Apple seems to be unhappy with the traditional browser design that includes navigation tools at the top, with websites being forced to live in their own view down below, and with Safari 15, it has blurred the line between browser and web content. This goes far beyond the mere splashes of color that Safari users may be used to seeing behind their navigation controls when scrolling a long webpage.
Now, the new tab bar takes on the color of the website, letting the entire window take on the personality of whatever website is visible. Apple says that this lets browsing feel more expansive, as the browser’s UI is now yielding to the content.
Before I begin with a few high-level criticisms, I should say that this is an early preview that may change significantly or, like the tabs above the address bar in Safari 4, be scrapped altogether. That said, Apple is marketing the new design heavily, so if you are not a fan of this change, don’t get your hopes up. I should also say that I think I use the web differently than many people. As John Gruber and Ben Thompson said on a recent episode of “Dithering”, there are two types of people in the world: those who know that Safari on iPhone has a limit of five hundred open tabs, and those who do not. I am the former.
I am not a fan of the new Safari design. I am not sure I hate it, and I think I get what Apple is trying to do by combining the tab and address bar into a single element and allowing it to inherit the colour of the page. But I do not think it makes sense yet and, worse, I am concerned about some bad design patterns that are emerging. Before I get into that, I wanted to start with the tab bar backdrop colour.
Hackett:
The color the tab bar takes on can be manually set by including setting a meta tag named theme-color in the head of the webpage. (Optionally, different values can be set for light and dark modes.) If this value isn’t set, Safari will choose its own color from the website’s background color or header image. Thankfully, Safari is smart enough to not use colors that interfere with UI elements like standard window controls in macOS.
This background colour only applies to the currently open tab; it does not persist when switching tabs. If you are on CNet — which has a red accent colour — and then switch to this website, which has a white accent, the CNet tab does not stay red. There is an obvious reason for this: it would become messy and hard to read with many tabs open. But you could make a similar argument if CNet were the only open tab — the red backdrop is jarring and difficult to read in every context.
It also is not a consistent browsing experience if the theme-color is not defined for a website. For example, at the top scroll position of a Markup article, the tab bar backdrop will be a deep blue, selected automatically by the browser. But if you scroll the page a little, the tab will turn grey. Surely it should select a colour and maintain it. And, while Safari is smart enough not to automatically select colours that will make it hard to see window controls, it will accept theme-colors that do. An article page at Rest of World will turn the tab bar a shade of green that is very close to that used for the expand window control in the Aqua MacOS theme.
Condensing the address bar into each tab is also irksome. It is a clever idea, but it means that everything moves around because tabs move. They scroll left to right; they change size as you open and close other tabs.
The small size of a browser tab also means that many controls are hidden by default, including the reload and share buttons. They are all buried into one of those vague “⋯” controls that Apple is obsessed with these days. If you share web links a lot, there is not even a way to add the button back to the toolbar in a more permanent state. This, I think, continues a worrying pattern of bad UI habits.
Over the past several releases of MacOS and iOS, Apple has experimented with hiding controls until users hover their cursor overtop, click, tap, or swipe. I see it as an extension of what Maciej Cegłowski memorably called “chickenshit minimalism”. He defined it as “the illusion of simplicity backed by megabytes of cruft”; I see parallels in a “junk drawer” approach that prioritizes the appearance of simplicity over functional clarity. It adds complexity because it reduces clutter, and it allows UI designers to avoid making choices about interface hierarchy by burying everything but the most critical elements behind vague controls.
If UI density is a continuum, the other side of chickenshit minimalism might be something like Microsoft’s “ribbon” toolbar. Dozens of controls of various sizes and types, loosely grouped by function, and separated by a tabbed UI creates a confusing mess. But being unnecessarily reductionist with onscreen controls also creates confusion. I do not want every web browser control available at all times, but I cannot see what users gain by making it harder to find the reload button in Safari.
I just want something in the middle of that continuum. That goes for Safari, but it could just as easily be applied to UI elements that are slowly being hidden behind menus and mouseovers across MacOS like the progress time in Music, the invisible access to Notification Centre, the invisible controls on notifications themselves, and, yes, the proxy icon in document-based applications. These details matter. It is one thing to have a few onscreen elements that have functionality most users are largely unaware of, but it is quite another to hide them with the assumption that if you know, you know.
My opinion might change as I spend more time with this version of Safari on my Mac and iPad, where it is basically the same. But I am adding the “⋯” button to my UI element enemies list. Like the back button, it is a vague excuse to avoid making decisions. It makes application interfaces worse, and the more often I see it, the more concerned I am about Apple’s human interface direction.
Apple’s relationship with the developer community has often been fractured, but I am not sure there has been such outright animosity and grief with the company as that expressed in the past year. The arguments expressed on the blogs of many developers — from Marco Arment to Becky Hansmeyer to Michael Tsai — are the norm, not the exception.
The developer community is deeply unhappy. While the opening keynote of WWDC has undoubtably become more of a consumer marketing affair, the rest of the conference is just for developers — and they have long needed to feel heard.
Usually, the hours before Apple’s keynote event are filled with speculation and excitement, but this year there is far more frustration and antipathy than I can remember seeing in my decade and a half covering Apple. There’s always been some degree of dissatisfaction, especially amongst developers, but it’s hard to escape that the current story about Apple is less about its products and more about its attitude.
[…]
WWDC marks Apple’s opportunity to take control of the story. Whatever its executives announce when they take the stage later today has the potential to dominate the tech news cycle for days and weeks to come.
But the real question is whether, by sheer compelling nature or simply by volume, it can drown out the existing narrative.
So, how did Apple do?
Well, that depends on which issues you would like to focus on. Fraud is a hot-button problem, with a lengthy story about App Store scams appearing in the Washington Post on Sunday.
Related to this, Apple clarified the language around App Store discovery fraud (5.6.3) to more specifically call out any type of manipulations of App Store charts, search, reviews and referrals. The former would mean to crack down on the clearly booming industry of fake App Store ratings and reviews, which can send a scam app higher in charts and search.
[…]
But a new update to these guidelines seems to be an admission that Apple may need a little help on this front. It says developers can now directly report possible violations they find in other developers’ apps. Through a new form that standardizes this sort of complaint, developers can point to guideline violations and any other trust and safety issues they discover. Often, developers notice the scammers whose apps are impacting their own business and revenue, so they’ll likely turn to this form now as a first step in getting the scammer dealt with.
This could be beneficial to developers who may stumble across fraud, but it does not users, and particularly not those who have found themselves close to becoming victims but did not fall for a scam. While I get that a reporting mechanism could introduce a new vector for misuse by less-knowledgeable users, I still cannot believe there is nowhere for an average person to say that they found a scam.
The long-requested TestFlight for Mac is finally real, as part of the new Xcode Cloud service. It will also be possible to A/B test App Store pages, something else many developers have wanted for a long time. So that’s the good news.
What about the thorny problem of some high-profile developers getting access to platform features and APIs that most do not? For example, it was possible to get a refund for Hulu and Netflix subscriptions bought through in-app purchases from within their apps — something developers are generally unable to offer. While there is a promising new beginRefundRequest method, it just displays the App Store refund request sheet within the app with the same two-day turnaround, still controlled by Apple.
I do not know that there was a single developer who expected Apple to relent on its in-app purchase policy. It remains unchanged, and likely will until lawmakers demand a different policy.
A story today by Jacob Kastrenakes, of the Verge, noted — almost as an aside — that Patreon is allowed to offer third-party payment services in its app. For example, I tried upgrading one of my subscriptions to a level that had entirely digital perks, and Patreon threw up its own payment form. I tried subscribing to a creator account and once again saw Patreon’s own form, not an in-app purchase dialog. You can try it by subscribing to my perk-less Patreon account. I am insufferable and I am sorry.
I do not know that this is enough to cool Apple’s tense relationship with developers. Judging by the number of people I saw taking issue with Apple’s annual payout slide, I doubt it. I imagine all of the presenters this year are thrilled they did not have to talk about how great the App Store is in a room full of people who resent it, but the reasons for their disdain continue.
The Mac had its best quarter ever, with $9.1 billion in sales. The last three quarters have been fairly consistent for Mac sales; in reverse order: $9.1 billion, $8.7 billion, and $9.0 billion. The Mac business is booming.
At $7.8 billion in sales, the iPad also had one of its best quarters in years, only surpassed by the previous quarter’s $8.4 billion — unless you rewind to Q1 2015, when Apple sold nearly $9 billion worth of iPads. And that was a massive drop from Q1 2014 with about $11.5 billion in iPad sales.
The rolling average is now trending up after sitting more-or-less flat for about three years, reflecting Apple’s renewed interest in the product. That is a good sign for its long-term health.
