Riccardo Mori

Apple’s DNA and Europe’s DMA

October 4, 2023

I praised a few video essays by Jon Prosser in the past, and I respect the guy, but while his latest This is the END of Apple may have a ‘hit’ title and premise, I feel it’s actually a ‘miss’. A fair warning and admission: I’ve only watched the first 10 minutes of this 14-minute video, then I got so irritated that I had to close the browser tab. But I think it was enough to understand Prosser’s argument, and in any case what I’m going to talk about here is based on what I watched, so I don’t think I’m jumping to conclusions. But do let me know if I missed something crucial.

Prosser’s video first points out how the appearance of USB‑C in iPhones is remarkable because for the first time in Apple’s history, it’s not exactly there because Apple chose to go this route, but it was a decision heavily influenced by EU legislation and its Digital Markets Act. Prosser theorises that this turning point — Apple’s compliance with government legislation — may very well be the beginning of the end for Apple. Because now that the EU Commission has successfully forced Apple’s hand, like the story of the mouse and the cookie, the EU will want more, the EU will require Apple to make changes to their products in ways that go against Apple’s own direction, and ultimately against Apple’s DNA. This is what Prosser calls ‘the end of Apple’.

Prosser:

A week or so ago, a chief of EU industry, Thierry Breton, publicly called on Tim Cook to open up the iPhone’s walled garden ecosystem of hardware and software to… rivals. In a quote, Thierry said, The next job for Apple and other Big Tech, under the DMA (Digital Markets Act) is to open up its gates to competitors. Be it the electronic wallet, browsers or app stores, consumers using an Apple iPhone should be able to benefit from competitive services by a range of providers.

This doesn’t seem like an unreasonable request for most companies, and it can be hard to pinpoint where the problem lies exactly for iPhone users, for Apple fans in general. But let’s really look at what this means. Under this new DMA law, Apple’s major platforms like the App Store, Safari, and iOS as a whole were officially classified as ‘gatekeepers’ [Note: To be precise, the Wikipedia entry for the Digital Markets Act states that “Twenty-two services across six companies — Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft — were named as ‘gatekeepers’ by the EU in September 2023.”] and as a solution Apple is expected to add support for the sideloading of apps from outside the App Store on iPhones and iPads. Apple’s argument for their walled garden approach has always been user security and privacy. Obviously the lack of competition in their own platform is another huge positive, and our guy Thierry was quick to respond to that argument too. In a quote, he said, EU regulation fosters innovation, without compromising on security and privacy. And in a very ‘Apple’ move, [Apple] haven’t responded to this comment. But I will: this is fucked up!

Here Prosser inserts a Steve Jobs quote taken from the interview at the All Things Digital D8 Conference in 2010 with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher:

We’re just people running this company. We’re trying to make great products for people, and so we have at least the courage of our convictions to say, “We don’t think this is part of what makes a great product, we’re gonna leave it out”. Some people are going to not like that, they’re going to call us names, it’s not going to be in certain companies’ vested interests that we do that, but we’re going to take the heat. Because we want to make the best product in the world for customers, and we’re going to instead focus our energy on these technologies which we think are in their ascendancy and we think are going to be the right technologies for customers. And you know what? They’re paying us to make those choices! That’s what a lot of customers pay us to do, to try to make the best products we can, and if we succeed they’ll buy them. And if we don’t, they won’t.

Then Prosser comments:

This opening of Apple’s ecosystem is not pro-consumer. This is not something consumers — Apple’s iPhone users specifically — are asking for. This is just anti-Apple, and it’s kind of gross.

So much to unpack here. I’ll start from the very last paragraph quoted above, and loudly call bullshit.

This opening of Apple’s ecosystem is very much pro-consumer, and very much anti-fanboy. I sympathise a lot with that Steve Jobs’s quote, and every time I see excerpts from his attendances at the various ‘D’ Conferences I get nostalgic and start missing the man badly. But we have to put that quote in context. And the context is the year 2010, thirteen years ago, when the newest phone was the iPhone 4, the latest iOS version was iOS 4, the first iPad had just been introduced, the iOS App Store was two years old, and iCloud didn’t exist yet. An era when Apple’s ecosystem was rather strong in general, but not as stifling as it would become in the following thirteen years.

I’ve been writing online about tech since late 2004 (if you don’t count my participation in forums and mailing lists, which started circa 2000), and I’ve launched this website in 2011. Since morrick.me started getting some traction circa 2014, I have lost count of the number of emails I have received from people, Apple users, utterly frustrated by the progressively walled-garden structure of Apple’s mobile ecosystem. Even back when the iPhone 3G was introduced, and it finally became widely available here in Europe as well, I had clients and friends who were puzzled by certain aspects of ‘Apple’s way of doing things’. Bluetooth file transfer between phones was one. An acquaintance at the time pointed out how easy it was for them to just send any file via Bluetooth from a Nokia (or any other brand) dumb phone to another phone, with just a few clicks. Try that with an iPhone to any other phone, or even between iPhones. There was no AirDrop back then. The quickest way was sending the file via email, or maybe uploading it somewhere and sharing the download link. Or using some kind of third-party solution, but both iPhones had to have the same third-party app installed, and so forth.

