Apple

Apple in 2017: The Six Colors report card

Written by

Jason Snell & Dan Moren, Six Colors:

It’s time for our annual look back on Apple’s performance during the past year, as seen through the eyes of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people who spend an awful lot of time thinking about Apple.

This is the third year that I’ve presented this survey to a hand-selected group. They were prompted with 11 different Apple-related subjects, and asked to rate them on a scale from 1 to 5, as well as optionally provide text commentary on their vote.

Lots of data to process, all based on a survey, but telling nonetheless. Read this (and check out the charts) for yourself, but one point I will note is that the biggest negative change from the 2016 report card, by far, is the rating for software quality.

Some of the comments:

In 2017, our panel’s perception of the quality of Apple’s software took a nosedive. Nobody who has been following along to Apple news and opinion for the last year will be surprised.

“Apple’s QA team has dropped the ball this year, with huge bugs in macOS, iOS, and even HomeKit, with often flawed patches for those bugs,” wrote Josh Centers. “Apple looks a bit amateurish lately,” wrote Kirk McElhearn. “It’s getting embarrassing,” wrote Rob Griffiths.”

“I don’t know how quality assurance works inside Apple, but something needs to change,” wrote Brent Simmons. Fraser Speirs wrote, “It’s as good as anyone else’s but it’s not good enough.”

“My family consists of a couple of big nerds, but mostly average users, and everyone agrees software reliability is trending down,” wrote Casey Liss.

Read the whole post. Very interesting.

Apple finally gets Cupertino’s permission to occupy parts of Apple Park spaceship building

Written by

Chris O’Brien, VentureBeat:

About one year after construction on the first phase of Apple Park was originally scheduled to be finished, the city of Cupertino has finally granted Apple a series of temporary occupancy permits that allow employees to move into parts of the main building.

According to a spreadsheet compiled by Albert Salvador, a Cupertino building official, Apple received temporary occupancy permits on December 30 for five of the 12 sections of the massive circular structure. The company had actually received a previous temporary occupancy permit back in July for one section of the headquarters that contains the restaurant and atrium.

It appears Apple is on track to receive temporary occupancy permits for all the other sections between the end of January and March at the latest, according to the spreadsheet dated January 17.

I had the impression the entirety of Apple Park was all clear, ready for move-in.

Lots more in the linked article. Very interesting.

HomePod can play purchased iTunes music, podcasts and stream Beats 1 without Apple Music subscription

Written by

Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:

Whilst HomePod works best with an Apple Music subscription, allowing users to ask Siri to play any of the 40 million tracks in the Apple Music catalog, it does not require a subscription to function. We have learned that the HomePod can play content purchased from iTunes, stream Beats 1, and listen to podcasts without needing a subscription.

And:

Users can continue to buy albums from iTunes and expand their collection of purchased songs associated with their iTunes Store account, and ask Siri to play those on HomePod.

But:

If you add music to your home iTunes library that was not acquired through a purchase, HomePod will not be able to access it. It appears HomePod doesn’t have Home Sharing, which would enable that kind of feature.

Judging from the huge HomePod interest on my Twitter feed, and from the volume of questions I’ve been getting on issues related to HomePod and Apple Music, I think HomePod has big potential.

In the short term, buyers might skew heavily towards folks already subscribed to Apple Music. But I see HomePod as a potential Trojan horse, bringing new subscribers to Apple Music, assuming the HomePod reviews are positive.

Video: Hands-on with AirPlay 2 on iOS 11.3 & tvOS 11.3

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Andrew O’Hara, iDownloadBlog, jumped through the hoops necessary to test out the beta version of AirPlay 2 using multiple Apple TVs, each running their latest betas.

Watch the video embedded in the main Loop post. This is especially timely, given the fact that we’re just a few weeks away from our first public HomePods and the importance of AirPlay to the HomePod experience.

Apple Watch, behavior modification, and cheating

Written by

Elizabeth Lopatto, The Verge:

Here’s how to cheat at the Apple Watch Stand goal: dangle your wrist by your side while you sit in a chair. I discovered this by accident — I dangle my arm during meetings — but once I found it out, I did it on purpose. I cheated while watching Thor: Ragnarok, in meetings, at brunch.

I’ll admit it. I’ve cheated my Activities taskmaster. Mostly inadvertently by, say, forgetting to mark the end of a run, then noticing that I’ve been running for 3 hours!