I have not felt this enthusiastic about new Macs in a while but, I tell you, these new iMacs seem pretty terrific. The power of the M1 combined with a Pro Display XDR-reminiscent design in a bunch of great colours? I’m not in the market for a new iMac but I am hoping these colours make their way onto some redesigned MacBook Air models as I begin thinking about replacing the nine year old model I am writing this on.1
Speaking of the colours, Jason Snell at Six Colors:
Put it all together and that’s not just seven new iMac colors, it’s 18 keyboard variations and 14 pointing-device variations. While at launch Apple will only be providing the color-matched accessories with an iMac purchase, if history is any indication they will eventually be available for anyone to purchase. Given how many Apple Watch bands there are, Apple seems to have gotten very good at managing product inventory with a whole lot of variations. Good thing!
I was thinking about this the other night. Nearly all of Apple’s major hardware comes in multiple colours and with multiple storage options. There are regional variations, too, like the China-specific dual physical SIM iPhone models.
Also, on the new magnetically-attached power and ethernet connector:
In practical terms, the force required to yank the magnetic power cable off the iMac is the same force required to yank the current iMac’s plastic power plug out of its socket. So it seems unlikely that there will be a spate of disastrous iMac unpluggings laid at the feet of the choice to use magnets.
Good to know; this is not like MagSafe in either its original guise or the new iPhone connector, where it is designed to disconnect gracefully. But many leaks point toward something more true to a MagSafe-like connector on some updated Mac notebooks. I am hopeful.
My previous laptop, a MacBook Pro, was wheezing after just five years; my Air is still humming along just fine. ↥︎
Let’s start with what we can see, shall we? Not since the iMac G3 of the late 1990s has Apple used such vibrant colours on any Mac, and they look beautiful. The product photography makes the green one look like the original “Bondi Blue” iMac. If I were buying one of these iMacs, that’s the one I’d have. I wish the MacBook Air came in these same colour choices.
The new model has a slimmed-down bezel in white, which is an odd choice. I am curious about what that will look like in person, though I have not been a fan of any of the devices I have used with white bezels. There isn’t a logo anywhere on the front, but it still has a chin because that’s where the computer is.
That chin features a pastel version of the iMac’s colour that is matched in the stand; around the sides and back, it is a richer and more vibrant hue. Don’t worry — there is still a silver model available if you are boring.
I am so happy to see colourful computers again — can you tell?
It is around the back of this iMac where things take a bit of a dive. For a start, it has just two USB 4/Thunderbolt ports; on the higher-end models, there are an extra two USB 3 ports. But that and a headphone jack is all the I/O that you get. That means no USB-A ports, of course, but also not SD card reader, which I use every few days on my own iMac. At least all currently-sold iPhones ship with Lightning cables that have a USB-C connector.
This iMac also has a curious new port around back for power and connectivity. It supports WiFi, of course, but if you want to use a wired connection, the higher-end models include a power brick with a gigabit ethernet port. That means the power supply is no longer built in, which creates some floor clutter, and — most curiously — this connects to the iMac via a single braided cable that attaches magnetically. So all current Apple notebooks have cables that are firmly seated and can cause the computer to go flying if they are tripped over, but one desktop model has a magnetic cable.
Apple is pitching this 24-inch iMac as a replacement for the 21.5-inch model; it has discontinued all but the lowest-end 21.5-inch Intel models, but it has retained the 27-inch models for now. This sets up the possibility for a greater differentiation between Apple’s more consumer-oriented products — the MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, and this iMac — and its higher-end products. This iMac uses ostensibly the same chip as its other own-silicon Mac models — and the new iPad Pro — and is limited to the same storage and memory options. The M1 products that have been released so far have proved to be extraordinarily powerful, but there are plenty of use cases that would benefit from more RAM and more power. That is what we can expect from the big iMac, and the 15-inch and higher-end 13-inch MacBook Pro models.
After many years, Apple has updated the Apple TV 4K and the accompanying remote control. From the newsroom (U.S. link because none of the announcements from today, aside from podcast subscriptions, have Canadian press releases yet):
Apple today announced the next generation of Apple TV 4K, delivering high frame rate HDR with Dolby Vision and connecting customers to their favorite content with the highest quality. At the heart of the new Apple TV 4K is the A12 Bionic chip that provides a significant boost in graphics performance, video decoding, and audio processing. And with an all-new design, the Siri Remote makes it even easier to watch shows and movies on Apple TV with intuitive navigation controls. Together with tvOS — the most powerful TV operating system — Apple TV 4K works seamlessly with Apple devices and services to magically transform the living room in ways that everyone in the family will love.
[…]
Through an innovative color balance process, Apple TV works with iPhone and its advanced sensors to improve a television’s picture quality. Apple TV uses the light sensor in iPhone to compare the color balance to the industry-standard specifications used by cinematographers worldwide. Using this data, Apple TV automatically tailors its video output to deliver much more accurate colors and improved contrast — without customers ever having to adjust their television settings.
This is a fairly modest spec bump. The star of the show is the new Siri remote, which looks like a hybrid of the aluminum stick from several years ago and the iPhone 12. It still has few buttons and some touch-sensitive controls, but it appears to be less fiddly than the current version and is certainly easier to tell by feel which way is upright. It is also going to be shipping with the still-available Apple TV HD — but it is only $30 less than the $179 4K.
The colour balancing feature is not exclusive to this new model. It works with any Apple TV that supports tvOS 14.5 and any iPhone with a Face ID array. I will not be able to try it until the tvOS update is released next week, but I am curious about what changes it will make to my cheap and old television.
Notably absent in this Apple TV update is spatial audio. Perhaps it is the kind of thing that will need a camera capable of tracking multiple people.
Windows getting shown up by Linux was not allowed, so Microsoft did some Microsoft maneuvering, and by January 2008 the Eee PC was running Windows XP instead. It was also part of a larger category called “netbooks,” and we were all made to know what netbooks were.
[…]
The netbook explosion was all the more odd because every netbook had the same basic specs, as Microsoft charged more for a standard non-Starter Windows license if a computer had anything more than a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 160GB hard drive. So it was all colors and screen sizes, really. All to run a deeply-annoying version of Windows, on a computer that no one was even remotely claiming could replace a primary PC. By the end of it all, as the chips inevitably got more powerful, enough laptop vendors were telling Joanna that their new netbook-like computers weren’t netbooks that she started calling them “notbooks.”
The thing I remember most about the netbook era were the constant cries of technology analysts demanding that Apple make a netbook.
Jason Snell of Macworld reported on Apple’s 2008 fourth-quarter earnings:
At Apple’s event launching the company’s new laptops last week, Jobs was asked about the emerging category of “netbooks,” low-cost and low-feature laptops. Last week, Jobs made skeptical noises about the category, saying it was just too early to tell what would happen. On Tuesday Jobs went a little further, dangling some suggestion that Apple is watching the category closely: “It’s a nascent category and we’ll watch while it evolves,” Jobs said. “And we’ve got some pretty good ideas if it does evolve.”
Apple Inc. will introduce two netbooks at the MacWorld Conference and Expo next month that will be tied to the company’s App Store, as is its iPhone, an analyst said today.
“I don’t have any inside information,” said Ezra Gottheil of Technology Business Research Inc., as he spelled out his take on Apple’s next hardware move. “This is just by triangulation.”
The computer Apple actually introduced at Macworld in January 2009 was the 17-inch MacBook Pro which only resembled a netbook from really far away.
David Carnoy of CNet could not have been more blunt in this 2009 editorial, which ran with the headline “Why Apple must do a Netbook now” and this dek:
With news that users are hacking Windows and Linux Netbooks to run OS X — and run it pretty well — Apple needs to release a Netbook of its own before it loses ground in the highest-growth laptop category.
Anyway, shortly after the iPad came out, the “netbook” name became toxic and, as Patel writes, the companies making them avoided that marketing. Patel and Joanna Stern argue that iPads are their spiritual successor, but I think Chromebooks are far more netbook-like. If anything is to be a “netbook”, it should be a laptop that is effectively just for web apps — and nothing is more like that than a kind of notebook named after the world’s most popular web browser.
The Cupertino, California-based technology giant never disclosed this component and the device currently lacks consumer-facing features that use it. The company has internally discussed using the sensor to determine a room’s temperature and humidity so internet-connected thermostats can adjust different parts of a home based on current conditions, according to people familiar with the situation. The hardware could also let the HomePod mini automatically trigger other actions, say turning a fan on or off, depending on the temperature.
A group of hackers say they breached a massive trove of security-camera data collected by Silicon Valley startup Verkada Inc., gaining access to live feeds of 150,000 surveillance cameras inside hospitals, companies, police departments, prisons and schools.
[…]
Kottmann said their group was able to obtain “root” access on the cameras, meaning they could use the cameras to execute their own code. That access could, in some instances, allow them to pivot and obtain access to the broader corporate network of Verkada’s customers, or hijack the cameras and use them as a platform to launch future hacks. Obtaining this degree of access to the camera didn’t require any additional hacking, as it was a built-in feature, Kottmann said.
