Company / division: Apple
★ Tim Cook Confirms Apple is Working on Autonomous Driving Systems (Jun 13, 2017)
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Apple Announces Developer Preview of Business Chat for iMessage Customer Service (Jun 9, 2017)
Apple didn’t mention Business Chat explicitly during its WWDC keynote on Monday, but details about it have emerged during the week and it held a session on Friday morning at which it detailed the service for developers. What we know now is that Business Chat is an equivalent to Facebook Messenger for business to allow businesses to perform customer service tasks through iMessage. It won’t launch publicly until next year, but Apple is announcing a developer preview and all the tools necessary for businesses to create customer interactions using iMessage. The platform is pretty fully featured, offering not just text messaging but payments through Apple Pay, pickers for time slots, products, and the like, and integration with custom apps through the iMessage apps platform. Between this and the various other changes we’ve seen announced by Apple around iMessage over the past year, it’s evolving iMessage from a mere app to much more of a platform, very much along the lines I outlined in this article I wrote early last year. I think that’s super smart, and one of the best things about it from a customer perspective is that Apple isn’t doing any of this to drive new revenues or push advertising or any of the other things others in this space – notably Facebook – are doing. Apple is very aware of how personal a space iMessage is, and will prevent businesses from ever sending unsolicited messages – every interaction will be initiated by the user, from the first onwards. The platform looks clever, and giving developers and companies lots of time to implement it should mean that by the time this releases to the public next year, it should be really effective.
via TechCrunch (see also Apple’s developer page for Business Chat and the WWDC session on Business Chat)
Apple Reported to Hold Off on “Gigabit” Modems in Next iPhones (Jun 9, 2017)
I’ll start with my usual caveat on so-called “gigabit” wireless services: though theoretical throughputs on devices with the new modems being discussed here can reach gigabit per second speeds, the real-world experience is going to be a fraction of that. In other words, even if the reporting in this article is correct, Apple isn’t going to be missing out on true gigabit speeds any more than the other device vendors will have them. The second caveat is that even the more realistic speeds will only be available where carriers have upgraded their networks to support them, which will be far from everywhere for the near future. With those caveats out of the way, though, Apple will be one of the few device vendors out there without these faster modems in its devices over the next year. However, as the article rightly points out, Apple has rarely been willing to put cutting edge new modem technology in its devices at the same time as others, generally preferring to wait for the technology to mature before deploying it, as it notably did with both 3G and LTE. There is, of course, this time also the added complication of Qualcomm being the only supplier with a gigabit modem ready to go, and the fact of Apple’s very adversarial relationship with Qualcomm and its decision last year to introduce Intel modems. I’m inclined to believe the reporting here is accurate, but I’m not sure it’s really all that significant – in real-world experience, there will be very little difference for many customers over the next couple of years, and Apple will almost certainly jump on the gigabit modem bandwagon next year, likely through Intel.
via Bloomberg
Major Tech Companies to Send Leaders to Trump Administration Tech Summit (Jun 9, 2017)
The Trump administration is holding the first meetings of its American Technology Council, led by Trump son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner, later this month. Despite the recent contretemps between the tech industry and the administration, it appears most of the largest companies will still send senior leaders to the meetings, including CEOs or chairmen in many cases. Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Intel, Cisco, and others will all send at least one senior representative to the meetings. That’s a sign of the realism that still prevails at these companies despite broad opposition within their ranks to any kind of collaboration with the government. These companies still have policy objectives the government can and likely will help with, and disengaging entirely over those issues where there’s disagreement isn’t likely either to drive meaningfully different policies in those areas or achieve their broader goals. But that will make for some uncomfortable times for these leaders, most of whom looked pretty awkward at the first pre-inauguration meetings with Trump and his team. And these companies will face continued criticism from within Silicon Valley and elsewhere for their perceived compliance with the administration regardless.
via Bloomberg
Apple Hires Head of Stanford Digital Health Center (Jun 9, 2017)
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Apple to Install Proprietary Screen Replacement Tech in Third Party Repair Centers (Jun 7, 2017)
Apple has been in battles with various states over so-called “right to repair” legislation in recent months, and one of its key arguments against proposed new laws is that its devices have to be repaired in special ways in order to ensure the continued integrity of the Touch ID sensor and the secure enclave attached to it. Replacing an iPhone screen with a damaged Touch ID sensor, it argues, is something that can only be done by official Apple technicians with the ability to certify the integrity of those components. That, in turn, means that not all screen repairs can be conducted by any run of the mill repair center. Predictably, critics have argued that Apple merely wants to preserve what they see as a lucrative repair business given that Apple often charges more for such repairs than mall kiosks. All that is by way of context for this news that Apple is planning to put a couple hundred of its proprietary screen repair machines into third party repair centers in the next little while, with another two hundred coming by the end of the year. This puts some weight behind Apple’s argument that it’s intent on preserving security of devices and not merely its revenue streams, given that it’s now opening up access to those machines, albeit mostly through big partners like Best Buy. Given that there are still states with no Apple Stores at all and other parts of the US where people would have to travel long distances to one, it makes sense to spread availability of the repair technology more broadly, and Best Buy already hosts mini Apple stores within its stores to help meet these needs. But I don’t think any of this is going to neutralize the calls for Apple to open its repair processes more broadly, which is a great illustration of how narratives form around what are at root fairly complex subjects. It’s far easier to claim that Apple is somehow acting against its customers’ interests in this area than to explain the complexities involved in repairing a Touch ID sensor with all the security implications that has.
