By John Moltz

May 3, 2024 2:00 PM PT

This Week in Apple: Event horizon

Oh, you like bizarre Apple rumors? Name M4. Apple is “behind” on AI and will probably still be after next week’s iPad event, something the EU must have just heard about.

Putting the cart M4 the horse

New iPads will be announced next week and Mark Gurman slid in just before the wacky rumor deadline.

“Gurman: New iPad Pro may actually be powered by the M4 chip, touting AI features”

An M4? In this economy?

This caused a great frenzy of speculation about how this might possibly come to pass. Would the new iPads be AI powerhouses, fueled by an all-new chip secretly made in an heretofore unknown orbital TSMC fabrication plant? Would this “M4” really be an “M3” with “4” written over the “3” with a Sharpie? Or was Gurman all hopped up on goofballs? Tune in Tuesday morning to find out.

Apple will surely make some references to AI next week, but as we will see in the next section, it seems it will just be a soupçon rather than the firehose of repetition that “5G” got at 2020’s iPhone 12 event.

Just a hint of AI

The Washington Post asks:

“Apple is behind in AI and killed its self-driving car project. What’s next?”

Uh, well, excuse me, but how can Apple be “behind” when it is conducting double secret advanced AI in an international lab?

“Apple has ‘secretive’ advanced AI lab in Europe; poached specialists from Google”

The Financial Times apparently only identifies the lab as being in Zurich but it seems pretty safe to describe it as a mountaintop lair. Feel free to make your own dioramas of what it looks like, but just know that mine has no fewer than 14 machine-gun-wielding guards on skis. I’d have added more but this shoe box just isn’t that big.

Also, I ran out of army men.

One of them is actually a cowboy.

Again, I feel like I have to point out that a lot of the AI that is currently being pushed out is 10 lbs. of hot garbage stuffed into a small device that should more rightly have just been an app, except for the fact that VC funding is the zombie virus that will destroy us all.

AI startup: “We have half an idea. But we worked someplace famous.”

VC community: [fires millions of dollars at them out of a t-shirt cannon]

And what do you get for all that money?

“The Worst Product I’ve Ever Reviewed… For Now”

“Rabbit R1 review: nothing to see here”

(The latter is so advanced, so ahead of Apple, that you apparently type in your passwords for services via VNC. Enjoy the security!)

If you’re going to be behind on something, this seems like a better thing to be behind on than, say, a wheat thresher.

Despite Apple being so dreadfully behind, the company will reportedly only offer a “hint” at its AI ambitions next week.

…Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook is expected to hint at new artificial intelligence features next week and unveil them at the company’s World Wide Developers Conference in June.

Where have you gone, Trip Chowdhry? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you. Whoo whoo whoo.

Gotta catch ‘em all

The EU apparently woke up one day a few weeks ago and remembered that Apple also sells iPads.

“EU will force Apple to add app sideloading, alternative browser engine support to iPad”

Apple might not be happy about it, but it seemed relatively prepared, subsequently sighing heavily and stating that iPadOS would be getting all the same changes that were made to iOS for the EU. While it might make even less sense from a monopoly standpoint, it just makes sense from an operational standpoint. Who wants to have third-party store software they can use on their iPhone but not on their iPad?

Next, the EU will build a time machine and go back to demand sideloading on the iPod shuffle.

[John Moltz is a Six Colors contributor. You can find him on Mastodon at Mastodon.social/@moltz and he sells items with references you might get on Cotton Bureau.]

By Dan Moren

April 30, 2024 1:49 PM PT

The Back Page: Meet the new new iPad

Good morning and thank you for joining us. 2024 has already started off as a huge year for Apple, including the launch of Apple Vision Pro, our new M3 MacBook Airs, and the most lawsuits and regulatory frameworks ever. Today, we’d like to share some very exciting news about one of our most important products, iPad.

We released the sixth-generation iPad Pro and tenth-generation iPad in October of 2022 and the response was amazing. Users love the iPad Pro’s huge Liquid Retina XDR display, the portrait camera orientation that they can easily cover with a thumb, and some even remember the Apple Pencil’s hover feature. The tenth-generation iPad has delighted those customers who long for us to give any concession to color and demand to plug in their Apple Pencil. And the iPad Air remains a product in our lineup.

Today, we’re announcing the biggest update to iPad ever, and we think you’ll agree that it’s worth the wait. Meet the brand new iPad Pro.

The new iPad Pro lineup features our Hyper Liquid Retina XDR Plus Premium UltraFineWoven® display, the best display in an iPad ever. It’s based on OLED technology to provide the most vivid colors and the blackest blacks, thanks to our patented BlackHole® technology that ensures absolutely no light or living matter escapes. Just don’t stare into that abyss or you never know what you might find staring back at you. Ha ha. No seriously, don’t stare at it.

Users love the iPad Pro’s industry-leading performance—it’s infinity percent faster than the leading Android tablets that don’t exist. But we’re taking that even further, yes, to infinity…and beyond. Because the new iPad Pro lineup is based around our next-next-generation M5 processor.

