By Dan Moren

January 28, 2016 8:47 AM PT

Open up your Xbox One’s NAT via AirPort Utility

Note: This story has not been updated for several years.

The other night I was having trouble meeting up with some friends in Elite Dangerous on my Xbox One; a little research into the issue yielded the information that the Network Address Translation (NAT) status of the Xbox can cause problems with multiplayer games.

NAT is a technology that lets traffic from the Internet at large reach the correct device on your home network, and vice versa. Because most home networks now involve some combination of modem, gateway, and router, you generally have one external, public IP address that faces the world, and several internal, private IP addresses that let your devices talk to each other locally. (Think of it like regular postal mail versus interoffice mail: At some point, a piece of regular mail sent to someone at a business address has to be translated to reach the correct person within the office.)

In the past, my Xbox’s NAT type has usually been “Open”, the best case scenario, but when I checked this time, I discovered it had dropped to “Moderate.” (The worst option is “Strict.”)

So I set out to fix it. Most newish routers can generally handle NAT automatically, thanks to technologies like Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) or Port Mapping Protocol (NAT-PMP), but even though my slightly old AirPort Extreme has the latter–enabled under the Network Options dialog of the Network pane in AirPort Utility–it’s not always the most reliable of systems.

Fortunately, Microsoft’s Xbox support offers suggestions for improving your NAT situation, and it involves our old friend manual port forwarding.

First, I fired up AirPort Utility and assigned my Xbox One a static IP based on its MAC address, using the DCHP Reservations part of the Network pane. (Hit the + button and fill out the MAC address, which you can get from the Xbox One’s Advanced Settings section of Network Settings, then pick an unused IP address within your network’s range.) This ensures that every time my Xbox One powers up, it gets the same IP address on my local network. In the interoffice mail example, it’s like making sure my Xbox is sitting in the same office everyday, not hopping from desk to desk, depending on what’s free.

Then I used the Port Settings option on the same screen to create a new rule mapping most of the ports specified by Microsoft in the above support doc to that static IP.

Yep, I said “most,” not “all,” because as it turns out there was a slight wrinkle in my plan. Two of the ports that Xbox Live wants to use to communicate–UDP ports 500 and 4500–are already being forwarded on my network, because they’re also used by my OS X Server’s VPN setup.

Doh.

The good news is that even just forwarding that subsection of the ports seems to have solved my NAT problem. Hopefully, that will continue to be the case–as long as I don’t have to access my VPN and play Xbox at the same time.

[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.]

By Jason Snell

January 27, 2016 7:05 PM PT

Three more observations about Apple’s conference call

Note: This story has not been updated for several years.

Over at Macworld on Wednesday I listed five interesting items from Apple’s conference call with analysts, but those were far from the only interesting items to come out of Apple’s quarterly financial-disclosure ritual. Here are three more.

Apple Watch and Apple TV get some love

Though Apple Watch and Apple TV don’t get broken out in Apple’s overall sales and revenue reports — they’re not big enough, yet, to merit inclusion — Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri both made points of mentioning the products and giving them little boosts.

The key line from Maestri: “Revenue from other products grew strongly, up 62 percent over last year, thanks to the growing contribution from Apple Watch, as well as the successful launch of the new Apple TV, both of which established new all-time quarterly records. We expanded Apple Watch distribution significantly over the course of the quarter, and we experienced especially strong results during the holiday buying season.”

The message there is that both Apple TV and Apple Watch did better during the first fiscal quarter of 2016 than at any point in their past. Given that Apple Watch skeptics were claiming that an early sales spike would be followed by a decline at the product crashed and burned, that’s important. “Especially strong sales in the month of December,” according to Cook, point to a successful first holiday season for the Apple Watch.

Apple TV has been around for a long time. But the introduction of the fourth-generation product (and, I’ll grant you, all the pent-up demand for a new Apple TV) was the best “by far,” according to Cook.

