The iPad is big in my house. I use one (Pro), my wife uses one (Air 2), my son uses one (Mini 2). Suffice it to say that we see the appeal. But at some point, even the biggest boosters of the iPad have to admit that something’s wrong. With iPad sales down year-over-year for 10 out of the last 11 quarters, it’s safe to say that this is more than a blip.
Many observers have been waiting for a while now for the iPad to find its level—for sales to flatten back out and reveal what size Apple’s iPad business will really be going forward. It’s clear that the heady days where Apple sold 80 million iPads in a year are gone, and won’t be coming back for quite a while. But as sales continue to decline, it’s worth asking when it will all stop.
At this point, Apple’s selling iPads at a rate of approximately 48 million iPads per year—roughly the rate it was selling them in 2011, at the very start of the iPad’s lifespan, just before iPad sales kicked into gear. So is this the bottom? Or will it get worse before it gets better?
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
The Amazon Echo integrates with Amazon’s own Prime Music service, which has a pretty solid music selection, but if you happen to be a Spotify subscriber, you can now stream directly from that service to your Echo as well.
Now, since the Echo can act as a Bluetooth speaker, you could always hook it up to your phone–via voice command, such a nice touch–and play Spotify from there. The integration allows you to access your playlists, request songs via voice command, and more.
All very nice, but there is a catch: you’ll have to be a paid Spotify user in order to use it; the free tier doesn’t work with the Echo. That’s not really a surprise, but it does put another tick in the Spotify column for me. Apple Music, meanwhile, will continue to rely on pairing your Apple device with the Echo, and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.
For the moment, though, I’m content with Amazon’s own music offering, which is included free with my Prime subscription, and my own iTunes library. Because apparently I’m cheap.
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]
In the last couple of years, however, I’ve noticed a gradual degradation in the quality and reliability of Apple’s core apps, on both the mobile iOS operating system and its Mac OS X platform. It’s almost as if the tech giant has taken its eye off the ball when it comes to these core software products, while it pursues big new dreams, like smartwatches and cars.
Apple’s iTunes program was once the envy of the world. A combined digital music store and player, it could also sync your iPod. And it worked on both Mac and Windows. It was reasonably fast and very sure-footed…. Now, I dread opening the thing.
Today I was listening to a shuffle of a couple of albums1 when someone sent me an email with an interesting link to a free iOS app. I clicked on the link, and clicked on the Free button to kick off a download—mostly as a reminder to myself to download it from Purchased Apps on my iPhone or iPad later.
First iTunes threw up a dialog box saying that the amount of iTunes credit had changed, so I would need to click OK and try my purchase again. (It’s a free app, so this entire experience is already pointless, but whatever.) I clicked OK and the Free button was now inactive. I typed Command-R to see if that would reload the iTunes page—no normal user would do it, but it worked because the App Store and iTunes is more or less a disguised web page—and then was able to click Free and download the app.
At some point in this process, the song I was listening to finished and another song began to play. It was a randomly selected track from my entire music library. The act of viewing the App Store had destroyed my music shuffle.
This is what Walt Mossberg means by “I dread opening the thing.” I don’t dread playing music in iTunes, but I dread doing anything else because of its capricious, confusing behavior.
In My Music, I selected an artist from the Column Browser and selected two albums I wanted to shuffle, then began playback. ↩
Thanks to Scott McNulty for alerting me both to this software update and to the new Bujold book!
The E-Ink Kindle screen interface is largely unchanged since the first-generation Kindle was released in late 2007. At least until today, when Amazon released a software update for the Kindle Paperwhite, Voyage, and Kindle (2014) models.
A bunch of the new features aren’t at all interesting to me, since they involve recommendations—essentially, the space on your Kindle home screen that Amazon uses to try to sell you more books. A large amount of the redesigned screen is devoted to recommendations and your own wishes for future book purchases. It really enhances the feeling that Amazon is constantly trying to get you to buy more Kindle books.
Fortunately, you can turn off recommendations, which I did. The fancy graphics disappear when you do this, but the entire interface has still been overhauled. There’s a new typeface that’s absolutely gorgeous on the high-resolution screen of my Kindle Voyage. There’s a new toolbar at the top of the screen, which gives you direct access to common commands—toggling Airplane Mode, forcing a content sync, and adjusting the lighting—with a single tap. There’s also an updated sharing feature that shares a highlighted quote, with a web preview of the book. (All the better, again, for Amazon to sell more Kindle books.)
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
Back in 2014 when Netflix lost “Battlestar Galactica”, I pointed out the sad truth of being the subscriber to a video streaming service: It’s all shifting sands, so you can’t count on what you’re watching today to be available tomorrow.
