Opinion pieces & commentary

Apple this week very quietly launched another new Services product: an AppleCare+ subscription. It’s a move that could see the company doubling its money on what is likely to be a very profitable product.

Previously, you could choose between a one-off upfront payment for your AppleCare+ policy or a monthly one, but either way, it ran for a fixed period of either two or three years, depending on the product. Two years in the case of an iPhone.

Now, however, it runs indefinitely – for an indefinite payment…

Expand
Expanding
Close

It’s the morning after, and time to provide my take on everything Apple announced in yesterday’s keynote. Some of it was as expected, some of it was a surprise – and some of it was notable by what the company didn’t announce.

The stars of the show were, of course, the new iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and the ridiculously-named iPhone 11 Pro Max…

Expand
Expanding
Close

A new report today, from two reliable sources, suggests that the anticipated ‘reverse charging’ feature – allowing an iPhone to charge AirPods – has now been abandoned by Apple, at least for this year’s models.

If true, this will add to the embarrassment of Apple’s track-record on wireless charging…

Expand
Expanding
Close

In-screen Touch ID could be appearing in iPhones as early as next year, according to a new report today. But while the current report suggests that both Touch ID and Face ID fans will be catered for, that may not remain the case for long.

The debate between the respective fans of Touch ID and Face ID began when Apple launched the iPhone X, the first iPhone to be launched without the fingerprint reader since it made its debut on the iPhone 5S in 2013.

With the iPhone X launch, Apple seemed pretty clear that Face ID was the future of iPhone authentication. It is, says Apple, faster, easier, and more secure than Touch ID…

Expand
Expanding
Close

The iPhone SE 2 — or whatever Apple would call a successor to the SE — has provoked more comment than any iPhone that doesn’t yet, and likely never will, exist.

Regular readers will know that I’m a great fan of the size and slab-sided design of the iPhone SE. I welcomed its introduction in 2016, “downgraded” to it shortly afterwards, and quickly knew it was the right decision. It was only a desire to experience the next generation of iPhones that had me move on from it.

I’ve also expressed both hope and despair at the idea of an iPhone SE 2…

Expand
Expanding
Close

Prior to the iPhone XS, Apple had a simple approach to its iPhone lineup. You could either buy the shiny new model, or you could buy any one of a range of older models — including last year’s flagship. (The iPhone SE temporarily complicated things, but no more, sadly.)

That changed last year. The iPhone X disappeared, and customers were left with a choice of three things…

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple TV+ pricing is still an unknown at this point. Apple itself has been silent on price, but a recent Bloomberg report suggested that Apple is considering charging $10 per month.

Following a report from The Financial Times earlier today, Bloomberg has now published its own report detailing certain aspects of Apple TV+. According to the report, Apple is targeting a November launch of Apple TV+ and “weighing” a price of $9.99 per month.

Apple itself has not yet offered any details on price, and this Bloomberg report is the first we’ve heard of a $9.99 price point.

That pricing doesn’t look completely impossible …

Expand
Expanding
Close

Whether the Apple Card benefits justify the hype has been a hotly-debated topic ever since the card was launched. Never before has a mainstream credit card attracted so much media attention and generated so much discussion.

There are those who have been as excited about receiving the card as you’d expect them to be about a new iPhone or Mac. And there are others saying the Apple Card really is nothing special…

Expand
Expanding
Close

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…

Expand
Expanding
Close

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…

Expand
Expanding
Close

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…

Expand
Expanding
Close

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 …

Expand
Expanding
Close

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.

Expand
Expanding
Close

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 …

Expand
Expanding
Close

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…

Expand
Expanding
Close

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 …

Expand
Expanding
Close

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 …

Expand
Expanding
Close

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 …

Expand
Expanding
Close

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 …

Expand
Expanding
Close

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 …

Expand
Expanding
Close

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 …

Expand
Expanding
Close