Linked List: April 27, 2018

Friday, 27 April 2018

The Talk Show: ‘$270 Worth of Unneeded Keyboards’ 

Special guest Jim Dalrymple returns to the show. Topics include the litany of problems with MacBook keyboards, speculation regarding why Apple’s AirPower multi-device charging mat still isn’t shipping, Google’s proposal to replace SMS with a new protocol that isn’t encrypted, and more.

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Gus Mueller: ‘Apple Should Make an Instagram Clone’ 

Gus Mueller:

Instagram is one of the last social networks I use these days, which I actually enjoy visiting. But I always get a little twitchy using it because it’s owned by Facebook (which I’m really not a fan of). And the ads are getting pretty annoying these days.

So wouldn’t it be awesome if Apple made a privacy focused clone of it? I know Apple doesn’t really do well when it comes to social services, but I’m wondering if a simple photo sharing site might not be impossible for them to do well.

I’ve been thinking about this ever since Mueller posted this a week ago. I think this could be great. At a technical level, iMessage shows that Apple can build a system that scales. The biggest problem I can think of is usernames. Apple IDs don’t have to be icloud.com / me.com / mac.com usernames — you can use any email address. And you wouldn’t want to expose your email and iMessage address publicly. But Game Center uses nicknames to avoid the same problem. Apple could either piggyback on Game Center nicknames, or set up a new namespace of nicknames for this hypothetical Instagram clone.

Katie Notopoulos: ‘I’m Sorry to Report Instagram Is Bad Now’ 

Katie Notopoulos, writing at BuzzFeed:

Look, I don’t want to talk about this any more than you do. I didn’t want this to be true. I wanted this to work out; I thought this was the platform that could be The One to make it with us for the long haul. But it’s time to get real. It’s not working out. Instagram kind of sucks now. And it’s not Instagram, it’s not us, it’s an outside force that is tearing us apart. That homewrecker is Stories.

I found myself nodding my head in agreement throughout — and she doesn’t even mention the non-linear algorithmic timeline.

Samsung Sees Slow Demand for OLEDs Used for Apple’s iPhone X 

Mark Gurman and Sam Kim, reporting for Bloomberg:

Samsung Electronics Co. is the latest Apple Inc. supplier to offer a sign of weaker iPhone X sales, saying that it’s seeing slow demand for the screens used in the flagship product.

The South Korean electronics manufacturer said in an earnings report today that profits for its display business “were affected by slow demand for flexible OLED panels.” The division’s sales rose 3.4 percent in the latest quarter, compared with 20 percent for Samsung as a whole.

Flexible OLED panels are the screens used inside the iPhone X, and those are supplied exclusively by Samsung. Other component makers for Apple, which reports quarterly earnings results next week, have also issued gloomy outlooks pointing to lackluster demand for the top-end phone.

Starting to sound like iPhone X sales really are falling short of expectations. You often can’t judge iPhone sales from the perspective of a component maker, because Apple could have switched to another company for the same component. But these flexible OLED displays only come from Samsung. Apple reports earnings for the first calendar quarter on Tuesday.

My spitball theory: the iPhone X is not “too expensive”, but it is too expensive for mass market casual phone buyers. iPhone sales always peak in the fourth calendar quarter by a large margin, for two reasons: (1) it’s the holiday quarter, so anyone buying an iPhone as a gift is going to buy it in November or December; and (2) that’s the first full quarter when new top-tier iPhones debut, and enthusiasts buy them as soon as they can. iPhone X sales were great in the holiday quarter, but perhaps the enthusiasm of the early adopter crowd isn’t shared by the mass market.

Perhaps I’m just stating the obvious here — the existence of the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus indicates that Apple anticipated the need for brand new high-end iPhones in the $700-800 price range. Assuming they keep going with the new $1000-1100 tier, those phones might be even more biased toward the holiday quarter than other iPhones.

Update: M.G. Siegler:

Good points, and the flip side of why the iPhones 8 didn’t sell as well out of the gate: the early-adopters/die-hard were waiting for X. In an ideal world, the releases would have been inverted (X first, 8 a couple months later).

3D Touch Needs to Be Pervasive 

Juli Clover, writing for MacRumors:

Kuo says that the 6.1-inch iPhone will use what he calls “Cover Glass Sensor” (CGS) technology, relocating the iPhone’s touch module from the display panel (in-cell technology) to the surface glass. The CGS method reportedly results in a display that’s lighter and more shock resistant.

With this display technology, Apple will add a thin-film sensor to the touch film sensor included in the CGS, but the purpose of the new layer is unknown. It will, however, result in a 15 percent increase in the cost of the touch panel, resulting in a higher purchase price of $23 to $26.

To offset the cost of the new display it plans to use, Kuo believes Apple will remove the 3D Touch functionality on the 6.1-inch iPhone, which would be a curious move as 3D Touch is well-integrated throughout the operating system that runs on the iPhone at this point.

I don’t generally link to rumors like this, but this one caught my eye because I’ve been thinking a lot about 3D Touch lately. 3D Touch is the sort of feature that either needs to be on all iPhones or else should be dropped. If it’s not pervasive across the entire platform, developers can’t count on it. I think that’s why it’s underutilized today. But it’s one thing to wait for older iPhones from the pre-3D Touch era to drop out of usage. It’s another for Apple to sell a brand new phone in 2018 without it. I’m not going to rant and rave about something that’s only a rumor — but if September rolls around and Apple ships this new phone without 3D Touch to save a few measly dollars, I’m going to rant and rave.

I also think it’s a serious problem that iPhones have 3D Touch and iPads don’t, yet iPads are stuck running an OS where 3D Touch is the way to bring up a contextual shortcut menu, but that’s a different rant.