Thoughts on the iPhone SE’s trajectory

Tech Life

I have loved the concept of the iPhone SE since the beginning. The introduction of the first-generation iPhone SE back in March 2016 managed to surprise me in a way that later iPhone introductions did not. At the time I remember thinking it was a very un-Apple move to make. Not because it didn’t make sense; quite the contrary — it felt like an unusually user-friendly decision. Having a phone with (most of) the capability of the then flagship iPhone 6s and 6s Plus models, but in a smaller package that retained the iPhone 5/5s size and design (what I consider the best iPhone design) and at a more affordable price range — the 16GB iPhone SE cost €250 less than the 16GB iPhone 6s in my country — felt like Christmas in March. And for those users who weren’t thrilled about the size of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus the year before, and the 6s and 6s Plus now, the iPhone SE truly was a Christmas gift delivered in spring.

That first-generation iPhone SE for me really embodied the idea of a ‘Special Edition’ iPhone. The classic, iconic design of the iPhone 4/4s/5/5s, was being relaunched with a more modern engine under the bonnet. The different timing (March, not September) immediately suggested a different pace, a separate timeline. Moving in an eccentric, inclined orbit, the Pluto of iPhones. One of the first things my nerd friends and I chatted about some days after the iPhone SE was available, was whether there was going to be a second-generation iPhone SE. Our first impression, our gut feeling about that iPhone was that it was going to be one of a kind. A Special Edition iPhone. Maybe Apple would not discontinue it after just one year; maybe it would last a bit more. Different timeline, different orbit, remember?

It did last two years. In March 2017, the iPhone SE was refreshed with new storage sizes, more reasonable storage sizes for the time. Instead of the initial 16 and 64GB capacities, now it was available in 32 and 128GB. 

The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus introduced in 2014 were a huge success for Apple. It’s been a while since I bothered to look at statistics and graphs, but I believe that these iPhone models are, to this day, the most sold in the history of the iPhone. Oh, apparently Wikipedia has a List of best-selling mobile phones and indeed, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are the best-selling iPhone models, with a total of 222.4 million units.

Yet that didn’t mean people stopped liking smaller phones. I remember crafting a cardboard mockup of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus to see how they would fit in my hand. I had an iPhone 5 at the time, and was considering an upgrade, but I found the sizes of the bigger iPhones difficult to handle, especially the Plus model, which felt heavy, awkward, and unpleasant to use one-handed. A lot of friends and acquaintances found the sizes of the iPhone 6 and 6s off-putting. And it’s interesting to see on that list of best-selling phones that, while there’s no trace of the first-generation iPhone SE, the iPhone 5s is actually the third Apple best-seller (164.5 million units sold), after the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus (222.4 million), and the 6s and 6s Plus (174.1 million). 

After a while, that question came up again: would there be a second-generation iPhone SE? And if so, what would it look like? I remember an email from one of my readers, back in late 2019: they were hoping Apple would maintain the iconic design, maybe simply making the SE a bit bigger, and giving it the specs of the previously-released iPhone XS, like the A12 Bionic chip, and the same camera array. And this reader wasn’t alone in their hopes; many others — perhaps thinking I had some kind of special access to otherwise secret product information, or could talk to someone at Apple to let them know my readers’ wishes — wrote me expressing their idea of the iPhone SE. That it should either be a once-in-an-iPhone-lifetime model, or an iPhone that essentially remained the same on the outside while being updated on the inside. Again, a Special Edition, a constant iconic presence along with the new iPhones on the block.

But Apple had less ambitious, more pragmatic plans in mind. In April 2020, the second-generation iPhone SE was revealed and it was, more mundanely, an iPhone 8 on the outside, with the internals of the iPhone 11 for the most part. At that point, us fans of the iconic design (and size) of the iPhone 5 and 5s, realised that the iPhone SE had very little ‘Special’ in its ‘Edition’. The pattern seemed to be more like, The SE is just last-generation design integrating modern-enough tech specs. Or perhaps Apple’s executives were underwhelmed by the sales of the first-generation iPhone SE and didn’t want to risk re-proposing something with the same design or with the same size.

When the third-generation iPhone SE was expected in spring 2022, then, I anticipated a product with the internals of the iPhone 13 line and with the design of the iPhone X. On the one hand it made sense considering the previous two iterations, on the other that would have been a bummer for me, because in 2022 I found myself needing to upgrade from my iPhone 8, and didn’t want an iPhone with a notch and without a Home button with Touch ID (that was the reason why I purchased an iPhone 8 instead of an X when both models were released in 2017). So imagine my surprise when the third-generation iPhone SE came out and it featured the same exact design of the second-generation iPhone SE (and the iPhone 8). 

And imagine my joy: the last time I was like, Shut up and take my money! had been when I purchased the iPhone 4 more than ten years prior. Well, in all honesty, I would have been happier if the iPhone SE line had preserved the size and look of the iPhone 5/5s/SE1, because that’s what had been feeling more comfortable and with a big-enough screen for me. But ever since purchasing the iPhone 8 I had grown accustomed to its physical size over time. Anything bigger still didn’t work for me: for work-related reasons (testing the UI of localised iOS apps on a bigger iPhone screen) I also bought a second-hand iPhone 7 Plus, and while I could see why smartphones this big may appeal to many people, I also couldn’t see myself rocking such a big phone on a daily basis and when out and about. The only articles of clothing with pockets big enough to accommodate a ‘plus size’ iPhone were my winter jackets and my raincoat. Considering how little it rains where I live, and considering that I may be wearing my winter jackets only occasionally over the course of one month and a half in a whole year (because that’s how long is the ‘cold’ season here, typically), taking the iPhone 7 Plus with me when not at home was a rather awkward affair and had to put it in my backpack or laptop bag. Even in the biggest pockets of my cargo pants it was uncomfortable to carry. As for the handling, it’s always been a two-hands phone for me.

But I digress. I was happy to upgrade to a third-generation iPhone SE in 2022, but I was also puzzled by Apple’s decision to keep the previous design without any external change. The ‘pattern’ I seemed to have identified two years before went straight out of the window. Was Apple reconsidering the concept of a ‘Special Edition’ iPhone and settling on a definitive design, deciding to keep offering a ‘small’ iPhone with Touch ID and a proper Home button for all those users who preferred this solution over Face ID and a no-Home-button iPhone? 

Or, less imaginatively, was Apple more satisfied with the sales of the second-generation SE — which did sell respectably according to that afore-linked Wikipedia page, 24.2 million units — that they decided to play safe and keep the previous design? Not that risking an upgrade to the iPhone X look would have been such a risk, however, given that the iPhone X has sold 63 million units (source: that same Wikipedia page). Was it simply a matter of having lots of parts available for manufacturing, and therefore not changing the SE design was the path of least resistance?

I don’t know, but looking at how the main iPhone lineup’s design has evolved over the years, I was starting to like the idea that Apple had made a more ‘conceptual’ choice and settled on the older, ‘new classic’ design of the iPhone 6/7/8 to keep offering a reasonably-sized phone, with a classic, properly rectangular display unmarred by dreadful notches, and with a reasonably reliable Home button with Touch ID. If Apple released a fourth-generation iPhone SE that looked like this while featuring most of the internals of the iPhone 16, I would, for the first time in my life, camp outside the local Apple Store the night before the official release and be among the first to buy it. (Yeah, I can hear your snark from here — It wouldn’t be such a long queue, Rick, don’t worry).

