Opinion pieces & commentary

A report earlier today cited a potentially huge WeChat threat to the future of the iPhone in China. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is concerned that the Trump administration could force Apple to remove the WeChat app not just from the US App Store, but globally.

Kuo warned that this could see a massive 30% reduction in global iPhone sales, and if that sounds hyperbolic, it’s likely not …

We’ve now had a chance to see the antitrust argument Tim Cook will make in today’s hearing, and it essentially amounts to: there’s nothing to see here.

Apple is arguing that it has done nothing wrong in the past, is doing nothing wrong now and sees no need to change the way it works in the future …

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A new Kuo report suggests that Apple may for the first time sell an iPhone without a charger this year. It follows an earlier report that the iPhone 12 box will lack a second standard iPhone accessory: a pair of EarPods.

Both moves would save Apple money, and by more than the cost of the accessories themselves. As my colleague Benjamin Mayo noted, this would reduce the size and weight of the iPhone box, which would reduce Apple’s freight costs…

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I recently suggested that Apple’s antitrust issues aren’t going to go away, and that the company should start taking action to address them. With iOS 14, Apple is doing exactly that.

The company didn’t pitch things like that, of course, but we got five announcements that directly tackle some of the antitrust claims facing it…

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None of us were surprised by Apple yesterday announcing that it was beginning the transition to ARM: In future, Macs will be powered by Apple-designed chips based on ARM architecture. We’ve been predicting the move for many years now, and the fact that this would be the year it was announced was leaked in advance.

There was a little more surprise at the first model being promised later this year rather than early next. Some were skeptical when 2020 was first suggested, in 2018, but two things seemed clear to us…

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Heading into WWDC, Apple isn’t exactly getting off to the best of starts. While outlining my view of Apple’s overall handling of the antitrust charges leveled against it, I mentioned one of the specific issues the company faces: the nature of its relationship with developers.

Developers should feel that Apple is on their side, but even ones who have had their apps featured by Apple are saying that they don’t feel this way. That Apple is, instead, an entity that can at any time and for any reason decide to kill their business.

Twenty-four hours later, things have gotten worse rather than better. First, Microsoft said that Apple and Google have a bigger antitrust case to answer than the Redmond company did some twenty years ago. But the even more damaging development came from Apple itself …

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Apple’s antitrust issues have again hit the headlines this week – not just once, but twice.

First, there were the two additional European Union antitrust investigations, which are just the latest in a long line of probes into Apple’s alleged anti-competitive behaviors. As a non-exhaustive list, there’s Congress, the Department of Justice, a number of US states, the EU, France, Japan, South Korea, and Russia.

Then Apple pulled Basecamp’s email app Hey from the App Store, just days after approving it …

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Some of us have been convinced for years now that ARM Macs are on the way, and there have been increasing indications that 2021 could be the year when it happens. If yesterday’s Bloomberg report is correct, those years of speculation will soon be at an end: Apple is reportedly set to make it official later this month.

I argued yesterday that we probably won’t learn all that much about the actual hardware we can expect …

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A Bloomberg piece this morning suggests that Apple will announce its plans for an ARM Mac at WWDC, even though the first model won’t be available until next year.

That makes perfect sense. This is a big shift, and developers need time to understand the implications and make plans to support the new platform. The big question right now is how much Apple will reveal, and how useful the information will be for consumers waiting to upgrade their Mac…

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There has long been debate about the future of the Lightning port in the iPhone. Will Apple stick to this, replace it with USB-C, or move straight to a fully wireless iPhone — one without any ports at all?

There’s fresh discussion today prompted by a claim that Apple will do none of these things, and instead use a Smart Connector on the iPhone 13…

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My colleague Filipe Espósito has discovered evidence that Apple plans to revitalize the Messages Mac app by creating a Catalyst version. This would mean that it would finally gain parity with the iOS app in terms of access to thing like stickers, GIFs, message effects and so on.

Although some might consider this a rather trivial thing, I think it’s actually a little more important than it might seem …

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The latest Apple/FBI war of words in the Pensacola case has once again highlighted the huge challenge Apple has in communicating the reality of the debate, in a world in which most people have no understanding of the core issue.

