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Apple elaborates on iPad Pro precision manufacturing process, reiterates 400 micron tolerance for bends

 

By Mike Wuerthele
Saturday, January 05, 2019, 06:14 am PT (09:14 am ET)

Apple has published a support document detailing the new iPad Pro’s enclosure manufacturing process, in an attempt to assure customers that the new device is durable and strong.

iPad Pro Bend

An 11-inch iPad Pro exhibits a bend out of the box. | Source: The Verge

In the support document published late on Friday, Apple talks about the new manufacturing process being used to fabricate the iPad Pro casing. Additionally, the company is doubling-down on its stated tolerance for the case, and what users should do if they think that any iPad Pro is bent beyond what Apple considers allowable.

To provide optimal cellular performance, small vertical bands or “splits” in the sides of the iPad allow parts of the enclosure to function as cellular antennas. For the first time ever on an iPad, these bands are manufactured using a process called co-molding. In this high-temperature process, plastic is injected into precisely milled channels in the aluminum enclosure where it bonds to micro-pores in the aluminum surface. After the plastic cools, the entire enclosure is finished with a precision CNC machining operation, yielding a seamless integration of plastic and aluminum into a single, strong enclosure.

In the note, Apple also points out that the “flatness specification” allows for nomore than 400 microns across the entire length of any given side. It also says that “the new straight edges and the presence of the antenna splits may make subtle deviations in flatness more visible only from certain viewing angles that are imperceptible during normal use.”

Reports of curved or bent iPad Pro models began circulating online shortly after the device debuted in November. Some impacted users have to AppleInsider that the bend slowly emerges after weeks of use, while others noticed an abnormal curvature out of the box. AppleInsider has continued to receive these reports, with users demonstrating bends greater than the thickness of a U.S. dime —about 1300 microns —from end-to-end. However, we cannot confirm the authenticity of the reports we have received, nor have we discovered one ourselves out-of-the-box with the problem.

On December 19, Apple confirmed that “some” 2018 iPad Pro models ship out to consumers with a slightly bent chassis. The company said then —and repeated on Friday —that the deformation does not degrade performance and is not considered a defect.

Apple noted in December that its latest iPad Pro is seeing a normal return rate, suggesting most users have not observed or are not bothered by the manufacturing side effect. Collated service data collected by AppleInsider has seen a very slight uptick of just under half of one percent of all service calls for any Apple product since the original report, which isn’t statistically significant. So, it isn’t clear how prevalent the issue is at this time.

Similar to what AppleInsider pointed out in December, Apple suggests that users who feel that the iPad Pro does not meet the 400 micron tolerance should contact Apple support, and take advantage of the company’s 14-day return policy. The company notes that “Apple also provides up to a one-year warranty on our products and will cover damage if it has occurred due to a defect in materials or workmanship.”

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Huawei punishes staff with pay cuts for marketing tweet sent via iPhone

 

By Roger Fingas
Friday, January 04, 2019, 06:01 am PT (09:01 am ET)

Chinese smartphone giant Huawei has issued harsh punishments to two of its staff in the aftermath of New Year’s Day marketing tweet sent out with the label “via Twitter for iPhone.”

Huawei's deleted tweet

Both of the workers have been demoted one rank and had their monthly salaries cut by 5,000 yuan, or about $728, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters. One person, the company’s digital marketing director, will have his pay rank frozen for a year.

The memo indicated that an outsourced social media firm, Sapient, encountered “VPN problems” with a desktop it was using for publishing, so instead turned to an iPhone with a roaming SIM card to trigger the message at midnight on New Year’s. Twitter is normally blocked in China, so a VPN (virtual private network) is a commonplace tool for reaching it.

The post — which read “Happy #2019” — was almost immediately deleted, but not before screenshots made their way to social networks like Weibo, where they were roundly mocked.

Huawei has had similar embarassments in the past. A notable example was when Israeli actress Gal Gadot, serving as a paid ambassador, promoted the Mate 10 Pro on Twitter but used her iPhone to do it.

The illusion of brand unity has become important at smartphone makers around the world, especially given the intense competition between iPhone and Android as platforms. In reality workers will often have devices from rival companies, even at Apple, though corporate leaders sometimes take measures to deter this.

Huawei likely has little to worry about in the near future, as Chinese iPhone sales were poor enough in the December quarter to trigger this week’s guidance downgrade. That sent Apple shares plummeting, and prompted CEO Tim Cook to promise management would “take action” to put the company on the right course.

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Apple’s earnings warning indicates trouble in China, but everyone should calm down

By the looks of the headlines since Wednesday afternoon, you’d think that Apple Park is on fire, and the company is headed for a loss for the quarter. While the earnings miss discussion isn’t a net positive for the company, there are still a few things to keep in mind.

Tim Cook and Steve Jobs, in 2010

Tim Cook and Steve Jobs, in 2010

We got a lot of emails last night about what happened, and let me tell you —they are loaded with hot takes. Minus the trolls using an assortment of vile language and so forth, let’s talk about them, what’s going on, and what it means to the Apple user.

In case you were under a rock yesterday, Apple published a revenue revision, saying that Apple would hit $84 billion in revenue for the holiday quarter. As such, most of the headlines we’ve seen overnight are talking about Apple missing projections by $9 billion.

Sure, that’s not wrong, but it also isn’t precise. So, let’s get precise —that $84 billion that Apple CEO Tim Cook was talking about is short of Apple’s predicted range by between $5 billion and $9 billion.

And, despite the revision, it will still be Apple’s second biggest quarter in the history of the company, eclipsed only by the 2017 holiday season.

Apple's projected earnings for the holiday quarter of 2018

Apple’s projected earnings for holiday 2018 in context with the last five years

Let’s take a closer look.

Profit margin remains effectively unchanged

There’s been a lot of talk about how the holiday sales propped up Apple, or doomed it to a bad quarter. Given that Apple’s profit margin is unchanged from the last quarter, unchanged from what the company predicted in November for the quarter, and effectively the same as the holiday quarter from 2017, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

There has been a certain aggression to Apple’s sales since Steve Jobs handed the company to Tim Cook. There have always been ways to get Apple’s products at less than Apple’s retail.

Of course, we’d rather Apple had hit its targets, but let’s talk about the letter itself, and the knee-jerk reactions we’re seeing.

Key points from the letter

The biggest takeaway is business in China —which I very briefly mentioned in our forums last night. Cook had a lot to say on the matter, and the emphasis we’re putting on the full quote below is ours, not his.

Lower than anticipated iPhone revenue, primarily in Greater China, accounts for all of our revenue shortfall to our guidance and for much more than our entire year-over-year revenue decline. In fact, categories outside of iPhone (Services, Mac, iPad, Wearables/Home/Accessories) combined to grow almost 19 percent year-over-year.

While Greater China and other emerging markets accounted for the vast majority of the year-over-year iPhone revenue decline, in some developed markets, iPhone upgrades also were not as strong as we thought they would be. While macroeconomic challenges in some markets were a key contributor to this trend, we believe there are other factors broadly impacting our iPhone performance, including consumers adapting to a world with fewer carrier subsidies, US dollar strength-related price increases, and some customers taking advantage of significantly reduced pricing for iPhone battery replacements.

