13-year streak of year-over-year revenue growth, expressing your optimism about the future is probably a smart move.

And:

With that in mind, file all of this away for three months from now: Apple says it won’t grow next quarter, either. When you look at the data, it’s clear that 2015 was a record-breaker for Apple, and a severe outlier. The release of the iPhone 6 seems to have supercharged Apple’s sales just when they were starting to slow down, but a year later those numbers are proving impossible to match.

This means that for the rest of this year, Apple will be putting up numbers that are lower than the ones it put up in 2015–and people who look to the company for growth will be unhappy, even as the company posts quarters with $10 billion in profit and adds to its $200 billion in cash.

The problem is that investors want growth (the “G” word), want a reason to be optimistic that growth is still possible. Growth, on a percentage basis is much, much easier when you are small. Doubling $100 is easy. Doubling $1 million, much harder. Doubling $1 billion requires a much more complex business mechanism that needs to be firing on all cylinders. And once you reach Apple’s size, continued growth is almost impossible.

But the market continues to require growth, especially when you’ve delivered impossibly steady growth for such a long time.

Rene Ritchie and Jason Snell put together a transcript of Apple’s earnings call today.

FBI Director James Comey said on Tuesday that his agency was still assessing whether a vulnerability used to unlock an iPhone linked to one of the San Bernardino killers would go through a government review to determine if it should be disclosed to Apple or the public.

I’d be shocked if they disclosed the flaw to Apple or the public. If this is the only way they have to get into these phones, they have no reason to disclose the flaw.

M.G. Siegler:

Last year, Rolex did $4.5 billion in sales. A solid year for the premium watchmaker. Of course, it was no Apple Watch. That business did roughly $6 billion in sales, if industry estimates are accurate.

The point here isn’t to compare the two devices — an Apple Watch is just about as comparable to a watch as an iPhone is to a phone. But it does provide an interesting context for Apple’s fledgling business — a new product category which has come under a lot of scrutiny since its launch a year ago. Many have called it a “flop,” which, again, is interesting in context.

Leaving aside the “…if industry estimates are accurate…” (they’re not), the media in general and the tech media is particular always seem to need to see everything in absolute terms. The Apple Watch is most certainly not a flop – nothing that sells millions of copies at $500+ a pop can be called that.

From the Dropbox blog:

With Project Infinite, we’re addressing a major issue our users have asked us to solve. The amount of information being created and shared has exploded, but most people still work on devices with limited storage capacity. While teams can store terabyte upon terabyte in the cloud, most individuals’ laptops can only store a small fraction of that. Getting secure access to all the team’s data usually means jumping over to a web browser, a clunky user experience at best.

Project Infinite will enable users to seamlessly and securely access all their Dropbox files from the desktop, regardless of how much space they have available on their hard drives. Everything in the company’s Dropbox that you’re given access to, whether it’s stored locally or in the cloud, will show up in Dropbox on your desktop. If it’s synced locally, you’ll see the familiar green checkmark, while everything else will have a new cloud icon.

The announcement very specifically mentions laptops and your desktop. No mention of iOS, but perhaps there’s just no sensible path there. Will be interesting to see how that plays out. As currently announced, Project Infinite is for OS X and Windows.

Take a look at the video below to see this concept in action. Note the OS X slight (at about 1:47), as the narrator focuses on Windows, then says, “Ah but graphic design, they’re still on…they always use OS Ten…It works on OS Ten too.”

Clearly a Windows bias there. I’d be surprised if the company didn’t update this video to add a more OS X and iOS spin on things. As is, Apple is merely an afterthought.

Still to this day, the pummeling grooves of John Bonham, Ian Paice, Keith Moon and Bill Ward continue to inspire writers and underline the fact that in classic rock, the drums are – and should be – loud, obnoxious and play as much of a leading part as anything else in a song.

I have quite a few of these drum groove libraries from Toontrack. They do a great job with them and I’ll be adding this one to my collection.

I interviewed former Apple CEO John Sculley on April 11th, an insightful and enjoyable experience. While the interview was ostensibly centered around his 2014 book Moonshot! (on Amazon and iBooks), Mr. Sculley also shared anecdotes about his time at Apple experiences with the late Steve Jobs, some of which I hadn’t previously heard.

