Seems like the highest point of quarterly iPod sales has become a measurement of the success of current Apple products
They call it “Peak iPod”
That happened in 2007 and was $4 billion in quarterly revenue
Guess what, there are now two products that have (or will soon) surpass “peak iPod” and they may or may not be what you think.
Asymco in a research note thinks that AirPods could surpass peak iPod revenue next quarter
It’s hard to estimate as Apple lumps AirPods into their Wearables, Home, and Other category.
They crunched the numbers by estimating and subtracking Apple Watch
Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi believe AirPods generated Apple $6B in revenue in 2019 and could pull in up to $15B in 2020.
Then you have Apple Watch itself which actually surpassed peak iPod last year
Again from Asymco data Apple Insider says that Apple Watch saw a 51 percent revenue increase year over year
That means in the Holiday quarter Apple Watch is expected to bring in $5.2 billion in revenue
Do your AirPods Pro smell like blueberries?
Came up in a tweet from Federico Viticci based on a forum thread on MacRumors.
Apple acquires more AI phone tech
According to Bloomberg Apple has acquired a UK-based photography company called Spectral Edge
The company has developed an algorithm to enhance low-light images in real time.
The technology uses and infrared shot and then combines that with the other exposures to create a crisper image with better color accuracy
The companies CEO says they can also help with bokeh processing by eliminating artifacts
Apple supplier Broadcom is looking to sell it’s RF wireless chip unit according to the WSJ
Broadcom’s RF unit makes filters used in smartphones to clarify signals.
Apple is reportedly already researching doing its own RF technology so Apple could be a good perspective buyer.
The RF unit brought in $2.2 billion in revenue during fiscal 2019 and could cost Apple as much as $10B to acquire.
Bug allows parental control bypass
Apple recently added the new Communications Limits feature to their parental controls
This allows parents to limit phone calls and texts on their child’s devices to just people in their contacts
Unfortunately there seems to be a bug related to iCloud syncing that can bypass the new feature
The feature also prevents kids from being able to add contacts, but that’s where the bug come into play
The bug surfaces if contacts are NOT stored in iCloud.
If a text from an unknown number comes in it is blocked as “restricted”, but there is still an option presented to add the number to the contacts
Once added that number is no longer restricted.
Using Siri on Apple Watch also bypasses the limits
Apple said in a statement that they are working on a fix but did not provide a timeline
Turning on Downtime seems to prevent the bug as well.
Counterfeit iPhones from Foxconn
Apple’s Business Assurance & Audit (BA&A) team is investigating a counterfeit ring that was selling iPhone made from rejected parts from Foxconn
Reportedly a whistleblower emailed Tim Cook to report the fraud.
There’s a suggestion that the management team at Foxconn responsible for destroying defective parts actually sold them to a crime ring who assembled them into working devices and sold them to unsuspecting buyers.
The scam has been happening over the past three years and has estimated to have brought in around $43M USD for the fraudsters.
You may remember earlier in the year Apple was scammed by two Chinese engineering students who were allegedly importing non-functional counterfeit devices and taking them to Apple for warranty replacements
That scam was reportedly worth around $1M USD
A similar counterfeit repair later in the year was run in Southern California by U.S. citizens born in China and that one cost Apple an estimates $6M USD
And there was a $19M scam in New York where a crime ring would pose as cellphone subscribers to get new devices at little or no cost and then sell the stolen phones on the black market.
Apple still gets two-thirds of smartphone profits
New estimates from Counterpoint Research again show that regardless of marketshare Apple still is the king at making money off selling smartphones.
Their latest estimates are that Apple earns 32 percent of total smartphone revenue and an impressive 66 percent of industry profits.
Samsung, in second place takes in just 17 percent of industry profits.
The report does note that the total pool is on the decline with global smartphone profit dropping 11% year-on-year for the third quarter.
Overall decline in smartphone profits in the last quarter is because premium smartphones are facing greater competition from mid-tier devices. Also lengthening upgrade cycles.
Apple in talks for more Apple TV+ content
According to the Wall Street Journal
They claim Apple met with both MGM Holdings and the Pac-12 Conference
None of the deals are said to have gone past the preliminary stages yet.
Having access to live streaming of college football would be a nice addition to the growing service.
It’s not clear what the deal with MGM would be.
New or original content vs. back catalog.
Apple is also continuing to line up and grow it’s own in-house content
Apple signed a recent “first-look” deal with Writer and actor Sharon Horgan
Horgan wrote the BBC comedy "Motherland" and "Women on the Verge" and is also known for the Emmy-nominated sitcom "Catastrophe." (Channel 4 & Amazon) and Divorce on HBO.
The duration of Apple’s deal with Horgan is said to be “multi-year”, but there are no specific projects announced.
Are Satellites next for Apple
Bloomberg’s Mark German says Apple has a small team of about a dozen engineers from the aerospace, satellite and antenna design industries working on the project.
The report oddly says the team has the goal of deploying their results within five years, but that a clear direction and use for satellites hasn’t been finalized
It also says that Tim Cook has made the project a priority for the company
Supposedly the main goal is to find new ways to send data to devices without reliance on the current cellular technologies
They also say it could be to explore providing more precise location tracking for devices, enabling improved maps and new features.
this feels unnecessary?
In 2017 Apple did hire two Google executives, John Fenwick and Michael Trela, who worked on the companies satellite and spacecraft operations and it was unclear at the time what they might do for Apple.
