Apple – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

The Gadget Price Conundrum That Isn’t Really A Conundrum

A future of haves and have less

It’s always fun watching folks trying to shoehorn yesterday’s conventional wisdom into tomorrow’s reality. It might feel like dealing with a today thing, but it’s actually making the point by missing it.

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Recently I’ve seen lots of blogging and social media mouthing off that such and such a device is boring, or isn’t innovative enough, or just iterates on last year’s model. Pick a device category and you’ll find a chorus singing that song. In the wake of Apple releasing the $599 MacBook Neo this week, which as a device seems anything but boring, I’ve seen plenty of folks complaining about the tech Apple left out to hit that low price point.

But that low price point is the point. And it’s not just a way to expand the market to more cost conscious consumers. That will happen of course. But Apple is opening up a future of higher price points for newer tech by now selling these lower priced Macs and iPhones that are anything but the low priced junk it once dismissed.

In case you’ve missed it there’s been a lot of preparation to condition the market for more advanced and more innovative tech that’s going to cost considerably more than what the median has been for quite some time.

No one knows for sure, but folding iPhones are predictably going to rival folding smartphone price points of other makers, and be much more expensive than what most consumers (I’m not talking tech writers and gadget bloggers) are used to seeing.

Whether costs go up because of new tech and new innovations, DRAM shortages, tariffs, wars, or what have you, the point is Apple, Samsung, and others are seeding the low end of the pricing fields to create more room for more expensive tech in the higher, richer pastures. Tech is poised to make some bolder moves, or so they tell us, but not everyone is going to be able to afford to play on the high end. But there is an essential, increasingly more marginalized market, perhaps not as lucrative on the margins, but still worth harvesting.

It’s no different than seeing the mix of higher end vehicles in the same traffic jam alongside rusting out beaters on the highway.

It’s actually and accurately a pretty sober assessment of how the frame of income inequality is gaining a more intense focus lately, even though it’s been that way for quite some time. Unless we’re EMP’d back to the Stone Age, tactile tech in our hands is going to be a part of all of our lives for quite some time. (Call me when you can do a video doctor’s appointment on an AI pin.) We’re just going to see a broader gap between what’s essential to have and what’s nice to have if you can afford it.

(Image from Julia Taubitz on Unsplash

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Apple’s MacBook Neo Will Probably Hit Many Sweet Spots

The sweet spot that matters most is the price

I support a number of folks, both older and younger, who only use computers in the same basic way they use their smartphones. I’m thinking Apple’s new MacBook Neo, with a starting price of $599 will hit many of their sweet spots.

Of course, we’ll all have to wait for the reviews after the first wave of reviews, the ones that real users take the time to share before we really know what’s what. But if nothing else the pricing is going to be one of, if not the, winning feature. If the build quality lives up to what Apple usually provides I’m guessing it will be a hit, and sell millions, adding new opportunities for Apple Services revenue growth.

I saw someone somewhere yesterday say that you can buy an also newly introduced iPhone 17e alongside a MacBook Neo for the same price of the base MacBook Air. They are not far off. The number of iPhone users I know who have shied away from Mac computers, simply because of price, will I’m sure will be checking this out, especially since you’ll be seeing them on sale at Walmart, Best Buy and other outlets. Certainly given that possible customers will be able to see these computers in locations no where near Apple Stores.

Online chatter is about as you’d expect with both positive and negatives responses to the announcement. The negatives focus on what Apple did not include and lesser specs than existing MacBook lines. But in the end, the spec that matters is that $599 starting price. My guess is the online chatter and the reviews are going to be largely irrelevant regarding the success of this product.

You can watch Apple’s clever product intro video below.

Sunday Morning Reading

Slicing life close to the bone

It could be said that the world is off its axis. Or it could be said that we’re just slicing the meat closer and closer to the bone. Because we don’t know what we don’t know about the war the U.S and Israel launched against Iran I’ll leave off any direct links on that topic for this week’s Sunday Morning Reading. Be warned though, some might be peripherally related. Things happen that way. I’m sure there will be plenty to share in the weeks to come. Meanwhile, here is the usual serving of links on a variety of topics that caught my eye this week. You’re on your own for the tzatziki.

Parthenon 14.

David Todd McCarty is bringing his writings from other platforms to his own site, and some of his earlier writings often strike with new currency. This piece, Defiantly Daft, Duplicity Delicious is certainly one that does.

