Posts by Thomas Wolf 106 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Sep 2008
Apple has been charging the same 30% for a very long time, possibly since the beginning. It’s hard to accuse someone of monopoly abuse when (a) they haven’t raised prices and (b) they arguably don’t have a monopoly to begin with.
In my opinion, Apple built and owns its app store and has every right to set whatever conditions it wants on the apps being sold there. Apple thinks its restrictions make their products and services more secure and, thus, more valuable to existing and potential customers. Customers and developers have every right to not agree with those conditions and not buy an iPhone or develop software for the app store.
"Your conclusion is an invalid as the article's, since none of us can present any official model by model break down, nor the ASP." I don't see why a model by model breakdown is necessary. The ASP went from $655 to $728. Clearly, the SE, 6, 6+, 7 (at least in base configurations) won't be major drivers behind that increased ASP since their prices don't even reach the old ASP and don't sell in huge volumes. At $669, the 7+ is right around the old ASP. So that leaves the 8, 8+, and X to have raised the ASP. According to Cook, X+ was the best seller each and every week of the quarter. It's also the most expensive phone. So it seems obvious that it contributed the most to the rise in ASP (assuming an equal distribution of base model vs. higher specced versions across the 3 models).
"...anecdote that the X was the best-selling iPhone throughout March" - he didn't say that. He said, on at least 2 occasions during the call, that the iPhone X was the best selling iPhone every single week this quarter - not just March! And that followed the iPhone X being the best selling iPhone last quarter.
So, yes, the iPhone X was the primary driver of higher ASPs - your weak analysis not withstanding.
Ignorant rubbish. Of course you could always drop a component on a form anywhere you bloody well wanted in Swing/Java - see Container.setLayout(null) - It's just a stupid thing to do if you want your GUI to accommodate different resolutions, locales, font sizes, look & feels, etc.
At the time Swing/AWT came out in the mid-90s (yes, I'm that old), it was way ahead of most GUI development tools with respect to its layout management - most notably VB. While Sun didn't include a GUI builder for "weekend-warrior" GUI developers, a couple good ones appeared soon thereafter (e.g. Symantec Visual Cafe and my favorite, Netbeans "Matisse".)
Where did you hear that (Swing/AWT being phased out)? Sure hope not - lots of applications (including mine) are still being actively developed using it. JavaFX was really a flash-in-the-pan: while it had couple components solely lacking in the elder Swing (e.g. WebView), it wasn't nearly enough to convince most Swing developers to move to it. Swing/AWT was way too embedded already (I worked for telecom & financial companies in the late 90s & early 2000s and they were all using Swing.)
Incidentally, if you're a Swing developer and looking to move your application to a Web based framework with minimum fuss, I recommend Vaadin. While it's still a rewrite, Vaadin is the closest to Swing in "spirit" of any framework I've found. I used it to do just that in the last 2 companies I worked for.
"If you chose the Apple ecosystem because you don't trust Google – bad news." Some/many choose Apple not because they don't trust Google's infrastructure, but because of what they do with the data. Just because AAPL uses Google (or Azure or AWS) as a big honking, distributed disk doesn't mean Google gets its hands on decrypted data.
Apple's just being smart: as with their hardware suppliers, they're letting cloud providers compete against each other to get Apple the best price for what is essentially a commodity by now.
As an aside, I thought I read a year or so ago that this is all temporary as Apple is building out its own server farms. Aren't some of their services already on Apple servers (e.g. the App Store, videos, music, etc.?)
...because with *some* of the payment platforms, security is actually increased and no fewer buying habits are exposed relative to CC purchases (where stores can easily tie your CC # to your purchases). The fact that your CC # isn't part of the transaction helps you not having to file disputes when that CC# makes into criminal's hands (because the store where you used it got hacked).
I don't know how secure Google Wallet/Android Pay/Google Pay are, but ApplePay is a heck of a lot more secure than that credit card that you probably have no problem using. For one, your credit card number & such never leave your phone during a transaction - so no need to worry that the store taking your payment stores your CC info and subsequently gets hacked (here in US there have been several such cases in recent past: Target & Home Depot, two huge nationwide retailers).
Heck, your CC info doesn't even leave a specially designed area on the chip of an iPhone. ApplePay has been around for 3+ years and nobody's been able to break into the phone or do anything with a pilfered transaction. AFAIK, the only time the ApplePay system has ever been compromised is during the registration process: because some banks didn't verify a registration with the owner of a card, criminals were able to register stolen cards with ApplePay and make purchases with it. But that wasn't a problem with ApplePay per se, but with the banks not yet being vigilant enough during registration.
