]]>Right now, you can think of the value of Bitcoin being set in the same way that the value of an export license might be set through bids. If/when China fully liberalizes capital flows, the value of Bitcoin likely will fall. A lot. To the extent the shadow market value of the yuan rises, and approaches the level of the current quasi-peg, the value of Bitcoin will fall, by how much is not clear. Or maybe getting money out through Hong Kong (or Shanghai) will become easier and again the value of Bitcoin would fall. If Beijing shuts down BTC China, the main broker, which by the way accounts for about 1/3 of all Bitcoin transactions in the world, the value of Bitcoin very likely will fall. A lot. You will recall that the Chinese government shut down the virtual currency QQ in 2009; admittedly stopping Bitcoin could prove harder but still they could thwart or limit it.
However, it’s not all bad news for Apple, added Coulling, because it’s one of the few firms making money out of the booming tablet market at the moment.
What percentage of all tablet profits is Apple making “at the moment”? Do tell.
]]>Apple! Boy, what a story. No taxes paid, everything made abroad — yet everyone worships them. This new iPhone, there’s nothing new in it. Just a golden color. What the hell, right? When people start playing with color, you know they’re played out.
I don’t know what’s more ridiculous: the idea that Apple pays “no taxes”, or that the only thing new in the iPhone 5S is the gold color option. Combined, they put Smil on my “pay no mind” list.
Update: And why didn’t Clive Thompson challenge Smil on these points? They’re blatantly false, but stand unchallenged in the article text. What about the editors at Wired?
]]>Brought to you by these fine sponsors:
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It looks like Mac OS X if someone designed it based on verbal descriptions of OS X, circa Leopard, shouted over a bad cell phone connection, and translated through different languages a few times.
]]>23andMe Inc., the Google Inc.-backed DNA analysis company co-founded by Anne Wojcicki, was told by U.S. regulators to halt sales of its main product because it’s being sold without “marketing clearance or approval.” […]
Wojcicki, who recently separated from her husband, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, started 23andMe about six years ago to help people assess their risk of cancer, heart disease and other medical conditions.
I feel obligated to point out that 23andMe sponsored my podcast, The Talk Show, back in July this year.
]]>]]>The carrier stores are still the dominant place for Americans to get their new cellphones, but two other retailers — Apple and Best Buy — have emerged as significant channels.
Apple, of course, sells only iPhones, but accounts for about 11 percent of retail phone sales, according to a survey from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. Best Buy, which sells phones from all major carriers and all the big operating systems, accounts for 13 percent of sales.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal Monday, Mr. Lv said that ZTE’s smartwatch will offer technological features that are similar to existing products such as the Galaxy Gear, but will sell for lower prices as it tries to appeal to China’s cost-conscious consumers. “We are focusing on the mainstream market,” he said.
Could just be me, but somehow, “like the Galaxy Gear but cheaper” does not strike me as a winning strategy.
]]>Somehow, I have a feeling Google doesn’t have to resort to these tactics to get people to use Gmail.
Or Apple with Apple Mail. The onus is on the Yahoo Mail team to make a product Yahoo employees want to use, not on Yahoo employees to use a turd webmail product and somehow magically improve it through collective complaints. If your employees are only using your own products or services because they have to, or feel obligated to out of some sort of loyalty, you’re losing.
Think back to those stories about Bill Gates’s and Steve Ballmer’s kids not being allowed to own iPods. The problem wasn’t with their kids. The problem was with the Zunes or the even worse “Plays For Sure” era Windows Media devices. If those devices were actually any good, their kids wouldn’t have asked for iPods, and they wouldn’t have had to make any silly rules. I somehow doubt Phil Schiller’s kids are forbidden from buying Samsung phones or tablets.
]]>It’s a great update packed with a lot of new features and improvements across the board. You can download a free trial of OmniGraffle 6 at omnigroup.com.
]]>Many of my iPhone friends are converting to Android. The latest high-end phones from Samsung (Galaxy S4), Motorola (Verizon Droid Ultra) and the Nexus 5 (for AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile) have better screens, are faster, and have a much more intuitive interface. They are a great Christmas present to an iPhone user!
The “better screens” and “more intuitive interface” are obviously subjective, but isn’t “faster” just plain false? Just about every benchmark I’ve seen puts the A7 atop the performance charts, often by far.
Also interesting: Schmidt brags that Android has 80 percent market share, but then compares switching from iPhone-to-Android to Windows-to-Mac. If there’s a Windows of mobile computing, it’s Android.
Anyway, the whole thing is kind of weird. (Two spaces after periods? Shouldn’t Google Plus fix that bad habit automatically?)
]]>Apple has completed its acquisition of PrimeSense, the Israel-based company focused on 3-D sensor technology, for a price sources said was around $360 million. […]
PrimeSense became widely known in the sensor technology space for its early work with Microsoft’s Kinect gaming product, which uses cameras and depth sensors to capture players’ motions and incorporate them into Xbox gameplay. (Microsoft now deploys its own homegrown sensor technology for the current generation of Kinect devices, which ship with the recently launched Xbox One.)
Will be interesting to see what comes of this. Seems like too much money for Apple not to have something specific in mind.
]]>Update: Sounds like no, you can upload far more than 1000 photos per month, but the “long-term” storage limits remain the same. I should have known better; last I heard, significant improvements to Photo Stream were slated as a 2014 thing, not a 2013 thing. This should not be confusing at all; but instead, it’s confusing as hell.
]]>New this week: two great new apps for iOS, Squarespace Blog and Squarespace Metrics. The blogging app even includes great support for Markdown, and is a great way to update your site from your iPhone or iPad.
]]>]]>I kind of hope that the small, fast application updates that we’re now seeing from Apple is the start of a new trend.
]]>I began working on baseball scheduling in 1994, and it took ten years of hard work (first Doug and me, then the four of us) before MLB selected our schedule for play.
Why were we successful in 2004 and not in 1994? At the core, technology changed. The computers we used in 2004 were 1000 times faster than the 1994 computers. And the underlying optimization software was at least 1000 times faster. So technology made us at least one million times faster. And that made all the difference. Since then, computers and algorithms have made us 1000 times faster still. And, in addition, we learned quite a bit about how to best do complicated sports scheduling problems.
Clumsy Ninja, which was featured in last year’s Apple media event for the fifth-generation iPod touch and iPhone 5, has finally made its way to the App Store as a free download. One of two high-profile game demos from Apple last year — the other being Infinity Blade Dungeons, which was shown at the third-generation iPad event in March 2012 and later canceled — Clumsy Ninja’s release was delayed for more than a year without explanation.
If you scored an on-stage demo at the September 2012 introduction of the iPhone 5 and don’t ship the app for another 14 months, I think you deserve a non-sarcastic finally.
I think one of the few truly weird things about Apple today is how they occasionally pick obscure third-party products to demo in their high-profile events. Clumsy Ninja looks like a cool game, but why would Apple choose them to demo if it wasn’t soon going to ship. And remember Anki, the toy race cars at the WWDC keynote this year? How’d they get picked?
Update: Whoa, check this out — Clumsy Ninja’s entry in the App Store has a video preview instead of static screenshots. So not only did they get an on-stage demo a year ago, this year, they get to launch a major new App Store feature. (Thanks to Neven Mrgan.)
Update 2: In a recent TV interview with Bloomberg, Anki co-founder and CEO Boris Sofman, when asked how they got picked to be on stage during the WWDC keynote, said “One of our investors introduced us to Apple, and originally we started talking about being in their stores, but they got excited about the product and how we were using their product ecosystem.”
