Originally published at: https://appletalk.com.au/2019/05/wednesday-morning-news010519/
Apple’s second quarter financial results tell us a familiar story, with revenue of US $58 billion, and profit of 11.6 billion. While revenue is down 5% compared to the year-ago quarter, services revenue of $11.5 billion means there’s a new all-time services revenue record that Apple can celebrate, and Apple is also calling out a 22% increase in iPad revenue compared to the year-ago quarter. Graphs of Apple’s quarterly financial results from Six Colors tell us the other parts of the story: while the Mac and iPhone were both down year-on-year, there are other parts of Apple’s business that are doing well, with services now accounting for 20% of Apple’s quarterly revenue compared to the iPhone’s 54%.
Apple’s statement on the removal of parental control/iOS device monitoring apps from the App Store gives us the facts about parental control apps. While I applaud Apple’s ongoing commitment to user privacy in the face of invasive Mobile Device Management technology designed for enterprise-level monitoring and control over a user’s device, their post conveniently sidesteps the fact that Apple holds clear advantages when it comes to what can be done on the iOS platform. No third party can build an app to compete with Apple’s in-built Screen Time feature, and for some, that’s a serious anti-competitive problem.
The engineer leading Apple’s 5G smartphone modem efforts has left the company. A paywalled article at The Information says Rubén Caballero recently left Apple, although whether his departure is related to Apple settling with Qualcomm and delaying its own smartphone modem efforts is pure speculation, although the timing does seem somewhat coincidental.
Apple manufacturing partner Foxconn is said to be investing in microLED technology for future iPhones. The tech has been long-rumoured to be destined for iPhones and the Apple Watch, which both currently use OLED displays (at least in the iPhone XS). But microLED displays come with advantages over OLED, in that they can be thinner, brighter, and more energy efficient, at the same time carrying many of the benefits of OLED over LCD, including better colour accuracy, contrast ratios, and true blacks.
Another long-running rumour says this year’s iPhones will come with an 18W USB-C power adapter and a USB-C to Lightning cable in the box. While iPad Pros currently come with that combo, that’s probably more down to the fact that iPads have much larger batteries than iPhones and aren’t charged as often as iPhones, so aren’t as susceptible to the same battery longevity issues than iPhones can be. We’ve heard this one many times over, and every time, Apple sticks with the standard 5W USB-A power adapter. We’ll just have to wait and see if this is the year this rumour finally comes true.
An Apple Support page for migrating your Aperture libraries to Photos or Lightroom Classic says that for technical reasons, Aperture will not run in versions of macOS after Mojave 10.14. To be fair, the writing has been on the wall for Aperture for almost five years now, ever since Apple announced it was discontinuing its pro photography app back in 2014, so it’s definitely time you think about moving from Aperture if you haven’t already.
If there’s one Apple product you can get excited about, it’s the Apple Watch. And truth be told, there’s a lot to like about a wearable device that’s way more subtle than an iPhone but still lets you stay connected enough. Apple’s focus on health and fitness with the Apple Watch is another big drawcard, and the potential for the Apple Watch to be the most important bit of technology you own is incredible.
The Mac Menu Bar is a curated directory of over 200 menu bar apps for your Mac. There’s plenty of third-party apps you can put in your menu bar to help you do everything, whether that’s simple system stats from something like iStat Menus, clipboard managers, note-taking apps, and much more. And if you’re sick of all the icons taking up space, there’s a menu bar app for that, too.
Now here’s a good idea: iOS HomeKit scene controlling app HomeRun’s latest update has a feature that lets you schedule changes to its Apple Watch face complication. Now, triggering your HomeKit scene is easy as pressing an icon on your watch face, which changes throughout the day according to a schedule that you’ve set. It’s a neat implementation of dynamic watch face complications, and I hope it’s something that’s adopted by more apps.
Up until around 2017, or before iOS 10.3, you were able to play official ports of id Software games like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom on your iPhones and iPads. But updates for those apps stopped in 2014, making the legacy apps no longer available on modern iOS devices and versions. A lone coder has taken the open-source versions of those apps and updated them to work on modern versions of iOS, as well as porting them to tvOS. There’s a little work involved if you want to put the modern versions on your iOS or tvOS device, but nothing that a few hours fighting with Xcode can’t fix.