Apple

Apple FCC application:

We seek to accomplish the following objectives:

1.Illumination of the part of the facility, located at 1 Apple Parkway, Cupertino, CA with a GPS signal to allow for the testing and experimentation indoors for continued exploration of utilizing GPS technologies within their devices to provide innovative applications and continue to provide safe products.

2.Further design, development and enhancement of existing GPS applications to provide greater efficiency and more effective means of utilizing GPS derived information.

Came across this on Reddit this morning. Wonder what this is for?

You can quibble with the grades, but no doubt the discussion of each category is worth the read.

Two A’s, deserved in my opinion: Wearables (AirPods and AirPods Pro are home runs) and Hardware Reliability (surprising A, but my experience in recent hardware has been rock solid).

I think Jason Snell and John Gruber should consider adding Apple Store/Customer Service grades. Lots to discuss there.

Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac:

iOS 13.4 contains references to a “CarKey” API, which will make it possible to use the iPhone and also the Apple Watch to unlock, lock, and start a car. According to the system’s internal files, users will be able to use CarKey in NFC-compatible cars, as they only need to hold the device near the vehicle to use it as a key.

I would absolutely love this feature.

I recognize this might not be possible with existing hardware, but imagine if you could get a text or your phone could ring if someone unlocked your car and your keys were nowhere near the car.

Or how about a camera built into the car that took a snapshot every time your car was unlocked? If you live in or near a city, car break-ins are a way of life, and these two features might help reduce these.

The unification of the car and the smartphone ecosystem moves ever closer.

At first blush, this post’s title, “One very bad Apple”, gave the impression of pure trolling. But reading through (which is worth your time, IMO), I found it to be an informed take on Apple’s evolving privacy model, full of detail and solidly sourced links.

Bottom line:

So, here we are, in 2020, with Apple in a bit of a pickle. It’s becoming so big that it’s not prioritizing security. At the same time, it needs to advertise privacy as a key differentiator as consumer tastes change.

Not sure I’d agree that Apple is “not prioritizing security”. But Apple’s massive growth has certainly made supporting privacy a far more complex problem than in Steve Jobs’ time, when Apple was small enough that he had complete control.

Bloomberg:

The head of business for Apple Inc.’s news app stepped down less than a year after launching a high-profile subscription product that has struggled to attract paying readers.

Liz Schimel, the outgoing executive, joined in mid-2018 after serving as the president of international business at magazine publisher Conde Nast, said people familiar with the move who asked not to be identified discussing personnel matters. At Apple, Schimel oversaw relationships with advertisers and news publishers.

Of all Apple’s services, News+ seemed to me the toughest win for Apple. When Apple took on the music space, it had a stronger financial model, consumers very willing to pay for songs to bring from CD to their hard drives and then pay again for the monthly all-you-can-eat of Apple Music. Apple also had Steve Jobs building and cementing those initial relationships.

Much has changed since the iTunes Store launched back in 2003. Liz Schimel had an unenviable, difficult task convincing publishers that News+ was their savior. Too much competition in news aggregation, much of it free.

To me, this is not a sign of doom for Apple News+. More a sign that change is needed. And if the Bloomberg report is correct, change is coming.

Reuters:

The chief executive of developer Mobicip, Suren Ramasubbu, told Reuters he was interviewed in November by a U.S. investigator who asked about the company’s interactions with Apple. The app, which has nearly a million users worldwide, allows parents to control what their children see on their iPhones.

Ramasubbu said the Mobicip app was temporarily removed from the iPhone app store last year for a failure to meet requirements imposed by Apple.

And:

Six executives of parental control app companies interviewed by Reuters said they had a comfortable relationship with Apple until mid-2018. That is when Apple introduced its own, similar software giving parents oversight of their children’s phone screen time and searches.

When Reuters reports that a “handful of app developers had been contacted”, I suspect (no inside info here, just intuition) that they are all connected to the parental control space.

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

When visiting Apple’s Support site to initiate a device repair, there’s now a mention of an onsite option when scheduling a repair. “Look for an Apple Authorized Service Provider or Genius Bar. In select locations, onsite service may be available.”

Onsite repairs from Go Tech Services appear to be available in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Houston, and Dallas.

