A few years ago, the iPad was in disarray. Sales were collapsing and the line-up of products was a mess. Fixing things takes time, but look at what we’ve got today: With the introduction of the fifth-generation iPad mini and the third-generation iPad Air, iPad is now Apple’s most coherent and complete product line.
Hey, look, new AirPods! Apple’s update to its wireless headphones includes 50 percent more talk-time, the “Hey Siri” feature and wireless charging option that we’ve been expecting, and a twist: the W1 chip in the original has been replaced by a new Apple-designed H1 chip.1
That H1 chip apparently features better audio and synchronization, allowing for faster switching between multiple devices, as well as more energy-efficiency for talk time.
By default, the AirPods cost $159, the same price as the original, or $199 if you opt for the new wireless charging case, that’s totally compatible with a hypothetical wireless charging pad.
Personally, I’m still holding out hope Apple will make wireless over-the-ear headphones with its own custom chips in them.2 A man can dream, right?
If you had W2 chip in the betting pool, I’m so sorry. ↩
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
Tuesday’s announcement of new iMacs is exciting for those who have been waiting for an update before buying, but a bit disappointing for those who were hoping for a more comprehensive iMac redesign. I have to admit that I’d been hoping for a new exterior iMac redesign—the current enclosure design’s almost seven years old. But the biggest disappointment of the announcement might have been Apple’s choices when it comes to storage.
Not to belabor the point, but the iMac is the only remaining new Apple product that features a spinning hard drive. It’s also the only Mac in a couple of years to receive an update and not include an Apple-designed ARM processor for security and other features. (The two are probably related—so far as I can tell, Apple has designed the T2 to only use flash storage.)
Spinning disks had a good run, but they’re old tech. They’re far less reliable than flash storage drives, and are also generally much slower. The $1299 base-model 4K iMac ships with a slow 5400 rpm spinning disk. It’s almost unforgiveable.
Apple pushes Fusion Drive as a cost-effective alternative to the much more expensive flash storage—Fusion Drive pairs a small bit of flash storage with a spinning disk drive to create a virtual disk that mixes the speed of flash storage with the much more affordable large capacities of traditional hard drives. And I will accept that Apple is reluctant to ship very small-capacity flash storage drives on iMacs, Macs that traditionally get loaded down with big photo libraries and other large collections of files. (As flash-storage prices continue to drop, the argument gets tougher to make, though.)
I will guarantee you that the single greatest bottleneck in terms of speed on the base 4K iMac is that slow spinning disk drive. People who spend $1299 for a 4K iMac in 2019 deserve not to see a spinning beach ball—but they probably will. This is one case where Apple should either take the hit on profit margin or just raise the price if it has to.
In the wake of Tuesday’s announcement, I’ve heard from a bunch of people who are equally frustrated that Apple hasn’t converted the entire iMac line to flash storage. I get the argument, but Apple knows very well who is buying iMacs, and I am guessing that these decisions are very much made with that knowledge in mind. Many iMac buyers are quite price sensitive, which is why the base models are configured as cheaply as possible. It’s not like you can’t configure an iMac with only flash storage—it just raises the price a lot, and you lose storage capacity in the meantime.
It’s clear where Apple’s going here, of course. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next iMac—the larger model, at least—update inherits some design elements of the iMac Pro, which removed support for spinning disks and used that space for a quieter and more powerful cooling system. And while we’re making wish lists, how about a new enclosure that reduces the size of the bezels and adds Face ID, too?
Alas, those are features that will have to wait for the iMac of the 2020s. The era of spinning hard drives at Apple will continue for a little while longer. I understand it, but I don’t have to like it.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
There was a time when the iMac was Apple’s flagship product. But in an era where there are iPhones and iPads and Apple Watches, it’s easy for a Mac—and a non-laptop, at that—to get lost in the crowd. And yet for all of that, the iMac is a huge product, generating billions of dollars for Apple and filling important ecological niches.
After nearly two years of waiting, iMac fans can rejoice at the arrival of an update. Today is iMac day. Apple on Tuesday announced a new generation of 4K and 5K iMacs with big internal upgrades. The old iMacs had seventh-generation Intel processors, but these models have eighth-generation processors—and in a couple of cases, the very latest ninth-generation processors. Apple has upgraded processor cores across the board, so that most models have six cores and there’s even an option for eight. And both sizes of iMac now have optional access to the more powerful Radeon Pro Vega graphics processor.
The $1099 base model non-Retina iMac remains unchanged, the desktop equivalent of the $999 MacBook Air—an old model anchored to a low price. But beyond that, things get more interesting.