However, since the fourth-generation iPhone SE was expected in spring 2024 but didn’t materialise, with some even speculating that maybe it was the end of the line for the SE spinoff, the rumour mill has been active for a long time by now, and it would seem that the most likely scenario for the next iPhone SE is that it will probably feature the internals of the iPhone 16 and the outer design of the iPhone XR.

Pragmatically speaking, it would make some sense. If the pattern for the iPhone SE line is indeed, The SE is just last-generation design integrating modern-enough tech specs, then an iPhone SE with the size and design of the XR would fit such pattern. Given the current sizes of the main iPhone lineup (6.1 inches for the regular 16, 6.3 inches for the iPhone 16 Pro, 6.7 inches for the iPhone 16 Plus, and 6.9 inches for the iPhone 16 Pro Max), the iPhone SE 4 would still be a small-ish iPhone by current standards. And it would feature the new notched look introduced with the iPhone X back in 2017, marking a decisive departure from the iPhone 6 look. This notched look is apparently considered ‘iconic’ by Apple and many fans (who have no design taste at all, but that’s a flame war for another time), so, again, in many ways an iPhone XR-looking fourth-generation iPhone SE would make sense.

Would it really, though?

At the time of writing, the iPhones Apple is still producing and selling are the current iPhone 16 line, the non-pro iPhone 15 and 15 Plus (starting at $799), the non-pro iPhone 14 and 14 Plus (starting at $599), and the third-generation iPhone SE (starting at $429).

This is exactly the same situation we had when the third-generation iPhone SE was introduced in spring 2022. At the time the lineup was the then-current iPhone 13 line, the non-pro iPhone 12 and non-pro iPhone 11 offered at slightly lower prices than when they were new. 

And rewinding a little more, in April 2020, the lineup was the then-current iPhone 11 line, the iPhone XR, and the second-generation iPhone SE. 

Of course, back in 2016 things were a bit simpler: the first-generation iPhone SE only shared the spotlight with the then-current iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, and discounted iPhone 6/6 Plus models. Keeping the 5s still in production made no sense, obviously, given that the SE looked exactly the same.

The iPhone SE has historically been positioned as the most affordable iPhone, and engaging in a sort of trade-offs battle with the oldest regular iPhone model still on offer. 

  • The first-generation iPhone SE had better internals (CPU and camera) than the discounted iPhone 6 models, but was cheaper; on the other hand it had a smaller screen with older display technology.
  • The second-generation iPhone SE had better internals than the iPhone XR (better CPU, same camera, to be precise), was significantly cheaper ($399 versus the XR’s $599), but again, it had a smaller display, it didn’t have Face ID, and worse battery life.
  • The third-generation iPhone SE was decidedly better than the iPhone 11 Apple was still selling in April 2022, but had also a better CPU than the iPhone 12; on the other hand, the iPhone 12 had a bigger and better display, better camera array, better network performance. Still, the iPhone SE was $429, the iPhone 12 $599.

For those wanting a smaller, more affordable iPhone with a powerful-enough CPU, the iPhone SE 3 remained an interesting pick. And given that the iPhone 14 still retains the A15 Bionic chip of the 13 Pro and the iPhone SE 3, and is currently offered at $599, the $429 iPhone SE 3 still remains a viable solution for those with a tight budget.

Now, imagine a hypothetical fourth-generation iPhone with an A18 Bionic chip (or perhaps a specially-designed A17 Bionic, sort of a nerfed-A18?), the single-camera setup and technology of the iPhone XR, and of course the external design of the iPhone XR, featuring a 6.1‑inch screen (maybe with a slightly updated display technology), Face ID, etc. Let’s say it would replace both the third-generation iPhone SE and the iPhone 14 in Apple’s current offering. Its trade-offs battle would be against the regular iPhone 15. And it would be a tough one. Yes, it would have a better chip, but given how recent performance gains in iPhones have become basically imperceptible in everyday use, would such an iPhone SE 4 be a better proposition over the 15 when all it had would be same or better CPU speed and a lower price? The display would have the same size, the display technology would be worse, it would feature a notch while the iPhone 15 has a dynamic island, it would feature a decidedly worse camera setup… Sure, $429 would be a bargain compared to the $699 of the iPhone 15. But its form factor is too similar and, apart from the CPU, all the rest would be the same stuff but worse in all respects. Unless Apple is planning to do some unexpected changes, like offering a single-camera setup but with a better camera than the XR’s 12-megapixel affair, to make the next iPhone SE more appealing, I don’t see anything particularly special or worth considering in it. 

Sure, the iPhone XR has been an unexpected hit — the combined total sales of the XR, XS and XS Max have been 151.1 million units (source: that same Wikipedia page) — so it’s understandable that its design and form factor would be a good candidate for the iPhone SE 4.

But you know what I think would make more sense? I know I come from a biased position, but to me it would make more sense if the design and form factor of the next iPhone SE would be those of the iPhone 12/13 mini. Maybe the 13 mini, since it has a smaller notch on the front and a better battery performance. 

It makes more sense for me because the trade-offs against the iPhone 15 would be more interesting. You would have a better display technology compared to the iPhone XR’s, but on the other hand you would have a smaller 5.4‑inch display. Those who are happy with bigger iPhone screens could choose the 6.1‑inch iPhone 16 or 15, while those who still love smaller iPhones could see in the SE 4 the long-awaited refresh of their beloved iPhone 13 mini. The camera array could be the same as the 13 mini, too: worse than the one in the iPhone 15, but not that comparatively bad as the one in the XR. Overall, it would still feel like a ‘Special Edition’ phone: compared to the mainstream iPhone lineup, it would be different/special enough, appealing enough, modern enough, all the while maintaining that classic, truly iconic design that harks back to the lines of the iPhone 4 and 5. Apple could even sell it at $499 instead of $429. Heck, I could even put aside my long-standing deep-seated distaste for the notch if I could buy a smaller iPhone with current tech specs.

I’m too cynical to really hope Apple would make such a design choice, though. Oh well, one can dream.

→ Persistent horizontal lines appear on iMac screen

Handpicked

The day before yesterday, I got a message from my brother-in-law: Want to know something? My iMac has developed a series of horizontal lines all over the screen, more noticeable at the bottom.

And he shared a link to a discussion in the Community forum on Apple’s website. His iMac is the 24-inch M1 iMac model released in 2021. Apparently this issue is not uncommon. I’d like to quote the ‘Top-ranking reply’ in that forum thread in its entirety because it explains the issue with clarity; then I’ll add a couple of personal remarks. (Emphasis is the original poster’s.)

Jotap62”:

According to the Apple support team I contacted, it’s an LCD malfunction and the only solution is to replace it.

What they didn’t say was why this problem is occurring after two years of using the iMac on so many computers.

So, as Apple hasn’t yet assumed that it’s their fault, what I did, given the lack of concrete answers from Apple, was to take my iMac to a technician and ask him to assess the problem to see if it’s a construction problem or just a random fault.