More from the article:

Exercise can reduce the risk of depression, help you sleep better, and even increase your chances of a long life. Seriously, it’s good for you.

And yet, only about half of American adults were meeting the recommended physical activity standards as of 2016, the CDC has found.

Yup. One of the great benefits of Apple Watch and the rewards that come from filling those rings.

Rewards, as influential American psychologist B. F. Skinner noted, are highly motivating. Rewarding a behavior is a very easy way to reinforce that behavior. Humans really like gold stars.

And:

Skinner’s big idea was basically this: you’ll do what you’re rewarded for. It doesn’t really matter if you’re a person, a cat, a pigeon, or a rat — rewards are a key part of animal behavior. The reward could be anything: a treat, some money, or just closing the rings on your Apple Watch.

And:

The Apple Watch is a behavioral intervention device that was created without consulting any behaviorists. I asked Apple directly about this — both at the original presentation around the Watch and again just before publication. I was told that Apple doesn’t use outside consultants, though it does invite researchers to come discuss their work, including those who have interests in habit formation and behavior change. Apple didn’t formally hire any behaviorists to design the Watch, either.

Whether or not the Apple Watch/Activities team built the reward system on nothing but spit and hunches, it clearly works. People’s behavior changed. So it works.

Read the article. Elizabeth really did some homework here. I found the whole thing fascinating.

Spike in job openings at Apple hints at renewed focus on design

Written by

Mikey Campbell, AppleInsider:

According to statistics accumulated by Thinknum, a new data-driven web publication that tracks Apple job openings, among a slew of other publicly available metrics, the number of new positions for designers at the Cupertino tech giant has been climbing steadily since October.

Follow the headline link, check out the graph. That is an impressive spike, year over (not quite) year. I wonder if this is indicative of a new product in the works, or purely replenishing the talent pool.

On HomePod and audio quality

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From a Reddit thread on /r/audiophile, discussing HomePod:

They’re using some form of dynamic modeling, and likely also current sensing that allows them to have a p-p excursion of 20 mm in a 4″ driver. This is completely unheard of in the home market.

And:

The practical upshot is that that 4″ driver can go louder than larger drivers, and with significantly less distortion. It’s also stuff you typically find in speakers with five-figure price tags (The Beolab 90 does this, and I also suspect that the Kii Three does). It’s a quantum leap over what a typical passive speaker does, and you don’t really even find it in higher-end powered speakers

And:

The speaker uses six integrated beamforming microphones to probe the room dimensions, and alter its output so it sounds its best wherever it is placed in the room. It’ll know how large the room is, and where in the room it is placed.

And:

The room correction applied after probing its own position isn’t simplistic DSP of frequency response, as the speaker has seven drivers that are used to create a beamforming speaker array,. so they can direct specific sound in specific directions. The only other speakers that do this is the Beolab 90, and Lexicon SL-1. The Beolab 90 is $85,000/pair, and no price tag is set for the Lexicon, but the expectation in the industry is “astronomical”.

And:

Lots of people online are calling it overpriced because they think Apple just slapped a bunch of speakers in a circular configuration and added Siri, but the engineering behind it is extremely audiophile niche stuff. And it does this all automatically with no acoustical set up or technical know how.

One comment I’ve seen over and over is the fact that the HomePod is not stereo. From Apple’s official HomePod page:

Place HomePod anywhere in the room. It automatically analyzes the acoustics, adjusts the sound based on the speaker’s location, and separates the music into direct and ambient sound. Direct sound is beamed to the middle of the room, while ambient sound is diffused into left and right channels and bounced off the wall.

While you can add a second HomePod to get true stereo, there’s more going on here than simple mono sound. And I’ve long been used to Bluetooth speakers from high end companies such as Bose that fill a room with sound using a single speaker, frequently priced around $300.

To me, HomePod is a step up in audio quality and in functionality. Looking forward to February 9th. I’ll definitely let you know if it was money well spent.

“No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.”

Written by

Dieter Bohn, The Verge:

Today, Apple finally announced a shipping date for its smart speaker, the HomePod. And something about the launch of this Apple music device reminds me of the launch of that other Apple music device, the iPod.