From this, there are two key takeaways. Weakness in China for the iPhone for any one of an assortment in reasons is the key driver, and given that both statements are true, Apple’s other products like the Mac and iPad more than made up the difference —and performed better than Apple had expected.

Apple Store in Hangzhou, china

Apple Store in Hangzhou, china

Indeed, revenue records, even with all the sales that have been decried by analysts, were set across the globe —just not in China.

We also expect to set all-time revenue records in several developed countries, including the United States, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Korea. And, while we saw challenges in some emerging markets, others set records, including Mexico, Poland, Malaysia and Vietnam.

Cook was specific about what products brought in these record-breaking revenue as well.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, revenue outside of our iPhone business grew by almost 19 percent year-over-year, including all-time record revenue from Services, Wearables and Mac.

Specifically, services generated over $10.8 billion in revenue during the quarter, hitting record revenue in “every geographic segment.” Wearables grew 50 percent year-over-year, and the Mac saw unspecified year-over year revenue growth, and the iPad Pro saw double-digit revenue growth.

A record for earnings per share, but this means little

Cook said in the letter that Apple was going to report an all-time record for earnings per share.

Earnings per share is a derived metric. It’s great that this is a record, but this was inevitable, given the ongoing stock buyback that the company has been proceeding with unabated.

“But the analysts were right!”

Well, considering that their job is telling investors what they think about a company’s prospects, it’s about time that they got something right. A blind squirrel eventually finds a nut. However, the irresponsible hot takes from most of them this morning are coming fast and furious.

There are calls for Tim Cook’s resignation, which are insane from a shareholder value perspective. There are second-guesses about everything. There is a lawsuit in the works claiming that Apple misled investors with last quarter’s claims about China, because sales were up last quarter, so how could they possibly be down this quarter. There is a lot of unnecessary panic about every single aspect of Apple’s business —including the parts like Services, the Mac, and wearables that Cook called out as record-breaking.

And, there is already a lot of useless hyperbole, like Wedbush’s Daniel Ives saying that Wednesday was “Apple’s darkest day in the iPhone era.” One analyst —and note that he’s repeatedly emailed us with the exact same claim —says that foot traffic in Apple stores is “pathetic.” That seems like a bad take given our own observations, and the aforementioned record revenue in the US, which the letter clearly spelled out. Idiotic comparisons to Nokia and Blackberry have already begun from other analysts.

None of this changes the fact that there will be an iPhone in 2019, and probably a refresh every year until we all die of old age and are forgotten.

Seriously, quit with the “Steve Jobs would never…” nonsense

This isn’t the first time that Apple has posted an earnings miss. In 2002, Steve Jobs announced one too. On June 18, 2002, Apple issued a two-paragraph warning that they were going to miss earnings. Apple predicted that it would generate about $1.6 billion. It corrected that figure to between $1.4 billion to $1.45 billion.

This is, literally, half of the warning that was issued then.

“Like others in our industry, we are experiencing a slowdown in sales this quarter. As a result, we’re going to miss our revenue projections by around 10%, resulting in slightly lower profits,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’ve got some amazing new products in development, so we’re excited about the year ahead. As one of the few companies currently making a profit in the PC business, we remain very optimistic about Apple’s prospects for long-term growth.”

We’re not going to delve into the history here. John Gruber at Daring Fireball discussed this at some length, and it is a good read.

But what does this mean for the users?

Of course, from this chair, we’d rather Apple have made the predicted revenue target. But, Wednesday’s letter to investors means just as much to users as every other earnings report has for the last 15 years. It means exactly nothing.

Why this happened means nothing to the user, at least outside of China. China consumers buying cheaper Chinese brands isn’t a big surprise —what was the surprise is by how much they did it.

Apple isn’t going to shut down the iCloud servers, isn’t going to sell itself to Dell or anybody else, and it isn’t going to focus on anything but the highest-end of the market. Your iPhone won’t magically stop working because of the only $84 billion in the quarter that the company is expecting to make, and the data that I am moving from one Thunderbolt array to another right now isn’t going to transfer slower. From a pricing perspective, we aren’t expecting any radical changes in the company’s sales structure for any of its hardware.

You’re going to hear a lot in the next few weeks before the earnings announcement. You’re going to hear a lot of talking heads suggest what Apple should do, you’re going to hear a lot of hardware suggestions that will save the company on the news, in our forums, on Reddit, on Twitter, and on your social media venue of choice. While that wish-fulfillment fantasy may make that person happy, none of the suggestions will be the savior of the company that the navel-gazer thinks it will be.

The only thing that changed for all of us between December 31 and January 1 is a numerical year increment —there was no seismic shift in attitudes or humanity as a whole over that one day. Likewise, the only thing that’s changed for Apple between Wednesday morning and Thursday is that Apple will report that it made more money in a quarter than it did from 2000 to 2005 in total, instead of 2000 to 2006.

It will evolve like it always has, and survive just fine.

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Wistron pouring $340M into facilities associated with India iPhone production

 

By Malcolm Owen
Wednesday, January 02, 2019, 05:09 am PT (08:09 am ET)

Apple production partner Wistron is increasing its investment in manufacturing for the Indian market, with the upped spending being made to expand the plants that manufacture iPhones for the local market to avoid international import issues.

The iPhone 6s, one of two iPhone models produced by Wistron in India

The iPhone 6s, one of two iPhone models produced by Wistron in India

A filing at the Taiwan Stock Exchange reveals Wistron has authorized its subsidiary in India to spend 30 billion rupees ($340.62 million), in order to expand and meet future demand for its services in the region. Currently the company has a paid-up capital of 1.8 billion rupees for its Indian operations, making the investment a considerable increase in resources.

The company advised it is expanding its investment to ramp up production capacity in its Narasapura plant, Digitimes reports, with the first phase of its expansion expected to complete in the first half of 2019.

Wistron’s operations in India notably includes assembly of the iPhone SE and iPhone 6S for the local market, with the investment thought to help reduce the impact on production caused by various factors.

For the Indian market, Apple still relies on imports to make up the bulk of purchases in the country not already covered by Wistron’s supply. Apple is likely to be hit by a proposed luxury goods tax, one that is designed to discourage imported goods, and one that could be mitigated by increasing production in the region.

A less pressing issue is the ongoing trade dispute between the United States and China, which may eventually force a price rise for the iPhone in the United States of about 10 percent. The issue is sufficient enough that reports have surfaced suggesting the supply chain may shift some elements outside of China in order to evade the extra levy.

The investment may not entirely center around the iPhone, as it is reported Wistron is also planing to move some of its PC, Internet of Things, medical, and cloud services businesses to India.

Wistron is not the only Apple partner apparently looking to increase its local production. In December, Foxconn was reportedly planning to invest $214 million on expanding its own plant in India, in order to accommodate iPhone production.

DigiTimes is generally poor at predicting Apple’s future product plans, but is an accurate manufacturer financial watchdog, in regards to capital expenditure.