What is journalism for? Good question these days, but it’s actually been an important one for quite awhile. Take a look at this piece from 1989 from Janet Malcolm called The Journalist And The Murder-I.

Journalism, like everything else, might be under fire at the moment, some of it friendly, some of it not so. Check out Zack Whittaker’s adventure in FBI Agents Visited My Home About An Article I Wrote, And Now I Can’t Go To Mexico.

Tom Nichols says The Republican Party Has A Nazi Problem. Well, duh.

One of the many charges against Artificial Intelligence is what it will do to the cost of the energy needed to power it. Chris Castle takes a look in Update: Trump’s “Ratepayer Protection” Pitch Becomes A Private Power Plan for AI — But Grassroots Revolt Won’t Fade. Hat tip to Stan Stewart for this one.

Apple is about to release a number of products this week at a time that it is under increased criticism on a number of fronts. Recently, Jason Snell of Six Colors released The Six Colors Report Card, in which he surveys a number of the Apple faithful on how things went in the last year and compares that to year’s previous. The scores are always interesting, but the commentary is even more so, which you can read here. Also of interest is Kieran Healy’s charting out the bad vibes based on that commentary.

Speaking of Apple, Wesley Hilliard takes a look at some of those bad vibes in Apple’s Week February 27: Chasing The Puck.

On a local Chicago front and also on the tech beat, The Chicago Tribune’s Editorial Board takes on a local (yet owned by Albertsons) grocery store’s shopping app in Fix Your Lousy Shopping App, Jewel-Osco! Having suffered through using this app, and watching store personnel and other customers show their distaste for it, I can agree. Fix the lousy app.

Libraries, like so much else, are under attack these days. So this piece from 2017 from Eliza McGraw reminds us of a bit of history. Check out Horse-Riding Librarians Were The Great Depression’s Bookmobiles. Knowledge, like life, finds a way.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Buttons, Buttons, Who Designs These Buttons?

Designing for dummies

Tossing this tidbit on the growing bonfire that burns around Apple’s design flaws, this Apple Watch screen drives me nuts.

Close-up of a person’s wrist wearing an Apple Watch displaying a bright orange screen that reads “Timer Done 3 MIN,” with cancel and repeat icons, in a cluttered home office setting.

It shows up when a Timer expires. I get that there needs to be two options: stop the Timer or reset it to go round again, but if that gigantic circle in the middle doesn’t scream STOP, I don’t know what else does. I reach to press it each time.

And in the context of design being not just about how something looks, but also how it works, there is that repeat button. Its functionality doesn’t make sense. If I set a Timer for something I’m cooking for 20 minutes or so, why would I want it to completely reset to 20 minutes if I determine whatever I’m cooking needs another minute or two?

Also interesting, if you use the Wrist Flick gesture it doesn’t provide you with options, it just stops the Timer. It’s not that I think options are needed, but if the only one besides stopping the Timer is to repeat the full Timer than the watch face UI makes no sense to me.

I think the entirety of this needs to be rethought.

Apple’s Color Wheelies

Color me a gadget utilitarian

I’ve never been one to be that obsessed with the color of tech gadgets or any of the other tools I use. Sure, colors attract, and I’m all in for more color rather than less in many things, but I’ve never been one who has made a gadget purchase based on color.

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In fact, I usually shy away from bolder color choices. I’ve typically chosen whatever version Apple is marketing as black when it comes to iPhones and whatever case I bury them in. I do the same for laptops, not straying too far from silver or occasionally the variant of Space Black that seems to change more frequently than I imagine happens in the dark depths of space. I do own a Blue iMac 24, but the last time I really saw the “blue” on the rear of the enclosure was when I set up the device.

I feel the much the same when it comes to other non-computing tools. Walking through a hardware store I always view the bright green, bright orange, red, aqua, and other multi-color designs of drills, other hand held tools, lawn care equipment, etc… as somehow cheaper than those with a more muted approach. They look more utilitarian, and frankly, suggest longer lifespans. As my grandkids age and I shop for their gifts, the more brightly colored tools look like toys to me.

I know I’m probably the oddball when it comes to color coveting. There certainly seems to be a lot of excitement about Apple presumably releasing new products with a slew of new color options soon. But I think of my computing devices the same way I do other tools. I acquire and use them to complete a task. Many others see them as personal statements and that’s cool. More power to those who need that or appreciate that sort of whimsy.

Another way I think of this is that if a tool maker needs to market new colors to keep customers excited about their products, it means the product has probably reached maturity enough to more than prove its value. But that doesn’t always keep the marketers employed.

