Apple

Take a look at the new emoji coming with iOS 14.5.

Two notable highlights:

• The blood is removed from the syringe emoji, making it more representative of vaccines
• The headphone emoji moves from a more generic headphone to a very specific AirPods Max

One thing I find interesting about moments of emoji change is that if I text, say, a headphone emoji from the new beta and you receive it on the latest public iOS release, you’ll see the old headphones even though I sent the AirPods Max.

If you are interested in the history of Apple emoji, you might enjoy Emojipedia’s Who Created The Original Apple Emoji Set?

Take a look at the video embedded below. Obviously, the concept is designed to work with some form of Apple AR glasses.

https://twitter.com/domhofdesign/status/1359587098043568133

Makes me wonder about the future of devices with screens, if Apple glasses ship and gain enough traction to become widely used. The glasses themselves are screens. Presumably, in addition to adding overlays to real life and existing screens, they could implement the Mac or iPad screen in the glasses interface, no need for the hardware at all, beyond the glasses themselves.

I can also imagine a future with contact lenses, so all the AR is built right into your eye coverings. And, ultimately, Apple Eyes, Apple Eyes Pro, and Apple Eyes Pro Max.

Sami Fathi, MacRumors:

During a 2018 interview in the midst of Facebook’s notorious Cambridge Analytica scandal, Cook was asked how he would lead Apple if it were to face a similar crisis. Cook responded by ruling the hypothetical situation out of the question, saying Apple would not be in the situation Facebook was in, thanks to its differing stance on privacy and user data. Zuckerberg shot back, calling Cook’s comments on TV “extremely glib” and “not at all aligned with the truth.”

If you had to pick between Apple and Facebook, which would you say is “not at all aligned with the truth.”

Back to the post:

Zuckerberg, outraged by Cook’s comments and public influence on Facebook’s reputation, reportedly told internal aides and team members that Facebook needs to “inflict pain” on Apple, according to sources who spoke on anonymity to The Wall Street Journal.

And:

Facebook is reportedly planning to take its disapproval with Apple to court, as it’s allegedly been preparing to file an antitrust lawsuit against the Cupertino-based tech company over its “unfair” approach to privacy with ATT and iMessage. As part of its lawsuit, Facebook is considering partnering with other companies such as Epic Games, which is already embroiled in a massive legal battle with Apple, to propel its antitrust case forward.

Here’s a link to the paywalled Wall Street Journal post.

It is amazing to me how Apple’s efforts to promote transparency are being weaponized against it. To me, good for consumers trumps bad for business.

Ben Bajarin:

Helping Intel stay in the semiconductor manufacturing game should be among one of the highest priorities for all US-based technology companies. While TSMC is the leader in manufacturing process technology, they remain a geo-political risk should China decide to enforce its will on the region. Samsung is not far behind, but being a Korean company, again, future politics guarantee no safe bets.

And:

I don’t want to dismiss the technological achievement of TSMC by being the first foundry to 7nm, 5nm, and likely the first to 3nm. Anyone who knows transistor designs knows how hard it is, at a micro level, to keep shrinking silicon. However, Apple helped make it easier for TSMC to justify the RND and CapEx costs and to continually invest in leading-edge process technology by being their largest customer, always committing to the latest node. I am not convinced TSMC would have the clear lead they do in process tech without Apple.

Most importantly:

Having a leading semiconductor company founded and based in the US is incredibly strategic given how critical semiconductors are to our digital future. Apple may be one of the only companies that can help Intel right the ship.

This seems a perfect match for Apple. Political gains by bringing more technology leadership and high-tech jobs to the US. A joint venture that helps ensure processors on demand to keep their supply chain healthy.

Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac, with a good read if you’ve got AirPods that work well, but suffer from aging batteries.

What I found most interesting:

PodSwap is a relatively new service, and it looks like a great option to get your AirPods batteries replaced at a nice discount. You can swap in your gen 1 or gen 2 AirPods with dead batteries for a refurbished and sanitized pair with “restored battery life.”

The company has indeed found a way to replace AirPods’ batteries with “specially developed equipment.” You’re not getting an official Apple battery here, but PodSwap says it’s done independent testing to make sure “The batteries we use are similar in performance to your original ones from Apple.”

The caveat:

PodSwap gives your AirPods new life for just $59.99 (the same would run $99 from Apple). The trade-off here is this service is mostly compelling for AirPods gen 1 owners since if you send in AirPods gen 2, you’re getting back gen 1 earphones.

Worth bookmarking PodSwap, especially if you’ve got gen 1 AirPods. And hopefully, they’ll work out fixes for gen 2 AirPods and AirPods Pro as well.

Justin O’Beirne:

After four years of driving in parts of fifteen countries, Apple announced in June 2019 that its imagery collection vehicles had driven “over four million miles”.

And:

What makes this number interesting is that Google has made similar statements about its Street View vehicles over the years. Google first started collecting imagery in 2006 and by mid 2012, its Street View vehicles had driven more than five million miles.

And:

Five million miles over six years (Google) is slower than four million over four (Apple)—and it suggests that Apple has been driving the world faster than Google originally did.

But when it comes to releasing this imagery, Apple has been releasing it much slower.

What follows is an interesting, and quite detailed look at Apple’s imagery rollout in southern Canada and the US. If nothing else, check out the map showing the sparsity of US Look Around coverage (about halfway down the page) vs the map showing US places visited by Apple Maps vehicles vs the map of robust Look Around coverage in southern Canada.