Great interview. You can read it or listen to the audio.

Matthew Schofield, writing for the Miami Herald:

Even 30 years later – 25 years after the country that built it ceased to exist – the full damage of that day is still argued.

Death toll estimates run from hundreds to millions. The area near the reactor is both a teeming wildlife refuge and an irradiated ghost-scape. Much of eastern and central Europe continues to deal with fallout aftermath. The infamous Reactor Number 4 remains a problem that is neither solved nor solvable.

Riveting account of the Chernobyl disaster, with a first person accounting from one of the very few people who was there and lived to tell the tale.

Shawn Knight, writing for TechSpot:

During a recent conversation with a close friend of mine, I mentioned the fact that I’ve gone over my 300GB broadband data cap a handful of times since switching from AT&T U-Verse to Comcast for my home Internet needs last September. He was flabbergasted and questioned how I could possibly be using that much data each month.

While I do work from home and am actively online for several hours during weekdays, I don’t game online or download torrents. I am, however, a cord-cutter so all of our television watching comes from streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and Sling TV.

And:

I never ran into overage issues when I had U-Verse. At the time, AT&T didn’t offer a way for customers to check their monthly data consumption (I asked multiple times) nor did they ever communicate that I was even subject to a data cap.

That changed recently, however, as AT&T announced it was increasing monthly data caps for U-Verse customers and would even do away with the cap entirely so long as you also subscribe to its cable television service.

Makes sense. This is a battle, business hardball. If cord cutting becomes mainstream (seems inevitable), the cable business will lose the lion’s share of their revenue from a typical monthly cable bill.

Jean-Louis Gassée, writing for Monday Note:

All cars manufactured after September 2014 must include an Event Data Recorder (EDR), as mandated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The NHTSA also mandates that 15 streams of data — speed, throttle input, braking effort and so forth — must be recorded, and has created standards for 30 more “voluntary” data types. In the event of a crash the NHTSA requires that the EDR data be made publicly available. This is for the good: The NHTSA simply wants the data to be available for study as an aid in improving safety. But…

“…perhaps the most significant feature of the Part 563 rule is that manufacturers must now relinquish their proprietary control over the equipment, software, and data decoding algorithms, thus lowering the barriers to data access.”

Beyond crash data, not much is said about who exactly has explicit or implicit permission to access the EDR’s content. Anyone with physical access to the car’s On Board Diagnostics (ODB) connector (your local car mechanic) can look into your dirty driving habits and can also install software updates, benevolent or otherwise. How are normal users to know if their car has been compromised, and for what purposes? Now add wireless connectivity and even more hacking fun can be had…

That last bit is key. How can you know if your car’s security has been compromised? I have access and control over my computer. I can run any virus scanning software I choose, customize my firewall, add hardware barriers as well. But my car’s security is strictly in the hands of my dealer.

Emma Boyle, writing for Gadgette:

Lionsgate, the movie studio responsible for major franchises such as The Hunger Games and Divergent, recently announced plans to add over 100 feature films to Steam with more to come in the future.

And:

For many people, myself included, Steam isn’t exactly the first place I would think to go to watch a film or associate with the cutting edge of online content delivery, as reliable as it is. That said, the films will be viewable on any platform that Steam operates on, meaning you could watch the latest Hunger Games instalment on PC, Linux, Mac, SteamOS and even via a headset on Steam VR.

Interesting to watch the commoditization of the original Netflix model. The key differentiator is custom content, such as Netflix’s House of Cards, or Amazon Video’s Mozart in the Jungle. Steam has gaming, but it’ll be interesting to see if they try to bring some exclusive content to their side.

VentureBeat:

Apple has been cutting all of its contract recruiters in the past few weeks, VentureBeat has learned.

The hardware and software giant is additionally beginning to let go of some full-time recruiters as well, a source familiar with the matter told VentureBeat. In all, more than 100 people could be affected by the moves, the source said. The company currently has no public job postings for recruiters.

Essentially, the recruiting engine inside Apple has slowed down, and the company is reevaluating its activities in that area, the source said.