(Images from 9to5Mac and MacRumors)

More Thoughts On iOS 26’s iPhone App Changes

Still very much a work in progress

Back last fall I wrote about the changes Apple made to the iPhone’s Phone app in iOS 26. I thought they were both helpful and confusing. I followed that up a month or so later suggesting that smartphone makers needed to make delete and report spam buttons more of a priority.

New Shareshot.

I still maintain the points I made in both of those posts, but here are some more thoughts after having used the Phone app since.

Regarding the Hold Assist Detection feature what I said earlier very much still applies.

It makes me think that the designers of this feature have never used the Phone app to call a pharmacy or a doctor’s office where the person answering the phone is so busy that when they answer they speak so fast that you can’t understand what they’re saying. In my experiences attempting to use this feature in cases like those, the person on the other end just hangs up and I have to make the call again.

Recently I spoke with a receptionist at one of my medical providers about this feature and her response I sums that up well from the other end of the line. Simply put she said, “I have no time for such nonsense.”

She said essentially the same thing about the Screen Unknown Callers feature that allows the call recipient to see who is calling or leaving a voicemail. As I previously mentioned I have the Ask Reason for Calling option selected. Early on there were a few callers that actually left a voicemail, but that seems to have diminished over time. My speculation is that those doing the calling have caught on and just continue down their call lists. With this same medical provider I missed several calls because she was using a different number assigned by their phone system than I had placed in my contacts and the call logged as Unknown.

As to making spam reporting a more prominent UI feature not buried under a series of menus and taps, if Apple (and others) were really serious about making life easier for their users they’d add a Delete and/or a Delete and Report Spam option to the notification of a call. I mentioned in that earlier post that this Call Filtering feature would probably lead to a whack-a-mole game with spam callers. Based on the increasing frequency of spam calls I’m receiving I think the spammers are currently on a trajectory to win that game.

I still don’t know why all phone calls I receive, welcome or unwelcome, are listed as a Priority Notification. Since last autumn I’ve changed my lazy habits with contacts and been diligent about providing good contact metadata for doctors and others I do business or social interactions with. At that point that appeared to be the best way to try and take advantage of the newer features. But honestly I don’t think it matters much at this point based on what I’m seeing.

I support several elderly relatives who use their iPhones for basic needs, communication being the primary one. Having had a chance over the holidays to physically examine their devices, I noticed little usage of the delete function in the Unknown Call Callers section of the Missed Calls list. There were long lists of unknown callers. I imagine at some point we’ll see articles on how to clean up those lists.

In summary, I’d say the new Phone app features are still helpful and still confusing. Like everything else with Apple these days they should be categorized as a work in progress. Here’s hoping we won’t be on hold too long before we see progress happen.

The Power Users Have With Subscriptions

Unsubscribing is a vote

I was not a fan of app subscriptions initially. I long ago rethought my position. I continue to think it’s the best option for users. That belief is becoming more entrenched now that we’re entering into whatever the future will be with Artificial Intelligence and it takes constant cash to continue to burn the planet.

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Whether it’s this week’s flavor of AI chatbots, Apple’s new Creator Studio, or any other new app or service, most now require a subscription to take advantage of new features as they roll out. In most cases the offer is pay $XX a month or $XX a year, with the yearly price being discounted by the cost of a month or more. Even so, we’re already seeing premium subscriptions that add on costs for more features and I think that trend will only accelerate. Welcome to the land of upsell.

Although much less than I used to, I will subscribe to a new app or service that attracts my interest for a month to check it out. I’ll set a reminder a few days before the end of the month and then take a little inventory to see if it’s worth continuing. If not, I’ll unsubscribe.

If the app or service is truly worth my while I may subscribe for the yearly price after determining it’s something I value, but that’s becoming rarer. Frankly, there just aren’t many new apps and services that seem worth even a monthly try out these days, much less paying for a yearly subscription. There have been a few apps that, although they didn’t really fit my needs, I have paid for a yearly subscription to support the developer. But that’s even rarer.

In those cases with apps, newsletters and other services, I think of those more as tips or a donation than I do entering into an ongoing relationship. I’ve even subscribed on occasion and immediately canceled with just that thought in mind. I’m all for supporting good work by good people. I admit it’s a bit unfair to a good app that doesn’t fit my needs, but it’s still a signal that I think is worth sending.