The explanation I was given was as follows:

In terms of circuitry, everything seems to be working properly. 

The problem, apparently, lies in a cable that also powers the LCD, which is located on one of the tops of the screen, and which, in order to be replaced, requires detaching the screen glass from the LCD itself, which is a very sensitive operation and almost impossible to carry out without damaging the LCD.

So the only option is to replace the entire LCD (LCD + main boards + screen glass).

Also, according to the technician’s explanation, this cable (of the FFC/FPC type or Flat Flexible Cable / Flexible Printed Circuit) has to sustain a very high voltage (around 50V) to power the LCD (this despite the iMac’s power supply being 15.9V), and it heats up a lot!

So, what happens after a while (in this case after about 2 years) is that it starts to burn out and degrade at the connector, to the point where it lets the signals leak between the various connectors and short-circuits some of them, which ends up causing those lines that we are all unfortunately familiar with.

The level of brightness makes a fundamental contribution to this problem. Thus, the higher the brightness used, the sooner the problem occurs.

This is easily understood by measuring the difference in temperature at the top of the screen when it is at its lowest brightness level, compared to when it is at its highest. It’s quite a big difference! 

When it’s at its lowest brightness, it’s practically room temperature; when it’s at its highest, you can almost “fry an egg”!

I think that as soon as Apple recognizes that there is a problem with these computers, the first thing it will do is make a change to the OS that reduces the maximum brightness limit allowed (to less than 500 nits). Time will tell…

Why does this happen? 

For at least one of three reasons:

  1. A design flaw — so this problem is likely to occur in a large number of devices;
  2. A defect in components — the problem is limited to a few cases;
  3. Use of components below Apple’s standards — the problem may be limited, or more widespread.

This was the explanation I was given. I’m not a technician. Only Apple will know the exact reason(s).

If I had to guess, I’d say that I don’t believe it’s a design fault, because Apple has an obligation to be very careful about that; I also don’t think it’s a fault with the component(s) because it seems to be happening all over the planet and doesn’t seem to be localized; so I think it’s due to the use of component(s) below, or at the limit of, Apple’s standards which, when put under extreme stress (higher brightness), end up failing.

I think it’s already clear to everyone that this is a design or manufacturing defect in this Apple model.

So let’s hope that Apple takes on this construction problem and repairs it or at least contributes part of the cost of the (overly expensive) repair of our computers.

If it were a car, surely all our computers would be called into the workshop to replace the component that has broken down or is in the process of breaking down. 

As it’s a computer… let’s hope that Apple will behave in a way that suits its customers, who believe in the above-average Apple standard…

So keep presenting your cases to Apple. 

Since I’ve been out of the tech loop for a few months this year, maybe this issue has already been discussed. Anyway, here are a few scattered thoughts.

My first reaction was to add this to the series of duds in Tim Cook’s Apple (see my previous post to better get what I’m alluding to). It’s true that Apple is not new to this kind of problems. Several iterations of past MacBook Pros were plagued by graphics card issues that rendered the computer basically unusable. And some Intel iMac generations met the same fate, unfortunately. (I really feel for my brother-in-law, because his previous iMac — a 21.5‑inch 4K iMac from 2013 or 2014 — was exactly one of those with graphics card issues).

But while “Jotap62” above says that they don’t believe it’s a design fault, I’d say this is very much the case. Apple wanted to redesign an already-slim-enough iMac to produce something that was strikingly thin for a desktop computer. The space inside such a thinned down chassis is so tight that Apple had to make the power supply external to the iMac, just like a laptop’s AC adapter. When you work within tight spaces and with strict tolerances, things can go wrong. 13- and 15-inch models of MacBook Pro manufactured between 2016 and 2017 presented an issue with the display flex cable. As explained here, in those MacBook Pro models, the flex cable connecting the display to the board is now wrapped around the hinge and is a spring-ed ribbon cable. This makes it even more susceptible to breakage over time due to the constant tension and relaxation when opening and closing the lid, unlike the previous design, where the wire connecting [the display] was tucked inside the hinge cover and never moved.

This issue also surfaced in the ultra-thin 12-inch retina MacBook models, as if the butterfly keyboard was not enough of a blunder.

Now, back to the iMac display issue, as the technician contacted by “Jotap62” explains, if the iMac’s display flex cable “has to sustain a very high voltage (around 50V) to power the LCD (this despite the iMac’s power supply being 15.9V)”, I find it hard to believe that none of the hardware gurus at Apple didn’t know that. I’m not an engineer, nor a hardware guru, but what I suspect is that those responsible of designing and assembling the innards of the 24-inch M‑series iMac were given the daunting task of fitting everything into that super-thin chassis, and something got to give. And this kind of flex cable was a compromise, the ‘okay-enough’, ‘it’ll last enough’ solution. 

What infuriates me is that this is the kind of problem the manufacturer certainly knows about, but they also know it won’t trigger immediately. Customers then are faced with a costly out-of-warranty replacement, where the right thing to do would be to treat this as a known manufacturing issue and offer a free replacement. (Especially considering that — and this is the other infuriating bit — even after a replacement the issue is likely to reoccur). Maybe it’s also a case of components that are below Apple’s standards or requirements, but the outcome is the same — customers shouldn’t pay for these mistakes.

But this would be very costly for Apple, I already hear some say. Well, no one asked them to make this stupid, unnecessarily thin iMac redesign in the first place.

Jobs’s ‘quirky Apple’

Handpicked

A few side notes to John Gruber’s piece The Things They Carried, about the Sept. 9 Apple event It’s Glowtime

I don’t read Daring Fireball as diligently as I used to do time ago. It has always been a Mac- and Apple-oriented blog, implying a natural built-in bias, but I always appreciated Gruber’s balance in most of his critiques and stances. And I always maintained that he was a big influence on me, and one of the main reasons I wanted to start a tech blog of my own all those years ago.

But in recent years I haven’t particularly liked Gruber’s more and more apparent bias towards Apple and the company’s politics and behaviour, something I attribute to him having more access to the company’s higher executives. And I’ve found his position towards the EU and the way EU legislation is affecting Apple operations to be misguided, disingenuous, and borderline offensive.

Unlike other people, and despite all this, I haven’t stopped reading Daring Fireball for now, partly out of curiosity, partly because, when it comes to technology insights and observations, Gruber can still provide some interesting food for thought.

And in fact, when I started reading his latest long-form article on Apple’s September 9 event It’s Glowtime, titled The Things They Carried, I was intrigued and interested in reading his take. But a few paragraphs in, my eyebrow started to raise:

Last week’s “It’s Glowtime” event was very strong for Apple. It might have been the single strongest iPhone event since the introduction of the iPhone X. 

Wh… What? Have I watched a different event? Has Apple broadcast a shittier event for us viewers in the EU out of spite? The iPhone X — while I hated that it introduced the notch in the iPhone design — wasn’t exactly as iterative a product as the iPhone 16 (and the Watch, and the AirPods that have been presented along with it). I don’t see anything particularly groundbreaking to make me consider It’s Glowtime “the single strongest iPhone event since the introduction of the iPhone X.” This quote sounds like a blurb you’d find in one of Apple’s press releases.

