Opinion pieces & commentary

When Apple promised that new iMacs later in the year would include pro machines, it wasn’t messing around. The new iMac Pro slated for release later this year won’t just be the most powerful iMac Apple has ever made, it will be ‘the most powerful Mac ever.’

That means that Apple’s new all-in-one desktop machine will be faster and more capable than the current version of the standalone Mac Pro.

The specs certainly bear out Apple’s description …

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Apple has been toying with the idea of a SIM-equipped MacBook since at least 2007, as a prototype MacBook Pro later revealed. The company has continued to explore the idea, with a patent on the concept emerging just last year.

Steve Jobs revealed in 2008 that Apple rejected the idea for a couple of reasons. First, that it would add complexity to the device, and second that it would lock customers in to a particular carrier.

Neither argument applies today, and news that a number of major Windows laptop manufacturers are committed to producing LTE-equipped laptops is likely to put pressure on Apple to revisit the idea …

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9to5Mac founder Seth Weintraub tweeted this morning a suggestion that Microsoft was hitting all the laptop checkboxes of late – and that Apple will not.

Microsoft continues to hit the laptop checkboxes that Apple refuses to: Touchscreen, LTE, Cray battery life, etc

Will Apple respond? (No)

— Seth Weintraub (@llsethj) May 23, 2017

Others noted that Microsoft has held its third event this year, and second this month, while we still await the first Apple event of the year. Does this mean that Microsoft is leading the way in innovation at present, and Apple is being left behind – or is the Seattle-based company engaging in meaningless gimmickry … ?

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Apple’s interest in cars dates back to at least 2008, when Steve Jobs and ‘father of the iPod’ Tony Fadell discussed the idea. Project Titan appeared to be the company gearing up to finally create an Apple Car, but things seem to have changed since the first reports.

Apple has acknowledged it is exploring the area, but of course declined to say anything specific about its plans. Tim Cook joked about dodging the question back in the spring of 2015, hinted a year later that the company was at an early stage in its deliberations, stating that ‘it’s going to be Christmas Eve for a while.’

The company’s enthusiasm appeared to wane later in the year when it ramped down recruitment before reportedly halting development of a car altogether. But that doesn’t mean Apple has lost interest in cars, and there have been some pointers to the company approaching it from a different angle …

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Amazon’s Echo with a screen is real and it’s shipping at the end of next month. Echo Show is a $230 7-inch tablet with video playback and calling that has to stay plugged in to work.

What makes that better than an iPad or any other tablet? Amazon hopes the answer is its Alexa voice assistant. While I’m curious about a voice-activated, always-present voice assistant that anyone can access in the home, the original Amazon Echo has more appeal to me. If Siri Speaker is something we see next month at WWDC (before Echo Show ships!), I’m hoping it’s more Amazon Echo and less Echo Show…

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As regular readers may recall, I’m a long-time user of home automation technology who made the decision to go all-in on HomeKit in the new year. I only waited that long because it takes a bit of time to get UK-compatible versions of quite a lot of devices.

I’ve been documenting the process in my Smart Home Diary series. For me, as a gadget lover, it’s been a no-brainer.

But even for a techie, it hasn’t all been plain sailing. There have been some irritations, and there is definite scope for improvement. Having had time to reflect on the transition and the experience, I’m concluding that while HomeKit is great fun for techies, it’s not quite ready for the mass-market …

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I’ve always been a keen photographer. At 14, my father bought me an old fully-manual film SLR, and my aunt gave me her old darkroom equipment, so my bedroom became a darkroom with a bed in the corner.

When the first DLSRs hit the market, I waited impatiently for them to drop below the $1000 mark. That early Nikon D70 was replaced by a D3 which I still have today. If you had suggested then that it could be just a few short years before cameraphones could replace a DSLR, I’d have laughed.

But camera technology has developed at an astonishing pace. That D3 already spends most of its time gathering dust in a drawer. My Sony a6300 compact camera delivers near-identical results in most situations. And the camera I use most on an everyday basis is my iPhone.

There are just four remaining pieces of the puzzle before an iPhone can replace a DSLR, and it looks to me like we’re just 2-3 years away from cracking all of them …

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When Angela Ahrendts spoke to CBS about a new Apple Store initiative called Today at Apple, I was initially a little confused. What she described as something new at first sounded pretty much identical to something that has existed for many years: free workshops at Apple Stores.

