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Apple Warns that It Expects to Miss Quarterly Revenue Guidance Due to COVID-19 Outbreak in China→

Apple has announced that it does not expect to meet its revenue projections for the March quarter as a result of the COVID-19 virus outbreak in China, which the company says has resulted in a slower return to normal conditions than expected at the time of its Q1 2020 earnings call held on January 28th. Apple cited two factors that will reduce revenue for the current quarter:

The first is that worldwide iPhone supply will be temporarily constrained. While our iPhone manufacturing partner sites are located outside the Hubei province — and while all of these facilities have reopened — they are ramping up more slowly than we had anticipated. The health and well-being of every person who helps make these products possible is our paramount priority, and we are working in close consultation with our suppliers and public health experts as this ramp continues. These iPhone supply shortages will temporarily affect revenues worldwide.

The second is that demand for our products within China has been affected. All of our stores in China and many of our partner stores have been closed. Additionally, stores that are open have been operating at reduced hours and with very low customer traffic. We are gradually reopening our retail stores and will continue to do so as steadily and safely as we can. Our corporate offices and contact centers in China are open, and our online stores have remained open throughout.

Although Apple has not provided revised March quarter revenue guidance, the company said that customer demand for its products and services outside of China has been strong and in line with its expectations.

Apple also announced in its press release that it is more than doubling its donation to support China’s public health effort.

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Jason Snell on Editing Podcasts with Ferrite on an iPad with the Apple Pencil→

Jason Snell has edited a lot of podcasts. In fact, The Incomparable, the flagship show of his media and pop culture podcast network of the same name, just reached episode 500.

Since last summer, Snell has been using Ferrite by Wooji Juice to edit nearly every episode of The Incomparable on his iPad with the Apple Pencil. I’ve heard him describe his iPad and Apple Pencil workflow on podcasts before, but there’s nothing like seeing it in action, which you can now do on the Six Colors YouTube channel.

What struck me most about Snell’s video is how natural direct manipulation of multiple audio tracks looks. I’ve always done all of my podcast editing on a Mac with Logic Pro X, but after watching Snell edit an episode with multiple guests, I look forward to trying this myself.

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Connected, Episode 281: Oligarch Modder Community→

On this week’s episode of Connected:

Stephen and Myke launch new careers as iPhone designers and Federico keeps refreshing Apple Music. Also: Swift Playgrounds on the Mac, Apple News+ and a few things we are currently enjoying.

You can listen below (and find the show notes here).

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Connected, Episode 281

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Adapt, Episode 18: Fixing Multitasking→

On this week’s episode of Adapt:

Multitasking is key to using the iPad as a primary computer, but the current drag and drop-centric system is flawed. Ryan shares his idea for a new approach, then Federico details his email app discoveries.

You can listen below (and find the show notes here), and don’t forget to send us questions using #AskAdapt and by tagging our Twitter account.

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Adapt, Episode 18

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Connected, Episode 280: Peanut Butterpeanut Butterpeanut Butter→

On this week’s episode of Connected:

This week, most of the show document got shredded as a bunch of breaking news took place during recording. iOS 13.4 is bringing a bunch of changes, Mac Catalyst could become more useful and universal apps are coming to the Mac. When not breaking news, Federico shares a sad story, Myke reads a tweet about bread and Stephen struggles with how to edit the episode.

You can listen below (and find the show notes here).

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Connected, Episode 280

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AppStories, Episode 148 – The Elements of Modern iOS and iPadOS Apps→

This week on AppStories, we discuss the features and technologies that go into building a modern iOS or iPadOS app with examples of some of our favorite implementations.

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Matt Birchler’s watchOS 7 Wish List→

Matt Birchler has made a tradition of publishing a watchOS wish list every year at BirchTree that is accompanied by concept art, showing how his ideas might be implemented. This year for watchOS 7, Birchler has a long list of excellent ideas that focus on virtually every aspect of the OS, including fitness tracking, communications, and battery life.

Like Birchler, I’d love to see more flexibility built into the Activity app. For example, he expects more ring options in watchOS 7:

I think this year not only will Apple let you customize these rings more than before, but they’ll also add more rings. Want to add sleep or mindfulness: go right ahead.

As he suggests, the ability to set custom metrics for each ring and edit workouts in the Activity app on the iPhone would be fantastic additions as well.

It’s also a little hard to believe that autocomplete hasn’t been added to the scribble keyboard on the Apple Watch. Perhaps that’s a technical limitation, but like Birchler, I think it would go a long way to making text input more tolerable on the Watch.

Those are just a couple of my favorite ideas from Birchler’s story this year. Be sure to check out the full post. There are some terrific ideas here, and the concept art looks wonderful as always.

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Jason Snell’s 2019 Apple Report Card→

Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors:

It’s time for our annual look back on Apple’s performance during the past year, as seen through the eyes of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people who spend an awful lot of time thinking about Apple.

This is the fifth year that I’ve presented this survey to a hand-selected group. They were prompted with 12 different Apple-related subjects, and asked to rate them on a scale from 1 to 5 and optionally provide text commentary per category.

It’s always a pleasure to share my thoughts about Apple’s past year in Snell’s annual report. Not only is it a great read – at this point, it’s also a fantastic historical resource collecting years of commentary about Apple.

You can read Snell’s complete report card here. For context, I’ve included my full responses to Snell’s questionnaire below.

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