0:39 Apple’s Massive Christmas Quarter
2:18 App Tracking Transparency will start with iOS 14.5
3:03 The BIG Upgrade to my setup – Highly recommended.
5:01 iCave Answers – Apple Watch Series 7
8:26 Notification Squad
Apple’s Massive Christmas Quarter
Of course the biggest story of today is yesterday’s HUGE earnings call from Apple with every category in double digit growth, and overall revenues climbing from $91 Billion up to 111.4 Billion dollars. That is a BIG jump!
Apple spoke about how there are now 1.6 Billion active apple devices around the world in use, with 1 billion of those being iPhones. Thats 1 in 6 people on EARTH potentially having an iPhone (and yes, I know a few people have more than one in use, but that isn’t the norm).
Around half of Mac and iPad purchases came from people new to the platform, not upgrades, which means that the user bases are growing substantially. Apple Watch purchases were 75% new users, not upgrades. Now, what was that Italy was suing Apple for? Planned obsolescence? Please Italy, wind your neck in.
All these things show that people aren’t finding their older devices holding them back, which is exactly what Apple wants. If you think they’re breaking your old stuff so you buy something new, you’re completely missing their actual intent, which is to just get more working devices in people’s hands so that they can use Apple’s services, which is where a growing segment of their revenues will come from going forward.
Of course, they’ll continue to make better products each time they refresh, Look at Apple Silicon. Each time macOS gets an update, there are likely to be more features exclusive to Apple Silicon, simply because Intel Macs simply aren’t capable of running them. Things like the ability to natively run iOS and iPad apps, but expect these features to be more prominent going forward as the software and hardware becomes more and more integrated.
App Tracking Transparency will start with iOS 14.5
Apple’s terrorising of Facebook’s business model will go into full swing with iOS 14.5 – apparently starting with the the first Beta version which is expected imminently. Contrary to what Facebook’s attack ads would have you believe, this won’t destroy personalised adverts as we know them, but simply mean that they have to request your permission to track what you do on your iPhone or iPad OUTSIDE of their app. You’ll still get adverts served to you based on what you do, like and follow on Facebook itself, and if you use Facebook in a browser, the protections won’t be effective.
So Mark, you don’t need to panic – you can keep most of your houses. Probably.
The BIG Upgrade to my setup – Highly recommended.
Before I got my M1 Mac mini I was very much a multi display person. My 2013 iMac was happily running along with two extra 1080p panels, so when I switched to a system that can only take 2 displays, I knew I’d have to change things up a bit.
So for the first month, I was using a 21” HP 1080p display as my primary, with a 40” HD TV on the wall above, also at 1080p. But moving away from the 2.5k iMac display, it did feel cramped. Well cramped no more, as my 40” 4k JVC smart TV arrived yesterday and is now loudly sitting as my main display. And it is GLORIOUS.
I’m running it at native 3840 by 2160, which actually keeps everything almost exactly the size it was on the 21” panel -but with 4x the pixels to play with. It also supports HDR 10, and has 4k Netflix and the rest built in so I can sit back and veg out to a movie when I feel like it too.
Now, there are a couple of downsides compared to an actual monitor – no height and tilt adjustments of course, though I could wall mount it too, but it just happened to work out that it sits at exactly the right height to match the old panel on the wall.
There’s also some slight fringing, most noticeable on the highlights that edge the windows in dark mode on MacOS, but these really don’t concern me at all. There’s been a couple of websites that have a particular grey that seems to upset the panel and flickers – but this might be something I can adjust for in the TV’s settings. The only other thing is I’ve not found a way just yet to wake the TV automatically with the Mac waking up, so I do have to use the remote to bring it back to life. A small price to pay for a £250 4k 40” monitor that will make me way more productive.
iCave Answers
Souvik Mukherjee
#icaveanswers, What new features do we expect to get from Apple watch series 7? And will there be a new SE or an updated SE with S6 chipset?
Notification Squad
Max Goodman
Haroon Wahidi
Maynell Wackwitz
Andrew
TheNicos1234
Adam Stocker
Frank Petrie
S SotiriosMaximos