Here’s the key. Large companies (Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc…) and independent developers, writers, etc, notice when the turnstile rotates in reverse because someone unsubscribes. It’s a metric they pay attention to. They count on inertia and waning attention spans. You might think they don’t notice, but they do. As a user I look at unsubscribing as my vote up or down. Again, maybe unfair, but as I said, it’s a signal worth sending.

With the recent release of Apple’s Creator Studio suite of apps I found it remarkable that much of the commentary included mentions that users could try things out and turn off the subscription payments if they didn’t find things suitable for their purposes. Or, if they needed one of the apps for a short project that they could check in and out of the bundle for the duration of the project. I highly recommend that kind of thinking.

For what it’s worth I chose not to subscribe and try out the new Creator Studio. I thought about it, but have long since discovered other tools that fit what I might need from those apps.

In this hyper political age, we talk a lot about voting. That’s always a choice. Using the choice to subscribe and unsubscribe from apps and services can be one as well.

Matt Gemmell on “The Fallen Apple”

Dissatisfaction with the familiar breeds contempt

Matt Gemmell begins with an understatement. “It’s a troubling time to be a long-term Apple customer.” It doesn’t get any easier to read after that. Nor should it.

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Like many Apple users these days, including myself, Matt is expressing his dissatisfaction with Tim Cook’s Apple. Misery loves company. So does commiseration. The Fallen Apple is a powerful read, and I suggest you do so.

Yes, he points to Cook’s knee-bending and kowtowing that betrays much of the carefully cultivated culture Apple spent untold sums creating over the years, now tossed aside like a decaying FineWoven iPhone case. Perhaps with a sparing nod to rationality Gemmell calls it an act of “corporate sacrifice.”

But this paragraph is particularly damning:

I sometimes think about the full-page, black-background Steve Jobs memorial on the Apple site, with the list of tributes you could send submissions for. Then I try to imagine the same thing for Cook, and I find that it only cheapens the original. The Tim Cook of the Trump era is the erasure of a man who previously could do little wrong, but I think that ultimately it has also laid bare a person whose goals and even motives are as far from Apple’s erstwhile values as it’s possible to be. While Jobs gets to be remembered with artful aphorisms and elaborate hagiographies, surely Cook’s epitaph must be something along the lines of “another record quarter”.

Corporate rationality, like it or leave it, is often as distasteful as it is easy to comprehend. But in my view it requires the wrong kind of different thinking when you’ve built a company on creating an emotional connection with your users.

One thing leads to another. Gemmell points not just to the cultural upheaval and downward spiral, but also to a future that appears uncertain. As he puts it, “More perniciously, Apple is also hemorrhaging people and knowledge.” It makes one wonder if Apple University is still in existence. If so, what exactly are they teaching these days?

But, and to the larger point, he correctly states Apple isn’t hemorrhaging profit.

I hope very much to be wrong, but I fear that Apple’s skyrocketing revenue masks a steep institutional decline that is already well underway, propelled by the fact that success itself, improperly managed, is a poison.

It must be something for folks like Cook, Trump, Musk, etc… to sit atop such vast piles of money, knowing how much dislike and distaste they engender and how it undermines the thrones they cling to. Apples ripen and fall. Unless they are harvested. Either way, there’s an end.

Read the rest here.

(image from Johann Lensless on Shutterstock

Tim Cook Captured, Trapped, and Caged

Tough to be a performing monkey in a cage

Om Malik has a great piece about Tim Cook and Apple’s current fail mode when it comes to dealing with the Trump administration called A CEO, Captured. M.G. Siegler sees Cook as trapped in his post Aside From That Mr. Cook, What Did You Think of the Movie?

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If you haven’t been paying attention, Cook has indeed seemingly been captured by his efforts to hang onto Apple’s success in the face of the Trump administration’s intent to drag everyone into his ever increasing cesspool view of the world. Attending the premiere of the Amazon produced film Melania on the night that Alex Pretti was murdered in Minneapolis is just the latest in a series of what can politely be called missteps by Cook, but in my view more appropriately called sucking up out of naked and unabashed fear.

Cook, hearing the large number of complaints about his latest knee bending issued a memo to Apple employees expressing his heartbreak over the events in Minneapolis and notes that he had a good conversation with the president about trying to deescalate the situation. From the reactions I’ve seen nobody is buying it. Issuing memos designed to be leaked is another cowardly PR move, certainly from a company once admired for its supposed civic conscience.