But this is just a quibble. Later on, we encounter more… fascinating observations:

But the biggest difference is that Apple, under Jobs, was quirky, and I think would have remained noticeably more quirky than it has been under Cook. You’d be wrong, I say, to argue that Cook has drained the fun out of Apple. But I do think he’s eliminated quirkiness. Cook’s Apple takes too few risks. Jobs’s Apple took too many risks. 

I agree only in part with this, and it’s a small part. I want to clarify some things about that ‘quirky’, but I have to add more context first.

Duds

After the debatable remark that “Jobs was driven to improve the way computers work. Cook is driven to improve the way humans live”, with which I simply disagree, Gruber makes an excursion to illustrate aspects of Apple’s quirkiness under Jobs, and talks about the third-generation iPod nano.

It’s quite possible you don’t remember the fat Nano, because it wasn’t insanely great, even though it replaced 2nd-gen iPod Nano models that were. And so a year later, with the 4th-gen Nanos, Apple went back to the tall-and-skinny design, as though the fat Nano had never happened.

That fat Nano was quirky. It was also, in hindsight, obviously a mistake. I’m quite sure that inside Apple there were designers and product people who thought it was a mistake before it shipped. Steve Jobs shipped it anyway, surely because his gut told him it was the right thing to try. Tim Cook’s Apple doesn’t make mistakes like that. That’s ultimately why Cook’s Apple is more successful[.] 

I don’t know where this singling out of the third-generation iPod nano comes from. First of all, each of the first five generations of the iPod nano was in production for just one year, whether it was successful or not, a mistake or not, a dud or not. Some specific nano generations might have been more successful than others, but Jobs was keen on keeping things fresh by trying new designs and not dwell too much on the older ones. But, importantly, he often tried new designs almost exclusively on consumer Apple products. Pro or premium products had a different treatment. This is a crucial point I’ll elaborate further on.

The third-generation iPod nano was the first to feature video capabilities — its ‘fat’ look was due to its bigger 320×240 display, made bigger and brighter to watch videos more comfortably (the second-generation iPod nano’s display was a mere 176×132 pixels). The fourth- and fifth-generation nanos did return to a taller shape, but they weren’t less quirky, since to watch videos (and browse music albums in Cover Flow view) you had to rotate the iPod in landscape orientation. At least in the fifth-generation nano this quirk was partly justified by the fact that it had a camera and you could capture video, and some argue that holding the iPod in landscape orientation was better ergonomically. 

But the point is, the design of the iPod nano kept changing year after year, no matter what. Personal assessment: the 6th-generation nano was the most daring from a design standpoint, and I liked that it was ‘clippable’ like the iPod shuffle, but from a manufacturing standpoint, it suffered from having tiny, fragile buttons that tended to break after a few months of continued use, and the touch interface, while cool, was applied to a display too small for its own good. If there’s a dud among the iPod nanos, it’s probably this one more than the ‘fat’ nano. And this iPod stayed in production for two years.

The same can be said in the unfortunate case of the 3rd-generation iPod shuffle. It was absolutely minuscule, and that’s because it had almost no physical controls, which were relegated to the included earphones. Clearly a product made to amaze — I purchased one many many years later, in 2017, and I liked it more than I did when it first came out — but still, we may consider this another ‘true’ dud.

But then Gruber considers duds the iMac G4, the Power Mac G4 Cube, and the iSight camera. While I don’t disagree about the Cube (a product whose failure I still think has to be attributed to bad pricing and positioning — and perhaps even to being the right product at the wrong time — more than anything else), the iMac G4 and the iSight were more successful products. The iMac G4, in various display sizes and processor speeds, stayed in production from January 2002 to July 2004, and during that time — at least in my part of the world — I saw it everywhere: offices, graphic studios, shops, dental clinics, you name it. The iSight was produced between June 2003 and December 2006, it underwent three revisions, and again, as more and more people took to videoconferencing at the time, the more I was seeing iSight cameras propped on top of Cinema Displays or aluminium PowerBooks. It wasn’t a quirky dud.

Mistakes

Let’s get back to the last bit of the quoted part above. Gruber says: Tim Cook’s Apple doesn’t make mistakes like that. That’s ultimately why Cook’s Apple is more successful .

Selective memory is amazing. Shall we talk about a few duds that happened under Tim Cook’s Apple? Like the 2013 ‘trash can’ Mac Pro? Like the impregnable 2014 Mac mini? Like the 2015 12-inch single-port retina MacBook? — A dud in itself containing yet another dud in the form of the infamous keyboard with butterfly mechanism, one of the biggest blunders in Apple’s history that took the company four years, four years to acknowledge and fix it. Shall we talk about the Touchbar? Or the gold Apple Watch Edition? Shall we talk about the slow but assured deterioration of Mac OS, the user interface and Apple software in general? 

Success (as by-product of success)

Tim Cook’s Apple is more successful because Cook, on the one hand, has done what he did best in his previous position: he’s expanded Apple’s reach and scale of operations; and on the other he’s been extremely effective at taking advantage of a consolidated brand and reputation. A lot of people today purchase Apple products in part because they take for granted that it’s a reputable premium brand. They don’t (always) question whether each Apple product is demonstrably, indisputably better than the competition. You buy a Rolex watch first and foremost because it’s a Rolex; you don’t make a fuss or start carefully comparing it to other brands and evaluate which is the better manufactured, the most precise timepiece, etc. And even if other high-end watch brands make products just as good as a Rolex, you still choose Rolex. It’s the brand you ‘know’ best. (Not the greatest parallel, perhaps, given the different order of magnitude of money involved, but hopefully you get the idea).

And a lot of other people today purchase Apple products because they’re well entrenched in Apple’s ecosystem. They prioritise that convenience over other considerations — like the worsened UI across Mac OS and iOS, like the worsened software quality, like certain atrocious design decisions such as putting a notch in iPhones and, worse, on MacBooks. 

And let’s don’t forget how a lot of Apple products today, from a sheer outer design standpoint, haven’t dramatically changed since they were first produced under Jobs. And where they have changed, the new design is an obvious remix of past tried-and-true designs we first saw under Jobs. Unibody MacBook Pros stayed the same between 2008 and 2015, and have changed very little since 2015. They’ve got thinner, then thicker; they’re available in other colours and not just silver, they’ve acquired a stupid fucking notch, but their form factor, their essence, is unchanged.

Same goes for the iMac: same essential design from 2007 to 2020(!), then Cook’s Apple — in a momentary lapse of quirkiness — decided to redesign it with the M1 iMac in 2021, and basically forgot about it apart from a mild refresh in 2023.

Same goes for the Mac mini. The Mac Studio can be seen either as a taller mini or a G4 Cube cut in half. 

The Mac Pro had to be returned to its ‘tower of metal’ design after the fiasco of the 2013 model. (But I won’t waste any more of your time talking about how the Mac Pro today has actually become the quirkiest professional product ever made by Apple, again thanks to Cook’s ‘vision’ and ‘sage leadership’). 

Quirkiness

But let’s get back to Steve Jobs’s ‘quirky Apple’.