The hackers’ methods were unsophisticated: they gained access to Verkada through a “Super Admin” account, allowing them to peer into the cameras of all of its customers. Kottmann says they found a user name and password for an administrator account publicly exposed on the internet. After Bloomberg contacted Verkada, the hackers lost access to the video feeds and archives, Kottmann said.
The spreadsheet, provided by one of the hackers to Motherboard, shows more than 24,000 unique entries in the “organization name” column. Verkada’s cameras are capable of identifying particular people across time by detecting their faces, and are also capable of filtering individuals by their gender, the color of their clothes, and other attributes.
[…]
From the spreadsheet itself, it is not clear which specific customers are deploying Verkada’s facial recognition capabilities. But those features appear to be basic functions of the camera, and not add-ons. Verkada’s website advertises that “all” of its cameras include “Smart Edge-Based Analytics,” referring to the cameras’ facial recognition, person identification, and vehicle analysis tools. It adds the cameras can detect “meaningful events,” which can mean unusual activity and “unusual motion” as determined by the camera’s AI. After detecting faces, a companion web app allows the camera’s administrator to search over time for footage that includes that specific person.
Access to the cameras and video archives of thousands of clients was granted by a username and password that was publicly available on the web, from which these activists were able to explore Verkada’s network. Just a staggering degree of incompetence. Apparently, some of Verkada’s clients are in Canada — including at least one government agency I can find — and I am sure our Privacy Commissioner will dig this.
In recent years, and whether we realize it or not, biometric technologies such as face and iris recognition have crept into every facet of our lives. These technologies link people who would otherwise have public anonymity to detailed profiles of information about them, kept by everything from security companies to financial institutions. They are used to screen CCTV camera footage, for keyless entry in apartment buildings, and even in contactless banking. And now, increasingly, algorithms designed to recognize us are being used in border control. Canada has been researching and piloting facial recognition at our borders for a few years, but — at least based on publicly available information — we haven’t yet implemented it on as large a scale as the US has. Examining how these technologies are being used and how quickly they are proliferating at the southern US border is perhaps our best way of getting a glimpse of what may be in our own future—especially given that any American adoption of technology shapes not only Canada–US travel but, as the world learned after 9/11, international travel protocols.
[…]
Canada has tested a “deception-detection system,” similar to iBorderCtrl, called the Automated Virtual Agent for Truth Assessment in Real Time, or AVATAR. Canada Border Services Agency employees tested AVATAR in March 2016. Eighty-two volunteers from government agencies and academic partners took part in the experiment, with half of them playing “imposters” and “smugglers,” which the study labelled “liars,” and the other half playing innocent travellers, referred to as “non-liars.” The system’s sensors recorded more than a million biometric and nonbiometric measurements for each person and spat out an assessment of guilt or innocence. The test showed that AVATAR was “better than a random guess” and better than humans at detecting “liars.” However, the study concluded, “results of this experiment may not represent real world results.” The report recommended “further testing in a variety of border control applications.” (A CBSA spokesperson told me the agency has not tested AVATAR beyond the 2018 report and is not currently considering using it on actual travellers.)
These technologies are deeply concerning from a privacy perspective. The risks of their misuse are so great that their implementation should be prohibited — at least until a legal framework is in place, but I think forever. There is no reason we should test them on a “trial” basis; no new problems exist that biometrics systems are solving by being used sooner.
But I am curious about our relationship with their biases and accuracy. The fundamental concerns about depending on machine learning boil down to whether suspicions about its reliability are grounded in reality, and whether we are less prone to examining its results in depth. I have always been skeptical of machines replacing humans in jobs that require high levels of judgement. But I began questioning that very general assumption last summer after reading a convincing argument from Aaron Gordon at Vice that speed cameras are actually fine:
Speed and red light cameras are a proven, functional technology that make roads safer by slowing drivers down. They’re widely used in other countries and can also enforce parking restrictions like not blocking bus or bike lanes. They’re incredibly effective enforcers of the law. They never need coffee breaks, don’t let their friends or coworkers off easy, and certainly don’t discriminate based on the color of the driver’s skin. Because these automated systems are looking at vehicles, not people’s faces, they avoid the implicit bias quandaries that, say, facial recognition systems have, although, as Dave Cooke from the Union of Concerned Scientists tweeted, “the equitability of traffic cameras is dependent upon who is determining where to place them.”
Loath as I am to admit it, Gordon and the researchers in his article have got a point. There are few instances where something is as unambiguous as a vehicle speeding or running a red light. If the equipment is accurately calibrated and there is ample amber light time, the biggest frustration for drivers is that they can no longer speed with abandon or race through changing lights — which are things they should not have been doing in any circumstance. I am not arguing that we should put speed cameras every hundred metres on every road, nor that punitive measures are the only or even best behavioural correction, merely that these cameras can actually reduce bias. Please do not send hate mail.
Facial recognition, iris recognition, gait recognition — these biometrics methods are clearly more complex than identifying whether a car was speeding. But I have to wonder if there is an assumption by some that there is a linear and logical progression from one to the other, and there simply is not. Biometrics are more like forensics, and courtrooms still accept junk science. It appears that all that is being done with machine learning is to disguise the assumptions involved in matching one part of a person’s body or behaviour to their entire self.
It comes back to Maciej Cegłowski’s aphorism that “machine learning is money laundering for bias”:
When we talk about the moral economy of tech, we must confront the fact that we have created a powerful tool of social control. Those who run the surveillance apparatus understand its capabilities in a way the average citizen does not. My greatest fear is seeing the full might of the surveillance apparatus unleashed against a despised minority, in a democratic country.
What we’ve done as technologists is leave a loaded gun lying around, in the hopes that no one will ever pick it up and use it.
Well we’re using it now, and we have done little to assure there are no bystanders in the path of the bullet.
I am linking to this with the caveat that it is a Bloomberg Businessweek story about supply chains in China, which is a particular genre that the magazine has completely bombed before without any public reckoning or accountability. One wonders why Bloomberg continues to leave its tattered reputation dangling in the wind, making it hard to trust stories from any of its writers.
With that in mind, here’s Austin Carr and Mark Gurman with a look into Apple’s supply chain and how Tim Cook grew Apple from a mere icon in 2011 to the world’s most valuable publicly-traded company:
Apple’s turnaround in the ensuing years has generally been attributed to Jobs’s product genius, beginning with the candy-colored iMacs that turned once-beige appliances into objets d’office. But equally important in Apple’s transformation into the economic and cultural force it is today was Cook’s ability to manufacture those computers, and the iPods, iPhones, and iPads that followed, in massive quantities. For that he adopted strategies similar to those used by HP, Compaq, and Dell, companies that were derided by Jobs but had helped usher in an era of outsourced manufacturing and made-to-order products.
[…]
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. At the same time he was obsessed with controlling Apple’s costs. Daniel Vidaña, then a supply management director, says Cook particularly fussed over fulfillment times. Faster turnarounds made customers happier and also reduced the financial strain of storing unsold inventory. Vidaña remembers him saying that Apple couldn’t afford to have “spoiled milk.” Cook lowered the company’s month’s worth of stockpiles to days’ and touted, according to a former longtime operations leader, that Apple was “out-Dell-ing Dell” in supply chain efficiencies.
Since Apple made the call to remove HKmap.live from the App Store — a decision that was apparently made to appease a Chinese government that is worried about pro-democracy demonstrators — I have been intrigued by how closely Tim Cook’s ascendance dovetailed with that choice. Hong Kong’s sovereignty was returned to China in July 1997; Cook joined Apple less than a year later in March 1998. Cook was a primary force in moving Apple’s production lines to China, mostly to factories that are located just across the Sham Chun River, which separates mainland China and Hong Kong.
Over the last twenty years, Apple’s dependency on China has grown, as has China’s influence over Hong Kong. The two paths collided in 2019 when demonstrators in Hong Kong used an iOS app to alert others about the location of police barricades, and Apple under Cook’s leadership removed that app from the store. Some commentators saw this as protecting Apple’s access to the Chinese market; I bet its reliance on factories in that country was a greater motivator.
A recent Nikkei report indicated that Apple is seeking to reduce that dependency. But it does not seem to be going well, according to Carr and Gurman:
When Apple engineers started setting up manufacturing in Texas, sources familiar with the matter say, they had a difficult time finding local suppliers willing to invest in retooling their factories for a one-off Mac project. According to a former Apple supply chain worker, huge quantities of certain components needed to be imported from Asia, which caused a domino effect of delays and costs. If a shipment arrived with defective parts, for example, the Texas factory had to wait for the next air-cargo delivery; at factories in Shenzhen, supply replacements were a short drive away. It felt like the opposite of Gou’s ultra-efficient all-in-one Foxconn hubs. “We really emphasized with the suppliers to triple-check their product before they put it on a plane to Texas,” this worker says. “It was a pain.”
