Month: March 2015

A Hard Case to Make ⇥ theverge.com

And I’m not talking about the physical case of the Apple Watch. Josh Dzieza, the Verge:

But how do you get up on stage and say that the best thing about this new gadget is that it lets people use this other gadget, the one you spent the last eight years turning into a fetish object, less frequently? Of course you still need an iPhone for the Apple Watch, so it’s not like the watch threatens to replace the phone — but rhetorically it’s a tricky argument to make. You’d have to acknowledge that people can have fraught relationships with their phones, and that their attachment to them is deeply ambivalent. True, I feel relief when I check my phone and anxious when its battery dies, but that’s a very different type of obsession than the sort Apple encourages in its lavish videos of cold-forged steel watch cases. It’s much more compulsive and dependent. Making the best pitch for the watch would mean acknowledging that devices can be burdens, not just tools for empowerment.

Brilliantly said. This is what Apple failed to articulate clearly at Monday’s event. It’s not that they don’t know what the use case is, but if they can’t find a way to communicate this, it becomes a little like Twitter, insomuch as it’s impossible to explain it in a nutshell, but quickly becomes indispensable. Maybe word of mouth from real-world use will be what it takes.

The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple’s Secrets ⇥ firstlook.org

Jeremy Scahill and Josh Begley of the Intercept:

Studying both “physical” and “non-invasive” techniques, U.S. government-sponsored research has been aimed at discovering ways to decrypt and ultimately penetrate Apple’s encrypted firmware. This could enable spies to plant malicious code on Apple devices and seek out potential vulnerabilities in other parts of the iPhone and iPad currently masked by encryption. […]

The security researchers also claimed they had created a modified version of Apple’s proprietary software development tool, Xcode, which could sneak surveillance backdoors into any apps or programs created using the tool. Xcode, which is distributed by Apple to hundreds of thousands of developers, is used to create apps that are sold through Apple’s App Store.

These allegations are absolutely staggering. The US spy machine isn’t targeting specific individuals’ communications; they simply want to mass-collect everyone’s data, regardless of whether it’s remote, local, or in transit. If any other country were exploiting loopholes like this in an American country’s products, there would be an international outrage. If any other country’s spy agency was doing this to products made in their own country, it would be unacceptable:

When the Chinese government recently tried to force tech companies to install a backdoor in their products for use by Chinese intelligence agencies, the U.S. government denounced China. “This is something that I’ve raised directly with President Xi,” President Obama said in early March. “We have made it very clear to them that this is something they are going to have to change if they are to do business with the United States.”

If you’re surprised by this hypocrisy, I can’t help you.

What’s equally worrying is that the bugs that the CIA and NSA are exploiting are real security problems affecting real people, and it’s very likely that countries — both allied and not — have discovered and are using the same bugs to snoop on US citizens. The United States can’t both ensure the security of their citizens and seek to exploit security loopholes.

So, make sure you have Gatekeeper turned on, keep your OSes updated, and tell the CIA to fuck off.

Spring Forward, Indeed

Apple is truly a company in a class of one. It is consistently unafraid of redefining expectations and the boundaries of what a tech company is seemingly supposed to do. Today’s “Spring Ahead” event once again put this skill on show for the press, testing our collective ability to — at the same time — embrace our dreams, and to accept the upheaval of our fundamental beliefs.

ResearchKit

In some ways, this was the most impactful news of the event. It wasn’t leaked; it wasn’t even anticipated. But ResearchKit could very well profoundly shape our understanding of a wide variety of medical conditions, simply because no other company, and certainly no medical company, has the kind of reach that Apple does to devices that can track and analyze movement. This means more people participating in studies, which means more data, which means a lower margin of error, which should translate into far more accurate analysis.

ResearchKit supports tests (PDF) for motion, fitness, screen tapping, memory, and voice. That’s a lot of data to collect, which is understandably concerning. But this is Apple, not Google: your health data won’t be sold for ads. In fact, Apple apparently won’t even see the data because it goes straight to the universities, hospitals, and institutions conducting the studies.

This probably isn’t the news you tuned in to hear, but it was a nice surprise. Jeff Williams presented extremely well for his first keynote appearance, and the news was equally impressive. It’s easy to imagine the possibilities of ResearchKit in the future, with likely Apple Watch integration and a myriad of third-party products.

