​CNET launched a bombshell article this week by Corinne Reichert citing data from a study that says iPhone loyalty is on the way down. But, she only reports half the story. Here is the crux of what she said.

​I’ve long held that Nilay Patel of The Verge is the poster boy of everything that’s wrong with tech journalism. If you ever need to find an example of a writer who starts with his thesis and then only showcases the facts which fit, look no further. 

When Ming Chi Kuo came out in March of 2018 with the unexpected news that Apple was going to update the MacBook Air, I had a feeling it was all over the 12” MacBook. Here are some excerpts from what I wrote at the time

​In the past, I’ve brought up the fact that Apple could win at the low-cost game if they ever made a concerted effort to design a phone with low cost as the main priority. But I’ve never given that road much more thought because it would potentially do two things. Lower average gross margins and dilute the strong iPhone brand. But if Apple is serious about making services their main growth engine in the future. It’s a whole new ballgame. 

​Writing for Bloomberg Opinion, Shira Ovide wrote a column stating the oft-repeated theory that the importance of hardware will decrease as the importance of imbedded tech everywhere deprecates it’s status. 

​Lovers of Apple’s MacBook Pro seem to have taken heart lately due to Apple’s display of shock and awe at this years WWDC. The amount of engineering and design hours that went into the impressive Mac Pro must’ve been huge. 

​So at last weeks WWDC keynote address, Craig Federighi took a humorous shot at YouTubers who make those crazy phone speed test comparisons. It was something along the lines of “Nobody uses their phone that way, but yeah, I guess we’ll win one of those”.  

​CNET launched a bombshell article this week by Corinne Reichert citing data from a study that says iPhone loyalty is on the way down. But, she only reports half the story. Here is the crux of what she said.

​Ok, so I’ve heard the rumors that Apple was going to stop offering 3D Touch completely in future iPhones. I won’t like it, but so be it. However, I figured I could continue to smugly use 3D Touch on my own iPhone XS indefinitely.

​One of the things that has always bothered me about many of the writers dedicated to covering all things Apple is their incestuous relationship with app developers. The big problem is that the interests of the developer is often at odds with the interest of the consumer. The developer wants to make more money, but the consumer wants more for his money. Who does the journalist speak for? It should be the consumer. 

​I’ve been meaning recently to comment on the Supreme Court’s decision to allow Spotify’s law suit regarding their app store to proceed. I both agree 100% with the court’s decision and I believe 100% that Spotify’s suit is absurd.
 
Earlier when I wrote how absurd Spotify’s complaint was, I over-simplified the situation for clarity’s sake. I compared Apple to Walmart and Android to an open farmer’s market. That’s because, to me, Apple’s app store belongs more to Apple than it does to the developers. The Supreme Court apparently agrees with me.
 
Technically, there is a difference. Walmart purchases their merchandise from their vendors. Once Walmart takes delivery of their inventory, the vendors couldn’t care less what Walmart does with it. The vendors are going to get paid even if Walmart sets all that merchandise on fire. 
 
I compared Apple to Walmart in my earlier post because in spirit, the app store is more like their proprietary store front. Apple controls everything about it. SCOTUS’s recent decision emphasizes that my over-simplification was directionally correct and reasonable. 
 
Now, having said that, I also believe that Apple’s case is no less weaker. In fact, it may be stronger now. If the Supreme Court views the App Store as their proprietary store front, my case becomes more compelling. That means an outside party like Spotify has an even weaker standing. 
 
Now that the Supreme Court has declared that the App Store is tantamount to Apple’s store front, an outside party has even less claim to bypass Apple’s standard charges. The case will go forward and Spotify is guaranteed to lose. 

​When Apple released watchOS 5 they highlighted the fact that they were bringing their Podcasts app to the Apple Watch for the first time ever. Then, a few weeks later when they unveiled the new 4th generation Apple Watch, they highlighted the fact that you could now get more complications on the watch’s new larger screen. But here we are 8 months later and Apple still hasn’t gone the last step needed. They still haven’t made a podcasts complication for the new infograph watch faces on the 4th gen Apple Watch. What is up with that? 

Phandroid.com had some interesting info on how Google is delving beyond Android Auto which is basically using a phone as the brains and integrating directly into Volvo’s new Polestar 2. 

​I was a watch person long before the Apple Watch ever came out. I hate being late for anything. So, I never understood how anyone got along without a watch before smart phones. Besides the time, I often found it useful early in the day to glance at my watch and see what day of the month it was. So, you can imagine that I was already wired to make full use of the Apple Watch from day one. 

​Stat News published a very interesting story about medical researchers who are DNA engineering viruses to go after and kill certain bacteria which are resistant to anti-biotics.  It’s a worthy goal and I applaud their efforts. It’s fascinating how we can tinker with the building blocks of life to fundamentally change the nature of living things just like programming a machine. 

​With the sudden departure of many of Apple’s old guard in their design team I can’t help but wonder if they were the losers in a power struggle. The departures are so close together that it can’t be coincidence. AppleInsider had a nice recap of the design team history. But most of what really happens is not spoken of outside those four walls. 

CNBC’s clickbait title of “Apple is finally moving beyond the iPhone as the smartphone industry stalls out” is such a crock. 

​I found Apple’s recent focus on “story telling” during their March special event hauntingly interesting. Ever since that event I’ve been pondering the very different tracks of entertainment these days. And the release of Marvel’s Avenger’s Endgame movie has rekindled my thoughts on this subject. I took the kids to see it yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s refreshing to see a movie that doesn’t follow the usual formulaic path.

​Okay, we all had a good laugh making exploding phone jokes back when the Note 7 was released. But everyone except me said that this was an unfortunate incident that could have happened to any manufacturer. I said, “No, this would have never happened at any of the manufacturers where I’ve worked.” A faulty design made it out the door when someone should have hit the abort button. 

​Amazon’s Echo never had the same appeal for me as it did for all those tech journalists and podcasters who work from home. Yeah, I get that speaking commands out into the air is cool. But when I work a full-time job and have a bunch of kids it feels like I’m rarely home. A homebound digital assistant made about as much sense to me as owning a car that only made right-hand turns.

I’m not a big fan of Tim Cook but one thing I will definitely give him credit for getting right is setting Apple’s tone when it comes to the privacy of user data. He was preaching privacy before it was cool. Perhaps in hindsight it’ll become evident that he was exactly the perfect person at a crucial point in history.

​The lack of decent keyboard covers for the new 11” iPad Pro has kept me from being able to upgrade from my 10.5” iPad Pro. I don’t like Apple’s folio or anyone else’s for that matter. So I decided it was time to help the process along and blog about what everyone is missing. I currently use the Logitech Slim Combo Keyboard case which has forever changed my requirements for an iPad case. Here are my 2 must-have items, that thus far, are nowhere to be found. 

​Something has really been bothering me about Apple’s announcement that they were killing the AirPower charging pad. Here is what was released by Apple’s Vice President of hardware engineering:

I stumbled on this fascinating article in Android Authority recently that hints at where I think the global economy  is headed far in the future as factory automation becomes more widespread.

​Yesterday I stumbled upon some excellent discussion on the Quoth the Raven podcast regarding whether the future of social media should be a libertarian open system or a silo’d and segregated one. It hit me during the discussion that this is the same problem that God deals with on a larger scale. It also occurred to me that many of the atheist parties that sit in judgment of the God of the Bible for sending people to Hell are the same parties advocating for Twitter to exercise it’s power and “send Twitter trolls to hell”. The atheists sit in an untenable position.