By John Moltz
January 13, 2023 3:08 PM PT
This Week in Apple: The king of content
The Apple headset cometh (but later-eth), Eddy Cue wants to sell you some hot Apple content, and get your dirty fingers off my screen!
Headset-ing into 2023
If Apple has its way, 2023 will be the year of the Apple headset. (Maybe next year, Linux on the desktop.)
Mark Gurman tells us that the company will reveal the headset at an event in the spring, before WWDC, and then release it in the fall.
It’s very exciting (whatever the heck it is) but I hope you weren’t hoping for new AirPods, iPads, Apple Watches, or Apple TVs this year because Gurman also says Apple has moved resources from those products to the headset to make sure it launches on time.
Well, maybe you can take the money you were going to spend on those products and buy… uh, half a headset, if it’s really going to be sold at the rumored $3,000 price point. Surely they’ll sell them that way.
Maybe by canceling everything else, Apple thinks it’ll be the year of the Apple headset by default. That could work.
Thank you for your services
Literally everyone: “…”
Eddy Cue: “Hey! I still work at Apple!”
Literally everyone: “Oh. Uh… OK. Cool.”
Yes, Eddy Cue would like you to know that Apple services are a very big deal, thank you very much, and they’re doing super great, K? Thanks, bye.
Cue gushes:
It’s remarkable how much great content is at our fingertips…
Please do not touch the content! The content is for the eyes not the fingers! Animals.
Last week marked my 34th anniversary at Apple…
Being at the same company for 34 years in the tech industry is like saying “I was formed on the great island of Pangaea during the Triassic period.” But it is a great testament to Cue’s utility to Apple and his devotion to the company.
Jason wonders if this note was posted in advance of Apple’s quarterly results, which look to be rough this time around. Probably, but also the timing might have to do with the Golden Globe Awards coming out this week, which saw a few Apple productions nominated, with Paul Walter Hauser winning best supporting actor for “Black Bird”.
Because in Hollywood, if you don’t stand up and take credit for something, did it even happen?
I want to touch you all over
Friends, I have spent the better part of the last 20 years trying to get my wife and son to stop touching my laptop screen and now Mark Gurman is telling me it’s all for naught?
Apple Inc. is working on adding touch screens to its Mac computers, a move that would defy long-held company orthodoxy and embrace an approach that co-founder Steve Jobs once called “ergonomically terrible.”
OK, Steve said a lot of things. He said “If you see a stylus, they blew it.” He said “You’re holding it wrong.” He said “You’re fired.”
A lot, apparently. Often in elevators.
There’s a big difference between the things Apple says publicly and what it’s working on behind the scenes. You can decry the filthy marketing aspect of it, but don’t necessarily think that they’ve changed their minds.
Not gonna lie, though, there have been times since the introduction of the iPad when even I’ve started to reach for the screen. Some of us have been saying for 10 years that Apple might eventually make a touchscreen Mac but that, to do it right, it would have to “reinvent user interaction on the desktop”. Since then, it’s gone a long way toward making trackpad gestures a convenient way of interacting with macOS. Is that enough? Probably not by itself, because there are still so many touch targets that are too small for a finger. But when you think about how the cursor on iPadOS works, you can imagine a system that lets you activate a small touch target with your finger without having to hit it exactly or by making a completely different set of interface elements like Microsoft did on Windows.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go buy a bunch of those touch-enabled gloves for my family before they grease up my screen.
One can only imagine the kind of content Eddy Cue is preparing for the Apple headset. I can’t wait for my family to point it all out by reaching in and touching the screen on mine, if I can ever afford one.
[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.]
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