“Doctor Who” fans found that out yesterday, as the popular BBC series disappeared from all American video-streaming services. Not only Netflix and Amazon Prime were affected—Hulu, which boasted by far the largest number of classic “Doctor Who” episodes due to a deal with the BBC a few years back, also went completely dark.
Whether “Doctor Who” migrates to a new U.S. version of BBC iPlayer or returns to existing subscription services for a while longer, this sort of thing is going to keep happening. The owners of The CW network, CBS and Warner Bros., are pondering whether to pull their shows from Netflix. “Star Trek,” a popular staple of Netflix and Amazon both, could possibly migrate to CBS All Access in advance of the new “Star Trek” series debuting there next year.
This is why a large chunk of the $6 billion Netflix will spend on content this year (my back-of-envelope calculation is between 1 and 1.5 billion dollars) will be devoted to original programming: Because it knows that it can’t rely solely on other programming providers to create the value of its service. By the time your favorite old shows from other networks are no longer on Netflix, the reasoning goes, you’ll be too addicted to Netflix’s original series to cancel your account.
The real question is this: Who wants to subscribe to a half-dozen different $10/month streaming services? This is going to be a tough business, and some of these services aren’t going to make it.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
Nobody likes having a list of things hanging over their head, but everybody’s got stuff that simply needs to get done. The key is how to motivate yourself to finish those tasks, and the answer is a system of ice cream rewarding behavior. Or, you know, turn it into a game. Habitica certainly isn’t the first service to gamify your to-do list, but it’s the first one that’s really sucked me in.
The app, available on the web and for iOS, merges to-do lists with classic RPG tropes and social networking to provide a potent potion of productivity, letting you team up with friends to get things done and acquire sweet loot along the way. Moreover, Habitica also aims to help you build good habits by providing a way to reinforce that good behavior you want to do every day. Also you get to create a character and arm them to the teeth, and who doesn’t love that?
Unsurprisingly, this is the sweet spot for me. You need look no further than our own Total Party Kill podcast to see my love of role-playing games and adventures and like everybody, I’ve got a to-do list that often seems as long as a half-giant’s arm.
So I’ve been using Habitica for a month or so now, not only to track my normal everyday to-do items, but also to try and encourage myself to simply do certain things more often. In addition to your one-off to-do items and recurring items, Habitica also lets you create “habits.” They’re not to dos, precisely, but more like sliding scales that you shift slightly everyday that you do them. So, for example, some of the habits I’ve got included reading more, walking 30 minutes a day, eating better, and so on.
Every time you complete items or reinforce habits, you get experience and gold. Don’t complete your items? Your character may lose some health–especially if you’re engaged in a dangerous quest.1
Yes, quests! There are quests! Habitica’s other joy is letting you party up with friends and take on quests, knocking off your items to damage a larger monster and potentially accruing new items along the way. (My personal favorite: eggs that you can hatch into pets, then feed until they become large enough to ride.) Over time you level up, and once you hit a certain threshold you can even change classes–everybody starts as a warrior–and get access to new gear.
Overall, I really enjoy Habitica, though I’ve got a few minor complaints. For one, it’s sometimes hard to figure out if something should be a daily to-do or a habit, and what the relative benefits or disadvantages are. That’s in part because, despite pop-up windows that try and explain what’s going on when you load each section of the app for the first time, some mechanics aren’t explained well. (I didn’t know, for example, that you can essentially hide in the inn if your health is running low.) And it unfortunately doesn’t integrate with iOS’s Reminders, so you can’t use Siri to add items to your Habitica list.
The app and service are free, though there are of course in-app purchases which let you buy gems that you can then turn into in-game items that you otherwise have to generally wait to get from random drops.
If your run-of-the-mill to-do app simply isn’t cutting it anymore and you’re a fan of the RPG genre, Habitica might very well be just what you need to get back on the warhorse.
My character has not perished yet, but he has come darn close a couple of times. ↩
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]
As a user, you might care about Parse because an app you use might break when it dies. As Marco Arment writes:
It’ll be problematic when possibly hundreds of thousands of iOS apps just stop working in a year because their developers have long since moved on, or their contracts expired, or they can’t afford to spend time on a significant update. One of the most damaging side effects of unhealthy App Store economics is that developers have little motivation or resources to keep apps updated.
There is nothing worse as a technology user than having a key part of your workflow just stop working, or be “sunsetted”, or be updated into something that no longer does what you need it to do. I still remember the feeling when my VideoGuide1 just stopped working one day, with a cold, unfeeling notice saying the service had been turned off and would no longer function.
