Linked List: October 29, 2020

Thursday, 29 October 2020

Tim Cook on Apple’s – and Our – 2020 

Tim Cook, in his prepared opening remarks for today’s results call:

Work can’t solve for all the things we’re missing right now, but a shared sense of purpose goes a long way. A belief that we can do more together than we can alone, that people of good will, driven by creativity and passion and that certain itch of a big idea, can still do things that help other people in our own small way to teach, to learn, to create, or just to relax at a time like this. Even as the things we make require us to operate at the very cutting edge of technology, in materials, products, and ideas that didn’t exist just a few years ago, this year has forced us to face plainly the things that make us human — disease, resilience, and hope.

Apple Q4 2020 Results: Record Mac Revenue, iPhone Down 

Jason Snell:

Despite the tough iPhone quarter, revenue was a record for the company’s fourth fiscal quarter, at $64.7B. iPhone revenue was $26.8B, down 20% year over year. Mac revenue was $9B, up 29%. iPad revenue was $6.8B, up 46%. Services revenue was $14.5B, up 16%. And Wearables revenue was $7.9B, up 20.8%.

As usual, Snell has excellent charts to visualize Apple’s quarter.

iPhone being down might largely be explained by the fact that none of this year’s new phones shipped in the quarter. Last year, the iPhones 11 and 11 Pro started shipping September 20. Tim Cook says demand for iPhone 12 — with the Mini and Pro Max not even being on sale yet — looks good. So I wouldn’t worry about iPhone.

Mac being up 29 percent is just fascinating. I think it’s largely about the whole work-from-home drive? People buying new Macs and replacement Macs to accommodate new ways of working? But what’s really obvious is how much Mac sales being up from July through September show that the Mac is a mainstream product. Nerds — folks like you, dear reader of this website — know that the Mac is on the cusp of a major transition from Intel’s architecture to Apple’s own, and that right now is probably not the time to buy a new one. But normal people just buy Macs when they need new ones, and they need them now.

Lastly, it shows how diversified Apple’s financials are getting that iPhone revenue could be down 20 percent year-over-year but the company had record revenue for the quarter overall. A few years ago that was unimaginable.

Aerosol Transmission of COVID-19: A Room, a Bar and a Classroom: How the Coronavirus Is Spread Through the Air 

This illustrated guide to how COVID-19 spreads through the air, by Mariano Zafra and Javier Salas for El País, is outstanding. It doesn’t just tell you how it spreads, it shows you.

Apple One Bundle Is Set to Launch Tomorrow; Fitness+ Coming Later This Year; iCloud Storage Limits Are Still Stingy 

Seems like only a few months ago that I spitballed the right price for such as bundle as $15/month for an individual and $20/month for a family. Wait, that was just two months ago. Somehow these months feel both incredibly long and yet fly by.

My only beef with the Apple One bundles is that the included iCloud storage levels are too small. Either I’m vastly overestimating the size of a typical user’s iCloud Photos library, or Apple is doing wrong by paying users with these storage levels.

Non-paying users, too — the free tier of iCloud remains stuck at 5 GB, which is ridiculous. That’s the same amount of storage as when iCloud debuted back in 2011. How is it defensible that the default storage tier hasn’t changed in the last 9 years?

Gallium Nitride (GaN) – the Technology Behind Smaller, Better Chargers 

So there seems to be a clear, simple answer to my question regarding why Anker and Aukey’s sub-$20 20W power USB-C power adapters are so much smaller than Apple’s — they use gallium nitride (GaN), and Apple’s apparently does not. Tim Brookes, writing at How-To Geek back in January:

GaN chargers are physically smaller than current chargers. This is because gallium nitride chargers don’t require as many components as silicon chargers. The material is able to conduct far higher voltages over time than silicon.

GaN chargers are not only more efficient at transferring current, but this also means less energy is lost to heat. So, more energy goes to whatever you’re trying to charge. When components are more efficient at passing energy to your devices, you generally require less of them.

So these GaN chargers are much smaller, the same price as Apple’s or cheaper, and more energy efficient. There seemingly is no downside or catch. Until I hear otherwise I’d say there’s no reason anyone should buy Apple’s 20W adapter instead of Anker’s or Aukey’s. (Those are Amazon affiliate links to make me some money.) I’ve ordered both, and will report which I prefer. Aukey’s even comes in black, which gives them the early edge.