From the picture Gruber is painting in his piece, Steve Jobs’s Apple was characterised by a continued series of highs and lows, a tidal ebb-and-flow tied to the whims of its impulsive leader. And I concede that Jobs had an impulsive side. But I want you to pay close attention to which products were always the testing ground for design ideas and solutions; which products featured the more fun and whimsical side of Jobs’s Apple — they were the products aimed at the consumer segment. Risks were taken, but they were calculated risks, given that consumer Apple products in Jobs’s era were more affordable than ‘Pro’ products. (To go back to the iPod nano, if the design chosen for a particular generation turned out to be unsuccessful, Apple wouldn’t have gone bankrupt for selling fewer nanos).

Under Jobs, consumer products and professional products were more clearly separated; not just in price, but also (and more importantly for the sake of this argument) visually, in their design and their building materials.

  • The iMac was the most colourful, and it underwent four major design changes in nine years. Consumer product.
  • The iBook started colourful and with a polycarbonate shell. Then it went white, glossy and matte, and still polycarbonate, as opposed to the professional PowerBooks made of titanium and aluminium. Its design, too, changed a couple of times, to make it sleeker. Consumer product, and very successful among students.
  • The polycarbonate MacBook inherited the positioning and materials of the iBook. Same target segment. Here the outer design remained rather consistent, but still, its looks, materials, and manufacturing, clearly indicated ‘consumer product’.
  • The whole iPod line was obviously targeted at consumers, and here we find all kinds of shapes, colours, designs.

But if we look at all the professional and higher-tier Apple products under Jobs’s tenure, there isn’t much quirk, fun, or whimsy to be found:

  • The PowerBook G3 series was comprised of dark, austere notebooks, clearly aimed at professionals and businesspeople. And while there was an evolution in their design, becoming sleeker and more elegant machines, their form factor was essentially the same throughout their lifetime.
  • Then came the Titanium PowerBook G4 in 2001, and despite its issues with the finish that deteriorated over time, it was a successful product that went through four iterations, essentially unchanged, between January 2001 and September 2003.
  • Then came the Aluminium PowerBook G4 line. Same story: sleek design, different sizes but absolutely the same design language, which was kept unchanged between January 2003 and April 2006. Then, when it turned into the MacBook Pro in 2006 after the switch to Intel processors — guess what — the design still didn’t change except for accommodating the built-in webcam at the top of the screen, and it stays unchanged until the first unibody MacBook Pro in 2008. No quirkiness here either.
  • On the desktop side, we initially have the translucent Power Mac G3 ‘Blue & White’, fun and colourful, but somewhat positioned in a ‘semi-pro’ tier. It was also a short-lived machine, lasting about half of 1999. The Power Mac G4, instead, featured essentially the same design language throughout its entire lifetime, from August 1999 to June 2004.
  • The same can be said for the Power Mac G5. Identical design from its first introduction in 2003, to mid-2006, to then become the Mac Pro and retain the same design until 2012. No quirkiness on this front either.
  • Professional Apple displays’ design evolved together with the computer they were meant to be paired with. So at first they had a similar design as the Power Mac G3 ‘Blue & White’, then they were changed to fit the design language of the Power Mac G4 and the Cube, and finally they became more minimal and austere to be paired with the Power Mac G5/Mac Pro and the aluminium PowerBooks/MacBook Pros, and then to be the natural counterpart of the ‘unibody’ design of the later MacBook Pros. Again, products for professionals, no quirkiness or strange design alterations.

Jobs knew exactly where and how to direct the most fun and whimsical designs in Apple’s product lines. And fun and whimsical they were. And they were a joy to own and use, also thanks to their well-designed operating systems.

Homogeneity > fun?

Gruber says:

You’d be wrong, I say, to argue that Cook has drained the fun out of Apple. But I do think he’s eliminated quirkiness. […]

The delight is still there, but there’s less amazement. It’s by design. They’re not trying but failing to reach the heights of the Jobs era’s ecstatic design novelty, because those peaks had accompanying valleys. Apple today is aiming for, and achieving, utterly consistent excellence. Quirkiness no longer fits. 

If arguing that Cook has indeed drained the fun out of Apple is wrong, then I don’t want to be right. One thing that I feel has been noticeably reduced is the ‘something special’ factor I once found in Apple products with much more frequency. It’s more than just the amazement. It’s that urge to get that Apple computer or device because it feels special. I’ve rarely been an early adopter of Apple products, but that was mostly due to budget. But after many keynotes, after many product announcements, I always thought, I can’t wait to get my hands on this. Believe it or not, the only products out of Cook’s Apple that have brought back that kind of feeling have been… the sixth-generation iPad mini and, briefly, the M1 MacBook Air. 

The ‘utterly consistent’ excellence of Cook’s Apple is achieved through masterful levels of iteration. We’re seeing, for the most part, the same computers, devices, peripherals we’ve been seeing since they were introduced under Jobs, but continually refined and perfected. The brand and related recognition must be maintained. And before you jump at me and tell me that iteration in tech isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I’ll tell you that you’re right, it’s not. But when it patently goes on for this long and for every product line, I’m starting to question Apple’s ability to come up with something truly original and groundbreaking (and sorry, but the goggles are not that — they are stereoscopic iPads with iPadOS floating in 3D).

In eliminating quirkiness (not completely though, see the examples I made earlier), Cook has also eliminated that once clear distinction between entry-level Apple products and products aimed at professionals. There isn’t a ‘just MacBook’ anymore. The MacBook Pro / MacBook Air lines have different names, but now the design language and form factor are almost indistinguishable (even more indistinguishable than they were under Jobs, yes). There isn’t a truly compact Apple laptop anymore, now MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models are all crowding the space between 13-inch and 16-inch sizes. You want a compact laptop, get an iPad, seems to be Apple’s answer. I think there is still a market for a sub-$999 11- or 12-inch Apple laptop, maybe made of more rugged and ‘youth-proof’ materials. I don’t think it would be too much of a risk given current Apple profits and resources. But it would probably contaminate what Cook considers the Ideal Apple Brand. Ferrari doesn’t produce economy cars under their brand, are you crazy? 

You bloody Roy, you

Gruber also misses the mark when he talks about Cook being passionate and giving as example that infamous 2014 shareholders meeting and Cook’s angry “I don’t consider the bloody ROI” retort, but instead of doing the nitpicking myself, I’ll link to Michael Tsai’s observations, with which I agree.

Conclusion

I have made a lot of digressions and excursions, and perhaps that has diluted the point I was trying to make. So I’ll try to summarise it in my conclusion. The main thing I didn’t appreciate in Gruber’s piece was the narrative about Steve Jobs’s Apple being quirky, impulsive, very risk-taking, versus Tim Cook’s Apple with Cook apparently saving the brand by removing quirkiness and uncertainty, and bringing Apple on a spotless path of constant excellence and success, free of mistakes and quirks. I hope to have demonstrated how Jobs actually and purposefully chose where to play the quirky/fun/whimsical card and where to play safe, design-wise. 