[…]
Meanwhile, Apple has moved some production of AirPods to Vietnam and iPhones to India, where the company has run into scale and quality issues, too. More significant manufacturing diversification is likely to take years, even as Cook faces pressure to decouple from China over censorship, human-rights violations, and criticism about labor conditions at mainland factories. In an all-hands meeting last year, an employee asked Dan Riccio, then Apple’s hardware chief, why the company continues to build products in China given these ethical problems. The crowd cheered. “Well, that’s above my pay grade,” he responded, before adding that Apple was still working to expand its manufacturing presence beyond China.
I do think that Apple’s executive team really believes in social justice and trying to do the right thing. The factories of its contract manufacturers in China undermine that, and I think they are cognizant of that. But modifying a supply chain as integrated and complex as Apple’s to give the company more leverage in its negotiations with Chinese government officials is an enormous task.
This report contains little new information, but it is an engaging summary of how this supply chain has evolved over time — right up until you get near the end and then there’s this weird paragraph:
In many ways, Cook is now applying the lessons Apple learned building its China manufacturing network to other parts of the business. Its operational prowess has enabled it to churn out more product permutations and accessories. And just as Apple uses its awesome buying power to extract concessions from suppliers, it’s now using its control over an equally impressive digital supply chain, which includes the company’s own subscription services, as well as third-party apps, to generate greater revenue from customers and software developers. In an October report on the tech industry, the House antitrust subcommittee said this influence of its App Store amounted to “monopoly power” and recommended that regulators step in.
Perhaps I am missing something, but the connection between the physical supply chain and the App Store’s distribution policies is tenuous. It is also incorrect: while Carr and Gurman say that Apple is exercising greater control to generate more revenue through its App Store, one of the few notable highlights for iOS developers last year was the announcement of the Small Business Program which lowered Apple’s commission to 15% up to one million dollars. There are many caveats and it is imperfect, but it is the opposite of the squeeze the company puts on its hardware suppliers, not its analog.
Jason Snell again graciously allowed me to participate in the annual Six Colors Apple report card, so I graded the performance of a multi-trillion-dollar company from my low-rent apartment. There simply aren’t enough column inches in his report card for all of my silly thoughts. I have therefore generously given myself some space here to share them with you.
As much as 2020 was a worldwide catastrophe, it was impressive to see Apple handle pandemic issues remarkably well and still deliver excellence in the hardware, software, and services that we increasingly depended on. If there wasn’t widespread disease, Apple’s year could have played out nearly identically and I do not imagine it would have been received any differently.
Now, onto specific categories, graded from 1–5, 5 being best and 1 being Apple TV-iest. Spoiler alert!
Mac: 4
It will be a while before we know if 2020 was to personal computers what 2007 was to phones, but the M1 Macs feel similarly impactful on the industry at large. Apple demonstrated a scarcely-believable leap by delivering Macs powered by its own SoCs that got great battery life and outperformed just about any other Mac that has ever existed. And to make things even more wild, Apple shoehorned this combination into the least-expensive computers it makes. A holy crap revolutionary year, and it is only an appetizer for forthcoming iMac and MacBook Pro models.
Aside from the M1 models, Apple updated nearly all of its Mac product range except the Mac Pro. The iMac Pro only dropped its 8-core config, but pretty much everything else is the same as when it debuted three years ago.
The best news, aside from the M1 lineup, is that the loathed butterfly keyboard was finally banished from the Mac. Good riddance.
MacOS Big Sur is a decent update by recent MacOS standards. The new design language is going in a good direction, but there are contrast and legibility problems. It is, thankfully, night-and-day more stable than Catalina which I am thrilled that I skipped on my iMac and annoyed that I installed on a MacBook Air that will not get a Big Sur update. Fiddlesticks. But Big Sur has its share of new and old bugs that, while doing nothing so dramatic as forcing the system to reboot, indicate to me that the technical debt of years past is not being settled. More in the Software Quality section.
iPhone: 4
I picked a great year to buy a new iPhone; I picked a terrible year to buy a new iPhone. The five new phones released in 2020 made for the easiest product line to understand and the hardest to choose from. Do I get the 12 Mini, the size I have been begging Apple to make? Do I get the 12 Pro Max with its ridiculously good camera? How about one of the middle models? What about the great value of the SE? It was a difficult decision, but I got the Pro. And then, because I wish the Pro was lighter and smaller, I seriously considered swapping it for the Mini, but didn’t because ProRAW was released shortly after. Buying a telephone is just so hard.
iOS 14 is a tremendous update as well. Widgets are a welcome addition to everyone’s home screen and have spurred a joyous customization scene. ProRAW is a compelling feature for the iPhone 12 Pro models, and is implemented thoughtfully and simply. The App Drawer is excellent for a packrat like me.
2019 was a rough year for Apple operating system stability but, while iOS 13 was better for me than Catalina, iOS 14 has been noticeably less buggy and more stable. I hope this commitment to features and quality can be repeated every year.
Consider my 4-out-of-5 grade a very high 4, but not quite a 5. The iPhone XR remains in the lineup and feels increasingly out of place, and I truly wish the Pro came in a smaller and lighter package. I considered going for a perfect score but, well, it’s my report card.
iPad: 3
The thing the iPad lineup has needed most from the late 2010s was clarity; for the past few years, that is what it has gotten. 2020 brought good hardware updates that has made each iPad feel more accurately placed in the line — with the exception of the Mini, which remains a year behind its entry-level sibling.
But the biggest iPad updates this year were in accessories and in software. Trackpad and mouse compatibility updated a legacy input method for a modern platform, and its introduction was complemented by the new Magic Keyboard case. iPadOS 14 brought further improvements like sidebars, pull-down menus, and components that no longer cover the entire screen.
Despite all of these changes, I remain hungry for more. This is only the second year the iPad has had “iPadOS” and, while it is becoming more of its own thing, its roots in a smartphone operating system are still apparent in a way that sometimes impedes its full potential.
After many difficult years, it seems like Apple is taking the iPad seriously again. I would like to see more steady improvements so that every version of iPadOS feels increasingly like its own operating system even if it continues to look largely like iOS. This one is tougher to grade. I have waffled between 3 and 4, but I settled on the lower number. Think of it as a positive and enthusiastic 3-out-of-5.
Wearables (including Apple Watch): 3
Grades were submitted separately for the Apple Watch and Wearables. I have no experience with the Apple Watch this year, so I did not submit a grade.
Only one new AirPods model was introduced in 2020 but it was big. The AirPods Max certainly live up to their name in weight alone.
Aside from that, rattling in the AirPods Pro models was a common problem from when they were released and it took until October 2020, a full year after the product’s launch, for Apple to correct the problem. Customers can exchange their problematic pair for free, but the environmental waste of even a small percentage of flawed models is hard to bat away.
AirPods continue to be the iconic wireless headphone in the same way that white earbuds were to the iPod. I wish they were less expensive, though, particularly since the batteries have a lifespan of only a couple of years of regular use.
Apple TV: 1
I guess my lowest grade must go to the product that seems like Apple’s lowest priority. It is kind of embarrassing at this point.
The two Apple TV models on sale today were released three and five years ago, and have remained unchanged since. It isn’t solely a problem of device age or cost; it is that these products feel like they were introduced for a different era. This includes the remote, by the way. I know it is repetitive to complain about, but it still sucks and there appears to be no urgency for completing the new remote.
On the software side, tvOS 14 contains few updates. It now supports 4K videos in YouTube and through AirPlay, and HomeKit camera monitoring. Meanwhile, the Music app still does not work well, screensavers no longer match the time of day so there are sometimes very bright screensavers at night, and the overuse of slow animations makes the entire system feel sluggish. None of these things are new in tvOS 14; they are all very old problems that remain unfixed.
The solution to a good television experience remains elusive — and not just for Apple.
Services: 4
No matter whether you look at Apple’s balance sheet or its product strategy, it is clear that it is now fully and truly a services company. That focus has manifested in an increasingly compelling range of things you can give Apple five or ten dollars a month for; or, if you are fully entranced, you can get the whole package for a healthy discount in the new Apple One bundle subscription. Cool.
It has also brought increased reliability to the service offerings. Apple’s internet products used to be a joke, but they have shown near-perfect stability in recent years. Cloud-based services had a rocky year for stability in 2020 and iCloud was no exception around Christmastime but, generally, the reliability of these services instills confidence.
New for this year were the well-received Fitness+ workout service and a bevy of new TV+ shows. Apple also rolled out services to a bunch more countries. But this focus on services has not come without its foibles, as Apple aggressively promotes subscriptions throughout its products in advertisements, up-sells, and push notifications to the irritation of anyone who wishes not to subscribe. Some of these services also introduce liabilities in antitrust and corporate behaviour, something which I will explore later.
