Tim Cook, during a shareholder meeting, when asked about a possible future convergence of macOS and iOS:
"Expect us to do more and more where people will view as a laptop replacement, but not a Mac replacement - the Mac does so much more," he said. "To merge these worlds, you would lose the simplicity of one, and the power of the other."
The Apple engineers were smart when they were building their MessagePads. The MessagePad required an immense 8MB of storage for the Newton operating system. In the 90's, flash memory was extremely expensive, so they had to use ROM chips that were mass-produced and could never be updated. But they knew that they would have changes to their firmware until release day, and they would need to able to fix bugs even after the machine was sold.
They came up with three solutions.
If all else fails, MessagePads have their ROM chips sitting on a daughter board, a small additional cicuit board that is fitted into a common (at that time) connector and can be changed without tools after opening the case.
Anyway, wouldn't it be fantastic to create a souped-up ROM board? 8MB Flash and 8MB NewtonOS, also in Flash, being able to patch it, fix it, extend it, have fun. Maybe have even more that 16MB if that is possible. Is it possible? How can we find out?
An early draft of the licensee information for this ROM card exists, but it is not detailed enough to build such a card. Before starting a patch wire solution, I wanted to know how the original board worked, and then fill in the missing information in that draft.
Well, I went all the way and reverse engineered the entire ROM board. Here are my findings.
Amazing work.
If you listen to Apple podcasts - and you really should, because ATP and Gruber's The Talkshow are a delight to listen to, even if it's sometimes infuriatingly inaccurate about Windows, Android, and Linux - you would know there's a lot of talk going on about what Apple is going to do to 'salvage' the iPad, and what Apple is going to do - if anything - to replace the Mac Pro. They sometimes take it a step further, and go into what the future of macOS and iOS is going to - will they continue to exist side-by-side? Will macOS be tightened up and made more like iOS, or will iOS be expanded to make it more like macOS?
These questions arise from Apple's seeming indifference towards the iPad, and the obvious situation with the lack of updates for the Mac Pro, the Mac Mini, and to a lesser degree even the iMac. On top of that, the rumour mill is running in overdrive, and it further fuel the fires of these discussions.
I've been thinking about this a lot these past few months, and I've been talking to people who know their Apple stuff, and the more I take a step back and look at all the discussions, rumours, and Apple's actions - and lack thereof - the more obvious it becomes: it seems like Apple is about to completely redefine its infamous product matrix.
In case you don't remember, back in the late '90s, Steve Jobs showed the following product matrix:
Before I show you what I think Apple is going to do, here are a few reasons underpinning it, in list form:
Add all this up, and I'm getting the feeling Apple is working towards a product matrix that looks more like this:
The basic gist is that I feel Apple is slowly but surely working towards positioning iOS computers as its consumer line, and macOS computers as its pro line.
Since I can already hear people tapping away at their keyboards about Xcode this and consumption device that - it's important to note that what is iOS today will be very different from what will be iOS in the future. iOS surely has its limitations right now - specifically things like awkward and cumbersome file management, no proper windowing, etc. - but there's no reason to assume that what iOS looks and feels like today is what it'll look and feel like forever.
A lot of people are exploring what an IDE and related software will look like on iOS (just follow Steven Troughton-Smith and Federico Viticci on Twitter - they talk a lot about production-oriented iPad applications). The problem here isn't that iOS can't do complex applications - the problem is that the application ecosystem isn't conducive to such complex applications, which is quite a big hole Apple dug itself into by letting the App Store model ravage the indie developer scene, race all prices to the bottom of the barrel, and creating the expectation that everything is either 99 cents or free.
Another issue easily spotted in the product matrix is that the iPad Pro awkwardly sits in the desktop line, even though it clearly isn't a desktop device. It could very well be that we'll eventually see an iOS desktop or desktop-like device, but I honestly don't think it's worth the effort. People have overwhelmingly voted with their wallets, and portable computing has resoundingly won.