And while I don’t deny Cook’s ability to make Apple an even more successful company, I would like to remind you of the state Apple was in when Jobs returned at the helm in 1997 versus the state Apple was in when Cook took control in 2011. In 14 years, Jobs literally built a company worth billions of dollars from the ashes of 1997 Apple. Cook has been an excellent asset manager, an excellent brand cultivator. He consolidated what was already successful and made everything greater and on an even bigger scale. And that’s undeniable. But he hasn’t built all this from scratch. He came into a very good inheritance. So while Gruber says,

I can’t prove any of this, of course, but my gut says that a Steve-Jobs–led Apple today would be noticeably less financially successful and industry-dominating than the actual Tim-Cook–led Apple has been. 

my gut isn’t so sure about that. And I wouldn’t be this quick in selling Jobs short. If we’re talking about gut feelings, I’d say that if Steve Jobs were still around, we would have a differently successful and a differently industry-leading Apple. A company that wouldn’t feel so ‘corporate tech’ as other giants in the field. A company that probably wouldn’t be this greedily pushy when it comes to the App Store and its bloody 30% cut. A company that probably wouldn’t want to be involved in everything, everywhere, all the time in all the markets but would instead choose specific markets and bloody excel at those. A company that would probably know what to do with the iPad. A company that would still make excellent software — especially when it comes to the Mac. And that would be capable of differentiating itself in more meaningful ways than just being a giant tech powerhouse.

Gruber:

Jobs was driven to improve the way computers work. Cook is driven to improve the way humans live. 

Steve Jobs:

It’s not just a job, it’s a journey. Let’s never forget that. … Your customers dream of a happier and better life. Don’t move products. Instead, enrich lives. 

It’s Lowtime — Observations on Apple’s September event

Tech Life

No, the title is not a typo. It’s me using wordplay to condense my impressions of Apple’s It’s Glowtime event of September 9 in just one word.

You’ll find very little here in terms of tech specs or feature breakdowns. You can find this kind of information in many other sites, starting from Apple’s own site. My impressions and observations are of a more general nature and, spoiler alert, are admittedly affected by the undercurrent of disappointment I’ve been feeling about Apple for a while.

The first thing that I found off-putting was the event format itself. Not because of something that stood out compared to other events of this kind, but precisely because it was the same pre-recorded and pre-packaged stuff Apple has been delivering since COVID hit four years ago. I miss Apple events with a live audience. On the one hand, they were more ‘static’ because everyone was in the same place, on the other they were also a bit more memorable and with a bit more character. Ever since Apple switched to this pre-packaged delivery format, the novelty has worn down quickly and these events all look like sophisticated PowerPoint presentations and, worse, they all look alike. When I try to isolate one from the last dozen I’ve watched, I can’t. They’re all a blur. If you ask me, “Remember the launch of the Apple Watch?”, I’ll tell you, “Oh yeah, I do!”. If you ask me, “Remember when Jobs announced the switch to Intel processors?”, I can still picture in my head some of the slides that were used. If you ask me to remember something about an iPhone event since the launch of the iPhone 11, my mind draws a blank. iPhone 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16… Yeah, nothing.

The structure and schedule of these events has progressively fossilised, too. Classic opening with a self-congratulatory video with the not-so-subtle message that ‘Apple saves lives’? Check. Tim Cook’s brief introductory speech with the same platitudes and trite turns of phrase we’ve heard since he became CEO? Check. Incredibly smooth overprocessed transitions from one presenter to another, located in starkly different locations at Apple Park and environs? Check. Claims of amazing new designs (where actually little has changed) to introduce the nth iteration of an Apple product? Check. Claims of Apple getting greener and greener as a company as we speak? Check. Hero video shorts that introduce the product starting from extreme, ultra-quality closeups to then reveal the final form with sweeping, liquid motions and epic background music? Check. Craig Federighi outgoing segment talking effusively about how Apple has turned the most basic features into something fantastic? Check. Hardware person blurting out technical details over technical details explaining how the SoC has improved, how many more cores it has, how much speed and efficiency have been gained, etc.? Check. You get the idea. I actually rewatched bits of past events, just to see if this was bias or me misremembering; but no, it’s all there.

It’s Apple going through the motions, and I couldn’t help noticing it at every turn of the hour-and-a-half event.

Three products were presented on Monday: the new Apple Watches (Series 10 and Ultra 2), the new AirPods (4, Pro 2, Max), and the new iPhone 16 and 16 Pro. Everything about these products was iterative. Despite Cook’s claim of a ‘beautiful new design’, the new Apple Watch doesn’t look particularly new. It’s a bit thinner than its predecessor, its display is larger and more readable, the materials are different, sure. But the design bears the same characteristic as the first Apple Watch. It’s an almost 10-year-old idea that has been refined year after year after year. There’s a particularly fitting phrase in Latin that describes this iterative process: labor limæ — literally ‘filing work’ — that was used to express the patient, assiduous, meticulous refining work of poets and writers after outlining their pieces in order to bring them to perfection. 

The segments about the new AirPods and new iPhones were no different. And Apple loves talking about their refining work, indulging in descriptions of which materials they chose, how such materials were treated and processed, how they were able to achieve certain finishing details, and so forth. As we were watching the event, a friend joked in private chat that Apple has to add some filler stuff, otherwise the event would last only 40 minutes or so. I don’t know whether this is filler stuff; my feeling is that Apple revels in such details because it’s still what Apple does best. I don’t think there’s another hardware company that has developed such advancements in material research, treatment, and finish. But I’m increasingly afraid that hardware manufacturing and engineering are the only ‘cores’ that can still effectively propel the company. 

What I loved about Steve Jobs’s keynotes is that there was a compelling underlying narrative giving a sort of human connective issue to all the ‘techy’ bits. Jobs weaved a coherent context that justified what was behind a change in design, a technical choice, the need for an advancement in specific areas of a product. Sure, there were data samples, there were tech specs and comparisons, but you didn’t reach the end of a keynote thinking that it had all been about tech specs and speed boosts. Conversely, that’s precisely what I felt at the end of most of these pre-recorded events I’ve watched for the past four years. I get to the end of an event thinking it has been like sitting in a conference room with employees and shareholders listening to the same well-oiled PowerPoint presentation showing how these latest machines are a bit sleeker, faster, and more performant than last year’s models. There’s a distinctive corporate stench.

And it seems to me that Apple is progressively losing itself in these minute details while missing the fundamentals of what made Apple a special company: the vision, the ‘thinking different’, the ‘technology is not enough’, the ‘innovation is saying no to a thousand things’.

The engineering feats of the Apple Watch, the research on the various materials, the meticulous finishing, are all undeniable and unparalleled. But it’s a watch for technophiles. Traditional horology enthusiasts and experts may appreciate the Apple Watch from a strictly technological standpoint, but to my knowledge few of them have praised its visual design. I love traditional watches and even those digital watches from Casio and Citizen that were incredibly popular in the 1980s, and I find the Apple Watch’s design to be nondescript at best and unattractive at worst.

But it’s a product that sells, as-is, so Apple doesn’t seem inclined to mess with it. They don’t seem to even think about, I don’t know, releasing a different model, maybe with a different shape or style, that may appeal more to lovers of traditional watches. They don’t even seem to consider maybe rethinking watchOS to make it more adaptable to the needs of different users. Every year, the new iteration of the system adds more stuff to the already dizzying array of stuff that was added the year before. Apple Watch is almost ten years old, and in all this time what we have got is an unstoppable amount of feature creep on one side, and still a surprisingly limited system when it comes to true customisation on the other. As I was losing myself in the presenters’ drone about all the new things the watch was able to do now, I was thinking about how I wish watchOS were actually a modular system, letting me install only the features I need. This would be great from a UI standpoint, because fewer features and fewer information to display and interact with would mean a cleaner UI. And it would potentially increase the watch’s efficiency and battery life. What I want in a smartwatch is the timekeeping, the steps/calories count, the heart monitoring, and little else. And I know a lot of people with similar needs. 