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Apple breaks earnings records, disappoints analysts, and offers festive cheer — Apple’s November 2018 in review

Looking back at Apple’s November 2018, it looked like investors just weren’t getting as into the Christmas spirit as Apple is with its new holiday ads. And maybe Apple is looking for cheer in all the wrong places as Microsoft supplants it as the most valuable company in the world.

Apple's Share Your Gifts ad

Apple’s Share Your Gifts ad

Sometimes there’s just nothing a trillion-dollar company can do. By November, Apple had released three new phones, two new iPads, a desktop Mac, a laptop, a pencil and some keyboard cover thing, but still its stock price dropped. The value of Apple stock dropped enough that in fact it was no longer a trillion-dollar company.

It’ll be back and if Tim Cook were here now, he’d be saying that it’s never about the money anyway, so there. Still, it had to hurt when during November 2018, Apple lost the mantle of World’s Most Valuable Company —to Microsoft.

Satya Nadella (Source: Microsoft)

Satya Nadella (Source: Microsoft)

You knew about the trillion-dollar part but you’d be forgiven for having forgotten that Apple was the most valuable public company in the world because it’s actually been that for so long. Apple was top from August 2011 to November 2018.

It will be again and Microsoft will be again and all of these firms will dance around but on the one hand, Apple must be smarting. And on the other, this is November. There were releases from Apple but the firm had just been through two months of announcing products, now it had to get them into peoples’ hands.

In transit

While many of us watched our delivery tracking information, Apple may have spent some time building a new shelf for all the awards it got.

The company as a whole won the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award for its work toward device accessibility.

Examples of Apple's work on accessibility

Examples of Apple’s work on accessibility

This is far from a new effort or direction for Apple and it’s also far from the first such award it’s received. In accepting the award, Apple’s Senior Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives Sarah Herrlinger said that accessibility had been central to the company “from the very beginning”.

“Our products should reduce barriers so you can do just that, regardless of ability. This work is never done,” she said. “But it’s exactly the kind of design and engineering challenge Apple was built for.”

Also this month, Apple as a whole earned the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s Stop Slavery Award and announced a new initiative to help victims of human trafficking to get jobs in the company.

Then the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple Park won the Structural Artistry award from the UK’s Institute of Structural Engineers. You’ve not heard of them and you’re wondering just how many things in the world are covered by awards ceremonies but then you see an image of Apple Park.

The Steve Jobs Theater at Apple Park

The Steve Jobs Theater at Apple Park

And you’re thinking yes, that’s structural artistry. Even if people walk into its walls. It’s a small price to pay for art.

The Steve Jobs Theater is “the largest structure in the world solely supported by glass”, said the UK organization, and it presented the award to architectural firm Eckersley O’Callaghan & Arup.

It won’t be the last award Apple Park gets. Also in November, Tim Cook was announced as being the first to win the Anti-Defamation League’s Courage Against Hate award.

Tim Cook

Tim Cook

“During a time where technology is being used to spread hate, Tim has been a trailblazer in combating it on Apple’s platforms,” said ADL CEO and National Director Jonathan Greenblatt. “He is a staunch advocate for the LGBTQ community and immigrants’ rights while denouncing racist vitriol like the events in Charlottesville and we are proud and excited to present Tim with this award.”

Cook would collect the award in December, when he would also deliver a keynote speech.

Tim Cook was continuing this new role of speaking out about social and political issues but he was continuing to do so with keynote speeches. He’s good at those.

Money calls

Cook is similarly good when he has to speak on Apple’s quarterly financial call, the legally-required announcement of earnings. They’re little more than an audiobook version of the earnings statements Apple has to release. Although they also then include optimistic questions from analysts thinking Apple might reveal future plans, and patient answers from Tim Cook saying that it won’t.

The earnings call in November did come at an interesting time, though, because this month Apple set records. “We’re thrilled to report another record-breaking quarter that caps a tremendous fiscal 2018, the year in which we shipped our 2 billionth iOS device, celebrated the 10th anniversary of the App Store and achieved the strongest revenue and earnings in Apple’s history,” said Tim Cook on the call.

So Apple is making money hand over fist and it’s releasing acclaimed products.

What could possibly go wrong?

Apple’s stock price immediately took a beating because you don’t want successful new products and high earnings. Or rather, investment analysts look at this and think no, it can’t continue.

“Calendar fourth-quarter guidance reflects our cautious view on weaker-than-expected sell-through and production reductions for the iPhone XS and iPhone XR,” wrote Rosenblatt Securities analyst Jun Zhang.

In other words, nobody’s buying the new iPhones. Allegedly.

Apple's new iPhone XS Max (left) and iPhone XS (right)

Apple’s new iPhone XS Max (left) and iPhone XS (right)

There were plenty of rumors that demand for the iPhone XR, in particular, had been poor.

Yet a lot of noise was being made over the fact that Apple had announced in this earnings call that it would no longer report specific iPhone sales figures. In future such calls, it would say how much money it made but not how many phones it sold.

This was greeted by furore by just about everyone and the conclusion was that Apple was hiding something. Sales must be going down and it’s only that the price of iPhones is going up that is saving Apple from being doomed.

Hang on, said AppleInsider, no other firm has ever reported its specific sales figures and nobody’s complaining about them.

Tim Cook at a Foxconn factory

Tim Cook at a Foxconn factory

Arguments

While some wrung their hands about Apple’s accounting practices and others saw how the move fitted into the company’s history, there were bigger disputes about the future.

It just didn’t always seem that way, or at least it didn’t appear to be that way for Apple. Now, for Qualcomm, it was bad news.

Amongst other things, Qualcomm makes modems for phones and Apple used their technology for many years. This month, US District Judge Lucy Koh issued a preliminary ruling against Qualcomm in a Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit.

Qualcomm offices

Qualcomm offices

The bottom line was that the court says Qualcomm must license its modem technology to rivals such as Intel.

Just getting to this point, though, Qualcomm had been in a global legal war over patents and royalties and in part with Apple. By November, Apple was rolling up its sleeves, preparing to go to trial, and definitely not talking privately with Qualcomm at all.

Somebody should’ve told that to Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf as he claimed the opposite. “We do talk as companies,” he told CNBC. “We’re really on the doorstep of finding a resolution.”

There’s an irony in the head of a company that makes communication equipment not knowing he isn’t communicating. Yet if you spot that this was really just an olive branch of a quote, you should know that it came too late.

Tim Cook for President? Not so much.

For even before that CNBC interview aired, the New York Times had revealed that Qualcomm’s PR company had been targeting attack campaigns aimed at Apple.

Definers Public Affairs, the same firm that Facebook used to sling mud at critics after the Cambridge Analytica debacle, worked to affect perception of Apple.

Much of the work revolved around conservative-leaning news aggregator NTK Network and whether it was used to disseminate stories critical of Apple. According to NTK‘s editor in chief, Joe Pounder, this is nonsense. “What NTK writes and posts on is what NTK chooses to write and post on,” he said.

Perhaps we’re foolish to automatically assume this means editorial independence as he could just have meant that NTK chooses to publish whatever Definers PR tells it.

For their part, Definers boasted to potential clients that it effectively owned NTK. “Definers manages NTK Network, a news aggregation platform that targets Washington D.C. influencers,” wrote Definers’ Tim Miller. “Through NTK we can directly re-publish favorable news from other outlets, and work with like-minded individuals to help create an echo chamber effect.”