]]>The ‘book to e-book’ move was deemed a disaster following major technical issues with the majority of the HP Elite Pad tablet devices. […]
“The HP Elite Pad has proved to be an unmitigated disaster. We have met with HP representatives on a number of occasions to address the issues. To ensure stability and continuity of education I have ordered a full set of books for all the students.”
Students experienced problems such as tablets failing to switch on, tablets spontaneously going into sleep mode, devices looping while performing automatic repairs, system board failures and issues with wi-fi.
Principal Gleeson said it was “an informed decision” to choose the HP Elite tablet. “A year and a half’s worth of research was put into choosing the right device for us.”
If you spend a year and a half researching tablets and wind up choosing the HP Elite, you might want to reexamine your research skills. (I’m reminded of CBS News’s claim that they spent a year researching their discredited Benghazi report that was in fact a hoax.)
]]>“What we’re dealing with is small green tomatoes,” he said of the Gear’s first-generation growing pains. “And what we want to do is take care of them and work with them so they become big, red ripe tomatoes. And what you want to be sure of is that you don’t pluck the green tomato too early and you want to make sure that you don’t criticize a small green tomato for not being a big, red ripe tomato.”
That’s a tough spot, speaking on stage in front of an audience. What’s he going to say? That the Gear is a huge turd? He has to defend it.
But, calling it a 1.0 doesn’t hold water. If you’re taking real money from consumers for the product — and the Gear costs $300 — you owe them a product of that value or greater. There are no points for being first to market with a bad product.
]]>According to the related industry sources on November 14, Samsung Electronics released the curved smartphone Galaxy Round on November 10, but the product currently shows daily sales of under 100 units. Its cumulative monthly sales fall under 10,000 units.
Also, on September 25, Samsung Electronics released the Galaxy Gear in time for the wearable computing generation. Yet this product has cumulative sales under 50,000, with daily sales of only 800-900 units. These low sales values for the Galaxy Gear are far below the initial expectations of the industry.
Sounds about right, given the almost universally terrible reviews the Gear garnered.
A day after the Business Korea report — which admittedly has no named sources — Samsung executives fired back, telling Reuters they’ve “sold” 800,000 Gear units, calling it “the most sold wearable watch available in the market place”. (As opposed to unwearable watches?) Anyway, turns out this is from the Department of Shipped Not Sold — the 800K figure is the number of Gear units Samsung has manufactured and shipped to resellers. That doesn’t put the lie to Business Korea’s claim that they may have only actually sold 50K of them so far.
]]>The great folks over at Plausible Labs have taken over development of VoodooPad.
Both VoodooPad and Acorn have grown over the years into much more than I can handle as a single developer. And because of this one of my two apps was going to be neglected, and obviously VoodooPad has gotten the short end of the stick lately.
This isn’t fair to my customers, it isn’t fair to VoodooPad, and it was driving me insane. I use VoodooPad every single day, and I love it to death. I want it to grow, and that wasn’t happening so something needed to be done.
Good news for a great app.
]]>Update: Great piece from Consequence of Sound on the poignant story behind this friendship.
]]>Who would actually buy any of this stuff?
Update: A few readers report that this “Scroogled” cack is actually popular with… Google employees. And the coffee mug is sold out.
]]>Most interesting to me is that the entire UI is set in Myriad, Apple’s branding typeface, rather than Helvetica Neue, the iOS system typeface. This is the first time (to my knowledge) Apple has shipped an app with an embedded version of Myriad — even the iPhone version of the Apple Store app is set in Helvetica (with the exception of Myriad rendered in promotional images). Makes me wonder if Apple will soon unveil a version of their website using Myriad as a webfont. (As with the iPhone Apple Store app, the Myriad you see on Apple’s website is all rendered in images.)
]]>Google Inc will pay $17 million to settle allegations by 37 states and the District of Colombia that it secretly tracked Web users by placing special digital files on the Web browsers of their smartphones.
The deal, announced Monday morning, ends a nearly two-year probe by the states into allegations that Google bypassed the privacy settings of customers using Apple Inc’s Safari Web browser by placing “cookies” into the browser. […] The Safari Web browser used on iPhones and iPads automatically blocks third-party cookies, but Google altered the computer code of its cookies and was able to circumvent the blocks between June 2011 and February 2012, according to the states’ allegations.
A $17 million fine will really teach Google a lesson. It takes them almost two hours to generate that in revenue.
]]>In an unprecedented move — and one that hasn’t yet been repeated by other companies — Apple spent millions of dollars building two massive solar panel farms and a large fuel cell farm near its data center. These projects and are now fully operational and similar facilities (owned by utilities) have cost in a range of $150 million to $200 million to build. Apple’s are the largest privately-owned clean energy facilities in the U.S. and more importantly, they represent an entirely new way for an internet company to source and think about power.
The photos really show the scale of this endeavor.
]]>But the familiarity of these patterns can be misleading when you use them to predict future product development. The new retina iPad Mini exemplifies this.
When the original Mini debuted last year, it was a lesser iPad compared to the iPad 4 it appeared alongside. Not just smaller physically, but a year behind technologically. Last year’s iPad 4 had a retina display, A6-class CPU, 1 GB of RAM, and a better camera. The original iPad Mini had a non-retina display, A5 CPU, 512 MB of RAM, and a lesser camera. The original Mini was, effectively, a shrunken iPad 2.
Thinking about it as an annual product, I assumed that if a 2012 iPad Mini was effectively like a 2011 full-size iPad, then the 2013 iPad Mini would be more or less like the 2012 full-size iPad. I hoped for a retina display in this year’s Mini,1 but it never even occurred to me to hope for an A7 processor or the same quality cameras. I assumed the most we could hope for this year in the Mini was the equivalent of the iPad 4. I assumed, performance-wise, that the iPad Mini was to the 9.7-inch iPad what the iPhone 5C is to the 5S.
That was totally wrong.
Last year’s iPad 4 and Mini were two very different iPads. This year’s new Air and Mini are simply two sizes of the same iPad.
I cannot emphasize this point enough. After three days of extensive use of the Mini (a review unit on loan from Apple), it works and feels exactly like the iPad Air. Everything about it is of equivalent or identical quality: the display, the cameras (front and back), the performance, the battery life.
Last year left me with the impression that choosing the Mini meant accepting numerous trade-offs. That is no longer the case. This is the same device as the iPad Air. The only significant differences between them are size and weight.
There are a few insignificant differences. On the iPad Air, the A7 CPU is running at 1.4 GHz; on the iPad Mini (and iPhone 5S), it runs at 1.3 GHz. Simple arithmetic shows that to be about a 7 percent difference, and the benchmarks I ran (Geekbench 3 and Sunspider) reflect that. Technically, the iPad Air is ever-so-slightly faster than the iPad Mini. In practical day-to-day usage, I perceive no difference between the two. I can think of numerous good reasons why a person might choose to buy an iPad Air instead of a new iPad Mini, but that minor difference in CPU clock speed is not one of them.
Battery life is almost exactly the same as on the Air. As a test, I played all 143 minutes of The Avengers on both the iPad Air and Mini, in HD, with both displays set at maximum brightness. The Air’s battery life dropped 34 percentage points (from 89 to 55). The Mini’s dropped 33 (from 87 to 54). Effectively identical. (You’ll get much better movie playback battery life than that at the default brightness level; I ran them at maximum brightness as a stress test.)
What about charging time? That was a real irritation with the iPad 3 and 4 — those devices gained weight and thickness to accommodate a battery that could power a retina display and still supply 10 hours of real-world battery life — and that big-ass battery took a long time to fully charge.