It’s a terrible feeling, especially when there’s no warning. If you’re using an app that relies on Parse and isn’t going to be updated, you may never receive that warning. And that’s going to be rotten.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
I visited my mother in Arizona for a few days last week, so I rushed to get a bunch of work done before I went. The project files associated with my Total Party Kill podcast are extremely large, so I decided to edit the next episode before I left rather than cramming those files into the small amount of free space on my MacBook Air and doing that work in the desert.
I edited, exported, and uploaded the episode, setting it to launch during the middle of the following week. Fast forward several days: I’m in Arizona, but my Twitter app is filling up with people who have listened to the new episode and discovered that it becomes a bunch of pops and whistles about 40 minutes in.
I’m a bit mystified about how this could happen—everything sounded fine and I’ve never had an export error like this before. But I check the file, and indeed, the last 30 minutes is just noise. The problem is, I’m in Arizona and my project file—all 20 GB of it—is back in California.
Fortunately, I store all my projects on my home server, which recently got a storage upgrade to make it much more usable. And my home server is accessible over the Internet via the built-in Screen Sharing app.
So I connected to my home server via Screen Sharing and used the app to transfer the full-quality audio file of the podcast, hoping that what had happened was an encoding error. A few minutes later: nope! This was apparently an export failure on the part of Logic Pro X. I really didn’t want to copy 20 GB of data over the Internet in order to fix this problem.
Instead, I used Screen Sharing to open the App Store app on the Mac mini and install Logic Pro X. Then I launched Logic, opened the project, and re-exported the last 35 minutes of audio to an Apple Lossless audio file. I copied that file over to my MacBook Air via Screen Sharing, replaced the bad audio in the original file, re-exported and uploaded, and the problem was solved. And all without transferring 20 GB of project data.
This worked because I had a Mac mini server running, with the right ports (3283, 5900, and 5988) open on my router to allow me to connect to the server.
Could I have done all of this with only my iPad Pro? (I had to bring my MacBook Air with me on the trip because there was no good way for me to record Clockwise and Upgrade with just the iPad Pro, so it wasn’t an issue this time.) In thinking about it, it would have been a more circuitous process, but it probably would’ve worked. I would have used Screens to remote-control my Macs from the iPad, used Dropbox to transfer the old and new files, and probably patched the two audio files together with Ferrite Recording Studio1. It would’ve been trickier than using the Mac, but it would’ve been doable.
By default, every image you import into Photos from your hard drive is copied into the Photos library. You can throw away the file that’s out on your desktop if you like, because a copy of it now resides inside the Photos library package. But some people want more control over their photos, preferring to organize their image files themselves, in the Finder. For those people, Apple offers a setting in Photos Preferences: “Copy items to the Photos library.” If you uncheck that box, any image you copy into Photos will not be copied into the library package. If you delete the photo later, Photos won’t be able to do anything to bring it back.
Accidentally unchecking that box can lead to some terrible consequences—like you deleting your photos without realizing you have no backup! Fortunately, in Ted’s case the photos still existed—but he had moved them to an external volume. Ted’s question then, was twofold: Can he do something so that those images are entirely copied into his Photos library, and what happens if he’s moved the image files in the meantime?
A photo not stored in the Library (left) and one with a missing source file (right).
First off, it’s worth noting that Photos displays a special icon on any photo that hasn’t been copied into its library: In the bottom-left corner of a thumbnail, it will display an image of a square with an arrow. (If it can’t find the source image, this becomes a yellow alert symbol with an arrow.) You can toggle this icon on and off via the View: Metadata: Referenced File command.)
Fortunately for Ted, Photos does include a command that will find all the source image files and copy them into the library. To perform this task, open Photos and select the photos you’d like the app to copy, then choose File: Consolidate. If you haven’t moved the files anywhere, once this task is completed your Photos library will be whole again.
Ted moved his items to a different hard drive, but if Photos can’t find a certain photo in its original location, it will ask you to pick a folder to search in. Ted was able to point Photos at his alternate disk, and then the app was able to import all of those files.
So if you ever regret leaving items outside of your Photos library, you can import them later with the Consolidate command. But for most people, it’s a better idea to leave the “Copy items to the Photos library” preference checked, now and forever.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
I didn’t spend a whole lot of time listening to Apple’s free iTunes Radio stations–with the exception of last December’s Star Wars station, obviously–but it was nice to know they were there. Alas, as mentioned in the middle of last month, the free, ad-supported stations are now gone, consigning iTunes Radio to a subscription-only life as part of Apple Music.