If this hunch of iOS = consumer, macOS = pro does indeed pan out, I don't expect it to happen overnight; in fact, it will most likely take several years, in a way where you barely notice it's even happening. We should be seeing a heavier emphasis on things like iPad keyboards, which may even include 'hard shell' keyboards which effectively turn them into laptops. On the software side, we should see things like mouse and trackpad support, improved multitasking (perhaps even some form of windowing), and improved file management. Of course, this would be accompanied by a marketing campaign more heavily focused on positioning the iPad as an all-round device capable of replacing your laptop.
Looking at the evidence I listed above, the conversations I've had with people who know Apple really well, and the Apple podcasts I've been listening to, I feel like this is a plausible future for Apple. I obviously don't have any insider information or anything like that - this is all based on gut feeling, some common sense, and the listed evidence. This is not a prediction, and not an "Apple must do this, or else"-kind of thing - just something I've been piecing together these past few months.
This year, 2017, will make or break a lot of this stuff.
A neat piece of computing history - a combination of a hardware dongle and software that lets you run up to System 7 on a NeXT machine (and with some hacking, Mac OS 8).
The latest addition to my NeXT/Mac collection, a Daydream ROM box made in about 1993 by Quix Computerware AG. This unit plugged into the host NeXT's DSP port and contained genuine licensed Macintosh LC ROMs. This allowed the NeXT to boot off the ROMs and thus become a Mac. It was the first time Apple licensed Mac ROMs to a 3rd party and also offered the same performance as a Quadra 950 at a much lower price point and that was including the purchase of the NeXT system. It ran up to system 7.5 officially though with a few hacks 8.1 can be made to run. It is not a Mac virtual machine; it actually boots as a Mac.
The manual contains more information, and it explains that Daydream installs a secondary kernel that in turn boots the Mac ROM.
This in and of itself is quite cool, but as it turns out, that's not where the story ends. People - including some of the original Daydream developers - have hacked this tool to remove the need for the hardware ROM dongle by inserting the ROM directly into the secondary kernel. This means that if you have a 68k NeXT machine, you can boot directly into System 7 or Mac OS 8. Or, more likely, if you have a NeXT emulator such as Previous, you can boot your NeXT emulated machine directly into System 7 or Mac OS 8 (video).
Incredibly cool, and I had no idea this existed. While NeXT and Apple people were doing these awesome things, I was still using MS-DOS. Strange realisation.
Apple Inc. is designing a new chip for future Mac laptops that would take on more of the functionality currently handled by Intel Corp. processors, according to people familiar with the matter.
The chip, which went into development last year, is similar to one already used in the latest MacBook Pro to power the keyboard's Touch Bar feature, the people said. The updated part, internally codenamed T310, would handle some of the computer's low-power mode functionality, they said. The people asked not to be identified talking about private product development. It's built using ARM Holdings Plc. technology and will work alongside an Intel processor.
And before you know it, you have a MacBook ARM.
Earlier today, The Irish Times ran an "article" titled "Brussels broke the rules in its pursuit of Apple's €13bn". That sounds serious, and would definitely have you click. Once you do, you read an article written by "Liza Lovdahl-Gormsen" without any sources, which is basically an almost word-for-word rehash of letters and answers from Tim Cook about the tax deal. The lack of sources and Tim Cook-ery tone of the piece should set off thousands of huge and loud alarm bells in anyone's mind, but it isn't until the very last paragraph of the "article" that the reader stumbles upon this:
Liza Lovdahl-Gormsen is director of the Competition Law Forum and senior research fellow in competition law. This article was commissioned from her by Apple and supplied to The Irish Times
Pathetic and disingenuous at best, intentionally misleading and ethically reprehensible at worst. The fact that the biggest, richest, and most powerful company in the world has to resort to this kind of unethical behaviour should tell you all you need to know about how certain Apple is of its own claims about the tax deal.