The iPad and Mac have issues

After several quarters of explaining how bullish he was about the iPad, Cook didn’t really discuss Apple’s tablet device this time. It’s understandable why—iPad sales have declined year-over-year for the last eight quarters.

Still, some of Maestri’s opening statements did try to take a stab at spinning the state of the iPad. He highlighted the iPad’s market-share success “in the segments of the tablet markets where we compete,” most notably the iPad’s 85 percent share in the over-$200 tablet segment. Maestri also cited high customer satisfaction rates for the iPad Air and explained the large number of corporate buyers who are satisfied with the iPad and intend to buy more. Including Eli Lilly, which is outfitting its entire U.S. sales force with iPad Pros.

The message there is: People who buy non-cheap tablets are buying iPads, and everyone loves their iPads. There are plenty of reasons why iPad sales might be down, most obviously the fact that the iPad seems to have a long usable life cycle, but it’s still winning in the (relatively quiet) tablet market, and there are no issues with dissatisfaction. In a period of rough sales figures, these are the arguments Apple reaches for. (Also, some perspective: even now, the iPad is a $20 billion per year business. Nothing to sneeze at.)

Then there’s the Mac, which ended a two year period of positive year-over-year sales growth. During the first fiscal quarter of 2016, Mac sales were down (slightly). Again, this is a situation where the overall market the product is in might say a lot: As Apple pointed out, analyst firm IDC estimates that the global PC market was down 11 percent, meaning that the Mac’s four percent sales drop means that the Mac continued to gain PC market share.

A bright spot for the Mac was China, where Mac sales were up 27 percent year-over-year. So while Mac sales aren’t exactly exploding, the Mac is doing well in a very difficult market—and remains a $25 billion per year business for Apple.

Did you hear that?

In my Macworld piece I mentioned Tim Cook’s coy not-a-denial answer to analyst Gene Munster’s question about virtual reality. (I’m even willing to admit that Tim was probably not just trolling Munster, and Apple is actively researching VR.)

But there was another little slip that was very interesting to me. It probably means nothing, but when Maestri listed off Apple’s four major product platforms, he said this: “We’ve built a huge installed base around four platforms: iOS, Mac OS, watchOS, and tvOS.”

Officially, that second platform is still “OS X.” But calling it Mac OS instead sure fits better, doesn’t it?

[Want more Apple financial charts? They’re all here.]

By Dan Moren

January 27, 2016 1:59 PM PT

Apple issues Snow Leopard update (not a typo)

Note: This story has not been updated for several years.

Ah, Mac OS X Snow Leopard. That OS has lived on in the hearts, minds, and Macs of many, since it was the last version of the Mac operating system that would run PowerPC applications from the pre-Intel era. If you’re holding on to a Mac running 10.6, brace yourself: there’s a reason to check for Software Updates.

Apple’s released a small patch for Snow Leopard, which debuted in 2009 and saw its last significant update in 2011. In particular, this update ensures that Macs running Snow Leopard will be able to continue to download and run apps from the Mac App Store, thanks to a renewed signing certificate.

Granted, there are probably a lot of apps since then that require newer versions of OS X, so I imagine that the utility of Snow Leopard is largely diminishing, but as Ars Technica points out, a reported 5 percent of Mac installed base is still running the long-in-the-snow-leopard-tooth operating system. Shine on, you crazy diamonds. And run Software Update.

[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.]

By Dan Moren

January 27, 2016 1:11 PM PT

Canary, meet Alexa and WeMo

Note: This story has not been updated for several years.

My home is pretty dumb, but it’s slowly getting smarter. As frequent readers will know, I live in a one bedroom apartment, so most automation tasks stem out of curiosity than actual utility.

Previously I’d mentioned my disappointment that my Canary home security device¹ didn’t really play with any of my other gear, but I didn’t realize until today that Canary had previously added support for home automation protocol Wink.² Wink connects to IFTTT, which in turn connects to my Amazon Echo.

