Opinion pieces & commentary

Apple’s Emergency SOS via Satellite service got a lot of time in the keynote, with the company proudly announcing that the service is free for the first two years.

What Apple hasn’t told us is what happens at the end of those two years. There’s one obvious answer, of course, but there are other possibilities …

One of the many antitrust investigations into Apple seems set to mandate alternative app stores, and it was yesterday reported that the Cupertino company is making plans to bow to the inevitable.

While there will be the usual chorus about politicians interfering in the way that companies operate, this change will be a win for all Apple users, even if we have no plans to go anywhere near a third-party app store …

One of the ironies of Apple’s long-running battle with the FBI over the agency’s desire for a security backdoor into iPhones is that it could have taken advantage of one which already existed: The fact that iCloud backups of iPhones didn’t use end-to-end encryption. Apple has now finally fixed this with Advanced Data Protection (ADP).

ADP not only closes a privacy hole which should have been closed a long time ago, but will also relieve Apple of the need to engage in any similar legal battles in future …

Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suggested earlier this week that tight supply constraints could cost the company as many as 15-20M iPhone 14 Pro sales. Not just temporarily, he argued, but permanently: Most of those sales would just “disappear.“

He’s not the only person to suggest this, and there are four arguments that can be made in support of the view – but I don’t buy any of them …

Following the launch of the Apple Watch Ultra, some are suggesting that next year’s iPhone lineup might see an iPhone 15 Ultra instead of a Pro Max.

The theory is that Apple will increase the differentiation between the Pro and Ultra model iPhones, with the twin aims of pushing up the price of the top-of-the-range model and persuading Pro buyers to switch to the Ultra …

Apple’s ad business generated around $4B in the company’s last fiscal year. That’s a lot of money, of course, but I think there’s a risk that ad sales are doing more than $4B’s worth of damage to the company.

Let’s start by putting that number into context. By most standards, it’s a huge sum of money. It’s as much as AstraZeneca made from a year’s worth of COVID-19 vaccines, for example. But for Apple, it represents around 1% of its annual revenue for the year …

Apple recently introduced the 10th-generation iPad with a new design and also a new higher price, which makes the product less appealing for schools and students. It seems the company knows that it fails to reach these consumers — Apple once considered releasing a plastic iPad with a keyboard to compete with Chromebooks. It never happened, but maybe it should have.

A report yesterday suggested that Apple has a 16-inch iPad in the works, which could be released late next year. It follows an earlier report of a 14-inch one.

Talk of larger iPads dates back several years, with 9to5Mac readers long expressing an interest in a model larger than the current 12.9-inch maximum …

Yesterday saw the launch of the all-new iPad 10, as well as updated versions of the 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro, which makes for a rather extensive iPad line-up!

This could be viewed in two ways. Apple’s argument would be that the company now offers a model for every need, while a certain Apple co-founder might have been found drawing a 2×2 grid about now …

Apple can never change anything without someone complaining, of course, but I think my complaint about “upgraded” watchOS 9 complications is fair. The Simple watch face used to offer a delightfully minimalist look, with only icons and minimal text, but has now turned into something way busier.

Indeed, I’d argue that Apple has completely ruined the Simple watch face in watchOS 9 …

Apple might be disappointed that a lot of what it announced yesterday leaked beforehand, but the company still managed to pull enough surprises out of the hat. Tim Cook punned beforehand that Far Out would be a stellar event, and he wasn’t wrong.

From the absolute UI genius of the Dynamic Island to the unexpectedly low price of the Apple Watch Ultra, it was an impressive event from start to finish …

A day before the Apple event, the latest rumor is a programmable Apple Watch button, letting owners decide what it does.

Right now, the suggestion relates specifically to the upcoming Apple Watch Pro, but it’s a feature I’d love Apple to add to all models …

The sale of location data sales has become both big business, and one of the biggest privacy threats in recent years. While the companies involved in this $14B industry claim that only aggregated and anonymized data is sold, numerous investigations have shown that this simply isn’t true.

Just yesterday, we learned that the Federal Trade Commission is suing a data broker that can identify people seeking abortions, and that it made samples of that data publicly available. In the past, we’ve seen how location data can reveal everything from where cops’ kids go to school to US troop movements in war zones …

There have been rumors for a long time that Apple will introduce its own mixed reality headset that will allow users to interact with immersive apps combining AR and VR. This new headset is now expected to be announced in the coming months, and Apple seems to have even more ambitious plans for its new “Reality” ecosystem.

There was good news and bad news yesterday. The Apple Self Service Repair program was extended to the M1 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models – but if you were hoping that would enable DIY MacBook upgrades, you’re out of luck.

Apple very deliberately and specifically prevents this, and that seems to me to be the wrong decision for customers and the MacBook maker alike …

Apple’s smart speaker HomePod has been available on the market for some time now, but it has never been considered a success like iPhone, Apple Watch, or even AirPods. Still, rumors suggest that Apple has been working on new HomePod models. While having new HomePods would be great, I believe Apple should focus on improving the software on the current HomePods.

We’ve long been expecting a new ruggedized version of Apple’s smartwatch, and Mark Gurman’s “Power On” newsletter yesterday suggested that this would be branded as the Apple Watch Pro. I can easily believe that.

However, he went on to suggest that the new Pro model would replace the Apple Watch Edition – and that makes no sense at all to me …

It’s officially been one year since I became an Apple user. Now, as an Apple blogger, it felt like the right time to reflect on the experience as I come from a unique perspective.

One of the things Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported in his latest newsletter is that Apple is working on a new HomePod model, which will look and sound similar to the original.

That’s somewhat surprising, as Apple discontinued the 1st-gen model well over a year ago, though it took quite some time to sell its existing stock. So why would Apple relaunch a commercially unsuccessful product, and what could have a similar one succeed? I suspect three factors …

The scale and reach of Chinese surveillance of its own citizens is well documented, but a new piece shows that the country’s government is now trying to use this vast trove of data to predict crimes and protests before they happen.

The Supreme Court ruling on abortion is also raising fresh concerns about the way that personal data may be used to prosecute women. We’re increasingly living in a world where Apple’s decision to have privacy be a major focus is looking increasingly prescient – but even the Cupertino company may now need to do more …

We’ve seen some baby steps towards using our iPhone for proving our identity. But a couple of recent developments point to a future in which an iPhone – plus biometrics – could let us use our phone as a single means of verifying our identity, both online and in face-to-face interactions.

In all, Apple provides support for four initiatives which I think provide a clear pointer to a future in which the iPhone will be our one-stop device for ID …