via Reuters
Bozoma Saint John Leaves Apple Music to Become Uber’s Chief Brand Officer (Jun 6, 2017)
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★ Apple Announces HomePod Home Audio System with Siri (Jun 5, 2017)
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★ Apple Tweaks its iPad Pro Line and Further Optimizes iOS for iPad and AR (Jun 5, 2017)
Apple today upgraded its iPad Pro lineup and announced a new version of iOS with big changes for the iPad as well as support for AR. The major theme in both the hardware and software aspects of the iPad announcements was productivity, where Apple continues to push the iPad Pro as a potential laptop replacement. The hardware changes improve performance across the board while specifically tweaking the ratio between screen and device size for the smaller iPad Pro in a change that likely foreshadows what Apple will do in a more dramatic way in the Fall with the iPhone. Just as the Mac lineup became more powerful with today’s announcements, so the iPad is becoming more powerful as a potential computer replacement, and the iOS changes specific to the iPad further that message, with support for a much wider range of multitasking scenarios and other more sophisticated features. For the first time, the iPad version of iOS feels like it’s gaining a truly distinct identity that’s really optimized for heavy-duty productivity tasks, and it will be interesting to see how the OS feels on the iPads not designed for pro use, because a number of user interface elements and conventions will change as a result. However, the other big change in today’s iOS announcements is support for AR through ARKit for developers, which is Apple’s first foray into AR. Notably, whereas the VR support in the Mac is primarily aimed for today at creation of VR content, Apple’s AR push is much more end-user centric, and will enable developers to quickly and easily create a range of AR apps and games for the iPhone and iPad. Whereas smartphone-centric AR today is very photo- and video-centric and dominated by companies like Snapchat and more recently Facebook, Apple’s platform approach could dramatically expand the use of AR in smartphone apps and move smartphone-based AR forward significantly in terms of mainstream adoption.
via Apple (iOS) and Apple (iPad Pro)
★ Apple Updates Mac and macOS with Creatives and VR in Mind (Jun 5, 2017)
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China Overtakes US to Become Top Contributor to $100bn Global Gaming Market (Jun 2, 2017)
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Tech CEOs Respond Negatively to Trump Withdrawal From Paris Climate Accord (Jun 1, 2017)
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Apple Adds Robot, Drone, and Instrument Support to Swift Playgrounds (Jun 1, 2017)
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Apple Announces Cumulative $70bn Paid to Developers, Over $20bn in Past Year (Jun 1, 2017)
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★ Apple Starts Manufacturing Its Siri Speaker (May 31, 2017)
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IDC Predicts Slightly Faster But Still Modest Growth in Smartphones in 2017 (May 31, 2017)
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Apple Hires Senior Qualcomm Engineer as Wireless SoC Lead (May 29, 2017)
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★ Apple is Developing a Dedicated AI Chip (May 26, 2017)
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Apple Watch Tops Heart Rate and Calorie Measurement Rankings in Stanford Study (May 25, 2017)
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Apple News Hires Former New York Magazine Editor as First Editor in Chief (May 25, 2017)
In our second news item about proprietary news formats today, Apple has hired Lauren Kern as its first Editor in Chief for Apple News. She was previously executive editor at New York Magazine and then took on more of a managerial role across several publications owned by the parent company. Apple has lots of editors today, but their role is curatorial rather than truly editorial, and I wonder if that will change with Kern’s appointment. Apple is purely an aggregation platform for today, but we could see it do more with pulling news together on a particular topic and perhaps highlighting the best coverage. Kern’s magazine background might also suggest a focus on more long-form content, which Apple could either continue to curate or perhaps begin to create or commission itself. Apple News as a platform has done relatively well, driving some decent traffic for at least some publishers, but doesn’t have nearly the reach of Facebook’s Instant Articles or the Google-led AMP format. It’s also at the early stages from a monetization perspective, offering only ads as a business model broadly and then subscriptions only for a handful of publications today. I would expect the subscription model to open up later this year, probably with an announcement at WWDC in a couple of weeks, so that would be another interesting angle for Kern to work on.
via 9to5Mac