The M5 processor is the most powerful chip ever in an iPad. Ever. To be fair, we could have put in an M3 and that would have been the case. We could even have put in an M4. But I said to the design team: screw it, we’re going to the M5. And they obligingly put a higher number on it.

Processor power is so important for the things we all do with our iPads, whether it’s rewatching all three seasons of Ted Lasso on a transatlantic flight, or browsing the web to find out why there isn’t a season four of Ted Lasso, or using industry-leading tools like Final Cut Pro for iPad to create videos to harangue Jason Sudeikis about why he won’t make more Ted Lasso.

But we know our customers want to do even more than that, which is why our new iPad Pro is our most AI-focused device ever. We’ve optimized the Neural Engine for generative AI tasks, whether it’s writing your Ted Lasso fan fiction, or even automatically producing entirely new episodes of Ted Lasso on the fly, based on your prompts.

Simply put, the new iPad Pro is the best iPad we’ve ever made. And it’s also available at the best price of any iPad ever, where by “best” we mean “highest.” In fact, the new iPad Pro costs so much that we can’t even tell you the price: you have to go to an Apple Store and have them write it down on a slip of paper that they slide across the table to you. And that’s before AppleCare.

Thank you so much for joining us today. We hope those of you can who afford the new iPad Pro enjoy it. And the iPad Air remains a product in our lineup.

[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 John Moltz

April 26, 2024 11:38 AM PT

This Week in Apple: Imitation is the highest form of fatuity

Sound the klaxons, because Apple’s sales are down! Sales of Finewoven cases may soon go to zero altogether, but at least we’ll have a lot of Pencil options.

Apple’s doing bad!

How can this be?! Just a little while ago they were on top of the world!

“iPhone Sales in China Dropped Significantly in Q1 2024”

OK. OK. So, that’s China. But, surely, Apple’s doing well in the U.S.?

“iPhone activation market share hits new low as Android dominates”:

The latest data shows a notable drop over the last year bringing Apple’s US smartphone market share of new activations back in time six years.

Well, maybe people are buying new iPhones and just not activating them. That’s probably it.

Anyway, Apple has new products out that are surely—

“Apple Vision Pro Customer Interest Dying Down at Some Retail Stores”

Oh, come on!

“Apple Cuts Vision Pro Shipments As Demand Falls ‘Sharply Beyond Expectations’”

Low Vision Pro demand makes no sense because last year I didn’t know anyone who had a Vision Pro and this year I know several. So, go back and check your maths.

While Apple sales may have dropped off, they’ve dropped off from pretty big highs. Also, there’s still one thing Apple will always be first at: being ripped off by its competitors.

“Huawei’s next smartwatch looks like a blatant Apple Watch ripoff”

The day Apple’s competitors stop dutifully copying the company’s designs, then maybe we should start worrying.

Finalwoven

Is it curtains for Finewoven?! (Note: do not make curtains out of Finewoven. It’s not good.)

Last weekend, a rumor claimed “Apple Reportedly Stops Production of FineWoven Accessories”.

Apple introduced Finewoven to much fanfare, proudly stating that it was removing leather from its product offerings. After trying out Finewoven, however, many customers began asking if Apple couldn’t at least kill a few cows, maybe just the ones who were jerks? The cows who drive slowly in the fast lane, take more items than they should into the express checkout, etc.

The rumors of Finewoven’s death, however, were followed up just days later with a claim that Apple did have one more “season” of Finewoven to deliver. It remains to be seen whether this will be a 26-episode U.S. network TV season or a 6-episode British TV season.

More like mini-nOLED, amirite?

This week Apple announced an iPad event for May 7th, with Tim Cook slyly asking people to “Pencil us in”.

Tim, buddy, you know I would love to want to do that, but 7 a.m. Pacific on a Tuesday doesn’t work for me. See, first the dog has to go out, then I have to get some coffee, and I gotta do my Duolingo. Can’t break my streak. You know that. Oh, and Tuesday is trash or recycling. It usually takes me a half an hour just to figure out which. Because I have to wait for the Hendersons to put theirs out first. I’ve asked Todd to get theirs out earlier so I’ll know, but he just stares at me incredulously.

I know you get up at 4 a.m., but what happened to having Apple events at a civilized hour… like 10 a.m.?

And all this to not get mini-OLED? Despite the rumors to date, display analyst Ross Young now says the iPad Air won’t feature a mini-OLED screen after all. Hope you didn’t snap all your other iPads in half already and throw them in the ocean. Partly because that’s an ecological nightmare.

Based on Cook’s coy reference to pencils, we can certainly expect Apple will deliver a new Pencil, thereby allowing us to spend weeks discussing Apple’s weird Pencil lineup again, like we did late last year. You’ve got your Apple Pencil (1st generation), your Apple Pencil (2nd generation) and your Apple Pencil (USB-C). I’ve got my fingers crossed for “Apple Pencil Pro”, if only because that opens the door to one day getting an “Apple Pencil Ultra”. That’s the world I want to live in.

[John Moltz is a Six Colors contributor. You can find him on Mastodon at Mastodon.social/@moltz and he sells items with references you might get on Cotton Bureau.]