Whether they were planted stories or completely independent editorial, NTK reportedly ran at least 57 articles about Apple. The New York Times also cited emails that demonstrated “dozens” of articles were planted on conservative news sites.

We can report that Definers emailed us, too. Back in June 2017, AppleInsider was contacted by Miller who pitched an article suggesting there was coordination between Apple, Intel, Samsung —those famously friendly firms —and the US Federal Trade Commission.

Just about the only thing Miller’s email to us failed to mention was the small fact that Definers was working for Qualcomm. We passed.

There was one more piece of work by Definers that we’ve got to mention. Here’s a company that was working to discredit Apple and Tim Cook but it was allegedly behind a Tim Cook for President campaign.

Screengrab from

Screengrab from “Tim Cook for President” campaign website

Whether you think Cook would be good in the White House or not is one thing —and it isn’t what is believed to have mattered to Definers PR or Qualcomm. It’s the current occupant of the building who matters and at this point, Tim Cook and Donald Trump’s relationship was up and down.

Early in November, Apple had been one of more than 50 major US companies who drafted and signed a letter opposing the Trump administration’s plans to define gender.

Alongside Apple, the letter’s signatories include Google and Microsoft. Both of them were then invited to a technology roundtable event to be held in December at the White House but Tim Cook wasn’t. Oh, and Qualcomm’s Steve Mollenkopf was.

And while the administration has been imposing tariffs on all manner of industries, toward the end of the month it did specifically state that iPhones could come under question. Asked about the next round of tariffs and whether they would apply to duties paid on phones and computers imported into the country, President Trump said: “Maybe. Maybe. Depends on what the rate is. I mean, I can make it 10 percent, and people could stand that very easily.”

Speaking of politics

November saw the midterms in America and technology firms were among many working to get more people voting. All the major car-riding companies like Uber and Lyft offered free or discounted rides to voting stations —though specifically to, never back from there —and updated their apps to help with finding those stations.

On the day itself, Apple News revamped to bring midterms coverage front and centre on the app. In a link up with the Associated Press, Apple News provided real-time information on the balance of the Senate and the House.

Apple News revamped for the midterms

Apple News revamped for the midterms

As you know, the result was that Democrats gained control of the House of Representatives but it also saw Apple’s home state of California getting a new governor. AppleInsider looked at the effects both of these are likely to have on Apple.

Speaking of people

You didn’t have to be in office or a PR firm to make news this month. Though being Mark Zuckerberg helped as he allegedly ordered Facebook executives to all ditch iPhones because of Tim Cook’s criticism of Facebook. He did later deny being so petty and just laid it on that Android “is the most popular operating system in the world.”

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg

There was then the case of the Black Friday shopper who either misread the terms and conditions or just didn’t notice them and so filed a class action lawsuit against Apple for not doing what it didn’t say it would.

We’re not entirely sure how much it costs to sue Apple and, one imagines, face a judge telling you to read the small print. However, it’s likely to be more than the $200 gift card this shopper believes she is due.

Not how this iPad Pro shipped

Not how this iPad Pro shipped

We’re also not completely on board with the idea of spending a lot of money to buy an iPad Pro and then deliberately bend it to the point of breaking. In hindsight, YouTuber JerryRigEverything could’ve just waited for Apple to bend some iPads but in November, he torture-tested one poor device himself for giggles.

AppleInsider also tested the new iPad Pro models in November, though our methodology was more about using them rather than holding up a lighter to see how long it takes a flame to burn through.

Everything tested

We also tested and reviewed and tried everything Apple released in its September and October events. The results were uniformly good but not uniformly great.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fuLSKBdv8k&w=560&h=315]

We were also highly critical of how Apple moved the Smart Connector on the new iPad Pros. That seemingly simple change belies a remarkably short-sighted approach that is going to mean the connector may never become as useful as Apple expected.

That said, we also found that the iPhone XR is far more than just the entry-level phone.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IznHmFHgOaM&w=560&h=315]

Reflections on November

There were new releases from Apple in November and they did include hardware of a sort —the Apple Watch gained two new Hermes bands. And also somewhat more importantly there was new software too as watchOS 5.1.1 came out to fix issues with Apple Watches being bricked.

Otherwise Apple released plans for a new Entrepreneur Camp for women with app-driven businesses and it launched new adverts including a sweetly animated one for the holidays.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dJCroCMBPM&w=560&h=315]

It felt early to be looking to the end of the year but maybe Apple is just longing to put its feet up for a bit.

Keep up with AppleInsider by downloading the AppleInsider app for iOS, and follow us on YouTube, Twitter @appleinsider and Facebook for live, late-breaking coverage. You can also check out our official Instagram account for exclusive photos.

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Austria looking at raising taxes on Apple amidst European disagreement

 

By William Gallagher
Monday, December 31, 2018, 06:00 am PT (09:00 am ET)

Having failed to get all 28 European Union countries to back a plan to tax the likes of Apple and Amazon, the Austrian Chancellor has announced plans to follow France in implementing new national taxes on tech giants starting in 2020.

Apple's Kaerntner Strasse store in Austria

Apple’s Kaerntner Strasse store in Austria

Austria’s Federal Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has announced that his country will introduce a new national tax on the largest technology companies. Details are to be hammered out in January with the tax expected to start in 2020, but the move is in response to the European Union’s current failure to implement a bloc-wide digital tax on the so-called GAFA companies —Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon.

Previously, Chancellor Kurz has said that Austria would introduce its own scheme if the European Union did. Now that Austria’s six-month presidency of the EU ends, he announced in a statement that the country intends to continue working for a pan-European system. However, he added that “in addition to the European plan, we will take a national step. We will introduce a digital tax in Austria.”

“The aim is clear,” he continued. “To tax companies that generate huge profits online, but pay hardly any tax on them, such a Facebook or Amazon.”

Currently the European Commission estimates that the largest firms pay an average of nine percent tax on their profits. In comparison, regional companies play 23 percent.

All member countries of the EU must agree before a bloc-wide tax can be implemented. At present, a company can choose which member country to register its taxes with and so all pick those with the lowest taxation rate, such as Ireland.

This benefits those countries who also argue that such taxes should not be implemented now when there are trade tensions between the EU and the USA.

Austria is not the first country to decide to implement new national taxes. The UK, which remains an EU member country until March 2019, has announced plans for a 2 percent tax that may be implemented from April 2020.

France, which led the proposals for an EU-wide system, is introducing its own separate tax levy from January 1, 2019.

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Comparing the 2.6GHz i7 versus the 2.9GHz i9 Vega 20 MacBook Pro

Four months ago, when Apple refreshed the 15.4-inch MacBook Pro with six-core CPU’s, graphics cards that come standard with 4GB of memory, and for the first time in a MacBook, the option of 32GB of system memory, we compared the performance of all three available CPUs and found the performance difference to be negligible.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFjRt1jW0XE&w=560&h=315]

The current design of the 15-inch MacBook Pros is incredibly thin and light for the performance that they pack. There are other Windows alternatives that are more powerful but they require a lot more than 87W of power, and as we saw with the Dell XPS 15 if you’re working without wall power, all that extra GPU performance and slightly better cooling are lost and then some — even with all the power saving profiles turned off.