Ever launch an app on your iPhone and then get a pop-up warning that says the app may slow down your iPhone? (I have old versions of certain apps, so it shows up for me every once in a while.) That warning usually appears when you're using a 32-bit app. You can still run the app, and you probably don’t even notice the slowdown you've been warned about (at least in my personal experience).
Your ability to run that 32-bit app is coming to an end. As several other Mac sites have reported, Apple has updated the pop-up warning in the iOS 10.3 beta to say that the 32-bit app you're running "will not work with future versions of iOS." The warning goes on to say that the "developer of this app needs to update it to improve its compatibility."
It'd be interesting to know if this actually affects all that many people.
Apple iOS point release betas usually aren't all that interesting, but the first iOS 10.3 beta contains a big change that, while probably being mostly transparent to the average user, is actually quite interesting.
When you update to iOS 10.3, your iOS device will update its file system to Apple File System (APFS). This conversion preserves existing data on your device. However, as with any software update, it is recommended that you create a backup of your device before updating.
Apple's developer documentation contains more information about APFS.
Last year marked the fifth year of Tim Cook’s reign, and year 3 of "Tim Cook's Apple". With recent technological shifts, Apple is at a crossroads of sorts; therefore, I believe a pre-mortem is expedient.
This is a great article.
I, too, wonder if Apple is so stuck on "let's just slap apps on it" that it serves to detriment their efforts. Virtually all their product introductions lately centred around slapping apps on existing, boring hardware and hope for the best. I'm not sure if the linked article's suggestions are the right way to go, but I do know that Apple places more faith in apps than is really warranted.
A cold and harsh truth Apple doesn't seem to grasp: nobody cares about apps. Apps are done. People have a small set of apps they use every day, usually the big name apps such as Facebook and Twitter, and really - that's it. Aside from us nerdier people, nobody browses through the App Store or Google Play, filled with anticipation for what they might find. If you really break it down, I'm pretty sure most people use maybe 2-3 apps daily, and any others maybe once per month.
That's really not something you want to bank your product strategy on.
iPhone app purchasers may sue Apple Inc over allegations that the company monopolized the market for iPhone apps by not allowing users to purchase them outside the App Store, leading to higher prices, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Thursday.
Apple bloggers obviously kneejerk straight into defence mode in response to this news, but if you actually dive into the decision, the court makes a very compelling argument as to why this case ought to be allowed to continue, that preempts all the usual terrible analogies they tend to come up with and/or parrot from the party line:
Apple argues that it does not sell apps but rather sells "software distribution services to developers." In Apple's view, because it sells distribution services to app developers, it cannot simultaneously be a distributor of apps to apppurchasers. Apple analogizes its role to the role of an owner of a shopping mall that "leases physical space to various stores." Apple's analogy is unconvincing. In the case before us, third-party developers of iPhone apps do not have their own "stores." Indeed, part of the anti-competitive behavior alleged by Plaintiffs is that, far from allowing iPhone app developers to sell through their own "stores," Apple specifically forbids them to do so, instead requiring them to sell iPhone apps only through Apple's App Store.
Instead, we rest our analysis, as compelled by Hanover Shoe, Illinois Brick, UtiliCorp, and Delaware Valley, on the fundamental distinction between a manufacturer or producer, on the one hand, and a distributor, on the other. Apple is a distributor of the iPhone apps, selling them directly to purchasers through its App Store. Because Apple is a distributor, Plaintiffs have standing under Illinois Brick to sue Apple for allegedly monopolizing and attempting to monopolize the sale of iPhone apps.
Over on Twitter, John Gruber asked me "iPhones are their own market? Does BMW have a monopoly on BMWs?" This clearly demonstrates a lack of understanding of how the car market actually works (and, quite clearly, indicates Gruber didn't even read the actual decision quoted above). In fact, exactly because car manufacturers have a de facto monopoly on their own products, they are legally obliged to open up their specifications to allow other companies to manufacture competing, off-brand parts and to allow third parties to service and maintain the cars according to the manufacturer's own specifications.