Rebranding and promoting the workshop would make sense, of course. Many Apple customers seem entirely unaware that the workshops exist, while others know about the basic ones but not the more advanced sessions.

This was made clear to me when I mentioned on Facebook that I was attending a Final Cut Pro workshop at Apple’s Regent Street store in London, and several friends told me they had no idea these existed. Even among 9to5Mac readers, there were similar comments when I mentioned them in my Final Cut Pro Diary series …

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There’s an acronym widely used for setting goals: SMART. There are a few different versions of this floating around, but one common one is that objectives should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. Apple’s stated commitment to stop mining the earth and build all products from recycled materials would seem to fail on two of these criteria.

It isn’t currently achievable. It simply isn’t realistic today for Apple to obtain all of the materials it requires in the quantities it needs at a viable price without mining some of them, and there’s no saying when it might become so.

It’s also not time-bound. Apple has given no indication of when it might reach its goal. Anyone can claim almost anything will be achieved – however far-fetched – without specifying a timeframe.

But while Apple’s objective isn’t SMART, that doesn’t make it either meaningless or useless …

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We’ve seen a whole bunch of rumors of late suggesting that while Apple really wants to embed a fingerprint reader into the display of the iPhone 8, it is struggling to do so.

The notion that Apple wants to use an embedded fingerprint reader seems abundantly clear. As I’ve mentioned before, we’ve had multiple reports from credible sources like Bloomberg, the WSJ and the New York Times. The claimed schematics and sketches have also all illustrated a design without any space for a Touch ID sensor at the bottom of the screen, and the volume of Apple patents makes it clear the company has been working hard on figuring out how to do it.

But, unusually for Apple, this is bleeding-edge technology. The company usually lets other manufacturers figure out the kinks in new tech before it launches later with a version that does the job properly. This is the reason it’s being suggested that the company may need a Plan B or even a Plan C …

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The last time a sketchy report suggested that Apple was planning to move the Touch ID sensor to the rear of the iPhone 8, I wrote an opinion piece saying that I didn’t believe Apple was dumb enough to do it. I set out the four reasons I didn’t expect it to happen.

Alongside multiple reports of a Touch ID sensor embedded in the screen, and supporting patents for the required technology, I felt there were two reasons in particular to doubt the idea …

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Apple is famously one of the most secretive companies in the world. It believes in what Steve Jobs called the ‘magic’ of the surprise reveal. The ‘one more thing’ presentation style pioneered by Steve is so much a part of Apple’s DNA that it has a stock phrase it uses to answer questions about its product plans: ‘We do not comment on future products.’

It’s hard to imagine Apple would ever take a different approach. Today it did.

It not only revealed future product plans a year in advance – something so out of character it’s hard to believe it really happened – but it also did something else Apple almost never does: it admitted to a mistake.

Sure, none of the three Apple execs present ever used that word, but the mea culpa is clear …

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The iPhone 8 reports to date mostly point to Apple embedding the Home button and a new type of fingerprint sensor into the display itself, as a way to lose most of the ‘chin’ of the device. Today, however, the sketchiest of reports suggests that the company will instead move the existing Touch ID sensor to the rear of the phone.

The report mixes this in with a raft of things we’ve heard before. Glass backs, vertical cameras (which would be horizontal when used in the more common landscape mode) and iPhone Edition naming are all things that have been reported previously. So while iDropNews would like us to believe that its unspecified ‘insider’ has revealed a whole bunch of new things, the report is actually just a mish-mash of earlier rumors coupled to one piece of supposedly new information …

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The reality won’t be quite as bezel-free as this concept image …

A spring iPad event this year has so far been taken almost as established fact. Apple has held one annually in recent years, and we’ve heard multiple reports about what to expect this year – one of them even suggesting a specific date.

The flagship product expected to be announced at the event was a new 10.5-inch iPad with a micro-bezel design that would allow it to have the same external dimensions as the current 9.7-inch iPad Pro.

But recent events suggest to me that, while the 10.5-inch iPad is probably real, it’s unlikely it will be announced at a spring event. Instead, it’s more likely to be at WWDC – or even later …

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If anyone had asked you to describe Apple’s pricing strategy in a sentence, this would – until recently – have been extremely easy to do. Apple aims to sell premium products at high margins to upmarket demographics. The company had shown almost no interest in more affordable products pitched to those on tighter budgets.