2018 Vega 20 MacBook Pro

2018 Vega 20 MacBook Pro thin chassis

Although the MacBook Pros have consistent performance when unplugged, that thin design forces smaller cooling assemblies than some of its thicker competitors. Even though each CPU option in the 2018 15-inch MacBook Pro features six cores, the CPU clock speeds are nearly identical after the fans and temps stabilize during a heavy workload.

2.2GHz i7 / 555X / 16GBV 2.6GHz i7 / 560X / 16GB 2.9 GHz i9 / 560X / 32GB
Cinebench Score (5-run avg) 991 1001 1011
Cinebench Speed (5-run avg) 3.05GHz 3.1GHz 3.15GHz

In our Cinebench R15 CPU test, which is designed to allow the systems to heat up and eventually stabilize by running it back-to-back repeatedly, there was only a 100MHz clock speed difference between the base 2.2GHz CPU and the top spec 2.9GHz i9. Based on the results, our initial takeaway was that the i9 CPU option wasn’t worth it for vast majority of users.

Since then, Apple released new MacBook Pro models with Vega 16 and 20 GPUs. The pair are entirely new graphics chips which come equipped with fast HBM2 memory built right into the GPU package, with the entire package now cooled by the heat pipes, versus just the GPU in the previous model..

2018 i7 Vega 20 MacBook Pro

2018 i7 Vega 20 MacBook Pro

We have a full review of the Vega 20 equipped MacBook Pro that you can peruse if you want to see how it compares to the 555X and 560X models. Spoiler alert — the Vega 20 configuration is a screamer.

That leaves one question: If you’re ordering the faster and more efficient Vega 20 graphics, is it worth spending another $300 to jump from the 2.6GHz i7 to the 2.9GHz i9?

Starting off with the standard Geekbench 4 test, as we saw in the past, the i9 model showed noticeably higher single and multi-core scores. Geekbench tests a variety of tasks and the CPU usage is very low most of the time meaning the CPU can turbo boost higher resulting in the i9 scoring about 11 percent faster in single core and nine percent faster in multi-core.

2.6GHz i7 Vega 20 2.9GHz i9 Vega 20
Geekbench 4 Single Core 5105 5675
Geekbench 4 Multi-Core 23552 25650

Onto our five-run Cinebench CPU test, which pushes all cores to the max, we see a bigger difference than in our previous ones with the 560X graphics. Our i7 is slightly slower than our previous i7 with 560X (991 score versus 1001) whereas the new i9 paired with Vega 20 is noticeably faster (1011 versus 1068). It also finished at a higher 3.25GHz clock speed versus 3.1GHz.

It’s important to note that even though we’re seeing an eight percent difference and our i9 paired with Vega 20 is faster than it was paired with the 560X, chipset performance could vary machine to machine.

2.6GHz i7 Vega 20 2.9GHz i9 Vega 20
Cinebench CPU Score 991 1068
Cinebench Speed 3.1GHz 3.25GHz

Moving onto real-world tests, we saw no difference whatsoever in Adobe’s Lightroom. Our past tests concluded that the graphics were practically unused. The CPU’s all ran at the same clock speeds. What actually improved performance was having more RAM.

Now that we have i7 and i9 models, both with 32GB of RAM, we see that the performance is practically the same when exporting 99 RAW 42MP edited images to Jpeg. Develop module performance was identical, both being very responsive.

Lightroom 99 42MP RAW 5 minutes 58 seconds 5 minutes 50 seconds
CPU speed during rendering 3.0GHz 3.0GHz

We then turned to video editing in Final Cut Pro X, and started with the Bruce X benchmark. Both machines took 48 seconds to render this 5K project, which was to be expected since this is mainly GPU intensive.

Next, we stabilized a 20-second 4K H.264 clip. Both the i7 and i9 models paired with Vega 20 took just eight seconds to complete the task, which is very impressive but the performance is the same.

Exporting a five-minute 4K project, our i9 MacBook Pro took 3 minutes and 21 seconds and the i7 model was two seconds faster at 3 minutes and 19 seconds, within the margin of error.

Looking at a more power-demanding format, like 4K RAW from the Canon C200, both machines take much longer to complete the task. The i9 was 21 seconds faster, but given that this task takes about 14 minutes, that’s only about 2-percent faster. Both machines could play the edited footage back at 30 frames per second without issue.

On graded 4.5K .R3D RAW footage from RED Raven, the Mid-2018 i9 Macbook Pro with 560X graphics finished the render with the CPU performing at 2.4GHz, 500MHz under its base rated clock speed of 2.9GHz.

This RED RAW footage maxes out both the CPU and GPU, which results in a lot of heat output. The i9 had to throttle where the 2.6GHz i7 still manages to turbo boost up to 2.8GHz and was faster overall.

Thankfully, that same i9 paired with the more efficient Vega 20 now runs at a stable 2.9GHz and our i7 finished slightly faster than before at 2.85GHz. Running at almost the same speed, the render times were almost identical; less than a one-percent difference.

2018 Vega 20 MacBook Pro

2018 Vega 20 MacBook Pro

Wrapping up our results, even with the more efficient Vega 20 graphics, we don’t feel that the $300 2.9GHz i9 upgrade is worth the added cost if your workflows are long calculations.

However, if your workflow lends itself to quick processor loading and unloading, then it can make a difference, practically demonstrated by the improvements seen in Geekbench 4. This all comes down to thermal design choices that Apple made, possibly based on promises that Intel gave the company in 2015 when it started working on this case design.

As a result, when the i9 chip is placed in a thin and light notebook like the 2018 MacBook Pro, the thermal limitations inhibit the chip’s ability to turbo boost and maintain anything close to the maximum speed that the chip allows, and it ends up performing at very similar speeds to the less expensive i7.

Save $225 to $400 on every Vega MacBook Pro

For a limited time, Apple authorized reseller Adorama is taking $225 to $400 off every Mid 2018 15-inch MacBook Pro with Vega 16 or Vega 20 graphics for AI readers. These deals, which can be activated with coupon code APINSIDER using the pricing links below and in our Price Guide, deliver the lowest prices anywhere on the newly released configurations. What’s more, Adorama will not collect sales tax on your order if you live outside NY and NJ through December 31, 2018. For most customers, that incentive combined with our coupon will save you between $470 to $790 on these brawny new machines.

To snap up the discounts, you must shop through the pricing links below or in our Price Guide and enter coupon code APINSIDER during checkout. Need help? Send us a note at [email protected] and we will do our best to assist.

2018 15″ MacBook Pros with Vega 16 graphics

2018 15″ MacBook Pros with Vega 20 graphics

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Apple still considering North Carolina campus, report suggests

 

By Mikey Campbell
Friday, December 28, 2018, 04:19 pm PT (07:19 pm ET)

A firm tied to a known Apple lobbyist recently purchased a large parcel of land in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park, suggesting the tech giant is still eyeing the area as the site of a new campus.