“No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame,” said Rob “CmdrTaco” Malda on Slashdot on October 1st, 2001. (The Nomad, if you’re wondering, was a pre-iPod MP3 player that was the size and shape of a Sony Discman in its early incarnations. So.) At the time, Slashdot was the most important online community for talking about tech. And at the time, tech news meant for discussion (a lot of Linux) was posted with brief news snippets submitted by readers, snarky one-liners from the people who posted, and even snarkier tags. The iPod came “from the well-thats-not-very-exciting dept.”

Here’s a link to that canonical iPod review.

Good analogy, comparing the HomePod launch to the iPod launch. Will HomePod succeed? I suspect we’ll see at least enough success to justify the effort, given that Apple is selling into a pool of about 30 million Apple Music subscribers.

If things go well, the enthusiasm of the HomePod enjoyers will help bring more people into the Apple Music fold. Seems a reasonable bet for Apple.

HomePod and the friction of liking/disliking music

Written by

Michael Simon, Macworld:

Apple is betting big on HomePod as an audiophile device.

I’m going to post separately on this, but suffice it to say that I think audio quality will make or break HomePod. From everything I’ve heard and read (from people who either worked on the tech or have heard it in person), it sounds like HomePod audio is impressive as hell, surprisingly so.

And that’s not likely something you’ll be able to go out and listen to in a crowded Apple Store. If the sound is as impressive as it sounds (sorry), you’ll be reading glowing praise in the blogosphere, it’ll be a grass roots effect.

After more than three years, the best way to stream your music library inside your house is still through your television. HomePod will change that with full Apple Music integration, complete with support for Siri commands and playlists. Apple also says it will learn your tastes based on the songs you like (by saying, “Hey Siri, I like this”), and adjust your playlists and recommendations accordingly.

To me, the friction of teaching Apple Music my likes/dislikes, of tuning my musical preferences, is a big problem. While I would love to be able to edit my model in some way, being able to like/dislike without having to dig through an interface, is a terrific step forward.

There’s a lot more to Michael’s article, well worth the read.

AppleCare+ for HomePod will cost $39

Written by

Guilherme Rambo, 9to5Mac:

In case you want to protect your $349 HomePod from accidental damage, you’ll be able to get AppleCare+ coverage for $39.

And:

The coverage includes AirPort products and “adds up to two incidents of accidental damage from handling for HomePod, each subject to a $39 service fee”.

As with all other AppleCare+ packages, it doesn’t cover cosmetic damage that doesn’t affect the functionality of the device.

Good to know.

EU fines Qualcomm $1.23B: “Qualcomm paid billions of US Dollars to a key customer, Apple, so that it would not buy from rivals”

Written by

Ingrid Lunden, TechCrunch:

The European Commission today announced that it would be fining the company €997 million, or $1.23 billion, for abusing its market position between 2011 and 2016, related to its relationship with Apple.

And:

“Qualcomm illegally shut out rivals from the market for LTE baseband chipsets for over five years, thereby cementing its market dominance,” said Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in a statement. “Qualcomm paid billions of US Dollars to a key customer, Apple, so that it would not buy from rivals. These payments were not just reductions in price — they were made on the condition that Apple would exclusively use Qualcomm’s baseband chipsets in all its iPhones and iPads.

Qualcomm will no doubt appeal this ruling. The size of this fine boggles my mind. $1.23 billion. That’s a lot of baseband chips.

HomePod arrives February 9, available to order this Friday

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From Apple’s press release:

HomePod, the innovative wireless speaker from Apple, arrives in stores beginning Friday, February 9 and is available to order online this Friday, January 26 in the US, UK and Australia. HomePod will arrive in France and Germany this spring.

HomePod delivers stunning audio quality wherever it’s placed — in any room in the house, playing any style of music. Using just your voice, it’s easy and fun to use, and works together with an Apple Music subscription for a breakthrough music experience, providing access to one of the world’s largest cloud music libraries.

On Siri:

Siri, now actively used on over half a billion devices, has developed a deep knowledge of music and understands your preferences and tastes. And with Siri, HomePod can send a message, set a timer, play a podcast, check the news, sports, traffic and weather, and even control a wide range of HomeKit smart home accessories.

And:

Using Siri to deliver deep knowledge of artists, songs, albums and more, HomePod can handle advanced searches within Apple Music’s catalog, so users can ask questions like, “Hey Siri, when was this song released?” or “Hey Siri, can you play something totally different?” to change the mood. Apple Music subscribers can enjoy a catalog of more than 45 million songs, combined with their entire iTunes library, for online or offline listening — completely ad-free.