But the real losers are iTunes Match subscribers, like me. Prior to Apple Music, Match subscribers got access to those radio stations–sans ads–as part of their $25-per-year subscription plan. But that hasn’t continued in the new iTunes Radio era either.
Despite my lack of use, it is a bummer. I don’t think it signifies the death of iTunes Match by any means–why would the company up the limit on number of matched songs just two months ago only to kill the service off? But it does certainly seem like yet another move to get Match subscribers to switch to Apple Music.
At the moment, it hasn’t had that effect on me. I’m still using iTunes Match, which to me has a far better bang-to-buck ratio, and supplementing it with Spotify’s free tier. Sadly, the removal of those radio stations has not meant the departure of the Radio tab in iOS’s Music app–mostly because Beats 1 is still available for free to everyone. (Joy.)
How about it, Match subscribers? This nudging you towards Apple Music, or not moving the needle much?
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]
My thanks again this week to Igloo Software for sponsoring Six Colors.
Most corporate collaboration tools are not very good. If you’ve ever used them, you know this. But that’s not the case with Igloo, which makes Intranet software you’ll actually like.
With Igloo, all of your company collaboration tools go in one place, from sharing files to providing status updates to coordinating calendars.
Okay, government: how about a trade? You seem to badly want the ability to access the encrypted data on the devices we all carry around these days. Frankly, I’m not sure why: maybe you’re really interested in listening to my copy of The Force Awakens soundtrack, or seeing all those Hawaii pictures I haven’t posted yet, or maybe you just want to check out where I stalled out on Alto’s Adventure. (Stupid wingsuit challenges.) Well, fine. You can have it all. But we’re going to need a little something from you in exchange.
It seems only fair that if you’re going to have access to all our phones and data that we should have access to all of your phones and data. And by you, I mean the politicians who are pushing this as an agenda item in this upcoming year of elections. After all, you are our duly-elected representatives and what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
This shouldn’t be too big a deal, right? I mean, if you don’t have anything to hide, why should you be worried about us seeing it? All of your emails and correspondence is supposed to be publicly available anyway, right? So it’s not like you’d try to make an end-run around the system by switching to a more difficult-to-archive medium, like Snapchat or phone calls. You also probably wouldn’t try to obfuscate exactly what you’re talking about by using code words like “fluffy unicorns” instead of “budget cuts” or “cupcakes” instead of “healthcare.”
Heck, you probably wouldn’t even stop using your cell phone altogether once you learned that all that information was easily accessible because, you know, that’s just the kind of people you are: upstanding, honest people with nothing at all to hide. That’s why we elected you of all people.
I know you might feel a little apprehensive about this deal, but don’t worry: we’re only going to use these powers for good. I mean, we’ll have access to all that data you keep on your phone, but it’s not like we’re going to post your personal pictures to Instagram, or steal your credit card and banking information. Because we too are the upstanding, honest populace that you believe us to be. Trust us.
So, how about it, government? Do we have a deal? Or is there some reason why perhaps you might not want to compromise the security of your personal devices and information for strangers to poke through? If so, I’m sure we’d all love to hear it.
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]
As I shared with subscribers exclusively on New Year’s Eve, late last year I conducted a survey of two dozen Apple watchers to generate a “report card” on Apple in 2015. At that time, I offered all of you a chance to chime in on the survey.
The results were interesting. As I noted in my full story on the survey results, your scores were a bit higher than my celebrity panel’s, but if I ranked the 11 categories from best to worst, the ranking order was identical. (I’ve since opened the poll up to all Six Colors readers, and the scores from the general public are somewhere in between those of subscribers and the celebrity panel, but the ranking order remains intact. Perhaps we’re on to something.)
My story on Six Colors summarized some of the feedback in each category, using quotes from participants to add some color. I thought it would be fitting to do the same for the thoughts of Six Colors subscribers. Almost 100 subscribers took part in this survey, with most results coming in on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day.
The Mac
Grade: B+. (Average score: 3.8, median score: 4.)
A lot of you had comments about the new Photos app, introduced in 2015. Debby C. said it was “not nearly as user friendly as iPhoto was.” John S. cited “a rough start” but liked Apple adding back missing features and stability with the El Capitan update. Barry F. said Photos was “the single most important app and development of the year.”
There was general disappointment in the pace of improvement in the Mac Pro and MacBook Pro models, probably owing in part to Intel’s delays in getting the new Skylake chips out. Still, what was there got praise: Bill H. said the 13″ Retina MacBook Pro was “the closest thing to perfection” he’d experienced, and Jared W. called it “a dream machine.”
