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Posts tagged with "apple"

Six Colors’ ‘Apple in 2023’ Report Card

For the past nine years, Six Colors’ Jason Snell has put together an ‘Apple report card’ – a survey to assess the current state of Apple “as seen through the eyes of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people who spend an awful lot of time thinking about Apple”.

The 2023 edition of the Six Colors Apple Report Card has just been published, and you can find an excellent summary of all the submitted comments along with charts featuring average scores for different categories here.

I’m happy that Jason invited me again to share some thoughts and comments on what Apple did in 2023. As you’ll see from my comments, I was very disappointed with the iPad – there was literally no new hardware last year and only minor changes in software – and more intrigued by what’s happening in macOS land. This, I think, will be a recurring theme on MacStories in 2024: as I move my workflow to the Vision Pro with the Mac as an accessory to it, I expect I’ll be using macOS a lot more as a result. In 2023, I was also very impressed with iPhone hardware, somewhat annoyed with the lack of changes to the AirPods line, and surprised by the updates in tvOS 17.

I’ve prepared the full text of my answers to the Six Colors report card, which you can find below.

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It’s Time for Apple to Get Weird

Speaking of weird things: I’m on the record with saying that I’d love to see Apple get weird with some of their products, so obviously this story by Jason Snell at Macworld resonated with me:

While I admire the great care Apple takes before it brings a product to market, I do sometimes think that the company is missing out on some potentially great products because they’re not willing to get weird and risk failure. Consider the original MacBook Air, which was deeply weird but led to a second-generation model that became the template for Apple’s laptop design for the next decade!

The technology already exists today for Apple to create some wild stuff, the likes of which we’ve never seen from them. The Vision Pro has broken the seal. Let’s get weird, Apple.

As a longtime proponent of Weird in my computing life (I mean), I love that Apple released the Vision Pro in its current form: it’s a weird product with tons of rough edges and I want to make it my main computer. But, like Jason suggests, there are so many other product categories where I’d like to see Apple try and make something weird and wonderful. I have some experience with Android foldables, including some recent ones, and while I like the form factor a lot, I can’t help but think how glorious an Apple device that unfolded to become a larger tablet could be.

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Six Colors’ ‘Apple in 2022’ Report Card

For the past eight years, Six Colors’ Jason Snell has put together an ‘Apple report card’ – a survey that aims to assess the current state of Apple “as seen through the eyes of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people who spend an awful lot of time thinking about Apple”.

The 2022 version of the Six Colors Apple Report Card was published yesterday, and you can find an excellent summary of all the submitted comments along with charts featuring average scores for different categories here.

Once again, I’m happy Jason invited me to share some thoughts and comments on what Apple did in 2022. MacStories readers know that last year didn’t exactly go as planned. While iOS 16 delivered a meaningful update to the Lock Screen for people who care about customization and the iPhone 14 Pro came with substantial improvements to the display and camera tech, the iPad story was disappointing and confusing. This is reflected in my answers to Jason’s survey, and it’ll be a recurring topic on MacStories in 2023. At the same time, I was also impressed by Apple’s performance on services, concerned by the evolution of the Shortcuts app, and cautious about the company’s newfound approach to HomeKit.

I’ve prepared the full text of my answers to the Six Colors report card, which you can find below. I recommend reading the whole thing on Six Colors to get the broader context of all the participants in the survey.

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Apple Celebrates Black History Month with a New Black Unity Collection and More

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

To celebrate Black History Month, Apple has released a new Black Unity Collection. The collection includes an iPhone wallpaper, an Apple Watch face, and a Sports Loop band.

According to Apple, the special-edition Apple Watch Black Unity Sport Loop “features the word “Unity” woven abstractly into the band using red, green, and black yarns that pay homage to the Pan-African flag, while a unique layering of yarns lends a sense of three-dimensionality to the letters.” Both the iPhone wallpaper and watch face combine geometric shapes in green, black, red, and yellow. On the watch face, the numbers on the face change as the minutes pass, using parts of other numbers.

Apple is also marking Black History Month across many of its services, including the App Store, Apple Music, the TV app, Fitness+, News, Podcasts, Books, and Maps. Among the offerings will be Apple Maps Guides by the Smithsonian, curated TV and film collections by Dr. Jelani Cobb, apps and games, special playlists on Apple Music, and podcast spotlights.

Apple also announced that it:

is supporting Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney), Ghetto Film School (New York, Los Angeles, London), Music Forward (Los Angeles), Shout Mouse Press (Washington, D.C.), and The National Museum of African American Music (Nashville, Tennessee). Apple’s support for these organizations is a continuation of REJI grants over the past two years that helped organizations committed to providing economic, educational, and creative opportunities in communities of color.

The Apple Watch Black Unity Sport Loop is available to order online today and will be in stores on January 24th for $49. The Unity 2023 watch face and iPhone will be available next week, presumably alongside OS updates.


