Category Archives: Technology

Smart device overkill

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I own a smart TV. Among other things, I can use it to connect to Netflix, with no other device needed.

I also have a smart Blu-ray player. It too includes an option to select Netflix, as well as a small assortment of other “channels.”

Lastly, I have an Apple TV. As you probably already know, I can choose to watch Netflix from this device as well.

I have absolutely no need for three different ways to stream video from Netflix. One is definitely sufficient. [I’m not even going to go into the fact that I can also watch Netflix on my Mac, iPad and iPhone.]

Currently, the Apple TV is my preferred choice. This is because, of the three devices, it has the most feature-filled and easiest-to-navigate interface. I also stay exclusively with Apple TV because it is the device I use for channels, such as HBO GO, that are not available on the other two devices. Apple TV is also the only device that gives me access to my iTunes library and offers AirPlay. Case closed.

Essentially, if my television and Blu-ray player magically became dumb devices overnight, it would not matter to me one whit.

This is the dilemma that is facing the makers of these smart devices. The market is currently suffering from an overdose of overlapping devices. It’s especially tricky for television makers (see this Macworld article for related insight). No matter how smart televisions become, it won’t matter to their sales if people like me still prefer to use Apple TV instead. At the same time, Apple needs to worry that, if they don’t update the Apple TV sufficiently, people like me may yet abandon it in favor of improved and expanded features on televisions.

In the end, there may remain room for more than one choice to be retained and stay profitable. For example, those on a tighter budget might stick with their television alone (as this doesn’t require an additional purchase) while those with more disposable income go for an Apple TV or Roku.

Regardless, the current mishmosh is not sustainable. There will be winners and losers. The losers will gradually vanish from the landscape. I already anticipate this happening with smart Blu-ray players, maybe even with optical disc players altogether. Who will emerge as dominant in the battle between televisions vs. Apple TV/Roku devices remains to be seen. However, I expect that new hardware coming later this year will go a long way to determining which way the ball will bounce. Personally, I’m still hoping for a much improved Apple TV to win the day. But it’s far from certain that this will happen. Game on.

Apple’s hardware announcements: How odd

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My reaction to the new hardware announced at today’s Apple media event was hardly a typical one. “How odd” pretty much sums it up. How so?

• Apple introduces the iPad Air 2. The first thing Apple wants you to know about the new iPad Air 2 is that it’s slightly thinner than last year’s model. At some point, increased thinness starts having diminishing returns. For me, we are now at that point. Last year’s Air is already thin enough. So I didn’t get excited by the .05 inches Apple managed to cut off.

Beyond that, the new Air’s dimensions and design are exactly the same as the previous model. Oh, it comes in gold, if that’s of any interest to you.

The new Air has an improved camera (8MP instead of 5MP). However, given that I never take photos with my iPad (I use my iPhone instead), this matters not at all to me.

The new Air has an improved “fused” display, 802.11ac support, a faster processor, TouchID and Apple Pay support. The cellular version also comes with a new Apple SIM that allows you to switch carriers whenever you want without needing to change SIMs. These are welcome additions, and they save the iPad from the doldrums I’ve just described. The end result is that the new iPad emerges as a significant upgrade. It’s not a major overhaul, but you can’t expect Apple to do that every year.

Overall, I don’t see the new iPad as a big enough change to justify upgrading from a prior iPad Air for most people. If you have a pre-Air iPad, or no iPad at all, that’s another story. The upgrade is definitely attractive. Kudos to Apple here.

By itself, we’re not yet in truly “odd” territory, but we’re just getting started.

• Apple announces the not-so-new iPad mini 3. Last year, the only difference in specs between the iPad Air and the iPad mini was the display size. Every other feature was identical. This meant, in deciding which model you preferred, all you had to consider was how big an iPad you wanted. This parity was greeted with unanimous praise by iPad owners.