I think you can see where this is going: I can now arm, disarm, or engage Canary’s privacy mode via voice commands to Alexa³. Moreover, I also integrated it with my WeMo light switch so that when my office light automatically turns off at night, the Canary is automatically armed.

The more I play around with connected home devices, the more interesting I find them. I had never used Wink before, but its app is actually pretty slick.

Next task: find a way to remotely activate my Breville tea-maker from the comfort of my bed. I think I may need a robot.⁴

[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.]

By Dan Moren

January 27, 2016 7:19 AM PT

Have we hit peak iPhone? It doesn’t really matter.

Note: This story has not been updated for several years.

There’s panic in the streets–well, make that on “the Street.” To listen to pundits and financial analysts talk, Apple is on the verge of becoming the next victim of Starkiller Base, exploding in a white-hot ball of plasma. iPhone sales appear to be flattening out, bringing tired pronouncements of Apple doom.

Okay, first of all: deep breaths, everyone. Yes, the iPhone is a tremendously important part of Apple’s business, accounting for a little above two-thirds of its revenue. But a) it’s not the only part, b) those sales, while largely flat, are still not declining, and c) Apple still sold almost 75 million iPhones in the past quarter.

Look, we’ve been down this road before. After the initial release of this quarter’s results, I found myself looking at a graph from MacStories, charting a four-quarter moving average of unit sales in Apple’s major product lines over the last fifteen years or so. That includes the rise and fall of Apple’s previous blockbuster product, the iPod.

But if you look at the curve of the iPod, you might also realize that the iPhone’s pattern is more or less the same, just on a much, much larger scale. So, will iPhone sales eventually plateau and decline? Absolutely. Have we already seen peak iPhone? That’s harder to say, but it’s not out of the question that this may be the apex.

Even if iPhone sales have topped out, however, what’s key for Apple is making sure that whatever ramps up while the iPhone slows down is another Apple product. iPod sales, for example, hit their zenith in the first quarter of 2009, when they sold 22.7 million. That’s less than a third of the number of iPhones the company sold this past quarter, to be sure, but keep in mind that at that same time, Apple was only shipping 4.3 million iPhones. It’s not as though the iPhone sprang from Apple, fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus, and immediately sold 75 million units.

Whatever comes next is going to have a ramp up, just as the iPhone and iPod did before it. This is a game that Apple has played a few times during its almost 40-year history.¹ In the company’s early years, its secret sauce was its software, especially its operating system. That’s a product that the company gives away today–it’s not even broken out in revenue statements anymore, because as important as it is to the company’s ecosystem and installed base², it’s not the business that it was back in the 1980s. Apple knows how to adapt to a changing market, especially one that moves as fast as technology.

So, investors, analysts, and pundits are worried because none of them can see what the next big thing is. Well, duh: if they could, they’d probably be off making that product themselves, right? They want Apple to do the heavy lifting for them. And Apple’s going to do that, because that is its business, just as sure as doomsaying and reading tea leaves is the business of those aforementioned investors, analysts, and pundits. If you think the company’s not hard at work on its next big thing–and I’m not talking the new Apple TV or even the Apple Watch–kindly have your head examined.³

There may be missteps along the way–based on the current trajectory of the iPad’s sales, I don’t think it’s ever going to be as enormously successful as Apple, and especially the late Steve Jobs, thought it would be. Hell, it’s more than possible that no future Apple product will ever match the sales curve of the iPhone. If Apple comes out with its much-ballyhooed electric car, does anyone think the company will sell 75 million of them? The century-old GM set a sales record by selling 9.8 million cars in all of 2015–and, if anything, it’s more akin to the Android of automobiles. Apple’s never gone for volume, and if it did move into the market, it would likely sell many fewer cars.

So we can all relax and stop worrying by embracing that truth that whatever does come next won’t immediately top or even replace the iPhone. And repeat after me: that’s okay. As author Joseph Heller once said: “When I read something saying I’ve not done anything as good as Catch-22 I’m tempted to reply, ‘Who has?'”

[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.]