The next question, obviously, is why isn’t Apple using GaN for its 20W charger? Perhaps it’s an issue of scale — maybe because GaN is a relatively new technology, Apple can’t make enough of them?

Update: Turns out Anker’s Nano seemingly is not using GaN. When they revised it to go from 18W to 20W, MacRumors ran a story with this note appended:

This article originally stated that the new Anker Nano was a gallium nitride (GaN) adapter, but Anker has since clarified that this is not the case.

And while Anker does call out GaN on the product pages for some of its chargers, it does not for the 20W Nano. In their FAQ, regarding how the Nano can be both faster and smaller, Anker more or less just attributes it to secret sauce:

Anker’s exclusive highly-integrated technology uses a stacked design with custom magnetic components to reduce size, boost efficiency, and improve heat dissipation. This allows Anker Nano to support an 20W max output, while being just as small as a 5W iPhone charger.

And when you search for “Gan” on Aukey’s site, a bunch of their chargers are listed, but not the Omnia 20W Mini. So I don’t think Aukey’s 20W charger is using GaN either. That just makes me all the more curious what their secret sauce is, and why theirs are so much smaller than Apple’s.

Joanna Stern on the Best 20W USB-C Charging Adapters 

Joanna Stern, writing two weeks ago for The Wall Street Journal (News+):

If you loved Apple’s 5-watt charger for its cute design that didn’t block multiple power outlets, get ready to be happy: You can now get four times the power in the same size brick.

The Apple 5-watt took nearly two hours to charge my iPhone 11’s battery to 50%. The 20-watt $20 Aukey Omnia Mini and Anker Nano took just 30 minutes. (Apple’s just released $19 20-watt charger should be just as fast, but I haven’t tested it yet.)

I bought an Anker Nano back in April, and at the time, it was only 18W. Anker recently updated it to support 20W, which, I think, means the updated ones will support Apple’s MagSafe inductive charger at the maximum 15W capacity.

What I don’t understand is why Aukey and Anker’s 20W chargers are so much smaller than Apple’s. They’re not just a little smaller, they’re a lot smaller — and about half the weight of Apple’s. They really are just a wee smidge bigger than Apple’s classic dice-sized 5W charger.

So what’s the deal? Are Anker and Aukey just better at making chargers than Apple? Is Apple’s so much bigger because it’s cheaper to produce that way? Or is Apple’s better in some way that necessitates it being bigger that I don’t understand? Because unless I’m missing something there’s no reason not to buy the 20W chargers from Aukey and Anker instead of Apple’s. Update: The apparent answer is GaN.

Major League Baseball’s Bad Example 

Paul Kafasis on Dodgers star Justin Turner returning to the field to celebrate after having been pulled from game 6 of the World Series after testing positive for COVID-19:

I can certainly understand Turner not wanting to miss a moment he’d worked his entire life for. The desire to celebrate with the rest of his team was a natural one. I hope there are no further cases among the Dodger organization, and that no other players, coaches, or family members get sick. Perhaps this incident can quietly die down to a mere footnote.

But even if that happens, it will be by sheer luck. There is a deadly virus going around and around the globe, and we can’t simply ignore it. We can’t pretend our way out of this thing. The picture above is emblematic of the fact that collectively, we Americans still haven’t learned that sacrificing for others is essential in getting past this pandemic. That’s not something to celebrate.

What an inexplicable embarrassment for the team and the sport — and a missed opportunity to set a very public good example.

Jared Kushner Bragged in April That Trump Was Taking the Country ’Back From the Doctors’ 

CNN with the shot:

In a taped interview on April 18, Kushner told legendary journalist Bob Woodward that Trump was “getting the country back from the doctors” in what he called a “negotiated settlement.” Kushner also proclaimed that the US was moving swiftly through the “panic phase” and “pain phase” of the pandemic and that the country was at the “beginning of the comeback phase.”

“That doesn’t mean there’s not still a lot of pain and there won’t be pain for a while, but that basically was, we’ve now put out rules to get back to work,” Kushner said. “Trump’s now back in charge. It’s not the doctors.”

Chaser:

Daily reports of coronavirus cases in the United States have surged to previously unseen heights, averaging more than 75,000 a day over the last week, and the country is rapidly closing in on nine million known infections over the course of the pandemic — a threshold it will probably cross on Thursday.

That’s today, October 29, six months into Kushner’s “comeback phase”.