As I've argued before, there's absolutely no reason why the technology world should be treated any differently. Computers have become integral parts of our society, much like cars, and as consumers we should not be forced into relying on just one company for servicing, maintaining, and using them. It's high time we stop treating technology companies like special little flower children, and force them to grow up and become real companies with real responsibilities.
This has been the winter of our discontent. 2016 was the year the tone changed. There's always been a lot of criticism and griping about anything Apple does (and doesn't do - it can't win) but in 2016 I feel like the tone of the chatter about Apple changed and got a lot more negative.
This is worrisome on a number of levels and I've been thinking about it a lot. I'm used to watching people kvetch about the company, but this seems - different. One reason: a lot of the criticisms are correct.
Apple, for the first time in over a decade, simply isn't firing on all cylinders. Please don't interpret that as "Apple is doomed" because it's not, but there are things it's doing a lot less well than it could - and has. Apple's out of sync with itself.
Here are a few of the things I think indicate Apple has gotten itself out of kilter and is in need of some course correction.
This post by Chuq Von Rospach has been widely shared and debated all over the web, and it has some great insights into Apple's 2016. Note that Chuq Von Rospach is a former Apple (and Palm) employee, and certainly has the credentials to talk about these matters.
The well-choreographed customs routine is part of a hidden bounty of perks, tax breaks and subsidies in China that supports the world's biggest iPhone factory, according to confidential government records reviewed by The New York Times, as well as more than 100 interviews with factory workers, logistics handlers, truck drivers, tax specialists and current and former Apple executives. The package of sweeteners and incentives, worth billions of dollars, is central to the production of the iPhone, Apple's best-selling and most profitable product.
Fascinating look at what the local Chinese governments do to entice Foxconn.
Apple removed the "battery time remaining" indicator from the battery status menu in the latest version 10.12.2 of macOS. Apparently it wasn't accurate.
Did you know that MacBook batteries have a dedicated chip that keeps track of how much energy goes in and out of the battery during all times? For example, the 13" MacBook Pro from 2015 uses a BQ20Z451 "battery fuel gauge chip" from Texas Instruments.
On Monday, an angry Apple appealed against an August ruling by the European Commission ordering the company to pay Ireland some €13 billion in back taxes, plus interest. Disappointingly, the Silicon Valley tech giant failed to address the fundamentals of the case, relying instead on a series of ad hominem attacks and procedural objections. If this is the best the company has to offer, it deserves to lose its case and pay its bills in full.
The problem for Apple (and Ireland) is that the company has no leg to stand on - so it has to resort to flat-out lies, like stating laws are being applied retroactively (not true - the treaties and laws applied are much older than this case) or that the case is unprecedented and Apple is being singled out (not true - dozes of companies all across the EU have been punished for the same thing) or that it's just anti-American rhetoric (not true - many of the punished companies are European).
What's even worse for Apple - this thing is a PR nightmare, at least here in Europe. In many European countries, we're used to relatively high taxes (compared to other parts of the world), so large corporations, be they American, European or otherwise, paying an effective tax rate of only 0,005 (no joke!), doesn't exactly sit well with European citizens.
It's really hard to swallow for people in a EU net contributor country like The Netherlands to see our tax money sent to Ireland in the form of bailouts - Ireland received a €64 billion bailout from the EU after the 2008 banking crisis - while Ireland then proceeds to illegally give Apple one of the biggest tax breaks in history. It's a little populist to frame it this way, but here it goes: I pay taxes to my government in the assumption they would go to maintaining services in my own country and all across Europe (I'd like other nations to come to our aid, too, if we were ever in such a position), while in reality, a part of it went to Tim Cook. That irks me.