By Jason Snell

January 26, 2016 1:02 PM PT

Last updated August 16, 2023

Apple Q1 2016 results

Note: This story has not been updated since 2023.

Apple financial results were released today. Look on for charts and our @sixcolorsevent live tweet. More analysis to come!

Continue reading “Apple Q1 2016 results”…

By Jason Snell

January 26, 2016 8:53 AM PT

Last updated August 16, 2023

Apple results: Congratulations, I’m sorry

Note: This story has not been updated since 2023.

Apple’s holiday-quarter earnings will be released today, and if you’re the kind of person who likes to complain when Apple releases record earnings and then is punished in the stock market, rev up your complaint engines because today is going to be a doozy.

I discussed this a bit on yesterday’s episode of Upgrade, but Dan Frommer makes the same point in this piece at Quartz:

When Apple reports its first-quarter results today… it will likely report its highest ever quarterly sales and profit…. Investors will immediately skip past these figures for a more important number: Apple’s revenue projection for the current March quarter. After an amazing period of growth, Apple is now expected to forecast its first year-over-year sales decline in 13 years.

The charts and press releases and filings will almost certainly describe Apple’s biggest quarter ever. Shiny! But for investors who are focused on growth and the future, Apple’s guidance for the next quarter will tell all. And if it even remotely suggests a slowdown when compared to the first calendar quarter of 2015, you will hear the screams.

As always, you can join us here for coverage of the earnings results later today, and follow @sixcolorsevent for blow-by-blow coverage of Apple executives’ phone call with analysts starting at 2 Pacific, 5 Eastern.

By Jason Snell

January 25, 2016 3:25 PM PT

The good and bad of Microsoft’s NFL marketing deal

Note: This story has not been updated for several years.

Microsoft has a big marketing deal with the NFL. As a part of it, coaches and players use Microsoft Surface tablets on the sidelines during the game. As marketing ideas go, it’s not a terrible one, since the NFL is wildly popular and it provides Microsoft with an opportunity to get the Surface in front of people who might not be aware that Microsoft makes a product that is an alternative to the iPad.

Unfortunately, when the marketing deal began, game announcers would describe shots of coaches peering into their tablets as involving iPads, not Surfaces. The NFL and Microsoft sprung into action, sending corrective notes to the TV networks and ultimately adding Surface branding on the devices themselves.

That presumably ended most of the iPad confusion. But football is still live TV—there are still going to be some less awesome incidents involving the products in question, like the time Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers tossed his Surface in anger. But hey, all PR is good PR, right?

Anyway, yesterday during the AFC Championship Game, there was a technical malfunction that made the Surface tablets on the New England Patriots sideline stop working. Which led to several minutes of announcer discussion about what was wrong with the Microsoft Surface tablets and whether the Microsoft Surface tablets could be fixed. Uh, but all PR is good PR… right?

Apparently the source of the malfunction has been found, and it wasn’t the Surface’s fault at all, as I’ve been informed by a statement that just appeared in my Inbox from Brian McCarthy, an NFL spokesperson:

Near the end of the 1st quarter, we experienced an infrastructure issue on the Patriots sideline that impacted still photos for the coaching tablets. The issue was identified as a network cable malfunction and was resolved during the 2nd quarter. The issue was not caused by the tablets or the software that runs on the tablets. We have experienced no issues with the tablets this season. Any issues were network related.

I also received an official Microsoft statement:

Our team on the field has confirmed the issue was not related to the tablets themselves but rather an issue with the network. We worked with our partners who manage the network to ensure the issue was resolved quickly.

I have to say that I actually feel bad for Microsoft. This was apparently an event entirely out of their control—who was in charge of testing the network cables, people?—and yet it opened up their product to mockery. Will people remember the Monday afternoon quarterbacking about the bad network cable, or will they just remember the failure of the day before? Probably the latter.

That’s the risk you take with any high-stakes, high-visibility product placement such as this one—but Microsoft’s relationship with the NFL seems to be star-crossed. It’s almost enough to send a superstitious NFL coach straight to an iPad for comfort.

