Adam Engst, TidBits:

I’m certainly aware that many readers venture outside the Apple ecosystem for certain devices, but I’ve always assumed that most people would opt for Apple’s device in any given category. TidBITS does focus on Apple, after all, and Apple works hard to provide an integrated experience for those who go all-in on Apple. That integration disappears if you use a Mac along with a Samsung Galaxy phone and an Amazon Echo smart speaker.

Let’s put my assumption to the test! Or rather, to the poll. […]

It is a good question; you should take this quick poll if you have a couple of minutes.

This will not be bias-free, but I also have a hard time assuming what kind of bias will be found in a sample of an audience reading TidBits. My gut instinct is many people will be wholly immersed in Apple hardware. However, a TidBits reader probably skews a little more technical and particular — or so I read in the comments — so perhaps not? Engst’s poll only asks about primary hardware and not, say, users’ choice in keyboards or music streaming services, so perhaps it will be different than my gut tells me.

Update: On August 25, Engst revealed the results.

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Berber Jin, Wall Street Journal:

Altman and Ive offered a few hints at the secret project they have been working on [at a staff meeting]. The product will be capable of being fully aware of a user’s surroundings and life, will be unobtrusive, able to rest in one’s pocket or on one’s desk, and will be a third core device a person would put on a desk after a MacBook Pro and an iPhone.

Ambitious, albeit marginally less hubristic than considering it a replacement for either of those two device categories.

Stephen Hackett:

If OpenAI’s future product is meant to work with the iPhone and Android phones, then the company is opening a whole other set of worms, from the integration itself to the fact that most people will still prefer to simply pull their phone out of their pockets for basically any task.

I am reminded of an April 2024 article by Jason Snell at Six Colors:

The problem is that I’m dismissing the Ai Pin and looking forward to the Apple Watch specifically because of the control Apple has over its platforms. Yes, the company’s entire business model is based on tightly integrating its hardware and software, and it allows devices like the Apple Watch to exist. But that focus on tight integration comes at a cost (to everyone but Apple, anyway): Nobody else can have the access Apple has.

A problem OpenAI could have with this device is the same as was faced by Humane, which is that Apple treats third-party hardware and software as second-class citizens in its post-P.C. ecosystem. OpenAI is laying the groundwork for better individual context. But this is a significant limitation, and it is one I am curious to see how it is overcome.

Whatever this thing is, it is undeniably interesting to me. OpenAI has become a household name on a foundation of an academic-sounding product that has changed the world. Jony Ive has been the name attached to entire eras of design. There is plenty to criticize about both. Yet the combination of these things is surely intriguing, inviting the kind of speculation that used to be commonplace in tech before it all became rote. I have little faith our world will become meaningfully better with another gadget in it. Yet I hope the result is captivating, at least, because we could use some of that.

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Last month, the Information reported OpenAI was considering buying io Products — unfortunate capitalization theirs — for around $500 million. The company, founded by Jony Ive and employing several ex-Apple designers and engineers, was already known to be working with OpenAI, but it was still an external entity. Now, it is not, to the tune of over $6 billion in equity.

OpenAI today published a press release and video — set in LoveFrom’s distinctive proprietary serif face — featuring Ive and Sam Altman in conversation. There is barely a hint of what they are working on but, whether because of honesty or just clever packaging, it comes across as an earnest attempt to think about the new technologies OpenAI has successfully brought to the world as part of our broader cultural fabric. Of course, it will be expressed in something that can be assembled in a factory and sold for money, so let us not get too teary-eyed. We have heard a similar tune before.

The video promises revealing something “next year”.

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There is a free market argument that can be made about how Apple gets to design its own ecosystem and, if it is so restrictive, people will be more hesitant to buy an iPhone since they can get more choices with an Android phone. I get that. But I think it is unfortunate so much of our life coalesces around devices which are so restrictive compared to those which came before.

Recall Apple’s “digital hub” strategy. The Mac would not only connect to hardware like digital cameras and music players; the software Apple made for it would empower people to do something great with those photos and videos and their music.

The iPhone repositioned that in two ways. First, the introduction of iCloud was a way to “demote” the Mac to a device at an equivalent level to everything else. Second, and just as importantly, is how it converged all that third-party hardware into a single device: it is the digital camera, the camcorder, and the music player. As a result, its hub-iness comes mostly in the form of software. If a developer can assume the existence of particular hardware components, they have extraordinary latitude to build on top of that. However, because Apple exercises control over this software ecosystem, it limits its breadth.

Like the Mac of 2001, it is also a hub for accessories — these days, things like headphones and smartwatches. Apple happens to make examples of both. You can still connect third-party devices — but they are limited.

Eric Migicovsky, of Pebble:

I want to set expectations accordingly. We will build a good app for iOS, but be prepared – there is no way for us to support all the functionality that Apple Watch has access to. It’s impossible for a 3rd party smartwatch to send text messages, or perform actions on notifications (like dismissing, muting, replying) and many, many other things.