That’s why it’s odd that Apple abandoned this parity with the new mini. The iPad mini 3 adds TouchID, Apple Pay support and the gold color option. As far as I can tell, that’s it. In every other way, including thinness, it remains the same as last year’s model.

• Apple keeps older models in the lineup. Apple has a history of maintaining older iPhones and iPads when a new model comes out. This allows it to offer lower price point models for those who shop primarily based on cost.

So it wasn’t odd to see Apple do that again this time around. But Apple has gone beyond its usual limits. You can now get last year’s iPad Air, last year’s iPad mini and even the original iPad mini from 2 years ago. This means Apple’s current iPad line-up includes 2 new models and three older ones. And among the two newer ones, only one (the Air) is significantly new. Very odd.

• 16 GB iPads. The storage on the new iPads follows the pattern of the iPhone 6 models: an entry-level 16GB model which bumps up to 64GB for $100 more. I really don’t see why Apple continues to sell the 16GB model. Given that, until this year, Apple has always offered double the storage for each $100 extra, why not start with 32GB? My cynical guess is that Apple expects most people to go for the 64GB model, making more money for Apple than if they had gotten a cheaper 32GB device. Obviously, Apple has not confirmed my speculation. Still, I find it all a bit odd.

[Note: You can compare the specs of all the iPad models here.]

• The Mac mini gets an uninspired upgrade. Apple introduced an entirely new line-up of Mac minis today. While it’s great to see support for Thunderbolt 2 and upgraded processors, this is not the Mac mini I was hoping for.

The top-of-the-line specs for the Mac mini still do not attain the levels available in the iMac. There seems no reason Apple could not do this. But they don’t. The internals of the mini are more like a MacBook than a desktop Mac.

If you were hoping that the Mac mini might evolve into a scaled-down cheaper alternative to the Mac Pro, for people who prefer a “headless” Mac, forget it. As Phil Schiller indicated at the event, Apple views the mini as a very low end model, targeted to first time Mac buyers or to those who want a server for a modest home network.

• Apple introduces the iMac with Retina display. This is the big one I was waiting for: a 27-inch iMac with a Retina display — a 5K display with 4x as many pixels as you get with a 4K television. Whoa!

It starts at $2499. Expensive. But considering what you get with it, that’s quite reasonable. As Apple points out, a comparable stand-alone display could cost $3000 — and that doesn’t include a computer! I expect to buy one in the coming months.

What’s a bit odd here is not the new iMac itself but that it’s the only new or upgraded iMac in the lineup. Apple continues to sell the same 21.5- and 27-inch iMacs from last year. There is no 21.5- or 24-inch Retina display model.

This is similar to what Apple did when it first introduced the MacBook Pro with Retina display. If Apple follows the same pattern here, we can expect to see an “all-Retina” iMac lineup within a year or so. Still, taken together with the new iPad line-up, I can’t recall a time when Apple continued to sell so many versions of older hardware, after new models were announced. Odd.

• No stand-alone Retina 5K display is announced. Apple did not announce a stand-alone 5K Retina display. I have read speculation that this is because current Mac hardware could not drive the display through a Thunderbolt port; it needs the custom direct connection of the iMac. This may be so.

Regardless, this means that Mac Pro users, despite having Apple’s most expensive and powerful machine, cannot get an Apple display that matches what is available with the iMac. Odd. Perhaps it too will come next year.

• Yosemite and iOS 8.1 arrive. Nothing especially new here. Apple had already announced the specs back in June at WWDC and in last month’s iPhone event. Still, it’s good to see that the OS versions are finally live (or will be by next week) — as are Apple Pay and new versions of iWork apps.

Personally, I find the new OS versions much more exciting than the new hardware announced today. I especially look forward to using iCloud Drive and other Continuity features, now that both iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite are out.

• The long view. More than anything else, I’m struck with how, despite the new iPads and iMac announced today, Apple kept older models in its lineups. I’m not sure what this means from a “big picture” perspective, but it certainly suggests that Apple is less motivated to push an out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new marketing approach than it has in the past. When you consider that the remaining iMacs are basically 2012 models, Apple is sticking with “old” for an especially long time.

