Category Archives: Apple

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iPhone 4S Thoughts

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iPhone 4S

Apple today announced the iPhone 4S. It’s pretty much what I expected to see, however many seem to view it as a disappointment due to anticipation of a mythical “iPhone 5″. I’m sure an iPhone 5 is in development, but I don’t really understand why people expected to see it today. Maybe 1% of Apple rumors, likely much less are actually true. Generally they are an attempt by a blog to generate buzz and publicity. Pay little attention to them. Launching the new phone later isn’t indicative of a “major upgrade”, especially given what we knew:

  • iOS 5 is taking a while – iOS 5 wasn’t developed in complete secrecy. 100k developers have been seeded developer builds (number comes from the Apple presentation). It hasn’t been GM ready. It’s been a work in progress. It didn’t seem to be waiting for hardware.
  • Apple was launching in parallel with iCloud – Apple established it was going to roll out an OS upgrade and iCloud together. Obviously any new hardware was not coming before that. iCloud was just getting tested. Again, it didn’t seem to be waiting for hardware.
  • Supply Chain – Slightly weaker, but thanks to the quake in Japan, there’s been a some more difficulty in obtaining materials and parts for many electronics. Moving the iPhone launch out makes sense when you’re shipping in such volume and already have a popular tablet shipping.

Some Analysis

In my opinion the iPhone 4S met my expectations.

Regarding the iPhone 4S being a “world phone”, this was obvious. The “Verizon iPhone” was a hack. The iPhone 4 for Verizon used a Qualcomm MDM6600 as discovered by iFixit. That chip supports CDMA/EVDO and GSM/UMTS. It however didn’t ship with a SIM slot effectively preventing on the hardware level support for GSM/UMTS. Apparently the antenna was tweaked too making is sub-optimal for GSM/UMTS. Unifying the hardware means Apple can ship just one device and simplify it’s supply/distribution chain. Remember, the majority of Apple sales will still be to GSM/UMTS networks. Only the US is a major CDMA/EVDO market as it’s hard for an iPhone to compete in Japan the other major market.

Not supporting LTE is also obvious. LTE deployment is just starting. LTE chipsets today still use more power. I don’t think anyone is using LTE 100% yet, only data meaning in usage these chips will be doing both LTE and a legacy technology for voice. Given such a small percentage of users would ever even see LTE in the 2 years they have their phone, opting for improved battery life (another new feature) was the ideal choice. I suspect next revision there’s a 75% chance we’ll see LTE. It will happen when power consumption gets down to where Apple wants it. It’s just a matter of time.

The choice of an A5 dual core processor was a giveaway from the iPad. What we still don’t know is if it’s the same speed or underclocked for the iPhone. That will be discovered soon enough.

Camera upgrade is also obvious as another year has went by and cameras have improved. Going to 8MP and 1080P was a given. The iPhone 4′s camera is likely already 1080P capable at least at the sensor level (assumed to be a OmniVision OV5642). However the iPhone 4 likely wasn’t fast enough to handle that data rate hence it was limited to 720P. That’s also why you don’t see RAW support. The sensor itself converts to JPEG.

I’m inclined to think Siri could run on the iPhone 4, though slightly slower if Apple really wanted. That’s pure conjecture however.

Fragmented Ecosystem

It’s worth noting that Apple is now shipping the iPhone 4S as their flagship phone, the iPhone 4, and the iPhone 3GS as their entry level phone. This is an unprecedented (for Apple) 3 revisions in production. This makes me believe the iPhone 3GS will at least get security patches for the next 2, most likely 3 years. I do suspect it will be cut off from future major OS releases before that time, or get a reduced feature set. For Apple this is unique. I don’t think any phone vendor is doing something like this right now. On the Android front phones upgrades are notoriously finicky thanks to different vendors.

It’s also worth nothing that despite the iPhone 4S being a much faster device, it’s unlikely many apps will take advantage of it anywhere in the near future. Most users for quite a while will be on the iPhone 4 and 3GS. Designing for iPhone 4S and iPad 2 performance means you’re cutting off most of your users. With a 2 year upgrade cycle and these phones still being sold… well you get the idea. That’s not to say you won’t get anything from the added speed. Just don’t expect everything to be designed to take advantage of it very quickly. The target platform is still the 3GS if you want the full iOS audience.

iPhone 5

I expect we’ll see an iPhone 5, sometime next year. Quite possibly summer. I wouldn’t even rule out doing so a little earlier if market conditions warrant Apple pulling out the big guns sooner. Updated form factor, LTE, NFC chip, more performance tweaks all likely candidates. I could see Apple going for a software “home” button to make the screen larger without having to make the device so much larger.