HomeKit
I have no experience with HomeKit so I did not grade it.
Hardware Reliability: 3
2020 was the year we bid farewell to the butterfly keyboard and, with it, the most glaring hardware reliability problem in Apple’s lineup. A quick perusal of Apple’s open repair programs and the “hardware” tag on Michael Tsai’s blog shows a few notable quality problems:
“Stained” appearance with the anti-reflective coating on Retina display-equipped notebooks
Display problems with iPhone 11 models manufactured into May 2020
AirPods Pro crackling problems that were only resolved a full year after the product’s debut
Overall, an average year for hardware quality, but an improvement in the sense that you can no longer buy an Apple laptop with a defective keyboard design.
I suppose this score could have gone one notch higher.
Software Quality: 4
The roller coaster ride continues. 2019? Not good! 2020? Pretty good!
Big Sur is stable, but its redesign contains questionable choices that impair usability, some of which I strongly feel should not have shipped — to name two, notifications and the new alert style. Outside of redesign issues, I have seen new graphical glitches when editing images in Photos or using Finder’s Quick Look feature on my iMac. The Music app, while better than the one in Catalina, is slower and more buggy than iTunes used to be. There are older problems, too: with PDF rendering in Preview, with APFS containers in Finder (and Finder’s overall speed), and with data loss in Mail.
iOS 14 is much stable and without major bugs; or, at least, none that I have seen. There are animation glitches here-and-there, and I wish Siri suggestions were better.
On the other end of the scale, tvOS 14 is mediocre, some first-party apps have languished, and using Siri in any context is an experience that still ranges from lacklustre to downright shameful. I hope software quality improves in the future, particularly on the Mac. MacOS has never seemed less like it will cause a whole-system crash, but the myriad bugs introduced in the last several years have made it feel brittle.
I am now thinking I mixed up the scores for software and hardware quality. Oops.
Developer Relations: 2
An absolutely polarized year for developer relations.
On the one hand, Apple introduced a new mechanism to challenge rulings and added a program to reduce commissions to 15% for developers making less than $1 million annually. Running WWDC virtually was also a silver lining in a dark year. It’s the first WWCC I attended because hotels are thousands of dollars but my apartment has no extra cost.
On the other — oh boy, where do we begin? Apple is being sued by Epic Games along antitrust lines; Epic’s arguments are being supported by Facebook, Microsoft, and plenty of smaller developers. One can imagine ulterior motives for the plaintiff’s side, but it does not speak well for Apple’s status among developers that it is being sued. Also, there was that matter of the Hey app’s rejection just days before WWDC, and the difficulty of trying to squeeze the streaming game app model into Apple’s App Store model. Documentation still stinks, and Apple still has communication problems with developers.
Apple’s relationship with developers hit its lowest point in recent memory in 2020, but it also spurred the company to make changes. Developers should be excited to build apps for the Mac instead of relying on shitty cross-platform frameworks like Electron. They should be motivated by the jewellery-like quality of the iPhone 12 models and build apps that match in fit and finish. But I have seen enough comments this year that indicate that everyone — from one-person shops to moderate indies to big names — is worried that their app will be pulled from the store for some new interpretation of an old rule, or that Apple’s services push will raid their revenue model. There must be a better way.
Social/Societal Impact: 2
As with its developer relations, Apple’s 2020 environmental and social record sits at the extreme ends of the scale.
Apple’s response to the pandemic is commendable, from what I could see on the outside. Its store closures often outpaced restrictions from local health authorities in Canada and the U.S., but it kept retail staff on and found ways for them to work from home. It was also quick to allow corporate employees to work remotely, something it generally resists.
In a year of intensified focus on racial inequities, Apple pledged $100 million to projects intended to help right long-standing wrongs, and committed to diversity-supporting corporate practices. There is much more progress that it can make internally, particularly in leadership roles, but its recent hiring practices indicate that it is trying to do better.
Apple continues to invest in privacy and security features across its operating system and services lineup, like allowing users to decline third-party tracking in iOS apps. It also bucked another ridiculous request from the Justice Department and disabled an enterprise distribution certificate used by the creepy facial recognition company Clearview AI.
But a report at the beginning of 2020 drew a connection between discussions with the FBI and Apple’s failure to encrypt iCloud backups. It remains unclear whether one directly followed the other. Apple’s encryption policies remain confusing as far as knowing exactly which parties have access to what data. Still, Apple’s record on privacy is a high standard that its peers will never meet unless they change their business model.
China remains Apple’s biggest liability on two fronts: its supply chain, and services like the App Store and Apple TV Plus. Several reports in 2020 said that Apple was uniquely deferential to Chinese government sensitivities in its App Store policies and its original media. Many other big name companies, wary of being excluded from the Chinese market, have also faced similar accusations. But it is hard to think of one other than Apple that must balance those demands against its entire manufacturing capability. No company can be complicit in the Chinese government’s inhumane treatment of Uyghurs.
Apple is also facing increased antitrust scrutiny around the world for the way it runs the App Store, the commissions it charges third-party developers, and the way it uses private APIs.
Apple’s environmental record is less of a mixed bag. It is recycling more of the materials used in its products, new iPhones come in much smaller boxes containing nearly no plastic. Apple also says that its own operations are entirely carbon neutral, and says that its supply chain will follow by 2030.
For environmental reasons, many new products no longer ship with AC adapters in the box, and to prove it wasn’t screwing around, Apple made Lisa Jackson announce this while standing on the roof of its headquarters. Reactions to this change were predictably mixed, but it seems plausible that this has a big impact at Apple’s scale. I’m still not convinced that it makes sense to sell its charging mat without one.
Apple still isn’t keen on third-party repairs of its products, but it expanded its independent repair shop program to allow servicing of Macs.
If this were two separate categories, I think Apple’s environmental record is a 4/5 and its social record is a 2/5 — at best. I am not averaging those grades because I see liabilities with China and antitrust to be too significant.
Closing Remarks
As I wrote at the top, 2020 was a standout year in Apple’s history — even without considering the many obstacles created by this ongoing pandemic. As my workflow is dependent on these products and services, I appreciate the hard work that has gone into improving their features, but I am even happier that everything I use is, on the whole, more reliable.
I have long enjoyed reading the annual Apple report card that Jason Snell organizes and publishes. It is a finger on the pulse of a company that remains uniquely interesting despite becoming a proper behemoth worth about six times as much now as it was when this survey began.
New in this year’s report card is a failing grade; guess which product that was given to. Also, high praise for Apple’s first own-silicon Macs, the iPhone lineup, services, and comments from many writers including yours truly. I’m grateful that Snell asked me to participate again.
The final “Calvin and Hobbes” strip was fittingly published on a Sunday — Dec. 31, 1995 — the day of the week on which Bill Watterson could create on a large color-burst canvas of dynamic art and narrative possibility, harking back to great early newspaper comics like “Krazy Kat.” The cartoonist bid farewell knowing his strip was at its aesthetic pinnacle.
“It seemed a gesture of respect and gratitude toward my characters to leave them at top form,” Watterson wrote in his introduction to “The Complete Calvin and Hobbes” box-set collection. “I like to think that, now that I’m not recording everything they do, Calvin and Hobbes are out there having an even better time.”
Calvin and Hobbes are two characters that felt like old friends from the moment I met them, and that has never faded. It is the finest American comic strip there has ever been.
Yes, the Open and Save dialogs keep appearing at their smallest possible sizes in Big Sur 11.1. It’s not just you, and it’s not something you’ve done wrong – it’s a bug in Big Sur.
[…]
Sadly, resizing the dialog so it’s larger only works on the current one. Every time you’re presented with an Open or Save dialog, it’ll be back to its uselessly small size again because Big Sur doesn’t remember the past size like it’s supposed to.
If this feels like deja vu, it might be because there was a similar bug in Yosemite where Open and Save dialogs grew by twenty-two pixels every time they were opened. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, Yosemite was the most recent major redesign of MacOS before Big Sur.
In introducing this series in August, Jason Snell defined his ranking criteria as based solely on notability:
Now, note my choice of words there: notable. I’m not saying these are my favorite Macs — a bunch of them I only knew in passing and never used myself. I’m not saying these are the best Macs ever — a difficult thing to measure, since (with a few obvious exceptions) the best Macs made are the most recent ones, otherwise we’d all still be using G3 iMacs.
Of course the iMac G3 is the most notable Mac. It is an icon with an impact many times greater than its five year production run and the now-modest five million or so that were sold:
People who didn’t live through it might not believe it, but the iMac took the product-design world by storm. Over the next few years, there would be very few consumer electronic products that had not offered a special, iMac-inspired translucent plastic edition. It started with USB accessories for the iMac, as printer and floppy-disk vendors quickly placed orders for translucent colored plastic pieces to replace their opaque beige ones. But it just kept going and going. Telephones. Toys. And my personal favorite, the George Foreman iGrill.
