By Jason Snell

September 4, 2024 5:26 PM PT

Apple’s September event: The delight will be in the details

When Apple was a small company that few people cared about, it leaked like a sieve. Sources like MacWEEK printed the company’s plans far in advance. These days, Apple is much bigger and more important, and journalists like Mark Gurman and analysts like Ming-Chi Kuo are experts at relaying the details of Apple’s future products around the world instantaneously.

Even so, there are always surprises at Apple events. On Monday, I’ll be sitting in the Steve Jobs Theater watching the same video the rest of you are watching at home, and while we can probably all sketch out the broad scope of the event, there will inevitably be little stuff that will make us scratch our collective heads. When all the big reveals are expected, the delight is in the details.

Leaks from the supply chain mean that we tend to know certain basic physical things about new Apple hardware: the shapes, the sizes, and the components with their accompanying specs. But it’s harder (not impossible, but harder) to get all the details of the software that Apple’s planning to take advantage of that new hardware.

A great example this year is the rumor of the Capture Button, a touch-sensitive area on the side of the iPhone 16 that will apparently let you open and control the Camera app. But the details are a bit hazier on exactly how it will work and what it will do. Will it control modes (video, still, etc.) or allow you to zoom or control autofocus? Will those gestures be at all customizable?

I’m looking forward to the story Apple tells around the Capture Button. This brings me to another feature of an Apple product roll-out that is very hard for leaks to get right: the narrative that Apple spins around its products. Yes, it’s all marketing, but the design choices are a part of the storytelling. Why did Apple decide last year to add a physical Action button and this year to add another button dedicated to the camera? Why is this feature different? What problems is it trying to solve for its users? The stories Apple tells around features like this tend to be quite informative about how Apple’s approach and philosophy. I find it interesting and helpful, a rare (albeit self-serving) peek behind the curtain.

Back in June, Apple spent a lot of time talking up Apple Intelligence. I’m sure a lot of people are wondering if there are going to be further Apple Intelligence announcements to come, perhaps tied specifically to the iPhone 16. I can’t see it. I think Apple is working hard to play catch-up when it comes to AI, and it played all its cards at WWDC. In fact, it played all its cards, and showed some other cards it’s planning on playing next year. If there was some other feature left in the tank, I think we would’ve seen it in June. What we’re getting is what we already know.

However, one area of Apple’s AI strategy was suspiciously vague back in June: where third-party chatbots fit in. In Apple’s world, the company’s own models use their knowledge of your personal context to help you on your device or by using Apple’s private cloud. But if you want to search for what the company calls “world knowledge,” it has said that it will (optionally) kick you out to a chatbot like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

But the unveiling of that ChatGPT relationship was underwhelming, given that it was plastered with disclaimers, warnings, the ability to turn it off… and the fact that Apple executives kept insisting that it was merely the first partnership to be announced and that support for other chatbots would undoubtedly come in the future. They even mentioned Google Gemini once or twice, which is not something that’s usually done unless you have some confidence that you’ll get a deal done.

So here’s a possibility for Monday: Might Apple have some additional chatbot relationships to announce? Is it possible that Google Gemini or Anthropic’s Claude might be added to the list of chatbots coming soon to the iPhone? It would be a bit of a shot to OpenAI’s confidence, but given the flak Apple’s taking in the EU for not offering consumer choice, launching its chatbot functionality with a bunch of choices might be a smart move.

Monday marks the tenth anniversary of the original Apple Watch announcement, and I expect at least some interesting Apple Watch news. There’s plenty of heat around the idea that the new Apple Watch models will be bigger, and I’m really interested in hearing Apple’s storytelling about why this is a good thing. I know people enjoy having a smaller watch, and if Apple’s expanding the small watch to be the size of the (current) large model, what does that mean? Does it wear differently? Will it not seem huge? Or does Apple just have confidence, based on its market research, that it can make the Apple Watch larger and people will still buy it?