But Apple has long recognized that you need a way of building your long-term customer base, and one good way to do that is to get them when they’re young. Apple has made considerable efforts over the years to get its computers into schools and colleges, and to make them more affordable to students through its education discount.

The MacBook Air line too has been priced at a level where it is just about affordable for those who would otherwise buy cheaper Windows laptops – again, in no small part because Apple wants to attract younger buyers whose lifetime value to the company will be substantial.

But as one analyst recently observed, there is now evidence that Apple is aiming to offer lower pricing across a broader range of products. Yesterday’s announcement of a low-cost 9.7-inch iPad was a good example of that new approach …

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Google couldn’t make Glass look cool – could Apple do better?

We’ve now heard more than one report that, while Apple has augmented reality plans for the iPhone, it is also planning to make some smart glasses further down the line. This is the product category made famous – or perhaps infamous – by Google Glass.

There are two undeniable facts about Google Glass. First, it’s cool technology. Second, it’s decidedly uncool to be seen wearing them. It was that latter fact that led to Google abandoning plans to pitch them as a consumer device and to target them instead at enterprise applications, like giving engineers hands-free access to manuals while repairing equipment.

Now, Apple is a master of taking once-geeky technology and making it cool. It did that with the iPod – turning a rather techy product category into the coolest product on the planet at the time – and of course with the iPhone. Previous smartphones were techy-looking things controlled by a keyboard and stylus, the iPhone was a friendly device that had mass-market appeal.

But could even Apple make smart glasses cool … ?

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Samsung’s Galaxy Edge design (left); iPhone 6/6s/7/Plus design (right)

Seemingly conflicting reports on the iPhone 8 screen have been causing confusion, some earlier reports describing a curved screen, while Business Insider notes that some analysts expect a flat display.

A large number of reports have suggested that the screen on that new device will be curved but an increasing number of iPhone watchers believe it will actually be flat.

The apparent contradictions may, however, be down to little more than semantics …

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I wrote an opinion piece last year speculating on Apple’s plans for its 2017 iPad line-up. A couple of factors led me to suspect that Apple may be planning to drop the iPad mini.

First, there was the fact that the starting price for the iPad mini 4 is exactly the same as for the iPad Air 2: $399. You’d already have to have a very strong preference for the smaller form-factor to want to shell out the same cash for the mini – especially given that you could combine phone and small tablet functionality by buying the Plus model iPhone.

Second, a KGI report suggesting that the 10.5-inch model would be the successor to the current 9.7-inch iPad Pro, while the new 9.7-inch model would be a low-cost model. That made it seem possible that Apple might be targeting an even lower price than $399, putting further pressure on the mini.

And now, consistent rumors of what we can expect from the iPhone 8 give a third reason to wonder whether the iPad mini has a future …

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Apple has an interesting tightrope to walk when it comes to entry-level products. While you and I may choose Apple products because we like the UI, the ecosystem and the designs, a large chunk of the company’s customer base automatically buys Apple simply because it is seen as the most premium brand. They may not know the specific benefits of Apple products, but they are – to quote an old ad slogan for a lager – reassuringly expensive. If they cost more, they must be better.

Indeed, in many markets, being seen with an iPhone, iPad or Mac bestows social status for that very reason, making them aspirational products.

Apple cannot afford to dent that premium image by offering low-end products, but at the same time it needs to bring in new customers to maintain growth. So far, its approach to doing this has seemed to me to be smart. But offering a 32GB iPhone 6 as an entry level iPhone in 2017? That I’m not so sure about …

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With Apple widely expected to embed a fingerprint reader into the display of the iPhone 8, the company has patented a number of different technologies it could use to accomplish this.

One approach would limit fingerprint recognition to the bottom section of the display, meaning that authenticating a fingerprint would have to be a deliberate step, as it is with today’s Touch ID sensor. But a patented granted today would allow a fingerprint to be recognized anywhere on the screen, with Apple specifically arguing that authentication could then be completely automatic …

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I wrote an opinion piece last year speculating on whether Apple would switch from Lightning to USB-C, and when it might do so. A new report today suggests that the company is planning to do so this year, in the iPhone 8.

I argued then that there were compelling reasons for Apple to make the switch. While the Lightning port is a clever standard, USB-C is even smarter and more capable. Adopting a single port across both Mac and iOS devices would massively simplify the cable and connector ecosystem. And the high-speed data transfer capabilities provided by USB-C would allow Apple devices to work together better than ever.

I addressed the three possible objections before, but let’s quickly summarize them here …

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