Tim Cook Delivers Keynote Speech to Privacy Group

Today at the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ Global Privacy Summit, Apple CEO Tim Cook delivered a keynote speech on privacy. The IAPP’s mission is to act as a resource for privacy professionals to help them in their efforts to manage information privacy risks and protect data for their organizations.

Cook’s speech, which was livestreamed on the IAPP’s YouTube channel, began with a recap of Apple’s efforts to protect user privacy, including App Tracking Transparency, alluding to the “A Day in the Life of Your Data” white paper the company published early last year.

Cook told the assembled crowd that Apple supports privacy regulation, including GDPR in the EU and privacy laws in the US. However, Cook also expressed concern about unintended consequences that laws being considered in the US and elsewhere might cause, calling out sideloading proposals in particular. Cook said that although Apple supports competition, alternate app stores and sideloading are not the solution because they would open devices up to apps that sidestep the company’s tracking protections and can expose users introduce malware.

Concluding his remarks, Cook called on tech companies and governments to work together to fashion policies that don’t undermine user privacy. Ending on an optimistic note, Cook told the gathering that although the world is at a pivotal moment for privacy, the end of privacy as we know it is not inevitable.


Six Colors’ ‘Apple in 2021’ Report Card

For the past seven years, Six Colors’ Jason Snell has put together an ‘Apple report card’ – a survey that aims to assess the current state of Apple “as seen through the eyes of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people who spend an awful lot of time thinking about Apple”.

The 2021 installment of the Six Colors report card is now out, and you can find an excellent summary of all the submitted comments along with charts featuring average scores for different categories on Six Colors.

I wasn’t able to participate in last year’s report card, but I’m happy Jason invited me back to share some thoughts and comments on what Apple did in 2021. As it turns out…I had a lot of opinions I wanted to share this year, particularly about the Mac. This may be surprising coming from me – a longtime iPad Pro user – but I’m incredibly fascinated by Apple’s new direction with the Mac platform and how it’s changed thanks to Apple silicon.

I’ll have much more to share about macOS and the M1 Max MacBook Pro I’ve been testing in the near future. In the meantime, I’ve prepared the full text of my answers to the Six Colors report card, which you can find below. Once again, I recommend reading the whole thing on Six Colors to get the broader context of all the participants in the survey.

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Austin Carr and Mark Gurman on Tim Cook’s Apple

Austin Carr and Mark Gurman, writing for Bloomberg, today published a lengthy investigation of Tim Cook’s tenure at Apple. From his earlier years building out Apple’s supply chain under Steve Jobs, to more recent times navigating the Trump presidency and the building antitrust pressure, the article is well researched and very worth a read. Without explicitly taking a stance, Carr and Gurman highlight both positive and negative aspects of Cook’s level-headed approach to piloting the company. I found some of the descriptions of Cook’s early manufacturing moves particularly interesting:

Cook’s global supply chain greatly improved upon the fabrication approaches that Dell and Compaq had developed. The big PC brands often outsourced both manufacturing and significant design decisions, resulting in computers that were cheap but not distinctive. Cook’s innovation was to force Foxconn and others to adapt to the extravagant aesthetic and quality specifications demanded by Jobs and industrial design head Jony Ive. Apple engineers crafted specialized manufacturing equipment and traveled frequently to China, spending long hours not in conference rooms as their PC counterparts did but on production floors hunting for hardware refinements and bottlenecks on the line.

Contract manufacturers worked with all the big electronics companies, but Cook set Apple apart by spending big to buy up next-generation parts years in advance and striking exclusivity deals on key components to ensure Apple would get them ahead of rivals.

The article also focuses on the stark contrast of manufacturing prowess between the U.S. and China, including Chinese manufacturer Foxconn’s ability to spin up brand new facilities in mere months:

[Foxconn founder Terry] Gou always seemed happy to accommodate, often building entire factories to handle whatever minimalist-chic design specs Apple threw at Foxconn. Jon Rubinstein, a senior vice president for hardware engineering during Jobs’s second tour at Apple, recalls almost having a heart attack in 2005 when he went with Gou to see a new factory in Shenzhen for the iPod Nano—a tiny device 80% smaller than Apple’s original MP3 player—only to find an empty field. Within months, though, a large structure and production line were in place. “In the U.S. you couldn’t even get the permits approved in that time frame,” he says.

Check out the full contents over at Bloomberg.

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Apple Announces Major Expansion of Its Racial Equity and Justice Initiative

Today, Apple announced a significant expansion of its Racial Equity and Justice Initiative (REJI), the $100 million project to help eliminate barriers to opportunities and address injustices confronted by communities of color. The new projects, which build on the company’s existing initiative, include a global innovation and learning hub for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, the first US-based coding and tech education center, and venture capital funding.

