Apple’s Troubling Relationship With China - Initial Charge

This problem isn’t unique to Apple. Most, if not all, of the major companies whose products and services we interact with each day are being influenced by China. And I expect that influence is growing with each day that passes. If you’re in favor of freedom, liberty, and individual rights, you should be concerned about this.

It’s refreshing to see that Apple isn’t the only one where its products are made and a lot of them are sold to. What can we do instead of just bashing on Apple?

There is apparently no money to be done from having apps on Android; all money being on the iPhone side. So developers are asking for their share of revenues from Apple, by reducing their commission, urging Apple to open up the App Store, weakening the security model along the way, making the user experience worse, making iOS experience more like… Android… we have a full circle.

Daring Fireball: The 2021 M1 iPad Pros:

The elephant in the room is iPadOS. It’s just not good enough. In the same way that Intel’s chips were holding back Macs, iPadOS has been holding back iPad Pros. With Intel chips, the hardware was holding back the Mac platform. With iPads, it’s the software holding the platform back. This hardware is indisputably amazing, and iPadOS is fine for casual use. But it still feels like I’m trying to do fine detail work while wearing oven mitts for my day-to-day work.

I like Gruber’s introduction in his review of the M1 iPad Pro. But his review echos other reviews. Nearly all M1 iPad Pro reviews that I have read note the same issue: iPadOS lacks maturity to sustain iPad Pro aspirations. Can’t wait for Apple’s WWDC in three weeks.

According to circulating rumours, the Apple Series 7 will go through a small redesign. The Series 4 introduced a bigger screen but the overall shape stayed the same. This time, a more boxy look is expected. I’m not sure that I like what I’m seeing here on this mock-up. To me, the Apple Watch would loses some of its iconic traits. If this boxy design allows for more internal space, hence probably more sensors or new features, better battery life, so be it.

I wonder when Apple will fix the issue of tiny release notes, on the iPhone. I can’t remember since when the issue started, but it’s been a very long time. It’s all the details, Apple, all the details.

To support users with limited mobility, Apple is introducing a revolutionary new accessibility feature for Apple Watch. AssistiveTouch for watchOS allows users with upper body limb differences to enjoy the benefits of Apple Watch without ever having to touch the display or controls.

Source: Apple previews powerful software updates designed for people with disabilities - Apple

The demo on Apple’s Newsroom website is really impressive. Surprisingly, it looks like the feature will work on recent Apple Watch generations (Series 4 and up).

One question: why announce these initiatives now? We’re 17 days away from WWDC. Looks like WWDC will have more room to announce even more exciting stuff. 😀

Another question: if you look at the following screenshot taken from today’s announcement, we can see that table cells are narrower than what we have on iOS 14. Is this a first glimpse of what is coming in iOS 15? I certainly hope so because it looks much better, friendlier. It reminds me of the pre-iOS 7 era.

First:

Apple is very efficient at pursuing their business model, which is based on selling overpriced, obsolete hardware to customers locked in their ecosystem," Durov wrote. “Every time I have to use an iPhone to test our iOS app I feel like I’m thrown back into the Middle Ages. The iPhone’s 60Hz displays can’t compete with the 120Hz displays of modern Android phones that support much smoother animations.

And:

Durov added that the worst part about Apple’s technology is not “clunkier devices or outdated hardware,” but that users who have an iPhone are a “digital slave of Apple.”

”You are only allowed to use apps that Apple lets you install via their App Store, and you can only use Apple’s iCloud to natively back up your data,” he said.

“It’s no wonder that Apple’s totalitarian approach is so appreciated by the Communist Party of China, which – thanks to Apple – now has complete control over the apps and data of all of its citizens who rely on iPhones.”

Source: Telegram founder says iPhone users are digital slaves | AppleInsider.

Mr. Durov can go to hell. Typical talk from an Android guy. Nobody his forcing him to develop for the iPhone. Nobody. He is a digital slave of Apple himself. I can’t stand this attitude and I’m voting with my digital means: closing my Telegram account.

For the new MacBook Pros, Apple is planning two different chips, codenamed Jade C-Chop and Jade C-Die: both include eight high-performance cores and two energy-efficient cores for a total of 10, but will be offered in either 16 or 32 graphics core variations.

Source: Apple (AAPL) Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps With Faster Chips - Bloomberg(https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-18/apple-readies-macbook-pro-macbook-air-revamps-with-faster-chips)

The “one chip SKU to rule them all” won’t last forever it seems. Apple will take advantage of its ability to decide what goes in its chips to help differentiate each models within the same product line. We already witness this with the 7-core vs 8-core variant of the M1 chip in the 2021 iMac, but this variability will increase over time. My hope is that Apple doesn’t try to hard to be greedy with this strategy and keep the product’s differentiation simple to grasp.

The keyboard flaked out on me once. I wanted to spend time testing the Touch ID button, so I moved an application to the Trash, which requires authentication. That worked. Then I tried to move the app back to the Applications folder, and … Touch ID just didn’t work. After 30 seconds of trying, I realized the whole keyboard just wasn’t working. I turned the keyboard off and on again, and boom, everything has been normal since — including Touch ID recognizing my finger very quickly.

Source: Daring Fireball: The 24-Inch M1 iMac(https://daringfireball.net/2021/05/the_24_inch_m1_imac)

Ah, ah, another moment of Apple’s Bluetooth device not working as expected. Since I got my 2017 21.5” iMac, I’ve experienced unstable Bluetooth connectivity with Apple’s mouse and keyboard. I don’t know when it started, if it’s related to a certain release of macOS, but it is happening all the time. The worst part is the mouse being jerky while moving on the screen. Bluetooth’s instabilities also impact my AirPods usage with the Mac. My AirPods simply drops from receiving the Mac audio while in Zoom meetings. It is infuriating. Eventually, I need to reboot the Mac to reset the Bluetooth stack.

When I got the M1 Mac mini, I thought Bluetooth connectivity issues would be a thing of the past. I couldn’t be more wrong. It was worst. The mouse and the keyboard are both having instabilities. They need to be turned off and on to temporarily fix the problem, but eventually the Mac needs a full reboot. Again, this is exasperating. It is a well documented issue which macOS 11.1 and 11.2 tried to fix but the problems still happen, albeit a bit less often.

There is something wrong with Apple’s Bluetooth implementation in general. Is it the driver, the firmware, the chip, a combination of these that is at fault? I don’t know but the fact that this shiny new iMac with the wireless keyboard with TouchID stops working like Gruber experienced is not a good sign.

I know a lot of people are concerned that the white bezel surrounding the display will be distracting. In practice, I found that it just disappears. If there can be such a thing as a muted white — a white that most certainly looks white, not light gray, but yet not white white, this white is that white. I didn’t need time to get used to it

Source: Daring Fireball: The 24-Inch M1 iMac(https://daringfireball.net/2021/05/the_24_inch_m1_imac)

There is a lot of talk regarding the white bezel of the new iMac. I still don’t know what to think about them. They make it look like if there was a white masking tape all around the display. But the thing is, considering the fact that Apple’s macOS overall user interface is so “white-ish” in general, this should help make the bezel kind of disappear in reality and just be an extension of the user interface.