I was young but I remember this era so well. Everything you can think of was sold in a translucent jelly-coloured plastic variant. Gel pens were all the rage. IKEA decorated desks with fake iMac G3s. More than anything, it was the first time I remember people talking about a specific model of computer — even if they did have to replace the mouse.
Also, I think Snell did an excellent job with this series. I have enjoyed every piece and, even where I disagree — I think the SE/30 and the Power Mac G5 should have been much higher — these choices have been fair and comprehensive.
On Friday, I was reading… something… on my phone, and the above advertisement greeted me in the middle of it.
As you’ll see it, it’s for a company called IVROSE, and depicts a woman wearing long johns with the buttflap slightly open in a way that can most certainly be described as “cheeky.”
I posted about it on Instagram, and over the next couple days, others started tagging me because they were getting the ad too. Then, on Sunday night, a whole slew of people reading a new article on Elle.com about Martin Shkreli started reporting the same thing, though the woman is wearing a different pattern of long john than the one I had seen.
Zach Edwards of Victory Medium, an analytics and marketing firm, on Twitter [sic]:
When ppl say, “these butt PJ ads are following me all over the internet!” – translation @
1) A product w/ low margin ROI is burning cash across ad networks
2) The product likely owned by chinese astroturfing group
As Edwards pointed out in his Twitter thread, it’s not impossible to figure out what IVRose plans to do with what is almost assuredly boatloads of data from potential onesie customers. In fact, there’s a technical phrase for it: “cookie synching.” The easiest way to describe the process is something of a handshake between a set of partnering adtech platforms that lets folks on both sides of the arrangement swap specific sets of user data back and forth. But this is adtech we’re talking about — which means the process is needlessly complicated and probably the last thing any of us would want to talk about at a party.
At the same time, it’s also a deeply shitty tactic that promises our clicks on those assless pajamas will — no joke — likely keep on haunting us for the rest of our digital lives.
Edwards, in response to a question from Rand Fishkin:
Yup – users on Safari / Brave / Firefox or browsers who block these types of 3rd party cookies already (or anyone who locks down browser settings) won’t receive the userID syncs & makes these “audience ID honeypots” less valuable for shady SSPs & dropshippers.
Among the many complaints in the antitrust lawsuit filed against Google by the attorneys general of Colorado and Nebraska is that Google has the power to collect far more data about users than smaller rivals, and that its plan to restrict third-party cookies in Chrome will deepen that moat. Both of those things are almost certainly true. But it is imperative that the solution to these problems is not to allow or require more ad-based surveillance by smaller firms like those that powered this pyjama ad.
Last week, in two separate lawsuits, Google was sued on antitrust grounds — first by the attorney general of Texas and nine other states, then by the attorneys general of Colorado and Nebraska plus thirty-six other states. Both lawsuits are, I assure you, wild rides but I feel that it is important to warn you that none of these accusations have yet been tested in court and likely won’t be for another three years.
Let’s start in Texas. Fresh off blowing a “repugnant stunt” to undermine democracy, Ken Paxton, the attorney general, accused Google in a lawsuit of rigging the online ad marketplace and striking an illegal deal with Facebook. Gilad Edelman, Wired:
As described in the complaint, the scheme between Google and Facebook has its roots in 2017, when Facebook announced it would start supporting something called “header bidding.” The details are too wonky to get into here. Basically, Google, which runs the biggest online ad exchange, likes to make publishers give it first dibs on bidding to place an ad. (“Publisher” just means any website or app that runs ads.) Header bidding was a technical hack that allowed publishers to earn higher prices by soliciting bids from multiple exchanges at once. Google hated this, because it created more competition. When Facebook declared that it would work with publishers that used header bidding, it was seen as a provocation. The millions of businesses that advertise with Facebook don’t just advertise on Facebook; through the Facebook Audience Network, the company also places ads across the web, making it one of the biggest ad buyers on the internet. If it began supporting header bidding, that could cause Google’s ad platform to lose a lot of business.
Drawing on internal documents uncovered during its investigation, however, the Texas attorney general claims that Facebook’s leaders didn’t actually want to compete with Google; they wanted Google to buy them off. This seems to have worked. In September 2018, the companies cut a deal. Facebook, the complaint says, agreed to “curtail its header bidding initiatives” and send the millions of advertisers in its Facebook Audience Network to bid on Google’s platform. In return, Google would give the Facebook Audience Network special advantages in ad auctions, including setting aside a quota of ad placements to Facebook, even when the company didn’t make the highest bid. The agreement, the complaint says, “fixes prices and allocates markets between Google and Facebook.”
Paxton’s suit is heavily redacted, especially in its juiciest claims, so it is not an easy read. But enough is revealed about this allegedly illegal deal to indicate two things: it is alarming, and it appears to be at least partially based on an incorrect interpretation of backups. From the suit (PDF):
For instance, shortly after Facebook acquired WhatsApp, in 2015, Facebook signed an exclusive agreement with Google, granting Google access to millions of Americans’ end-to-end encrypted WhatsApp messages, photos, videos, and audio files.
This sounds like an alarmist way to write that you could back up WhatsApp to Google Drive beginning in 2015, but it also indicates that Google may be crawling WhatsApp backups for its own purposes. If that is the case, any supporting evidence in the lawsuit is currently redacted. However, according to a report in the Information, the agreement allowed Google to train its facial recognition software on users’ personal WhatsApp photos and video, which are not encrypted at rest in backups, if the user backed-up their WhatsApp account to their Google Drive account. At the very least, this strikes me as a violation of users’ expectations and trust over how the WhatsApp backup mechanism works. You might expect photos you drop into a cloud photos service to be used to improve that service; you probably don’t expect your backed-up conversations from a third-party app to be used for that.
Paxton’s suit also makes big claims about Google’s AMP page format: that it was developed in response to header bidding as a means of exercising greater control over publishers’ ads, and that AMP was just a precursor to total control. From page 84 of the suit:
Google’s control of publisher monetization will allow it to build a version of one giant walled garden that is particularly advantageous to Google. A walled garden where publishers own the property and bear the cost and risk of providing content but Google captures the benefit by extracting a high share of advertising revenues as the sole ad tech services provider. The following internal Google document summarizes Google’s future plans for the internet:
[redacted]
We are this close to seeing Larry Page’s plans for a hollowed-out volcano full of servers.
I have long maintained that AMP is a unique threat to an open web, and have been told by Reddit and Hacker News types — not to mention several people who work on AMP — that I am overreacting. If the allegations in this suit are correct, consider this a metaphorical bullhorn announcement that I told you so.
Let’s move on to the second suit; Shannon Bond, NPR:
The AGs accuse Google of giving its own products priority in search results over more specialized rivals, such as Yelp, which focuses on local businesses, and Tripadvisor, for travel listings. And they allege Google gives itself an unfair advantage over rival search engines, such as Microsoft’s Bing, in the ads that appear in search results.
The states’ complaint echoes one filed by the U.S. Justice Department in October. Both object to deals that, they allege, Google struck to ensconce itself in users’ lives. Notably, both suits point to a pact that made Google’s search engine the default on Apple devices.
The AGs go further, however, warning that Google is trying to lock in similar deals to dominate search on newer technologies such as smart speakers, voice assistants and connected cars. The states are asking for their complaint to be consolidated with the Justice Department’s suit and litigated together.
Google responded to this by saying that all it is doing is making it faster and easier to see relevant information, which it demonstrated by a search for “bread” returning recipes, local bakeries, and an information panel in addition to the standard ten blue links. It compares this to Bing, which looks pretty much the same.
But, notably, Google does not have a product that has anything to do with bread. If you search “music” with Google, the first result is YouTube Music; if you search “spreadsheet”, the first result is for Google Sheets; if you search “photos”, the first result is for Google Photos; and, if you search “domain registration”, the first non-ad result is Google Domains. Notably, even if you clicked on one of the ads to register a domain through a different company, Google would get paid for your click.
These factors combined — Google’s vertical integration, its prioritization of its own products, the positioning of advertising that displaces search results, and contracts with companies like Apple and Microsoft — are illegal, according to the Colorado and Nebraska attorneys general (PDF, page 36):
Google’s conduct has entrenched and solidified its monopoly positions against competition in three ways that individually and cumulatively harm competition. First, Google has put into place a series of artificially-restrictive contracts that have guaranteed it de facto exclusivity in the vast majority of distribution channels (like browsers and voice assistants), thus limiting the ability of consumers to reach general search competitors through search access points. Second, and notwithstanding Google’s pledge to operate its search advertising tool in a neutral fashion, Google operates its SA360 tool to harm advertisers by denying interoperability to important, competitive features, thereby harming what limited choice in general search services remains for advertisers in the wake of its exclusionary distribution contracts. Third, Google’s discriminatory conduct on its search results page has impaired the ability of specialized vertical providers to reach consumers, thereby thwarting their ability to lower barriers to expansion and entry for general search engine competitors.