When Jobs says, That’s what a lot of customers pay us to do, to try to make the best products we can, and if we succeed they’ll buy them. And if we don’t, they won’t. — That’s not as clear-cut as it perhaps was in 2010. Recently, in a feedback email I received, one of my readers was sharing his exasperation about feeling irrevocably locked into Apple’s ecosystem:

I’ve seen a lot of interesting Android devices in the past 2–3 years or so. I like what certain brands like Google and Samsung and Nothing are doing with the design. iPhones feel stale in comparison. And Android, I’ve tried the latest version on a borrowed Google Pixel. I like it. When you remove all the crap and the bloatware, it’s pleasant, and certain quality apps don’t feel that much different from their iOS counterparts. I also think this Pixel takes better photos than my iPhone 13.

But I can’t just switch to Android and leave the iPhone behind. Why? Because friends and family all have iPhones. Because chats means using iMessage. Video calls means FaceTime. Photo sharing, file sharing means iCloud. Convenience should mean using whatever the hell solution you want to seamlessly connect with others. Not, let’s just all lock ourselves in the same ecosystem and use the tools that are graciously bestowed on us by our overlords.

And before you ask, no, I can’t afford to dual-wield an iPhone and an Android phone. I’m also not saying it’s impossible for me to just switch. I’d probably find a workaround for many situations where the 2 platforms [iOS and Android] diverge. But it’s exhausting, and you know, also ridiculous if you stop and think about it. It’s 2023, there should be more interoperability and fewer ivory towers, you know? These constraints look more and more stupid and artificial.

And this is by no means the only message I’ve received with this kind of complaint or frustration.

Sideloading

To avoid becoming too long-winded, I’ll point you to my article On sideloading from November 2021. My position on the matter hasn’t changed since then (it never changed, by the way).

Painting sideloading as this serious threat against Apple’s ecosystem or even DNA is really just parroting Apple’s stance and just accepting a closed and proprietary system as the best and most consumer-friendly solution. It is neither. It’s simply the easiest solution to implement, the easiest to maintain, and the one that potentially brings more money through user lock-in.

Apple likes to use privacy and security as a way to justify the walled-garden approach of its mobile ecosystem. I don’t doubt that a locked-down system (like current Macs’ hardware and some parts of Mac OS) or a locked-down platform (like iOS on iPhones and iPads) is inherently more secure than a system or platform where users have complete freedom of movement and choice. But the flipside is, well, that as a consequence, users do not have complete freedom of movement and choice. So they cannot replace a Mac’s internal SSD or expand a Mac’s RAM if they want more down the road, because it’s all soldered and impenetrable. You have to go through Apple, probably spending double or triple what you would spend by sourcing the parts yourself and replacing them yourself or having them replaced in a repair shop.

And if someone creates a wonderful Commodore or Nintendo simulator to play classic games on your iOS device, and Apple rejects the app citing some App Store rule, you won’t be able to enjoy such app, full stop. If someone creates an iOS utility that truly takes advantage of certain iPhone/iPad features, but in a way Apple considers too ‘close to the metal’ or too competitive with what they’re already offering in the operating system, Apple will reject this utility. Not because it’s ‘dangerous’ or ‘malware’, but because it interferes with their agenda in some way. And we should believe that Apple has the customer’s best interests at heart? Sideloading may open the doors to frauds, scams, and malware, but also to many potential great apps that are currently rejected for some bizarre App Store rule, technicality, or interference with Apple’s internal plans. And by the way, the current state of all App Stores is not really secure for customers either, since a plethora of scammy apps are discovered practically every day. As I wrote back in 2021:

[Back when the App Store was first introduced] Instead of teaching users how to fish, Apple decided to position themselves as sole purveyors of the best selection of fish. Now, leave aside for a moment all the tech-oriented observations you could make here. Just stop and think about how arrogant and patronising this attitude is. Sure, I can believe the genuine concerns of providing users with the smoothest experience and protecting them from badly-written apps (or just straight malware) that could compromise the stability of their devices. But by not taking a more moderate approach (it’s either we lock down the platform or we’ll have the cyber equivalent of the Wild West!), you also deprive users of choice and responsibility.

The problem of appointing yourself as the sole guardian and gatekeeper of the software that should or should not reach your users is that you’re expected to be infallible, and rightly so. Especially if you are a tech giant which supposedly has enough money and resources to do such a splendid job that is virtually indistinguishable from infallibility. Instead we know well just how many untrustworthy and scammy apps have been and are plaguing the App Store, and how inconsistent and unpredictable the App Review process generally is.