Perhaps we’ve gotten to a plateau where significant hardware advances don’t happen every year or two anymore. So major new hardware is not possible on an annual or even biannual basis. If so, Apple’s marketing has clearly adjusted to this new reality.

As for the new hardware: the iPad Air 2 is a worthy update; the iMac with Retina display is truly ground-breaking. As for the rest, it still strikes me as odd. Perhaps, in a few days, I’ll shake that feeling. But that’s where I am for now.

The myth that AppleCare+ is worth it

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[Note: See also my latest (April 2016) take on this subject: Why AppleCare+ is still not worth it.]

Back in 2006, I advised against getting AppleCare for your Mac, arguing that the odds that it would save you money were too low to make it worth buying. In 2011, I reached the same negative conclusion regarding AppleCare+ for iOS devices.

While I thought I had built a pretty air-tight case, there are apparently still people who remain unconvinced. The myth persists that AppleCare is worth getting. As one recent example, a Cult of Mac column, discussing AppleCare for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, stated: “AppleCare+ should be strongly considered for those devices.”

Had something changed since 2011? I decided to take a closer look. I found that nothing had changed. Except for a few rare circumstances, AppleCare+ remains as bad a deal as it ever was.

To see why, let’s look at exactly what AppleCare+ covers. AppleCare+ for an iPhone 6 offers two years of coverage for $99. For the moment, let’s ignore accident protection and just examine the basic coverage.

Basic coverage

The most critical point to grasp is that AppleCare’s coverage is very limited. You don’t even have a chance of saving money with AppleCare except during a relatively narrow window.

Basic AppleCare only covers things that are not your fault, such as failures due to manufacturing defects. One year of this same basic coverage is included free with each iPhone.

This means, for covered service issues, purchasing AppleCare+ is a complete waste of money for the first year.

Further, most things that go wrong with an electronic device due to manufacturing defects and such tend to happen within the first year. This means that the second year of coverage is not likely to be of much value either. And if you happen to be someone who gets a new iPhone every year, selling or trading in the old one, the second year of coverage is entirely irrelevant.

By the third year, you have to pay for any repairs, whether or not you purchased AppleCare+. Once again, having AppleCare+ becomes worthless at this point.

In other words, the only time that AppleCare+ can be of any help here (and it’s a low chance) is during the 12 month interval between one and two years after you purchase the iPhone.

Even if something does go wrong during this second year, it still may work out to your disadvantage to have paid for AppleCare+. For example, if your iPhone 6 battery dies, you can get a new one for free with AppleCare+. Without AppleCare+, it will cost you $79. This means that, should this turn out to be the only time you need AppleCare+, you will have paid $20 more for the replacement battery by getting AppleCare+ than if you had foregone the coverage.

From a probability perspective, I can’t see any way to argue that AppleCare+ is likely to pay off for basic coverage.

Accident protection

AppleCare+ offers one additional benefit: you get two years protection against “accidental damage.” This is protection that the one year free warranty does to cover at all. As such, people who favor AppleCare+ typically cite this as the key reason to buy it.

However, if you take a closer look, you’ll find that even the accidental damage protection is not likely to work to your advantage.

First, bear in mind that “accidental damage” does not cover a lost or stolen iPhone. You are still on your own if either of these things happen.

Second, each accident incident (and you are limited to a maximum of two) will cost you an additional $79. So, for example, if you need to replace a shattered screen it will cost you $79 if you have AppleCare+. Without AppleCare+, replacing the screen of an iPhone 6 will cost you $109 (for the 6 Plus, it’s $129). In other words, getting AppleCare+ for an iPhone 6 would only save you $30 here (and that’s not counting the $99 you paid to get AppleCare+ in the first place). To me, that’s not enough incentive to make it worth shelling out $99 for AppleCare+ — money that you will never recoup if nothing goes wrong with your iPhone.