Even if you believe Apple is doing this not out of anticompetitive verve, but instead for reasons of privacy, security, API support, and any number of other qualities, it still sucks. What it means is that Apple is mostly competing against itself, particularly in smartwatches. (Third-party Bluetooth headphones, like the ones I have, mostly work fine.)

The European Commission announced guidance today for improving third-party connectivity with iOS. Apple is, of course, miserable about this. I am curious to see the real-world results, particularly as the more dire predictions of permitting third-party app distribution have — shockingly — not materialized.

Imagine how much more interesting this ecosystem could be if there were substantial support across “host” platforms.

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Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

Apple sells two external displays, including the Pro Display XDR and the Studio Display, but neither has received hardware upgrades in years. In fact, the Pro Display XDR is nearly five years old, having been released all the way back in December 2019.

Via Michael Tsai:

This is not surprising, since Apple has historically taken a long time to update its displays. I don’t think the panels necessarily need to be updated. But it’s disappointing because the Studio Display has well documented camera problems and power issues. I had high hopes that, coming from Apple, it would be reliable as a USB hub, but I end up directly connecting as many storage devices as possible to the meager ports on my MacBook Pro.

Displays are a product category conducive to infrequent updates. The plentiful problems I have been reading with the Studio Display, in particular, worry me. Most sound like software problems, but that is not consolation. Apple’s software quality has been insufficiently great for years and, so, it does not surprise me that a display running iOS is not as reliable as a display that does not use an entire mobile operating system.

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Nilay Patel, of the Verge, interviewed Hanneke Faber, CEO of Logitech, for the Decoder podcast.

NP […] You sell me the keyboard once. It’s got Options Plus. It has an AI button. I push the button, and someone has to make sure the software still works. Someone probably has to pay ChatGPT for access to the service. Where is that going to come from? Are you baking that into the margin of the keyboard or the mouse?

HF Absolutely. We’re baking that in, and I’m not particularly worried about that. What I’m actually hoping is that this will contribute to the longevity of our products, that we’ll have more premium products but products that last longer because they’re superior and because we can continue to update them over time. And again, I talked about doubling the business and reducing the carbon footprint by half. The longevity piece is really important.

I’m very intrigued. The other day, in Ireland, in our innovation center there, one of our team members showed me a forever mouse with the comparison to a watch. This is a nice watch, not a super expensive watch, but I’m not planning to throw that watch away ever. So why would I be throwing my mouse or my keyboard away if it’s a fantastic-quality, well-designed, software-enabled mouse. The forever mouse is one of the things that we’d like to get to.

Faber goes on to say this is a mouse with always-updated software, “heavier” — which I interpreted as more durable — and something which could provide other services. In response to Patel’s hypothetical of paying $200 one time, Faber said the “business model obviously is the challenge there”, and floats solving that through either a subscription model or inventing new products which get buyers to upgrade.

The part of this which is getting some attention is the idea of a subscription model for a mouse which is, to be fair, stupid. But the part which I was surprised by is the implication that longevity is not a priority for business model reasons. I am not always keen to ascribe these things to planned obsolesce, yet this interview sure looks like Faber is outright saying Logitech does not design products with the intention of them lasting for what at least seems like “forever”.

To be fair, I have not bought anything from Logitech in a long time, and I do not remember when I last did. I believe its cable may have terminated in a PS/2 plug. I switched to a trackpad on my desk long ago. When I bought my Magic Trackpad in 2015, I assumed I would not have to replace it for at least a decade; nine years later, I have not even thought about getting a new one. Even if its built-in battery dies — its sole weakness — I think I will be able to keep using it in wired mode.

But then I went on Wikipedia to double-check the release date of the second-generation Magic Trackpad, and I scrolled to the “Reception” section. Both generations were criticized as being too expensive at $70 for the first version, and $130 for the second. But both price tags seem like a good deal for a quality product. Things should be built with the intention they will last a long time, and a $200 mouse is a fine option if it is durable and could be repaired if something breaks.

I know this is something which compromises business models built on repeat business from the same customers, whether that means replacing a broken product or a monthly recurring charge. But it is rare for a CEO to say so in such clear terms. I appreciate the honesty, but I am repelled by the idea.

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Jeff Johnson:

Yesterday I took the M1 MacBook Pro to my local Apple-authorized service provider that I’ve been going to for many years, who performed all of the work on my Intel MacBook Pro, including the battery replacements and a Staingate screen replacement. This is a third-party shop, not an Apple Store. To my utter shock, they told me that they couldn’t replace the battery in-house, because starting with the Apple silicon transition, Apple now requires that the MacBook Pro be mailed in to Apple for battery replacement! What. The. Hell.