In announcing the projects, Apple CEO Tim Cook said:

We are all accountable to the urgent work of building a more just, more equitable world — and these new projects send a clear signal of Apple’s enduring commitment. We’re launching REJI’s latest initiatives with partners across a broad range of industries and backgrounds — from students to teachers, developers to entrepreneurs, and community organizers to justice advocates — working together to empower communities that have borne the brunt of racism and discrimination for far too long. We are honored to help bring this vision to bear, and to match our words and actions to the values of equity and inclusion we have always prized at Apple.

Cook is scheduled to be interviewed today on CBS This Morning by Gayle King, and although the topic of the interview has not been revealed, it’s a safe bet Cook will be discussing REJI.

Rendering of the Propel Center.

Rendering of the Propel Center.

REJI was launched in June 2020 in the wake of the killing of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and others and is led by Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives. As part of the initiative, Apple announced it is contributing $25 million to help build Propel Center in Atlanta, Georgia, to support Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). In its press release, Apple explains that:

The center is designed to support the next generation of diverse leaders, providing innovative curricula, technology support, career opportunities, and fellowship programs. The Propel Center will offer a wide range of educational tracks, including AI and machine learning, agricultural technologies, social justice, entertainment arts, app development, augmented reality, design and creative arts, career preparation, and entrepreneurship. Experts from Apple will help develop curricula and provide ongoing mentorship and learning support, along with offering internship opportunities.

Apple is creating two new grants to support HBCU engineering programs, and a new Faculty Fellows Program is being established for HBCU educators, too. Apple also offers 100 Apple Scholar scholarships to students from underrepresented communities.

Apple has opened developer academies in several cities around the world, but today’s announcement marks the first US-based academy that will be established in Detroit, Michigan. The academy is being launched in collaboration with Michigan State University and will offer an introductory 30-day program and an intensive 10-12 month program. The company will also host a virtual Entrepreneur Camp for Black Founders and Developers next month.

The third prong today’s announcements is venture capital funding for Black and Brown entrepreneurs designed to address systemic barriers to funding. Apple is investing $10 million with Harlem Capital, a New York-based early-stage venture capital firm. Harlem Capital will also participate in the Detroit Developer Academy and Entrepreneur Camp. Also, Apple is investing $25 million in Siebert Williams Shank’s Clear Vision Impact Fund, which invests in minority-owned companies and making a contribution to The King Center.

The breadth and depth of Apple’s REJI initiative is impressive, focusing on educators, students, and start-ups as a way to create opportunities and address systemic injustices. It’s heartening to see Apple pour its resources into this initiative and one that I hope will continue to grow and succeed.


Phil Schiller Transitions into Reduced Role as Apple Fellow; Greg Joswiak Newly Appointed SVP of Worldwide Marketing

Apple announced a major change to its executive team today: Phil Schiller, who first started at Apple in 1987, is transitioning into a limited role with far fewer responsibilities, holding the title Apple Fellow. Schiller will retain oversight of the App Store and Apple Events, and continue reporting directly to CEO Tim Cook, but most of his current responsibilities will shift to Greg (Joz) Joswiak, who takes over the title of senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.

Here’s Schiller on this significant day of transition:

“It has been a dream come true for me to work at Apple, on so many products I love, with all of these great friends — Steve, Tim, and so many more,” said Schiller. “I first started at Apple when I was 27, this year I turned 60 and it is time for some planned changes in my life. I’ll keep working here as long as they will have me, I bleed six colors, but I also want to make some time in the years ahead for my family, friends, and a few personal projects I care deeply about.”

Tim Cook remarks:

“Phil has helped make Apple the company it is today and his contributions are broad, vast, and run deep. In this new role he will continue to provide the incredible thought partnership, and guidance that have defined his decades at Apple”

Schiller has been one of the most visible members of Apple’s team for a long time, most notably owning primary responsibility for introducing new hardware at Apple keynotes, such as the latest iPhone models each year. His expected absence from future such occasions will mark a stark shift for the company.

Joswiak, who takes Schiller’s former role, is no unfamiliar face himself. He has over two decades of leadership experience within Apple, and in recent years has become a regular presence at Apple events as well. Despite being a major force within the company, however, Joswiak’s presence on the executive team represents a new level of leadership for him, and come with major new responsibilities.

After many years of stability at the highest levels of leadership, time is finally catching up with Apple’s executive team. Chief Design Officer Jony Ive departed the company last summer, just a few months after Angela Ahrendts vacated her role as SVP of Retail. While today’s news follows a different pattern, since Schiller is remaining with the company despite his reduced role, so much change at the top of the organization feels very new for the modern Apple era.

As someone who began following Apple closely only about a decade ago, not long before the passing of former presentation chief Steve Jobs, I’ve seen a lot of Schiller product introductions and am really going to miss his presence for many keynotes to come.