By Dan Moren

January 25, 2016 12:13 PM PT

Rowmote Pro, for your Mac remote controlling needs

Note: This story has not been updated for several years.

As much as I like my Apple TV, sometimes I need to fall back on my Mac mini server for watching content. These days, that’s more often than not because services like Hulu don’t always have the rights to stream certain shows to set-top boxes or mobile devices.

So to the Mac mini it is! Unfortunately, it’s not the most friendly device for watching content, because it usually means interacting with a web browser via a keyboard and/or mouse. But that’s when I fall back on my trusty remote control app: Rowmote Pro.¹

I’ve been using Rowmote Pro for a long time; there are other apps for controlling your Mac using your iPhone or iPad, and most of them are perfectly fine–this one just happens to be my favorite.

Back when I was still running Plex as an app on my Mac mini, I used Rowmote’s Apple-Remote-style interface a lot, but now I rely much more on the trackpad/keyboard option. It makes it easy to access modifier keys like Control, Option, and Command, whether you’re using the trackpad or the keyboard, and there’s a Function mode that lets you access other common keys, like the cursors, Page Up/Page Down, F-keys, and so on. I also find that Rowmote allows me to drag files much more seamlessly than most of the other similar apps I’ve tried in the past, and it’s got good support for two-finger scrolling.

Rowmote also provides quick access to launching applications on your Mac, and–in a really nice touch–even offers a mini version of your Dock, letting you quickly switch between open apps or launch other programs you use frequently.

I’ve run into very few problems with Rowmote over the years, and most of those have been rapidly fixed by an update to the app or its OS X helper companion. The $5 I spent on Rowmote Pro those many years ago has proved itself a worthy investment–if you don’t need the trackpad/keyboard option, there’s also a $1 version. Either way, if you ever need to control a Mac from your couch, Rowmote is what I would recommend.

[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.]

By Jason Snell

January 25, 2016 8:00 AM PT

Last updated November 19, 2021

Enter the clicky keyboard

Note: This story has not been updated since 2021.

A lot of my job is typing. Yes, these days I do a lot of podcasting, but I am a writer at heart. But while many of my friends and colleagues have always been obsessed with the tools of our trade—computer keyboards—it’s never been something I’ve spent a whole lot of time worrying about.

Yes, I have an old Apple Extended Keyboard II in my office, and I remember the years I spent typing on an Apple Standard Keyboard, but as I used laptops more and more, I got used to laptop keyboards and soldiered on.

It’s only in the past year, as I’ve settled into my home office with only the dog and cat for company most days, that I’ve started to think about whether I wanted to take the plunge and consider buying a mechanical keyboard. While I remember the old days of keyboards with clicky-clacky sound effects and big key travel with some nostalgia, whenever I’ve taken a test drive on someone else’s mechanical keyboard I’ve come away thinking that time has moved on and my fingers have adapted to the soft, low-travel feel of today’s laptop keyboards.

Apple’s keyboard moves in 2015 had a part to play in getting me thinking about keyboards, too. The new MacBook keyboard is the one feature of that product that I actively dislike, and it’s been a while since a keyboard has been the only thing standing between me and embracing a new bit of technology. Then Apple came out with the new Magic Keyboard, which was thankfully not as radical as the one in the new MacBook.

I started to ponder whether I wanted to really try using a mechanical keyboard when Joshua Topolsky, late of Bloomberg, posted this tweet:

Pair of cyberspace decks pic.twitter.com/SSy9OYZeWV

— Joshua Topolsky (@joshuatopolsky) October 7, 2015

I loved the photos. These were tiny keyboards—no function key row, no numeric keypad—with colorful keyboard layouts. Topolsky was right to call them “cyberspace decks,” because they definitely put me in the mind of William Gibson’s 1984 classic Neuromancer, a book I own in paperback, HyperCard stack, and ePub editions. I prefer small keyboards and prefer to have my trackpad closer to my right hand, rather than pushed away by a number pad that I never use.