However, if you don’t have AppleCare+ and you need to entirely replace your iPhone 6, it will cost you $299 ($329 for an iPhone 6 Plus). At last, here is a case where it seems you can save significant money if you purchased AppleCare+. It is this scenario that leads to online postings such as:

“I dropped my iPhone the other day and it completely broke. I needed to get the phone replaced. Because I had AppleCare+ coverage, it only cost me $79. I would have had to pay $329 otherwise. I’m so glad I had AppleCare. Definitely worth it. Highly recommend everyone getting it.”

First off, the person glosses over the fact that they also had to pay $99 to get AppleCare+. But let’s ignore this for now. The larger problem with such postings is that they are anecdotal. As I pointed out previously, anecdotal evidence by itself is essentially worthless. That’s because, for every anecdote supporting one point of view, someone can come up with a counter-anecdote that supports the other position.

For example, take my own situation. I have owned 8 iPhones. I started with the original iPhone in 2007 and have gotten a new one every year since (the older one transfers to my wife). I never purchased AppleCare for any of them. Only one of the phones ever needed an out-of-warranty repair — and that occurred after the device was more than two years old. Had I purchased AppleCare at the current $99 price for all of these phones, I would now be almost $800 in the hole. Clearly not worth it.

Actually, if the person quoted above had considered all of their iPhone purchases (as I did), they too might have come to my conclusion. For example, if this was their fourth iPhone and the first time they needed a replacement or any other repair, they would have spent $479 to save $329. Looking only at your most recent purchase (or any single purchase among many that you have made) gives a potentially false picture.

But let’s not place any more value on my negative experience than on someone else’s positive one. As isolated anecdotes, they are both useless as a means of helping you decide whether or not you should buy AppleCare.

What would help is some sort of experiment — such as picking 1000 iPhone owners at random and following them for four years — and seeing whether or not AppleCare+ would have saved or cost money in each case. In the absence of such data, what other options do you have for making an intelligent decision? Here’s what I would recommend:

• Assess the likelihood that you will damage your iPhone

Some people are more clumsy or careless or rough with their phones than are others. Are you the sort that frequently drops your iPhone? Or has that never happened? If you’ve owned smartphones for several years, consider your track record. Have you needed to replace a damaged phone once a year or so? Or have you never needed a replacement? If you find yourself on the “bad” end of this spectrum, perhaps you should get AppleCare+.

• Assess your finances

If you needed to pay $329 to replace your iPhone 6 Plus tomorrow, could you afford to do so? Or would you possibly have to forgo having a phone at all? If it’s the latter, perhaps it’s worth the peace of mind to get AppleCare+.

However, bear in mind that, by getting AppleCare+, it will still cost you $178 ($99 + $79) to replace a broken iPhone. In the long run, I would argue that you’re more likely better off putting the $99 in a bank account each time you buy a new iPhone, saving the money to cover the cost of a possible replacement phone down the road.

So where does all this leave you?

Getting AppleCare+ for any reason other than accident protection is definitely not worth it. As for accident protection, if neither of the above two assessments tilt clearly towards getting AppleCare+ (and I suspect that it won’t tilt that way for most iPhone users), then I would still strongly advise against getting AppleCare+. Remember: this is a probability assessment, not a guarantee. AppleCare+ could still save you money in some unlucky circumstances — but the odds are against it.

Bottom line? For the vast majority of iPhone owners, AppleCare+ remains “a sucker’s bet.”

This is why iOS 8 is such a big deal

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Believe the hype!

iOS 8 is the most important, most game-changing update to iOS since…well, since the arrival of the App Store in 2008.

I don’t say this because of all new features in iOS 8. There are many new features…so many that I’m still discovering some of the lesser known ones.

I don’t say this because of how nicely iOS 8 smooths out the rough edges of previous iOS versions. To take one example, you can now answer messages while staying in your current app rather than having to switch to the Messages app. This is all true, but that’s not the most critical change.