On SiriKit:

Through SiriKit, HomePod supports third-party messaging apps, so users can ask Siri to send a message to a friend or colleague using apps like WhatsApp. Reminders, note-taking and to-do list apps like Things and Evernote will automatically work with HomePod, so Siri can set reminders, create a new list, mark items as complete, or create and modify notes. For developers interested in adding SiriKit support, more information is available at developer.apple.com/sirikit.

On setup:

Setup is as easy and intuitive as setting up AirPods — simply hold an iPhone next to HomePod and it’s ready to start playing music in seconds. The Siri waveform appears on the top to indicate when Siri is engaged, and integrated touch controls also allow easy navigation.

The biggest question for me, how will Apple distinguish HomePod from Amazon Echo and Google Home, both priced significantly less. HomePod is $349.

Order it Friday, arrives February 9th.

On rumors of the iPhone X being produced for only one year

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Start off with a quick read of this Apple Insider post: If iPhone X Demand Is Less Than Expected, Analyst Expects It to Be ‘End of Life’ When Replacements Ship.

From the post, this bit about KGI predicting a quick end-of-life for iPhone X:

KGI also expects a trio of iPhone models in the fall of 2018. He predicts the iPhone X will be “end of life” in the summer of 2018, instead of being retained as a lower-cost option in the following year. If this is the case, it would be the first time that Apple has not retained the previous year’s model to allow for a wide range of iPhones available at many price points.

John Gruber shares some insight on this:

This would not be the first time an iPhone flagship model didn’t stick around for a second year. In 2013, Apple introduced the iPhone 5S to replace the iPhone 5, and also introduced the iPhone 5C to occupy the second pricing tier.

The iPhone X was a relatively giant leap in hardware design. The notch took a lot of heat and it seems a logical speculation that Apple is working hard to shrink the hardware footprint and the notch. And that means a new rev of the iPhone X. Once that happens, it’d seem logical to end-of-life the previous version. If the KGI speculation is true. If.

But my favorite part of Gruber’s post is his takedown of a Newsweek article, with the headline:

Is Apple About to Cancel the iPhone X? Poor Sales Mean Device Faces ‘End of Life’”

This article got a fair amount of traction, but it was based on the Apple Insider article quoted above. Headlines. A sharp, cutting tool, dangerous when used poorly.

Follow the link above to Gruber’s post. A worthy read.

Apple adds Apple-designed public bikes to Apple Park campus

Written by

Kif Leswing, Business Insider:

The “ring” building is situated on 175 acres, so it can take a lucky Apple employee as long as 10 minutes to walk from the parking garage to their office.

So Apple will provide 1,000 free bikes and 2,000 bike parking spots on its campus for employees to get from place to place.

Most Silicon Valley tech giants provide free bicycles for their employees, but given Apple’s corporate preferences, its bikes are minimally designed, compared to Google’s rainbow-colored two-wheelers.

It seems Apple settled on a completely chrome, minimalist bicycle design, and ordered a whole lot.

Not new news, but there’s a bit of video and a still shot of the bikes. Interesting to compare Google’s Google-color-scheme bikes to Apple’s minimalist take.

What I wish the iPad would gain from the Mac

Written by

Ryan Christoffel, MacStories:

If you want an iPad to supplement your iPhone and Mac, you can still get one in the $329 “just call me iPad” model introduced last spring. But the bulk of Apple’s iPad efforts of late have centered on making the device a capable replacement for the traditional computer. The iPad Pro and iOS 11 represent a new vision for the iPad. This vision puts the iPad not next to the Mac, but instead squarely in its place. It’s a vision embodied by the question, “What’s a computer?”

If the tagline “What’s a computer?” doesn’t ring a bell, take a moment to watch it.

Two key moments:

  • At about 30 seconds in, our hero does a super-Pro-move to fold up the keyboard. I’ve not yet found someone who can duplicate that move, at least not nearly as smoothly. Wonder how many takes that took.

  • At 55 seconds in, there’s the real payoff. “What’s a computer?” Apple is clearly pitching the iPad Pro as the be-all and end-all in devices.

Ryan’s MacStories post does a terrific job answering that question, painting the differences between a Mac and an iPad with absolutely no snark or venom. This is a wish list, an exploration of what the iPad still needs to cross the “What’s a computer?” divide.

