Opinion pieces & commentary

I wrote recently that while I tend to believe reports that Apple is planning to launch this year’s flagship iPhones as the iPhone 11 Pro (and Pro Max), I did so reluctantly.

Just the idea of a ‘Pro’ iPhone is a little annoying.

Don’t misunderstand me. Modern iPhones are amazing devices. There was a time when such a powerful and flexible pocket computer would have stretched the credibility of science fiction stories, yet we now take them totally for granted.

And they are sometimes used for professional purposes. There are, for example, all those ‘Shot on iPhone’ movies and ads. But let’s not kid ourselves about those. The reasons for shooting on iPhone have little to do with it being a ‘pro’ device.

However, if the latest reports are to be believed, Apple does seem to be working hard to justify the label…

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We’ve heard two credible reports now that this year’s successor to the iPhone XS will be named the iPhone 11 Pro. Today’s report suggests that the successors to the iPhone XR, XS, and XS Max will be, respectively:

• iPhone 11
• iPhone 11 Pro
• iPhone 11 Pro Max

I think it’s a fairly horrible idea, but I do tend to believe it…

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A new report today suggests that Apple is bringing back Touch ID to iPhones. Unlike a sketchier report last month, this one says that under-display Touch ID will not replace Face ID, but rather supplement it, with 2021 iPhones able to be unlocked using either method.

The report certainly cannot be dismissed out of hand. While analyst Ming-Chi Kuo doesn’t have a perfect track-record, he has a far better one than most. Deep dives into Apple’s supply-chain means that he often has visibility on upcoming developments…

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Apple yesterday released the fifth developer beta of iPadOS 13, and it included a Home screen improvement: an option for adjusting iPad icon spacing.

In iPadOS 13, you can now adjust Home screen icon density. This means you can pick between a 4×5 grid of apps, or a 6×5 grid of apps.

Any improvement here is welcome, of course, but even a 6×5 icon grid is a tremendous waste of space on a 12.9-inch iPad. Offering an option to change it, but doing so in the most limited way imaginable, is a huge missed opportunity …

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We’ve grown accustom to new Apple Watches debuting alongside iPhones each fall since the Series 1 and Series 2 launch in 2016, but does Apple Watch need a ‘Series 5’ this year to stay competitive? Probably not, and Apple waiting until 2020 to introduce the next generation of Apple Watch doesn’t seem impossible.

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The latest AirPlay 2 TV news is that LG is set to roll out HomeKit and AirPlay 2 support to its 2019 models next week.

That’s great news for owners of the 2019 models; not so much if you bought a 2017 or 2018 one. As many owners of older models have commented, their TVs are almost certainly capable of receiving the update …

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Earlier this week, Apple announced this year’s rendition of its annual Back to School promotion. 2019’s student-focused offer delivers a free pair of Beats headphones with the purchase of iPad Air, iPad Pro, and any Mac.

Apple’s roots in education have been well-documented, but over the years its Back to School deals have lost some luster as it has gone through a series of changes. Missteps along the way, the exclusion of gift cards in favor of headphones, and more have caused Apple to miss the mark on one of its most popular first-party promotions.

Launching the 2019 Back to School sale in combination with refreshed MacBook hardware has turned that all around. Here’s why…

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Apple’s restructure to accommodate the departure of Jony Ive led to some concern that Apple wasn’t giving design quite as high a profile in the past – amid claims and counter-claims about the run-up to it.

There is no direct replacement for Ive as head of design, and instead of the hardware and software leads reporting directly to CEO Tim Cook, they are reporting into COO Jeff Williams.

But this shouldn’t be cause for concern; quite the opposite …

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If you want a true pro-grade monitor, and have deep pockets, there’s an Apple Display to make you happy. That Apple Pro Display XDR is a thing of beauty.

32 inches. 6K resolution. P3 color gamut. True 10-bit. 1600 nits peak brightness. A million to one contrast ratio. Anti-reflective coating, with the option of a matte one. Individually calibrated and modulated LEDs. True reference grade. It’s a beast.

It’s also $5-7K, which is more than most of us want to pay for a Mac, let alone a monitor …

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Apple’s announcement yesterday about Jony Ive leaving the company was something of a bombshell even though we’d seen it coming for awhile. Ive’s iconic designs are fundamental to Apple’s success, so to see the two parting ways came as a shock to many.

The NASDAQ hasn’t yet opened, but pre-market trading suggests that AAPL investors are not overly concerned …

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While I personally hardly ever notice the notch in my iPhone X, there are those who want Apple to get back to a notchless iPhone. To do that while retaining the bezel-free design, Apple would have to find a way of embedding beneath the display all the tech present in the notch.

