Appleviews – 14th July 2023
Size counts
Apple and iMac go together like Wimbledon & strawberries – they are inseparable.
I still own my lovely 27-inch 5K 2015 iMac but sadly I don’t get to use it that often any more as is just too slow in this Apple silicon era. But there is some good news on the horizon for us iMac fans.
For starters possibly as early as later this we may be getting a refreshed 24-inch iMac with an M3 3-nanometer chip in it and then it looks like in a few years we may be getting the big one – a 32-inch iMac. It’s already in the early testing phase which would make it seem that it’s likely to come our way at some point.
And hot on the heels of those two releases could be Apple’s largest-ever display or iMac with the rumoured release of a 42-inch OLED iMac.
Not again
The will-they-won’t-they rumours of Apple ever releasing a foldable device have once again started to surface.
According to reports in Business Korea the company is in talks with a Korean display supplier for a foldable MacBook. These stories have been circling for at least 5 years at this point and we still seem no closer to them becoming a reality.
We all know the arguments about whether Apple would ever go the foldable route, and all I would add to this latest story is I’d rather wait for some other more reliable sources such as Gurman, Young & Kuo to throw their hats in the ring before I start to believe it’s coming.
On the horizon
And speaking of stories that won’t go away Project Titan made the news again this week.
Project Titan is better known of course as the Apple Car project which this week has bolstered its number of test drivers just months after they decided to dramatically reduce the test team.
Although there has never been any official confirmation that an Apple Car is being worked on it’s widely thought that the project has been in development over the past decade or so.
California’s DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) published data in March which showed that Apple had registered 66 vehicles and 201 drivers that could test vehicles on ‘public streets & highways’. Inexplicably in April the number of registered drivers reduced to only 145. This month the number is back up to 152 suggesting Apple is still marching forward with their ambitious plans for the autonomous vehicle which is possibly slated for its release in 2025 or 2026.
Thank the iPhone
Apple’s sales in the U.K. have managed to buck the current tech trend and grown over the past 12 months.
According to the accounts filed at Companies Housesales from Apple Stores and online were £1.5 billion for the 12 months to September 24th 2022 meaning these accounts are reflecting the sales of iPhone 13 not 14. Revenue rose by an astonishing 61 per cent!
Much of that growth has been down to the continued success and demand for the high-end iPhones. Apple’s typical demographic is seen to have higher-than-average disposable incomes, leaving them less vulnerable to the impact of rising prices meaning they are still lining up to buy new iPhone Pros and Pro Max models.
Apple recently opened two flagship stores in London – Brompton Road and Battersea indicating the importance that Apple places on its U.K. high street presence.
Union woes
Staff at Apple’s Maryland store has accused the company of unlawful behaviour in an attempt to fight unionisation at the store.
Staff say that Apple stalled and acted in ‘bad faith’ and worse than that they’ve also been accused of engaging in “surface bargaining” and “regressive bargaining.”
Surface Bargaining is when a company pretends to negotiate…yet it’s a bluff. For instance, they could put forward new language which gives the impression that improvements to conditions have been made when in actuality the terms remain unchanged.
Regressive Bargaining is where a company puts forward one proposal only later to come back with a worse one. Bloomberg this week reported:
Contract talks with its first unionised US retail store reached a flashpoint on Wednesday, with labour representatives filing a complaint in response to what they called bad faith negotiations. CORE, which represents the Apple store in Towson, Maryland, said that the iPhone maker is stalling and hasn’t responded to key proposals sought by employees. The group filed the complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, citing a “clear pattern” of regressive bargaining.
Come on Jony
Have you been wondering what Apple’s former design guru has been up to recently?
Along with four colleagues, Ive created the creative agency LoveFrom which has long-term contracts with Ferrari & AirBnB. LoveFrom also created the Comic Relief Red Nose this year and worked with King Charles III to create his coronation logo.
Recently Ive designed his first hardware project since leaving Apple. Working with British luxury hi-fi brand Linn he has launched the Sondek LP12-50 as a special 50th-anniversary edition of a legendary turntable.
There will only be 250 made of the hand-built deck. They’ll be made in Scotland and they’re available in a natural finish, or white for a more Apple look.
The gorgeous aluminium-edged turntable with its minimalist aesthetic weighs in at a hefty price though…starting at £50,000!
I think I’ll stick with my Technics!
Apple TV+ struggling
Well, it soon will be as actors this week joined writers on the picket line.
The Writers Guild went on strike in May with little sign yet of resolution but this is the first time since the 60s that both the screen actors and writers’ guilds have been on strike simultaneously.
The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) is looking for better compensation on streaming shows and protections against the use of AI in TV shows and movies. Behind the scenes, and the decision to strike, there had been month-long negotiations going on between SAG & The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents Apple TV+ and the other major Hollywood studios but with little joy.
The SAG claims that the studios will not budge an inch on key issues, like streaming residuals and policies around the use of generative AI.
Members of SAG will, with immediate effect withhold all labour – not only acting on set but promotional duties as well. This comes at a crucial time for Apple as they need their stars to promote theatre releases such as Napoleon for the upcoming awards season.
The action impacts Apple hard as their content pipeline will start to run dry fairly rapidly if solutions can’t be found. The writer’s strike had already caused a slow-down and forced some projects to be axed but with the actors now on the picket lines as well that effectively means Hollywood is shut down. All scripted TV shows and movies will now be on hold.
With little movement between the two sides, what workarounds are there? Well, one option is to use talent from outside the U.S. or make more non-scripted reality-type content.
In the good old days
In those heady days before the strikes season two of Apple’s hit sci-fi series Foundation was already produced.
To promote its release last Monday Apple decided to take the same approach they had recently with Silo and promote it hard on YouTube. The guerrilla-style marketing techniques are designed to side-step the barrier to entry for Apple TV+ – the price of the monthly subscription – and give something for nothing in the hope of driving more viewers to eventually take out the subscription.
Apple streamed the episode as a Live Premiere on their YouTube channel along with a Q&A session with showrunner David Goyer.
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