The $1299 21.5-inch 4K iMac is a 3.6GHz quad-core Core i3, and the $1499 model brings six-core power to the smaller iMac with a 3.0Ghz Core i5. The 4K iMac’s top-of-the-line processor configuration is a 3.2GHz six-core Core i7. While standard graphics configurations on these models are the Radeon Pro 555X and 560X, the high-end model can be configured with a Radeon Pro Vega 20.
On the 27-inch 5K iMac, six-core processors have replaced four-core models as the default. (You couldn’t even upgrade to a six-core processor on an iMac before!) Base processors for these are a 3.0 GHz six-core eighth-generation i5 ($1799 model), 3.16GHz six-core eighth-generation i5 ($1999 model), and 3.7Ghz six-core ninth-generation i5 ($2299 model). The 5K iMac can also be configured with a 3.6Ghz eight-core ninth-generation Core i9 processor.
According to Apple, those latter two processors are the two available ninth-generation Intel chips that are currently available and fit the iMac’s design. They’re hot off the presses, so to speak, and Apple has pressed them into service.
Graphics on the 27-inch models are, by default, Radeon Pro 500 series (570X, 575X, and 580X respectively), but again, Apple’s offering a configurable option with the Radeon Pro Vega—it’s the Pro Vega 48 for the 5K model.
What this means is that these new iMacs have closed a bit of the gap between the highest-end iMac and the lowest-end iMac Pro. You’ll need to pay extra in configurable options, but the highest-end eight-core iMac should creep close to iMac Pro territory in terms of processor and graphics performance.
Of course, all that performance comes in a familar shell—it’s the same iMac cooling system as before, which means if you stress out the iMac you will hear the fans. My friend Stephen Hackett ended up switching from a high-end 5K iMac to an iMac Pro in order to get a computer that was silent under heavy load, thanks to the iMac Pro’s superior (and quiet) cooling system. It’s another data point to keep in mind if you’re considering whether to buy an iMac or an iMac Pro.
Adding processor cores to many standard configurations (at the same prices as the old models) should be a big step forward for iMac performance, as is the addition of a few configurations from Intel’s latest processor generation. Throw in the optional Vega graphics and it’s clear that Apple has raised the headroom of the iMac—even the little 4K iMac, because sometimes you want speed but don’t need size!—quite a lot.
Apple says the iMac is popular with families, businesses, and other users who don’t necessarily need the most power possible, but appreciate that the iMac can handle the required job and do it with its trademark sleek aluminum all-in-one style. But of course, it’s also popular with pro users who don’t need all the workstation power of the much pricier iMac Pro. Those users will be the most excited about the processor and graphics improvements in these models.
It might not steal the spotlight from an iPhone or even next week’s services-themed media event, but the iMac still matters. And as of today, it’s refreshed with more power than ever before.
It’s a big day for the iPad line, which gets a new iPad Air and iPad mini replacing the old 10.5-inch iPad Pro and the very old iPad mini:
Apple today introduced the all-new iPad Air in an ultra-thin 10.5-inch design, offering the latest innovations including Apple Pencil1 support and high-end performance at a breakthrough price….
Apple today also introduced the new 7.9-inch iPad mini, a major upgrade for iPad mini fans who love a compact, ultra-portable design packed with the latest technology… The advanced Retina display with True Tone technology and wide color support is 25 percent brighter and has the highest pixel density of any iPad, delivering an immersive visual experience in any setting. And with Apple Pencil support, the new iPad mini is the perfect take-anywhere notepad for sketching and jotting down thoughts on the go. The new iPads are available to order starting today and in stores next week.
The new iPad Air starts at $499 and the iPad mini at $399, joining the $329 iPad at the lower end of Apple’s increasingly differentiated iPad product line. Obviously they’re using Touch ID rather than Face ID and have larger bezels than the iPad Pro, but they’re also a fraction of the price. (Like that $329 sixth-generation iPad, both models support the first-generation Apple Pencil and the Logitech Crayon. The iPad Air is also the first non-Pro iPad to support Apple’s Smart Keyboard. I suspect it’ll fit many other 10.5-inch iPad Pro accessories, and am looking forward to trying it out with Brydge’s 10.5-inch keyboard.)
This is essentially Apple’s answer to the complaint that the iPad Pro is too expensive: There are other, very capable iPads in the product line that cost a lot less than the iPad Pro. Potential iPad buyers are free to choose accordingly.