The EU is not the enemy

It’s worrying to me that Prosser and so many technophiles (especially from the US) prefer to side with Apple and Big Tech and frame this whole matter as government/legislation versus tech companies/innovation — the typical us-versus-them mentality — as if these were two irreconcilable entities. In a world where tech companies are dictating and controlling (directly or indirectly) so many aspects of our lives, seeing a governmental body and legislation — whose purpose is to really care about people’s best interests — as the enemy is just misguided. According to many of these nerds, tech companies should be given free rein to do whatever they please, because otherwise innovation would not happen; and we should give them free rein also because they said they want what’s best for their customers and we of course must believe this narrative, because tech companies are typically sincere and altruistic in their pursuits. Shareholders, fiscal quarter results, money and capitalism are just minor, tertiary factors we shouldn’t really look too much into — Right?

You know what’s gross and fucked up, Prosser? Siding with Big Tech today, instead of understanding that maybe a bit of legislation and compliance is necessary to protect customers from being treated like sheep with wallets, or reduced as products.

The typical retort, If they don’t like the status quo, customers can vote with their wallet, is just ridiculous and out of touch with many realities. Platform lock-in is a serious issue, and many people can’t just buy an Android phone or a Linux laptop on a whim or in protest. Sometimes migrating platforms involves many months or even years of transition, especially if your business has always gravitated around Apple solutions. Sometimes you can’t even migrate to a platform while leaving the other entirely behind, because your clients need compatible, cross-platform solutions. And on a personal level, like with the feedback email I quoted before, what keeps you locked into a platform is peer pressure, or the increased friction you would experience by switching. Mind you, increased friction that is artificially created by tech companies to keep you locked in. Friction that tech companies, if they truly wanted to enhance people’s lives, would remove and let people decide what they want by really offering them incredibly good-quality products. Healthy competition and all that, you see.

Because if you think about it, one quite detrimental side effect of a locked-down ecosystem is that you as a company (especially if you’re in Apple’s position) are not exactly incentivised to provide quality software. Apple still makes good hardware, but when software is concerned, the ‘good quality’ is essentially a myth today. The quality here is mostly tied to Apple’s reputation and legacy, but its software has been on a downward spiral since Jobs passed away. With so many locked-in customers, you can get away with so many things, such as the appalling quality and reliability of iCloud services, which is incredibly baffling considering the resources of a trillion-dollar company and the fact that by now iCloud has been around for twelve years. Same with Siri, another 12-year-old fiasco. And some people complain, but due to the intricacies of switching to third-party solutions, or even migrating entirely, they remain within Apple’s ecosystem, so customer retention is really not something Apple is terribly worried about.

So, since people don’t really have enough power to make tech companies behave in a more customer-friendly way, it’s entirely natural that the government step in to act as a sort of mediator. I don’t know if it’s because I’m European and have a different mindset from an American citizen, but I welcome this attempt by the EU Commission to legislate and provide a set of rules Big Tech should abide by, and nowadays I prefer this over a scenario where Big Tech can control and manipulate our lives without any kind of supervision.

You could cynically point out that both Apple and the EU Commission are pushing their own agendas using the ‘customer’s best interests’ as a pretext. But the difference between a big tech company that uses customer friendliness and acting in the customers’ best interests as essentially marketing ploys, and a governmental body drawing legislation that should be more protective of customers’ rights, is that the latter necessarily involves accountability. Laws and regulations are codified and written down. They aren’t blurbs on a website you can retroactively change or delete if the wind turns a certain way. How much accountability has Apple had for all the troubles and headaches they created with the MacBook’s butterfly keyboards? Is that pro-customers? The way they’ve handled the whole ‘right to repair’ matter, does that look pro-customers to you? A governmental body wanting to create some legislative framework and regulations Big Tech must comply with in order to operate within a specific territory (not in the whole world), is that really the enemy here?

Innovation, schminnovation

Don’t even get me started with the argument that the European Digital Markets Act is stifling innovation. Eleven goddamn years with the Lightning connector — is that innovation? Persisting with an aging, proprietary solution even when every other port in every other Apple device is standard? What’s innovative or even remotely user-friendly here?

And opening up Apple’s ecosystem and allowing the sideloading of any kind of compatible app isn’t exactly stifling innovation, either. Quite the opposite, because when people can install whatever software they like on your devices, you are absolutely incentivised to innovate. Firstly because, if you really have at heart your customers’ best interests, you ought to start taking security and privacy even more seriously. Secondly because, when your customers aren’t pushed to use your first-party solutions, you want to keep reeling them in by providing (but for real this time) the best software, services, and solutions you can come up with. You can’t afford to rest on your laurels.

A walled-garden structure hinders innovation in a more profound way than having an open structure or an environment where competitors are allowed to participate. In a closed ecosystem, only Apple has the final word on what you, the customer, may use or not use. Any innovation here either comes from Apple or from whatever third-party solution Apple allows you to use. And so many fanboys and techies are okay with that, mind-bogglingly. Because ApPlE kNoWs BeSt. And let me tell you, as an Apple user since 1989: Apple used to know best; they really knew best for a period of time. An era when the company was much more genuine in their intents and purposes, an era when their main goal was really to put technology, innovation, and customers first (how much they cared for the final user was intrinsic to, and apparent in, the very way the operating system’s UI was designed); by doing that, the money and the revenue just came as a natural consequence.