Oppo, the best-selling smartphone brand in China, has gotten us one step closer to this: showing off the world’s first smartphone with the selfie camera underneath the display.

It is an impressive technical achievement, but it’s nothing like enough for a notchless iPhone yet, for three reasons …

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It was back in February that we first heard about a new 16-inch MacBook Pro in the works, and a new report today supports this, adding some more details.

The report claims a 3072×1920 resolution, up from the 2880×1800 panel found in Apple’s 15-inch laptops since the first Retina MacBook Pro in 2012 […]

IHS Markit says the new 16-inch laptop has a target manufacturing date of September 2019 with a production rate of about 250,000 units per month. The panel would still be LCD (no OLED yet as previously reported) and supposedly manufactured by LG.

As we noted this morning, the timing does seem a little odd …

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Many of us were long hoping for an iPhone SE 2: something with the portability and slab-sided design of the iPhone SE, but the near-bezel-free design of the iPhone X family. The type of thing we’ve seen in concept images and videos.

I’d pretty much given up on that for reasons explained here. The hit iPhone sales have taken since then has made things seem a little less certain – as it raised the possibility of Apple needing to hit a lower price for a new model – but we’d likely have heard rumors by now if something were in the works, so I’m still tending toward pessimism.

However, the latest 2020 iPhone report suggests that perhaps we might get an acceptable compromise …

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Apple has long aimed to do the right thing, not just the profitable one, on a great many fronts. On tax avoidance, not so much.

Apple could be the good guy here. It could be the one tech company to take a strong stand on paying its dues, rather than using any loophole it can find to minimize the amount of tax it pays.

That would, I suggest, be consistent with the company’s approach to other areas of corporate responsibility …

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We’ve already rounded up everything Apple announced at WWDC during the keynote presentation – and it was a lot!

I’d normally write one or two comment pieces on the things that most interested me, but there were so many interesting announcements yesterday that a single piece providing my take on all of it seemed the best approach.

Let’s start with what I saw as the headline on the software side …

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The Supreme Court this week ruled in the Apple App Store antitrust case, and Apple lost. The court ruled that the lawsuit could proceed in a lower court.

The decision, however, was just a technical one. It didn’t address the merits of the antitrust lawsuit itself, but merely rejected Apple’s argument that the issue had nothing to do with consumers. The real battle comes when the lawsuit itself goes to court …

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We’ve this morning seen claimed moulds for this year’s iPhone line-up, and once more the triangular camera arrangement inside the square camera bump is coming under fire.

People have been criticising it ever since we first saw renders of the claimed design back in January.

That’s incredibly ugly.

No offense to the person that created that, but ewww.

No. Just no.

We’re seeing more of the same today …

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Apple has now made an official statement confirming an earlier report that it had removed or restricted the majority of popular third-party screen time and parental control apps from the App Store.

The company did, however, deny that it was anything to do with competition with its own Screen Time app …

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Music Business Worldwide reports that Amazon is gearing up to offer a hi-res streaming music service.

We understand that Amazon is currently in discussion with various large music rights-holders regarding the upcoming launch of a high fidelity music streaming platform – and that at least one major record company has already agreed to license it.

MBW has heard this whisper from several high-placed music industry sources, who say the price of Amazon’s new tier will likely be in the region of $15 per month. It’s expected to launch before the end of 2019 …

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There has been much speculation about what led to the Apple/Qualcomm settlement at the eleventh hour.

Did Intel tell Apple it was unable to deliver 5G modems by 2020? Did Apple reach its own conclusion that Intel wasn’t up to the job? Or was there some other factor at play that mysteriously led Apple to have a change of heart about a massive lawsuit centred on Qualcomm’s business practices, despite a long history of vehemently objecting to them … ?

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Apple’s MacBook keyboard replacement program solved one problem: customers would no longer have to pay for a fix for an Apple design failure. But, as I wrote recently, it still left many of us with another one: the hassle of living without our machine for a week – even those of us fortunate enough to have a backup machine.

I called an Apple Store, and they told me they’d need it for about five days, and that’s a much bigger deal […] It’s not that it’s impossible to be without it – I managed before – but it is a major hassle. I have my key work apps and bookmarks set up on my MacBook Air, but I know from that experience that there are a zillion small things that will drive me nuts in the week I’m without the machine.

I suggested a solution, and it’s one that Apple has now implemented …

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