By Dan Moren
October 31, 2022 6:35 PM PT
The Back Page: Bobbing for Apples
Once again, it’s the sPOooOOkiest time of year at Apple Park: Yes, the end of the fiscal year. WooooOOoOoO! When financial analysts haunt Tim Cook and Luca Maestri in order to find out how much cash Apple has taken home from customers in its oversized plastic jack o’lantern: apparently around $90.1 billion dollars worth of fun-size Milky Ways and M&Ms. And if you very listen closely, you can hear the mournful howl of Gene Munster still sad about the Apple television set never arriving.
Of course, the analysts are trying their level best to gull Tim Cook into admitting something—anything—about the future of Apple’s products, much like ghouls and revenants who hunger for a mere bite of flesh. These damned souls are doomed to remain unsated, but perhaps this is where I may be of service to them. Here, then, is a list of what some in their blasted profession might calls the “puts and takes”, but which I am dubbing…the tricks and treats of the past Year in Apple to date.
Trick: Tim Cook saying that Apple is going into the holiday season with “its lineup set” and no new Macs having been announced.
Treat: Eddy Cue is, once again, the only Apple executive to show up to work in costume, this year as a mix between an Oktoberfest patron and an F1 race car driver, which nobody is brave enough to tell him is actually a kind of dangerous combination?
Trick: Apple trying to convince us that Stage Manager is going to change everything for multitasking on the iPad.
Treat: The tenth-generation iPad finally moves the front-facing camera somewhere where you’ll have to actually work to put your finger over the lens.
Trick: Apple trying to convince us that Stage Manager is going to change everything for multitasking on the Mac.
Treat: You can finally share iCloud Photo Libraries with other members of your family! I’m sure my wife will really enjoys all my app screenshots.
Trick: Advertising is littering the App Store like discarded candy wrappers on the morning of November 1st.
Treat: The iPhone’s 48-megapixel camera is good enough to make out details on the ground while you’re flying in a plane. Eat your heart out, Gary Powers!
Trick: Apple services are getting small price increases, in an attempt to fuel that sweet Services revenue and also because Tim Cook is a mercurial deity who quietly eats dollar bills when no one is looking.
Treat: The Apple Watch Ultra cost way less than people expected at $799. Unfortunately, customers now have to pick up the very expensive habits of scuba diving and mountain climbing. Which Apple doesn’t currently take 30 percent of, but only because it hasn’t yet figured out how.
Trick: Apple continues selling the first-generation Apple Pencil for use with the tenth-generation iPad because when they first put in orders, someone added an extra zero to the end, and now Jeff Williams won’t leave the fort he’s built out of them.
Treat: Well, at least Elon Musk didn’t buy Apple.
Trick: Sure, silver is a “color.”
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the supernatural detective story All Souls Lost, is out now.]