To a non-technical person, the debate appears to be a moral one. The FBI says that it needs access to data from terrorists and criminals, and Apple wants to prevent this. FBI, good; Apple, bad.

To anyone who understands the technology, the debate is very different …

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I’m a huge privacy advocate who’s written a lot about the topic because it’s a massively important issue.

It’s important for two reasons: First, because the kind of technology we have available to us today poses privacy risks never before imagined. China, for example, has demonstrated the ability of its massive network of facial-recognition cameras to track one individual among millions as they travel from one side of a city to the other.

Second, because once you allow something to happen, it is very, very hard to roll it back. Crises are particularly dangerous in this respect, because it’s easier to justify extreme measures at extreme times – like the coronavirus – but once a government goes down a particular road, it’s vanishingly rare that they abandon the approach once the crisis has passed…

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Apple has made great progress over the years in protecting its customers against two big risks: theft of their Apple devices, and exposure of their personal data.

Activation Lock was introduced in 2013 and made it impossible for a thief to restore an iPhone or iPad to factory settings without the Apple ID credentials of its owner, or proof of purchase. Apple’s T2 chip did the same job for Macs as of 2018.

But while that’s great for protecting data, and making Apple devices far less appealing targets to thieves, there is a big downside …

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The idea that ‘Apple is doomed’ has been a constant refrain from some quarters throughout the decades, and has been given something of a boost during the coronavirus crisis.

First, there was the opening quarter of the year – Apple’s fiscal Q2. There was a dramatic difference between Apple’s original guidance and the actual numbers …

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Apple famously says no a thousand times for every time it says yes, and if there’s one thing the company has been saying “no” to more often than anything else, it’s a touchscreen Mac.

But some are suggesting that the new Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro — which setup Apple describes as “a computer” — amounts to the company tacitly endorsing the idea of a touchscreen laptop…

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Apple’s HomePod has faced two consistent criticisms right from the start.

First, people said, it’s the dumbest of the smart speakers — that both Amazon Echo and Google Home speakers can do more.

Second, it was said to be way too expensive. If you want a smart speaker, the thinking went, you could get an Amazon Echo Dot for $50, and sometimes as little as half that during promotions. Why pay Apple $349 then (and $299 now)?

Hearing both criticisms repeated recently, I couldn’t let it pass…

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Apple yesterday announced what it calls the new iPhone SE. The latest budget iPhone is many things. It’s a great upgrade for owners of the iPhone 6. It’s a lot of phone for an affordable price. It’s an efficient way for Apple to offer a ‘new’ phone with minimal retooling. It’s a smart business move in an uncertain economy.

What it is not, however, is an iPhone SE …

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If there’s one thing that’s become abundantly clear since Apple and Google’s API partnership, it’s that the coronavirus contact tracing privacy protections need to be spelled out in terms that non-technical people (even POTUS) can understand.

The two companies have gone to pains to explain that privacy was top priority in the design of the application programming interface, but mainstream media reports and conversations with non-techy friends have made it obvious that many don’t understand why apps that use this can be trusted …

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I should start by making it absolutely clear that I am of course not suggesting in this piece that the coronavirus outbreak was a good thing. It was a terrible thing. Many have died, many more have suffered extremely unpleasant illnesses, many have lost loved ones. If I could wave a magic wand and erase it from history, I’d do that in a heartbeat.

Nor am I suggesting that there is any equivalence between the terrible harm done and the possible good that may emerge. Nothing can come anywhere close to the pain of losing a loved one; any positive effects pale in comparison.

But with that made clear, we may see some silver linings …

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Various people have suggested in the past that Apple should allow FaceTime for Android and Windows, in an attempt to make it the default standard for consumer video calls. That idea gained new impetus when Apple launched the Group FaceTime function for calls between up to 32 people.

But the coronavirus outbreak has taken consumer group videoconferencing to a whole new level. Back in February, most non-techies had never done it in their lives. Fast-forward to now, and Zoom conferences are a completely normal thing for everyone …

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