The retina iPad Mini handles this well, charging even faster than the iPad Air in my testing — and the iPad Air charges much faster than last year’s iPad 3/4. The Air ships with a 12-watt AC adapter; the new Mini with a 10-watt adapter. (Last year’s Mini shipped with an iPhone-style tiny little 5-watt adapter.) I charged both models using the adapter they ship with — it wouldn’t be fair to measure the Mini’s charging time while using the more powerful adapter that ships with the Air.
I performed this test immediately after the movie playback test. The Air went from 55 percent to 79 percent in one hour, and got to 100 percent in a little over two hours. The Mini went from 54 to 86 percent in one hour, and got to 100 percent in under two hours. So the Mini charges even faster than the Air, despite shipping with a slightly less powerful charger.
As I tested and just plain used the new iPad Mini, I kept thinking there had to be a catch — some sort of way that the device is less powerful or useful than the iPad Air. There is no catch. Does it get warm with use? Nope. It was cool to the touch after playing The Avengers, and it never got the least bit warm during a 90 minute train ride between New York and Philadelphia, during which time I used it nearly non-stop for Twitter, email, and web surfing, with spotty LTE networking.
There are reports that the production shortages Apple is facing with the new Mini are the result of image retention (a.k.a. burn-in) problems with displays from Sharp. I can’t speak to this issue in the large, but the model in my hands has no such problem. I tested it using Marco Arment’s image retention test. Marco himself tested his own new iPad Mini the same way, however, and his device failed.
I’ve also seen reports of white-balance issue, or yellow-ish tinting, with the new Mini. To my eyes, colors are nearly identical between the Mini, the Air, and my iPhone 5S.
Big Question #1: Is it worth upgrading from last year’s Mini? I usually don’t recommend year-over-year upgrades for iPhone and iPad users. If you can afford it, sure, they’re always better. But for most people, a two-year upgrade cycle is natural. You really can — and should — get two or three years of high-quality use out of an iOS product.
But this new retina Mini feels like a two-year upgrade over last year’s. There is no longer any compromise over display quality or CPU performance. All of the advantages of the original Mini remain — smaller size, lighter weight — and there are no drawbacks. When the full size iPad went retina, it was a two steps forward, one step back sort of upgrade: you got the beautiful retina display, but the device got noticeably thicker and heavier to accomodate the battery that was necessary to power all those pixels and maintain 10-hour battery life.
There is no drawback to the iPad Mini going retina. There is a negligible increase in weight, and an even more negligible increase in thickness, but the differences are so slight I honestly don’t think they matter. The old and new Minis are so close in thickness that both fit perfectly in Apple’s new leather Smart Case (and the same polyurethane Smart Covers fit both as well).
With the speakers, maybe the Air sounds slightly better, but come on, the external speakers on any iPad are relatively tinny in the grand scheme of things.
If you liked the original Mini last year, you’re going to love everything about this new one. All the same advantages, none of the performance or display quality trade-offs.
Big Question #2: iPad Mini or iPad Air? It really just comes down to size. I think the Air is better-suited for those who use their iPad as their primary portable computer (or primary computer, period). And if you use your iPad for things where bigger is better — watching video, reading comic books or PDFs or print-derived magazine apps (where you’re better off with a screen that is closer in size to that of the printed page), or for on-screen touch typing — well, you probably want the bigger display of the iPad Air.
Me, I use my iPad primarily for reading — Twitter, email, web pages, and books. The Mini, for me personally, is the better-sized device. I like that it’s easier to hold in one hand, and that it’s small enough to fit in a jacket pocket. (A new test for any new jacket I’ll buy: Does an iPad Mini fit in the pocket?)
So the iPad Air is an excellent year-over-year update over the iPad 4 — double the performance, and a serious reduction in size and weight. But the retina iPad Mini is an almost unbelievable year-over-year update — four times the performance, a retina display (which therefore means four times the pixels), and yet no appreciable difference in size or weight. This is the iPad Mini I expected to see next year, in 2014. But here it is today, in my hand.
Consider the iPad 2 from 2011. Non-retina display, A5 chip. A nice improvement over 2010’s original iPad in many regards: performance, weight, thickness.
Then, in 2012, a fork in the road. At the full size, the iPad 3 and 4: same basic size as the 2011 iPad 2, but now with a retina display and, with the 4, a significant performance improvement with the A6X. And then the original Mini — same basic specs as the iPad 2, but radically reduced in size. Two very different ways to improve upon the iPad 2: one with better tech specs, the other with a dramatic reduction in size.
Just one year ago, those were the compromises Apple was forced to make. They could shrink the year old iPad 2 into the Mini form factor, or go retina and A6X with a thicker and heavier battery.
This year, there are no compromises, there is no or. The iPad Mini has gone retina and provides just a hair less than the full performance of the Air, with no appreciable increase in weight or thickness over last year’s Mini.
Hence, I think, the name change for the 9.7-inch model, from last year’s “iPad” to “iPad Air”. There no longer is a main or regular or standard iPad. Last year Apple billed the Mini as “every inch an iPad”, and that was true, but it was every inch an iPad 2. This, year, it’s every inch a top-of-the-line iPad.
To date, Apple has introduced three iOS device form factors: iPhone, iPad, iPad Mini. The iPhone went through three generations before going retina (original, 3G, 3GS). The full-size iPad went through two before going retina (original, iPad 2). The iPad Mini spent just one generation with a non-retina display. If that pattern holds, Apple’s next iOS device will debut with a retina quality display in its first generation. ↩
In 2011, Google lost an expensive bidding war for a group of Nortel Networks patents to a handful of technology giants including Apple and Microsoft that paid $4.5 billion. Two years later, a consortium jointly owned by those companies is suing Google for patent infringement.
In response, Paul Graham:
The world changed today. Apple definitively crossed over into evil. (Microsoft is merely pathetic.)
Apple and Microsoft should be ashamed of themselves for underwriting such blatant patent troll warfare, … - disgusting.
Both link to Ars Technica’s story on the lawsuit, headlined, “Patent War Goes Nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-Owned ‘Rockstar’ Sues Google”, which I would say presents a rather one-sided slant to the story, starting with its sub-head, “Rockstar paid $4.5 billion for Nortel patents and has launched a major attack.”
The only mention of Motorola in Ars’s story is this:
Google’s failure to get patents in the Nortel auction was seen as one of the driving factors in its $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola in 2011.
But Motorola — a wholly-owned Google subsidiary — has filed patent lawsuits against Apple all over the world. Just one month ago Apple finally put an end to an 18-month injunction that prevented iCloud users in Germany from getting push notifications for email — because of a patent lawsuit filed by Google.
If anything, Google has been the worst of the bunch, found guilty of abusing FRAND patents.
This latest lawsuit filed by Rockstar is an escalation of a patent war against Google and Android, not the start of it. Nobody looks good here — not Apple, not Microsoft, but certainly not Google either. Google started filing lawsuits based on Motorola patents long before Rockstar filed this suit. Given that, I find it hard to believe that had Google won the bidding for the rights to Nortel’s patent trove — and it bid $4.4 billion for them — it wouldn’t have filed lawsuits based on them in the same way it has with Motorola’s.
If you want to argue that the whole patent system stinks, and that all of these tech giants are abusing it, I agree. But if you want to argue that Apple and Microsoft are in the wrong, and poor Google and their Android partners are victims of one-sided abuse, I’m going to have to disagree. If there’s a difference between Apple/Microsoft and Google in this war, it’s not over nobility, but rather over how well each side has played the game. It’s looking more and more like Google made a strategic blunder, underbidding for the Nortel patents and then subsequently overpaying for Motorola Mobility.