Sure, corporations are corporations and do what they need to do to protect their market share and shareholders. You can make that argument with assurance until the MBAs are all penned up in the same pasture. But when you’ve built much of your success by heavily marketing civic engagement, and I dare say a civic conscience, it becomes not just a dent in that hard earned reputation, but a tougher row to hoe going forward. But we are living in the age of melting myths and laughing at legends.

Malik posits:

When your company is worth more than most nations, you cannot afford principles that inconvenience presidents. The moral equation changes. What once seemed unthinkable becomes necessary. Cook learned this the hard way after he skipped a presidential photo op and was thrown back under the tariff bus. So now he shows up. He sits in the front row. He claps when expected. This is what happens when valuation becomes destiny.

Siegler says Cook should have pulled out of the event and “has lost his way,” and probably should wait out Trump or the GOPs defeats before passing on his dimmed torch.

I don’t disagree with Malik or Siegler. But if you carry the captured analogy further it makes one wonder if reaching the top doesn’t just turn you into just another zoo animal behind bars.

I wonder if they teach that in business school.Photo by Artem Bryzgalov on Unsplash

Chatbots, Pins, and Other Talking Distractions

The world of talking to chatbots just isn’t for me

In the end everything boils down to a question of taste or a matter of preference. In the beginning everything bubbles up in a hot tub with the jets on high. That’s kind of how I’m viewing all the bubbling around chatbots, AI Pins , possible AI earbuds, AI glasses, and any other kind of method or gadget folks are devising to talk to computers — those with screens, and those without.

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Apple rumors popping like champagne corks are going to turn up the heat on discussions about chatbots, especially since Apple had been previously saying they weren’t interested in creating a chatbot for its Apple Intelligence portfolio. Fortunately most of those discussion will be between humans.

Mark Gurman reports that we’ll see changes to what we currently think of as Siri this spring, but stay tuned for a revamped version that offers the back and forth conversational approach that existing chatbots offer, codenamed Campos, later this year.

Almost simultaneously, MacWorld reports that Apple employees are being encouraged to use a chatbot called Enchanté in their work. So, it sounds like Apple is seeding the ground for what’s to come.

For the record, I’m not big on voice computing. Yes, I use my Apple Watch to ask Siri to set a reminder or send a text message, but that’s about the extent of what my experimenting with voice computing has boiled down to.

I’ve tried some of the existing chatbots on smartphones and on computers, and I’ve been in the company of others who enjoy using voice as their primary method of interacting with smartphones. I don’t begrudge anybody using voice as their input method if that’s their preference, and I certainly don’t if it makes computing accessible to those who can’t type. But it’s just not for me.

Part of it is I find myself being more accurate when I can type, and part of it is the social aspect. While microphone technology continues to improve to allow better pickup in noisy environments I find it awkward when someone pulls out their smartphone and starts talking to it with others around. I feel compelled to silence myself while they are doing so. I couldn’t imagine using it in my theatre work, compared to using an iPad with pen to take notes, because my talking would be distracting to everyone else in the rehearsal hall. Goodness knows being in a room with small children laughing/crying/talking at the top of their lungs doesn’t strike me as a suitable environment.

I spent a good portion of this fall watching the Chicago Bears on their improbable run, while texting back and forth on several chains with my nephews and others. I can’t imagine doing that in my local sports pub trying to do so via voice input.

I won’t get into a conversation about how some are using existing chatbots for social interactions like therapy and companionship except to say that I’m guessing if those trends continue as voice input as chatbots proliferate, we’ll eventually see similar reactions to curtail that type of usage similar to what we saw back in the day about decreasing smartphone and screen time usage.

There are some interesting questions out there though. OpenAI has already announced its inevitable move into advertising for ChatGPT. I’m sure the others aren’t far behind. I’m not sure how viable advertising really is in a voice chat environment, whether it’s a smartphone, pin, or set of headphones. I certainly wouldn’t want a “conversation” interrupted with an ad. Amazon certainly doesn’t seem to have come close with its Alexa products. To my way of thinking, ads in chatbot conversations will give new meaning to the clichés about intrusive advertising.

I’m also of the opinion that while the non-smartphone AI devices might be clever gadget accessories, I don’t see them ever replacing smartphones or significantly denting that market. Too much of everyday life has become so inextricably linked to smartphone usage that requires a screen that I just don’t see voice chatbots replacing it. Someday your voice may be your password, but I think we’re a long ways off from that for interacting with the businesses and other institutions we deal with daily.

But who knows where this is all headed. Quite frankly, I don’t think anybody does. Including the chatbots.