Worth an Upgrade?

If you haven an iPhone 4, I think waiting for iPhone 5 is just fine. I don’t think this device is amazingly better than the iPhone 4. That’s why they didn’t bump the version to 5. For older iPhone’s, this upgrade is just another step further away. The iPhone 4 is still a very solid phone. See above for my analysis on a more fragmented ecosystem.

TL;DR

iPhone 4S is nice, pretty much what people should have expected and will likely hold things over until next year when the iPhone 5 ships. Don’t expect apps to take advantage of this speed because most iOS users are running slower hardware and will for some time. If you have an iPhone 4, likely not much to persuade you to upgrade early.

Steve Jobs Steps Down As CEO

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As released by Apple:

To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

Steve

A few things strike me here:

First of all, the letter is addressed “Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community” (emphasis mine), which as far as I know is unprecedented by Steve Jobs and really by Apple. Apple has never really acknowledged the community around it. In past “letters” (for example Thoughts on Flash), Steve Jobs just starts. It’s like an actor only acknowledges his audience when he comes out to take a bow to ensure they don’t remove the fourth wall.

Second, I sadly suspect this position of “Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee” is largely symbolic. From what’s known about Steve Jobs is he almost lived for this job. Stepping down is a major concession for someone so obsessive about a vision and passionate about achieving it with perfection. That said, he seemed pretty strong a few weeks ago at the Cupertino City Council, so I don’t mean to suggest he’s on his deathbed. Just unlikely to regain enough health to keep a CEO schedule. Several changes in 10.7 Lion like the odd design for Calendar and Address Book make me think he didn’t have much say in it’s design either.

Third, this succession plan is hardly shocking. Tim Cook was groomed for this a quite some time. I suspect this was known by a select few for a little while now. Jonathan Ive was long suggested as his replacement, but that seemed unlikely given he already is in charge of industrial design, and the other half of the role (the business side) he has no experience in. He’s also notably reclusive and more subtle in presentations in contrast to Steve’s “reality distortion field” persona on stage. By elevating Cook and leaving Jonathan Ive to focus on design Apple gets the best of both worlds.

Lastly, I think Colin Barrett’s tweet put my personal perspective on this best:

I was 11 when Steve came back, and I’m 25 now. Can’t overstate the enormous impact Steve and Apple had on me growing up. Good luck, dude.

- @cbarrett

Indeed. Good luck Steve Jobs.

On Apple’s Location Tracking

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The controversy over Apple’s “Location Tracking” is quite interesting. It’s worth making clear that the nodes stored in the database are approximations of cell phone towers and WiFi hotspots you’re likely to encounter rather than your location(s) at any given point in time. It’s a way to “prime the well” when doing a GPS lookup to improve performance.

Apple notably failed in a few key ways which should serve as a lesson to others:

  1. Always disclose what you’re doing. – Never just assume what you’re doing with someone’s information is cool. Apple could have mitigated a lot of this had they disclosed what the phone was actually doing from day 1. Never transmit anonymous or personal information without letting the user know first.
  2. Never store more than you need – I can’t believe how many companies mess this up. Storing user information is a liability. A good business limits it’s liabilities to only what’s necessary to conduct business. Storing so much data, and not expunging was a very bad move and amplified the situation. On top of not letting users know what was going on, there was no way to purge information. This just made things much worse. Apple went as far as backing up what should be an expendable cache.
  3. Always be paranoid with information – Apple states “The local cache is protected with iOS security features, but it is not encrypted. Beginning with the next major release of iOS, the operating system will encrypt any local cache of the hotspot and cell tower location information.” in the response to Edward J. Markey. This should have been encrypted since day 1. Various tools existed for a few years that could read this data in the surveillance community. Apple undoubtedly knew people were using this data sometimes for illicit purposes. No company has gotten in trouble for being to secure with customer information with anyone other than the NSA or FBI.