Apple is not going to win this case. The EU's case is strong, detailed, and built on a solid base of legal precedent. And this brings us to Trump's meeting with technology leaders last week. During that meeting, Tim Cook also got some one-on-one-one time with Trump (and Elon Musk), something not all attendees were granted. When asked by Apple employees why Tim Cook attended the meeting, he had this to say (among other things):
We have other things that are more business-centric - like tax reform - and something we've long advocated for: a simple system. And we’d like intellectual property reform to try to stop the people suing when they don’t do anything as a company.
Apple has several hundred billion dollars sitting in foreign, non-US bank accounts. If it were to repatriate that money, Apple would have to pay the United States corporate tax, which amounts to about 39.6%. Apple obviously doesn't want to pay those taxes, so that's why it keeps its massive cash pile in foreign bank accounts.
Apple wants a tax holiday. It wants the US government to give Apple a special tax deal wherein it can repatriate those more than 200 billion dollars at a much, much lower tax rate, and with a Republican president, Senate, and House, such a deal seems a lot closer than it was before. However, the Trump administration is, obviously, not going to declare such a tax holiday out of the goodness of their hearts. This is politics, this is business; nothing comes for free.
This means Apple will have to give the Trump administration something it wants, and if you look at Trump's campaign, one of the first things that could come to mind is Apple bringing manufacturing back to the US. The problem here is that bringing manufacturing back to the US is a multi-decade undertaking of strengthening, improving, and expanding vocational education, construction of factories, and the development of brand new manufacturing lines (assuming it's even possible at all, which is a big assumption). Tim Cook can't just snap his fingers and magically recreate Foxconn in the US - this will take decades, and far outlive Trump's four-year or even eight-year term, at which point some other president will take credit for it.
Trump will want something else - and it's going to be Apple's cooperation in the fields of anti-terrorism and homeland security - big, big issues during Trump's campaign. During the campaign, Trump called for a boycott of Apple because the company refused to assist the FBI in breaking into a terrorist's iPhone. Admirably, Apple and Tim Cook took a very principled stand against it, standing up for encryption and user privacy.
And here we have it. I wouldn't be surprised if over the coming years, Apple will be forced to choose between a tax holiday for its 200+ billion dollars stored in foreign bank accounts on the one side, and encryption and user privacy on the other. How do you think shareholders will react when they hear Apple can repatriate more than 200 billion dollars at a very low tax rate... And all they have to do is give in on encryption and user privacy? Do you think shareholders will be able to resist that?
Do you think Tim Cook will be able to resist that?
The coming years will be a massive test for Apple and Tim Cook. How much is their loudly proclaimed morality - and by extension, that of their customers - worth?
Copland was Apple's failed attempt to modernize the classic Mac OS in the mid 1990s. While parts of it would end up in Mac OS 8, the dream of a modern Mac operating system wouldn't be realized until after Apple bought NeXT.
Copland is a really interesting (and sad) chapter in the Mac's history. Here are some documents I've collected over the years about it.
A digital treasure trove if there ever was one.
When the Apple smartphone project started, the key decision was the choice of software engine. Should Apple try to make a 'lite' version of OS X (as it was then known)? Go in a completely new direction?
It appears that a new direction may have been tempting. At the time that Apple's smartphone project began, an Apple employee and former Be engineer offered Palm Inc. $800K for a BeOS "code dump" - just the code, no support, no royalties. The engineer was highly respected for his skill in mating software to unfamiliar hardware; BeOS was a small, light operating system; draw your own conclusion... Palm, which had purchased Be a few years before that, turned him down.
Interesting historical footnote. This would be the second time that Apple tried to buy BeOS. I've been told that while Forstall (who wanted OS X) and Fadell (who wanted the iPod's Pixo) were battling it out, a former Be engineer then working at Apple wanted to prove BeOS was a viable iPhone candidate, and thus tried to buy it. As history knows, Forstall won out, and only after the fact did the Apple engineer inform the higher-ups of what he tried to do. Apparently, this happens more often inside Apple's culture.