Good review. I haven't experienced the camera delay issues (incl. the flash delay) you have, but I guess everyone has a unique phone setup due to different apps & customizations. I completely agree with your point about things not being discoverable enough. I just had the same experience: yesterday I wanted to transfer something via AirDrop - which I had done a thousand times (I've never seen the fussiness you describe) on my iPhone 6. But AirDrop was gone from the control center!? Where the heck did it go? Why didn't Apple tell us? I had to query the web. Lo and behold, when you 3D Touch the connectivity area in the control panel, more icons show up, including AirDrop...WTF??? Apple should really provide some visual indicators for things that are "3D touchable" - otherwise, how the he11 do you know???
(btw, if anyone has succeeded exporting health data from an iPhone 6, let me know how - when I try emailing it (Apple creates a zip file of it), the zip file that arrives is always empty :-(
You say you were always paranoid about the expensive phone dropping - so why don't you use a case??? I assume you were going case-less because you complained about the camera protruding on the back and because you use wireless charging, which can be fussy with cases. Folks who use cases (or, in my case, a stick-on wallet) don't have that issue - or have come to terms with it since this protrusion business started 3+ years ago. Personally, I use the aforementioned stick-on wallet plus Itomic's Edge protectors. This way I still mostly get the 'feel' of a naked phone, but also some really good drop protection. I'm not a member of the Rolex crowd either and plan on keeping this phone for a good number of years - as I have my iPhone 6. I paid full price for 2 iPhone X (the other being my wife's) - and after using it for a couple months now, I think it was the best investment I've made in awhile. For folks who want to keep their phones in their front jeans pocket, maximize their content/reading surface, and still mostly use it one-handed, there's no better phone.
Everyone here does realize that Apple is a for-profit corporation, right? It's not a human rights endeavor. It's not a government. It's a company whose primary responsibility is to make money for its shareholders. And China is a big market in which to do just that.
Apple is selling widgets in China. It needs to follow Chinese laws to do so. Saying "Apple could just walk away" is naive nonsense - they'd probably get sued by their shareholders for ignoring the largest market in the world. If you care about human rights violations in China, get your government to affect change there or protest in front of the Chinese embassy or stop buying Chinese widgets in protest - don't lay that responsibility at the feet of soulless companies doing what they're supposed to: make money.
Is there a link that compares performance for desktop VMs? When I worked at Lenovo (and used their WS class laptop) I used VMWare. Now I'm using an MBP with VirtualBox - and don't see any performance differences in similar use cases. I realize my experience may not representative - thus my question.
VMWare is definitely a much better solution if you have to manage many VMs on servers.
Where do Nest cameras (and now security cams), thermostats, etc. do their 'learning'? Isn't your usage (and faces if it does facial recognition for you?) sent to servers somewhere (presumably Google's since it bought Nest)? Doesn't it bother anyone that this info cannot only be potentially (aka likely?) mined by Google for its advertising cash cow, but also be absconded with by intrepid hackers? While I'm sure Google/Nest take plenty of precautions against the latter, I'm not convinced the former does not currently go on
Assuming Face ID is as well implemented as Touch ID, then people will be paying for a feature that, while not new, actually works well. A path well worn by Apple.
I do share the author's skepticism about the *convenience* of Face ID over Touch ID. For example, to pay with Apple Pay, I am used to simply pulling my phone out of my pocket, holding holding it over the transaction device & double-pressing the home button for authentication. It *seems* the Face ID equivalent is "pull my phone out of my pocket, double-press the power button, hold up to my face, hold up to transaction device?
I don’t get the author’s comment about ad blocking: he says that iOS 9 introduced support for ad blocking...but people just revert to the default browser...Safari and Chrome?!!! Wasn’t it Safari on iOS 9 where Apple added said ad-blocking support??? As we speak, I have 2 installed (although I have to admit they don’t seem to be blocking all that much).
We live in a world full of "first world" problems - looking at your smartphone would often require you to take it out of your pocket! I get a lot of emails & notifications that can be safely ignored for the time being (or completely) - with a smartwatch, I can decide to do so without first having taken my phone out of my pocket, look at it, and put it back.