These suits will undoubtably take years to be resolved. But they indicate a crumbling of trust in large tech companies with plenty of evidence from internal documents and analyses.
It would be a shame if this newfound zeal for investigations into possibly criminal anticompetitive behaviour were limited to tech companies.
When it first became possible to capture unprocessed iPhone camera data with the API introduced in iOS 10, I remember being shocked by the images I saw. Here are the same unedited sample photos I showed in my review of the feature, both shot on an iPhone 6S:
Shot as a JPEG, 100% zoom.
Shot as a RAW image, 100% zoom.
Even on a camera from five years ago, you can see crisp edges on the windows of the building across the street, texture on the roof of the castle-like armoury in the bottom-centre, and more fidelity in the trees. Because RAW photos preserve the data straight off the sensor, they also allow for more editing flexibility. It is possible to precisely adjust the white balance, instead of simply making the image more orange or blue, and you can recover shocking amounts of detail in shadows and highlights in a way that simply is not possible with compressed and processed images.
Over time, the availability of this API has paid off as every new iPhone’s camera gets a little bit better. And I do mean little:
iPhone 6S
iPhone 12 Pro (Wide)
Megapixels
12
12
35mm Equivalent
28mm
26mm
Aperture
ƒ2.2
ƒ1.6
Pixel Size
1.22μm
1.4μm
These are literally microscopic changes, but they have a big impact with the tiny lens and sensor of a smartphone. As a result, I have been able to capture photos with better dynamic range and more detail than I would have thought possible for a phone using third-party apps like Halide.
The numbers above only tell part of the story, though. Today’s iPhone photography is only half about what the camera actually sees; the other half is about how that individual image and its contents are interpreted. Skies and skin tones are separated to be colour-corrected and have noise reduction applied specific to those typical image elements; in poor lighting, multiple images are combined so that noise can be reduced without compromising texture and detail. If you are shooting RAW images you are, by definition, not taking advantage of any of these computational photography advancements. But what if it were possible to combine the two?
The release of iOS 14.3 includes support for something Apple calls “ProRAW”, available on iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max models. Here’s how Apple describes it:
Apple ProRAW. For an absurd amount of creative control.
ProRAW gives you all the standard RAW information, along with the Apple image pipeline data. So you can get a head start on editing, with noise reduction and multiframe exposure adjustments already in place — and have more time to tweak color and white balance.
This is the first time RAW photography has been available in the first-party Camera app, so of course it has been done in a typically Apple way: it’s RAW, encapsulated in the industry-standard Digital Negative file format (DNG), and it has a bunch of little tricks that make it different from unprocessed RAW photographs. This is not going to be the kind of in-depth guide that the Lux team is able to put together. These are also not going to be particularly exciting images. These are merely some impressions after using and editing ProRAW for about a month.
The short version of my findings is that ProRAW bridges the gap between the fidelity and flexibility of a RAW photo and the finished product of a processed image — and whether this is what you want, as a photographer, is going to depend hugely on capture circumstance and what you are hoping to achieve. That sentence is pretty vague, so let me show you a few examples.1
Let’s start with this picture of Calgary’s hopelessly Soviet west side:
Camera app, HEIC [26mm “wide” lens, 1/1150s, ISO 32]
Camera app, ProRAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/1000s, ISO 32]
Halide, RAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/1200s, ISO 32]
You can already see many differences, but I want to highlight a few specific areas. I’m going to start at McDougall Centre on the left-hand side of the image midway down:
Camera app, HEIC [26mm “wide” lens, 1/1150s, ISO 32], 100% crop
Camera app, ProRAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/1000s, ISO 32], 100% crop
Halide, RAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/1200s, ISO 32], 100% crop
There’s a lot of fine detail in this area: trees, windows, flagpoles, sandstone, and scaffolding. The HEIC image gets to take advantage of HDR processing to better balance highlights and shadows, but there’s almost no fidelity left in this area. The Bob Rossian trees and Dali windows look fine when you’re looking at the whole image at a normal size, but as you zoom in, the illusion is revealed.
The two RAW files are interesting, though. Both images were taken with similar settings, but if I told you that one of those was taken with a faster shutter speed than the other, you might have assumed it was the one that is darker overall. It turns out that the Halide image is the one that was shot with a slightly shorter exposure time, yet it is the lightest of these two; the ProRAW file is handled differently, which is something I will get to a bit later. However, comparing unprocessed RAWs kind of defeats the point of the RAW format, so I edited both images to be more similar:
Camera app, ProRAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/1000s, ISO 32], 100% crop, processed to taste
Halide, RAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/1200s, ISO 32], 100% crop, processed to taste
The ProRAW image stands out as being more defined and less noisy. There’s a black SUV on the rooftop parking lot at the bottom of the image and, in the ProRAW image, you can see its chrome door handles; in the Halide image, they simply don’t show up. No matter how much I fiddle with various contrast, definition, sharpness, and detail sliders in Lightroom, I just don’t see those handles in the Halide-captured image nor in the standard HEIC photo, but they are clearly present in the ProRAW one.
The ProRAW image is, overall, noticeably crisper without much editing, to the point where it almost looks like someone has artificially dialled up edge clarity. The Halide image is softer and noisier, but I noticed that I could push it further than the ProRAW file without it looking so aggressively retouched.
Let’s move to the concrete building in the foreground:
Camera app, HEIC [26mm “wide” lens, 1/1150s, ISO 32], 100% crop
Camera app, ProRAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/1000s, ISO 32], 100% crop
Halide, RAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/1200s, ISO 32], 100% crop
The noise reduction applied to the HEIC image has completely erased the texture of the concrete, but in the ProRAW image, you can see how stippled it is. The Halide RAW image shows the difference between an unprocessed image and the adjustments applied by ProRAW: ProRAW appears simultaneously sharper and less noisy than the standard RAW file. How is this possible?
The readout from the DNG files gives us some clue. Here’s what Halide’s shows:
Minor differences aside, I want to draw your attention to three tags: BaselineExposure, BaselineSharpness, and NoiseReductionApplied. Adobe’s DNG spec (PDF) explains those tags in detail. As far as I can work out, those represent at least some of Apple’s special sauce: the RAW file already has corrected exposure, noise reduction, and sharpness, even before the photographer edits it. I found the latter two values to be consistent across images; it applies the same sharpness and noise reduction values regardless of the scene, but the BaselineExposure value varies.
One of the cool things about the DNG format is that, because these are tags applied as adjustment to the contained image data, we can edit those tags using exiftool. I was unable to change NoiseReductionApplied, but I modified a few other key tags, and this is the result compared to the base ProRAW:
Camera app, ProRAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/1000s, ISO 32]
Camera app, ProRAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/1000s, ISO 32], BaselineExposure set to 0, BaselineSharpness set to 0, and BlackLevel changed from 0 to 528, the same as the Halide RAW photo
That’s pretty dark. Let’s change one more thing — the WhiteLevel from 65,535 in the ProRAW file to the 4,095 value in the Halide file:
Camera app, ProRAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/1000s, ISO 32], BaselineExposure set to 0, BaselineSharpness set to 0, BlackLevel changed from 0 to 528, the same as the Halide RAW photo, and WhiteLevel changed to 4,095 to match Halide
Lovely.
RAW image data that is kept in a DNG file might have different amounts of detail available to a third-party app based on the settings of that DNG file. These are differences that appear before the image is ingested into a RAW workflow. All of this is to say that at least some of the secret sauce of ProRAW appears to be about how its data is encapsulated. But wait — that’s not all. There is one more thing these images will not tell you, which is the size of the DNG files. The ones produced by Halide and Manual are in the 10–12 MB range, and Obscura’s tend to be around 13–16 MB — but ProRAW files are 20–30 MB. That is a big leap.
I am not sure why ProRAW files are twice as big or more compared to the RAW files from third-party apps. A big reason for this, I assume, is that the files are 12-bit, which accounts for about half that difference. I expect someone more capable will explain this better, because I am out of my depth here.
Let’s look at a different picture. This one was shot indoors and lit by diffuse daylight from a large window, and I tapped to focus on the nearest leaf.
Camera app, HEIC [26mm “wide” lens, 1/60s, ISO 500]
Camera app, ProRAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/50s, ISO 500]
Halide, RAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/55s, ISO 500]
We can see a few things pretty clearly here:
The images produced by the default Camera app look very similar.
Despite using near-identical camera settings, the Halide image is far brighter.
