By John Moltz
April 21, 2023 4:00 PM PT
This Week in Apple: SurpriSE!
This week Tim takes a trip, Apple has another convenient, easy-to-use way for it to hang on to your money, and will iOS 17 have a startling new feature?!
No, will it?
I’m really asking.
Timdia
You know the old saying: only Nixon could go to China but only Tim Cook going to India will bring out all the old Apple hardware.
That’s totally in The Big Book of Old Sayings. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
India rolled out the red carpet for the Apple CEO who showed up for the opening of the company’s first retail store in the country. The store has been a long time coming as Apple was first required to conduct manufacturing in India before opening a store, a deal that actually helps the company wean itself off complete dependence on China.
One of the first shoppers brought with him a Mac SE to show Cook and if you haven’t seen Tim’s expression upon being presented with the device, well, it’s not to be missed. This is either the happiest Tim has looked or the most frightened. Or that combination of happy and frightened you get when riding a rollercoaster.
The shopper wasn’t the only one dusting off old Apple kit for Cook. Tim also visited pastry chef Pooja Dhingra, who rounded out the pantheon of Apple’s most iconic products. Dhingra not only plied Cook with sweets, she also showed him her first iPod and iPhone (an original model).
The message here is pretty clear: Indians excited by Apple’s new relationship with the country want Tim to know they’ve been fans of the company’s products for a long, long time. And they couldn’t be happier Apple’s increasing its presence there.
Almost as happy as Tim looks.
The real savings were the purchases we made along the way
Apple launched its Apple Card Savings feature this week, giving you another place to keep your money in your Apple Wallet. With an initial APY of 4.15 percent, the company is offering a fairly decent return on the money you save by, uh, buying things. Can you even afford not to buy more stuff now?
You understand why Apple wants you to keep your money with the company, right? Apple is notoriously cash-poor. So much so that Tim Cook was beside himself when someone brought him a Mac SE.
Technically the fine folks Goldman Sachs are actually holding the money. So at least you know it’s being kept with someone… uh, with someone.
Speaking of Apple and payment methods, grocery chain Kroger is finally partying like it’s 2016.
“Kroger now rolling out Apple Pay support to stores across the United States”
Gosh, and it was so close to making Kroger Pay a thing. Just heartbreaking.
You’d think the example of Apple Pay would be a lesson to the car companies that are telling you to use their janky software instead of CarPlay but, alas, companies still seem enamored by the “f-around” stage, somehow not believing the “find out” stage is a necessary consequence.
Side-loading on the down-low
In his Sunday column this week, Mark Gurman detailed everything he expects to be unveiled at this year’s WWDC, starting with the mixed-reality headset and development kit.
Tucked away in the 15th paragraph, however, is a bit of a bombshell:
…iOS 17 will cause some noise beyond WWDC itself. Apple is working to overhaul the software to open up the iPhone to sideloading — the downloading of apps outside of its official store — to comply with new European regulations by next year.
Whaaaaat?! Now, I may be just a simple country Apple columnist, but where I come from (Tacoma), we call that headline news.
If you think Gurman buried the lede, just wait until you see how Apple handles it at WWDC. Do not expect the company to use the drop effect in Keynote on the words “SIDE-LOADING!”, filling the screen. No, far more likely there will be an innocuous footnote in a slide somewhere saying a new feature of iOS 17 will be “Compliance with stupid EU regulations that are stupid and dumb.”
Also, you can expect that like with how Apple handled the situation with dating apps in the Netherlands when legally mandated (no dating pun intended) to allow third-party payment options, the company will still try to collect its pound of flesh (also no dating pun intended, I don’t know what the kids are calling it these days). Developers should continue to expect to pay 15 to 30 percent no matter how customers load their apps until morale improves.
[John Moltz is a Six Colors contributor. You can find him on Mastodon at Mastodon.social/@moltz and he sells items with references you might get on Cotton Bureau.]