In an unsigned statement, Apple has rebutted Spotify’s claims of unfair treatment by suggesting that it’s the music service that wants to avoid the rules that everybody else plays by. The company also took aim at Spotify’s treatment of artists, though it claimed that the company is “suing music creators” when the truth is, of course, a little more complex.
While Apple’s arguments are largely compelling, especially in terms of Spotify essentially wanting all the benefits of the App Store platform without having to pay anything, this issue still isn’t a black-and-white case of one side right, the other side wrong. Apple isn’t an altruistic company anymore than Spotify is, and even if Spotify is in the wrong here, it still may be time for Apple to rethink its 30 percent rate.
We’re teetering on the edge of an embarrassment of Apple riches. The company’s March event is just over a week away, but with this week’s official announcement of the 2019 Worldwide Developers Conference, many eyes are already fixed on that point, three months from now.
Whatever comes our way in March, it will almost certainly pale in comparison to WWDC, which is probably the most significant event in Apple’s calendar. Yes, the September launch of new iPhones and attendant devices may get more attention, but WWDC is where the company sets its agenda for the year—or years—to come.
Though it’s still a few months away, it’s never too early to start thinking about where Apple may be looking to focus the priorities of its many and varied platforms.
Apple’s just inviting everyone to everything now. On Thursday Apple unveiled its Worldwide Developers Conference site, with the dates we all suspected—June 3-7 in San Jose. So get ready for an interesting keynote on the morning of Monday, June 3!
In many ways, this is an old story. For several years, Apple and Spotify have been jousting over Apple’s App store rules. Apple claims that Spotify doesn’t want to follow the rules that Apple has instituted to protect its users, while Spotify says that Apple is just trying to prop up its own second-rate services rather than straight-up competing.
Who’s right? The truth, it will not surprise you, is somewhere in the middle.
Our long national nightmare is over, you can get a battery pack for your Palm phone: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/3/11/18260713/mophie-palm-phone-battery-pack-charger-keychain
In less thrilling news, Apple has announced an event for March 25th: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/11/apple-announces-march-25-event-video-and-news-services-expected.html
Steven Spielberg has some weird thing against Netflix: https://www.indiewire.com/2019/02/steven-spielberg-theaters-over-streaming-netflix-1202045064/
Jason Snell on Upgrade talks about mean Apple being mean to the people producing its shows: https://www.relay.fm/upgrade/235
Apple is making a Time Bandits series: https://www.macrumors.com/2019/03/11/apple-time-bandits-series-taika-waititi-director/
Apple is also working on a show with Chris Evans: https://variety.com/2018/tv/news/chris-evans-defending-jacob-apple-series-1202951682/
Elizabeth Warren wants to break up Apple: https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/9/18257965/elizabeth-warren-break-up-apple-monopoly-antitrust
Twitter’s twttr prototype: https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/11/twitters-new-prototype-app-twttr-launches-today/
Slack’s mobile apps have a new dark mode: https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/11/18260488/slack-dark-mode-ios-android-mobile-out-of-beta
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Yes, the next Coda is so different it won’t even be called Coda.
Frankly, we were worried that developers may have tried Coda in the past, decided it wasn’t for them, and written the app off forever. This new version is so new, it deserves a fresh start.
And then, incredibly, a new Coda arrived on the scene – a reimagined document at coda.io – and we reached an agreement to let them have the name. They’re Coda now. And we’re free to look to the future.
So the next Coda won’t be “Coda”. So what will it be?
The end of an era, but also the beginning of an era! Panic’s software is always excellent, and I expect that this new Coda, by any other name, will smell as sweet.1
This week marks the 30th anniversary of the web, or at least the date that Tim Berners-Lee made a proposal at the Swiss particle physics lab CERN involving the creation of a hypertextual system that would end up becoming the web as we know it today.
The history of web browsers on Apple devices takes a lot of twists and turns. Fortunately, I’ve been around for most of them—in fact, my first magazine cover story ever was in July 1996 about the first big browser war. You might be surprised just how much impact Apple has had on the development of the web itself.
Today Ben Thompson takes apart presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to break up big tech companies, and then starts to put it back together. It’s a great, in-depth piece and I recommend that you read the whole thing, but I want to call out a little bit about Apple:
…do consumers not matter at all here? Is Senator Warren seriously proposing that smartphone be sold with no apps at all? Was Apple breaking the law when they shipped the first iPhone with only first-party apps? At what point did delivering an acceptable consumer experience out-of-the-box cross the line into abusing a dominant position? This argument may make sense in theory but it makes zero sense in reality.