MacBook

I was really looking forward to this announcement. Ever since Mark Gurman’s prescient report from January, this has felt like my next computer. What was revealed was even more impressive than I imagined.

The MacBook — just the MacBook — is, for all intents and purposes, an updated version of the 12-inch PowerBook, but it is way, way better than just a thinner, narrower, and taller 11-inch MacBook Air.

Based on the hands-on reports I’ve read, the display is stunning. It’s a Retina display, of course, and it’s the full IPS, laminated, ridiculously thin kind of display that they’re getting really good at making. The display alone is tempting me to upgrade from my mid-2012 MacBook Air, which is equipped with a truly mediocre screen. (I think a portable device should have way better viewing angles than this display has.)

The new keyboard also appears to be a significant development. Apple switched from scissor switches to their own proprietary “butterfly” switches, which they say results in a firmer, more accurate key actuation. It also has individual key backlighting, which is something The Godfather has long wished for, and the key labels are now printed in San Francisco instead of VAG Rounded. If I don’t get one of these Macs for a while, I at least hope this new keyboard will find its way into a new Bluetooth keyboard, because this looks terrific. It appears to combine the short key travel of a chiclet keyboard with the precision of mechanical switches. That sounds like quite the recipe.

Best of all, the new MacBook has no fan, so it’s totally silent, and that’s a small miracle in of itself. The processor I’m guessing they’re using is rated for a Turbo Boost of up to 2.6 GHz; the new MacBook only goes up to 2.4 GHz, which makes me think that Apple is limiting the top end, probably for thermal reasons. But the fact that Apple has built a full MacBook into something of near-iPad weight and thickness is remarkable. I do wonder how this processor will perform while encoding video or playing games, though.

The biggest surprise for people who didn’t read Gurman’s preview was that the new MacBook lacks virtually all of the ports you would expect: there’s no Thunderbolt port, no SD card slot, and no MagSafe. It even lacks the “standard” USB port we’re all used to. All of these ports have been replaced by a single USB type C port, which joins the headphone jack to create the entirety of wired peripheral connection possibilities for this Mac. The USB-C port supports charging, USB data, and DisplayPort output. With a couple of ugly-ass adapters, you can output to HDMI or VGA, too.

But I own a Thunderbolt Display. It wasn’t released that long ago, and most of Apple’s computers support Thunderbolt. But this one doesn’t, and I don’t think it will for a while, because USB-C doesn’t yet support generic PCIe or Ethernet data, like Thunderbolt does. Apple hasn’t given up on Thunderbolt — the updated MacBook Airs and Pros are a sign of their ongoing commitment — but it hasn’t really made the kind of splash in the consumer market that I think Apple hoped it would. It’s probably destined to be this decade’s FireWire 800: a protocol that I, along with professionals in some markets, absolutely love, but which isn’t widely adopted. That’s fine; it still connects to an HDMI display. But I really, really like my Thunderbolt Display, and I really like this new MacBook, and I wish the two could talk to each other.

The new MacBook is also being offered in colours for the first time since the first iBook, and it’s a mirror of their iPhone and iPad colour lineup (and, in a way, that of the Watch, too): aluminum, “space grey”, and gold. I’m far too self-conscious to own a gold laptop, but I saw a lot of people on Twitter lusting after it. Apple sure knows their market. The back of the display looks even more like an iPad or an iPhone than ever before, because it has lost the glowing Apple logo; a polished metal logo contrasts with the bead-blasted aluminum instead.

Also iPad-like is the pricing. It comes in two models, separated only by capacity and processor speed, and only very slightly on the latter. The built-to-order options seem to be limited to processor speed; at this stage, it doesn’t appear that you can change RAM from the 8 GB standard configuration, nor can you increase storage capacity. Unlike the iPad, though, the MacBook starts with a respectable 256 GB of storage.