It’s worth noting that their software update in response to this controversy is actually pretty good and pretty thorough. I’m surprised they couldn’t quickly shim some encryption around it. The iOS is loaded with enough DRM and crypto.

On another note, I fully expect some court cases to be reopened now that “cell phone records” are not quite as accurate as they were falsely billed to be. Also companies who marketed software are capable of showing a users location history may be liable as this wasn’t accurately vetted. If they did good testing they would have seen the extent of it’s “tracking”. It seems inevitable.

Lastly, I wonder how much battery life, and how much bandwidth this was utilizing. Some customers are on metered WiFi (especially some hotspots). To geo-tag one must turn on GPS, meaning battery life was being drained behind the scenes.

Apple’s full response can be found on Congressman Ed Markey’s website (copied here for perpetuity).

On Chrome Dropping H.264

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The Chrome team announced they are dropping support for H.264.

WebM Support

WebM support will be growing quickly as Firefox 4 rolls out (Firefox upgrade adoption is legendary). Chrome commands sizable market share and is pushing the Chrome OS platform. Opera is also supporting WebM.

Apple and Microsoft could join the party and bundle WebM support along with the other codecs they support at any time, though they are licensors for H.264 and wouldn’t benefit from WebM market penetration. Microsoft’s implementation does allow for VP8 support if a codec is installed. I’m not aware of anything for Safari and am rather certain nothing can be done for the iPhone without Apple intervening.

On the hardware side AMD, ARM, Nvidia are backing WebM. Broadcom announced support, as did Qualicomm and TI. These are major vendors for mobile chips. Intel is working on stuff too.

H.264 Trouble

H.264 is problematic and bad for the web for many reasons I’ve mentioned here before as well as great posts by roc and shaver. I’ll leave it at that rather than rehash.

There was buzz a while back about H.264 being “free” (quotes intentional), but it’s not really “free” if you read the fine print. As Peter Csathy of Sorenson Media notes:

But, you say, MPEG LA recently announced that it will no longer charge royalties for the use of H.264. Yes, it’s true – MPEG LA recently bowed to mounting pressure from, and press surrounding, WebM and announced something that kind of sounds that way. But, I caution you to read the not-too-fine print. H.264 is royalty-free only in one limited case – for Internet video that is delivered free to end users. Read again: for (1) Internet delivery that is (2) delivered free to end users. In the words of MPEG LA’s own press release, “Products and services other than [those] continue to be royalty-bearing.”

That’s hardly “free”. That’s just one potential use case that’s now royalty exempt. The reason they are doing that is presumably if they can get H.264 adoption high enough, all the other cases will be paying and therefore subsidizing this one case.

WebM is licensed a little different: Patent wise, it’s irrevocably royalty free. License is about as liberal as you can get.

There’s no proprietary html, css, or images (GIF was, now it’s dead) used across the web. Why should video be any different? The key to success and growth has always been an open platform that’s low cost and encourages innovation.

Implementing Today

For anyone who suggests that this further fragments the market, that’s not really true. Adobe Flash actually creates an excellent shim to help migrate away from Flash to <video/>. Allow me to explain:

Adobe will soon be supporting WebM through Flash. Adobe already support H.264 in Flash. For legacy browsers and those who won’t support WebM, you have the option of delivering a Flash experience just like most websites do today. There are websites doing this today via Flash and H.264. For modern browsers you can just use <video/>. Once your non-WebM market share drops low enough, you can get rid of the Flash experience. Soon enough you’ll be able to push WebM to your Flash users. The benefit of switching your Flash experience to WebM as a middle step would be one encoding for both delivery mechanisms vs. using H.264 and WebM in parallel. Of course if you’re supporting mobile you likely need H.264 for a bit longer but likely use a smaller resolution and different profile for mobile consumption.

No matter what there will be two delivery mechanisms for those looking to push video using HTML5 to users today. The only thing that changes is the lean towards standardizing on the actively developed WebM codec vs. H.264.

All new technology has speed bumps, that’s the cost of being on the bleeding edge. However this is a positive turn as things are now starting to line up. The most awesome thing is that the codec, HTML5 specs, and some of the most popular browsers in the world are open and inviting feedback and contributions to improve things.

Floating Stairs

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An interesting tidbit about the NeXT corporate offices:

The architectural centerpiece was a “floating” staircase with no visible supports

I’d be curious to know if this had any influence on the glass staircases used in the modern-day Apple stores such as the 5th Ave store in New York. Perhaps Mr. Jobs was fond of those stairs when he was at NeXT.