Is this a course correction? A basic change of strategy? We’ll likely learn more this afternoon.

The quarterly earnings call was originally scheduled for yesterday afternoon, but:

Apple’s second quarter earnings announcement has been rescheduled to Tuesday, April 26, at 2:00 p.m. PT/5:00 p.m. ET out of respect for the friends and family of Bill Campbell, whose memorial service will be held Monday. Apple executives and employees will be attending the service to remember Bill and his many years of friendship and service to the Apple community.

The call is now on for this afternoon at 2p PT, 5p ET. You can listen to the audio webcast here.

Screens is a beautiful, yet powerful Screen Sharing and VNC client that lets you connect back to your Mac, Windows or Linux PC from the comfort of your living room, the corner coffee shop or anywhere in the world.

I do love this app.

Bid now on this opportunity to have lunch with Apple CEO Tim Cook on campus in Cupertino, California, and to be his guest at an Apple keynote event!

Tim, we should really do lunch sometime soon.

Appleton announced that she was leaving Box in a Medium post last week. Today she said on Facebook that she had joined Apple, but didn’t elaborate on the nature of the job. “Officially an Apple employee. Excited for this adventure!” she wrote.

Good move.

I thought this was a cool trick to get your kick drum and bass together in the mix. I’m going to try this out.

Kevin McLaughlin, writing for CRN:

Apple is buying and deploying an increasing amount of IBM technology for internal use, in a sign of how the vendors’ mobile enterprise partnership is spreading to new areas, sources familiar with the matter told CRN this week.

Apple is using IBM software and hardware in its retail platform and in its corporate data centers, according to the sources.

And:

“Apple and IBM will not call out this work as part of the partnership, but there is momentum at Apple to adopt more of the IBM stack,” a source familiar with the partnership told CRN, speaking on condition of anonymity because the details are confidential. “IBM is becoming one the top software vendors to Apple.”

And:

IBM has an internal team of about 25 salespeople that focuses on selling technology to Apple. That team is forecasted sell $82 million in IBM technology to Apple for fiscal 2016.

Not a huge number for either company, but certainly a sign that the relationship is burgeoning. The headline from the linked article was:

Sources: Apple Is Buying More IBM Products And Drinking The IBM Enterprise Kool-Aid

Not sure I buy that Kool-Aid part. Not seeing anything here that makes me thing IBM is changing Apple’s thinking. To me, this seems like smart business for both sides.

ESPN:

Documents laying out some of the original “Laws of Base Ball” sold for $3.26 million early Sunday morning, setting a new record for the highest-priced baseball document.

A spokesman from SCP Auctions told ESPN that the buyer wished to remain anonymous.

It was not me.

Craig Hockenberry, writing on the Iconfactory blog:

There’s only one way for manufacturers to improve displays and gain a competitive advantage. They need to make the displays “deeper”; able to show a wider range of color. It’s also clear from Apple’s work that they see smarter displays, with things like True Tone technology, as a way to distinguish themselves in a crowded market.

Apple is in a unique position with regard to color management. They own a technology called ColorSync that first saw the light of day in 1993 with System 7.1 on the Mac. It’s also been integrated at a system-level for all of the OS X releases. It’s a very mature technology that recently made its way to mobile in the iOS 9.3 release.

On the other side of the coin, Android has no color management. Companies like Samsung are going to find it impossible to pull off something like True Tone and DCI-P3 without the aid of color management.

This is a well written, understandable walk through the future of color. Deep, but not too deep. A great read.

This is an interview with ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, asking him about Prince, his guitar playing, and his influence.

Q: You’re a little bit older, you come from Texas and I’d imagine you first learned about Prince in the early ’80s, when you were both MTV stars.

Billy: As you may remember, he began bubbling up without a lot of advance fanfare. There was just this vague knowledge of this new guy on the scene called Prince. And then, of course, we all got our world rocked when “Purple Rain” showed up at the theaters. Even today, I’m struggling to try and emulate that guitar introduction to “When Doves Cry.” It’s just a testament to his extraordinary technique.

Q: Wait. When you say emulate — you mean you try to play it and you can’t?