The passion was palpable. Even in the most delicate phase in Apple’s history, when they acquired NeXT and Jobs returned at the helm, and Apple’s future was entirely uncertain, Jobs didn’t approach the situation by thinking, In what way can we make money and save our arses? — Had he thought that, Apple would have probably released a computer or device completely in line with what people wanted or expected in 1998. Instead we got the iMac, which was an utter left-field move whose success was far from guaranteed. It was a different, unexpected product, getting rid of almost all legacy connections seen in previous Macs, getting rid of the floppy drive in a tech landscape where that was still a widely used medium. But it also made a lot of stuff easier, and made personal computing a more pleasant affair overall. The Think Different marketing campaign was also stellar, and it certainly helped with the sales. But in the end, the iMac’s success rewarded Apple’s innovation and courage (yeah, that was courage).

Opening up Apple’s ecosystem is not making a disservice to the customers; and is not really an obstacle to innovation. It’s reducing Apple’s immense control over their ecosystem and over their customers. And look, Apple isn’t the only entity classified as gatekeeper in this scenario — there are other five big-tech companies, too. The issue isn’t, Should a governmental body decide how a company shapes the ecosystems the company itself created? — The issue is more like, Should Apple (and Alphabet, Amazon, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft) have this level of control over people’s personal lives and livelihoods, and society at large? With little to no accountability, at that?

And by the way, if you like using Apple products and ecosystems as they are, the provisions of the DMA won’t really change your experience. You can keep using the App Store as Apple intended and never install any kind of extraneous software on your iPhone or iPad. And Apple’s compliance with the DMA is only expected in the EU territories. It’s up to the company to decide whether it’s worth complying and keeping the presence on the European market. The burden is entirely on Apple’s shoulders here, and their protests over the supposed threat to innovation the DMA poses really sound like the crocodile tears of someone playing the victim. If your attitude is to defend Apple, rather than your rights as a customer, I’m sorry to say this but you’re a fool.

The real end of Apple

There’s this interesting passage in the Steve Jobs Lost Interview with Robert X. Cringely (1995). In discussing Xerox’s failure, Jobs says:

Oh, I actually thought a lot about that. And I learned more about that with John Sculley later on, and I think I understand it now pretty well. What happens is, like with John Sculley… John came from PepsiCo, and they, at most, would change their product once every 10 years. To them, a new product was, like, a new-size bottle, right? So if you were a product person, you couldn’t change the course of that company very much. So who influenced the success of PepsiCo? The sales and marketing people. Therefore they were the ones that got promoted, and therefore they were the ones that ran the company. Well, for PepsiCo that might have been okay. But it turns out, the same thing can happen in technology companies that get monopolies. Like, oh, IBM and Xerox. If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox… So you make a better copier or a better computer. So what? When you have a monopoly market share, the company is not any more successful. So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision-making forums. And the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies who have no conception of a good product versus a bad product. They have no conception of the craftsmanship that’s required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product. And they really have no feeling in their hearts usually about wanting to really help the customers. So that’s what happened at Xerox.

Apple, as it is and as it operates today, is gradually becoming like this. The process is subtler, of course, and perhaps not entirely irreversible. But if and when comes a point where you can exactly identify Apple in these words from 28 years ago, then you’ll have the real end of Apple, and the final disintegration of its DNA.

Wondersomethingsomething

September 21, 2023

by Riccardo Mori

Tech Life

I don’t know if you realised this, but the Lightning connector on iPhones has had a longer lifespan than the headphone jack. Apple was quicker to remove a well-established, widespread standard in the name of ‘courage’, yet left Lightning — a proprietary, and by now aging connector — on iPhones for eleven years. With Apple, it should be clear by now that ecosystem comes before customers.

I didn’t really want to write this article. Not for lack of enthusiasm (though that is still present), but for a matter of honesty. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t watch the Apple “Wonderlust” event on 12 September. I don’t know if it was my workload or just plain absentmindedness, but I simply forgot about it and went for a walk instead. I tried to watch it the day after on Apple’s website, and I don’t know if I was tired or (as my contacts on social media suggest) if the event itself was boring, but I fell asleep after about 20 minutes.

So I really don’t have firsthand impressions about the event. I watched some shorter summaries on YouTube, and the excellent recap-with-critical-commentary video by Quinn Nelson, which gave me a fairly good idea of what was introduced at the event, and whether it matters.

I’m writing this piece only because I’ve received a significant-enough number of emails and requests that couldn’t just be ignored. But I wanted to be honest and clear about a few things: I missed the event, I’m not particularly interested in any of the things Apple introduced, and in my (very biased) commentary I may miss some nuances or details I could have caught if I’d taken a much deeper dive into these things.

