Opinion pieces & commentary

Apple might be disappointed that a lot of what it announced yesterday leaked beforehand, but the company still managed to pull enough surprises out of the hat. Tim Cook punned beforehand that Far Out would be a stellar event, and he wasn’t wrong.

From the absolute UI genius of the Dynamic Island to the unexpectedly low price of the Apple Watch Ultra, it was an impressive event from start to finish …

A day before the Apple event, the latest rumor is a programmable Apple Watch button, letting owners decide what it does.

Right now, the suggestion relates specifically to the upcoming Apple Watch Pro, but it’s a feature I’d love Apple to add to all models …

The sale of location data sales has become both big business, and one of the biggest privacy threats in recent years. While the companies involved in this $14B industry claim that only aggregated and anonymized data is sold, numerous investigations have shown that this simply isn’t true.

Just yesterday, we learned that the Federal Trade Commission is suing a data broker that can identify people seeking abortions, and that it made samples of that data publicly available. In the past, we’ve seen how location data can reveal everything from where cops’ kids go to school to US troop movements in war zones …

There have been rumors for a long time that Apple will introduce its own mixed reality headset that will allow users to interact with immersive apps combining AR and VR. This new headset is now expected to be announced in the coming months, and Apple seems to have even more ambitious plans for its new “Reality” ecosystem.

There was good news and bad news yesterday. The Apple Self Service Repair program was extended to the M1 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models – but if you were hoping that would enable DIY MacBook upgrades, you’re out of luck.

Apple very deliberately and specifically prevents this, and that seems to me to be the wrong decision for customers and the MacBook maker alike …

Apple’s smart speaker HomePod has been available on the market for some time now, but it has never been considered a success like iPhone, Apple Watch, or even AirPods. Still, rumors suggest that Apple has been working on new HomePod models. While having new HomePods would be great, I believe Apple should focus on improving the software on the current HomePods.

We’ve long been expecting a new ruggedized version of Apple’s smartwatch, and Mark Gurman’s “Power On” newsletter yesterday suggested that this would be branded as the Apple Watch Pro. I can easily believe that.

However, he went on to suggest that the new Pro model would replace the Apple Watch Edition – and that makes no sense at all to me …

It’s officially been one year since I became an Apple user. Now, as an Apple blogger, it felt like the right time to reflect on the experience as I come from a unique perspective.

One of the things Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported in his latest newsletter is that Apple is working on a new HomePod model, which will look and sound similar to the original.

That’s somewhat surprising, as Apple discontinued the 1st-gen model well over a year ago, though it took quite some time to sell its existing stock. So why would Apple relaunch a commercially unsuccessful product, and what could have a similar one succeed? I suspect three factors …

The scale and reach of Chinese surveillance of its own citizens is well documented, but a new piece shows that the country’s government is now trying to use this vast trove of data to predict crimes and protests before they happen.

The Supreme Court ruling on abortion is also raising fresh concerns about the way that personal data may be used to prosecute women. We’re increasingly living in a world where Apple’s decision to have privacy be a major focus is looking increasingly prescient – but even the Cupertino company may now need to do more …

We’ve seen some baby steps towards using our iPhone for proving our identity. But a couple of recent developments point to a future in which an iPhone – plus biometrics – could let us use our phone as a single means of verifying our identity, both online and in face-to-face interactions.

In all, Apple provides support for four initiatives which I think provide a clear pointer to a future in which the iPhone will be our one-stop device for ID …

Editing iMessages was one of the new features introduced by Apple in iOS 16, along with the ability to completely ‘unsend’ a message. While these are long-awaited features which will be welcomed by most, some have expressed concern about the potential for abuse.

Fortunately, it would be easy for Apple to solve this problem in a way that works for all, and I have a few suggestions for how this might be achieved …

The Stage Manager controversy doesn’t look to be going away anytime soon, despite Apple’s attempts to explain its reasoning for limiting the feature to M1 iPads.

I expressed my own disappointment that my 12.9-inch 2018 iPad Pro won’t get the feature, but it’s an even bigger blow to those who bought a 2020 model, only to discover that it is excluded from the headline iPadOS 16 feature just two years later …

When Apple announced AFib History as part of watchOS 9, it sounded like a kind of useful feature to have, but not really relevant to most people. But stated quietly within the announcement was something that I think will be absolutely huge, as the Watch gains the ability to detect more health conditions.

The Watch is going to play a massive role in helping you and your medical professionals to identify the role that lifestyle factors may have on your health …

A sketchy report dating back to July of last year suggested that we’d see a new range of MacBook Air colors this year. This was given new life a month later when it was backed by Ming-Chi Kuo.

The pastel colors offered by the new iMac rekindled excitement about the idea, and many of us could see the merits in Apple offering same color choice for the MacBook Air. But Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman recently warned not to get too excited …

There’s been a lot of speculation about the timing of Apple’s mixed-reality headset launch – and in particular whether the company will announce it at WWDC 2022.

The smart money seems to be saying that it won’t go on sale until next year, with some suggesting that this means no mention at WWDC. Personally, though, I don’t buy this argument …

As regular readers know, I’m a huge fan of smart home tech. But there’s a trend we’re increasingly seeing with this and other technology where we never fully own the product.

That’s true in a couple of ways, and there’s both an upside and downside to that – each illustrated by a different story I spotted this morning …

A report yesterday noted clues to a new ‘iPad multitasking mode’ in iOS 16, which appears to reference the ability to create arbitrarily sized windows rather than the limited, fixed options currently available.

We’ve been calling for a more powerful operating system on the iPad for years now, and have made a number of specific suggestions …

Apple has long been expected to transition to fully portless iPhones at some point, and for most users that makes perfect sense. But we’re seeing growing reports that the iPhone maker is first going to switch from Lightning to USB-C, and that raises a key question.

Is USB-C just a brief interim stage before iPhones go fully wireless, or do USB-C iPhones have a longer future … ?

For years now, Google hasn’t seemed particularly interested in the tablet market, but yesterday the company announced that it’s working on what might be the company’s first real iPad alternative – a new Pixel tablet due for launch sometime next year.

Apple getting some serious iPad competition could be just the thing we need to finally spur the company into taking iPadOS more seriously, and having the software catch up with the hardware …

We’ve been seeing growing interest in the formation of Apple Store unions by retail staff, frustrated by stagnant wages at a time of rising inflation, or other working conditions issues.

The prospect of unionization is one which often fills management with fear. This isn’t surprising given the confrontational nature of most management-union relationships. But there is a much more cooperative model out there, and Apple currently has a golden opportunity to adopt it …