Triangle

Source: Flatiron Law Group

The 281-acre plot of land in Wake County, which Apple purportedly considered for a new campus earlier this year, was this week sold to a recently established LLC called Acute Investments, reports WRAL Tech Wire.

Scott Levitan, CEO of the Research Triangle Foundation, confirmed the sale concluded this week, but would not comment further on the deal.

Apple is not officially attached to the purchase, but R. Bruce Thompson, a lobbyist connected to the tech giant, was named in the public documents. Thompson is Apple’s local arbitrator when the company negotiates government incentives related to local job recruitment, the report said. The lobbyist’s current registration to conduct operations for Apple, under the authorization of law firm Parker Poe, Adams & Bernstein, expires at the end of 2018.

The sale reignites speculation that Apple is moving forward with plans to open a campus in North Carolina.

Reports earlier this year claimed Apple was on the verge of announcing a deal that would see the development of a major facility in the area known as the Triangle. At the time, sources familiar with then-ongoing negotiations estimated Apple’s campus would house between 5,000 to 10,000 workers.

The rumor mill ground to a halt this month, however, as Apple announced plans to invest $1 billion in a new Austin, Tex., campus as part of a wider U.S. infrastructure strategy.

A new campus was expected, but its location came as a surprise to many. In an interview discussing Apple’s campus buildout plans earlier this year, CEO Tim Cook said the company was not considering California or Texas as new base of operations.

Following Apple’s announcement, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper declined to comment on why his state failed to make the final cut, calling Apple an “open recruiting situation.”

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Analysts blow iPhone X sales guesses, Apple Watch saving lives — Apple’s May 2018 in review

Depending on when in the month you asked, and who you talked to, sales of Apple’s flagship iPhone X were appalling or fantastic. Meanwhile, the Apple Watch was saving lives and Amazon’s Alexa was getting even creepier. AppleInsider takes a look at Apple’s May 2018 in review.

People actually paid to have this done to their beautiful iPhone X

People actually paid to have this done to their beautiful iPhone X

In a word, May 2018 was about money. Chiefly it concerned Apple revealing just how much cash it had made but it did also begin with the company having to pay out quite a bit too.

Specifically and possibly grudgingly, Apple made a first payment of its disputed Irish tax bill. The company is said to owe $15.3 billion and in May Ireland’s finance minister Paschal Donohoe announced that the first $1.76 billion had been paid into an escrow account.

Even Apple prefers to pay in instalments, then.

Apple Ireland

Apple Ireland

The reason this is all disputed is not that anyone much disagrees that Apple should be paying more tax than it does. It’s that Apple didn’t dodge anything: it always paid exactly what it was billed by Ireland. Even the Irish government is saying well, yes, we could’ve got more but this was what we billed them for.

It’s the European Commission who says Apple owes back taxes and they’re serious: they threatened legal action against the Irish government for its alleged failure to collect.

So everything is fine between Apple and Ireland, really. Oh, except that in May, Apple cancelled plans to build a $1 billion data center there, that’s all.

It’s not as petty as that sounds. The company said that it was cancelling it because of years of legal challenges. Late in April, the Irish High Court had passed a ruling that would allow objectors to begin an appeal process again.

Apple had announced plans for the datacenter in Athenry back in February 2016. On the same day, it also revealed it would be building another such datacenter in Viborg, Denmark.

That one is open and running. Apple has since announced that it’s going to build a second one in the country, this time at Aabenraa, which is in southern Denmark.

An Apple datacenter like the one that had been planned for Ireland

An Apple datacenter like the one that had been planned for Ireland

Money

It’s estimated that it costs around a billion dollars to build these datacenter wherever they are so Apple does need your help. Fortunately, we’ve not been slowing in chipping in a few bucks here or there.

In its legally-required earnings call in May, Apple revealed as little as it could about sales but Tim Cook directly stated that the iPhone X was a success. “Customers chose iPhone X more than any other iPhone each week in the March quarter, just as they did following its launch in the December quarter.”

Just for once, we’d like Cook to end that kind of sentence with the words “so there”. For even more than ever, this year had seen analysts and critics resolutely proving that the iPhone was a failure.

Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal and just about everyone except customers said the iPhone X was a disappointing dud. So much so that AppleInsider took them to task in an editorial this May.

The exceedingly popular and/or unsuccessful iPhone X (delete as applicable)

The exceedingly popular and/or unsuccessful iPhone X

It’s not as if we think news reports about Apple should all be shiny happy, we do think that doom-laden headlines conjured up out of sloppy journalism are offensive. It doesn’t take much to get this right.

Usually the analysts who say the iPhone cannot succeed because no one is willing to pay such a high price are then the ones who say it did succeed because people were will paying such a high price. This time we did get at least an attempt at face-saving from Jun Zhang of Rosenblatt Securities.

“We believe that after Apple reported a slightly better quarter and guided better than the market anticipated, Apple’s supply chain should look towards an increase in the 2nd half,” he said. “Apple needs to reduce most of their components, such as panels, RF, 3D sensing, and some commodity components. We believe this is the key reason that Apple’s supply chain might still provide weak guidance for the June quarter, even as Apple’s guidance was better than expected.”

More money than cents

If you were one of the many of us who turned out to be willing to pay a lot of money for the iPhone X, perhaps you were one of the few who felt it could be more expensive than it was.

In which case, May was your lucky month because luxury accessor maker Hadoro began selling a version of the iPhone X costing up to 8,900 euros or approximately $10,436.

There are real diamonds embedded in that case, you just can't see them.

There are real diamonds embedded in that case, you just can’t see them.

That price does include the phone.

Hadoro replaces the casing with anything from leather to marble and even something with real diamonds in it. You can forget your Apple warranty, the phones cease to be waterproof, and in our opinion they look ugly as hell, but it’s your money.

Plus we said that about them being ugly before we saw what else was released in May 2018. For a comparatively bargain $3,964.16, you could briefly buy a Royal Wedding commemorative iPhone X encased in gold.

Okay.

Okay.

To think we’d been saying HomePods were expensive at $349.

HomePod

Speaking of which, Apple’s earnings call did say how much money the company had taken in but it didn’t and never does break out the details for items like the HomePod or the Apple Watch. That doesn’t stop people guessing.

Sorry, we mean estimating and calculating based on reliable sources in the supply and retail chain. This month Strategy Analytics guessed that Apple had sold around 600,000 HomePods. Compare that to Google’s 2.4 million Home devices and Amazon’s 4 million Echo speakers.

Mind you, the Dot version of the Echo sells for $50 or seven times cheaper than the HomePod. And Apple’s device is the only one that wasn’t available for the whole quarter.

Consumer Reports on the HomePod

Consumer Reports on the HomePod

Maybe we’ll just give up on sales figures and concentrate on how great the HomePod sounds. At least that’s something everyone agrees on, except for Consumer Reports who insist it’s good but others are better. This May, AppleInsider went to see how their controversial testing is actually done.

Apple Watch saves lives

While we were busy concentrating on that testing, other people were out at church, working at bowling alleys, taking their parents to hospital —and having their lives saved by their Apple Watch. No kidding.