Topolsky’s decks were both Leopold FC660Ms—a product I had never heard of before, but then, I had never been to the Mechanical Keyboards subreddit, either. His tweet stuck with me. I shopped for the FC660M, which—after consulting various web sites with audio recordings of the clicky-clacky sound that mechanical keyboards make—I had decided I wanted with Cherry MX Blue keyswitches. As I mentioned on this week’s edition of Upgrade, I spent almost four months with a version of that keyboard in my shopping cart.

Finally, earlier this month, I bought one. (They’re available here and there, though I bought mine new on eBay from a seller in Korea.) I ended up with an all-black model, which I liked better than the all-white ones I had been seeing last fall. But as soon as I had ordered it, I started thinking about its included Windows and Alt keys, and pondering replacements. Topolsky seems to have picked up replacement keycaps on Massdrop and elsewhere. I ended up at WASD Keyboards, which sells numerous custom keycaps.

The keyboard and keycaps arrived the same day, and I’ve replaced most (but not all) of the original keys with custom orange keycaps from WASD. The Windows key is now properly labeled as a Command key, and the Alt key is now just a blank key (but I know it’s really Option). It’s not cyberpunk like Topolsky’s two keyboards, but it’s mine—and it makes me happy.

Of course, all the keyboard fashion in the world won’t matter a bit if you can’t get any typing done. I’m happy to report that I’ve really enjoyed my first week with the Leopold keyboard. Yes, it’s spectacularly loud and clicky, but that’s what I was looking for. When my family’s home, I can close the office door so that they don’t hear my clicking. When I’m focused and writing a whole lot of text, the sound and feel of the keyboard helps my writing flow. As I described it on Upgrade, it’s a bit like a horse starting to gallop—there’s a momentum that comes along with typing fast on the clicky keyboard that’s not just pleasant, but downright motivating.

Other times, though, it’s ridiculous. Editing a podcast or just clicking through email and Slack and Twitter is less suited to a keyboard like this—single loud keyboard clicks here and there just don’t have the same appeal. And since I do a lot of podcasts, I have to keep my old keyboard around—you’d hear this one if I was typing something during the middle of a show, while my old keyboard is mostly silent.

Adapting a keyboard designed for a PC to be used with a Mac was mostly uneventful. It’s a USB keyboard, and comes with a mini USB to regular USB cable, which I ran under my desk to the USB/Thunderbolt hub I’ve got velcroed to the back of the desk. Swapping modifier keys used to require extra software on the Mac, but it doesn’t anymore—within the Keyboard preference pane, there’s a Modifier Keys button that you can click to bring up a dialog box that lets you remap the Caps Lock, Control, Option, and Command keys on a per-keyboard basis.

That got me most of the way there, but this keyboard also lacks a dedicated backtick/tilde key, and typing Command-backtick to cycle through windows has become second nature to me. Also, I’d lost access to keyboard shortcuts to turn my Mac’s volume up and down or mute it entirely, which were previously mapped to function keys. So I installed Keyboard Maestro and set up a bunch of new shortcuts to restore my muscle memory, more or less.

Finally, I wondered if I would be able to attach this new keyboard to my iPad Pro via a USB-to-Lightning adapter, and if doing such a thing would be ridiculous. Yes to both of those—it absolutely worked, and it felt completely ridiculous to be clacking away in front of an iPad.

Should you consider a mechanical keyboard? I’d wager that the people who should already know who they are. For most people, just about any keyboard will do the job, and do it well. Even the MacBook keyboard, which is a bridge too far for me, seems to be just fine to most of the MacBook users I talk to. But there are definitely people out there who love their keyboards, and obsess over them, and value the tactile and audible feedback of old-school mechanical keyboards.

Apparently I may be one of them now? It’s certainly been a lot of fun to play with this stuff. But if you’ll excuse me now, I’ve got to go—my daughter just got home from school and I need to shut the door before she’s distracted by the sound of this keyboard.