I largely agree with Matt Drance’s take, but quibble with his concluding paragraph:
I’ve said this multiple times in the past, and I’ll say it again: I don’t like this game. Rockstar looks, smells, and now acts like countless NPE’s that have done more harm than good — namely Lodsys, which has been aggressively harassing Apple’s own ecosystem. It’s extremely disappointing to see Apple facilitate this kind of behavior. At the same time, the missed Nortel auction and dubious Motorola purchase look as awful a strategic blunder as ever for Google. They kept their head in the sand for too long.
The difference between Lodsys and Rockstar is that Lodsys is a bully, suing small (and in some cases, downright tiny) companies that lack the financial wherewithal to fight back. And in fact, when Lodsys’s targets do fight back, Lodsys runs away — settling for nothing in order to avoid a trial. Rockstar may be a patent troll, but they’re a patent troll that at least is picking on someone its own size.
]]>But the tremendous weight reduction in the iPad Air complicates this equation. A year ago, a new iPad 4 weighed 1.4 pounds (650 grams); an 11-inch MacBook Air weighs 2.38 pounds (1,080 grams). There’s something about the fact that last year’s iPad 4 was quite a bit more than half the weight of a MacBook Air, and this year’s iPad Air (1.0 pound / 469 grams) is quite a bit less than half the weight of a MacBook Air. For one thing, it makes the iPad Air seem more reasonable as a supplement to a MacBook (filling the role I had previously thought best served by the iPad Mini). And on the flip side, for those who really care about traveling light, it makes the iPad Air far more compelling as a replacement for traveling with a MacBook at all. For those whose software needs are such that they can truly go iOS-only, the new iPad Air is a compelling option as an alternative to a Mac or PC laptop. Even if you pack along a hardware keyboard peripheral, you can easily stay under 2 pounds total weight with an iPad Air as a travel computer. The iPad Air makes an iPad 3/4 feel heavy; it makes an 11-inch MacBook Air feel like an anchor.
So I’m envisioning two types of people:
Those who still need or merely want to carry a MacBook with them when they travel, but who also want to carry an iPad.
Those whose portable computing needs can — all, or even just most, of the time — be met by an iPad.
I think it’s worth considering the iPad Air from both perspectives.
Last year the decision regarding which iPad to buy was pretty easy. If you were in group 1, you should have bought an iPad Mini. Group 2, an iPad 4.
Me, personally, I’m still in group 1 — when I’m traveling, I need a MacBook of some sort to work efficiently. Part of it is as simple as having a hardware keyboard, but if that were all, I could easily solve the problem with a hardware keyboard for the iPad. But it’s also about software — BBEdit, MarsEdit, a web browser that can open several dozen tabs at a time without breaking a sweat, custom scripts and services that I’ve written for myself over the years — these things make me far more efficient on a Mac than I am while working on any iOS device. Carrying around an iPad Mini for the last year as a secondary travel device has been great — to me an iPad is worth carrying as a secondary device just for reading and use as a cellular hotspot alone.
I like to travel light, and the Mini just made sense as the iPad for me.
Now that the iPad Air is merely 0.3 pounds (137 grams) heavier than a retina iPad Mini, though, it just isn’t that much extra weight to worry about. The weight difference still might matter in terms of what it feels like to hold it in your hands for prolonged periods, but not in terms of travel weight.
It’s also the case that most of the time, I’m at home, not traveling. I use my iPad daily, generally first thing in the morning, and then again late at night. I use it for reading and flagging emails and tweets with potential content I might post to Daring Fireball. For me, the iPad, on a day-to-day basis, is largely a triage device for news and links, and the device I turn to for long-form reading I didn’t find time for during the workday. Having spent the last week using the new iPad Air instead of my old iPad Mini, it’s been a win in every regard but one. First things first: good god almighty did I miss having a retina display on my daily iPad. I don’t regret switching to the non-retina Mini for a year, but that display is just gross once your eyes get accustomed to retina quality. The extra weight of the iPad Air (compared to my Mini), while holding it one-handed1 standing in the kitchen making coffee in the morning, or sitting on the couch watching the World Series at night? Practically negligible. Looking at the specs, you can see that the iPad Air is now closer in weight to the iPad Mini than to the iPad 3/4, and in my experience, it feels that way in actual use, too.
The one and only catch for me is typing. I’ve never typed much on any iPad. And then over the past year with my Mini, I grew attached to typing with my thumbs, iPhone-style. This is more comfortable now with the Air than on previous full-size iPads (with their significantly wider bezels along the sides while in portrait orientation), but it’s still not as comfortable as on the Mini. For people who type with all ten fingers on their iPads, surely the 9.7-inch models are better than the Mini. But for me, as an iPad thumb-typist, the Mini makes it easier to type.
The bottom line, though, is that for anyone who sees an iPad as a supplemental device, the iPad Air is a very compelling alternative to the iPad Mini. It’s so much lighter than the iPad 3/4, both as something to carry when traveling and to hold while using, that it significantly diminishes the iPad Mini’s primary distinguishing feature. For anyone who has spent the last year thinking, Well, I would like something lighter, sure, but I’m not crazy about the idea of such a small display, because I want to use my iPad for things where a bigger display is better, like watching movies, reading magazines and comic books, and touch-typing in landscape orientation — the iPad Air is the device for you.
For me, personally, with my primary uses of the iPad being reading web pages, Twitter, email, and books,2 the larger display of the Air doesn’t have as much appeal. I think I’m going to hold out and buy a new iPad Mini for myself. But it’s a damn close call.
Here, I can’t write from personal experience. As stated above, I still want a MacBook of some sort for working while traveling, and I think I will for years to come. But most people don’t. Most of you, reading this, might. But most people in general don’t.
They have no need for the extra performance of a laptop, and they are hindered — not helped — by the extra complexity. Performance matters, but the iPad has always been fast enough for many people, and with each passing year it becomes fast enough for more people.
The A7 in the iPad Air is a huge upgrade performance-wise over previous iPads. More importantly, and more intriguingly, it brings the iPad Air into line with late-model Mac and PC laptops.
When I reviewed the iPhone 5S last month, I pointed out that it beat, albeit slightly, my 2008 15-inch MacBook Pro in the Sunspider web browser benchmark. Here’s a perhaps more relevant comparison: my 11-inch MacBook Air, late 2010.
The new iPad Air outperforms that MacBook Air on both the Sunspider and Geekbench 3 benchmarks:
| Device | Single core | Multi core |
|---|---|---|
| iPad Air | 1,476 | 2,673 |
| iPhone 5S | 1,413 | 2,561 |
| iPad 3 | 263 | 493 |
| iPad 4 | 764 | 1,424 |
| MacBook Air (late 2010) | 871 | 1,438 |
| Device | Time (ms) |
|---|---|
| iPad Air | 397 |
| iPhone 5S | 416 |
| iPad 3 | 1,326 |
| iPad 4 | 710 |
| MacBook Air (late 2010) | 476 |
(According to Geekbench 3, the iPhone 5S CPU is running at 1.29 GHz and the iPad Air CPU is running at 1.39 GHz — this would account for the iPad Air’s slightly superior benchmark scores. All iOS devices were running iOS 7.0.3; the MacBook Air was running OS X Mavericks 10.9.0 and Safari 7.0.)
To me, the comparison that is most interesting is to my MacBook Air. In exactly three years, Apple has produced an iPad that outperforms a then-brand-new MacBook. Three years is a decent chunk of time in this industry, and the MacBook Air has made great strides since then, but this (a brand-new iPad Air versus a late 2010 MacBook Air) is a credible comparison. In many ways the iPad Air is not just the superior device, but clearly so — it has a retina display, the MacBook Air does not; it gets 10 hours of battery life, the MacBook Air was advertised at just 5 hours back then (and as an old and much-used device, my personal MacBook Air gets significantly less than 5 hours of battery life today).