Fenwick and Trela are leading the team dedicated to satellites and related wireless technology.
It’s not clear at this point if Apple would be launching it’s own satellite systems or just making use of the technology via ground-based technology and send it to mobile devices.
They could find existing aerospace partners to work with.
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For most of us yes, but for many true “Pros” in high end applications, like research science, 3D modeling, film & television, photography, game development, etc. Maybe not.
Also, looks like based on specs alone the Mac Pro is at least AS affordable if not more affordable than similarly specs off the shelf PC Workstations.
Maybe not as much vs an iMac Pro (in Mac Pro base config) or a build your own PC
None of which are nearly as overly engineered or well designed.
The most expensive components in the higher level configurations are the 8TB flash storage and the 1.5TB of high end RAM
That RAM alone will run 25K
The graphics cards, Radeon Pro Vega II Duo cards, run $10K
Many will be able to find some cost savings on higher end configs by doing upgrades themselves.
Even comparing comparably specs off-the-shelf workstations vs the Mac Pro base configuration it compares well.
AppleInsider looks at similarly spec’d offerings from HP, Lenovo, and Dell and the Macs $6K price tag was right in line.
In many cases the other PCs were missing things like Thunderbolt 3, dual gigabit Ethernet, or the styling of the Mac.
Also many of the PCs were marked down significantly with “Holiday” savings
It’s worth mentioning that in pure Geekbench scores most of Apple’s consumer models and the iMac Pro are on par or offer better performance than the base model Mac Pro when looking at single-core performance
And yes, even the 6-core i7 Mac mini out geekbenches the
When it comes to multi-core only the 8-core iMac Pro edges out the 8-core Mac Pro
Just keep in mind that CPU isn’t everything when it comes to a machine.
The Mac Pro’s 8TB storage option came out and it’s a $2,600 USD upgrade.
MacPro also got a 9/10 in repairability score from iFixit
Very few or no tools are required.
Diagram inside the RAM covers shows which DIMM slots can be populated with different amounts of memory to optimize performance.
SSDs are modular, same ones as iMac Pro, but paired to the T2 chip, so need to be replaced at Apple or by an Apple Authorized Service Provider.
It has been pointed out that Mac Pros arriving in Europe are not manufactured in the US
They are being made in China by Apple’s partner Quanta.
Save some money on Apple Arcade
I’m still loving my subscription
Jeff Gamet just told me about an awesome new puzzler, Lego Builder’s Journey
I’m also loving Where Cards May Fall, Guildlings, Grindstone, and Cat Quest 2 (on Apple TV)
Using a PS 4 controller and Nimbus Steel Series is great.
Now you can save about $10/yr. and subscribe yearly for $49.99 USD.
About $4.17/mo vs. $4.99/mo.
You can switch if you like and you will be billed starting in your next bill cycle
Go into Settings
Tap on your account
Tap on subscriptions and tap your current monthly subscription
Then tap the Yearly option to authorize and switch your plan.
There also seems to be a promo going in the Shazam app for up to 6 free months of Apple Music
First spotted by Macworld UK
Download the Shazam app
Open it and tap the Library button in the top left corner.
Inside you should see a promotion for a free offer from Apple Music.
Tap that and you can sign up for you Apple Music offer.
The Macworld UK piece said their offer was for 6 months, though Macworld only got a 4 month offer.
If you’re already an Apple Music subscriber you won’t see the offer, but some reports claim if you cancel Apple Music and try you’ll get a 3 month offer.
The promo lasts until December 31.
Slo-mo video bug
Play comment from Rod (Google Voice)
I confirmed this bug on my iPhone 11 Pro
Seems to happen when you take any action that would cause the video to re-save.
Only removes it from the special “Slo-mo” album
Go into Photos > Albums
Scroll down to “Media Types” > “Slo-mo”
Tap the “Share” button and tap duplicate before you make any edits.
Saving audio from Messages
Julius wrote in with a question about saving voice messages from the Messages app in iOS 13
When you tap and hold the received voice message you get the pop-up with options and there is a "Save", but tapping it seems to do nothing?
Prior to iOS 12 I believe the files would save to the Voice memos app, but Juilus mentions that since iOS 12 the Voice Memos feature was removed.
For the record the Voice Memos app still exists for iOS but you now need to download it from the App Store. It’s just not installed by default since iOS 12.
Still, I have the Voice Memos app installed and tapping “save” on the audio message in Messages did not save the audio to voice memos.
I tried this and had the same experience. The “Save” option seems to do nothing.
The only workaround I could find was to use the “Copy” option and then open the Files app and “paste” it into there. That gave me a Core Audio file that I could play.
The file is an Apple Core Audio file (.caf)
Via iCloud, I could sync file to my Mac and play it.
I could also open that file in Quicktime and then choose File > Export As… > Audio Only to save it out as an MPEG-4 audio (.m4a) audio file.
I assume Julius, that you also already went into your Messages setting to make sure Messages doesn’t delete the audio?
By default iOS will only keep audio messages for 2 minutes.
Open Settings and go to the Messages settings
Under the "Audio Messages" section tap the Expire option
Change the setting from "After 2 minutes" to "Never"
You may also want to adjust the "Message History" "Keep messages" setting. Option are 30 days, 1 Year, or Forever.
You could also use a tool like [iMazing](https://imazing.com) to save the audio to your Mac
If anyone else knows an easier way to save audio messages in Messages in the iPhone let us know.
