Opinion pieces & commentary

If there’s one certainty in life where Apple is concerned, it’s that it targets the premium end of the market. Apple would tell you that it aims to make the best products, and that these cost money to make. A more cynical observer might say that Apple aims to make the highest margins and makes the products (and adds the marketing) it takes to achieve this.

But either way, the company has always targeted those customers willing to pay the big bucks for premium products. That approach has meant that while Samsung sells almost twice as many smartphones as Apple, it’s the Cupertino company that hoovers up almost 80% of the total profits in the industry.

But there are signs that Apple may be broadening its horizons …

Expand
Expanding
Close

I wrote yesterday that Apple’s Q4 guidance would give a big clue about iPhone 8 timing, but that it might not be easy to decode.

I said that one of the three possible scenarios would give the clearest steer: a guidance range significantly higher than normal for a ‘tock’ year. In that event, it would send a clear message that the iPhone 8 will go on sale in September, with at least enough availability to show up in the financials.

And that’s where I think we’re at, even if the numbers are not high enough to absolutely guarantee it …

Expand
Expanding
Close

President Trump claimed in a WSJ interview that Tim Cook has promised to build three large manufacturing plants in the U.S. – without specifying when this might happen, where they might be located or what they might make.

“I spoke to [Mr. Cook], he’s promised me three big plants—big, big, big,” Mr. Trump said as part of a discussion about business-tax reform and business investment. “I said you know, Tim, unless you start building your plants in this country, I won’t consider my administration an economic success. He called me, and he said they are going forward.”

But there is every reason to doubt this, no persuasive reason to believe it – and little basis for believing it would matter much even if it were true …

Expand
Expanding
Close

We’ve been hearing all kinds of speculation about when the iPhone 8 might go on sale. I think we’ve now had at least one guesstimate for every month from October through to January of next year.

But JP Morgan yesterday suggested that the iPhone 8 (or iPhone Pro, as they dub it) will appear on time in September, just in constrained volumes. Specifically, JP Morgan predicts that around 2M units will be available in September.

To me, this seems the most credible of all the reports to date …

Expand
Expanding
Close

The Clips app that Apple announced back in March and launched in April doesn’t exactly seem to have set the world on fire.

Apple’s description made it seem simple and fun to use:

Clips is a new app for making fun videos to share with friends, family, and the world. With a few taps you can create and send a video message or tell a quick story with animated text, graphics and emoji, music, and more.

The reviews, however, disagreed …

Expand
Expanding
Close

John Gruber has succinctly summarised my own doubts about claims that Apple is still in the process of making hardware decisions about the iPhone 8 at this late stage. In particular, that no final decision has yet been made about whether or not to include Touch ID, or replace it altogether with face-recognition.

I think it’s bonkers to think that Apple is still working on hardware decisions like this in the middle of July […] Hardware doesn’t work like that. Many of the decisions related to the hardware on this year’s new iPhones were made two years ago …

Although there have been multiple rumors of a delayed launch for the iPhone 8, these have been in the order of weeks or – at worst – a month or two …

Expand
Expanding
Close

There’s been much speculation about the price of the iPhone 8. There have long been reports that the price may exceed $1000 – and even those who think it won’t quite reach this level do expect it to be very close.

When we wondered whether a thousand dollars might be a psychological barrier, there were mixed views. Fewer than 15% of you said you’d ‘happily’ pay a 4-figure sum. Around 30% of you said you’d reluctantly pay it, and almost half said that was just too much.

But John Gruber has been stirring up speculation that the price may be even higher …

Expand
Expanding
Close

There’s an old maxim that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, meaning that anything which appears to be free will have a hidden cost somewhere.

In the tech sector, ‘free’ services generally operate using one of two different business models. The first is ad-funded, where – as the more recently-coined saying has it – you’re the product, not the customer. Some cheat the system by using ad-blockers, but most of us recognize that someone has to pay the bills, and accept exposure to ads as fair exchange for the benefit we receive.

The other model is the upsell, where you get a basic service free of charge but the company hopes to persuade you to pay for access to more features or storage. This again can be fair enough, but one company has just taken a particularly underhand approach to this …

Expand
Expanding
Close

The debate as to whether an iPad could be a viable laptop replacement continues, with a Twitter thread today a good example. The Outline’s Joshua Topolsky is a strong nay-sayer.

Couple of tweets about the new iPad and iOS 11. It is inferior to a laptop in almost every way, unless you like to draw. If you think you can replace you laptop with this setup: you cannot. Imagine a computer, but everything works worse than you expect. That is the new iPad […]

This doesn’t come close to replacing your laptop, even for simple things you do, like email. And one other thing. Apple’s keyboard cover is a [retracted] atrocity.

He acknowledges that iOS 11 is a step in the right direction, but suggests it’s a small step …

Expand
Expanding
Close

In a Computer History Museum interview this week, Scott Forstall was unapologetic about the skeuomorphic designs used in early iOS versions – the famous leather, paper and metal textures used to make on-screen elements look like real-world objects.

Disagreements between Forstall and design head Jony Ive on the look of iOS were believed to have been one of the reasons for him leaving the company back in 2012 …

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple has now implemented a controversial change to the way it handles cash ‘tips’ sent to content providers through social media apps in China. It is treating them as in-app purchases, and taking a 30% cut.

Apple’s point of view makes perfect sense in the USA. It argues that a donation from a user to a content creator is no different to an in-app purchase. Indeed, in the original news piece, many commenters took issue with the use of the word ‘donation,’ saying that this is suggestive of a contribution to a charitable cause rather than to an individual.

But it is this which highlights the cultural gulf between the two countries …

Expand
Expanding
Close

Regular readers will know that my enthusiasm for smart home technology dates back to the days of clunky X10 devices. Though there were standalone systems available, it was obvious even then that it made sense to adopt a common standard, and in the 1980s, X10 was that standard.

Fast-forward to a few years ago and what we gained in app support, we lost in standardization. Most manufacturers did their own thing, using their own protocols. There were one or two exceptions, like the Philips Hue system that was really just a rebadged form of Zigbee, but most devices didn’t talk to each other. You ended up with a whole slew of separate apps on your iPhone to control everything.

Apple’s HomeKit platform was designed to unify everything, but that came with its own dilemma for early adopters …

Expand
Expanding
Close

A quite stunning story came to light over the weekend of a scam app charging people a staggering $400 per month through an in-app purchase disguised as a free trial – for an app that does nothing in the first place.

Taking advantage of App Store search ads to achieve visibility, the app claims to be a virus and malware scanner, and for anyone naive enough to install it presents a dialog box offering a ‘free trial’ that actually charges them $99.99 for a 7-day subscription …

Expand
Expanding
Close

Siri has come under fresh attack today, with former members of Apple’s intelligent assistant team stating that it still lags behind its rivals despite the announcement of HomePod and improvements introduced in iOS 11.

Independent tests of the main IA systems also tend to bear this out, especially when it comes to personalization. Both Google Home and Amazon Echo have a better understanding than Siri of who we are and what we are likely to want.

The thing is, this isn’t coincidence – and doesn’t come without a cost …

Expand
Expanding
Close

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 …

Expand
Expanding
Close

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 …

Expand
Expanding
Close

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 … ?

Expand
Expanding
Close

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 …

Expand
Expanding
Close

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…

Expand
Expanding
Close

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 …

Expand
Expanding
Close

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 …

Expand
Expanding
Close