Apple Inc. has disbanded its division that develops wireless routers, another move to try to sharpen the company's focus on consumer products that generate the bulk of its revenue, according to people familiar with the matter.
Apple began shutting down the wireless router team over the past year, dispersing engineers to other product development groups, including the one handling the Apple TV, said the people, who asked not to be named because the decision hasn't been publicly announced.
Apple hasn't refreshed its routers since 2013 following years of frequent updates to match new standards from the wireless industry. The decision to disband the team indicates the company isn't currently pushing forward with new versions of its routers. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on the company’s plans.
You can pry my 2013 AirPort Extreme from my cold, dead hands. After a long string of terrible routers, I have nothing but positive experiences with it, and have zero intention of replacing it with anything else.
Vlad Savov, the tech reporter with the most awesome name in the industry, hits some nails on their heads:
Many of us have been talking our way around this issue for the past week without directly confronting it, so I feel like now's as good a time to address it as any: Apple's new MacBook Pro laptops are not designed for professional use.
This should come as no surprise to those who've long perceived the Mac platform as inward-looking, limited in compatibility, and generally worse value for money than comparable Windows alternatives. Pros are smart with their tools and their money, after all. But the change with Apple's 2016 generation of MacBook Pros is that those downsides have been amped up - more expensive and less compatible than ever before - to an extreme that exposes the fallacy of the continued use of the Pro moniker. These are Apple's premium laptops, its deluxe devices, but not in any meaningful way computers tailored for the pros. A MacBook Pro is now simply what you buy if you're in the Apple ecosystem and have a higher budget and expectations than the MacBook can fulfill.
Basically exactly what I said last week.
The first reviews of the new MacBook Pro are in. Note that this only concerns the base 13"model, which does not come with the new Touch Bar.
While the display, build quality, and looks of the new MacBook Pro are beyond reproach, they're no longer beyond the competition. Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Yoga has a spectacular OLED display. Dell's XPS 13 has great battery life and design. HP's EliteBook Folio has a hinge that folds out to a full 180 degrees, whereas Apple s laptops have always been limited to opening to a little bit beyond vertical. Razer's Blade Stealth has a 4K touchscreen, Thunderbolt 3, and the latest seventh-gen Intel processors, whereas Apple is still using sixth-gen chips. Why does any of that matter? It matters because this new MacBook Pro's compromises are large enough to make me, a loyal and satisfied MacBook user for seven years, look outside the cozy confines of Apple's ecosystem. Apple has built a beautiful computer with all the upgrades I wanted, but it's taken away things that I actually need, and now I'm looking elsewhere.
Putting aside larger concerns about Apple's stewardship of the Mac as a hardware and software platform, the new MacBook Pro is a very solid design that should serve Apple well over the next few years. Some pros will claim that it isn't "pro" enough, but the 13-inch models have always served as more of a bridge between the consumer MacBooks and MacBook Airs on the low end and the 15-inch Pros and the desktop lineup on the high end. They've never been particularly "pro."
Since I'm sure some of you are already angrily typing comments about my claim that the new MacBook Pros aren't designed for professionals at all - on purpose! - but for affluent regular consumers, here's Mac developer Michael Tsai's summary of the community's responses to the new MacBook Pros.
I was really disappointed with today's Apple event. It seems like Apple has either lost its way, that it has lost touch with what (some of) its customers want, or that it simply doesn't care about those customers. Developers are a captive audience, and creative professionals can switch to Windows, I guess. Apple no longer considers them core.
There's nothing particularly wrong with what Apple announced. I like Thunderbolt 3. The display looks good. I'm not crazy about Touch Bar, but it does seem potentially useful. The problem is that the MacBook Pro is not a true Pro notebook.
I really think this line is the core reason why the Mac is being neglected:
It has seemed clear for a while that the CEO doesn't really understand the Mac, or simply doesn't like it that much, and that's a problem for those of us who do.
Ding, ding, ding.