The whole time I was watching this part of the keynote, I couldn’t help but think that this felt an awful lot like the MacBook Air introduction in 2008. This is a product that’s way, way ahead of the curve — even Apple’s own USB-C-to-USB adapter feels like they’re copping to that. This is a future with the bare minimum of wired connectors, but without losing any of the software capability of a modern Mac. I think the name — “MacBook” — encapsulates this vision. There’s no suffix; it’s not a “Pro” or an “Air”. It’s the Mac notebook.1

You can bet you’ll be seeing PC copies of this in a year or two, once it has proved that it — like the Air before it — is the future of the consumer notebook.

If you like the sound of the new Force Touch trackpad2 and really fast RAM, you can get that in the updated 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, too. The Air lineup was also updated today but, curiously, not the 15-inch Retina Pro. WWDC should be exciting.

Apple Watch

Today’s main event, as it was, was undeniably the new superstar of Apple’s lineup. Kevin Lynch spent an awful lot of time recapping stuff we already knew: there are fitness capabilities, messaging capabilities, you can use Siri on it, and all that stuff. Lynch demoed a bunch of third-party apps this time around, too, showing notifications you might expect from a hotel app, or notifications from Uber, or notifications from a myriad of first-party apps. There was a lot of notifying going on today. Much like the hellish way notifications worked on iOS pre-5.0, I wonder how well this will scale. It’s become clear that many developers are not cognizant of the power they wield to make users’ pockets vibrate, so users will need to be selective of which apps post notifications to their wrist.

Of note, there was little talk today of technology. Nobody mentioned the S1, nor the display technology; Lynch said “Bluetooth” one time, by my count. Also unmentioned only briefly mentioned at the keynote but announced on the web was battery life, and it’s better than I thought it would be. Apple claims 18 hours of typical use, which is perfectly serviceable provided you charge it nightly. This underscored Apple’s intent of this being a fashion accessory first, and a digital device second.

But a whole lot of questions were answered today, chief among which was pricing. The $10,000 Edition dominated much of the post-keynote chatter I saw, surprising the uninitiated. And, it must be said, the pricing of the Edition looked especially egregious after introducing the Watch act of the keynote with a video of the product — though, not the Edition model — being used in a half marathon in one of the poorest countries on Earth. Oh, yes, it was also for a nonprofit that absolutely deserves the kind of attention an Apple keynote can bring. But there wasn’t nearly enough time between that video and the showcasing of an 18-karat gold watch with a $10,000 starting price for me to forget that the money spent on an Edition could instead buy a thousand pregnant Ugandan women two trips each to a hospital.

The Edition itself is a bit of a mystery to me. There are plenty of Patek Philippes, Rolexes, and Omegas available for that kind of money, and they have handcrafted movements that can be passed down for generations. The Edition shares its internals with the other two models in the lineup, but is over nine times more expensive than the next most pricey model, the 42mm black stainless steel. It’s a product for the people with that kind of money to blow on a first-generation device, who aren’t necessarily sure what they’re going to use it for.

And that brings me to the big unanswered question of today: what problems, specifically, does the Watch solve? Apple has traditionally introduced products to the market that addressed specific shortcomings in existing product categories. They have refined and defined markets time and time again. The iPod solved the question of what CDs to bring with you for your Discman, and the iPhone defined the future of the phone in myriad ways, creating the perfect convergence device. They created the perfect travelling or kick-back-on-the-couch companion with the iPad.

But the Watch doesn’t have an easy story like these. There are a bunch of ways Apple suggests you use it: you can now have your calendar chime on your Mac, your iPhone, your iPad, and your Watch at approximately the same time; you can track your workouts; you can use miniaturized versions of your iPhone apps on it; you can pay for stuff with it; and you can communicate with other Apple Watch wearers in subtle ways. Perhaps this is a compelling package — I certainly have never wanted one more than I do today. But I’m still not confident enough to drop over $400 Canadian on one, I don’t think.

In some ways, I think Android Wear is a clearer vision for the watch. It utilizes the time-sensitive nature of the “watch”, but adds contemporary features to the space. You look at your wrist to see what time it is, often to jog your memory of what’s next in your calendar, or what time the next train arrives, or to estimate how far away you are from a meeting point. This functionality seems to come more naturally via Google Now than it does on the Apple Watch.