Feelings about the new MacBook were more mixed, with some people praising Apple for pushing boundaries while others—and sometimes the same people!—complained about the keyboard and single USB-C port. Donald P. wrote: “The MacBook was another bold step in which Apple removed something we deem so important: integrated USB ports. They are probably onto something, I thought it was terrific, but I know it wasn’t for everyone.”
In general, though I sense a lot of anticipation for Skylake and Thunderbolt 3/USB-C hardware in 2016.
The iPhone
Grade: A. (Average score: 4.4, median score: 5.)
People love their iPhones. There’s no doubt about it. There were a few complaints here and there—some comments about the camera not being good enough, and a bunch of complaints that Apple needs to do better with battery life! I won’t argue that point at all. John S. wrote: “Force touch is great, but more third party developers have to add features to their apps to make it a success.” Matthew L. write: “There could definitely be some improvement to iOS 9, especially in the setup process.”
Valeri was disappointed that iOS dumbed down the Apple Podcast app—a complaint I’ve heard from quite a few people recently. Marc R. noted that “there’s room for a 4-inch model,” which I’ll also second—and the rumor is, there might be one at some point soon.
The iPad
Grade: B+. (Average score: 3.9, median score: 4.)
Lots of love in this category to the iPad Pro update, though a lot of you don’t seem to feel it’s the right iPad for you. Also, people generally appreciated the iOS 9 updates that were iPad specific. “I’m glad that iOS is finally getting some iPad-centric features,” wrote Ivan T. But the most mainstream iPad is the iPad Air 2, and there was no iPad Air 3 this year—which rankled a bunch of you. “I would have liked to seen a refresh of the Air this year to keep its hardware similar to the Pro,” wrote Matthew L. “The main product line should have been updated,” wrote Dan W., also noting that’s he’d buy an iPad Air 3 if it supported the Apple Pencil.
Six Colors subscribers seem to run the gamut from people who do most of their work on iOS to those who have very little time for an iPad when a Mac will do the job. “It will never replace my Mac for work, but now it functions as my only non-work computer,” wrote Magnus. “I can definitely see the iPad Pro taking over as a general workhorse,” wrote Ronnie. If your comments are any indication, an iPad Air 3 with iPad Pro-like specs (and support for the Apple Pencil) might be quite a hit.
Cloud services
Grade: C. (Average score: 2.9, median score: 3.)
Everyone from subscribers to pundits pretty much agrees on this — Apple’s cloud-services story is a work in progress. “Still not trusting this,” wrote Alfie S. “Convoluted and confusing,” wrote David P. “Nervousness about weird quirks,” wrote Joseph R.
Still, there’s a silver lining. “Seems to be very app dependent—some are lightning fast and consistent, others not so much,” wrote Emory P. “I think I’m the only person who has no problems with iCloud!” wrote Chris H. “iCloud Drive and Photos backup are awesome,” wrote Paul N.
Then there’s Apple Music, which seems to have been positively received, though iTunes Match and iCloud Music Library are still problematic. “A horror show,” wrote Alex H., and several people cited Jim Dalrymple’s rants about what iCloud Music Library did to his music collection as a reason for concern. (I have to admit, I’ve recently run into some problems similar to Jim’s, where live tracks are transmuted into studio versions, or bowdlerized “clean” versions have been substituted for the uncensored versions I bought. Not cool.)
Paul M. wrote something that strikes me as being a pretty fair summary: “I like Apple’s ambition here, and I think they hit more than they missed.” Still, there’s a lot more work to be done—ambition is nice, but then you’ve got to deliver, and consistently. Maybe 2016 will be the year that Apple builds more trust in its cloud service offerings.
Apple TV
Grade: B. (Average score: 3.6, median score:4.)
The fourth-generation Apple TV, long rumored to be in development, finally arrived in 2015. And generally, people who bought one said they were happy with it—with a few caveats. “Can’t give it a 5 with the state of the current remote and searches,” wrote John S. “I like it, but it could be more compelling,” wrote Dan W. “Needs a little polish,” wrote David R.
Of course, a bunch of you are happy Roku owners, and fail to see what the new Apple TV offers that the Roku doesn’t. (I’ve got an Amazon Fire TV Stick myself, which is pretty great, especially for travel. And it does everything the Apple TV does, more or less.) A lot of people cited the Siri Remote, the lack of a Remote app for iOS at launch, and a limited supply of new apps as other reasons to feel mixed about the Apple TV.
I’m gonna let Paul M. do the summary for this category, too: “Also a lot of promise—feels like a 1.0 product.” Or as Alex M. wrote, “I’m excited about the possibility of where the new Apple TV is headed… but so far it’s been thoroughly underwhelming.”