For me the biggest deal of the event is the introduction of USB‑C on the iPhone, at long last, after the European legislators beat some standard sense into Apple. The rest — and I’m borrowing the impression of many who watched the event in its entirety — was pretty much a boring, predictable expanse. In his article about the event, John Gruber goes on for almost 700 words in the introduction to explain that this event may have been boring to some people, and that the iPhone September events may be repetitive and iterative in nature but are actually very much iconic, “the Super Bowls of technology”. I find that to be a very hilariously American-centric comparison. A lot of people outside the US don’t know when the Super Bowl is supposed to happen, and some regular folks don’t even know what the Super Bowl specifically is, apart from a vague ‘big American sports event’. The first time I heard about it, many many years ago, I initially thought it was related to bowling.

Despite Gruber’s attempts to paint the ‘Wonderlust’ event as something iconic and exciting, these past few years Apple’s September iPhone events have really felt boring and repetitive. A very diverse network of people has grown around me, both online and offline; the spectrum goes from very tech-savvy nerds and developers, to regular folks who are tech literate enough to use current devices unaided, to people who are not into tech at all and rely on the advice of others to make their purchases. And while such network can only produce anecdotal data, I’ve seen statistics made with smaller samples. So, when I said, Damn, I forgot Apple’s event was today and went out for a walk instead, a lot of people in my network told me I didn’t really miss out on anything special. The majority of those I interacted with weren’t particularly excited about anything regarding the event.

Compared with the previous generation, the new iPhones are faster, have an improved camera system, and are made with different materials. I could use these words to describe the iPhone 11 line compared with the X, XS and XR iPhone models. But Rick, this time titanium is a big deal, because it makes iPhones lighter than their predecessors. Well, it was about time, I’d say. Since today we have to endure oversized smartphones, making them lighter is the least Apple and other brands could do.

According to some tech YouTubers, the new camera system in the iPhone 15 Pro models is a big deal too. It’s probably a big deal for those who rely on their phones for all their photography and videography needs. Hardware-wise these cameras are a true engineering feat, and thanks to the computational heavy lifting behind the scenes, the final result can be stunning in the right hands. But as someone who uses cameras, not smartphones, for most of his photography, smartphone photography has become less interesting and less exciting exactly since computational photography has taken the lion’s share of image processing. Photos, even good photos taken with the last four generations of iPhones to me — to me — look artificial, clinical, lacking character (That ‘Apple website’ flair, a friend commented), at times overprocessed and with a somewhat weird colour science. Like I said on Mastodon, when showing older iPhone photos, I often get asked which camera I used. When seeing shots taken with more current iPhones, I often hear comments like, Yep, typical iPhone look.

The fact that the cameras on the iPhone 15 Pro models will be able to shoot ‘spatial videos’ — which, as far as I know, you’ll only be able to enjoy through the Vision Pro headset — and that for some this is another big deal, is another hilarious detail for me. And another example of ecosystem before customers. These 3D memories that will feel like magic in your Apple Vision Pro, how long they’ll truly last? After the death of my mother I had to sell my parents’ house and therefore remove all our personal belongings. In doing so, I came across a huge amount of memories in the form of old slides and printed photos (in most cases with their negatives carefully preserved). I saw pictures of myself when I was just a little child. I saw scenes from my parents’ and grandparents’ childhoods. Photos taken 50, 60, even 90 years ago. Will your children and grandchildren, 90 years from now, be able to watch that spatial video you shot in late 2023 or 2024? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe after a long chain of format conversions. Maybe through applications created by wise souls who see past the innovation du jour of our tech overlords.

I digress. I wanted to understand if these new iPhones were actually this big deal some kept repeating. A few YouTubers all seemed to sing to the tune of ‘the new iPhone looks like a small update, but there’s much more to it than meets the eye’. So I turned to more prominent and established tech reviewers like Marques Brownlee, Dave Lee, Michael Fisher. They always have the most balanced reviews, I think, because they’re all constantly using and testing different platforms, and when it comes to new features on a phone, they can look farther than any fanboy and put things in a more objective perspective.

After listening to their impressions, my takeaway is that, well, the new iPhone 15 and 15 Pro are actually an incremental update and little more. Here are the features that, based on these reviewers, seem worth mentioning:

The new building materials. Titanium is a good choice especially because it allows the new iPhone 15 Pro models to be lighter than last year’s Pro models, but also feel even lighter in the case of the Pro Max.

Better displays. Brighter than the iPhone 14 and 14 Pro displays. This means better clarity and legibility when outdoors. The displays on the regular iPhone 15 and the iPhone 15 Pro have the same characteristics and specifications. The only two features missing from the non-Pro iPhones are always-on display and ProMotion.