The crazy part of this whole thing is that I think I would vastly prefer using an Apple Watch. Based on everything I saw today — admittedly, from a distance — it has a much more elegant look and feel, and it’s nowhere near as nerdy as most Android Wear devices. But, if I’m honest with myself, I’d probably only wear it as a health tracker. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that; health is clearly one of the focus areas of the Watch. Much of the other functionality, though, seems wasted on me and, much as I think the stainless steel model looks stunning, I simply don’t yet find it compelling. For now, for day-to-day wear, I think I’ll be sticking with my trusty seven year-old Boccia.

You may be reading this thinking I was let down by today’s event. I wasn’t. The new MacBook is almost exactly what I want in a notebook, and ResearchKit looks like it will make a profound impact. The Watch was even huge; as I said, I have never wanted one more than I do now. What was significant about the event today for me, however, was not the products themselves, but what they represented: Apple’s singular ability to entirely upend markets and pave new ground.

Think about it: how many other companies would create a brand new power connector, then update it a few years later, only to abandon it with a product that was surely in the pipeline around the same time as the update? How many other companies would enter a market with a product that ranges in price between $350 and $17,000? How many other companies would create entirely custom materials and techniques for a product that probably won’t have the reach of their flagships? And, crucially, how many companies would be alright doing this?

Apple is in a class of one in stepping out on a limb like this, and fully embracing what they think comes next. They’re not going into the wearable space with a half-baked product; they’re going full-bore into it with a solid fucking gold luxury offering. If nothing else, that takes guts.

I’m not convinced yet that the Watch represents the future of the company, but what I do know is that the most feared aspect of post-Steve Apple — that it would sit still — shouldn’t be a fear at all. They’re doing what they’ve always done: create viable markets with compelling products. We’re about to find out if they still have that magic and, judging by my Twitter timeline and searches today, the outlook is promising.

  1. It’s probably the closest the Mac and the iPad have come to converging, and likely the closest they will come. Very few “normal” people will likely own both one of these and an iPad. ↥︎

  2. Which, by the way, Apple touts as being pressure sensitive and perfect for drawing. Something tells me an iPad with a pressure-sensitive display might be in the cards this autumn. ↥︎

The Apple Watch Is Time, Saved ⇥ techcrunch.com

I swear this is the last Apple Watch thing I’m going to post before Monday’s event, but Matthew Panzarino has put something really good together that I just have to share:

People that have worn the Watch say that they take their phones out of their pockets far, far less than they used to. A simple tap to reply or glance on the wrist or dictation is a massively different interaction model than pulling out an iPhone, unlocking it and being pulled into its merciless vortex of attention suck.

One user told me that they nearly “stopped” using their phone during the day; they used to have it out and now they don’t, period. That’s insane when you think about how much the blue glow of smartphone screens has dominated our social interactions over the past decade.

I think there’s something valuable here, but also something very telling: we don’t have self-control. When our phone buzzes, we can’t just leave it in our pocket or purse. We must remove it to see if it’s anything important, and if it is, to act upon it. A smartwatch removes the part where you must remove your phone, which means you can see the importance of notifications as they arrive, and deal with the ones that are important right away.

But what are we doing that gets so interrupted by a pending notification?

Are we talking to someone? A smartwatch is not really any better there; it still looks a bit rude if you’re constantly checking your wrist throughout a conversation.

Are we reading a book? In that case, a smartwatch would certainly make it less cumbersome to respond to a notification, particularly in an age of giant phones.

Perhaps the generic smartwatch, as exemplified by all of the Android Wear devices out there, isn’t the best example. Perhaps, in typical Apple fashion, the user experience sets the Apple Watch apart from all the other smartwatches out there.

I do have a quibble with this part of Panzarino’s report, though:

For now, the iPhone is a dominant business for Apple and the smartphone is a domineering force in our daily lives. But one day something will come along to destroy it. And, as Apple has expressed many times in the past, it is willing to be the one that finds that thing. With the Apple Watch, we could be seeing the beginnings of that process.

Perhaps someday, the Apple Watch could do the impossible: it could make you stop using your phone.