As with our panel of pundits, you get the sense that in a lot of these categories, the general sentiment is that you’re glad Apple is striking out in new directions with new products, but that 2016 needs to be about tightening the screws and smoothing the finish on these products.
HomeKit
Grade: D. (Average score: 1.8, median score: 2.)
The low score in all our surveys! HomeKit was announced by Apple at WWDC in 2014. At WWDC in 2015, basically zero HomeKit products had shipped. A few have, now, but it’s been a hard road, and that was reflected in the scores.
John S. has optimism: “HomeKit has its bugs, but once you suffer through setting it up, it’s amazing.” But Ben G. called it “a flaky disaster” and David M. wrote that it’s “too immature to be a real product.” Interoperability with existing equipment is definitely a problem, as Tedd L. wrote: “My home is fully automated, but not with anything compatible with HomeKit.” Me too, Tedd.
Let’s have Matt L. wrap up this category: “Go big or go Homekit.”
Hardware Reliability
Grade: A. (Average score: 4.6, median score: 5.)
The top scorer across all our voters. For all the quibbles and constructive criticism of Apple, it’s hard to deny how solid the company’s hardware processes are.
“I would not go with any other company on hardware, because Apple’s products are overall the most reliable I have ever used,” wrote Paul N. “The quality of their hardware is unmatched,” wrote John S. “Best in the industry,” wrote Jared W. “Close to perfect,” wrote Arnie S. “Still the best in the business,” wrote Tedd L. And the beat goes on.
Developer Relations
Grade: C-. (Average score: 2.5, median score: 2.)
Most of you aren’t developers, so generally I think the scores here come from the coverage you read on sites like this one about the issues facing Apple developers. So is it any surprise that the score echoes that of the celebrity panel? There’s definitely a lot of unease in the Apple developer community. A bunch of you said you hoped Phil Schiller’s takeover of the App Store would lead to better conditions for developers. And many of you pointed out—quite rightly, in my opinion—that the Mac App Store needs some love.
Environmental and social impact
Grade: A. (Average score: 4.5, median score: 5.)
This is a funny category. Tim Cook’s Apple has made a big enough deal out of using Apple’s prominence to promote social issues and also create products that are environmentally friendly that it seems like fair game. At the same time, it’s a bit far afield from the core of what makes Apple successful.
Still, the perception is that Tim Cook’s Apple “cares a lot,” as Debby C. wrote. “Sets the standard,” wrote Mark Y. Or as Ted C. wrote: “Hard for a multinational, publicly-traded company to do more than Apple is doing. The work to improve the lives of people who support the supply chain are admirable, and I love the focus on privacy.”
Software quality
Grade: C+. (Average score: 3.2, median score: 3.)
Responses for this one were all over the place. “Suffering from a lack of polish,” wrote Mike S. “A really mixed bag,” wrote Joseph R. Generally, I’d have to say that people feel like Apple is turning this around, but that there’s a whole lot more to do. Wrote David R.: “I’m surprised I’m saying this, but they should slow down their releases and improve the quality. It’s not bad, just not ‘Apple Good’.”
A bunch of people also complained about inconsistent updated to first-party software, most notably the iWork apps.
Comment on Apple Watch
Grade: C. (Average score: 3.1, median score: 3.)
Your comments about the Apple Watch were very much like the comments our pundit panel provided: A whole lot of you are using the Apple Watch and still like it, but have come to terms with the fact that it doesn’t as much as you’d hoped and that there’s a lot of room for improvement, especially on the software side.
“I really enjoy receiving texts on it for the convenience of not taking my 6s Plus out of my purse so much,” wrote Debby C. “It’s the epitome of a version 1 product… then again, I wear mine every day,” wrote Chris H. “Good start, but even watchOS 2 frustrates and underperforms,” wrote Dan W. “Good start—so much untapped potential,” wrote Mark Y. “Beautiful and does a few things well… and many other things poorly,” wrote Clinton M.
Donald P. wrote: “I finally got the watch… I was incredibly skeptical for a fanboy. I loved Apple’s narrative: it help keep us from the incessant checking of our devices. A technology to solve a technology problem I didn’t want to admit I had. I have now had my phone on mute for nearly a month with the use of my Apple Watch. Any phone call, text or approved notification I get comes to be in the form of a silent tap. Making a cup of tea? I get to ask Siri to remind me not to over-steep. I’m loving it!”
Thanks to everyone who filled out the survey. I appreciate your participation in this first-ever Six Colors Report Card! Let’s make a note to do it again next year.
