Opinion pieces & commentary

I wrote an opinion piece on Friday outlining the five reasons I believe Apple, not Bloomberg, about the Chinese spy chip story.

It’s a friend-of-a-friend story. The technical arguments suggest it didn’t happen in the way Bloomberg says it did. Apple’s denial appears unequivocal. The company has ruled out the gag order theory. And, if it were true, there would be no reason now not to come clean about it.

Since then, four further reasons to believe Apple have emerged …

Expand
Expanding
Close

Bloomberg’s Chinese spy chip story yesterday has dominated tech news. All the companies involved – Apple, Amazon and Super Micro – have issued strong denials, so the big question is: who is telling the truth?

The piece was either a massive scoop about something of vital importance to everyone, or an embarrassing misunderstanding since debunked by the companies involved.

Deciding which applies isn’t entirely straightforward, but there are five reasons I come down on the side of believing Apple …

Expand
Expanding
Close

Last year’s iPhone X arguably represented the biggest design change ever seen in the evolution of Apple’s smartphone.

The iPhone thru iPhone 3GS were all essentially the same design. The slab-sided iPhone 4 represented a pretty big change, but was still recognizably the same device. The iPhone 5 was just a larger version. The iPhone 6 introduced a new design language as well as size, with rounded edges contributing to a slimmer look, but you’d still instantly pick it out as an iPhone.

The iPhone X was different …

Expand
Expanding
Close

When Apple unveiled the iPhone X a year ago, Tim Cook described it as ‘the future of the iPhone.’ A year later, that future is here.

All three of this year’s models share the same core design. As close as possible to an all-screen design, the Home button replaced by Face ID and gestures, and a notch to accommodate the camera and sensors at the top of the screen.

The iPhone XR makes for a particularly attractive purchase, offering a lot of the design and functionality of the flagship phones for $749. But there’s one piece of bad news in all this …

Expand
Expanding
Close

There’s usually one star of the show when it comes to September Apple events: that year’s flagship new iPhone models. That’s usually true even in S-model years.

But it wasn’t the case yesterday. The flagship new iPhones – the XS and the XS Max (I still can’t believe Apple chose that name) – were actually the least interesting things Apple presented … 
Expand
Expanding
Close

A report from an analyst with a solid if imperfect track-record yesterday suggested that this year’s iPad models would drop the Lightning port in favor of USB-C.

I’m on record as arguing in favor of this change, for both iPads and iPhones – and laid out why I saw it as an Apple-like move despite the short-term pain it would cause …

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple has received many complaints of late of its habit of announcing products before they are ready. Airpods, HomePod, AirPower … and the new Mac Pro currently setting the record. First announced in April 2017, it is expected to be launched sometime in 2019, with cynics suggesting the end of the year rather than the beginning.

But Apple doesn’t come anywhere close to Samsung’s record. The company first released a concept video (below) for a folding smartphone way back in 2013. That date explaining the low-res screengrab above.

Five years later, we’ve still seen no sign of it, but Samsung claims that’s about to change …

Expand
Expanding
Close

In my last Apple Watch Diary piece, I said that there were two things which might sell me on the idea of upgrading from my Series 3 to the upcoming Series 4. One was a more responsive Siri, but the bigger one was more data on the screen.

Apple may allow more characters in text fields, to display more of an upcoming appointment, for example. That too might be handy. Third […] it could allow more complications. If it did that, I’d be sold straight away.

As we yesterday exclusively revealed, we will indeed be seeing additional complications …

Expand
Expanding
Close

Google has today unveiled a redesign of its Android smartwatch platform, Wear OS. A key element of this is what the company calls a ‘notification stream’ – scrollable notifications that work in a similar way to Apple Watch ones.

For Android smartwatch owners, I’m sure it’s an improvement. But what strikes me more than anything about it is just how terrible it looks on a round watch face …

Expand
Expanding
Close

Acer has today teased the latest version of its Swift 7 laptop at IFA. The company hasn’t revealed much about it as yet, but The Verge reports that it has shared a few details.

This latest model is less than 10mm thick and includes an edge-to-edge display. The display is now 92 percent screen-to-body ratio, and overall the laptop weighs less than 2.2 pounds. Acer is shipping this new Swift 7 with an 8th generation Intel Core i7 processor, and it’s claiming that it’s the world’s thinnest laptop.

Not all MacBook Pro owners will agree than thin is necessarily good. There are those who argue that thicker batteries and more passive cooling capacity would result in a more useful machine. But the thing that does stand out for me about the Swift 7 is those ultra-thin bezels …

Expand
Expanding
Close

The rumor mill notched up a surprise today. We’ve long been hearing reports of Apple working on an entry-level 13-inch MacBook, and there has been speculation of a price in the $899 to $999 range.

That all seemed to make perfect sense. The existing MacBook Air is positively ancient by the standards of the rest of the MacBook line-up, so a new machine to replace this seemed an obvious fit.

But a new report today suggested that the new machine could have a price tag of $1200 – and that paints a different picture entirely …

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has a good (if imperfect) track-record, but his latest note – in which he predicts that an Apple Car will go on sale sometime in the 2023 to 2025 timeframe – needs to be viewed in rather a different light to his usual ones.