I’m also fascinated by the rumor about the Apple Watch SE, which might be getting a revision that could potentially include some lighter and cheaper materials, such as plastic. Would Apple, a company that mostly gravitates toward muted colors (or no colors at all), dare to make some eye-popping, brightly colored plastic watches, perhaps targeted at younger people?

Among the most opaque areas for Apple reporters who are trying to break news are the ones that come from a small group of people deep inside the marketing group: product names and prices. The Apple Watch SE price is a bit of a mystery, but an interesting one. Could Apple possibly get an Apple Watch under $200 for the first time? Or will it just slide into the existing price point?

And with all the buzz about Apple Intelligence, what’s Apple’s story regarding A.I. and the Apple Watch? Obviously, the hardware can’t support it in the same way as other devices and probably won’t be able to for years to come. But is there some sort of mitigation that Apple could promise for the near future? Will the Apple Watch be able to talk to an iPhone that’s powered by Apple Intelligence and use it to relay queries to a more intelligent assistant than on-device Siri? No idea, but Monday would be an opportunity to provide some reassurance, if any is on offer.

Finally, there’s the question of the blood-oxygen sensor on the Apple Watch. This will mark the first launch event after Apple was prevented from selling the device in the U.S. with the oxygen sensor turned on. Does the company really want to launch new models without being able to use that feature in its home market? Does it have any choice?

I see three possibilities: Apple could use Monday to announce that it’s reached a detente with Masimo, and that the oxygen features are once again available. It could announce that it’s somehow built a new oxygen sensor that its lawyers feel does not infringe on Masimo’s patents. Or it could just… do nothing, ship the new watches, not talk about the oxygen sensor, and people buying new Apple Watches in the U.S. will actually take a step back, assuming they’re upgrading from an older model with the oxygen sensor intact.

One last hardware marketing detail I’ll be looking for is how Apple defines the AirPods line, assuming some new AirPods are on the way. How many AirPods models are going to be for sale? Are there new low-end models that are replacing older models, or are we doing the tried-and-true Tim Cook thing of selling the older model for a cheaper price while the new model slots in at a slightly higher one? And what AirPods Pro features might creep into the lower-end model AirPods? What differentiates a “low-end” set of AirPods with noise cancellation from the AirPods Pro, and does that differentiation make sense?

One of the final mysteries of most Apple events comes from timelines. Only Apple knows exactly when the new iPhone preorders will go online, when the devices will ship, and when all the new OS versions will drop. Hopefully, we’ll hear all those dates on Monday—along with, if we’re very lucky, a better idea of when Apple Intelligence will ship to the general public.

In any event, there’s plenty to watch for on Monday, even if the big points have been spoiled. I look forward to watching the video, getting my hands on the products afterward, and relaying it all to you when I’m back home from my day trip to Cupertino.

By Shelly Brisbin

September 3, 2024 10:10 AM PT

Why Apple Books works for me

Dan wrote last week about reports that Apple had laid off 100 people in the Books group. The news seemed to strike most observers as a regrettable, but understandable business decision. Apple Books has never really been able to topple, or even challenge, Amazon’s dominance in the ebook world, As a writer who sells books directly and via Apple Books, I have some thoughts.

I sell iOS Access for All: Your Comprehensive Guide to Accessibility for iPhone and iPad via my Web site, and on Apple Books. I publish a new version of the book for each year’s iOS update. The majority of books are sold directly through my own site. I’ve promoted the book that way, and made sure the site is accessible for blind readers and others. Readers have told me they want both ePub and PDF formats, so that’s what I offer. But there’s a subset of readers who prefers to get the book from Apple Books, so I link there. Whether it’s the familiarity of doing business with Apple directly, or the desire to store and sync purchases with the Books app on all their devices, I’ve heard loud and clear that Books is a place I need to be. A couple of times I made Kindle versions of the book and attempted to sell them on Amazon. I got very little traction there – perhaps because I didn’t promote its availability well, but more likely because people with accessibility needs don’t gravitate toward the Kindle platform. The Apple Books app not only offers a lot of flexibility in text formats and themes, it works flawlessly with the VoiceOver screen reader and other Apple speech tools. All of this makes my book a bit of an unusual beast, but it keeps Apple Books on my radar.