It’s not even the Handoff feature, which allows you to start a document on one device and automatically pick it up in progress on any other of your devices, OS X or iOS. Impressive as it is, it’s not the biggest deal.

The biggest deal is the greatly expanded “openness” in iOS 8. It’s as if iOS had been living in a shuttered room with the curtains drawn — and now the windows have been thrown open and the sun is pouring in. Yes, the change to iOS is that big. And the primary benefactor behind all of this openness are iOS 8’s extensions: Actions, Custom keyboards, Document providers, Sharing, Widgets and such. Taken together, these represent a profound philosophical shift in how Apple views iOS.

Working our way back to iOS 8

I’ve been writing about iOS since I wrote a book about it back in 2007. I marveled at the iPhone back then and continue to do so. At the same time, I’ve never stopped lamenting about the limitations of iOS, limitations that I believed Apple could easily address if it chose to do so. It has at last chosen to do so.

Although iOS is essentially a variation of the Mac’s OS X, Apple has never provided any of the Mac-like access to the iOS file system. There is no Finder in iOS, no way to see the files and folders that exist.  There has been no way to manipulate where you stored the documents you created. There are similarly no iOS apps that can directly access the file system, apps such as Terminal.

There is no way to connect an iOS device to a Mac and mount it as an external drive, as you can do with an iPod. Conversely, there is just about no way to physically connect an external drive to an iOS device.

There have been only limited ways to share files between Macs and iOS devices. There has been no seamless way for two iOS apps to work on the same document. In fact, due to sandboxing, an iOS app typically is not even aware of the existence of documents created in other apps.

Similarly, there have been only very limited ways that one app can work within another app. There have been no system-wide utilities, such as exist in OS X.

Also recall that when the iPhone was first released, Steve Jobs was opposed any sort of third-party App Store. All third-party software was to work as web apps. Even after he was convinced to change his mind here, the “curated” App Store remained the only way to get apps on your iPhone (unless you chose to jailbreak your device).

And on and on. You get the idea.

Each new update to iOS brought the promise that things would get better. And while each release did move the ball a bit further down the field, Apple still was quite a distance from the end zone. Until now. Until iOS 8. It changes everything. Well, almost everything. Certainly more than enough to get excited about.

iOS struts its stuff

To give you a small taste of what I mean, here are three key examples:

TextExpander. TextExpander on a Mac is a great utility…allowing you to type keyboard shortcuts that instantly expand to longer text or even graphics. There’s also an iOS version, but it has not been nearly as useful. Why? Because, due to iOS sandboxing, TextExpander could not function in most apps. Third-party apps had to specifically add in support for TextExpander. Most did not. And even if they did, it did not always work as promised.

This problem is now gone…vanished…over. The latest version of TextExpander touch for iOS 8 includes a TextExpander custom keyboard. With the keyboard active, TextExpander shortcuts work in any app that has access to the iOS keyboard. Fantastic!

[Note: How do you set this up? Briefly, after installing the TextExpander app, go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Keyboards. From here, select Add New Keyboard. Once you’ve added, the TextExpander keyboard, you activate it from the Globe icon/key on the iOS keyboard in any app.]

Adding custom keyboards, such as SwiftKey and TextExpander

1Password. The 1Password app is another superb OS X utility that has had trouble making the transition to iOS. With 1Password, you can save all of your passwords in a single location. To use any of them, all you need to remember is the single password for 1Password. The most frequent destination app for 1Password is a web browser, due to all the Internet accounts that require names and passwords to log in.

In iOS, “web browser” typically means Mobile Safari. Unfortunately, prior to iOS 8, there was no way for 1Password to work in Mobile Safari. To work-around this, AgileBits built a web browser into the 1Password app. In other words, using 1Password regularly could mean giving up on Safari, something most users did not want to do.

With iOS 8, the dilemma has been resolved. You can now enable the 1Password action extension in Safari (as well as other apps). Once it’s up and running, 1Password appears as a sort of mini-app within Safari.