Speaking of ProMotion, I love this bit in Dave Lee’s video review:

I really think they [Apple] used [ProMotion] to distinguish the difference between the Pros and the ‘Amateurs’, because I don’t think that the cost of production is that far apart at this point, at least not for Apple, because the volumes are so high. But when I review these phones and see them side by side, the 60 Hz [screen] just got to stutter, right? But I really think if I remove myself from this situation and I try not to be a sweaty tech nerd about it, I really think, like, 99% of the world doesn’t care about it. I’ve shown it to many of my friends and my family members, and they’re like, Yeah, that’s cool, that ProMotion is neat and all, but who cares? And in that line, very very little media takes advantage of that stuff; very few games take advantage of 120 Hz [refresh]. But it’s mostly just the UI. When you’re in the UI, and you’re browsing on your phone, and doing stuff, having ProMotion is just so much nicer to look at — if your eyes are used to it. And the fact that they [the regular iPhone 15 models] don’t have it is just ridiculous, because there are phones out there that are, like, 300 bucks that have 120 Hz displays, for it to be missing on a $700 phone… It hurts.

Thinner bezels. The regular iPhone 15 models have slightly thinner bezels than the regular iPhone 14 models from last year. But the bezels on the 15 Pro models are much thinner. This may be excellent news for those nerds who are utterly obsessed with bezel thinness. I think there’s a limit to such thinness, because too thin bezels in a handheld device could mean involuntary user-interface interference from the palm of your hands or the edges of your fingers. Dave Lee quickly points this out too, saying this happened to him a few times while gaming.

USB‑C ports. Again, big Finally here. Thanks to EU legislation, which strongly reminded Apple that standards and customers come before ecosystems. It still sucks that you have to resort to a dongle if you use regular wired earphones or headphones with your iPhone. But at least when travelling you can just take the iPad charger, and one USB‑C cable to recharge the iPad, the iPhone, maybe a pair of over-ear noise-cancelling headphones, and you can use it to connect an external data drive if you use one with your iPad or Mac.

The new Action button. A new customisable button that on the iPhone 15 Pro models replaces the mute switch, which has been a constant on iPhones since the beginning. Now you can assign a specific function to this Action button (it acts like the mute switch by default), like launching the camera or the flashlight, or taking a voice memo. At first the selection seems limited, but one of the options allows you to assign a Siri shortcut, and this really opens the doors to all kinds of stuff. Reactions to this new Action button have generally been positive. Marques Brownlee suggests it could be further improved if we could also map additional functions to double-tapping (or even triple-tapping) the button. Dave Lee wishes there was some kind of tactile marking on it so you could feel for it when the iPhone is in your pocket, and in his review he stressed a few times that “it takes some time to get used to it”. As for me, I’m somewhat ambivalent. I both like the concept of a customisable button, and wish the physical mute switch could have remained. I wouldn’t mind an iPhone with the mute switch in the same position as it was before, and an Action button on the other side, maybe further down from where the power/sleep button is located. (It’s where some Nokia Lumia models had the dedicated camera button, and it was quite handy).

Slightly improved CPU performance. Much improved GPU performance. The fact that you can play triple‑A games like the Resident Evil remake on an iPhone is impressive, but the question is, why would you want to? The interface is cramped, the touch controls make things awkward, and with games like that, the better experience is definitely on a gaming PC or console like the PlayStation or Xbox. I know, I know there are portable gaming solutions like the Switch, the Steam Deck, the recently-introduced Lenovo Legion Go. But while these don’t have very big screens, they all have physical controls, so you don’t have to put your fingers on the screen when gaming, and the interface remains uncluttered.

Slightly better battery life. Tests may vary, but I found Dave Lee’s numbers very telling. The full table is visible at about the 13:13 mark in his video. He calls his test ‘Reddit refresh loop’, which I assume is self-explanatory. The iPhone 15 Pro Max lasted 12 hours and 27 minutes, eight minutes more than the iPhone 14 Pro Max. The iPhone 15 Pro lasted 11 hours and 37 minutes, twenty-one minutes more than the iPhone 14 Pro and the iPhone 13 Pro. The iPhone 15, instead, lasted a few minutes less than the iPhone 14.

The camera system. More megapixels, and a new 5× telephoto lens on the Pro Max, essentially. Some observations from Dave Lee which again, ring true based on what I could see for myself. About the resolution:

I don’t feel the sensor on the regular iPhone 15 makes good use of that extra resolution, but on the Pro I would say […] it’s absolutely worth that larger file size. The details [in the photo] are there.

On low-light photography:

It’s still not great. Apple talked a bit about how they improved it, but the Pixel 7 devices and Samsung S23 devices [low-light photos] look better to me.

On lens flare:

Apple also talks about how they addressed some of the lens flare that has been in some of their photography. Sometimes you’ll see some reflective orbs floating around some of your shots; they’re definitely less pronounced on the iPhone 15 cameras, but they’re still visible here and there, and it’s particularly noticeable still in night shots with bright lights.

Automatic Portrait Mode. I like how simply Dave describes it: It’s the ability to just take a shot, not think about it, and the phone will capture the depth data, so you can adjust the focus later. And I agree with him, it’s a cool feature. I used to use a couple of ‘defocusing’ photo apps on my iPhone 8 to achieve something similar, but of course the iPhone 15’s image processing power guarantees a much faster, more accurate and effective result.