The battery in my 14-inch MacBook Pro seems to be doing okay, with 89% capacity remaining after nearly two years of use. But I hope to use it for as long as I did my MacBook Air — about ten years — and I swapped its battery twice. This spooked me. So I called my local third-party repair place and asked them about replacing the battery. They told me they could change it in the store with same-day turnaround for $350, about the same as what Apple charges, using official parts. It is unclear to me if a Apple could replace the battery in-store or would need to send it out, but every Mac service I have had from my local Apple Store has required me to leave my computer with them for several days.

The situation likely varies by geography. Apple’s Self Service Repair program is not available in Canada, which means a battery swap has to be done either by a technician, or using unofficial parts. If you are concerned about this, I recommend contacting your local shops and seeing what their policies are like.

In a recent interview with Marques Brownlee, John Ternus, Apple’s head of hardware engineering, compared ease of repair and long-term durability:

On an iPhone, on any phone, a battery is something […] that’s gonna need to be replaced, right? Batteries wear out. But as we’ve been making iPhones for a long time, in the early days, one of the most common types of failures was water ingress, right? Where you drop it in a pool, or you spill your drink on it, and the unit fails. And so we’ve been making strides over all those years to get better and better and better in terms of minimizing those failures.

This is a fair argument. While Apple has not — to my knowledge — acknowledged any improvements to liquid resistance on MacBook Pros, I spilled half a glass of water across mine in November, and it suffered no damage whatsoever. Ternus’ point is that Apple’s solution for preventing liquid damage to all components, including the battery, compromised the ease of repairing an iPhone, but the company saw it as a reasonable trade-off.

But it is also a bit of a red herring for two reasons. The first is that Apple actually made recent iPhone models more repairable without reducing water or dust resistance, indicating this compromise is not exactly as simple as Ternus implies. It is possible to have easier repairs and better durability.

The second reason is because batteries eventually need replacing on all devices. They are a consumable good with a finite — though not always predictable — lifespan, most often shorter than the actual lifetime usability of the product. The only reason I do not use my AirPods any more is because the battery in each bud lasts less than twenty minutes; everything else is functional. If there is any repair which should be straightforward and doable without replacing unrelated components or the entire device, it is the battery.

See Also: The comments on Michael Tsai’s post.

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Joanna Stern, Wall Street Journal:

[Apple vice president of iPad and Mac product marketing Tom] remained firm: iPads are for touch, Macs are not. “MacOS is for a very different paradigm of computing,” he said. He explained that many customers have both types of devices and think of the iPad as a way to “extend” work from a Mac. Apple’s Continuity easily allows you to work across devices, he said.

So there you have it, Apple wants you to buy…both? If you pick one, you live with the trade-offs. I did ask Boger if Apple would ever change its mind on the touch-screen situation.

“Oh, I can’t say we never change our mind,” he said. One can only hope.

Matt Birchler, commenting on a somewhat disingenuous article from Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac:

This is fair, and if you were forced to use a touch screen Mac on a vertical screen with no keyboard or mouse to help, then sure, I believe that would be a tiring experience as well. What I find frustrating about this idea is that it lacks imagination. I get the impression that people who hate the idea of touch on Macs can only imagine the current laptops with a digitizer in the screen detecting touch. It’s kind of ironic, but this is exactly the sort of thinking that Apple so rarely does. As we often say, Apple doesn’t add technology for the sake of technology, they add features users will enjoy.

Apple has never pretended the iPad is a tablet Mac. As I wrote several years ago, it has been rebuilding desktop features for a touch-first environment: multitasking, multiwindowing, support for external pointing devices, a file browser, a Dock, and so on. This is an impressive array of features which reference and reinterpret longtime Mac features while respecting the iPad’s character.

But something is missing for some number of people. Developers and users complain annually about the frustrations they experience with iPadOS. A video from Quinn Nelson illustrates how tricky the platform is. One of the great fears of iPad users is that increasing its capability will necessarily entail increasing its complexity. But the iPad is already complicated in ways that it should not be. There is nothing about the way multiwindowing works which requires it to be rule-based and complicated in the way Stage Manager often is.

Perhaps a solution is to treat the iPad as only modestly evolved from its uniwindow roots with hardware differentiated mostly by niceness. I disagree; Apple does too. The company clearly wants it to be so much more. It made a capable version of Final Cut Pro for iPad models which use the same processor as its Macs, but it makes you watch the progress bar as it exports a video because it cannot complete the task in the background.

iPadOS may have been built up from its touchscreen roots but, let us not forget, it is also built up from smartphone roots — and the goals and objectives of smartphone and tablet users can be very different.

What if it really did make more sense for an iPad to run MacOS, even if that is only some models and only some of the time? What if the best version of the Mac is one which is convertible to a tablet that you can draw on? What if the most capable version of an iPad is one which can behave like a Mac when you need it? None of this would be simple or easy. But I have to wonder: is what Apple has been adding for fourteen years produced a system which remains as simple and easy to use as it promises for its most dedicated iPad customers?

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