In short, for people upgrading from a 3 or 4 year-old laptop (let alone an even older one), the iPad Air is faster, straight up. Plus it has all the other advantages the iPad has always had: weight, simplicity, app selection, and most elusively, in Steve Jobs’s own words, magic.
For anyone who doesn’t truly take advantage of the capabilities in Mac OS X (or Windows) that aren’t available in iOS, the iPad Air is a superior portable computer to a laptop in nearly every way. Smaller, lighter, simpler, more fun. And now, with the iPad Air, in many cases it’s even a faster device. Note too, the simple fact that the high-end iPad Air, with cellular networking and 128 GB of storage (the configuration I tested), costs $929 — only $70 less than the base model MacBook Air. The new iPad Air is a full-fledged competitor to laptops.
An obsession with treating “tablets” as an entirely new and separate product category is blinding some observers from what is really going on with the iPad — it is taking over a large segment of the PC industry. As iPad sales have grown, PC sales have contracted. I expect the iPad Air to accelerate both trends — the growth in iPad sales, and the contraction of the PC market.
Apple included both the new Smart Cover and Smart Case with my review unit.
The new Smart Cover is pretty much just an iPad Air-sized version of the iPad Mini Smart Cover from last year: the magnetic side attachment is now part of the polyurethane cover, as opposed to the iPad 3/4 Smart Cover, which had a metal side attachment. The new Air Smart Cover also has just three folding panels, as opposed to four. I like the new cover better. The metal Smart Cover attachment scratched the side of the iPad 3/4 over time, and the connection between the polyurethane and the metal tended to stretch and get loose over time. I’ve seen complaints that the iPad Mini’s three-panel cover doesn’t make for as sturdy a stand as the old four-panel one when folded over to prop up the iPad, but I’ve had no such problems.
Regarding the Smart Case: I just don’t see the point. The iPad Air certainly does snap in and out of the Smart Case rather easily (in hindsight, just how awful was that case Apple made for the original iPad?). But I don’t think most people have a good reason to protect the back of the iPad. What’s the point of buying an iPad that is so amazingly thin only to wrap it in a case that makes it so much thicker? What’s the point of obsessively preventing the aluminum back from getting scratched if you’re going to keep it wrapped in a case and never look at or touch the back of the device anyway?
And if you use your iPad in a scenario where you really do want to protect the whole thing — not just the glass but the back too — why leather? Wouldn’t polyurethane — at least as an option — make more sense for the cover that is intended to be more protective?
In terms of battery life, I found the iPad Air to be, well, an iPad. In a week of normal use and only occasional charging, it seldom fell under 50 percent. It does take a while to charge, even when using the included 12-watt power adapter. It took about an hour to go from 37 percent to 66 percent, and about 90 minutes to go from 66 percent all the way to 100. But charge it overnight and you should easily get a full day of active use or several days of casual use out of it. Starting with the original model in 2010, Apple has seemingly been unwilling to bend on a floor of 10 hours of battery life, and the iPad Air maintains this pedigree.
Worth noting that not once in the past week have I encountered a single problem caused by the narrower bezel on the iPad Air. I’m not surprised, given that I never had any problems with inadvertent touches registering on the sides with the similarly proportioned bezels of the iPad Mini, but I know from the email I’ve been getting from readers that this is a concern for users upgrading from previous full-size iPads. Your mileage may vary, of course, but it seems to me that Apple has solved this problem in software. ↩
Is anyone else surprised that the iOS version of iBooks still hasn’t been updated for iOS 7? When it didn’t appear in the App Store last week along with Apple’s other App Store apps, I sort of assumed that there must have been some sort of last-minute bug holding it up. But here we are a week later, and the one app from Apple that was most in need of an iOS 7 redesign still hasn’t gotten one. ↩
There is a certain sameness to almost every Apple event. A pattern, a formula, a structure, a rhythm and pacing. Does this make them boring? In some ways, certainly, insofar as the only thing we don’t know is what they’re going to say, as opposed to how they’re going to say it. (And even then, we often have a pretty good idea what they’re going to announce, too.) Nick Bilton, writing for the NYT Bits blog argues that they’re getting stale, “Longing for the ‘Wow’ at Apple’s Product Showcases”:
Here’s the script: Timothy D. Cook comes out on stage in his signature jeans and black shirt — usually untucked. He shows off some statistics. Then other execs take the microphone to show off new software that we’ve already seen.
There are a few jokes; the audience laughs.
Then comes Philip W. Schiller, Apple’s head of marketing, who talks about new hardware and confuses everyone by touting an “Intel Xeon E5 chip,” and a “10 MB L3 cache and Turbo Boost,” and “cores” and other things most people know absolutely nothing about. (It’s as if he’s speaking Klingon.)
Then Mr. Cook is back on stage to introduce a new version of an iPad or iPhone or iPod. Then Mr. Schiller again to explain, in Klingon, the guts of the new iPad or iPhone or iPod. Then there’s a video of Jony Ive talking about the new iPad or iPhone or iPod. “It’s the best [iPad or iPhone or iPod] we’ve ever made,” Mr. Ive says in his smooth British accent.
The shows are like watching someone perform the same magic show over and over. Eventually it stops looking like magic.
But that’s not quite right. Repeatedly watching the same tricks in a magic show would grow tiresome. Apple’s events are more like watching episodes of the same TV show, but with different bits each time. The show itself grows ever more familiar, but the content changes with each episode. The URL slug on Bilton’s piece, which I suspect hints at the original headline, puts it better: “The repetition of Apple keynote presentations feels boring.”
The problem with a complaint like Bilton’s (or Marco Arment’s) is that the formula works. It puts the focus where Apple wants it: on the products being announced, not the show itself or the presenters. Sooner or later, Apple will introduce some sort of major new product, and when they do, they’ll likely cater the structure of the introduction accordingly. The iPhone introduction was unlike any previous Macworld Expo keynote. The iPad introduction used a different structure (and added a chair). If you want a new Apple event, you’re going to have to wait for a new Apple product.
In the meantime, make no mistake, Apple continues to sweat the details on these events. This year they customized the entrance to the gallery building at Yerba Buena Center, ripping out the doors in the back — just for this event — to create a sunlit open-air entrance to the post-event hands-on area.
Apple’s accountants had as much to do with making Mavericks and these apps free of charge as did Apple’s product marketing team. This has been a years-long effort. As the price of Mac OS X updates dropped over the last few versions — after holding steady for many years at the hard-to-believe-today price of $129 — the goal was always to get to free. Remember all the stuff from a few years ago, when the iPhone first came out, and Apple used “subscription-based accounting” for iPhone sales, because it was the only way it saw to comply with U.S. accounting regulations and also provide free software updates?
That’s all in the past now. My understanding is that it’s been a long slog to get here — here being where these apps and all OS updates are available free of charge — the details of said slog being the sort of convoluted bean-counting that would put anyone who doesn’t wear a green eyeshade to sleep. But this too — I think — is why the iLife and iWork apps are only free with the purchase of a new device and for users of previous versions. Apple’s not trying to milk money from those customers ineligible for the free versions of these apps (although, of course, they will happily keep the money). It’s simply the fallout from Apple’s accounting guidelines that they cannot simply offer these apps free of charge to everyone.
Free apps and free OS updates will benefit both Apple and its customers. Customers benefit by having access to the latest versions of these apps and the latest OS for their devices, without having to weigh whether the new features are worth the upgrade price. At yesterday’s event Tim Cook claimed 64 percent of iOS devices are already running iOS 7. How best to make Mac OS X’s running-the-latest-version number more like that of iOS? By making it free. (It helps too, that the App Store makes upgrading far easier than in the old days.)
