Category: Apple Insider

16-inch MacBook Pro

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The fall is Apple’s main product launch period, with the annual iPhone refresh being the centerpiece of events. Flanking them are Apple’s other ecosystem changes, covering product areas including the iPad, the Apple Watch, and the Mac, which can sometimes get their own events.

Apple’s M2 processor debuted in 2022, with new MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro models. And, before that, the incredibly powerful Mac Studio found its way to store shelves.

The obvious next choice for the M2 is in the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro. That update has been rumored for some time. November has been the most likely timeframe.

A combination of a fall release cycle with atypical timing, and comments made by Tim Cook directly, have called a November event into question.

So now, we may not even see anything new until 2023.

A couple of things were mentioned in a call to analysts following Apple’s quarterly results release. As is typical for a results call, Apple doesn’t offer opinions or details of yet-to-launch products.

However, you can still pull out details based on what is said.

During the call, which saw Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri discuss generally favorable revenues and currency challenges, the pair also broke down details based on each unit.

For the Mac, Maestri spoke about the “great quarter” for the Mac unit, achieving an “all-time revenue record of $11.5 billion, up 25% year-over-year despite significant FX headwinds.” Maestri points out three things that helped the quarter, including the launch of the M2 MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro.

Second was Apple’s ability to “satisfy pent-up demand that carried forward from the significant supply constraints we faced during the July quarter,” explained the CFO. Lastly, as the supply position improved, the channel was able to be filled completely.

Maestri also referenced how Apple has attracted upgraders and new customers, increasing the install base to an all-time high. “In fact, we set a quarterly record for upgraders while nearly half of customers buying Macs during the quarter were new to the device.”

While good for the quarter gone by, Maestri offered some guidance for the fiscal Q1 2023 quarter — the crucial holiday quarter. Maestri expects the quarter will see a deceleration of performance growth for the company as a whole.

A lot of this is a 10% negative impact on year-on-year growth caused by currency exchanges, but he also highlights the Mac.

“Second, on Mac, in addition to increasing FX headwinds, we have a very challenging compare against last year, which had the benefit of the launch and associated channel feel of our newly redesigned MacBook Pro with M1,” the financial chief offered. “Therefore, we expect Mac revenue to decline substantially year-over-year during the December quarter.”

The other curious comment is from Cook himself. In a section about retail, Cook thanks Apple employees across the company, and adds color about what’s being sold in the quarter.

In opening statements, Cook addressed the analysts directly.

“As we approach the holiday season, with our product lineup set, I’d like to share my gratitude to our retail AppleCare and channel teams for the work they are doing to support customers.”

Right in the middle of that sentence is the key. Apple is entering the busy shopping season “with our product lineup set.”

Maestri’s comments paint the fiscal Q1 2023 quarter as being tough for Mac revenue. The reasons offered for his forecast are rooted in known past events and in good educated guesses.

In discussing why, he referred to the high Mac revenue of Q1 2022, brought on by the M1 MacBook Pro launches. This could be a telling element depending on how you view evidence by omission.

Maestri and Cook don’t talk about future product launches, as it is usually left to Apple’s PR team to inform of upcoming events. This hasn’t stopped them from saying another event is on the way or that new Macs are inbound.

After all, if there were to be a launch in Q1 2023, for the Q1 2022 to still be better and be worthy enough to reference M1 launches, the Q1 2023 Macs would have to be anticipated as low-sellers in comparison.

No company’s leadership in its right mind would tell investors that the launch of products in the next quarter will be underwhelming. The most likely reason is that there won’t be an event or release of any sort.

And, Cook’s clear “product lineup set” remark practically kills off any other speculation of an event.

If Apple were to have more products to launch, such as new Macs, Cook wouldn’t knowingly say a lineup has been “set,” as that says there’s nothing more to come.

This late in the year and with other commentary in play, it seems like the product catalog has been completely finalized.

After months of rumors about M2 changes, including adding M2 to the 14-inch MacBook Pro and 16-inch MacBook Pro and an expected overhaul of the Mac mini, the financial commentary makes it seem very unlikely that there will be another launch in 2022 for Macs.

Sadly, we can’t even stretch things by questioning if a change in chip constitutes a new model for a Mac. Previous refreshes of the Mac line that were simple specification bumps were given at least a press release announcement and have been counted as full model upgrades in the past.

As a more recent example, take the 2022 iPad Pro refresh, which largely consisted of Apple sticking an M2 inside instead of the M1, and adding the Apple Pencil hover feature, while keeping practically everything else static about the models. This relatively simple pair of changes was important enough for Apple to perform a press release launch, and it would be reasonable to expect the same for a Mac or MacBook Pro update in a similar vein.

Further evidence of a late 2022 refresh being unlikely is in the cadence of other Apple Silicon hardware updates. It took Apple a year and a half to go from the M1 MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro to the M2 versions of each.

By contrast, the M1 14-inch MacBook Pro and 16-inch counterpart were launched in October 2021, making them just a year old.