Update — 22 Sept. — I was pretty sure I had seen a similar feature before, but couldn’t recall where or when exactly. My friend Tony on Mastodon reminded me of Nokia Refocus (later renamed Lumia Refocus), an application Nokia presented at Nokia World 2013 — yes, ten years ago — that allowed you to take a shot and refocus later. In this article on Windows Central it is explained that

When snapping a shot, the Windows Phone will take numerous photos over the focus range. This makes it possible to simply hit the shutter button without messing around for three days to get the right object in focus. Think about this example: you take a self-shot and the background is in focus behind a blurry face. With Refocus you can select your own self and boom, the focus is now corrected. Alternatively, you can choose to have the entire shot in focus.

I’ve linked to an archived version of the article because it preserves the video at the end, where you can see a live demonstration of how the feature works. There is also this article from The Verge, and the related YouTube video where Tom Warren demoes the feature.

And yes, of course it’s faster and better on the new iPhones. But considering that the Nokia Lumia 1020 did the same thing with a dual core processor and 2 GB of RAM, the slight delay when capturing a photo with Refocus is forgivable.

It sounds like a lot, but if you zoom out and look at the evolution (or lack thereof) of the iPhone over the years, there’s really nothing groundbreaking about these new iPhone models. Some reviewers have spent a considerable time talking about the new building materials of the iPhone 15 line, especially the use of titanium on the Pro iPhones. It’s undoubtedly a cool detail, and it’s great that it makes the phones lighter. But essentially what we got with the new iPhones was entirely within expectations and educated guesses. Faster devices with improved cameras. But ‘faster’ and ‘improved’ in an iterative fashion, not in a ‘leaps and bounds’ or ‘night and day’ fashion. Meaning that if you asked me, Should I really upgrade to the iPhone 15? I’d tell you, If you currently own an iPhone older than the 12, sure. If you’re hell-bent on always having the latest iPhone camera technology because it really matters to you, sure. Otherwise, I wouldn’t bother.

Of course, at the end of the day, you do you. If you have money to burn, and love to get a new iPhone every year, here’s a lighter. I simply encourage people to be smart and not wasteful, because there’s too much waste today already. There are those telling you you should upgrade to the iPhone 15 Pro for the new titanium finish alone, because it makes for a svelter device that feels great in the hand. Do you know what feels even greater in the hand? Ten 100-dollar bills.

My lack of excitement about the iPhone in general comes from the fact that for the past few years it hasn’t really gone anywhere. I’m not one who demands constant innovation, mind you, but at the same time you can’t expect enthusiasm from me for any minor change or improvement. In technology there are occasional bumps of innovation, and inertial periods of iteration which can last a long time. The smartphone category as a whole has been stagnant for a while now. I’m not really complaining about this — again, it’s a necessary evil. But I can wish Apple showed more intent in thinking out of the box with the iPhone. Going foldable is what some wish for a future iPhone. But that isn’t thinking out of the box — it’s following a trend (and an uncertain one at that).

I know Apple is playing safe with the iPhone because it’s a cash cow, but sometimes I wish they revisited the iPhone line by maybe offering one less ‘safe’ model and using that vacant slot to propose something different, quirkier. Something that could be niche for a couple of generations, just to see where it goes. A ‘Special Edition’ in the true sense of the word. And not just from a hardware standpoint, but also from an application/usage standpoint. An iPhone model perhaps with different ways of interfacing, even. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, Apple is pursuing that with Vision Pro and visionOS, and I see your point. I just wish it weren’t an AR headset. Something more in line with what Humane is headed towards. I want ‘vision’ without the impracticality and awkwardness of VR/AR goggles.

I was forgetting the new Apple Watches — Well, again, iterative improvements all around. If you love the Watch, you’ll love them. If you don’t, you’re probably shrugging as hard as I am. Neither its design nor its interface have ever really clicked with me. The general feeling I constantly get when I look at its UI is that it’s too crowded and complicated, too dependent on gestures with mediocre discoverability. And the Watch as a whole simply feels too chock-full of stuff. And every year Apple seems to be adding more stuff to the Watch’s capabilities. It feels like pure feature creep. (To be entirely fair, the competition isn’t exactly doing a better job in this regard). Again, it depends on what you use a smartwatch for. I just want a bare-bones tracker that tells me the time and date, that shows me a step counter and a heart rate monitor. I don’t need a miniature smartphone on my wrist, I already have one in my pocket.

Layers of exhaustion

September 1, 2023

by Riccardo Mori

Tech Life

This summer has been particularly hard on me. I don’t handle heat and humidity very well, and July and August have been devastating in this regard where I live. Like I wrote in my previous article about a month ago, what little energy I could save was mainly devoted to work. But I had to take a break from that too, so I enjoyed some holiday time in August. I went to Madrid and Toledo, where the temperatures were even higher than in Valencia, often reaching 40–41 degrees Celsius, but at least there was little humidity. Dry heat is much more tolerable for me. So at least I had enough energies to take long walks, snap photos, and enjoy being a tourist with my wife.