Billy: I continually come back to attempting to piece together each and every one of those segments. And it’s very short. It’s not an extended solo by any means. But the way it is delivered. There’s certainly no way to write it. You’ve just got to dive in and feel it to see if you could come close.

In the interview, Billy talks about technique and references the video below. Prince was a master of technique. Take a listen. Prince is in complete control. This is not about speed, this is about breathing life into his guitar, making it an extension of his Princely self.

Daisuke Wakabayashi, writing for The Wall Street Journal:

Apple Inc. sold twice as many Watches as iPhones in each device’s debut year. Yet the smartwatch is dogged by a perception that seems premature given the history of Apple’s most popular devices: disappointment.

This is damning Apple with faint praise.

But reading on:

As the Watch marks its first anniversary on Sunday — two days before Apple’s quarterly earnings announcement — the product’s fate is critical to the company. It is Apple’s first all-new product since the iPad and a test of its ability to innovate under Chief Executive Tim Cook, when sales of iPhones are slowing.

So far, the numbers appear solid. Apple doesn’t disclose sales, but analysts estimate about 12 million Watches were sold in year one. At an estimated average price of $500, that is a $6 billion business — three times the annual revenue of activity tracker Fitbit Inc.

By comparison, Apple sold roughly six million iPhones in its first year. As a new entrant, the Watch accounted for about 61% of global smartwatch sales last year, according to researcher IDC.

To me, no matter how you slice this, the Apple Watch is a remarkable success. A $6 billion business its first year out of the gate. True, there is no Apple Watch success without riding the coattails of the iPhone juggernaut. But that qualifier shouldn’t diminish the Apple Watch’s success. This is a rev one piece of hardware.

The original iPhone was, by today’s standards, clunky, buggy, and underpowered. But it was just the beginning. Same with Apple Watch.

I continue to wear my Apple Watch every day. At a glance, I know the outside temperature, can see my next calendar event, and read emails and instant messages as they arrive, all without pulling my iPhone out of my pocket. All without a hitch. A remarkable achievement for a first generation product.

Andrew Hayward, writing for Macworld:

One year ago, just before the release of the Apple Watch, we spoke to several game developers about the coming future of wrist-based wearable gaming. All of them were excited, but some were uncertain of what was ahead—in part because some were developing for a smartwatch they’d never worn, and a device that wasn’t quite like any other before it.

Now, as the Apple Watch nears a full year on the market, we’re taking another look at gaming on the device, this time with a lot more experience. We’ve played hours of wearable games, tapping and swiping through tiny narratives or battling fantasy monsters, and we’ve watched as the initial enthusiasm and intrigue around wearable gaming quieted considerably.

Talking with developers again today—some of whom we spoke with last year, along with others—there’s still excitement about the Apple Watch gaming market today and ahead. But there’s still uncertainty, this time over whether players are going to embrace wearable gaming like they did smartphone games, if developers will push hard enough with new ideas, and if/when Apple will shine more of a spotlight on their creations.

With the potential release of a second generation of Apple Watch and the requirement that Apple Watch apps be able to run independent of their paired iPhone overlords, this is an interesting time for Apple Watch game developers. New opportunities are definitely on the horizon.

Ben Thompson, writing for Stratechery:

I do believe that Apple’s products — their devices anyways — are superior, particularly if you value the finer details of industrial design, build quality, and little UI details like scrolling and responsiveness that seem so simple but are so hard to get right. And, frankly, it’s not surprising that Apple is good at this stuff for the exact reasons laid out above: everything about the company is designed to produce integrated devices that don’t sacrifice perfection for the sake of modularity.

But…

The problem is that everything that goes into creating these jewel-like devices works against being good at services.

Apple is set up to share their expertise across product lines, in what’s called a unitary organizational form. Knowledge is centralized in functional areas, such as marketing, finance, engineering, with this expertise spanning all products. Great for creating products that integrate well. Not so great for running services, like iCloud or advertising.

The strength of integration is its mass of specifics, building for an incredibly complex tangle of devices and demands. Services, on the other hand, tend to be more general purpose. To succeed, a service should serve the widest possible customer base.

As you make your way through the post, ask yourself whether Apple is an integrated product company or a services company. Interesting post.