Instead, Apple Watch is becoming more and more a smartphone for your wrist. We already have a smartphone in our pocket. But this feature cramming, in my eyes, is yet another sign of a company led by businesspeople and hardware specialists who don’t seem to be able to look past their iterative mindsets. The UI, UX, software design, don’t feel prioritised. Every year a new layer is placed on top of the previous; gestures accumulate, operations you memorised now have variants to accommodate the new, bolt-on features. The user interface silently deteriorates, becoming more fiddly, less intuitive, more crowded by additional elements that require impossibly precise and purposeful navigation on the part of the user — this applies in part to watchOS, but especially to iOS.

I didn’t pay much attention to the AirPods segment because it’s a product I have little interest in, and not because I have something against it — my ears do. I simply can’t use true wireless earphones, no matter the brand, as one of the buds always falls off and the other stays barely in place. I could never use this kind of earphones on the move: I would lose them instantly. The only AirPods I could be interested in are the over-the-ear AirPods Max, but if you’ll forgive my bluntness, I just find them ugly and overpriced. I love my Sony WH-1000MX3 and MX5 too much to look elsewhere. They have great noise cancelling, a very nice audio profile (for my ears), good design, they’re very comfortable to wear even for hours, durable, and worth every penny of their overall reasonable price.

During the event, I chuckled at Francisco Tolmasky’s observations, particularly this one: The number one thing they could add to AirPods is putting a LATCH ON THE CASE. Do a study of people dropping the fucking AirPods and having them pop out like popcorn. I don’t want a smaller case, different shape case, I want a case that STAYS CLOSED.

I don’t have direct experience of this, but know a fair amount of people who complain exactly about this aspect. Apple, the company that’s all about sweating the details, could be a little less shortsighted when it comes to more practical matters related to the use of their products.

Finally, the iPhone segment clearly revealed (if that wasn’t clear enough already) just how much Apple has become ‘just another tech company’. First: emphasis on tech specs and performance increase. It’s all bigger, faster, better. The performance graphs are getting comedic. It’s like the car manufacturer introducing the revised version of their flagship sports car, telling you that, while the older model ‘only’ reached a top speed of 300 km/h, with this new one you can reach 400 km/h! As if that made any real difference in your day-to-day life.

Second: let’s jump on the ‘AI’ bandwagon and drop ‘AI’ everywhere in our products. And Apple Intelligence (Apple’s personal spin on ‘AI’, which looks like they finally found some expensive makeup to beautify Siri) seems to permeate every aspect of iOS 18 and the iPhone 16 models. I watch Federighi affably explain how with Apple Intelligence in Messages, Notes, Photos, you now can do this and that… And the first thing coming to my mind is, Dude, you have no idea how regular people use messages, notes, and photos, do you?

I know, unfiltered thoughts may be rough, but let’s be honest: Messages, Photos, Notes, Reminders, Calendars… it’s the same old shit we’ve had on our Macs and iPhones and iPads for years, but every year they need to reinvent the wheel to make this same shit ‘interesting’. It was text, then came emoji, then animoji, memoji, now it’s ‘AI’-generated emoji. In simpler times, it was just taking a photo, look at your photo roll, maybe share it with friends or on social media; then it came photos (badly synced) in the cloud, then moments, memories, themed albums, albums with soundtracks, then spatial photos, then make your own little movie based on your albums and memories and whatnot. But don’t worry because all the heavy lifting is done by ‘AI’. I don’t worry about that, I worry that you’re so far removed in your aseptic, frictionless ivory tower that you have little to no clue as to how people interact with their phones, their photos and notes and messages. Spoiler alert: not much differently than what they used to do 10–15 years ago. Your reinventing the wheel only confuses non-tech people because it messes with their simple, tried-and-true workflows. The workflows they learnt when iOS was lean and naturally intuitive, 15 UI layers ago. The cries for technical assistance I sometimes get from friends and acquaintances are for issues that are so ridiculous, and so non-Apple, they remind me of when I was doing tech support in the era of Windows 95 and 98. 

My impression that Apple is severely removed from how actual people use their phones is reinforced every time they show a short video to illustrate how certain features work. These videos are supposed to showcase how Apple products naturally embed in regular people’s daily lives. What we see are slices from utopia. Impeccable people moving about in their impeccable homes living glossy-magazine lives, everybody fluidly relating to their personal tech devices. They’re filmed in a way Apple people think will look relatable, while you’re sitting at your messy desk in a modest studio in your decent-enough apartment that is costing you your life savings, watching the Apple event, watching these little videos and thinking, Who are these people, what do they do for a living, and what the hell is that girl doing on her iPhone?

These videos, the whole pre-recorded Apple event, it all feels like a controlled environment. I want back those live demos on stage done by Apple’s senior management. Every now and then there was some goofy banter or awkward moment. Every now and then something wouldn’t really work 100% as planned. But they were fun to watch. They felt real. They were memorable. Apple felt more hands-on with the product(s) they were introducing.

Back to the iPhone. Oh yes, I don’t want ‘AI’ in my phone. It should be a togglable feature, like autocorrect. For the moment, due to EU legislation if I got it right, it seems that in the EU iOS 18 won’t feature Apple Intelligence at first. I wish things could stay this way indefinitely, but if indeed Apple Intelligence will eventually be part of iOS everywhere, again, I would really really love for it to be an opt-in functionality. I’m not interested in ‘AI’-generated emoji. I don’t need Apple Intelligence to correct or summarise a message, email, or other text for me. I can do the work myself. I want to do the work myself. This is the good friction that keeps your brain nimble and makes you sound like you when you write to someone else.

And then of course there’s the usual part when Apple talks at length about the camera technology in the new iPhone. And again, here everything is faster, better, smarter. Without doubt, camera technology in iPhones is getting ridiculously powerful, to the point that the feature offer far surpasses the feature demand. I still find all the emphasis on speed to be adorable. The unsurmountable speed bottleneck is deciding which of the 45 photo apps you’re going to choose to take the shot. 

Camera Control is a good example of a new feature that works great on paper, and even in some pre-recorded animations on Apple’s site. In practice, the simple and effective idea of having (finally) a dedicated camera button (and I say finally because with iPhones that are becoming more and more like small tablets in size, they are also more and more awkward to handle when used as cameras, so a dedicated camera button is definitely a godsend) is immediately contaminated by assigning multiple functions and gestures to this button, in a way that reminds me of the jog-dial in many personal devices like phones and PDAs manufactured by Sony in the 1990s and 2000s. A dial that was context-aware, that you could turn but also push because it was a combination of a wheel and a button. It wasn’t terrible at the time, but it wasn’t always intuitive either.