Apple’s College Market Share

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From iPodNN:

Only a little over 20 percent of 212 polled students say they bought a new computer in the last three months, as compared to over 30 percent in 2009, 40 percent in 2008 and nearly 70 percent in 2007. Mac share has meanwhile risen to 38 percent, from 32 percent in 2009, 29 percent in 2008 and 14 percent in 2007. Apple is now tied with Dell, and doing better than HP’s 13 percent and Toshiba’s 5 percent.

There’s a perfectly logical explanation for declining trend in new computer purchases by students and it’s not the recession: they already have computers. The days of the one family computer until kids go off to college are mostly gone in the middle class who dominate college in the United States these days. Why buy a new computer outside of your normal upgrade cycle just because your going to a new school? Given a typical 4 year lifespan of a computer I suspect it will stabilize around 20-25%, most of whom bought new computers replacing current computers.

As for Apple’s growth: Largely chic factor. Outside of some computer science folks who actually understand the UNIX architecture under it, I’d venture most students use nothing but a web browser, iTunes and maybe Microsoft Office and couldn’t give a solid reason why they choose what they choose. The handful who do will say “it’s more secure” without anything coherent reasoning to back that up. The computer science folks started the migration several years ago when Mac’s started to turn up in lots of high-tech offices. AutoCAD coming back to Mac also means that engineering students will soon be able to use Mac’s as well.

MacBook Pro Sleeps When Lid Closes

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The MacBook Pro still has a quirk that has always bothered me. It’s not a hardware issue, it’s a software issue. Power users with laptops know about “closed clamshell” or “closed display” mode. That’s when you use a laptop with a desktop keyboard and mouse and the laptop remains closed. I don’t think any OS I’ve used totally gets this totally right, they all have their quirks. The MacBook Pro just has this one quirk that gets to me.

The problem with the MacBook Pro is when you have the computer open and on and you connect another display you’re given the option to mirror or use the display as a second display. If you mirror and close the laptop it goes to sleep. That’s completely illogical. There seems to be no way to disable going to sleep in this situation that I can find. I can’t imagine why anyone would want another behavior when closing a laptop while having a display and input device connected. When no display is connected and the laptop is closed, it should obviously sleep.

Searching on Google returns numerous forum threads with people who also have this gripe. Even a check box in the Energy Saver pref panel to facilitate this would do nicely.

For the record Windows is no saint either. It’s handling of monitor resolutions, especially if your desktop display is a different resolution is abhorrent. It can result in anything from reshuffling icons to putting windows out of the display area. I’ve never even bothered with such functionality in Linux, at least not yet so I can’t speak to its competency in this area.

Taking Good Photos

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The OkCupid blog has a pretty cool series of posts analyzing all sorts of data that they collect in anonymous ways. This time around they analyzed photos taken and tried to figure out trends behind what makes people attractive. Some of the more interesting things:

  • Panasonic cameras are better than Nikon,
  • Interchangable lens cameras (like digital SLRs) are better than basic point & shoot, which are better than camera phones.
  • iPhone users have more sex,
  • Flash makes you look older (obvious, harsh lighting is nobody’s friend).
  • Shallow depth of field is a good thing,
  • Late night, late afternoon photos are better.

In conclusion they say:

It’s actually not that hard. Use a decent camera. Go easy on the flash. Own the foreground. Take your picture in the afternoon. Then visit the nearest Apple store. Done.

Very interesting stuff. It’s a great example of what can be done with a large set of data. I’m guessing somewhere deep within Google and Facebook are a group of people doing even deeper analysis with a much larger set of data.

Mac Finally Gets H.264 Decoding In Flash

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Adobe today pushed an update that enabled H.264 hardware decoding in Flash 10.1. It only works on certain newer Mac’s and there are an assortment of caveats in which Flash will revert to software decoding according to a Flash Engineer.

I’ve only played with it for a few minutes on my Core i7 MacBook Pro, and things seem very speedy and my CPU didn’t see much of a spike. Hopefully enough videos will take advantage of hardware decoding that this will be a nice improvement.

I still believe WebM is the better future, but H.264 hardware decoding does make Flash less painful for the moment.