Kuo has excellent supply chain contacts, giving him good insight into Apple’s short- and medium-term plans. Once a product is actually in production, the complexity of Apple’s supply chain means it’s hard to keep secrets.

But even before volume production begins, manufacturing lines need to be set up, molds need to be created, test-runs need to be carried out. So suppliers will be in a position to know a lot about Apple’s medium-term plans, and Kuo’s contacts can begin feeding him solid information …

Expand
Expanding
Close

There have been a number of suggestions recently that this year’s iPhones might support dual SIMs. The first, from Ming-Chi Kuo, reported that this would apply to the flagship model, the 6.5-inch OLED iPhone.

We found supporting evidence in iOS 12 beta 5, with references to ‘second SIM status,’ ‘second SIM tray status’ and ‘dual sim device.’

A new report on Friday was, however, less encouraging …

Expand
Expanding
Close

(Product rendering)

A report on Friday on the 2018 iPad Pro models made three claims about the new slim-bezel models we’re expecting to see. First, it said, Apple will drop the headphone socket. Second, it will move the Smart Connector to a short-edge rather than long edge. Third, that Face ID will work only when the iPad is in the vertical orientation.

I have absolutely no difficulty believing the first of these claims, but the other two make no sense to me …

Expand
Expanding
Close

My colleague Bradley Chambers recently wrote that his single biggest disappointment with WWDC was that Apple made no move to announce an upgrade to the 5GB free iCloud tier.

One of our readers, Sahil Malik, made a wry comment on the $6,699 maximum cost of the new MacBook Pro:

I hope it still includes the free 5gb iCloud thing.

As his comment implies, the 5GB free tier is now nothing less than an embarrassment …

Expand
Expanding
Close

Update: It’s now been confirmed that the change made to the keyboard design appears primarily intended to improve reliability, with quieter typing a side-effect. An Apple internal document provides definitive confirmation.

One of the things Apple mentioned almost in passing in yesterday’s 2018 MacBook Pro announcement is that it had an improved keyboard. Apple had only seven words to say about it:

improved third-generation keyboard for quieter typing

But two things seem obvious …

Expand
Expanding
Close

A Counterpoint blog post today questions whether the planned ‘massive overhaul’ of Apple Maps is too little, too late.

This brings me to my key point — that map making, map data collection and keeping maps up-to-date, is an expensive and unending task […]

Apple will have to pour in hundreds of millions of dollars every year to collect, parse and integrate maps, transit and traffic data. Further, having Apple Maps cars equipped with expensive LiDAR, 360 cameras gear and drive hundreds of thousands of miles globally will still take Apple years to perfect the maps at a global scale […]

In summary, it could be a little too late for Apple to build maps content from the ground-up.

For a company which boasts of saying no a thousand times for every time it says yes, Apple Maps always seemed like a strange project to green-light, but I think there were a couple of reasons for it …

Expand
Expanding
Close

I said back in February that my experience of HomePod had made me feel optimistic about a report that Apple was working on ‘studio quality’ over-ear headphones.

Apple hasn’t exactly made a name for itself for headphone quality, either through its own-brand EarPods and AirPods, or through the Beats-branded products it has promoted since buying the company […]

But my experience of HomePod gives me a very different perspective on this. Sure, I’m still not expecting the audio quality of any Apple headphones to rival that of my favorite B&W P5 Wireless, but the company has demonstrated itself capable of dramatically stepping up its audio game.

And today’s report increases that feeling of optimism …

Expand
Expanding
Close

Looking at Apple’s recent history of new product launches, it seems that delays are the norm rather than the exception.

AirPods were originally promised for late October 2016, and actually went on sale in mid-December. HomePod was announced in June 2017, promised for December 2017, and wasn’t actually available until February 2018. In both cases, Apple missed the all-important holiday gift season, which undoubtedly hurt launch sales.

The Mac Pro isn’t technically late, as the company said only that it would go on sale ‘after 2017,’ but it was announced in April 2017 and a year later Apple said it would be sometime in 2019 – which is a lengthy wait by anyone’s standards.

Then there’s AirPower …

Expand
Expanding
Close

One of the changes Apple has made in iOS 12 is much tighter protection against devices designed to brute-force iPhone passcodes. Unless the device has been unlocked within the past hour, the USB port will be restricted to charging, requiring the phone to be unlocked before it will permit data access.

From much of the reporting on this, you could easily get the impression that Apple’s aim here is to thwart law enforcement investigations – and that simply isn’t the case …

Expand
Expanding
Close

CNET has a piece today listing five things it thinks Apple needs to do with the Mac line-up this year. Alongside sorting out the butterfly keyboard issues, allowing a sneak-peek at the Mac Pro, updating the MacBook Air and offering one non-USB-C port on MacBooks, Dan Ackerman asks for … one more thing.

Make the Touch Bar truly optional. It’s not a universally adopted control interface, and plenty of Mac users either don’t care for it or don’t feel they need it.

The least expensive 13-inch MacBook Pro without the Touch Bar is a full $500 less than the least expensive 13-inch MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar (yes, there are CPU and storage differences as well). The 15-inch MacBook Pro, however, is only available with the Touch Bar. I’d wager that many potential shoppers would jump at a chance to shave a few hundred dollars off a 15-inch Pro that skipped the high-concept Touch Bar …

Expand
Expanding
Close