What is even more striking, though, is that the App Store does have a massive antitrust problem: it is not Apple unfairly competing with app developers, it is Apple unfairly imposing massive complexity and extracting 30% of revenue with its contractual requirement, enforced by App Review, that developers use Apple’s payment mechanism…
The important takeaway for this article, though, is the degree to which Senator Warren missed the point: there is significant consumer benefit both to having preinstalled apps and also to Apple controlling the installation of apps. There is a big benefit to suppliers (app developers) as well: the app market on PCs died in large part due to security concerns, which Apple obviated with the App Store to the tremendous benefit of every participant in the ecosystem. Senator Warren’s proposal would make the App Store worse for everyone.
When I saw Nilay Patel’s brief interview with Warren I had the same reaction—she seems to be suggesting “solutions” to things that aren’t problems, all in the name of sticking it to the big guys. As Thompson writes, “Tech is a means, not an end, but Senator Warren’s approach presumes the latter. That is why she proposes the same set of rules for the sale of toasters and the sale of apps, and everything in between.”
Read through Thompson’s piece and you’ll see him identify numerous areas where giant tech companies could be restrained, including their voracious acquisitions of any company that might possibly threaten them in the future. This is the trick with stuff like this—a lot of people can agree that the tech industry is out of control, but when it comes to legislation, it’s all about the details. Thompson makes a forceful argument that Warren has many of the details wrong.
Get ready… in two weeks’ time Apple will be having an event in Cupertino at the Steve Jobs Theater that will presumably feature new subscription services, including an introduction of its new video service.
Hey readers, Dan here. Never thought I’d see the day when I was sponsoring our own blog, but I just wanted to let you know about my latest novel, The Bayern Agenda.
Simon Kovalic, the Commonwealth’s premiere covert operative, has a problem. The rival Illyrican Empire is trying to make a deal with Bayern, a planet-sized corporation that’s one of the galaxy’s financial hubs. That’s not good for the Commonwealth, and it’s not good for Kovalic. But, to make matters worse, he’s injured on a mission, and command of his team of operatives is handed over to Lieutenant Commander Natalie Taylor…his ex-wife. So now he’s got two problems.
But when Kovalic’s boss tells him that the situation’s even more complicated than they thought, it’s up to him to find the team before they’re all caught or killed. And the problems, well, they just keep coming.
When people roll out wish lists of things they wish Apple would do to its products, they’re often focused on brand new features. We all like new features, sure, but part of me worries that while the focus is on the shiny, the basics–the software that we’re all using everyday–gets ignored. In particular, I’m really ready for Apple to tackle that old standby: Mail.
I know: email’s dead, supplanted by a myriad of other means of digital communication. Except, for many of us, email is still something that we’re unavoidably attached to when it comes to corresponding with people, signing up for accounts, and archiving or doing a to-do list.
Apple expended a lot of effort developing tools in iOS 12 that let us spend less time on our devices by preventing us from using them at certain times. But what about all that time where we are using our smartphones, tablets, and computers? Maybe there are features that can help us be more efficient, and treat our time with the respect it deserves.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
So the other day Robert Greenblatt, the new chairman of Entertainment at Warner Media, where he’s in charge of HBO, TNT, TBS, truTV, and the forthcoming Warner Media streaming service, said something to NBC’s Dylan Byers about Netflix that got people tittering: “Netflix doesn’t have a brand,” he said. “It’s just a place you go to get anything — it’s like Encyclopedia Britannica. That’s a great business model when you’re trying to reach as many people on the planet as you can.”
In the aftermath I’ve seen lots of folks stepping up to defend Encyclopedia Britannica(!) and Netflix. Maybe Greenblatt’s statement isn’t the most artfully worded. If you want to point and laugh, Nelson style, you can. Netflix is wildly successful… it’s not just a brand, it’s a powerful cultural force, the kind that can fill thrift stores after the launch of a show about de-cluttering, when it’s not winning multiple Academy Awards.
But I think I understand what Greenblatt is getting at. In fact, I wrote something similar earlier this week at Macworld:
Apple’s not Netflix and it isn’t going to be. There’s nothing wrong with Apple’s executives having a clear vision about what the vibe of their content should be. For Apple’s video service to be successful, it should be a set of programs that fit a particular worldview. The best networks have an identity and their programmers know exactly what it is.
Netflix tries to be everything to everybody, and spends tens of billions of dollars to do that. So far, as I can tell, Apple’s not going that direction. It needs to choose. Apple’s video service will benefit from a clear brand identity, and if that brand identity is bright, optimistic, and broadly appealing, with standards more like broadcast TV than premium cable, that won’t preclude it from finding an audience.