Not to be shortsighted, but the smartphone is kind of the perfect convergence device. It’s small enough to take everywhere, but big enough to comfortably watch movies on. It combines constant communication with always-available information. For many people, it’s all they need, everywhere. Reading the news on a smartwatch would be uncomfortable at best; integrating a camera would be impractical, not to mention a little creepy. Photo editing? Forget about it. These are things everyone uses their smartphone for.

But the smartwatch will do things the smartphone never could. One day, it will be able to operate entirely untethered from a smartphone, so you’ll be able to track your exercise — including GPS tracking and streaming music — without lugging your phone with you. You’ll be able to use your phone a lot less. It won’t be banished entirely for most people, I don’t think, but you’ll use it differently. And that’s very interesting.

Press Junk ⇥ 9to5mac.com

If even the Apple Watch Edition is below your pay grade, Hoptroff wants to cater to your tastes with a smartwatch that looks nothing like a smartwatch, to the tune of no less than $21,700. That’s the starting price; the platinum version costs an eye-watering $54,000. It does include a rather unique feature, though, as explained by 9to5Mac’s Ben Lovejoy:

It syncs with your iPhone to access your calendar data, then one dial points to the time of your next appointment while another points to the first letter of the appointment title–for example, the name of the person you’re meeting. Delightfully clever, if perhaps questionable in usability.

Of course, for $54k you don’t just get a standard alphabet for those letters, that would be common. Each client gets a bespoke arrangement of the letters on the top dial.

The company has chosen to illustrate this functionality with press photos that spell out, in part, “WALTZED BY JUNK”. Make of that what you will.

Kirk McElhearn’s Apple Watch Pricing Guesses ⇥ mcelhearn.com

A bold prediction on the Edition pricing, given talk of a $5,000 to $10,000 to $20,000 price range:

As such, I think the list price for the base model Apple Watch Edition will be $1,999. There will certainly be a price differential by size, and it could be a couple hundred dollars for this version. In addition, the watchbands will cost as much as several hundred dollars. There’s just no reason to pay more. I repeat, this is not a luxury watch; this is a smartwatch with a gold case.

Also a reasonable prediction on the no-suffix Watch:1

The middle of the line Apple Watch differs from the Apple Watch Sport in its casing (stainless steel vs. aluminum), and its crystal (sapphire vs. glass). As such, it will be more expensive. But I think it will come in at under $500. Again, it’s not clear whether the two sizes will be priced differently, but, if they are, think $499/$549.

Another difference between the Watch and the Watch Sport is that the latter, uhm, sports a plastic cover on the back, while the two higher-end models use ceramic with sapphire lens covers.

  1. Will this, like the iPod, be the Watch Classic in a couple of years? ↥︎

Try ⇥ mrgan.tumblr.com

As overused as terms like “magical” are, with regard to technology, there is something that feels more human and right about software that suggests rather than dictates. Great post from Neven Mrgan.

Kanye West at Oxford ⇥ vulture.com

I came across this guest lecture via Jim Dalrymple, who quoted and then commented:

“I love Steve Jobs, he’s my favourite person, but there’s one thing that disappoints me. When Steve passed he didn’t give the ideas up. That’s kinda selfish. You know that Elon’s like ‘yeah, take these ideas’. Maybe there are companies outside of Apple that could work on them and push humanity forward. Maybe the stock brokers won’t like that, the stock holders wouldn’t like that idea, but ideas are free and you can’t be selfish with them.”

What a moron.

Name-calling like this, without additional substance or proof, is unproductive and unbecoming of anyone with a modicum of intelligence or clarity of thought. Shame on Dalrymple for stooping so low.1

West is clearly and decidedly not a moron. Regardless of whether you like him or his music, his talent and intelligence are undeniable. I dislike his strong personality much of the time, and I think the way he treats women in his lyrics is deplorable, but he is a brilliant and skilled performer, producer, lyricist, designer, and tastemaker.

And, regardless of whether you agree with me or not, you might be able to see some validity to his argument: there are plenty of ways in which patents are regularly abused. Even though I’ve regularly said — and I do believe — that there remains a place for patents, there’s a fair and reasonable argument to be made to the contrary.

Just before the Steve Jobs bit, West said:

This humanity that I talk about, this civilization that I talk about, this future utopia I talk about…it can only happen through collaboration.

