Opinion pieces & commentary

The Mac Pro has effectively been defined as two things. First, the most powerful Mac in Apple’s line-up. Second, the most expandable machine, but it’s looking increasingly like neither will apply to the 2023 Mac Pro.

And if you take away both of the unique selling points of the Mac Pro, isn’t it dead on arrival … ?

Apple last year introduced a new iPad Pro that is essentially the same as the previous generation model, but this time with the faster M2 chip. While rumors suggest that none of the iPad models will get massive upgrades in 2023, it seems that Apple has been working on a “major iPad Pro revamp” for 2024. But at this point, iPad Pro doesn’t need a major revamp, but better software.

A couple of reports earlier this week made two claims about Apple’s VR/AR plans. One, that the company is trying to trim the cost of a second-generation Apple Headset. Two, that work on Apple Glasses has been put on hold.

The first claim is almost certainly correct; the second, almost certainly wrong …

Apple still manages the occasional surprise, and yesterday was an interesting example. Almost two years after discontinuing the original HomePod, Apple launched a new HomePod.

Or, rather, it basically re-released the original HomePod, at the same price the company was last charging for the discontinued model …

The 27-inch iMac used to be one of the most popular models in Apple’s line-up, and a lot of people still view them with great affection even today. If you wanted a Mac but didn’t need portability, the machine combined all-in-one simplicity with a beautiful design and a great screen in a decent size.

But the iMac Pro was quietly discontinued in March 2021, with the non-Pro model suffering the same fate a year later. Not everyone was happy about this, and reports of a new iMac Pro persist, but I’m honestly not sure there’s a role for either Pro or non-Pro versions any longer …

Both users and developers of Twitter’s third-party clients were surprised last week when many popular apps like Tweetbot stopped working out of the blue. Since then, not even Twitter or its new owner Elon Musk (who likes to talk a lot on the social network) have addressed this issue. Today, Twitter continues to disrespect developers, this time with a weak explanation of what’s going on with its API.

There have been numerous examples of people losing a lifetime’s worth of photos after being locked out of their iCloud account. The Apple account recovery process often proves impossible, especially in cases where an iPhone has been stolen and its owner forced to unlock it.

Just yesterday there was a fresh example, where an unlocked iPhone was stolen at gunpoint by seemingly tech-savvy thieves …

Touchscreen Macs are back in the news – though it’s unclear whether there’s actually much reason for this. The Bloomberg report didn’t say that Apple actually plans to make any, only that engineers are ‘‘actively engaged‘‘ in the project.

I mean, that much has always been true. Apple has long made touchscreen Mac prototypes, and put them through usability testing. So are we talking a dozen engineers, as has probably always been the case? Or hundreds of ’em, which would indeed be evidence that Apple has serious plans? The report doesn’t say …

A Bloomberg report about Apple custom displays is leading to some interesting takes on it. Like Apple is moving into the manufacturing business, or that the company doesn’t already use custom-designed displays.

Neither of these things is true, so I think it’s worth taking a look about what the report did and didn’t say – and what the implications are likely to be …

I felt a real sense of deja-vu recently, when I told one of my HomePods to run a scene and Siri responded with “You’ll need to continue on your personal device.” This is a message many of us will remember from 2020 … and 2021 … and 2022. Welcome to the new year – same as the old year.

But more than just an annoyance, this is, to me, an encapsulation of the biggest problem with smart home tech in general, and HomeKit in particular …

YouTuber Marques Brownlee, also know as MKBHD, shared the results of his 2022 Smartphone Awards last month. And although the iPhone 14 Pro won in the Best Camera System category, the YouTuber pointed out some flaws regarding the photos taken with Apple’s latest smartphone. Now MKBHD is back with a video in which he details why some iPhone photos are getting worse – and the answer is: post-processing.

The weekend saw Mark Gurman reporting on his understanding of a revised 2023 Mac Pro plan by Apple. Essentially, he believes Apple to have abandoned plans to make the machine the ultimate Mac, relying instead on user expansion options to unleash the full potential of the machine.

In a sense, that’s a return to the original concept of the first-generation Mac Pro way back in 2006 …

Apple’s Emergency SOS via Satellite service got a lot of time in the keynote, with the company proudly announcing that the service is free for the first two years.

What Apple hasn’t told us is what happens at the end of those two years. There’s one obvious answer, of course, but there are other possibilities …

One of the many antitrust investigations into Apple seems set to mandate alternative app stores, and it was yesterday reported that the Cupertino company is making plans to bow to the inevitable.

While there will be the usual chorus about politicians interfering in the way that companies operate, this change will be a win for all Apple users, even if we have no plans to go anywhere near a third-party app store …

One of the ironies of Apple’s long-running battle with the FBI over the agency’s desire for a security backdoor into iPhones is that it could have taken advantage of one which already existed: The fact that iCloud backups of iPhones didn’t use end-to-end encryption. Apple has now finally fixed this with Advanced Data Protection (ADP).

ADP not only closes a privacy hole which should have been closed a long time ago, but will also relieve Apple of the need to engage in any similar legal battles in future …

Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suggested earlier this week that tight supply constraints could cost the company as many as 15-20M iPhone 14 Pro sales. Not just temporarily, he argued, but permanently: Most of those sales would just “disappear.“

He’s not the only person to suggest this, and there are four arguments that can be made in support of the view – but I don’t buy any of them …

Following the launch of the Apple Watch Ultra, some are suggesting that next year’s iPhone lineup might see an iPhone 15 Ultra instead of a Pro Max.

The theory is that Apple will increase the differentiation between the Pro and Ultra model iPhones, with the twin aims of pushing up the price of the top-of-the-range model and persuading Pro buyers to switch to the Ultra …

Apple’s ad business generated around $4B in the company’s last fiscal year. That’s a lot of money, of course, but I think there’s a risk that ad sales are doing more than $4B’s worth of damage to the company.

Let’s start by putting that number into context. By most standards, it’s a huge sum of money. It’s as much as AstraZeneca made from a year’s worth of COVID-19 vaccines, for example. But for Apple, it represents around 1% of its annual revenue for the year …

Apple recently introduced the 10th-generation iPad with a new design and also a new higher price, which makes the product less appealing for schools and students. It seems the company knows that it fails to reach these consumers — Apple once considered releasing a plastic iPad with a keyboard to compete with Chromebooks. It never happened, but maybe it should have.

A report yesterday suggested that Apple has a 16-inch iPad in the works, which could be released late next year. It follows an earlier report of a 14-inch one.

Talk of larger iPads dates back several years, with 9to5Mac readers long expressing an interest in a model larger than the current 12.9-inch maximum …

Yesterday saw the launch of the all-new iPad 10, as well as updated versions of the 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro, which makes for a rather extensive iPad line-up!

This could be viewed in two ways. Apple’s argument would be that the company now offers a model for every need, while a certain Apple co-founder might have been found drawing a 2×2 grid about now …