Apple:

Apple today announced a comprehensive $2.5 billion plan to help address the housing availability and affordability crisis in California. As costs skyrocket for renters and potential homebuyers — and as the availability of affordable housing fails to keep pace with the region’s growth — community members like teachers, firefighters, first responders and service workers are increasingly having to make the difficult choice to leave behind the community they have long called home. Nearly 30,000 people left San Francisco between April and June of this year and homeownership in the Bay Area is at a seven-year low.

First things first: Bravo. I’m guessing we’re going to see a wave of responses to this announcement, some of it snarky, some calling for the money to be spent in different ways. But no matter the takes, Apple didn’t have to do this. That’s a big chunk of change for anyone to spend for the public good.

The breakdown:

• $1B, affordable housing investment fund
• $1B, first-time homebuyer mortgage assistance fund
• $300M, Apple-owned and available land for affordable housing
• $150M, Bay Area housing fund
• $50M, to support vulnerable populations

Well done, Apple.

This is a nice little writeup from a Redditor who picked up AirPods Pro from a New York City Apple Store.

Read the whole thing, but two snippets I had to post:

If you buy them in-store, set them up next to the line of display iPhones. Absolutely hilarious to watch a full line of iPhones pop up the setup box in sync. When you press connect on yours, all the other ones will switch to “Not your AirPods Pro.” If that’s not a “pro” experience, I don’t know what is lol.

I definitely want to see a video of this. If you are at an Apple Store and have a way to capture this, please do send it my way.

And this on sound quality, vs AirPods:

It’s actually a bigger step up than I thought previously (I was mostly paying attention to ANC quality). The seal makes a big difference but honestly the drivers are just better.

Was wondering if the drivers are new, and if they made a difference. If you care about the subtlety of the AirPods sound, here’s another, more detailed take on the difference.

Watch the 3D X-ray video in step 3. Very cool.

Looks like the battery is deep in a well of glue and solder, so about the same repairability as previous AirPods generations. Which is to say, 0/10. Feh.

Kif Leswing, CNBC:

Under the argument for an iPhone subscription, which some people call Apple Prime after the Amazon program of the same name, Apple would bundle hardware upgrades with services like iCloud storage or Apple TV+ content and hardware for a single monthly fee. This would let it switch iPhone sales from a transactional model to a subscription model, potentially driving the stock price up without having to increase product sales or prices dramatically.

And:

″In terms of hardware as a service or as a bundle, if you will, there are customers today that essentially view the hardware like that because they’re on upgrade plans and so forth,” Cook said during an earnings call. “So to some degree that exists today.”

And, most importantly:

“My perspective is that will grow in the future to larger numbers. It will grow disproportionately”

I had the chance to be on John Gruber’s show (recorded yesterday, guessing it’ll drop today or tomorrow, assuming John is not too horrified with the results), and we were talking about this, peripherally. John mentioned the future possibility of Apple Prime, a concept similar to Amazon Prime. From the article:

Under the argument for an iPhone subscription, which some people call Apple Prime after the Amazon program of the same name, Apple would bundle hardware upgrades with services like iCloud storage or Apple TV+ content and hardware for a single monthly fee.

I suspect we’ll all eventually be subscribing from a menu of services, including column A, software, column B, traditional services, and column C, hardware. Intriguing.

John Gruber:

Wearing noise-canceling earbuds on the subway and walking through the city is going to take some getting used to. It’s so good you really do lose sense of your surrounding aural environment.

And that’s a good thing. Combines with:

The “Transparency” mode is interesting and a little mind-bending. It really does make it possible to conduct a conversation while still enjoying the benefits of noise cancellation.

And:

Transparency lets you hear parts of the world around you. One obvious use case for this: jogging or running and maybe just plain walking on streets where you want to hear the sounds of traffic.

To me, this is a huge benefit. Traditional noise-canceling means, when walking, you won’t hear that car horn (or, at least it won’t be alarmingly loud, which is what you want in a car horn) or other sound of warning.

Another bit I like:

The force sensor — the flat section on the earbuds stem that faces forward when in your ear — is effectively a button. But it’s not a button. It doesn’t actually move, and it doesn’t provide haptic feedback. But it acts like a button and — most importantly — sounds like a button. When you press it, the AirPod Pro plays a click.

This is a great review. If you are considering AirPods Pro, John does a nice job painting a picture of what they’re like in real life.

Lots of changes. Worth the time to scroll through the linked post just to get a sense of what’s new.

For the record, I had no problem with the update, but I did speak to people who did brick their HomePods. Not fun.

I’m guessing this fix is high priority for Apple and that we’ll see a new update pretty quickly. Details in the linked post.

[VIDEO] There it is, at 35 seconds in (video embedded in main Loop post). The exploded view, showing all the pieces that come together to make the new noise cancelling, water splash resistant, AirPods Pro.

The first time I saw this image, I had a brief moment of hope that I’d be able to take these apart myself and swap the batteries. But I’m going to assume that all these pieces are glued tightly together, with the exception of the click-in-place rubber ear-tips.

As to splash-resistance, the AirPods Pro are rated at IPX4, which you can read all about here.

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. is ramping up hiring for a team that is working on new smart-home software and devices in an effort to catch up in a field where Google and Amazon.com Inc. have dominated, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Two elements at work here. First is HomeKit:

The overhaul is designed to spur more outside accessory and appliance makers to connect smart-home products such as lights and garage doors with the iPhone and Apple’s voice-activated digital assistant, Siri.

Not sure I’d use the phrase “falling behind” to describe HomeKit. Over the weekend, got a tour of some new home construction that was built from the ground up with HomeKit compatibility, including smart locks, smart music systems, and smart light switches throughout the house. The sense I get is that new construction offers HomeKit compatibility as a matter of course.

But where the phrase “falling behind” seems appropriate:

The team also is exploring the possibility of building new home devices beyond the HomePod speaker.

There’s the rub. Amazon and Alexa have a clear lead here, with huge inroads into your home. HomePod still feels like a one-off, not a seamless part of a house wide ecosystem. Feels like HomePod and HomeKit are crafted by two separate product teams, where all Alexa products feel much more cohesive, unified.