Being only a year old isn’t a barrier for Apple’s hardware updates, as in the Touch Bar era of Intel MacBook models, the time between updates repeatedly went down to around a year. So it would generally be possible if components were available.

And components are also a problem, specifically the M2 chips. Apple waited 11 months between introducing the M1 and the faster M1 Pro and M1 Max chips.

With M2 landing in June 2022, it seems extremely early in the chip cycle to bring out the Pro and Max versions that would go into updated MacBook Pro models.

All of this firmly puts forward the idea of Apple truly taking a rest from product launches for 2022. This pushes new Macs into early 2023.

Apple can’t lie in earnings reports, lest they fall afoul of the Securities and Exchange Commission, or an assortment of other regulatory bodies internationally. There’s enough wiggle-room in Cook’s statement, that if you squint and look at it just so, Apple rolling out a new MacBook Pro or Mac mini in the same form factor before the end of the year could be construed as an enhancement or other similar legal dodge to avoid SEC ire.

But, it would be new phrasing for Apple. And, Cook and Maestri have been at this long enough to make sure that they don’t say anything that requires a regulatory dance to work around after-the fact.

A better way to avoid that ire is to not have said anything at all about the product lineup during the heavily scripted earnings announcement, going into the holiday season.

But they did. And it wasn’t because they were caught off-guard.

Credit: Twitter

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The on-again, off-again story of Musk buying the social media platform has finally concluded, with Musk taking control of the company in the final days of October.

On Tuesday, Musk began moving ahead with his acquisition of Twitter, a deal that has been up in the air for months. He pledged to provide $46.5 billion in equity and debt financing, covering the acquisition price and closing costs.

On Wednesday, he was spotted on Twitter’s campus speaking to engineers and executives. By Thursday, he closed the deal to buy the social media platform.

However, the transfer of power has been anything but peaceful. According to The New York Times, four top executives were fired on Thursday, including former CEO Parag Agrawal, former CFO Ned Segal, former policy executive Vijaya Gadde, and former general counsel Sean Edgett.

Musk has also claimed that substantial layoffs could be necessary to limit Twitter’s operational costs.

The billionaire plans to radically overhaul how Twitter is managed in the name of free speech. He has stated that he would reverse the permanent ban of former President Donald J. Trump from the service.

He’s also suggested that he’d transform Twitter into an “everything app,” which would be called X.

He told investors Twitter would reach an annual revenue of $26.4 billion and have over 930 million users by 2028.

In 2021, Twitter had an annual revenue of just over $5 billion and around 200 million users.

However, Musk decided to back out of the deal in July, claiming that Twitter lied about the number of fake accounts on the platform. That same month, Twitter sued Musk in an attempt to force the billionaire to acquire the platform at full price.

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Greg Joswiak, known as “Joz,” spoke at the Wall Street Journal‘s Tech Live event on Tuesday evening.

He said Apple agreed with the European Union’s decision to require a standardized charger for consumer devices.

“We’ll have to comply,” he stated.

On Monday, the European Union gave its final approval to the standard charger directive, a plan that will force Apple and other electronics producers to use USB-C by the end of 2024.

The hope is that the move will improve consumer convenience and reduce electronic waste significantly.

A new report claims that the forthcoming iPhone 15 range will switch to USB-C charging, and that Apple will still produce four models, with bigger feature differences than the iPhone 14 family has.

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To date, accessory makers have expressed frustration to AppleInsider about their lack of ability to create MagSafe chargers with other colors or different surface materials. They all have to have a white silicone charging surface which doesn’t always mesh with a product’s aesthetic.

That is about to change.

AppleInsider has been able to confirm that Apple has made some changes to its MFi program and introduced a new MagSafe module that can be covered and styled with different materials.

Any third-party manufacturer that hopes to create an accessory that uses any of Apple’s connectivity methods needs to use Apple’s official components and complete a rigorous certification process.

Consider the Apple Watch charging puck — Apple supplies the proprietary charging module directly to the manufacturers to build into their products. And, the same goes for the Lightning connector.

Then Apple takes the product and runs it through various safety and performance tests before certifying it and assigning it a dedicated ID.

This ensures the charger is safe for your device, performs to Apple’s standards, and is the same quality as if you’re buying from Apple directly. You’ll know one of these tested and certified devices by the tell-tale Made for iPhone (or Made for Apple Watch) logo on the side of the box.

Manufacturers go to great lengths — and significant expense — to get this badge of honor and is a sign of reliability to consumers.

Because MagSafe falls into this category, until recently Apple-certified MagSafe chargers to date have the same bright white, soft-touch, MagSafe surface. The charger you get from Nomad or Belkin works, looks, and feels just like Apple’s but with a different design.

With MagSafe, things can be confusing. Apple offers two methods of wirelessly charging iPhones with users having the choice between Qi and MagSafe.

If you’ve ever come across a magnetic wireless charger that doesn’t carry the Made for iPhone badge, it’s just a 7.5W Qi charger with a ring of magnets. This differs from MagSafe which can charge at up to 15W.

Now, Apple is introducing a new official MFi MagSafe component. As it is an official part, it has fast charging speeds but Apple will now allow the charging surface to be covered.