[Note: To get this working in Safari, after installing the 1Password app, go to Safari and tap the Sharing item. From here, swipe the bottom row to get the More button to appear. Tap More. Scroll down to locate the 1Password item and move the slider to turn it on. Tap Done and you are ready to roll. Return to the same bottom row of Sharing. There will now be a 1Password item. Tap it and the 1Password login window will appear!]

The 1Password extension, as seen in Safari on an iPad

Document Picker. I’ve saved the best for last. File sharing has always been one of the weakest links in iOS. At first, it was almost unusable. It’s gotten better, but even with iOS 7’s Documents in the Cloud, much was left to be desired. As one example, if you saved a TextEdit or Preview document to iCloud on your Mac, there was no way to access the document on your iOS devices — because iOS 7 apps could only open documents created by the matching app on a Mac — and there was no matching iOS versions of TextEdit or Preview.

Again, all of this has changed for the better in iOS 8. Because OS X 10.10 Yosemite has not yet been released, not all of the cross-platform features of Document Picker are available yet. And very few iOS apps have been updated to take advantage of the option as yet. As a result, I still have several questions about how all of this works. But here is what I do know:

Document sharing, and what options are available, can vary from app to app. Following a tip from an excellent article by Federico Viticco, I tested the Document Picker in the updated Scanner Pro and Dropbox apps.

[Note: To find the Document Picker in Scanner Pro on a iPad (it works a bit differently on an iPhone), navigate to Sharing > More > iCloud Export. The iCloud Drive export window appears. You can save documents to any of the listed locations. Apple has never supported anything close to this before.]

The iCloud Export screen from Scanner Pro, with the Locations menu visible

A similar iCloud Drive import window in another app will allow users to open documents stored in iCloud drive — as long as the app is compatible with the document type and has been updated to support the feature. Different apps will be able to view and edit the same document, not just a copy, allowing changes made in one app to be reflected in the other.

This will work with documents shared between the Mac and iOS devices as well as among iOS apps. Yes, this means documents created in TextEdit or Preview on a Mac will finally be openable by iOS apps!

I was hoping to test all of this out with Apple’s iWork apps (Pages, Numbers, Keynote). Unfortunately, the iOS versions of these apps, while they support iCloud storage (as they did in iOS 7), they do not yet provide access to iCloud Drive and the Document Picker. Perhaps that will come after Yosemite is released. Or perhaps not. As far as I know, Apple has not commented on this.

Back at Scanner Pro’s iCloud Export screen, you can see a Location button in the upper left corner. Tap it to bring up a list of other export locations besides iCloud Drive. If no other items appear, tap the More button to see what choices you have.

On my iPad, I can choose Dropbox. This gives me the option to export/save a document to any location in Dropbox. As this is a system-wide feature, it means that any app that includes support for the Document Picker can automatically have Dropbox access. No longer will developers have to separately add Dropbox support to their apps.

Apple (and app developers) still need to do some interface cleanup. For one thing, it’s a bit of a misnomer to select Dropbox from a screen labeled iCloud. Overall, there are too many different variations and circuitous paths involved in the iCloud options. It needs greater simplicity and consistency. And some bug fixes. I’m optimistic this will all get better as time goes on (although we may have to wait for iOS 9 for really big improvements).

Regardless, this is a huge shift for Apple. True, iOS 8 doesn’t have all the file access available on a Mac (there’s still no Terminal app in the App Store, for example). And it probably never will; it’s not Apple’s goal to do so. Apple sees the needs and wants for iOS devices differently than for Macs. But iOS 8 provides users and third-party developers with a new level of openness and inter-app communication that is a quantum leap beyond what existed before. It addresses all of the most pressing concerns. This is what makes iOS 8 such a big deal.

I believe this change in direction is a deliberate move that can be traced back directly to Tim Cook. For me, that’s why, even more so than the forthcoming Apple Watch, this is the clearest evidence that it’s really Tim Cook’s Apple now.