Apple intros Apple Music for Artists

Written by

Billboard:

Today Apple launches Apple Music for Artists, a dashboard designed to provide acts with hundreds of data points giving deep analytical insight into their fans’ listening and buying habits.

And:

The easily navigable dashboard’s home page provides artists with their current number of plays, spins, song purchases and album purchases. The user can specify the time period ranging from the past 24 hours to the 2015 launch of Apple Music.

An Insights panel showcases key milestones via bullet points that highlight such information as all-time number of plays and purchases for specific songs or cumulatively.

And:

Apple Music for Artists debuts more than two years after Spotify, Pandora and YouTube bowed their own artist dashboards. While admittedly a late entry, Apple hopes to make up for its tardiness with the depth of information available, level of transparency and the ease of use provided by the clean user interface.

Good news for Apple Music artists.

One side note: The original Billboard headline was “Apple Bows Apple Music For Artists to Provide Acts With Deep Analytics Dive”. Took me a few reads to parse that one. Music and Hollywood writers have their own headline language. You’d rarely (if ever) find the word “boffo” in a tech headline. But “Boffo Box Office”? Happens all the time in the Hollywood press.

When Hollywood folk check out the tech blogs, do they see the same alien language?

iPad: “Attempting data recovery”

Written by

iPhone J.D. legal blog:

The computer asked me if I wanted to update the iPad to the latest version of iOS, and I said yes without thinking much about it. Everything seemed to go fine, but then at the very end I saw an error message that I had never seen before telling me to press the iPad’s home button to attempt data recovery. What the heck? Nervous that I had somehow lost data on my daughter’s iPad, I pressed the button as instructed and crossed my fingers.

I then waited a while while the iPad told me that it was attempting data recovery.

I’ve seen this message, and I’ve heard from a number of other folks who’ve encountered the same issue while trying to apply an iOS update. Here’s a link showing what this looks like.

Seems to me it’d be easy enough to add in some kind of clarifying text to this error message. As is, it is a bit terrifying.

Tim Cook’s take on learning to code vs learning a new language

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This snippet comes from a Guardian interview with Tim Cook:

Cook said: “I think if you had to make a choice, it’s more important to learn coding than a foreign language. I know people who disagree with me on that. But coding is a global language; it’s the way you can converse with 7 billion people.”

From Kirk McElhearn’s response:

I agree with Mr. Cook that coding teaches people logic and many other skills, but suggesting that it allows you to converse with 7 billion people is Trumpian foolishness. (If you follow Mr. Cook on Twitter, you’ll notice that he occasionally posts tweets in languages other than English. His minions clearly give him the texts, but it’s surprising that he doesn’t post code to converse with his Twitter followers.)

At a strictly surface level, I think Kirk has a point. Clearly, programming languages are not intended as conversing languages. You’d never chat with someone in Swift.

But digging in a bit, I took a different meaning from Tim’s comment. Programming languages are a common currency, a common language shared by many different cultures.

That said, is it more important to learn coding than a foreign language?

Food for thought.

iPhone X ad: “I am the greatest”

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[VIDEO] This iPhone X ad (embedded in the main Loop post) reached back in time, editing together snippets from a comedy album Muhammad Ali created early on in his professional boxing career, before he changed his name. The album was released under his birth name of Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr., back when the world was first learning about “The Greatest”.

The snippets used in the Apple ad are from the second track on the album.

Here’s a link to the album’s Wikipedia page.

For the first time in over 20 years, Office is built from one codebase for all platforms

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A new version of Microsoft Office 2016 just shipped (release notes here).

What really caught my eye was this tweet from Microsoft’s Erik Schwiebert:

https://twitter.com/Schwieb/status/954037656677072896

As Erik says, that is a massive code realignment. My 2 cents, this is good news for all Mac Office users. The Office experience will now have more consistency across platforms, and there’s more of a chance for new features to make their way to the Mac at the same time as they appear on Windows.

Side note: Office 365 subscriptions give you the opportunity to keep up with the latest version of Office at no extra cost. A license to a specific version of Office does not. When Office 2019 is released (presumably, later this year), Office 2016 users will have to pony up for a new license. Office 365 subscribers will have the opportunity to upgrade as part of their subscription.