In other words, unless you spend tens of billions of dollars on original content over the course of a decade—and other than Netflix, the only other player even close to that level right now is Amazon—you can’t be Netflix. Netflix’s target audience is everyone. It casts the widest possible net. It is launching every kind of show and movie, by the dozen, every single week of the year.
Smaller players just entering the streaming market are not going to be capable of out-Netflixing Netflix for years, if ever. Instead, they all need to pick their spots carefully, and spend their money wisely. New streaming services must define who they are, what kind of content they’re going to offer, and market themselves to a specific potential audience.
Greenblatt doesn’t seem to be insulting Netflix to me. He’s praising, or at least acknowledging, that Netflix is playing a different game—and he’s planting seeds now to fend off any comparisons between his streaming service and Netflix later. Nobody’s going to be matching Netflix—not Warner Media, not Apple, not even Disney—for years to come. They will all lose a comparison to Netflix. The only winning move is not to play.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
The keyboard that started it all.
This week on the Accidental Tech Podcast, John Siracusa floated the concept of a MacBook Hierarchy of Needs, a priority list of features for the next time Apple redesigns the MacBook line, as is rumored to happen later this year.
It’s a fun thought experiment, because it requires you to rank your wish list of laptop features. That’s important, because if I’ve learned anything in this wacky world of ours, it’s that you can never get everything you ask for, so you’ve got to prioritize.
The ATP hosts all made a “good keyboard” their top priority, an idea that would’ve been surprising a few years ago but now is almost a given. Yes, of course, Apple laptops need to be fast and reliable and have great displays and good battery life, but the past few years’ worth of MacBooks have made a lot of people realize the truth: a bad/unreliable laptop keyboard isn’t something you can really work around if you’re a laptop user.
This is why a lot of nice-to-have-features, like SD card slots, have to fall way down the hierarchy of needs. Any feature that can be rectified with an add-on adapter falls immediately to the bottom of the list. You’re stuck with a laptop keyboard forever, and if you’re committed to the Mac and every single Mac laptop that’s sold uses the exact same keyboard, there’s nowhere to run.
Apple’s mistake isn’t that it designed a clever new keyboard that decreases travel while increasing tactile feedback in order to make the MacBook ultra thin—it’s that it made a keyboard without broad appeal and then forced it into all of its new laptop designs. I love Apple’s tendency to make bold design decisions, but as the single hardware vendor on the Mac platform, Apple’s designers have a responsibility to create features that don’t leave users with nowhere to turn. Better to make a keyboard that nobody loves (but everyone can use) than something loved by a quarter of users, met with indifference by half, and despised by the remaining quarter.
If Apple designed a weird keyboard, or mouse, or trackpad for an iMac, it would be annoying, but you could just buy a replacement from a third party. You can add a DVD drive or a SD card reader or any other reader for a media type Apple has deemed uncool via USB. But a laptop’s keyboard is fundamental to its identity. It’s not the place for bold new directions, it’s a place for boring and reliable. Apple and its users are still living down a decision made several years ago now.
It’s a little unfair for me to even attempt to create my own MacBook Hierarchy of Needs, in large part because I no longer travel with a Mac laptop, instead opting for an iPad. But I think that decision says something about my priorities. My iPad isn’t limited to an Apple-supplied keyboard. I can use Apple’s Smart Keyboard Folio, or a Brydge laptop-style keyboard (when they arrive this spring), or literally any other Bluetooth or USB keyboard I want. It’s a relief.
Still, if I were to rank a hierarchy of MacBook needs, it would start with all the things that users can’t change later, and that are important to laptop users. The keyboard, yes, and also the display. As the ATP hosts pointed out, there’s a possibility that this rumored 16-inch MacBook Pro might actually have a display capable of displaying true native Retina resolution, rather than the scaled default found on all Retina MacBooks.
I might love an SD card slot and a return of MagSafe and for Apple to keep the headphone jack around, but in the end, there are adapters that will bridge those gaps if need be. No adapter will solve the problem of an unreliable or unpleasant keyboard or replace a display. That’s where Apple must supply something that works for everyone—and if the needs of its users are varied, it should offer a variety of products that can fulfill those needs. A one-size-fits-all approach can work, but only if you’re really successful with the choices you make. With the 2015 MacBook keyboard design, Apple missed the mark—and still forced the result into every single new laptop it designed.
Here’s hoping that Apple has spent the last few years coming up with its own hierarchy of MacBook needs, and that it recognizes that it must tread lightly when it comes to the features that its users have no choice but to accept.