“If it wasn’t for her Apple Watch alarming her about her HR [heart rate] we wouldn’t have discovered her kidney issue,” wrote Stacey Recktenwald in a letter to Apple. “I honestly feel your Apple Watch saved my daughter’s life. I am forever grateful to Apple for developing such an amazing, lifesaving product.”

Recktenwald’s 18-year-old daughter had got a notification from her Apple Watch telling her to seek medical attention because her resting heart rate had reached 190 beats per minute.

Left: William Monzidelis (credit NBC New York)

Left: William Monzidelis (credit NBC‘s New York division)

She lives in Tampa, Florida, but a similar thing happened with William Monzidelis in New York. Again it was a heart rate warning but in his case he had an erupted ulcer. Doctors told him that if he had ignored the dizziness he was feeling, he would’ve died.

Then in England, Kevin Pearson was in hospital accompanying his father when his Watch warned that his heart was beating 161 times per minute. He followed the Watch’s instructions and sat down, monitoring his heart rate until it steadied.

He was at a hospital, after all, so he got doctors to check him out and they discovered that he had atrial fibrillation. Pearson says he’s now set his Watch to alert him whenever his heart rate spikes over 120 beats per minute.

There’s no word about how his father is.

Alternatives to Apple

You can’t be anything but amazed that a watch can save lives. It is truly a remarkable thing that Apple has done with this device. Yet if it’s impossible to dislike the results, plenty of people are not keen on the company who’s doing it.

This May if you happened to be someone who didn’t like Apple devices or you were finally worn out from how much they all cost, you could of course turn to Android. What’s more, if you did that, you could finally get a phone that doesn’t have the notch at the top of the screen that the iPhone X did.

You know that the notch is there because it’s needed, because behind it is all the Face ID sensing equipment. By May, many Android phones were including a notch solely to look good.

Except LG, which doesn’t just follow fashion and doesn’t make technologically-based decisions. And which seemingly hasn’t heard the old engineering maxim of ‘form follows function’. For LG put a notch on its new phone, the LG G7 ThinQ, and revealed in May that it was after a survey.

The company asked 1,000 people across the US, UK, Italy and South Korea and only 300 or so objected to there being a notch.

The company didn’t break down the rest of the results for us, though, saying only that 60 percent liked or didn’t mind the notch. Whatever the breakdown, enough liked it that the new LG phone had one.

Or sometimes. The LG G7 ThinQ has a feature whereby you can choose to switch the notch off. Of course it does.

Sequences Lengthened

Samsung also hesitated over fully going for the notch, too, but not in its phones, just in its advertising. May saw an ad that belabored a comparison between the iPhone 6 from 2014 and the Samsung Galaxy S9 from 2018. You’ll never guess which phone was faster.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qhW1sDPHYI&w=560&h=315]

You missed it, but at the start there was a pixel-high disclaimer on the screen saying that “newer iPhone models are currently available”.

What you may also have missed in the barrage of examples of slowness was the occasional tentative mocking of the notch.

If the ad had run just a little later in May, though, it could have instead focused on the features announced for the new version of Android. Google announced Android P and also released it in a beta program.

That beta program meant that Android P was initially only installed on what AppleInsider called “a small sliver of devices”. Later it would be released publicly to all Android users and consequently end up on a slightly larger sliver.

A likely story

Android is famous for how even new phones can’t always be updated to the latest versions and slightly older phones never can. Still, we wouldn’t say that in front of Android users because we’re polite.

And because you never know who’s listening.

You talkin' to me?

You talkin’ to me?

In May, Amazon confirmed a report that an Echo device had recorded audio from a conversation and sent it to someone else. Speaking to AppleInsider, the company explained that it was down to an extremely unusual sequence of mishearing. Alexa believed it had been told to send a message and then after it had said “To whom?” believed it was told a name in the customer’s contacts list.

“As unlikely as this string of events is,” said Amazon, “we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely.”

An unlikely story

Maybe you’d have guessed that something like this must happen sooner or later with a device that works by listening to your conversations. We’d have bet money, though, that you wouldn’t have guessed we’d lose net neutrality.

That wouldn’t go away until June but in May we were still hanging on to the hope that a last-minute Senate vote might help.

US Senate

US Senate

It didn’t.

With the prospect of losing net neutrality and all it could mean for us and even Apple, we weren’t leaving May in the best of moods.

Except it was during May that Apple confirmed the dates of WWDC 2018. Things were looking up for June 4.

Keep up with AppleInsider by downloading the AppleInsider app for iOS, and follow us on YouTube, Twitter @appleinsider and Facebook for live, late-breaking coverage. You can also check out our official Instagram account for exclusive photos.

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iPads & education in Chicago, Alexa laughing, and the FBI pressing – Apple’s March 2018 in review

New iPads, Alexa laughing at us, and the FBI trying to get backdoors into iPhones —all of these things, and more, happened to Apple and technology in March 2018

Apple invites the press to its education launch

Apple invites the press to its education launch

It’s peculiar how well the events and talking points of one year will usually divide into months but there was an exception this time. March 2018 began with a follow-up news to a February report about employees walking into the glass walls of Apple Park.

Cupertino building official Albert Salvador told the San Francisco Chronicle that he and others had warned Apple about the problem some nine months before Apple Park opened.

“We did recognize that this is going to be an issue, especially when they clean the glass,” Salvador said. “When you clean the windows, you can’t even tell some of them are there.”

Glass in Apple Park

Glass in Apple Park

He also said that at the very time they were discussing the problem with a contractor on the site, another worker walked into one of the walls.

One thing that still hasn’t come out is whether the glass is bullet-proof. Your average office block doesn’t need this kind of protection, but Apple doesn’t have average anything —and in March 2018, the company was being shot at.

Pellet guns

Or more specifically, its shuttle buses were under fire from pellet guns. Many large companies run their own bus service between their various sites and between January and March 2018 there were 20 shooting incidents at these charter buses. No one had been injured, the shootings had so far caused dents and shattered glass.

Damage done to shuttles

Damage done to shuttles

Apple and Google were among the companies using the charter busses being hit and in March the California Highway Patrol introduced decoy vehicles. At the same time the FBI revealed that it was placing undercover officers on the shuttles.

Maybe just announcing this was enough to stop the problem because all these months on, there don’t appear to have been any more reported incidents. Equally, though, there’s been no official statement of anyone being apprehended, either.

Security

Few security issues in technology involve guns of any sort, and in March the bigger story was about MoviePass. This is the app and service that gets you an impossibly cheap way to watch a movie a day in theaters and of course it turned out that impossibly cheap means the app gathers information about you.

MoviePass app

MoviePass app

“We get an enormous amount of information,” Mitch Lowe, MoviePass CEO said at something called the Entertainment Finance Forum. “We watch how you drive from home to the movies. We watch where you go afterwards.”

“Netflix buys $8 billion of content a year, and believe me, they have to borrow the money to do it,” he continued. “Or companies like Facebook — it’s free, but they’re monetizing all the advertising and all the data about you. That’s exactly what we are [doing].”

If there wasn’t a crisis team in MoviePass before, there surely was now and it responded to a tsunami of complaints very quickly. “We will not be selling the data we gather,” he said. As if they would.

Perhaps the company just likes knowing that you got home safely from the movie theater. In the meantime, while they were looking out for us with location tracking, the FBI was trying to get public support for a completely sane idea.