Apple overhauls App Store web interface with new iOS-like design

Written by

Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:

Apple today has rolled out a major redesign for the App Store web interface. The new redesign replaces the dated and clunky interface that previously housed the App Store on the web

The new redesign takes cues from the all-new App Store in iOS 11, which offers larger images, a focus on curation and reviews, and more. On the new webpage, you’ll see a larger app heading, preceded by “This app is only available on the App Store for iOS devices.”

To see this for yourself, here’s a link to today’s iOS app of the day, MUBI. Open the link on your Mac.

As Chance points out, there’s now a big warning towards the top of the page (blue background) telling you you have to go to the iOS App Store if you want to buy the app.

While the refreshed look is nice, it still feels like a broken marketing link, forcing me to switch devices (from my Mac to my iOS device) and type in the name of the app in an iOS App Store search field to find the app and make a purchase.

And this, from Craig Grannell, in a post entitled Apple’s App Store Preview needs to steal some ideas from Google Play:

It’s 2018. Apple has Apple Pay. If I’m sent to An App Store Preview page after reading an article about an amazing new iOS app, I should be able to buy it there and then, and send it to my iOS devices. Likewise, if I’m on my iPhone, I should be able to buy and send an iPad-only app to my iPad (or vice-versa). I shouldn’t have to remember it later, by sending myself an email or note.

There’s clearly a reason Apple is doing this. But to me, it’s just as clear that this is adding friction to the purchase process.

Jeff Bezos, margins, and the future of retail

Written by

Benedict Evans, from a terrific read entitled TV, retail, advertising and cascading collapses:

When Sears and Macy’s go bust, how many malls do they take with them, and how many other retailers that might have been doing fine on their own will go or lose a lot of their footprint because of that? And, where were those retailers advertising? What was their TV budget? How much of this is self-reinforcing – the more you buy online, the more you buy online?

And:

Suppose you go on eBay and buy the last ten years’ of Elle Decoration and drop it into Google Brain, and then wave your phone at your living room and ask what cushions or lamps you would like?

And:

Suppose I put a bunch of HD cameras in the right parts of Berlin and Brooklyn and track what people are wearing, entirely automatically, and then see what of that shows up in middle America in a year, and then apply that pattern matching to what people are wearing in Berlin now?

And:

There’s a famous Jeff Bezos quote that ‘your margin is my opportunity’ – right now Amazon is building a billion dollar ad business in its own search results, but I suspect he also looks at the $500bn that’s spent every year on advertising and the further $500bn that’s spent on marketing and sees money that should be going to lower prices and same-day or 1-hour delivery.

The mechanics of retail are changing. Margin (simplistically put, what Apple charges for an iPhone minus what they pay to create that iPhone) is critical to a company, necessary for them to prosper, grow. The slimmer the margin, the thinner the ice on which that company skates.

In “your margin is my opportunity”, Bezos sees disruption in large margins. He does not need to advertise products. The company that creates the product pays for the advertising/marketing out of their margins. An opportunity indeed.

Safari 11 tips and tricks

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Apple Insider pulls together the details on what’s new with Safari 11 on both iOS and macOS. Don’t miss the video embedded at the top of the Apple Insider post.

Inventec begins shipping long-awaited HomePods

Written by

Taipei Times:

Inventec Corp, one of the two assemblers for Apple Inc’s HomePod, has started shipping the US company’s long-awaited “smart” speaker with an initial shipment of about 1 million units, industry sources said.

I’m really interested in learning what features will ship with this first version of HomePod.

Obviously, the music capabilities will be first and foremost. But how much of Siri will be available? Will HomePod’s Siri be limited in any way? Will HomePod’s Siri domain be more detailed when it comes to music?

How will updates be handled? Will HomePod be linked to my iPhone, with a HomePod app for handling settings/updates like my Apple Watch?

How will HomePod distinguish itself from existing products like the Amazon Echo and Google Home? What is the value proposition here? How would a consumer justify the extra cost?

I’m very much looking forward to getting one, seeing all this for myself.

Tim Cook talks new Apple site, tax repatriation, battery kerfuffle, and more

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[VIDEO] Watch the videos embedded in the main Loop post, two different takes on the same interview. If you only watch one, watch the second. It’s a bit more detailed, longer stretches of Tim talking.

One takeaway from all this: Tim is earnest. When he talks about Apple’s intentions regarding the battery snafu, I believe he means what he says, and I believe what he says is true.