The general impression that stayed with me after the iPhone camera segment was that everything is getting to a bewildering saturation point which goes beyond photography and kind of steals its soul in the process. So many ‘exciting’ camera upgrades, so much computational assistance, you’ll end up forgetting what it means to take a photo. Point and click and get the perfect photo. No wonder more and more people share this mindset that makes it all about the gear. No wonder people come to me, unprompted, and justify their need for a new iPhone Pro because “it takes better photos” than their two-year-old iPhone.

At this point you may understandably wonder whether there was something, anything I liked about the new devices Apple presented on September 9. Yes, actually. I like the materials Apple is using both for the watch and for the iPhone. I especially like titanium for its durability and lightness, and I like the titanium colour variants in the iPhone 16 Pro models — their colour scheme is overall very ‘Dune’. I also like the colour variants of the regular iPhone 16, especially the Ultramarine, but it’s a pity they dropped warmer, more vibrant colours (I’m also not seeing a PRODUCT(RED) option when simulating a purchase). 

I also like the boosted video capabilities of the new iPhone Pro models. I’m not a videographer or video expert of any kind, mind you, but from what I’ve seen, the iPhone 16 Pro is capable of delivering a one-stop solution for filming stuff in at least a semi-pro capacity. I’ve toyed with the idea of starting a YouTube channel for a while, but one of the many aspects holding me back has been what kind of gear to use to deliver decent audio and video without much fuss. And an iPhone with these capabilities would be a perfect single-tool answer, probably even overkill.

The AirPods and AirPods Pro are also a great product. I hated the design of the first-generation AirPods, with those stupidly long, ungainly stems, making them look like replacement heads for an electric toothbrush. For once, the continued iteration has brought a better, more elegant design, and they’re packed with interesting audio technology. I still think true wireless earbuds with non-replaceable batteries are an environmental issue, and from a more practical standpoint, I wouldn’t invest in a product with a potentially short lifetime. As for the AirPods Max, as I said earlier, I’m not a fan. They’re available in different colours now, and they have USB‑C connectivity, but Apple hasn’t changed or improved their design, which is probably what some people were expecting.

So, is it time for me to upgrade to a new iPhone? No, not yet. There are things to like about this last iteration, but I’m not fond at all of the fundamental design choices Apple has been making: as I’ve said (too) many times, I don’t want notches or dynamic islands to contaminate the screen’s real estate. I also hate the disappearance of a Home button and related Touch ID functions. And I’m not a fan of the ever-increasing device sizes. 

And then there’s the matter of the price, which cannot be ignored. In my country, prices for the regular iPhone 16 start at €959; starting prices for the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max are €1,219 and €1,469 respectively. The M2 Pro Mac mini I purchased last year was about €1,530. This is nuts. After one year, what the Mac mini has enabled me to do has already paid for itself. What I would do on an iPhone 16 (Pro or not) is basically the same I’ve been doing with the iPhone SE 3, and the iPhone 8 before that. Yes, better video performance and ‘pro’ video features could be of use, if I decide to do video-related stuff down the road.

All in all, it’s a frustrating outlook. My iPhone SE 3 still works great and will probably last me another year or more. It also retains the iPhone design I love most: the perfect size for my hands, a rectangular display without notches or similar crap, and Touch ID via a proper Home button. But it’s the last of its kind, and there won’t be another one like it. I’ll probably keep using it until it no longer supports the latest iOS, investing in a battery replacement if need be. But switching to Android — gasp — isn’t out of the question either, and while certain Android flagship models have similar prices as the new iPhones, I don’t need a flagship phone for my use cases. Further, this Surface Duo I acquired second-hand for a pittance is a surprisingly good device and doesn’t even run the latest Android version.

In conclusion, this latest Apple event did very little to bring back any enthusiasm towards the brand. I feel more alienated event after event. I no longer see a company with the technological vision of a pioneer in its field, but a corporate entity that’s becoming indistinguishable from other tech giants. A company that, for the most part, still iterates on designs and ideas that are 10–15 years old — and it’s excellent at iterating, hardware-wise, but I keep feeling it’s losing the plot and the ability to carve new paths. And don’t “Vision Pro” me, because I’ll just laugh back. A company that keeps reinventing the wheel with its products, obsessed with improving tech specs, investing a lot of resources to keep the same applications (in the sense of practical use cases) relevant and interesting, instead of pushing the research & development envelope and devising some entirely new ways and applications aimed at a true technological progress.

But maybe I’m expecting too much from a company which lost its founder and visionary 13 years ago, apparently fired a lot of people who understood user interface and software design, and is run by largely unimaginative businessmen and hardware nerds.

Redeeming a code: when processes are too simple

Software

Here’s something that recently happened to me. I realise it might be a bit of an edge case, but I think it’s worth reflecting on it.

I’m sure you’ll all be familiar with the process of redeeming a code when someone gifts you an app for your Mac or iOS device. It’s simple, fast and straightforward, no question about it. My recent experience revealed that, in certain cases, it can be too simple for its own good.

One of my clients is a software studio that makes different apps for Mac and iOS. As they wanted me and other translators to check things in their latest apps, they provided a bunch of codes so we could obtain the apps free of charge. I can’t name names or be more specific, as you’ll understand, but this doesn’t really matter for what I want to demonstrate.

Now, I had already purchased one of these apps for Mac some time ago. Let’s call it App 1. In the communication I received, the codes were given for both App 1 and App 2; since the wording wasn’t crystal clear, and I didn’t want to waste a code for an app I already had, I asked for confirmation: “Is this code for App 2? Because I already have App 1 but not App 2, so it would be quite handy to have a code for App 2”.

Yes, this is for App 2”, was the reply. So I happily initiated the process of redeeming that code. I opened the Mac App Store app, clicked on my account, clicked on Redeem Gift Card, and I entered the code in this screen:

Redeeming a code in the App Store app for Mac

After hitting Return, the next window simply said something like Your app is now downloading. So I clicked back and in the app list associated with my account I watched, in horror, that what was downloading was App 1. And its code had been ‘burnt’ for nothing.

The mix-up done by the client isn’t the issue here. The first question I asked myself as I was powerlessly watching the app download, was Could all this have been avoided? And the answer I gave myself was, of course, yes. Yes, all this could have been avoided with just a sprinkle of thoughtfulness in the user interface.

The two failure points in this process, as far as I reckon, have been:

  1. After entering the code, I should have been presented with a confirmation screen informing me about which app that code corresponded to and asking me whether I was sure I wanted to redeem it. What happens instead is that you have no idea what you’re downloading until it’s too late. Addressing this would be enough to avoid mistakes or accidental wastes of gift codes.
  2. The second appalling thing in this process was that, despite me having already a purchased copy of the app installed on my Mac, the App Store app redeemed the code and re-downloaded the app anyway. And this, in an ideal UI world, should not happen. There should be a failsafe that interrupts the code redeeming process if the system detects that you already own the app and it’s regularly licenced.

I know that in most cases people already know which app they’ve been gifted and have no issues with the code redeeming process as it is. But I think that adding just a little confirmation screen before actually redeeming a code would certainly be an improvement. I talked about this with a couple of friends to confirm whether my remarks were making sense, and one of them told me that this would have been very useful to him when he was given a code for an app as a birthday gift, and it turns out he already owned that app.

Simplicity in user interface design is often a good thing, but it’s worth spending time evaluating the amount of simplicity you provide in an application or in a user interaction flow.