This benefits developers to some degree as well. It’s better for developers when they can count on more users running the latest OS — it decreases fragmentation and allows them to rely upon new APIs only present in the latest versions of the OS. It’s also the case that Mavericks is an OS that helps older Macs run faster and get better battery life — Apple is forgoing revenue by not charging anything at all for Mavericks, but they are increasing the value of existing Mac hardware. Never say never, but I don’t expect that we will see a paid update to Mac OS X ever again. I think all future upgrades, no matter how significant, are going to be free of charge henceforth.
This puts Microsoft in a tight spot. Apple gives away software for free in exchange for your buying their hardware. This is not charity. It’s also in marked contrast to Google, who gives away software for free in exchange for selling your attention (and personal information) to advertisers. Apple and Google are squeezing Microsoft from both sides, and the result is that less and less perceived value in the industry resides solely in software. You can make money selling hardware (like Apple) or make money selling ads (like Google), but given the popularity of Apple’s hardware and Google’s apps and services, it’s getting harder for Microsoft to make money by selling software.
To a lesser degree, Apple might be putting the squeeze on iOS and Mac developers as well, for the same reason. Apple is reinforcing the perception that incredibly deep apps, apps that in some cases have been three or four years in the making, “should be” free. Why does your app cost even $1 if the cost of an entire office suite, running on both my Mac and iOS devices, is free of charge? That’s what I worry users will ask. One would hope they’d see the difference between Apple’s financial situation and that of the indie developer, but the truth is that many — maybe most? — people think that everyone who writes apps for the App Store works for Apple. (I know that’s hard to believe, but ask your neighborhood app developer next time you see them.)
Calling the new full-size model the iPad Air says it all. In one year, the iPad Air has dropped 30 percent of its weight, narrowed considerably, and doubled in performance. A weight drop like that is significant for any product, but especially so for a device that is primarily used while being held in your hands. It’s startling when first you hold one.
The new Mini is an even more impressive year-over-year update. Last year’s original Mini was billed as “every inch an iPad”, but what they meant by that was that it was every inch an iPad 2. The original Mini’s non-retina display and A5 chip put it one generation behind the iPad 3/4. My expectation was thus that this year’s Mini would maybe get a retina display, but regardless of display would get an A6 processor — more or less keeping it about a year behind the 9.7-inch iPad state of the art. I was wrong.
From what I’ve seen, and what Apple has said, the only differences between the iPad Air and the Mini are the screen size and $100. Same performance. Same storage capacity options. Same cameras. This is the iPad Mini I expected to see in October 2014, not 2013. The price for the new models has gone up, but given that the new Mini has achieved technical parity with the Air, and that the original iPad Mini remains available in a 16 GB configuration for just $299, the Mini’s pricing structure makes more sense than last year’s oddball starting price of $329.
I’m an iPad Mini convert. After just a few weeks last year, my Mini became my one and only iPad. My iPad usage is mostly for reading, and not much for typing. The smaller size and lighter weight just fit my usage better. I went into this year’s event assuming I’d walk out wanting to buy the new Mini. But the new Air is so much lighter, and thus so much more amenable to holding it in just one hand, that I walked out of the event completely unsure which one I want. In fact, the new Air (469 grams) is closer in weight to the new Mini (331 grams) than it is to the old iPad 3/4 (650 grams) that it replaces. (Those weights are all for the Wi-Fi-only models.)
Both models are great updates from last year, but the result is that what makes them great updates (the Air’s reduction in size and weight; the Mini’s retina display and performance parity) also make it a much harder decision to choose which one you want. Many readers have asked whether the Mini’s slight increases in thickness (from 7.2 to 7.5 mm) and weight (from 308 to 331 grams for the Wi-Fi model) are noticeable. From my time in the hands-on area, I’d say no, the differences are negligible (especially with regard to thickness — we’re talking about one-hundredth of an inch), but the fact that the retina Mini got heavier at all only serves to further complicate the decision of which new iPad to buy.
The new iPads strike me as prime examples of Tim Cook’s leadership. We — or at least I — largely celebrate Apple’s design leadership. But Apple’s amazing success story over the past 15 years is also very much a story of operational excellence. It’s not just about making cool new hardware — it’s about making cool new hardware in very large numbers, with high reliability and affordable prices. I had the chance to speak to Cook for a few minutes in the hands-on area Tuesday, and when he asked me what I thought, I told him that I was surprised they were able to take the Mini to retina and the A7 in just one year, with no appreciable difference in weight or thickness to accommodate a larger battery, in contrast to what happened with the iPad 3/4 just 18 months ago. Cook smiled, and said something to the effect of, “We’ve learned a lot since then.”1
The fact that the new iPad Mini isn’t shipping until “later in November” (translation: the end of November) shows just how tight this upgrade was. That’s the latest a device could possibly ship and still be available for holiday sales. Remember in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indy barely made it under the slowly sliding door before it shut, then reached back and snatched his whip just in time? That’s the retina iPad Mini making the lineup in time for Christmas.
To take nothing away from Jony Ive and the rest of Apple’s designers, there really wasn’t much to design about the new retina Mini. It’s the same external design as last year’s. What makes it a tremendous year-over-year update are the internal components: the display, the cameras, and that A7. Last year’s Mini was a triumph of design; this year’s update is a triumph of operational efficiency.
What the iPad Air and Mini lack, on the other hand, I believe offers some clues as to where the iPhone 5S is component constrained. Most obviously: no Touch ID sensor. It could be that Apple has kept Touch ID exclusive to the iPhone 5S primarily as a marketing move, but that doesn’t sound like Apple to me. My somewhat informed guess is that those sensors are both supply and engineering constrained — Apple needs all of them simply to meet demand for the 5S, and engineering-wise, it was a challenge just to work them into one device this year. The same goes for the 5S’s amazing camera.2 It’s only in the context of the iPad Air and retina iPad Mini that Apple’s repeated use of “most forward-thinking iPhone yet” to describe the 5S makes sense. The 5S isn’t just the most advanced iPhone, it’s the most advanced iOS device, period.3 4
And then there’s the iPad 2. Readers have inundated me with the same questions about this. Why did Apple keep it? Because people are still buying it. Why did they keep the price at $399? Because people are still buying it.
Why would anyone buy it? That’s a better question. Two groups that I know are buying it are businesses using iPads for things like cash registers (or any other situation where the iPad is used in a kiosk-like situation), and schools. For the cash register scenario, it’s perfectly rational for the business to want the cheapest full-size iPad they can get. They don’t need retina, they don’t need more than 16 GB of storage, and they don’t need cutting edge performance. For schools, the logic seems unclear to me. Why not buy the iPad Mini instead? For grade school children in particular, it seems like a better-sized device. But what I’ve been told is that schools want full-size iPads and they want the cheapest ones they can get. So: the $399 iPad 2 is with us for another year.
Update: One reason schools only buy full-sized iPads: testing regulations that require tablet displays to measure at least 9.5 inches.
As for pricing overall, I think concerns that iPads are “too expensive” are overblown. The same was said last year, and the year before that. The tech and business press frequently compare iPads’ prices and specs to those of high-end Android-based competitors — from Samsung, Google, and Amazon — and find the iPads lacking. How many pieces were written last year arguing that the iPad Mini, with its non-retina display and $329 starting price, was incongruously overpriced compared to Nexus and Kindle Fire devices with retina-caliber pixel densities and prices under (sometimes well under) $300? Lots. So far so good — it’s fair to make such comparisons. (Although often left unsaid in such comparisons are the significant size differences between the Mini’s 7.9-inch 4:3 aspect ratio display and the 7-inch 16:9 aspect ratio displays of its ostensible competitors. Rene Ritchie had a good piece at iMore last week explaining how this matters.)