From a production standpoint, the Books store is easy-peasy for me, too, since I create the book as an ePub – the format supported by Books and the one I prefer to offer directly because of its native accessibility. All I have to do is load the book into iTunes Connect and submit it for publication in as many country-specific stores as I want. And while I’m at it, I can choose whether or not to apply DRM. I’ve chosen not to do so.

The issue with transferring Apple Books to another platform is not the existence of DRM, but the opacity of knowing exactly how to get the book out, and move it to another ePub-compatible platform. But once you dig in under the hood in iCloud, it’s certainly possible for a committed user to drag a file where you want it, assuming there’s no DRM.

There’s a tendency to focus on the condition of the Books app when we try to understand Apple’s decision to lay off staff. And because many of those let go work on the engineering side, that’s fair. But the cuts also hit the Books store, which maintains the book approval process, gets authors paid, and provides support. I’ve relied on that infrastructure more than once, and been pleased with the speedy turnaround those teams offered. I worry that could change after these cuts, and I hope I’m wrong.

When developers began the first uproar over the 30 percent “Apple tax” on their apps, I was painfully aware that as an indie book publisher, I was paying it, too. In fact, when I promote my book on podcasts or have a chance to speak to buyers in person, I remind them that I get all of the profits (minus a small per-month fee I pay to store and distribute the book files) when you buy a book directly from me. Apple Books returns just 70 percent to me, which makes things painful when I sell books in bulk to an agency or school district whose financial managers are more comfortable buying from the Books store. If I sell 50 books at 24.95 US$, I get $873.25 back from Apple. If I sell those same 50 books myself, it’s $1247.50. Ouch!

So is the “tax” worth it? I’m forced to think so, because the Apple process has been so easy for me and 25-or more percent of my customers prefer Apple Books. But ask me again when I publish my iOS 18 edition later this fall, and I’ve had a chance to experience the slimmed-down Books regime firsthand.

[Shelly Brisbin is a radio producer and author of the book iOS Access for All. She's the host of Lions, Towers & Shields, a podcast about classic movies, on The Incomparable network.]

By Dan Moren

August 28, 2024 7:09 AM PT

Apple job cuts in Books are turning the page in the wrong direction

The next chapter of Apple Books’s life is looking a little bleak.

In a report at Bloomberg (paywalled, naturally), Mark Gurman says that the company has laid off about a hundred people, primarily in the team behind Apple Books and the Apple Bookstore.

Apple Books has become less of a priority for the company, which doesn’t see it as a major part of its services lineup. The Books app is still expected to get new features over time, according to the people.

Books has long been a weird business for Apple. The company made a big push back at the time of its introduction to try and steal market share from Amazon, courting publishers with terms that included better prices and an agency model split. It subsequently got slapped by the Department of Justice for some ill-advised business decisions related to that pricing, and then seemingly got scared off from trying anything in the market ever again.

Which is a shame, because in the intervening years Amazon has only continued to consolidate its market share and desperately needs a serious competitor to shake things up.

Sharing a little of my own data here: I’ve self-published my own short stories across most major ebook market places. Amazon makes up the bulk of those downloads and sales—53 percent and 66 percent, respectively. Apple comes in a solid second place in sales, with 21 percent, and third place in downloads with 11 percent.¹ My literary agency has also published my novel All Souls Lost in ebook across those platforms, and Apple Books sales are also in second there, accounting for 18 percent of sales to 63 percent for Amazon.

I suspect my numbers are probably skewed by the fact that my audience—that’s you all reading this, in large part—are overrepresented by users of Apple products.² That said, to my eyes, Apple has managed to achieve itself a comfortable, if distant second place in ebooks without really spending much in the way of time and effort. Which perhaps explains why they’re looking to cut costs and reduce focus—if the business works “fine” as is, then why invest more?