An analogy from the kitchen world: we just installed a faucet that is activated by touch. There's absolutely nothing this faucet does that a normal one doesn't - but it sure is nice to be able to start the water with the back of your grimy or raw-meat-handling hands.
Battery life is always brought up as the be-all, end-all of smartwatch success. I used to be one of them. But I got an Apple Watch anyway - and, guess what, charging every night is just no big deal. I already charge my phone every night on my night stand, so what's the big deal laying the watch next to it? Sure, some would argue "what about sleep tracking"? The obvious answer: get a different device if you care about that. But for anyone other than those sleep-obsessed few, laying the watch on its charger next to the bed is just fine and dandy.
The author thinks an Apple Watch with 4G is a bad idea (battery life, Dick Tracy look, yada, yada, yada). I think she should have qualified that: it's a bad idea IFF Apple made all Apple Watches 4G-enabled. I think it's a great idea to have it be an option - sort of like 4G is an option for iPads. You don't have to get it (and pay for it) if you don't want to.
The author claims 20% of people jailbreak their phones. I don't believe that number at all - even your 5% sounds high. 95% of people who own iPhones wouldn't even know how to jailbreak an iPhone - even if they cared to. Those that do jailbreak are a subset of the other 5% - in my opinion :-)
I don't see either attack as a weakness in ApplePay: (1) if you jailbreak your phone, you get what you get - you can't blame the maker of your front-door lock for a break in that occurred because you left the back door open. (2) your article says that Apple states a cryptogram should only be used once. If vendors re-use them for convenience, that to me is not a weakness in ApplePay per se, but a weakness in its implementation.
The second attack reminds me of an early 'weakness' in ApplePay: because vendors weren't confirming ApplePay card registrations with the owners, criminals managed to register stolen cards with ApplePay on stolen phones and use ApplePay to make purchases. That wasn't an ApplePay weakness either - it was a weakness in the card vendor's protocols.
If the article claimed that the CPU was the only reason iPhone wipes the floor with Android phones, you'd have a point - but the test simply measured how well the iPhone overall fared in some representative user activities relative to Android devices. It's a perfectly fair comparison.
Who cares how easy it is for Apple to integrate iOS and its hardware. The only thing that counts for customers is the result - and those are clear in the test.
When you say that "speed isn't the only metric people use", you're conflating two types of speed: CPU speed - and for this you are absolutely correct (except, that Apple users didn't care that much for this metric in the first place - only Android fanbois liked to talk about # of cores and multi-core benchmarks) - and speed of the overall system - and for this you're absolutely wrong! Of course people care how long it takes them to open apps, scroll through content, download stuff, etc.
The things you're claiming "count" are, of course, the things that are important to you. You have no proof at all that they're that important to others! Except for the battery, I couldn't give a rats a$$ about any of the other factors you care about. And I've never had an instant in which my iPhone didn't last a full day, so to some extent I don't even give a hoot about battery life.
It's not a single thing, but the test does a bunch of things a typical user might - and those things typically don't require multiple cores to perform. And in any single-core comparison, Apple's chips are just ridiculously faster than any Android CPUs - we're talking like twice as fast, if I remember the benchmarks correctly. I think even an iPhone 6s beat today's latest Android cpus. The speed of the storage is probably also a factor, but I haven't read much about the difference between Apple & Android in that regard. I suspect (and so did the tester on another one of these "real world" tests where Apple won easily) that the memory management in iPhone is just much better or, perhaps, apps in Android land are just much more bloated in size, making it more time consuming to move them in/out of memory.
"Mac lost the war because IBM deliberately made the PC specs open, so other manufacturers could deliver cheaper versions." - uh, aren't you saying essentially the same thing I'm saying? My point was that customers back then (and, yes, I was one of them) chose the cheaper hardware which, in turn, caused software developers to gravitate to that hardware. More software on that platform, in turn, drew more customers.....virtuous cycle.
In the iOS vs. Android battle, software does not help Android. Arguably, it continues to help iOS sales (in general, software appears on iOS before Android; and even with Android market share 4x that of iPhone, app developers still make more money on the iOS platform). And, whatever your opinion of iOS native apps, the fact is that iOS users get a choice of core Apple apps *and* core Android apps (since Google doesn't want to miss out on iOS customers) whereas the reverse is not the case.
