SoundByte 356 October 2024

ChristopherNews, SoundByte

Camera Control Surface

Welcome to SoundByte! In this issue:

October Meeting

Join us this Monday, October 14 at 7pm for our monthly meeting. We will be doing a deep dive into Apple’s latest software releases, including iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia! Whether you’ve already upgraded or are considering it, this meeting will be a great opportunity to learn, ask questions, and share insights.

Check the email this newsletter came in for the Zoom link to the meeting. We will also post the link in our Slack General Channel. 

Follow the London Mac User Group on…Mastodon🐘! If you are not familiar with Mastodon, have a look at TidBit’s explainer here.

IPhone hits sweet 16

On schedule, Apple released their annual revision to iPhone, now at iPhone 16 and 16 Pro. The delta between each iPhone varies each year and is usually slow. Most of us should only upgrade when our phones fail or (in my case) when the battery is getting old. For those doing the upgrade from an older iPhone there are a number of exciting features.

All the phones get more memory, camera upgrades and a camera control button. [ED: the control button takes some getting used to. You double click to open the camera, but to get to the camera controls needs finesse. A gentle half press, but not actually pressing (doing that will take a photo), just pressure: a gentle squeeze. Then swiping left or right and more squeezing to get to the setting you want to change. Many say this takes longer than using the regular camera menus…].

Both get an action button, which can be mapped to various functions (I have it mapped to the spotlight). The iPhone 16s gain faster charging, and the ability to take spatial photos and videos, and an audio mixing tool when editing video. However the most unusual part of the announcement, was that the keynote feature of the iPhone 16s is one they aren’t actually getting this year: Apple Intelligence.

Apart from the Maths Notes feature, the main AI summarisation features, for emails, text, messages and notifications aren’t coming until 18.1, and that’s US only. Apple Intelligence isn’t coming to the UK until 18.2 (likely next year) and we may have to wait until 18.4 for Siri’s AI brain transplant to gain the skills to control apps at your command. Perhaps the problem is the fixed iPhone September release timetable. If it were a Mac, the launch would be delayed until the feature was ready. Almost certainly, Apple is working on getting Apple Intelligence right, with as few embarrassing hallucinations or controversies as possible. It’s a bit of a mine-field at present.

The demands of Apple Intelligence, requiring a beefed up neural engine and 8GB ram, have meant that the regular iPhone 16 has gotten a bigger upgrade than usual. In particular it is moved up to the A18 chip rather than getting a cut down version of last years A17 Pro. With it gaining the new control buttons and some strong colours, for many people, this year could be the choice time to upgrade for best value.

The iPhone 16 PRO, pulls ahead in a different way. It gains an A18 PRO chip with significant differences to the regular A18 like support for Thunderbolt connectivity and PRO RES video. The 15 PRO already supported professional level video recording and the 16 PRO has added to this with 120FPS 4K video for high resolution slow-mo footage. The camera gains the ability to use the new JPEG format (JPEG-XL). The 16 PRO MAX also gets a larger screen, now a whopping 6.9-inches. The PROs also get longer battery life. There’s also new Gold colour, acknowledging the different reasons people opt for the most expensive iPhone.

The iPhones come with iOS18, which includes a number of other new features like a beefed up control centre. For a recap watch the video below to take advantage of them:

Apple Watch 10 and Air Pods 4

Apple unveiled the 10th Apple Watch, with a screen stretch making it bigger than the Apple Watch Ultra! The 10 is also squashed to its thinnest ever, and comes with the option of a fetching titanium case. It also gains a new health feature (for men?): Sleep apnoea detection.

The iconic Air Pods got a redesign for their 4th revision. Now smaller to fit more ears, these gain spatial audio. There is also a version which gains noise reduction. Both features are possible by the Air Pods 4 getting the same H2 chip as the Air Pods Pro. The main issue with AirPods remain their solid earbud shape. It will fit most people, and hopefully more people than the last Air Pods.

The pricer alternative is to upgrade to the AirPods Pro, which are truly nice ear buds. The main problem with the Pro’s however are the ear wax from their snug fit in our ears. Apple have just released a video explaining how to clean them. Note the key ingredient:

Is the Pencil Pro enough?