And, later in his speech:

Clothing should be like food. There should never be a $5,000 sweater. You know what should cost $5,000? A car should be $5,000. And you know who should work on the car? The people that work on the $500,000 cars. All the best talent in the world needs to work for the people. And I am so fucking serious about this concept that I will stand in front of anyone and fight for it. Because I was 14 and middle class. I know what it felt like to not get what I have.

People say to me ‘you’re successful, what are you crying about?’. I’m crying about the people. I’m crying about their daughters. Our daughters, as one family. What good is it. What good is anything that everyone can’t have. Every ism. They think we’re done with racism. What about elitism, what about separatism, what about classism? That’s all.

He makes a lot of good points. In typical West style, there are plenty of tangents and parenthetical comments in the transcript, but it’s a smart, well-considered argument. And that’s what makes something interesting and valuable, even if you don’t necessarily agree with it.

  1. Dalrymple’s comments in a 2013 interview with Tuts+: “You have to make sure that there’s content posted, and it has to be interesting content. Sometimes I go longer not posting anything than other people do because I don’t want to post any junk.”

    I don’t see that mantra reflected here, nor did I see it in Dalrymple’s post yesterday about Kanye. Seriously: what does he have against Kanye West? ↥︎

Life and Technology After Cancer ⇥ macstories.net

You need to read Federico Viticci’s moving and informative article about his recovery from cancer,1 and how HealthKit and a plethora of apps have enabled him to take control of his body:

Tracking my life with my iPhone makes my commitment real and the effects directly measurable. Being able to open an app and be coached through workout sessions or use my phone to track steps and runs is empowering. iPhone software has enriched my lifestyle and it has allowed me to be more conscious in my daily choices.

Some might say that I’m overly optimistic about Health and that Apple is only a corporation driven by finances. I would disagree with that sentiment, and, at the end of the day, Apple’s motivations are less important to me than this: I see the results. That’s what matters.

I’ve been using pretty entry-level HealthKit functionality for a long time, by way of Strava, Nike+ Fuel, and all the things the M7 offers out of the box. There are a bunch of apps in his list that I’ve never heard of, though, and I plan on checking them out.

Of the many takeaways from this typically-extensive article, I’m struck by how awkward it is to track food consumption. Because there are so many variables in ingredients and preparation, it’s near impossible to get a precise reading. But Viticci is right in his assessment of this: most of the time, precision is irrelevant, and the big picture is what matters most.

Viticci is stretching the functionality to not only be aware of what he’s eating, but to actively improve his diet in a data-driven way. That’s intriguing to me, but I’m also content to keep eating whatever I want, whenever I want. I generally eat pretty healthy meals and don’t snack super often — and even those are pretty wholesome — but I’m interested to start seeing some data behind my diet.

  1. Fuck cancer. ↥︎

Perplexing Choice ⇥ techcrunch.com

Darrell Etherington, TechCrunch:

Google’s Sundar Pichai essentially used today’s Mobile World Congress keynote to let the cat out of the bag for a whole host of interesting Google projects, including Android Pay, a new mobile payments framework that will look to succeed where Google Wallet failed. This time, they’ll be mostly leaving the apps themselves to developers, and Android Pay is intended primarily as a developer tool made available via API, rather than a centralized app like Apple Pay, for instance.

[…]

Like Apple Pay, Google’s Android Pay will use NFC for transmission, and will also support biometric authentication via hardware like the Samsung Galaxy S6’s fingerprint scanner. And while Samsung is clearly hoping to offer its own hardware-specific solution, Google’s offering is looking to convince businesses to adopt it by giving them a lot of freedom in how it’s presented and integrated into their brand. Pichai told the MWC crowd today that it’s not meant to compete with Samsung’s offering, however, and is intended primarily to offer up more consumer choice.

To be perfectly clear, then: it’s totally possible for someone with an Android device to have both Samsung Pay and Android Pay, and the slew of specific apps that will come with making it an API instead of its own product. And this confusion is ostensibly good for users?

Ah, who am I kidding? The user experience of Samsung Pay is so atrocious somewhat clunky compared to Apple Pay that I don’t anticipate it being a huge selling feature. Similarly, if Google Wallet wasn’t so hot, what’s going to make Android Pay much different?