Linked List: May 2, 2017

Tuesday, 2 May 2017

Nothing surprising, one way or the other. The numbers that stuck out to me are the year-over-year sales numbers:

iPhone was nearly dead even: units were down 1%, revenue up 1%.
iPad is down: 13% in units and 12% in revenue.
Mac is up: 4% in units and a solid 14% in revenue.
“Other” (Apple TV, Apple Watch, Beats products, iPod, accessories) was up a whopping 31 percent in revenue.
Services are up 18%.

My read: the new MacBook Pros are selling well, as are Apple Watch and AirPods (and maybe the wireless Beats?). No records were broken, but the results are all good other than iPad.

Leaked Photos of Fitbit’s Upcoming Smartwatch ★

The “chin” on this watch is ridiculous.

Trump’s Dizzying Day of Interviews ★

Josh Dawsey, summing up Trump’s array of interviews marking his 100th day in office:

President Donald Trump questioned why the Civil War — which erupted 150 years ago over slavery — needed to happen. He said he would be “honored” to meet with Kim Jong-Un, the violent North Korean dictator who is developing nuclear missiles and oppresses his people, under the “right circumstances.”

The president floated, and backed away from, a tax on gasoline. Trump said he was “looking at” breaking up the big banks, sending the stock market sliding. He seemed to praise Philippines strongman President Rodrigo Duterte for his high approval ratings. He promised changes to the Republican health care bill, though he has seemed unsure what was in the legislation, even as his advisers whipped votes for it.

And Monday still had nine hours to go.

“It seems to be among the most bizarre recent 24 hours in American presidential history,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian. “It was all just surreal disarray and a confused mental state from the president.”

Republican political consultant Rick Wilson (whom you should follow on Twitter if you aren’t already):

Taken as a package, the 100 Days interviews sound like evidence submitted in an involuntary commitment hearing to a mental institution.

Google Maps, Amazon, and eBay Pull Apple Watch Apps From App Store ★

Nice find by Neil Hughes at AppleInsider:

In the last few weeks, the latest update for Google Maps on iOS ditched support for the Apple Watch. Its removal was not mentioned in the release notes, and Google has not indicated whether support for watchOS will be reinstated.

It’s the same story with Amazon and eBay, both of which previously included Apple Watch support in their iOS apps. Both were updated in late April, and as of Monday, neither includes an Apple Watch app.

The striking thing is that no one noticed until today. It’s pretty clear that despite the significant improvements in WatchOS 3, Apple Watch is not a successful app platform. It’s a successful fitness tracker and notification platform, but not for apps. Also, it’s one thing for a developer not to have supported Apple Watch in the first place, but it’s something else when a developer has gone to the effort to create an Apple Watch app and now removes it.

There are an awful lot of apps where a Watch app doesn’t make sense. Amazon for one. No one is going to shop on their watch. But Google Maps is an app where a Watch app makes sense, for turn-by-turn directions.

It’s just too slow and finicky to even get apps installed on Apple Watch in the first place. And the thing most apps are useful for on the watch — notifications — you don’t even need a WatchOS app for. You can just have the notifications from your iPhone show up on your watch.

The ‘Orange Is the New Black’ Netflix Hack Was a Terrible Idea ★

Brian Barrett, writing for Wired:

Although the hack offers a reminder that even the best security can be undone by the so-called “weakest link” — Netflix can’t do much if a vendor is compromised — it provides a bigger lesson in how the internet has largely shifted away from torrenting. If a show lands on The Pirate Bay and nobody watches, did it really stream?

Consider that in 2011, BitTorrent accounted for 23 percent of daily internet traffic in North America, according to network-equipment company Sandvine. By last year, that number sat at under 5 percent. “There’s always going to be the floor of people that are always going to be torrenting,” says Sandvine spokesperson Dan Deeth. That group will surely enjoy whatever Piper’s up to in season five. But the idea that so small a cohort might prompt Netflix to negotiate with hackers seems absurd.

I agree with this: Netflix’s best defenses against piracy are the facts that the actual Netflix service is so affordable and so convenient to use. The same thing happened with the iTunes Music Store back in the day.

On Windows 10 S Going App-Store-Only ★

Dieter Bohn, on Twitter:

Microsoft beats Apple to releasing a locked down, App Store only computer.

Odd!

I think that fairly captures a lot of people’s reaction to Windows 10 S. But it’s interesting to me that the premise of the tweet ignores the iPad, which has been completely locked to the App Store all along. I’m not accusing Bohn of an oversight here. I don’t think he forgot about the iPad, but rather that he doesn’t even consider the iPad a “computer”.

I, for one, don’t find it the least bit odd or surprising that Microsoft has shipped a version of Windows that’s locked to their app store before Apple has done similarly with MacOS. That’s a fundamental aspect of Apple’s dual OS strategy. Microsoft only has one OS, Windows, so if they want to ship a laptop with the advantages of being restricted to software from an app store, they have to do it in a version of Windows. I wouldn’t go so far as to state with certitude that Apple will never ship a version of MacOS that is App-Store-only, but I would bet against it.

Windows 10 ‘S’ Is App-Store-Only Unless You Pay $50 ★

Business Insider’s Matt Weinberger calls the new Surface Laptop a “MacBook Killer”, because he works for Business Insider and they’ve got some sort of bot that changes the word “competitor” to “killer” in any headline related to Apple. This bit about Windows 10 S caught my eye:

The one thing to know, here, is that the Surface Laptop is the poster child for Windows 10 S, a new version of the operating system, also announced today, that Microsoft promises is more streamlined, more secure, and that offers better performance and battery life than the standard Windows 10.

The tradeoff for those perks is that Windows 10 S doesn’t let you install any software that’s not from the Windows Store app market — which means that, at the very least, you won’t be able to install the Google Chrome web browser.

If you’re not down with that, Microsoft lets you switch any Windows 10 S computer, including the Surface Laptop, to the regular Windows 10 Pro for a one-time $49 fee (less if you’re on a tablet or something else with a small screen size). But if you do that, Microsoft says, it can no longer guarantee you’ll get the improved battery life or higher performance.

I can see the argument for making the OS App-Store-only by default. I can also see the argument for an iOS-style system where it’s App-Store-only, period. But charging $50 for this feels like a shakedown. Imagine if Apple charged $50 to toggle the setting in the Security pane of System Prefs to allow the use of apps from outside the App Store.

Intro Video for Microsoft’s New $999 Surface Laptop ★

Nice video for an interesting laptop. There’s an Apple-esque pride in the design of the internal components as well as the exterior.