Apple have refreshed their Pencil line-up. For all current iPads there are two good choices, the Pencil Pro and the Pencil USB-C. But what do actual professionals think about the Pencil Pro, will they actually use it? MAC Address put it to the test below:

Innovating into spaces Apple can’t reach

2024 has seen innovations in hardware and software, from AI Pins to ever more folding phones. Apple innovates too, but once it has launched a ‘great’ product, the sequels often contain modest improvements. This can contrast poorly to its competitors. Some of this is due to scale. It is simpler for a smaller Android phone maker to quickly adopt fast screen refresh rates when they don’t need to procure millions of screens, for example. But some innovations are simply not in the sweet spot that Apple likes to hit with its products. In this little editorial, I’ll list below some of the interesting innovations this year and why I think Apple couldn’t make them.

The Rabbit R1 and the Humane Pin AI devices. The problem is that these aren’t ‘great products’. AI is just a feature. Apple assembles mutiple features to make a product it can sell. Apple tends not to release products with just one feature. Instead we see Apple Intelligence is just one of dozens of features in iOS18 and crucially, it is integrated together (in Apple’s unique way) with other features to make a compelling product.

Huawei has shocked the world with a triple-folding phone, the Mate XT. From a regular phone it folds out to the size of an iPad!

The problem here is implementation. Apple cannot get away with flaws in its hardware. What if the hinge or folding screen breaks regularly? And a folding screen tends to have a visible crease which might get worse over time. I don’t think Apple would release a phone without a reliable screen. And then there is the price, at 10x the price of a base iPad, I’m not sure it would make any commercial sense.

Remarkable have released an impressive colour eInk tablet. Why didn’t Apple?

The problem here is strategy. Almost certainly Apple with the iPad was looking for a sweet spot. The features that would appeal to the most people. And one of the things Apple determined most people would want was great web browsing, video and photos. That means, the extraordinary benefits of Colour eInk was in the wrong part of the Venn diagram of high technologies and most customer wants. Most importantly, the iPad built on the iPhone’s ecosystem. It had to have the same type of screen to do so. So that’s no eInk for the iPad.

Meta (aka FaceBook) has shocked the tech media by unveiling real AR glasses. The intention was to steal the march of the century on Apple, while Apple is stuck on the clunky Vision Pro hardware, but, er…it’s nowhere near ready for release.

The issue here is this isn’t just a preview of unreleased hardware it’s a showing off of what in the development labs. Apple never shows unreleased hardware and we never see what’s in the labs. Yes in reality the supply chain in China leaks details of the next iPhone years ahead, but in general Apple develops in a cloak of secrecy to protect their competitive advantage from copy-cloners.

What we see in the Meta Orion glasses is the current state of the art breakthrough technologies that could in time make AR Glasses a reality and that real AR glasses are possible. I think AR glasses will likely end up replacing the phone and our monitors, disrupting both MacBooks and iPhone – Apple’s best selling devices. A huge deal.

But we also see the hard limitations that make them at present both unviable and unaffordable. Why was it OK for Meta to show their secret developments? Meta is spending billions of dollars on this technology and some suggest they need to show their investors where the money is going. Second, like Apple with Vision OS, they want to perfect their user interface. This requires wider testing and feedback. But if Meta has this in its labs, I think there is no doubt Apple has too. But Apple will have decided at some point to put down the glasses and focus on a creating a ‘great product’ that’s achievable now to get the same real user feedback. Which is the Vision Pro. And that’s what makes Apple, Apple.

Sequoia on older Macs

The latest macOS Seqoia is out. Have a look back at July’s Soundbyte for what’s new. But if you have an older Mac that isn’t supported, you might not be out of luck. You might recall something called OpenCore Legacy Patcher from an earlier Soundbyte that can hack the new macOS onto older Macs. Have a look at this tutorial below to see if it would work for you.

The end of Apple’s User Groups

You might not be aware that LMUG was a part of a global collection of Apple User Groups. LMUG is completely independent of Apple, but under Apple’s umbrella, LMUG took part in cross-border collaborations with other MUGs. Well, due to changing times and internal changes, the umbrella is being folded up. We hope the collaborations will continue however. The main loss is what should be here – our member offers and discounts. We shall see if we can get them back in time.

In the meantime thanks for reading Soundbyte. LMUG is not going anywhere!

Often at the back of Soundbyte we like to have a retrospective. First lets go way back. Before the Mac was the Lisa. A failure with lessons learned applied to the Mac. Have a look at this full documentary below:

Speaking of lessons learned, here is a lovely interview with Mac interface designers, offering water in the desert to Microsoft DOS users [ED: they are explaining how a Mac works].

Finally, if you can’t stand it and you want to go back, have a look at the bizarre project to remake a vintage Mac with modern components: