Company / division: Apple

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    Apple to Start Making iPhones in India Over Next Two Months – WSJ (Mar 23, 2017)

    I almost didn’t bother commenting on this news story, because it’s essentially identical to all the stories that were doing the rounds at several earlier times (see this previous comment, for example, from a month and a half ago). I honestly don’t know why the Journal published this story today, because it adds nothing to the earlier stories – same unnamed government sources, same details about Wistron being the manufacturer, and the same absence of on the record comment from anyone involved, least of all Apple. It’s entirely possible (even likely) that Apple is indeed planning to manufacture phones in India, but the fact that it hasn’t announced those plans yet suggests either that the plans aren’t fully baked yet or there’s some sticking point, which makes me curious what that is.

    via WSJ

    Apple has acquired Workflow, a powerful automation tool for iPad and iPhone – TechCrunch (Mar 22, 2017)

    This is a fascinating acquisition in the context of Apple’s recent parting of ways with Sal Saghoian, who ran the Automator app for macOS. That departure had signaled to some people that Apple was abandoning automation as a feature, but this acquisition sends the opposite message. Perhaps more importantly, Workflow is much more user friendly approach to automation than Automator, and what I’d hope we’ll see here is that same approach applied to built-in automation across Apple’s product lines including the Mac. That would make automation a more mainstream proposition, which is an intriguing prospect. That Workflow will remain available in the App Store is interesting too – that’s obviously going to be reassuring to existing users, but there’s no guarantee that it will stay there when Apple is done integrating it into its platforms. Siri stayed available for a time too, but of course disappeared when Apple released its version.

    via TechCrunch

    Apple’s App Store Gets a Makeover – Bloomberg (Mar 21, 2017)

    The headline makes it sound like there are changes coming to the App Store, but this story is really about all the changes that have already happened on the App Store since Phil Schiller took it over from Eddy Cue a little over a year ago. One of the notable things in the story is the impact that better analytics have had, and how that’s made it easier for more dynamic developers to update their apps more frequently in response to user behavior. More generally, though, the article suggests that big strides have been made in the way the App Store runs from a developer perspective, which is a story that hasn’t been told much. It’s been subtle, and if you’re just a user you might not be aware of most of these changes, but better experiences for developers make for better end user experiences too. I know there are still lots of developers, especially Mac-centric developers, who have complaints they feel have gone unheeded, but Apple has at least made some progress in fixing big pain points on the iOS side.

    via Bloomberg

    Apple Debuts Clips, a New Way to Create Videos on iOS (Mar 21, 2017)

    Alongside the iPad announcement it made this morning, Apple made three other announcements, of which this is the most interesting (the other two concern a PRODUCT(RED) iPhone and new languages for Swift Playgrounds). Clips looks like a hybrid of Snapchat and iMovie, with lots of new filters, stickers and other effects and an easy editor for creating a montage of video clips and photos, but apparently without any kind of social component. This is a funny sort of inbetweener software product from Apple, which doesn’t have an explicit social network and whose creative tools around editing photos and videos are far less used among young people than those which come with the social networks they use. I don’t necessarily see that changing with this product, though there are some clever-looking features like auto-generating titles. The proof will be in the pudding, though – the app comes out in April, though I’m guessing it may appear in developer betas before then, giving us a chance to try it out. It’s interesting to see Apple experimenting to try to fill a gap here, but I’m not convinced it’s got it right just yet.

    via Apple

    Apple Announces New Low-End iPad, Confirming Change in Strategy (Mar 21, 2017)

    Apple today updated its online store and issued a press release around a new 9.7″ iPad, confirming a change in strategy which seemed apparent when the 9.7″ iPad Pro launched but wasn’t made explicit until now. The new iPad drops the Air branding, and offers specs a year or two behind the iPad Pro line, while reducing the price to the lowest in Apple’s iPad lineup, at $329 (the only iPad mini available now is the 128GB model, which starts at $399, meaning that for the first time it’s cheaper to buy the new 9.7″ iPad than the newest iPad mini). What we have now, then, is a clear bifurcation between the iPad Pro, which is the latest and greatest with high-end specs, new features, and accessories like Pencil and the Smart Keyboard, and the more basic and low-end iPad. The iPad Pro is therefore not just the iPad for people who want to replace their laptop, but also the best iPad for everyone else. The iPad, then, becomes the low-cost alternative, the one for people with simpler needs, for giving to kids, and so on. That’s going to do interesting things to average selling prices, which had gone up slightly with the launch of the iPad Pro line and will now come down, but also to Apple’s competitiveness in a price band where it really hasn’t played before, expanding its addressable market. This new iPad is effectively the equivalent of the iPhone SE, taking older innards and wrapping them in new branding to bring the price down to a new level, and I suspect that – like the iPhone SE – it will indeed bring the device to new people. However, I suspect it’ll take quite a bit more share of the overall market than the SE has in iPhones.

    via Apple

    Secretive Billionaire Reveals How He Toppled Apple in China – Bloomberg (Mar 20, 2017)

    The whole framing of this article feels very much driven by its subject, Duan Yongping, who runs the conglomerate which owns Oppo and Vivo, two of the world’s largest smartphone brands. The idea that these brands have somehow toppled Apple in China isn’t really borne out by the facts, and it appears the (unnamed) author rather took Duan’s word for it on this and other points. Apple has absolutely seen falling sales in China, but that’s as much about a saturating market and the drop-off from the huge iPhone 6 launch as about any local competitors. It’s also fairly clear that Oppo and Vivo compete in a very different segment of the market from the iPhone, though many who buy those devices plan to buy an iPhone next, per some recent Morgan Stanley research, suggesting that these are customers which aspire to buy iPhones rather than having switched from them. There’s no doubt Oppo and Vivo have achieved impressive market share in China, and therefore also globally, but it’s far less clear that their strategy is sustainable – after all, we’ve seen other Chinese brands (notably Xiaomi) do very well in the short term and then fizzle. In China in particular, the Apple brand is highly aspirational, and that will continue to drive a lot of sales.

    via Bloomberg

    Apple’s Next Big Thing: Augmented Reality – Bloomberg (Mar 20, 2017)

    Yet more evidence that Apple sees a far more promising future in augmented than virtual reality, something Tim Cook has already affirmed several times. There’s little concrete in this article – lots of discussion on the people Apple has leading and working on its AR project, the kinds of technologies they’re working on, and some features they’re experimenting with, but really nothing about what Apple is actually likely to launch. I’ve often said that Apple tends to build up to new technologies slowly, and often subtly, incorporating the necessary hardware in devices like the iPhone long before it actually takes advantage of them, and I think the dual cameras in the iPhone 7 Plus are an example of that. The same technology that powers Portrait Mode and 2x optical zoom could easily be incorporated into some kind of AR technology on the iPhone, and I think it’s likely this fall’s iPhones will start to show some of what they’re capable of using these and other components. But Apple will probably also use the iPhone to build up to something separate over time, like glasses, something this article seems to confirm. For now, VR definitely has far more public attention than AR, and it’ll take someone like Apple getting into the business to change perceptions and raise awareness of the latter.

    via Bloomberg

    Chance the Rapper Says His Apple Music Deal Was Worth $500,000 – The New York Times (Mar 17, 2017)

    From a musical perspective, this is a little down in the weeds, but it’s relevant to how Apple and other streaming services are using exclusives to promote and differentiate their services, so it’s worth understanding at least some of those details. Chance the Rapper is a popular musician who famously has eschewed both a deal with a label and, for the most part, charging for his music, making much of it available through free streaming services like SoundCloud. However, he did have a brief exclusive with Apple Music a while back, which has led to some criticisms that he’s not truly an independent artist (neither the musician nor the articles covering this story today seem to be specific about that, but here’s a recent example). In his defense, Chance detailed his relationship with Apple today in a series of tweets in which he said that Apple had indeed paid him half a million dollars, which he says he needed at the time, for a two week exclusive on Apple Music before he released his album on SoundCloud. That’s a much smaller amount than Apple was reported to have paid fellow musician Drake, but highlights that Apple has been spending a decent amount on exclusives, though it’s possible that we’ll see less of this and more emphasis on its original content going forward. Meanwhile, it appears Drake’s next project (technically a mixtape and not an album) will be the first in quite a while not to be an Apple Music exclusive.

    via New York Times

    Six months in, iMessage App Store growth slows as developers lose interest – TechCrunch (Mar 17, 2017)

    I think there are at least a couple of ways to read this data set, one of them not so good for Apple and one of them more neutral. The first is the one this article favors, which is to say that the slowing growth in iMessage apps is down to lack of user engagement with them, and I think that’s entirely reasonable. I downloaded one or two in the first day or two after they became available, thought they were fun, and have never either used them or downloaded more sense, and I would guess I’m not atypical. But I’m probably also not the target market for most of these little apps, which were always likely to be more popular among younger people and probably geographies other than the US, so I’m loath to extrapolate too much from my own experience. The other way to read this data is that iMessage apps are so ridiculously simple to create that anyone who wanted to create one did so very quickly after the tools became available, in marked contrast to Apple Watch or Apple TV apps, which required quite a bit of development time to create. And so now we’re seeing a low maintenance rate of growth from those who came to the market later or are making second or third apps. The Sensor Tower data itself doesn’t help identify which of these is the right explanation, and in reality I expect it’s a bit of both. The far more interesting data set would be revenue from these apps and how that’s changing over time.

    via TechCrunch

    Apple Plans Two More Chinese Research Hubs as iPhone Sales Slow – Bloomberg (Mar 17, 2017)

    Two things worth noting here. Firstly, another big commitment by Apple to China, following its billion0-dollar investment in ride-sharing service Didi last year, with the total of these R&D center investments reaching about half a billion dollars in their own right. That signals again that Apple is very serious about continuing to be a big force in China, and is in fact increasing its investment there rather than backing down. That’s important, because in this piece as in other recent ones on Apple in China, the prevailing narrative is that Apple is losing ground there. At a basic level, of course, there’s truth to that over the past year, with declining iPhone sales, though the picture in PRC as opposed to the Greater China region Apple reports as a segment is a little less clear cut. The reality is that the “super-cycle” driven by the iPhone 6 launch led to unprecedented sales everywhere, but nowhere more than in China, and so the comedown has been that much bigger too. But Apple is positioned to start growing in China again in the coming year, and it will continue to be a crucial market for Apple.

    via Bloomberg (press release in Chinese here, with Google translation here)

    Amazon puts Alexa inside its main iPhone app – VentureBeat (Mar 16, 2017)

    Alexa’s single biggest flaw today is that it’s a shut-in: for the most part, it can’t leave the house. That means competing in a broad-based way with Siri and the Google Assistant requires getting onto smartphones, and now we have Amazon putting Alexa into the Amazon shopping app on iOS. Job done? Well, no. Because just having an app on a phone doesn’t mean people will use it. And if it’s buried inside a shopping app, that’s a steep hill to climb relative to just holding down the home button to summon Siri. On the one hand, I get the logic of putting Alexa in the Amazon app – it’s an app many of the company’s most loyal users already have installed and likely use frequently, but it also means it’s going to be several clicks away. I can see some parents with kids using it to keep them quiet with jokes, but it’s hard to imagine people using an Alexa buried in a shopping app as their main assistant while away from home. Integration within the smartphone and its operating system is the key here, which will be impossible on iOS but more feasible on Android, as we’ve already seen with Huawei and Lenovo’s integration plans.

    via VentureBeat

    Apple could kill almost 200,000 apps with iOS 11, report says – Mashable (Mar 15, 2017)

    This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a claim like this – Apple has been hinting at dropping apps that haven’t made the switch to 64-bit from the App Store for quite some time. While it’s good to get some sense of how many apps might be affected – Sensor Tower says 8% or 187,000 apps – what’s missing from this analysis is whether any of those apps are actually ones people care about or use today. My guess is that there are very few apps in the App Store which haven’t been updated in years and still see significant usage – I can only think of one app I use today which would fall into this category, and that’s because it’s been superseded by a new version which dropped some features I use. So even though the number here sounds dramatic, my guess is that dropping these apps in iOS 11 – if that is indeed what’s going to happen – will have minimal negative impact on users, and potentially remove some dead wood from the App Store in the process.

    via Mashable

    The Apple Watch is still the best designed smartwatch – The Verge (Mar 14, 2017)

    This is a good follow-up to this morning’s item about the new Android Wear watch from Huawei, and argues much as I did that other smartwatch makers are largely failing to learn the lessons of or compete effectively with the Apple Watch. It frames the discussion in terms of the compromises and tradeoffs watchmakers choose to make, which seems a smart way to think about it, and has arguably always been one of Apple’s strengths.

    via The Verge

    Apple Joins Group of Companies Supporting Google in Foreign Email Privacy Case – Mac Rumors (Mar 14, 2017)

    Given the way other big tech companies had weighed in on the related Microsoft case over the past few years, it was a little odd that more hadn’t sprung to Google’s defense in this one, but it’s good to see that they are now doing so. These cases have far-reaching consequences not just for user privacy but for the ability of US companies to do business in overseas markets, and those companies need to defend themselves vigorously. The final outcome of both cases is therefore worth watching closely.

    via Mac Rumors

    Apple hires Jonathan Zdziarski, an active forensics consultant & security researcher in the iOS community – 9to5Mac (Mar 14, 2017)

    Zdziarski was in the news a lot a year ago, when Apple was fighting the FBI over the iPhone used by the San Bernardino shooter, because he was frequently quoted and cited as an expert who backed Apple’s stance. As such, it’s not altogether surprising that he should end up at Apple – he’s been both one of its staunchest supporters around some security and privacy issues and someone who has discovered vulnerabilities in its code. On the one hand, that makes him a useful person to have inside the company – this hire feels a lot like Apple’s hire of Anand Shimpi, another prominent outside expert who was brought inside – but Apple will lose the benefit of having a vocal independent advocate on these issues. It’s also interesting to note Zdziarski’s comments about his hiring and why he’s joining Apple – he cites its privacy stance, which is of course closely tied to security concerns, as a strong motivating factor.

    via 9to5Mac

    Apple Watch Series 2 Satisfaction & Usage Survey – Wristly (Mar 13, 2017)

    Wristly is one of the only organizations out there which does regular Apple Watch user surveys, and as such provides some very useful insights into how users feel about their Watches and how they use them. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but I’ll call out two points in particular: user satisfaction has risen over the past year as the number of users has grown significantly, and the drivers are the new hardware and new software Apple has released in the past year. That both have driven increased satisfaction is obviously good for Apple, but the fact that the new software improved the experience has possibly also worked against bigger hardware sales – I know my first generation Watch performs well enough running the new software that I don’t feel the need to run out and buy a Series 2 device, and I’m guessing the same is true for others. But of course the Watch has sold reasonably well regardless, and so the user base continues to expand, albeit still at a fairly small scale relative to massive mainstream categories like smartphones.

    via Wristly

    New LG 5K UltraFine Display models work properly near wireless access points including routers – 9to5Mac (Mar 13, 2017)

    Just a short update on this earlier story about Apple’s LG monitor partnership, which I’ve covered here. It’s obviously good news that LG has produced a monitor that’s now unaffected by nearby wireless routers, but still bad news that its first version had this fundamental flaw. That speaks both to LG’s lack of quality and Apple’s lack of quality control as a partner, especially for the first monitor from this partnership after years of Apple making its own monitors. Hopefully this is a one-off for both companies, but future monitors from these two will be subject to that much more scrutiny as a result.

    via 9to5Mac

    Apple Comes Top in Laptop Magazine Service and Support Ratings (Mar 13, 2017)

    Tim Cook is very fond of talking about Apple’s customer satisfaction ratings on earnings calls – he clearly believes these are both the best indicators of whether Apple is being successful and the best determinants of its future prospects. As such, reviews like this one, which focused on online and phone technical support and service for laptops across the top brands, are good news for Apple, given that it came top of the rankings. It’s also worth noting where others did and didn’t score well – Acer, Lenovo, and Microsoft took the next three spots, while Samsung came near the bottom.

    via Laptop

    Apple’s Siri learns Shanghainese as voice assistants race to cover languages – Reuters (Mar 9, 2017)

    One of the things that’s often missed by US writers covering Amazon’s Alexa and its competitors is how limited it still is in language and geographic terms. It only speaks English and German and the Echo range is only available in a handful of countries. Siri, meanwhile, just got its 21st country and 36th language, which reflects a long-time strength of Apple’s: broad global support. Apple News is a notable exception, which is only available in a few countries and one language, but almost all of Apple’s other products are available in a very long list of countries and territories, often longer than for other competing services. The article here is also interesting for the insights it provides into how each company goes about the process of localization, which is quite a bit more involved than you might surmise.

    via Reuters

    FBI Director Comey Criticizes Encryption Again – BuzzFeed (Mar 8, 2017)

    If ever there were a terrible week for the FBI to restate its case against encryption, this would have to be it, given the Wikileaks CIA leak which demonstrated that the CIA regularly engages in hacking of electronic devices, and claims to have the code for the tools themselves. Any backdoor for the government would be subject to the same sort of breach that has clearly affected the CIA and its hacking tools, so there is no reason to believe that the FBI would be able to protect these tools adequately if they existed. And the broader statement which is in the BuzzFeed headline here about privacy is chilling too. The reality is that there have always been aspects of citizens’ lives which have been inaccessible to law enforcement, not least their private conversations which happen outside earshot of bugs and wiretaps, and protections against self-incrimination, which should logically extend to things like smartphones too. And any tools created for or by the government to bypass such protections are inevitably going to fall into the wrong hands eventually.

    via BuzzFeed