I’m curious about the pricing model. Obviously, there’s an extra fee for these services.

Detailed graphical look, by Justin O’Beirne, at what’s changed with the massive new Apple Maps rollout.

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Customers who have AirPods Pro that also purchased an AppleCare+ protection plan for $29 appear to be able to receive free replacement tips for their ‌AirPods Pro‌.

Multiple MacRumors readers have reported being provided replacement tips at no cost after going through Apple’s support repair steps for the ‌AirPods Pro‌.

File under good to know.

Cam MacMurchy, 9to5Mac:

I know it’s not too common for people to be out and about wearing masks in public in the United States, but it’s fairly common over here in Asia. The thinking behind it is actually to prevent you, the mask-wearer, from spreading your diseased germs to other, healthy, happy people.

And:

The Coronavirus, obviously, is different: doctors are recommending people wear masks to prevent coming into contact with the “novel” virus, thus keeping yourself safe. But the masks cover a huge portion of your face (even a big face, like mine) basically invalidating Face ID. I know, I know, this sounds very trivial, and it is. But trivial and annoying have long conspired together to cause great anger and frustration.

This is an interesting perspective, and makes me wonder if Apple has a team working on solutions to open your phone when wearing a mask. Perhaps a smarter, eye-centered Face ID, or a combination of Face ID and some other biometric (perhaps Touch ID as an additional option).

This was published last month, but I came across it yesterday, thought the whole thing was fascinating, if not a bit politically incorrect.

Mostly, this is a series of unvarnished anecdotes about Apple’s now-defunct Aperture product from one of its team members.

Loved the whole post, but my favorite thing was that bit in there about a pair of leaks to Daring Fireball.

Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac:

Apple has cancelled Xnor.ai’s Pentagon contract for military drone work following the iPhone maker’s acquisition of the AI company.

Xnor.ai was reportedly working on the controversial Project Maven, which is using AI to identify people and objects in drone video and photos.

I don’t expect we’ll ever get an official comment on this, so take with a grain of salt. But we’ll know the truth of this over time, no question.

Is this Apple picking their battles, or freeing up their newly acquired team to focus on Apple stuff?

LiveMint:

In an interview to the BBC last week, Facebook’s Vice President of Global Affairs and Communications, Nick Clegg, said it wasn’t WhatsApp’s fault because end-to-end encryption is unhackable and blamed Apple’s operating system for Bezos’ episode.

Hubris.

Two things I always look forward to after each Apple quarterly results call are the call transcripts (I can read quickly, but can only listen as fast as someone is speaking!) and Jason Snell’s set of charts reflecting “the numbers”.

Take a look. They are beautifully done. Three charts that tell a big part of the story:

• Wearable/Home/Accessories – Just look at that growth. And that’s with all the headroom of HomePod vs Amazon Echo and HomeKit devices like a doorbell to compete with Ring or a smoke detector to compete with Nest. So much opportunity still to come.

• Services revenue – Slow and steady growth, with just a little more pop the last two quarters.

• Apple regional year-over-year growth (the very last chart) – Look at that China curve. A precarious dip a year ago, with steady recovery ever since.

Surprisingly readable, a headline in every paragraph.

One subtle point that stuck out to me. This is from Apple CFO Luca Maestri’s part of the call:

Mac revenue was $7.2 billion and iPad revenue was $6 billion. Both products had a difficult year-over-year comparison due to the launches of MacBook Air here, Mac mini and iPad Pro during the December quarter a year ago and the subsequent channels fill. Despite the tough compare, on a demand basis, our performance for both Mac and iPad was around even to last year.

Mac and iPad year-over-year was down, but for a good reason.

Continuing:

Importantly, around half of the customers purchasing Macs and iPads around the world during the quarter, were new to that product. And the active installed base of both Mac and iPad reached a new all-time high.

So though the short term year over year number is flat, the customer base is growing. Tim, earlier in the call, spoke about iPad growth “in key emerging markets like Mexico, India, Turkey, Poland, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam”.

This all makes me wonder what the iPad/Mac mix is in Luca’s “half of the customers purchasing Macs and iPads around the world during the quarter, were new to that product”.

No matter, clearly a blowout quarter, no matter how you look at it.