Apple

Intercom lets you use one Apple device to send a message to most of the other Apple devices in your house. Here’s a nice look at this feature in action:

https://twitter.com/domenicopanacea/status/1318883578009276419

Note that the Apple Watch gets a notification and a play button to hear the audio. Not sure why Intercom does not (at least not yet) support the Mac. Seems like Apple could send a notification to any Mac on the current network with a play button, just as they did with Apple Watch. This a “waiting for Big Sur” thing? Or some limitation with macOS?

MacRumors Forum:

For a very long time, it has not been possible to change your Apple ID email address if it was an iCloud email address, say from iCloud to Gmail.

I’ve just discovered it’s now possible, you can change your email to any email address you want – and back again. I note Apple’s Support pages have also quietly removed any reference to this (now removed) limitation.

This is one of those things that I’d normally try to test/verify before I post but, for obvious reasons, no easy way for me to do that. But I do recall this limitation, and other folks have stepped up to say they were able to make this change.

If you are exploring Apple One bundles, this is worth a look. Lots of good iCloud advice, including what happens if the iCloud storage included in Apple One is more than your current plan, and what to do if you use one Apple ID for iCloud storage and one for Apple Media subscriptions.

UPDATE: Apple One bundles are rolling out. I signed up for Premier and my existing Apple Music subscription stayed live, with the note that it will automatically roll into my bundle at the end of the free monthly bundle trial.

Here’s a link to Apple’s official Apple One bundle page. And here’s my tweet with the Apple One bundle pricing.

In the meantime, I’ve been asking folks for their bundle questions, scroll down for the list. If you have a question, or know the answer to one of these, please ping me on Twitter. I’ll try to keep the list updated as I get more questions/answers.

• If I already paid for a year of Apple Music (or any service covered by a bundle), will that payment be applied to the bundle cost?

• If I am in the middle of a free trial and upgrade to a bundle, will that impact the bundle pricing?

• Can you verify that Apple One Premier is only available in the US, UK, Canada, Australia (places where News+ is available)?

• Can you verify that I can raise my default bundle storage by adding more storage to my bundle? If so, is there any space limit?

[Per Craig Grannell, Apple One storage caps at 4TB]

• How will Apple handle the case where a bundle storage is less space than what I already have? For example, if I have 200GB and move to the Individual bundle’s 50GB, will Apple prompt me to add additional storage before I switch. My concern is that I don’t lose what’s stored in my 200GB if I do things in the wrong order and momentarily drop to 50GB.

[Per Craig Grannell, Apple One bundle storage is added to existing storage, so this is not an issue. Add the bundle, then remove extra storage as you like.]

• If I get the Premier bundle, will Fitness+ be automatically added when available?

Russ Frushtick, Vulture:

On each of these trips, something has followed me no matter where I go. Something I never asked for. Every time I get into the car, it’s there. It appears, unsolicited, to spoil the beauty of the winding roads surrounding Minnewaska State Park. On a quiet, early morning drive to the farmers’ market, it returns. It is legion. It is …

U2’s 2014 album Songs of Innocence.

This is a great anecdote, worth your time. If you’ve ever popped in the car and had your iOS device autoplay the same song again and again, because Bluetooth, you will definitely relate.

And possibly learn something useful.

[Via Michael Tsai’s blog]

Follow the headline link for a nice rollup from Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac, on what to expect, what analysts are saying, especially given the impact of the pandemic, with increased demand for MacBooks and iPads.

Apple:

Clips 3.0, available today in the App Store, features a streamlined interface and full-screen browsers on iPhone that make it even simpler to record and add effects. On iPad, Clips supports landscape orientation, Scribble with Apple Pencil, and the use of a Bluetooth mouse or trackpad.

And:

The new version also lets users make videos in multiple aspect ratios, including horizontal and vertical, ideal for creating eye-catching content for Instagram Stories, Snapchat, YouTube, and more. And Clips 3.0 is optimized to record and share content in HDR using the rear-facing cameras on all iPhone 12 models, resulting in videos with more vibrant colors and contrast.

I completely forgot about Clips. Saw this, updated and launched the new version, was quickly reminded how fun this app is. There are a ton of great effects to play with.

Launch the app, tap the 5-pointed rainbow star (lower right), then tap one of the icons to explore effect categories, like Memoji, Filters, Live Titles, etc. Glad to see this update.

Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac:

Apple’s iPhone 12 lineup features a number of improvements to the camera systems and one of those is Night mode expanding beyond the standard rear-facing wide lens and landing on the ultra wide lens and the front-facing TrueDepth camera. Let’s take a look at how to take Night mode selfies on iPhone 12.

Night mode selfies is a selling point for the iPhone 12. To get a sense of what this is, follow the headline link, scroll about halfway down the article to the side-by-side-by-side trio of images, showing a Night mode selfie, a no flash selfie, and a selfie with flash. The improvement is obvious.

Great explainer.

Om Malik:

How real is 5G in the US? Is it worth the money?

My simple finding is that, as it stands today, in the US, it is decidedly not magical — though, it does involve a bit of hocus pocus. You might be promised gigabit speeds, but what you get will be much slower, especially in the near term. In order to understand, why, let’s look at what is on offer.

This is a welcome, and very readable explainer on 5G. Om did a lot of homework here, lays it out clearly, with lots of links.

It’s early days for 5G. The hardware infrastructure is still being rolled out. And the branding is terrible. The terms “mmWave” and “sub-6 GHz” are important distinctions, but the names do nothing to indicate their relative role/speed. And as carriers come up with their own tags, the confusion only deepens.

Matt Birchler captures the confusion on buying MagSafe and an iPhone 12, then working through the charger options.

Really well written.

And to clarify any MagSafe and power questions, be sure to watch the video in the post that follows.

Neil Cybart:

A billion people now have iPhones. According to my estimate, Apple passed the billion iPhone users milestone last month. Thirteen years after going on sale, the iPhone remains the perennial most popular and best-selling smartphone.

Follow the headline link for some interesting analysis to back that number up. And not to be confused with the more than 2 billion iPhones sold over time (as of 2018).

This “billion iPhones” estimate is staggering, especially when you think back to where it all began, back in June 2007, when more than a few people saw the iPhone as a fad, thought Apple would be lucky to sell a million of them.

Apple sold 1.39 million in 2007, and 11.63 million in 2008. And, as it turns out, that was just a drop in the bucket.

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Intercom works with the HomePod, ‌HomePod mini‌, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, and even CarPlay, so you can dictate a voice message on any of your devices that you can have delivered to a single person in the family or all family members.

No mention of the Mac, anywhere. This remains odd to me. At the very least, you’d think Intercom could tie into Notifications in some way, letting Mac folks know an Intercom message was sent.

Juli does a nice job laying out the setup and use cases for Intercom. Wondering if there’s a way to set “Do Not Disturb” on a specific device. For example, if I’m in a meeting or on a podcast, I’d prefer not to have the HomePod weigh in with a “Dinner’s ready” message.

Imagine if my iPhone was in Do Not Disturb mode and Intercom was smart enough to not send audio to the HomePod in the room I’m in but, instead, just sent a notification with playable audio.

Harvard Business Review:

When Jobs arrived back at Apple, it had a conventional structure for a company of its size and scope. It was divided into business units, each with its own P&L responsibilities. General managers ran the Macintosh products group, the information appliances division, and the server products division, among others. As is often the case with decentralized business units, managers were inclined to fight with one another, over transfer prices in particular.

The first thing Jobs did:

Jobs, in his first year returning as CEO, laid off the general managers of all the business units (in a single day), put the entire company under one P&L, and combined the disparate functional departments of the business units into one functional organization.

Amazing that that functional structure is still around today.

As was the case with Jobs before him, CEO Tim Cook occupies the only position on the organizational chart where the design, engineering, operations, marketing, and retail of any of Apple’s main products meet.

Here’s an example that shows how this model works:

In a functional organization, individual and team reputations act as a control mechanism in placing bets. A case in point is the decision to introduce the dual-lens camera with portrait mode in the iPhone 7 Plus in 2016. It was a big wager that the camera’s impact on users would be sufficiently great to justify its significant cost.

One executive told us that Paul Hubel, a senior leader who played a central role in the portrait mode effort, was “out over his skis,” meaning that he and his team were taking a big risk: If users were unwilling to pay a premium for a phone with a more costly and better camera, the team would most likely have less credibility the next time it proposed an expensive upgrade or feature. The camera turned out to be a defining feature for the iPhone 7 Plus, and its success further enhanced the reputations of Hubel and his team.

Great quote from the article:

Apple is not a company where general managers oversee managers; rather, it is a company where experts lead experts.

Wonderful read, chock full of insight.