The way to make iPhones and others safer is to break their encryption, said FBI Director Christopher Wray

FBI Headquarters

FBI Headquarters

“We need them to respond to lawfully issued court orders, in a way that is consistent with both the rule of law and strong cybersecurity,” said Wray, about Apple and Google. “We need to have both, and can have both. I just don’t buy the claim that it’s impossible.”

Seemingly at least one US police department agrees with him, too. Indiana State Police bought a forensic tool called GrayKey in order to hack into devices running iOS 11.

They spent $500 for the initial purchase plus $14,500 for a one-year licence that lets them unlock 300 iPhones. Hopefully they got their money’s worth in the first six months because AppleInsider reported that GrayKey exploited security problems in iOS 11 and you can presume Apple fixed those for iOS 12.

Although Apple was a bit tied up in other legal issues. That company is never out of court and this month it was a case about Siri.

Portal Communications, which appears to make nothing but money, filed suit against Apple for allegedly infringing three patents related to natural language voice systems. It wasn’t that Portal had just noticed you can speak to Siri, it was more that the company got the patents from its previous owner in January.

The wheels of justice don’t always grind slowly, though. Portal filed its original complaint at 20:19 on Thursday March 8 and then filed its intention to voluntarily dismiss the whole thing at 16:59 on the following Monday, March 12.

The court signed or shrugged or does whatever it does when a case is being withdrawn and declared that it was dismissed without prejudice on Tuesday March 13. That was at 16:12, if you’re wondering.

It’s not funny

Maybe it was the revolving-door speed of that case going away, but something caused Amazon’s Alexa to giggle at users in March 2018.

Amazon's logo is a smile, but Alexa laughing was a bit much

Amazon’s logo is a smile, but Alexa laughing was a bit much

After AppleInsider pressed the company, it admitted that it was investigating.

“In rare circumstances, Alexa can mistakenly hear the phrase ‘Alexa, laugh.’ We are changing that phrase to be ‘Alexa, can you laugh?’,” said Amazon. “We are also changing Alexa’s response from simply laughter to ‘sure, I can laugh’ followed by laughter.”

Just don’t ask why someone programmed this into Alexa in the first place. And definitely don’t ask why users who heard this mysterious, unbidden chuckle say that it sounded more evil and creepy than Alexa’s regular laugh.

To be fair, you can tell Siri to laugh too. It will respond with phrases like “LOL” or “Hee hee”. We checked so you don’t have to.

That said, at the same time Amazon was addressing Alexa’s plans for stroking cats and ruling the world, it was also significantly improving how you interact with your new emperor. Rather than having to prefix every sentence by calling out the name “Alexa”, a new Follow-Up Mode meant you should be able to issue multiple commands in a row.

Competition

Follow-Up Mode was one of Amazon’s efforts to keep Alexa competing with the likes of Apple and Google with their walled gardens. In March we could’ve learned just how hard it will be for Amazon to beat its rivals because a report said so.

The headline on a survey by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners claimed that Android is “beating iOS in smartphone loyalty“.

Just because it's a graph, it doesn't mean anything

Just because it’s a graph, it doesn’t mean anything

We’ve often suspected that people only read headlines but this time people who wrote about Android beating iOS even quoted evidence to prove the opposite. This CIRP group that you only hear about when they make claims about Apple, actually reported that “iOS gains more former Android users, than Android does former iOS users.”

AppleInsider did point out some statistical absurdities in the group’s methodology but maybe the truth is just that Android users are more fed up than iOS ones.

In March, we rounded up the reviews of the new flagship Samsung Galaxy S9 and if we’d done a word cloud, “predictable” and “safe” would be the biggest entries. There were comments about Samsung’s version of Apple’s Animoji feature were “creepy” but otherwise it was a release that didn’t seem to interest many.

You’ll notice that we make no mention of Samsung phones having previously caught fire. That’s partly because, weirdly, users don’t seem quite as bothered by the more than 100 events in just a few months as you’d expect. And because this time, Apple allegedly had a similar issue.

Fire sale

Remains of iPhone charging cable, from the Township of Langley Fire Department Field Report

Remains of iPhone charging cable, from the Township of Langley Fire Department Field Report

The fire was actually in 2016 and it became news now because the couple, Cathy and Ian Finley of Langley, B.C, had gone public. Having received $600,000 in insurance money, they were hoping to get Apple to pay as much again because they say the house burned down because of a charging cable plugged into an iPhone 6.

The cable was found in the wreckage of the house and an investigators’ report said that “it would appear that the phone or charger generated enough heat to ignite” a chair it was on.

After a year of talks with Apple, the couple launched a petition on change.org. “We are releasing every phone call, letter and email that has gone between us and Apple. There will be complete transparency. It’s ugly,” they say on the petition site. “There’s phone calls where you just hear us cry and eventually hang up. It’s extremely personal, embarrassing to share and not fun to listen to.”

There’s been no further news of what’s happened. The couple’s petition is still active, currently showing 2,537 signatures. It also includes links to their documentation but the last entry in that is to do with the decision to go public.

It’s not just consumers

The Finleys weren’t the only people unhappy with Apple in March this year. WiseWear, a San Antonio wearable device startup, filed for bankruptcy and blamed an Apple design decision.

WiseWear battery strap

WiseWear battery strap

The original Apple Watch included a diagnostic port which WiseWear used as a way to charge the Watch from what they called a Reserve Strap. This was a way of getting an extra battery band for the Apple Watch, like an external charger but permanently part of the strap.

WiseWear claimed in March that “Apple turned off the port through an operating system change” and that this action made their product unusable.

Speaking of the Watch

Apple launched a new Activity Challenge for Apple Watch users on International Women’s Day, March 8. To earn an achievement badge for this challenge, you had to double your regular move goal.

Women using iPads just like regular people

Women using iPads just like regular people

It wasn’t the first time that Apple has tied fitness to events but this time it was part of a wider move to acknowledge International Women’s Day. More than just a Watch challenge, Apple marked March 2018 by running events around the world including one that was focused on recruiting women to the company.

Hopefully this was a success but if you talk about Apple events in March 2018, none were bigger than the one that saw out the month.

Chicago

On March 27, Tim Cook to the stage in Lane Tech College Prep High School in Chicago to announce a renewed drive into education.

Detail from Apple's press invitation to its March education event

Detail from Apple’s press invitation to its March education event

“We know our products can help bring out the creative genius in every kid,” said Cook. “That’s why education is such a big part of who we are as a company, and has been for 40 years.”

He was followed by Susan Prescott, vice president of product marketing. “”We do know that the best products alone can’t create great learning experiences,” she said. “Teachers are the heart of the classroom, and we know it takes dedicated, passionate teachers to fuel students’ curiosity, and to guide them to their full creative potential.”

A nice A10 Fusion-powered iPad with Apple Pencil support and free iCloud storage increased to 200GB does help, though.

Keep up with AppleInsider by downloading the AppleInsider app for iOS, and follow us on YouTube, Twitter @appleinsider and Facebook for live, late-breaking coverage. You can also check out our official Instagram account for exclusive photos.