In my case, during my ten-day vacation in the Hawaiian Islands earlier this month, that meant stepping away from technology a bit. But in this day and age, you can’t escape it entirely. While I ended up leaving my MacBook Air at home, I still had plenty of gadgets: I brought along my iPhone 6s, my Apple Watch, my iPad Air 2, and a Bluetooth keyboard, just in case the writing mood struck me.
In the end, it was the iPhone 6s that got the biggest workout, unsurprisingly. From taking many pictures and videos (which prompted me to make a return to Instagram after a long absence), to using Maps to get from place to place in our rental car, to relying heavily on Yelp for being able to find great places to eat, the iPhone was indispensable. (And of course, Dark Sky, for being to avoid oncoming tropical downpours.)
Surprisingly not so useful was the iPad, which ended up mostly serving as a watching device during the long flights to and from the islands. My go-to apps on the tablet ended up being GoodReader, in which I stored some videos I’d ripped from my DVD collection, and Transmit, which I used before our return voyage to load up some additional TV shows downloaded from my server at home. The Bluetooth keyboard I used not at all on the entire trip—but better to have it and not need it than need it not have it, I suppose.
The major technological challenge was making sure the iPhone had enough power to last for the day. My 6s really chews through its battery—my girlfriend’s iPhone 6 fared slightly better—but having a cable for charging in the car was key, as was my Belkin travel power strip and its two USB ports. A portable battery pack (the same Limefuel model I took to Portugal last year) proved likewise crucial.
But the biggest help was actually iOS 9’s Low Power Mode, which I gave a workout for the first time. Enabling it via Settings > Battery when I dropped down to single-digit battery life towards the end of the day prolonged my iPhone’s life just enough to ensure that I never actually ran the phone down to empty on the entire trip. Color me impressed.
And while my feelings about the Apple Watch haven’t changed much in the last year, I did find its activity tracking to be a great way to record exactly what we did every day. A few multi-mile hikes is a great way to not only double your activity goals, but also an easy way to rack up those 10,000 steps per day.
I suppose I wasn’t as disconnected from technology as I might have liked—you never are these days, with the Internet at your fingertips; the trick is ensuring that it enhances your experience of the world instead of distracting you from it.
[Any favorite apps when you’re traveling or on vacation? Let us know!]
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]
Welcome to the second issue of the Six Colors Magazine. I’m writing this column from my iPad Pro, sitting in bed watching the rain pour down outside. One of the advantages of working at home is that I can make the commute without setting a foot on the floor—but one of the disadvantages is that the entirety of my work is always a device away.
The largest item in this month’s magazine is my summary of your responses to the 2015 Apple Report Card survey I sent out late last month. It’s the mirror version of the story I posted on Six Colors earlier this month, but this time it contains the ratings and voices of you subscribers, rather than the two dozen pundits in the original story. Thanks to all the subscribers who participated in the survey!
Over the New Years holiday, I spent an hour working on a project I detailed on Six Colors—upgrading the drive in my home server. At some point I’ll write more details about the server for the site, but every time I mention the tech I use at home, I am surprised at the curiosity of readers, so I thought I’d share a little bit more about the story here.
My server is a 2011 Mac mini, bought to replace an older model—I’ve been using a Mac mini a server for a very long time now, and used older Macs (including a couple of Power Mac G3s) to do the job before that. My motivations for running a home server have changed over the years. It’s like my server has had many careers (and many enclosures) over the years, always changing and growing and adapting to my needs at the time.
I started running a home server as a way to test Mac OS X Server. I used it to host for all my intertext.com web and email services. Over a slow DSL line. (It was probably a terrible idea.)
Over time, my server needs have changed. With the exception of things like my home weather station, I’ve moved web services off to a dedicated server. My email is entirely off-site as well. Today, the server’s jobs are these:
Attach to a huge disk, namely a Drobo 5D array
Act as file server so I can use that disk from my iMac to store old podcast files and stuff
Run Plex to serve my local video files to my TiVo Roamio and fourth-generation Apple TV
Run Logitech Media Server for my rapidly aging collection of Squeezebox music players
Run Sonos Server for the new Sonos music players I’m testing to replace my Squeezeboxes
Act as a Time Machine server for my iMac. (Yes, I bought the OS X Server add-on.)
Run CrashPlan to back up all the data on the Drobo
Run iTunes so I can access my iTunes library from other devices, especially handy when my Internet connection is slow or down
I’m probably forgetting something. It does a lot of little jobs.