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

If you swipe up on the ‌Apple Maps‌ interface where maps details are available, you can tap on a “Report” button that lets you flag an accident, a hazard, or a speed check, similar to other mapping apps like Waze.

Interestingly:

Tapping automatically flags your location with no confirmation window, so it shouldn’t be used except in a valid situation.

That does open the door to accidental flagging, but this is crowdsourcing, so it’s not likely a single report will trigger the flag.

You can also say “Hey ‌Siri‌, there’s an accident” and ‌Siri‌ will send in a report to ‌Apple Maps‌, and presumably, if enough people file reports, an accident site will show up in the maps app through the crowdsourcing.

Sounds right. Nice to see Siri interface.

There’s been a steady drumbeat on Twitter recently, a river of tweets about fake/scammy apps on the App Store.

From the headline linked post:

I have spent the last four years of my life working on my very successful app only to have it ruined by scam apps with very obvious fake reviews as well as false advertising claims that Apple does not take action against. I can literally prove they are fake but Apple refuses to take action for undisclosed reasons, allowing thousands of more people getting scammed by these apps day by day.

Follow the link, read the post. This is a detailed breakdown of one developer’s experience, a very specific example that is one of many.

When you’ve read that post, hop over to this Michael Tsai rollup page with comments on another, perhaps more well circulated example.

App Store folks, spend some time reading through the linked comments on Michael Tsai’s page. There are links to examples, stories, and specific thoughts on small ways to address the problem. As is, one might think Apple is looking away. This has got to stop.

Austin Carr and Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

Joe Biden had a question for Tim Cook: Why, the then-vice president wanted to know, couldn’t Apple make the iPhone in the U.S.? It was January 2012, during President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign and three months after the death of Cook’s predecessor, Steve Jobs.

And:

As everyone at the dinner well knew, the idea of mass-producing an iPhone, or any advanced consumer electronics, in a domestic factory was an exceptionally tall order. The big Asian contract manufacturers, especially Apple Inc.’s main partner, Foxconn, had built city-size factories in China with armies of hundreds of thousands of skilled laborers. None of that scale existed in the U.S. Chinese factory employees generally worked much longer hours, for a fraction of what even the lowest-paid American workers make.

And:

Biden’s question put Cook, who’d become Apple’s CEO the previous August, in an awkward position. He was the architect of the strategy to outsource Apple’s production to China, a trend of increasing concern for the Obama administration. But Cook was also, as it turned out, extremely effective at deflecting political pressure.

This is just a tiny taste of a fantastic, detail-filled profile of Tim Cook’s Apple stewardship. Great read, worth every minute. Riveting.

Amber Neely, AppleInsider:

After being unable to locate one of his AirPods, a Massachusetts man’s trip to the emergency turned it up in an unlikely place.

And:

I went back out in the morning and shoveled [snow] for an hour,” he told WWLP News 22. “When I came in, I tried to drink a glass of water again and couldn’t,” said Gauthier.

Gauthier’s family joked that maybe he’d swallowed it, but the idea felt “too coincidental.” A trip to the emergency room lead to an x-ray, which lead his doctor to discover the AirPod lodged in his esophagus.

I can’t imagine doing this. But there it is, on the X-Ray. Crazy. I wonder if this will impact his warranty.

CNBC:

“Hyundai Motor is getting requests from multiple companies for cooperation in joint development of autonomous, electric vehicles but nothing has been decided since it’s in early stage,” the company said, according to a CNBC translation of a regulatory filing.

More specifically:

“Hyundai Motor is not in talks with Apple on autonomous vehicle development,” it added.

And:

Kia Motors also said it was not in talks with Apple.

I’m fascinated by the secrecy of Apple’s auto efforts. Part of this is how long this has been going on, how many people have come and gone on this project, how much attention it has received from the media and, after all this time, how little is known.

I would love to see Apple’s detail-focused design skills applied to a car. But between internal combustion engines vs EV, driven vs driverless, and the move away from car ownership, the evolution/disruption of this space seems to still be a future event. And this is an expensive space to set up in, especially if you buy in and the space changes underneath you.

Harvard Business Review:

“Without personalized ads,” [Facebook] says in its ads and on its website, “Facebook data shows that the average small business advertiser stands to see a cut of over 60% in their sales for every dollar they spend.”

Hmm. Really?

It’s an eye-popping figure, and one that suggests that Apple’s pro-privacy policy is poised to deal a devastating blow to small businesses. But where does the data for this apocalyptic claim come from? And does it hold up under scrutiny?

And:

To properly evaluate this claim, you first need to understand the popular metric that Facebook used here to quantify advertising success: return on ad spend, or ROAS. The metric indicates the amount of revenues associated with advertising — but it does not indicate the amount of revenues caused by advertising.

And:

In its campaign against Apple’s new policy, Facebook is claiming that when it compared the ROAS for campaigns that leveraged personalized information with campaigns that didn’t, it found that small businesses would suffer a 60% cut in revenues if they were deprived of personalized advertising.

That scary-sounding number, however, is almost certainly too high. Randomized controlled trials that compare personalized advertising with no advertising tend to reveal much smaller differences.

Follow the headline link for more of this takedown. I’d be quite happy with a much smaller version of Facebook that allowed me to keep in touch with friends and family without all the privacy busting. I’d even pay for the privilege so I stopped being the product.