Many folks - especially in populous emerging markets - buy Android phones because of price. And that has resulted in its 80+% current market share. The question, really, is whether Apple can continue to convince people to pay a premium to gain the benefits of the iOS ecosystem (better integration between [Apple] devices & better security/stability due to better updating policy). Who knows whether they'll succeed. I know their strategy worked for me: in my family we have about a dozen different Apple gadgets, all working beautifully together (most of the time). An Android vendor would pretty much have to come up with an earth-shattering feature before I'd consider switching.
"Despite increased smartphone sales overall, Apple’s sales and its market share for iOS have fallen" - yes, due to off-the-charts iPhone 6 and 6 Plus sales (due to switch to bigger screens), Apple's year-over-year quarterly sales have been down. And that's the only reason this tired, old "iPhone is doomed because of down sales, market share" type of article is possible. In another quarter or so, when iPhone 7 will be compared to the previous year's iPhone 6s, sales will be on a positive trajectory again.
The comparison with "Mac battle with Windows" is nonsense. Mac lost that war because it and IBM PC came to the party around the same time - and the lower IBM PC prices caused more folks to buy more of those computers - which attracted more software developers. A virtuous cycle ensued - and Apple, without much software, was left out in the cold. Contrast this with the iPhone situation: Apple was to market first and attracted lots of developers because it was the only game in town. By the time Android came around, lots of software was already written for iPhone and lots of developers were making lots of money off iPhone. Even today, despite Android having 80+% market share, app developers make nearly twice as much off their iOS versions of apps than they do off Android.
Not to stand in the way of a good (and expected from Register) Apple bash, but the only "crashing" iPhone sales have done is relative to the outsized sales of the iPhone 6 - a phone that sold in crazy numbers due to the new screen size. If you take out that one data point, iPhone sales are on a pretty linear growth path.
"payment support was added." - No, payment support has existed since Apple Watch came out - payment support within 3rd-party applications have been added.
"WatchOS 3 (note the subtle leap-frogging over the more established platform) " - what leap-frogging? My Apple Watch is running watchOS 2!
ApplePay is a lot more secure than physical credit cards as no credit card information is kept on the phone or transmitted during a transaction (for Android Pay I'm not sure ifGoogle maintains user credit card numbers anywhere on their servers now - that used to be the case with Google Wallet; I'm pretty sure Samsung's Payment system, because it needs to emulate a traditional magnetic credit card, keeps CC info somewhere - and is, thus, an invitation for hacking).
And what gives them "reasonable cause" anyway? The perpetrator has already been procecuted (he was killed) and there's no evidence, from what I've read, that the information in this phone would help prevent another crime/terror plot. In other words, the judge is asking Apple to help the FBI in a fishing expedition.
"The law says, you shall break this encryption..." - except that it doesn't. Your sentence should say: "The government says..." - and then, of course, your position has less support.
"Corporations aren't on our side. Ever." Well, that's a nice *opinion* to have, except that corporations are on our side all the time - after all, they produce the products & services we want - I'd count that as being 'on our side'. As a matter of fact, show me a single corporation that stayed in business for very long by *not* being on our side? Governments, on the other hand, do stuff to their population that isn't in that population's best interest all the time - e.g. the Snowden disclosures.
"Cook is playing on our distrust of government snooping in order...." It's obvious from the recent Snowden disclosures and countless historical incidents that, in fact, we cannot trust government. Not only do governments intentionally violate citizens' rights - there have been countless cases of sheer ineptitude that violated our rights. To wit, the recent hack of millions of detailed background-check records in the CIA. Those idiots didn't intentionally give up these highly sensitive documents, they were just too inept by leaving them on a network for someone to steal! So when the FBI says to Apple "this is just a one-time executable that will get thrown away when we're done with it" I just have to laugh. Yes, perhaps Tim Cook is "playing on our distrust" to highlight the security of Apple devices and sell a few more units. That doesn't mean that distrust is misplaced.
"Sorry, but I'm not buying it. I don't have my life on my mobile..." Good for you - the rest of the world isn't living your hermit life.
You're simply wrong.
I don't give up my social security number or that of my family "on a daily basis to function in modern society". Neither do I divulge my various account numbers. Neither do I divulge private photos. But all these things are on my iPhone. And all these things can be used to harm me financially.
Darn right, I think privacy trumps national security - especially when the threat to national security are way overblown. The likelihood of being harmed by terrorists in the US is currently about 1000x smaller than being killed by some hillbilly's gun....yet we haven't passed even the smallest gun legislation in decades. Why are we so scared of a few terrorists that we're willing to give up our liberties so easily?
