Linked List: January 27, 2022

Thursday, 27 January 2022

Apple Reports Q1 2022 Results ★

Apple:

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2022 first quarter ended C 25, 2021. The Company posted an all-time revenue record of $123.9 billion, up 11 percent year over year, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $2.10.

If record-breaking quarters can be boring, Apple’s recent results qualify. From Apple’s statements of operations for the quarter (PDF), the most interesting year-over-year change I noticed was the divergence between Mac and iPad net sales:

	Q1 2022	Q1 2021
iPhone	$71.63	$65.60
Mac	$10.85	$8.68
iPad	$7.25	$8.44
Wearables, Home, Accessories	$14.70	$12.97
Services	$19.52	$15.76
Total net sales	$123.95	$111.44

Last year Mac and iPad were very close to even. This year, Mac sales were up 25%, and iPad down 14%. That’s not surprising given the hardware releases last year: a good but uneventful year for iPads vs. the single most transformative year for Mac hardware ever.

iOS 15.4, Now in Developer Beta, Has an Option to Use Face ID With a Mask ★

Nick Heer, Pixel Envy:

First spotted by Brandon Butch, iOS 15.4 will offer support for Face ID while wearing a mask. The text on the setup screen implies that it focuses more on the area around a user’s eyes to make a match. As Federico Viticci documented, it allows you to add pairs of glasses too, which makes sense for greater sensitivity around that specific area.

Today’s OS updates — MacOS 12.2 and iOS 15.3 (in all its device-specific variants) — are seemingly mostly bug fixes. But MacOS 12.3 and iOS 15.4 are feature upgrades. In addition to this welcome new support for using Face ID while wearing a mask, the MacOS 12.3/iPadOS 15.4 betas introduce the much-awaited Universal Control.

New ‘Unity Lights’ Face for Apple Watch ★

Apple Newsroom:

The band is complemented by the Unity Lights watch face, which is designed using 2D ray tracing, a technology never before implemented for a watch face. Each pixel on the screen simulates the light and shadow falling across it and the movement of the clock hands simultaneously reveal and hide the light, changing dynamically throughout the day. The Unity Lights watch face can be customized to be a full screen or circular dial, and includes a black and white option, tick marks, and up to four complications. iPhone, iPad, and Mac users can also show their support for Black History Month by downloading Afrofuturism-inspired wallpapers available at apple.com.

Very cool watch face.

The wallpapers seem a little hidden to me: go to Apple’s main Watch page, and click the “Find out more” button. That reveals a popover with links to download the wallpaper images.

Apple Releases iOS 15.3, iPadOS 15.3, MacOS Monterey 12.2, WatchOS 8.4, tvOS 15.3, and HomePod 15.3 ★

Josh Centers, TidBITS:

It’s time once again to fire up Software Update. Apple has released updates for all of its shipping operating systems with bug fixes and security updates but no new features, apart from Siri on the HomePod learning to recognize two new languages. Apple says that one of the security vulnerabilities addressed may have been actively exploited in the wild, so we recommend updating soon.

One More Dunk on Spotify: Their Apps Still Don’t Support AirPlay ★

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

Spotify has still not enabled AirPlay 2 in its iPhone and iPad app, nearly six months after last promising to support the feature.

“Spotify will support AirPlay 2 and we’re working to make that a reality,” a Spotify spokesperson informed MacRumors in early August, in response to a Spotify Community forum post that said the company had paused plans to support the feature.

Big-Name Podcasts Spotify Has Announced Yet Have Never or Seldom Published ★

Speaking of Spotify’s exclusive podcasts, here’s James Cridland writing for Podnews:

Over the last two years, Spotify have been busy announcing deals for podcasts. But when it comes to the shows themselves, where are they? [...]

With this level of PR activity, it’s no surprise that these deals are normally heavily covered by the press, and each of them has a positive effect on Spotify’s stock market value. Meghan and Harry’s announcement alone contributed to a 1.9% rise in value, worth $836 million.

However, if there is a track record of these announcements never coming to fruition or delivering any value for the company, when do these announcements become a little misleading? Is this a strategy?

Ashley Carman, writing for The Verge:

Still, the takeaway from the skirmish is clear: Spotify can’t afford to ostracize Rogan or his audience. The company specifically licensed his show with the goal of both converting listeners to the platform and making money through ad sales. [The Joe Rogan Experience] has become the lynchpin to its entire podcasting apparatus.

A source previously told me that if marketers buy ads on Rogan, they have to buy ads on the rest of Spotify’s catalog, too, meaning Rogan’s success brings more advertisers to the rest of Spotify’s investments. Without him, Spotify has Call Her Daddy and Armchair Expert, but neither reaches Rogan’s scale. It’s easy to see why Spotify didn’t cave so easily.

See also: Carman, back in August: “Joe Rogan, Confined to Spotify, Is Losing Influence”. Rogan may well be laughing all the way to the bank, but there’s no question that going Spotify-exclusive has reduced his audience size. People who like podcasts already have a favorite podcast player.

Spotify, Unsurprisingly, Will Remove Neil Young’s Music Instead of Dropping Joe Rogan ★

Jon Brodkin, writing for Ars Technica:

With Neil Young having told Spotify that it can keep him or podcaster Joe Rogan but not both, the streaming company today said it will remove Young’s catalog of music.

“We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users,” Spotify said in a statement to Deadline and other media organizations. “With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators. We have detailed content policies in place, and we’ve removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID since the start of the pandemic. We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify but hope to welcome him back soon.”

Neil Young:

Spotify represents 60% of the streaming of my music to listeners around the world, almost every record I have ever released is available — my life’s music — a huge loss for my record company to absorb. Yet my friends at Warner Brothers Reprise stood with me, recognizing the threat the COVID misinformation on Spotify posed to the world — particularly for our young people who think everything they hear on Spotify is true. Unfortunately it is not.

Thank you Warner Brothers for standing with me and taking the hit — losing 60% of my world wide streaming income in the name of Truth. [...]

I sincerely hope that other artists and record companies will move off the Spotify platform and stop supporting Spotify’s deadly misinformation about COVID.

This is all good. Of course Spotify chose Joe Rogan over Neil Young. Everyone knew they would, including Young. Young didn’t do this to try to get Spotify to drop Joe Rogan; he did this to raise awareness that Spotify supports Rogan and Rogan pushes a lot of nonsense about COVID. Young put his money where his mouth was and was rewarded with publicity for a message he clearly feels strongly about.