If I were starting from zero today, I’d seriously consider buying a NAS—a network-attached storage device, essentially a computer and hard drive array in one—rather than a Mac mini with a giant attached hard drive. These days, NAS devices can do most of the media serving and backup tasks that a Mac mini can do. But still, I’m much more comfortable with administering a Mac. And I’d rather not leave my 5K iMac running at all times in order to serve the rest of my household, so a second Mac it is.
I’ve been frustrated with how slow the Mac mini was for the last few years. The bottom line is, spinning hard drives are slow, and the drive in this Mac mini wasn’t particularly fast to begin with. These days, there is no single upgrade you can do to a Mac to make it run faster than swapping out a spinning hard drive with an SSD.
In the end, I added the SSD rather than just swapping it in for the existing hard drive. My Mac mini model has room for two hard drives, and so I bought a kit from iFixit that allowed me to add the SSD as a second drive. Then I formatted the drives together as a sort of do-it-yourself Fusion Drive.
Fusion Drive is an Apple concept—it fuses a fast SSD and a slow spinning disc together into a single volume, and then the operating system puts your most commonly used files on the SSD and your less-used, larger files on the spinning disc. It’s a clever idea, and it works pretty well. (You can get links to the instructions I used, and the products I bought, from the original Six Colors story.)
In the end, my Mac mini was completely transformed. I can’t say it’s for everyone, but it works for me and I’m glad I have it! Doing the upgrade was harrowing, but in the end, it was a lot cheaper than buying a new Mac mini equipped with an SSD or a Fusion Drive.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
I dug out my old Apple spreadsheets and generated some more charts based on Apple’s quarterly results, disclosed earlier this week. One of the problems with charting Apple revenue historically is that the company has revised its accounting practices a few times over the past few years. However, the way it counts individual sales remains more or less identical, as does the count of overall revenue. So I was able to create some charts with a longer time range than the ones I posted on Tuesday. Here are a few, all using four-quarter rolling averages in order to wash out seasonality.
Here’s the history of the rise of the iPhone:
Here’s the history of Mac sales for the past 10 years, generally moving upward—even as the overall PC category began to shrink:
Here’s a year-by-year chart measuring historical Mac sales:
Remember the iPod? Here’s its sales history up to the point where Apple consigned it back into the “other products” category:
Here’s Apple’s revenue growth over time:
Here’s a comparative plot of unit sales. You can see the iPod crest and fade, the Mac motor along, the iPad boom and then slack off, and the iPhone shoot into the stratosphere:
And here’s the same data, but plotted in terms of year-over-year growth. (Yes, in the early years the iPhone had a couple of quarters of off-the-charts growth.) This chart shows how Apple’s product-line growth has slowed, especially recently:
The next big thing. Everybody’s looking for it, and nobody’s sure what it will be until the mainstream consumer weighs in. Apple, more than most of its competitors, bears the heavy weight of expectation when it comes to innovation, and that’s one reason it plays its cards notoriously close to its chest. Still, every once in a while, we get a peek behind the curtain to see what Tim Cook and company might be thinking about.
One such hint came during the financial results conference call earlier this week, when analyst Gene Munster–fresh off his mania of teasing an Apple TV set that was never going to happen–decided to strike out in a new direction, and quizzed Cook on what he thought about virtual reality.
“In terms of virtual reality, uh, no, I don’t think it’s a niche,” Cook said. “I think it can be … it’s really cool, and has some interesting applications.”
In the wake of Apple’s recent quarterly financial results report, there’s been a lot of talk about what happens if the company has truly reached the peak of iPhone sales — and what must come next in order for Apple to keep growing.
The iPhone is a once-in-a-decade (if not once-in-a-lifetime) product, and won’t be replaced on Apple’s revenue chart any time soon. And that’s okay, for a whole bunch of reasons.
Apologies for the recording quality this week as a problem with one track required the use of the Skype recording. There were no survivors.
Donald Rumsfeld developed an app! No, really. Well, not himself. You can read his Medium post on it: https://medium.com/@DonRumsfeld/at-83-i-decided-to-develop-an-app-dadd4e53d342#.3rjwpamjy
Really!
Download it here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/churchill-solitaire/id1030804846?mt=8
Apple reported its results after we recorded this episode: https://sixcolors.com/post/2016/01/apple-q1-2016-results-live/
Apple’s Music Memos: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/music-memos/id1036437162?mt=8
Apple is rumored to be releasing an iPhone 5se in March: http://9to5mac.com/2016/01/22/apple-readies-iphone-5se-not-6c-for-marchapril-with-curved-edges-live-photos/
AT&T’s WiFi calling: https://www.att.com/shop/wireless/features/numbersync.html