Trev,
You're absolutely right that what the magistrate is asking Apple to do is not a "backdoor in the context of encryption". But your context is wrong. A special OS firmware build that disables the "slow-down after x tries" is effectively a backdoor into the device because it makes it possible for someone to get in (with a 'brute force' key). So now the government has this special build Apple gave it that will make it possible to get into any iPhone 5c - with or without warrant. Of course the US government wouldn't abuse that build. I'm sure it won't find its way into NSA's hands....CIA....whatever. Nah.
And then there's the 'precedence' thing that you ignore: if Tim Cook develops this special version of the OS for the US government, how can he refuse similar 'legal' requests by other governments? How comfortable would you feel when you hand your iPhone to some border official in, say, China. He disappears briefly with your phone into some back office. Comes back smiling, telling you you should lay off the porn. On a more serious note: how safe can a dissident feel?
The problem is, of course, "legal" is defined by the country making requests. And these countries don't always have the same definition that we do. It is indeed, as Tim Cook put it, a slippery slope when you begin accede to one government.
I know The Register has a decidedly anti-Apple following, so perhaps the reason for the article's statement "...while failing to note that Apple's own iCloud servers had been ransacked late last year" was to address its fan base? Because I can't see another purpose. Why, exactly, is it a "failure" by Tim Cook to not mention every single security bug that has been found in its products prior to making a statement about security/privacy? *Obviously* all software has bugs. Are you suggesting that whenever he talks about any software related subject, he should first give his audience a run-down on every one of the thousands of open bugs in his various products - otherwise he's "failing" his audience? Ridiculous.
Really? I think it's unbelievably ugly. Especially the front grille - somehow reminds me of a Ford Fusion or Mazda....$130k for that?!
At the intro, Musk made a big deal out of being able to get into the car in a tight parking spot thanks to the "Falcon" doors....never mind that you'd then have to climb into the drivers seat - since the front doors are still conventional. Yes, those doors look cool and will get get some stares when your kids use them - but they're mostly a useless gimmick.
Echoing what another commenter brought up: I thought the X was supposed to be priced similarly to the S. Did I dream that?
....how does she know whether the cyber attack on CIA records would have been prevented if the FBI had unfettered access to company records? She's just a private citizen (and incompetent CEO judging by her record while at HP).
That CIA hack made it plenty clear that we can't trust the FBI or government in general with our data. If they can't even keep highly confidential records safe, what chance is there that they'd do better with our more "mundane" private data? I mean - given that there's no consequence for obvious ineptitude (who got fired over the fact that these government employees divulged 20 million records??) - would these federal yahoos even learn from their mistakes?
My wife and I both got one in May. So far she's had to reset it once (touch screen became unresponsive) and I've never had to reset it. Strange that yours is having these connectivity issues. Maybe you fiddle with it a lot more than we do - we mostly let it be and use it as an activity tracker and notifier and occasionally to answer calls. Don't use any third-party apps.
It is certainly true that it tells us more about people than about technology - but I beg to differ with you on what it tells us about people. You're of the opinion that anyone who buys Apple products does so out of fashion sense instead of rational thinking. Sure, if your definition of 'rational thinking' are thoughts guided solely by the amount of money you pay for the hardware & specs & number of software functions (irrespective of how polished they may be). But, believe it or not, people can make rational decisions based on a host of other dimensions - usability, relative freedom from malware, privacy, easy of updating to the newest version of the OS, etc. are all perfectly rational reasons for choosing a device - and, for many, Apple devices are hands-down the better choice in these regards.
Yes, every phone - including the single most successful smartphone model ever - which hardly needed "manufactured scarcity" in order to sell well. Could it possibly be that it *is* difficult to manufacture 10m units of anything - much less complex electronics - in a short period of time?
The Apple Watch uses new manufacturing techniques and probably a new mix of suppliers. It is not surprising that there are birthing problems. I think this is much ado about nothing.
Apparently not. The UP3 I think ended up with IP67 certification - ok to wash hands with and maybe take into the shower - but not for prolonged submersion as in swimming. So the UP4 just adds heart monitoring and this insecure payment feature (who cares that it uses "tokens" - someone can still just steal your UP4 and pay for stuff before you report it stolen.
Google claims that last year it did not have to fix any critical security issues. Could that be because it does not bother fixing old versions of Android? Or, even if it did, that most people with older devices could not install these fixes because their carriers don't make them available?
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