But where these comparisons go awry is when they are conflated with tablet market share numbers showing Android devices, as a whole, making significant gains. As Benedict Evans argued this week, the rise in Android tablet sales has not been driven by the high-end would-be-iPad-competitors from Amazon, Google, and Samsung, but by profoundly cheap “$75-$150 black generic Chinese Android tablets” that are seemingly used primarily for video consumption. Evans calls them “the featurephones of tablets”, and argues they compete with televisions just as much, if not more, as they do with iPads.
The iPad does not have competition in the way that the iPhone does. Tens of millions of people use high-end Android phones — largely Samsung’s — in much the same way iPhone users use theirs. There just aren’t that many people — yet? — using Kindle Fires, Galaxy Tabs, Nexuses, or Surfaces as alternatives to the iPad. Thus the massive discrepancies between the iPad’s market share and usage share numbers.
Last year, the iPad 4 and original iPad Mini felt like two different devices. This year, the iPad Air and retina Mini feel like two sizes of the same device — more like the difference between the 11- and 13-inch MacBook Airs than the difference between MacBook Airs and the MacBook Pros. If anything, the new iPads are even more similar to each other than the 11- and 13-inch MacBook Airs are. Again, I’m pretty sure the only differences between the new iPad Airs and Minis are size/weight and $100.
This, in turn, gives me hope regarding any potential move Apple might make next year with regard to a larger-display iPhone. What I don’t want to see is a single iPhone 6 with a larger display (and correspondingly larger physical size). What I’m hoping for is that, if Apple produces a larger iPhone, it debuts alongside a 4-inch display iPhone with the exact same specs — same A8 processor, same better-than-the-5S camera, same storage capacities. Same everything, except for the size of the display.
If Apple can do this with the iPad, why not the iPhone too? The only complication I can think of is that with the iPad Air and Mini, both sport the same pixel count, 2048 × 1536. I’m not sure that an 1136 × 640 display at a bigger display size will satisfy those who desire a physically larger iPhone.
The updated MacBook Pros pose a simpler story than the new iPads. Choosing between a MacBook Pro and MacBook Air is, to my eyes at least, far easier than choosing between an iPad Air and iPad Mini.
If your primary concerns are performance and display quality, you want a MacBook Pro. If your primary concerns are battery life and weight, you want a MacBook Air. Again, though, Apple continues to narrow those gaps. The latest Airs are faster than ever before. The brand-new Pros are thinner, lighter, lower-priced, and get better battery life (9 hours for the 13-inch Pro, according to Apple, which quite frankly sounds amazing to my ears; it doesn’t seem like that long ago when “4.5 hours” of battery life was state-of-the-art).
And one last thought, circling back to the iPad Air and Mini. If the iPad Air and Mini are sort of like the 11- and 13-inch MacBook Airs, and there is no longer a model named just-plain “iPad”, does the iPad Air moniker set the stage for an iPad Pro? I’m thinking yes. Maybe not soon, but soon enough.
There’ve been a lot of complaints this week regarding functional regressions in the Mac versions of the new iWork apps. The disappointment is justifiable; no one likes having features they rely upon removed in a major software update. But given Apple’s recent history — Final Cut Pro X and iMovie 08 to name two examples — no one should be surprised, either. I don’t think anyone at Apple took these functional regressions in the Mac version of the iWork apps lightly, but they are no mistake, either.
The bottom line as I see it: you need to have clear priorities, and Apple’s highest priority here was clearly cross-platform parity for iPhone, iPad, web, and Mac. No other office platform in the world has that — complete parity between native apps for phone, tablet, desktop, and a web app. Other companies have different priorities; Microsoft, for example, has feature-completeness built into its DNA. A version of Microsoft Office for Windows that removed functionality to achieve parity with the mobile version is unimaginable.
But whenever you have clear priorities, secondary and tertiary features have to be sacrificed. I think Apple’s continuing commitment to the Mac is clear — everything from hardware like the all-new Mac Pro and a MacBook lineup that leads the industry, to the now annual updates to Mac OS X. But iOS is Apple’s primary platform, and it’s better for iOS to have the entire iWork suite at parity than the previous situation, where the iOS versions of the apps supported only a subset of what the Mac versions did.
Also, the updated version of iWork for iCloud is pretty slick, standing in contradiction to the rule of thumb that Apple stinks at web stuff. But what’s the point of iWork for iCloud? I think it’s two-fold. First, it’s effectively the Windows version of iWork, without Apple having to write an actual native Windows version. It’s not going to set the Windows world on fire, but it’s not intended to. It’s there so that iPhone and iPad users with Windows PCs can view and edit their documents created on iOS devices. Second, as with any web app, it’s an excellent “universal access” even for Mac users. Store a document in iCloud, and in a pinch, even without your Mac or iPad handy, you can open it from any PC or Mac anywhere in the world. It also seems to me that this week’s update to iWork for iCloud is a rather amazing step forward from the version that debuted at WWDC back in June — a tremendous amount of progress in just four months.
The $2999 starting price is about what I’d expected. Anyone put off by the price probably doesn’t need what the Mac Pro offers over and above, say, an iMac or a decked out Mac Mini.
The big disappointment for me is that Apple did not announce 4K Cinema Displays to go along with it. Why make a machine capable of driving three 4K displays but not make the displays? This is the machine that will take desktop computing to the retina era, but I want Apple to make the displays too, not just the machine that powers them.
The march of time is inexorable. Product by product, keynote by keynote, we are seeing the post-Steve Jobs Apple emerge. The “This never would have happened if Jobs were still around” vein of Apple punditry will be with us for decades to come. Most of it is deeply misguided. But some of it rings true. Apple today is a different company than it would be if Jobs were still there. No one denies this, inside or outside the company.
But what are those differences? I’m going to go out on a limb and name one: iOS 7.
I’m not going to pretend to know Jobs’s taste — no one could, that’s what made Steve Jobs Steve Jobs — but I can certainly make a guess, and my guess is that he would not have supported this direction. I don’t think I’m saying anything here we haven’t all thought, regardless of what we each think of the iOS 7 look and feel individually. This is neither damning nor praising iOS 7. But I do think it’s a tangible sign that Tim Cook means it when he says that Jobs’s advice to him was never to ask “What would Steve have done?” but instead to simply ask “What is best for Apple?” and judge for himself.
But the hardware Apple showed yesterday — everything from the assembled-in-the-USA Mac Pro to the new iPads — that, I think Steve Jobs would have simply loved. Apple has pulled off some major engineering and design advances. Jobs took inordinate pride when he unveiled the A4 system-on-a-chip during the introduction of the original iPad in 2010. Doing custom silicon in-house was a new direction for Apple, and they’ve continually upped their efforts in this regard. Each successive generation — A5, A6, A7 — has been more customized, and less like the off-the-shelf chipsets and components used by competing device makers. In short, Apple’s chip design team is firing on all cylinders. How did the iPad Air get so much thinner and lighter in just one year? How did the iPad Mini gain a retina display and quadruple in performance with almost no increase in weight to accommodate a larger battery in just one year? The answer to both questions is the same: the A7. The A7 is an “only Apple could do this” piece of technology, and Jobs would have exulted in it.
And I keep thinking about this old video from 1990 of a NeXT computer factory in California, “The Machine to Build the Machines”. Watch that, then read this brief piece from Fortune back at the same time, and it’s pretty hard not to see Apple’s new assembled-in-USA Mac Pro as the culmination of the same dream.
