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News
iPhone SE sales strong
The latest survey numbers from CIRP show that Apple’s iPhone SE is proving to be the preferred entry level device fro many consumers
The numbers for the April to June quarter indicate that the iPhone SE, at US $399, is taking over for devices like the 3 year old iPhone 8 and the iPhone XR.
The iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max still are the majority of sales at 65 percent.
But the iPhone SE accounted for 19 percent of iPhone sales in the quarter
So the good news is the iPhone SE is not stealing premium sales but seems to be filling in the gap for consumer who are more price conscious and looking to upgrade from older devices.
New data from Counterpoint Research shows that Apple’s sell through over all for the quarter is down 23 percent year over year, likely a result of the pandemic.
Their report did also note that the iPhone SE is a “bright spot”
Selling well and enticing Android users with over 26% of buyers coming from Android
Are new iMacs coming
While a lot of buzz is focused on Apple new Apple Silicon based Macs coming later this year, there are still some Intel based Mac updates that are expected.
Apple leaker “L0vetodream” says those products are on the way.
It was believed that Apple may have had the hardware pretty much ready to go at their WWDC event, but held off.
There have also been other indications and signs of an impending update
An unannounced iMac with a 10-core Intel i9 CPU and Radeon Pro 5300 GPU showed up on Geekbench recently
iMacs in the supply chain have been constrained for months
There haven’t been any real specifics, but it’s believed that the iMac line is likely to get refresh with some new models and a reduced bezel design.
Though even this rumor is in contention with some believing the Intel update will just be that. A hardware refresh with Apple saving a redesign for the Apple Silicon based iMacs likely coming next year.
Other possible updates include a move to all SSDs and the addition of the T2 chip
Reports from DigiTimes that Apple has sealed deals with super-thin rigid PCB manufacturing partner Tripod Technology
The idea is Apple would use the boards for upcoming mini LED-backlit iPads and MacBooks
According to Ming Chi Kuo Apple is working on at least six upcoming miniLED based designs
a 12.9-inch iPad Pro, a 27-inch iMac Pro, a 14.1-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro, a 10.2-inch iPad and a 7.9-inch iPad mini.
Future Macs may also have FaceID
9to5Mac noted references in the latest macOS Big Sur betas that list “PearlCamera"
That is an internal Apple codename for the TrueDepth camera and Face ID
They also have seen references to "FaceDetect" and "BioCapture"
Apple greening their supply chain
Apple has been driving to be a leader in their environmental operations for years.
Two years ago they announced that Apple’s own operations had become carbon neutral
Now they’ve announced an initiative to take that goal to their supply chain as well
Apple made the announcement on their website with a 10 year plan to become carbon neutral across their entire business, manufacturing supply chain, and product life cycle by 2030
The main goals are:
Low carbon product design
Expanding energy efficiency
Renewable energy
Process and material innovations
Carbon removal
Apple plans to reduce emissions by 75 percent by 2030
The remaining 25 percent will be achieved by developing innovative carbon removal solutions
Apple is also making their roadmap available for other companies looking to reduce their impact on climate change.
The ultimate goal is that every Apple device sold has a net zero climate impact by 2030
“Periscope” lenses and future iPhones
Ming Chi Kuo released an investor note this week detailing some potential changes ups to Apple supply chain for lenses in future iPhones.
While interesting, Apple changes their supply chain all the time and for you and me it doesn’t matter too much who makes which lens.
But also in the note was a comment that one supplier, Semco, would be providing periscope telephoto lenses to Apple for the 2022 iPhone.
The technology would allow Apple to deliver a much higher level of optical zoom in future iPhone designs
Possibly up to 10x
Apple describes periscope lenses as “folded”. basically the external optics don’t change. The lenses make use of internal space to provide additional mirrors and lenses to provide focus and zooming.
Kuo also mentioned voice coil motor technology that would also ship in the 2020 iPhone.
2020 iPhone release delayed
Coming from Mac Otakara.
Apple's LTE iPhone 12 models will be released in October, while 5G models will follow in November.
They also claim Apple could delay the announcement to October
What’s iffy about this report is that Ming Chi Kuo has said all of these years iPhone 12 line up would feature 5G
He also said about a month ago that Apple still appeared to be on track for a September launch
It’s still expected that Apple could announce the devices in September like they normally do and then have a delayed shipment date.
We are seeing more pictures of “braided” USB-C to Lightning cables
This would be the first to ship with an iOS device, but Apple has had braided cables before:
The iMac Pro had a braided Thunderbolt Pro cable and black braided Lightning cable
The HomePod has a braided power cable
Apple picks up ‘Shining Girls'
They put together a straight to series order for "Shining Girls" which is based on a 2013 novel by the same name
Described as a metaphysical thriller the show will star Elisabeth Moss who you may know from shows like “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Mad Men”.
The story is about Kirby Mizrachi, a Chicago reporter who survives an attempted murder by a time-traveling Depression-era serial killer and begins to hunt him.
Moss will also co-executive produce the show along with Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way production company.
Apple also recently acquired the rights to a new Werner Herzog documentary called, “Fireball"
The film is another collaboration between Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer who also did "Encounters at the End of the World" and "Into the Inferno" together.
“"Fireball" takes viewers on an extraordinary journey to discover how shooting stars, meteorites and deep impacts have focused the human imagination on other realms and worlds, and on our past and our future.”