My disappointment stems from the fact that Apple is better positioned and equipped than anyone else in the industry to take on Amazon head-to-head in ebooks. But doing so would require the company to do something different. And I don’t mean its misguided attempts to reinvent the reading experience as it’s tried in the past—most avid readers are pretty happy with their the way they consume books.

One move would, obviously, be for Apple to release its own dedicated e-reader device with an e-ink screen. Kindles and Kobos are so successful because they replicate several of the best things about physical books—high contrast screens that are easy to read in all conditions, long-lasting battery life, and extreme light weight and portability—while bringing plenty in the way of convenience—to wit, a nearly infinite amount of books in a tiny device.

Do I expect Apple to do this? Absolutely not. Cupertino seems pretty comfortable with saying its e-reading devices are iPads and iPhones. Which is clearly understandable from the company’s perspective: for one, the company already makes these devices and they are passable for reading. For another, the most popular e-readers are generally low-cost, low-margin devices—not the kind of market Apple likes to play in. I’m sorry, nobody wants a $500 e-reader.³

So if embarking upon a new hardware product is out⁴, the biggest opportunity Apple has is to change the business side of things. I can think of two primary options there: the first is to provide some sort of, yes, subscription program. Amazon already offers a version of this with Kindle Unlimited, which provides access to an all-you-can-eat model—but only for certain content, as its terms for publishers require a window of exclusivity for electronic copies, which generally counts out traditionally published books. That’s certainly been a boon for Amazon, which not only picks up recurring subscription revenue, but has provided an entirely separate marketplace of content. (Albeit one that has its own game to play.)

While that deal might benefit some voracious readers and might bolster both Apple’s books business and its services revenue, it comes with some potential limitations for authors and publishers, depending on how the terms and royalties are structured.

The second option, to my mind, is one I’ve advocated for before: taking a page from Apple’s own digital music market of the 2000s and figuring out a way to make the Apple Books the premiere purveyor of ebooks without digital rights management. Ideally it would be combined with a seamless process to deliver those DRM-free books to your third-party e-reader of choice.⁵

The potential here is to expand the market beyond those people who will only ever buy and read ebooks on Apple’s own devices. Which is clearly not a huge chunk of the market, because if it was, the company would probably not be looking to cut costs by laying off people. If it’s about growth, this is how you do it.

Do I think Apple will make this move? I’m not optimistic, especially since it would require publishers to get onboard. There are a few who already sell DRM-free ebooks, including a major imprint of the big five and my own mid-size publisher, but fear of piracy runs deep.⁶

Perhaps eight years isn’t long enough in Apple’s institutional memory to have erased the sting of its defeat in the ebooks case, or maybe it’s just made the company gun-shy when it comes to trying anything else in the market. I think that’s a shame, because this is a great chance for Apple to change the narrative.

Updated on 8/28: A previous version of this article misstated the terms of Apple’s push with publishers when it first launched its ebook marketplace.

[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

August 26, 2024 9:35 AM PT

Apple announces “Glowtime” event on September 9

It’s time once again for the biggest event in Apple’s calendar. Apple on Monday announced a special event kicking off at 10am Pacific/1pm Eastern on Monday, September 9. Few other details are known, beyond the fact that the event will be broadcast from Apple Park. This year’s event iconography features a neon, glowing animated Apple logo and the event includes the tagline “It’s Glowtime,” so make of that what you will.

The expectation, of course, is that Apple will use this event to announce the iPhone 16 line, which is rumored to bring the usual updates to the iPhone’s camera system, a new line of processors, and external design tweaks (including some new colors). We may also see updates to the Apple Watch line, new AirPods, and, of course, official release information for iOS/iPadOS 18 as well as the company’s other software updates.

Start your speculation engines now.

[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.]