I doubt the Mac Pro is the only product Apple wants to assemble like this.
I was hanging around the room with MG Siegler at the time, when Cook came by and stopped to talk. This was the same conversation that MG wrote about, where, when MG professed to being unsure which iPad he wanted more, Cook smoothly replied, laughing, “Well, you want to buy both.” He may come from operations, but Cook, like any great CEO, knows how to do sales, too. ↩
I noticed during Apple’s promotional video showing how people are using iPads across the world that there were numerous segments showing people using them as cameras. I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating: as silly as it can seem, the time for snickering at people using tablets as cameras (and I’m as guilty as anyone) is over. ↩
One other thing the 5S offers that the new iPads do not: a gold option. My understanding is that they tried it, and it just didn’t look good bigger. It works on the iPhone because the iPhone is so much smaller — more like jewelry. ↩
What makes the lack of Touch ID on this year’s iPads slightly more disappointing than it otherwise would have been is iCloud Keychain, with which Apple strongly recommends you use a passcode on your device. If, as Apple claimed last month, more than half of smartphone owners have no passcode on their devices, surely the number is even higher for tablets. iCloud Keychain is a good reason to use a passcode on your iPad even if you had never done so before, and Touch ID removes most of the friction incurred when switching from not using a passcode to using one. ↩
Apple has always placed a priority on protecting our customers’ personal data, and we don’t collect or maintain a mountain of personal details about our customers in the first place. There are certain categories of information which we do not provide to law enforcement or any other group because we choose not to retain it.
For example, conversations which take place over iMessage and FaceTime are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them. Apple cannot decrypt that data.
This week, security researchers at Quarkslab published a white paper disputing this, claiming, at the top:
What we are not saying: Apple reads your iMessages.
What we are saying: Apple can read your iMessages if they choose to, or if they are required to do so by a government order.
As Apple claims, there is end-to-end encryption. The weakness is in the key infrastructure as it is controlled by Apple: they can change a key anytime they want, thus read the content of our iMessages.
Writing at AllThingsD, John Paczkowski reports:
Asked by AllThingsD if the firms’s claim is legitimate, renowned security technologist Bruce Schneier replied with a definitive yes. “The researchers show that iMessage could be undetectably designed to intercept and read messages, not that it is designed to do so,” Schneier said.
But Apple insists it is not so motivated. And it stands by its June claims about iMessage’s security. Apple says that QuarksLab’s theory is just that — a theory, and one that would require a re-architecting of iMessage for it ever to be a threat in the real world.
“iMessage is not architected to allow Apple to read messages,” said Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller in a statement to AllThingsD. “The research discussed theoretical vulnerabilities that would require Apple to re-engineer the iMessage system to exploit it, and Apple has no plans or intentions to do so.”
In other words, this is in many ways a semantic argument over the difference between can and could be. What Quarkslab’s research proves (I read the paper and admit I found it largely over my head — but I’ll accept Schneier’s vouching for its validity) is that Apple’s iMessage back-end could be designed to allow for Apple to intercept and read message content, and there is no way we, as iMessage users, would be able to detect it.
What Apple has said, and reiterated today, is that iMessage’s back-end is not in fact designed in that way — that there is no mechanism in the system for Apple employees to surreptitiously change the encryption key to allow for messages to be decrypted during transit.
Thus, I think Dan Goodin at Ars Technica took things too far in his report on Quarkslab’s findings, writing:
Contrary to public claims, Apple employees can read communications sent with its iMessage service, according to researchers who have reverse engineered it.
That’s not what Quarkslab proved. What they proved is that Apple could be, and that we as users have no way to verify cryptographically that they are not.
It comes down to Apple’s word.
If you believe or even suspect that Apple is lying about this, consider at least that Apple is taking an enormous risk by doing so. If they are in fact allowing law enforcement or the NSA to surreptitiously decrypt iMessage content, their corporate credibility will suffer an enormous, perhaps irrevocable loss if it ever comes to light. In the case of law enforcement, decrypted iMessage content used in a prosecution would necessarily need to be revealed as evidence in court. In the case of a secret agency like the NSA, it’s entirely possible that Edward Snowden is already in possession of proof of such a back door, and even if not, Apple would remain forever at the risk of another whistleblower revealing such a thing.
Leaving aside the moral implications of flat-out lying to their customers, I would think that if iMessage’s back-end were designed with a weakness exploitable by Apple as Quarkslab supposes, Apple would say or promise nothing with regard to iMessage’s susceptibility to server-side decryption rather than compound that weakness with blatant lies to the contrary. To lie would be to take an enormous PR risk for a relatively small PR gain. I say “small PR gain” simply because I doubt most people who use iMessage even know their messages are supposed to be securely encrypted from end-to-end. I say “large PR risk” because if Apple’s statements regarding iMessage encryption are eventually discredited, the backlash in the press will be severe (and justly so).
(Sidenote: My understanding is that Apple does not permanently store iMessage message content on its servers. Even in encrypted form, iMessage data is only in Apple’s hands while in transit. Once delivered, it’s gone. [Update: Or, perhaps better said, some amount of time after being delivered, it’s gone. Just how long Apple will hold messages pending delivery, I don’t know. In some cases it seems to be days, as anyone who’s taken a device that’s been offline for a few days and received a sudden burst of iMessages can attest.] This is by design. In a discussion with a source at Apple earlier this year, I was told that some time ago word came down from the top that wherever possible,1 Apple’s messaging services should be designed in a such a way that there is nothing — or, at least, as little data as possible — stored or logged for law enforcement agencies to ask for. And the same is true of decrypting content while in transit. An uncynical take on this: Apple cares about customer privacy and knows that storing nothing at all is the only way to protect it. A cynical take: Apple seeks to wash its hands of any possible involvement in such matters.)
So, for example, this does not apply to iCloud email. Email is by design susceptible in numerous ways: it’s usually transmitted in plain text and it’s stored on the server. ↩
According to China’s official population clock, there are an estimated 1,359,025,970 people in China as of Sept. 26, with just 2% of that number — some 27,180,519 people — consuming one third of the world’s luxury items. The 2% are the backbone of the global luxury goods sales and the target of hundreds of international brand names, the Chinese-language Money Week magazine reports.
Although the huge majority of China’s population is unable to purchase luxury items, as the country’s economy grows so will its market, the magazine said.
When the iPhone 5C came out last month and was not “low cost”, many took it as a sign that Apple was somehow ignoring China. I would say it’s just the opposite: they’re skating to where the puck is heading, not where it is, and positioning their products to thrive as China’s upper class grows.
From Apple’s perspective, there’s no such thing as an “emerging market”. There are certainly cultural differences between consumers in different countries, but the bottom line is that there are people who can afford iPhones and iPads, and people who can’t. The class of people who can afford Apple products is growing faster in China than it is anywhere else.
There’s nothing unique to Apple about this, except, perhaps, the size of the opportunity. Chinese consumers are buying disproportionate quantities of luxury products across the board. Red Obsession, an excellent new documentary film about the French wine industry (available on iTunes; I recommend it highly), documents the rise of China as the number one market for the best (read: most expensive) French wines.
Apple’s hirings of Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts (to head Apple’s online and retail stores) and former Yves Saint Laurent CEO Paul Deneve (“special projects”) fit right into this dynamic.1 Apple’s path to success in China (and much of the rest of the world) is not to lower itself and compete purely on price against low-cost commodity Android devices. It is the opposite: to further separate its products, in terms of branding and quality, from its competition. The sweet spot for Apple in China is the same as it is in the U.S. and elsewhere: attainable, affordable, casual luxury.
Benedict Evans points out that Burberry has 69 retail stores in China; Apple (currently) has eight. ↩