No date has been given for “Fireball”’s release
More reports that Apple is stepping up efforts to acquire “blockbuster” films after the premier of “Greyhound”
The report claims Apple is on the lookout for "more tentpole-like feature films." and could make plans for releasing at least a dozen new movies a year on Apple TV+
Find My App 3rd Party support questions
Details came out in the Washington Post leaked by an unknown developer who broke NDA
Apple customers who use Find My to locate a device will be barred from using other competing services simultaneously
And Apple spokesman said, “the software could be useful to smaller companies that don’t have the resources to build a location-finding service on their own”
Frankly I applaud this. The 3rd party apps often suck and I’d rather have it all in a single app.
They gave HomeKit as a contrasting example, but I think that’s a bad user experience.
Also in this case it’s an advantage for user privacy.
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Rene Ritchie did a [great video](https://youtu.be/wgEKDGNjqsk) on his YouTube channel about how Apple is NOT moving Macs to ARM
It’s a great video and it points out a subtle, but important distinction with how ARM and ARM licensing works.
ARM offers licensing for it’s chip designs and for it’s instruction set.
Apple is now using the latter
In the past they did license designs, but starting with the custom Apple Designed A6 CPU
This is also likely why we’re hearing that, while SoftBank is looking to sell ARM, Apple isn’t interested.
Nvidia reportedly is.
Apple is also taking on a bunch of other processor tech that is NOT ARM in their chips
Including their own GPU designs
Their own Neural Engine
Image Signal Processor
Secure Enclave
Advanced power management
Pro video encoders and decoders
They can also customize the silicon to match the needs of the hardware, software, and user interface teams needs
A custom Apple Mac Chip, doesn’t have to match all the features of a custom iPad chip, or iPhone chip.
They can tweak the design for the platform.
The features are what Apple really delivers and they get to tweak the chipsets to drive their feature sets.
No other company can do this.
About ‘optimize’ storage
I know this has been a topic we’ve covered a few times, but there still seems to be a lot of confusion about the term as it relates to iCloud storage.
Specifically in iCloud Photo Library and iCloud Drive
“Optimize” in the Apple iCloud world still means “save space”, but it’s how it does it that might be confusing.
It’s also something that Apple heavily “encourages” users to do, but they might not always understand the potential down side.
Access Manage Storage options:
Apple Menu > About this Mac.
Click on Storage. Click on Manage…
Under Recommendations… you get:
Store in iCloud
Desktop & Documents
Photos
Optimize Storage (for TV, not iCloud)
Also Empty Trash Immediately and Reduce Clutter
Turning on the Desktop & Documents and Photos means that copies of ALL of that date will by sync’d to your iCloud storage.
Assuming you have enough space or you buy enough
Now if you click on iCloud Drive
There is another “Optimize” button
Same if you click on Photos
These “optimize” options are a bit different
Enable them and it means that if your local drive starts to run out of storage space you’re giving the OS permission to delete local copies of older documents and photos that are sync’d into iCloud from your local Mac.
This means that any other local backups or non-iCloud cloud based backups, will no longer have access to those files and cannot back them up.
Another annoying issue is that once you turn on “optimize” you can’t turn it off from the same place. You need to go to the individual app (Photos, System Preferences > iCloud) to turn off the feature
One other question that came up from Justin was about the “manage storage” feature:
Apple Menu > About this Mac.
Click on Storage. Click on Manage…
If you look in the sidebar you’ll see sections for “Documents” and “iCloud Drive”
But… the “Documents” size is likely much larger than the “iCloud Drive” even if you have your Documents folder syncing to iCloud drive.
How can that be?
In this view “Documents” is not just the contents of your Documents folder. It is ALL the documents stored on your hard drive.
Some more on iCloud Drive
John ran into a rather frightening situation when he needed to sign-out of iCloud because he was having some issues
He uses iCloud Drive and Documents & Desktop in iCloud
When he signed out he got the pop-up about “Do you want to keep a copy of iCloud Data on this Mac”
Checkboxes for iCloud Drive and Contacts
He choose “Keep a Copy”, but it took forever and seemed to be stuck in an endless loop.
He hard restarted his Mac and when it rebooted it seemed like some of the files were missing.
He ultimately found them in iCloud Drive
I suspect it never finished copying them all locally and when it finally sync back from iCloud they were there.
He asked for a run down on how iCloud Drive works
The general idea is that it “syncs” the data from your Mac to iCloud and to your other devices and Macs
As we learned earlier this can be different depending on your “optimize” settings, but that’s the general idea.
In theory, if you are NOT “optimized”, there should be a copy in the iCloud Drive folder on your Mac and a copy in iCloud on Apple’s servers
On iOS devices you are more likely to be “optimized” so when you need a file it will sync it “on demand” and store it locally until your device needs more storage (and you are not needing that file).
When you turn off iCloud Drive, you’re asked if you want to keep those files locally
Choose “yes” and it should “sync” before disabling iCloud Drive to ensure your local copies are all up to date.
Choose “no” and any local copies not already sync’d will then stay in iCloud, but not be available locally on your Mac.
One special set of folders to be aware of are the “Documents & Desktop” folders.
Normally these live in your Home Folder.
If you choose to move them to iCloud they are moved to the iCloud Drive folder.
When you turn it back off. Apple will create new “Empty” Documents and Desktop folders in your home folder.
It will then move your existing Documents and Desktop folders (and their contents) to an iCloud Drive (Archive) folder in your Home folder and you’ll need to manually move those files and folder back to the new Document and Desktop folders