This will pave the way for a whole new world of MagSafe chargers that don’t have to be stark white and instead can be styled in all sorts of different ways. We can have MagSafe with dark profiles, premium leather surfaces, or covered in fun patterns.

We’ve already seen the first of these chargers in Anker’s new 3-in-1 MagSafe cube. This ditches the white circle for a more seamless top surface with a raised rubber ring.

This is the only MagSafe charger that delivers 15W of power with a non-white surface. Other accessory makers that have spoken to AppleInsider with the promise of anonymity have said they’re already working on new devices with hidden MagSafe chargers.

MagSafe didn’t gain any new features with the iPhone 14 series but at least accessories will be getting a whole new look.

Apple CEO Tim Cook with U2 in 2014

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Apple’s gift of a free copy of the U2 album “Songs of Innocence” was seen as a massive blunder for the music-selling service, with complaints from many forcing Apple to come up with instructions to remove the album from user libraries.

In extracts from Bono’s memoir “Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story” published in The Guardian, the rock frontman recounts meetings between the band and Apple executives in 2014. In the meeting, Bono spoke with manager Guy Oseary, Eddy Cue, Phil Schiller, and Tim Cook, with the suggestion of a giveaway being from Bono’s side of the table.

“You want to give this music away free? But the whole point of what we’re trying to do at Apple is to not give away music free. The point is to make sure musicians get paid,” Bono was told.

Bono instead insisted that Apple should pay U2, but then give it away as a gift. “Wouldn’t that be wonderful?,” he added. When Cook pressed, Bono compared it to how “Netflix buys the movie and gives it away to subscribers.”

“But we’re not a subscription organization,” Cook fired back, before Bono offered “Not yet. Let ours be the first.”

Cook was apparently still skeptical about the deal, and asked further if this was just to those who liked U2. “I think we should give it away to everybody,” Bono proposed, “I mean, it’s their choice whether they want to listen to it.”

On the reception the album had, Bono states he takes full responsibility. “Not Guy O, not Edge, not Adam, not Larry, not Tim Cook, not Eddy Cue.” Bono believed that if the music was made available for listening, people “might choose to reach out toward it.”

Bono has previously apologized for the incident, which saw automatic downloads of the album to millions of users, in the weeks after it occurred.

“At first I thought this was just an internet squall. We were Santa Claus and we’d knocked a few bricks out as we went down the chimney with our bag of songs,” he offers. “But quite quickly we realized we’d bumped into a serious discussion about the access of big tech to our lives.”

Bono takes a moment to commend Cook on his actions afterward. “You talked us into an experiment,” the CEO said to the rockstar. “We ran with it. It may not have worked, but we have to experiment, because the music business in its present form is not working for everyone.”

Bono then points out the “probably instinctively conservative” leadership style of Cook, and that while he wanted to try and solve a problem, he was still ready to take responsibility.

The extract also discusses another Apple CEO interaction ten years prior, with Bono and Edge visiting Steve Jobs with Jimmy Iovine in tow. While U2 didn’t do commercials, it was proposed that the band was a good fit for Apple’s ad style at the time.

For remuneration, Jobs didn’t think Apple had the budget such a band would expect. Bono countered by saying they just wanted to be in the commercial, however while the band wasn’t looking for cash, they suggested a “symbolic amount” of Apple stock, though Jobs called it a “dealbreaker.”

As an alternative, a customized U2 iPod in black and red was suggested, though Jobs insisted “You wouldn’t want a black one. I can show you what it would look like, but you will not like it.”

Later, after the band were shown the first version and found it favorable, design chief Jony Ive was invited to look at the device’s design a second time. Eventually, the special edition iPod in red and black saw public release.

Apple Watch

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One evening, Imani Mile’s Apple Watch began alerting the 12-year-old to an abnormally high heart rate.

Mile’s mom, Jessica Kitchen, took her to the hospital, where doctors diagnosed her with appendicitis. During the procedure, they discovered a neuroendocrine in her appendix, which is rarely seen in children.

The doctors then learned that the cancer had already spread to other parts of Mile’s body. She had surgery at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital to remove the remaining cancer.

“If she didn’t have that watch, it could have been so much worse,” Kitchen told Hour Detroit.

In July, the Apple Watch helped doctors discover a rare tumor in a woman’s heart after she received multiple warnings that her heart was in atrial fibrillation.

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YouTube has begun informing customers that they will see a price hike on YouTube Premium family subscriptions starting November 21. The subscription will jump from $17.99 to $22.99.

However, it seems that those who subscribe through the App Store will be hit even harder. Instead of paying $22.99 per month, they’ll pay $29.99 per month.

For many years, YouTube has been charging Apple customers paying with in-app purchases extra for YouTube Premium. The company is now explicitly saying that that it charges more to offset the 30% or 15% cut Apple takes from in-app purchases.

This may be the first time that the company is clear in the subscription dialog that the service is cheaper on the website itself, though.

YouTube was testing a program where it limited 4K video to Premium subscribers. That test has been stopped without any clarity from the service what its future intentions are regarding 4K video.