The HEIC image has more detail of the embarrassing amount of dust on the leaf, and better-balanced highlights. If you guessed that this is a Deep Fusion image, you’d be right.
The out-of-focus areas in this image also look less natural than those in the two RAW photos. I suspect this is a Deep Fusion side effect.
Because the Halide and ProRAW images are so different, I have processed the photos for these 100% crops to look more similar:
Camera app, ProRAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/50s, ISO 500], 100% crop, RAW processed to taste
Halide, RAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/55s, ISO 500], 100% crop, RAW processed to taste
These two images look pretty close to me. Parts of each are a little bit sharper than parts of the other. The slower shutter speed combined with a slightly moving leaf likely all contributed to that. And, while I braced my phone against a sturdy surface to take all of these photos, there may have been some camera movement as well. Alas, my phone tripod does not fit the iPhone 12.
Moving to the out-of-focus areas highlights a more obvious difference:
Camera app, ProRAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/50s, ISO 500], 100% crop, RAW processed to taste
Halide, RAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/55s, ISO 500], 100% crop, RAW processed to taste
I adjusted Lightroom’s noise reduction to the best of my abilities in that Halide image but, as the noise profile became closer to the smooth ProRAW image, I found that details in the foreground disappeared. I struggled to balance the two as successfully as they came out of the camera in the ProRAW image.
That made me think that ProRAW would be especially effective with low-light photography, so here is a series of test shots from a nighttime scene:
Camera app, HEIC [26mm “wide” lens, 1/40s, ISO 500]
Camera app, ProRAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/40s, ISO 500]
Obscura, RAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/40s, ISO 500]
Halide, RAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/40s, ISO 500]
In this case, I decided to take four photos: an HEIC one, a ProRAW one, and then one RAW photo in each Halide and Obscura. I know that I have pointed out a few times in this piece that Halide’s images are grainier than the ProRAW samples. I want to be clear that I do not see this as a problem with Halide, nor am I bashing the app. I really like Halide. But, to make sure that I wasn’t missing anything, I wanted to see what the results would be from another third-party RAW-shooting camera app, and I also really like Obscura. Here are some things to know about the photos above:
The grain, lighting, and contrast all look very similar. Too similar. So I checked the DNG tags and they are virtually identical. I asked Obscura developer Ben Rice McCarthy about this and they said that the system takes care of those tags and that Obscura does not write them. That aligns with the documentation I found, which shows only a handful of options for processing RAW files compared to the long list of tags in Adobe’s DNG spec.
I braced the camera against a construction fence to take these pictures, but my efforts were not good enough and resulted in a blurry Halide image. I will not be using it for any detail comparisons.
As I mentioned earlier, it is more worthwhile to compare details if both of the RAW images are processed to look similar, so that is what you will see below. First, here are some leaves in the foreground:
Camera app, ProRAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/40s, ISO 500], 100% crop, RAW processed to taste
Obscura, RAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/40s, ISO 500], 100% crop, RAW processed to taste
In this case, I think the Obscura image looks far better. Yes, I know there’s more noise, but that cluster of leaves is actually recognizable as leaves. The smoothing in the ProRAW image creates an image with less fidelity and, critically, there does not appear to be a way to decrease the pre-applied noise reduction. You can see similar smearing in the train station in the background, but you can also see a somewhat demoired wire fence, which is nice:
Camera app, ProRAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/40s, ISO 500], 100% crop, RAW processed to taste
Obscura, RAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/40s, ISO 500], 100% crop, RAW processed to taste
But the ProRAW format’s aggressive noise reduction works out okay for the building on the right, as well as the sky:
Camera app, ProRAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/40s, ISO 500], 100% crop, RAW processed to taste
Obscura, RAW [26mm “wide” lens, 1/40s, ISO 500], 100% crop, RAW processed to taste
So, I am not sure I was correct — I don’t know that ProRAW is particularly good in low-light scenes. One of the advantages of RAW is that the photographer can choose their own adjustments, including balancing noise and detail. In the ProRAW world, that choice has been made and I cannot find a way to dial it back with the tools at my disposal. It isn’t like the Noise Reduction slider in Lightroom is at a preset amount; it is at zero, yet noise has been reduced within the file. The Obscura image is far grainier, but I think it is possible to bring the noise down to manageable levels while preserving many of the details that have been smeared together in the ProRAW example.
This particular example is quite challenging, with many fine lines and small details in a high-contrast setting at night. But I found similar results with fine detail in many ProRAW photos shot in the dark. This is a representative — albeit exaggerated — sample.
All of the example images so far have been made with the main “wide” camera on the iPhone 12 Pro, as it is the one with the biggest sensor, widest aperture, and creates the best quality images. But I have a few thoughts on ProRAW on the other three cameras:
The telephoto experience is very similar to the examples above, with one main exception: the first-party Camera app will continue to digitally zoom images from the “wide” camera in telephoto mode if it feels there is not enough light for the telephoto camera. This remains the case in ProRAW mode, and there is no immediate way of knowing when it is happening.
This is maybe the most irritating characteristic of something called “ProRAW” and explicitly marketed for its “absurd amount of creative control”. If you select the telephoto camera in third-party apps, you’re guaranteed to get the telephoto camera; in Apple’s app, you may or may not, and you have no way of knowing until you inspect the photo’s metadata.
ProRAW brings RAW photography to the iPhone’s ultrawide camera for the first time, and it is excellent. Its specs land it in a solid third place of the four cameras on an iPhone, but RAW brings more flexibility to that camera. There is still a surprising level of noise reduction, but I have found it to be more detailed and, naturally, more flexible than its HEIC cousin.
Apple has said that third-party app developers will be able to take advantage of the ProRAW pipeline, but it is unclear to me whether they will also be able to capture unprocessed image data from the ultrawide camera.
ProRAW is also available on the front-facing selfie camera. I am sure some photographers will be excited about the creative prospects of this, but it is the smallest sensor and lowest-quality camera of the four — and it shows.
I hope this gives you a sense of how ProRAW works and how it differs from the RAW capture that third-party apps have been offering for the past four years. As I mentioned, I have been trying out ProRAW for about a month now, and I am very pleased. It is another tool in the iPhone photography toolbox that, for me, does not entirely replace third-party camera apps. That is a good thing; I want to see exceptional independent apps like Halide and Obscura succeed on the iPhone. It is, however, a worthwhile addition that underscores how great of a camera this telephone really is.
ProRAW also largely accomplishes the pitch Apple makes for it. I can nitpick the amount of control a photographer has with ProRAW compared to other RAW capturing apps, but one thing I have been consistently impressed by is just how similar the HEIC and ProRAW versions of the same scene appear. It really does seem like Apple has managed to bridge the computational workflow of the standard camera app and the greater flexibility and quality of RAW images. I bet photographers will be pleased.
To create these test shots, I first photographed a scene in the first-party Camera app in standard HEIC mode. Everything was set to auto except the flash, which was switched off, and I tapped to set the focus and exposure. I then tapped the RAW toggle to capture a ProRAW file. I used the Exify extension to view the exposure settings, and attempted to replicate them as closely as I could to capture a standard RAW file in third-party camera apps like Halide and Obscura.
All photos were AirDropped to my Mac, imported into Lightroom Classic, and then exported without any adjustments except resizing to fit, unless otherwise noted. Images were exported as JPEG files with P3 colour space at quality setting 80. All metadata fields except location information were preserved. ↥︎
Earlier this week, I linked to Stuart Maschwitz’s Twitter thread about Extended Dynamic Range in MacOS. Maschwitz has followed that up with a full blog post explanation that I think is worth reading:
So add a third method of displaying EDR content to Apple’s roster: On these non-HDR displays, Apple has remapped “white” to something less than 255-255-255, leaving headroom for HDR vales, should they be called for. The operating system is complicit in this trickery, so the Digital Color Meter eyedropper shows “white” as 255, as do screenshots.
With Catalina, Apple quietly changed what “white” means for millions of Macs, and none of us noticed.
Think of it this way: This EDR display philosophy is so important to Apple that they are willing to spend battery life on it. When you map “white” down to gray, you have to drive the LED backlight brighter for the same perceived screen brightness, using more power. Apple has your laptop doing this all the time, on the off chance that some HDR pixels come along to occupy that headroom. It’s a huge flex, and a strong sign of Apple’s commitment to an HDR future.
Visit for the explanation of EDR; stick around for Maschwitz’s thoughts on HDR as a tool for videographers.
By the way, this only appears to apply to HDR video — not photos with extended range in the highlights. For example, I took a picture on my iPhone of some food on a platter made of white glossy porcelain and cranked the brightness of it in Photos. It is not an HDR photo, but its white values are brighter than the white background of Photos, even though they apparently share the same RGB values. This is similar to the way HDR video appears on my phone but, unlike video, my 2017 iMac did not show any noticeable difference in the white value of the photo compared to Finder’s white background.