In this world, today so ever-obsessed with technology and productivity, when you complain of physical exhaustion some people will inevitably think you’re kind of exaggerating; almost as if it were some lame, unimaginative excuse to justify your general poor performance. But the exhaustion caused by a very hot and suffocatingly humid climate can be something alarmingly draining. (If you have lived all your life in a country that has this kind of climate by default, all year round, it’s clearly a different story, as you will be accustomed to it and you’ll probably be able to function better in it). Worse, it often leads to mental exhaustion as well. Unless you find some form of protection against the heat and humidity (ventilation, air conditioning), your nights will likely be restless, with intermittent sleep; and we all know by now how important long hours of uninterrupted sleep are for our mental health and balance. Sadly, a lot of my days these past two months have been spent in a generally listless stupor, the sleep disruption of the night being deeply felt during the day, in a state resembling jet lag or mild drunkenness.

For a creative person as myself, this is the stuff of nightmares. This is the worst kind of creative block: it has very little to do with what you’re trying to create — it’s a force majeure type of block stopping you in your tracks no matter what you were trying to do. Sure, you know it’s not your fault, but that doesn’t take anything away from the same resulting feeling of utter frustration and anger boiling inside of you. And you can’t even act this frustration out because you’re too fucking exhausted to do so. How ironic.

There is also another depressing realisation sprinkled on top: that while you’re suffering this kind of climate-induced physical and mental exhaustion, you’re wasting a lot of your time. And this is not the productivity-obsessed mindset speaking. It’s not like thinking, I’m wasting all this time I could spend working or doing more soul-crushing grind. More simply, it’s thinking, I’m wasting all this time I could spend… truly living and having fun and being happy. When you’re in your 20s or 30s, leaving a bunch of weeks behind where you couldn’t do almost anything can surely be annoying. But when you’re older and you’re starting to enter that phase in your life where you realise time is a truly scarily finite resource and you should do the best you can to savour every moment, all the time you lose to exhaustion feels like a criminal waste and a horrible punishment at the same time.

Every time I go quieter on this site and on social media, I routinely receive little messages from concerned parties asking me— well, some of them at least start by asking how I’m doing. Others are more interested in knowing why I haven’t shared my opinion on the Hot Tech Topic Of The Day.

I have been able to keep up with the main tech news this summer, and honestly, that’s the other layer of exhaustion I’ve been experiencing. You see, I gladly analyse and criticise things in tech when there are interesting enough things to analyse and criticise. But tech news have felt so utterly samey for a while now. Rumours about the hardware Apple will introduce in September and October. Some new proposed law that’s pissing off some tech company and all their fanpeople. Hackers doing more hacking. Some new apps — the flow of cool innovative apps is now sadly reduced to a trickle — which force subscription on you as the sole method of sustaining them. A new folding phone comes out, same as the old folding phone. And is the iPad capable of replacing a Mac? (Not again.) And where is the iPad headed? (Not again!) Is spatial computing The Future??? Blah blah blah.

Technology today is in the boring part of the curve. The part where the curve is almost flat. The exhaustion part. There’s the occasional spark, but the industry is at its most iterative at the moment, generally speaking. So I find increasingly hard to be excited about something in tech. The gaming world might be a small exception, but you really have to look for gems in a landscape that, here too, feels mostly iterative: hardware-wise, you get spec bumps that improve how games look and perform. Creatively, and when it comes to triple‑A titles, sometimes it feels just like Hollywood — a landscape dominated by franchises, sequels, and, uh, stuff designed to make you waste money.

Changing subject, another reason I’ve been quieter on social media is because the situation couldn’t be more fragmented. I’m currently more active on Mastodon, where a fair amount of mutual friends and followers from my Twitter/X network of people have been landing since Elon Musk started actively destroying Twitter. But on that shipwreck of a platform there are still a lot of people I care about and want to interact with. I’ve found this fracture to be very detrimental to the way I engage with social media on a daily basis. As I wrote on Mastodon, when Twitter was the platform everyone was on, it brought a positive flow in my day-to-day. It was quicker and easier to check on people, keep up with what they shared, interact. Now it’s more like, Oh, let’s have a quick look over there, see how everyone’s doing. Everything is more sporadic and inertial. Attention is also a finite resource, and the more you disrupt and fragment it, the less you see of the overall picture.

To circle back to the original subject, exhaustion, and conclude, at this point you might be wondering about coping mechanisms. The disarming truth is that I’ve handled this exhaustion poorly. When you can’t sleep well at night, and feel sleepy and tired during the day, when you can’t concentrate and feel utterly useless, you really have very little energy left to muster any kind of meaningful reaction. I felt mostly resigned and finding a tiny tiny comfort in thinking that “This too shall pass”, but the general anxiety coming from watching time melt away, drowned and drenched in days that felt almost more routine‑y than when I’m knee-deep in work, was really overpowering.

As for tech exhaustion… it’s ultimately just a phase — which is lasting longer than in previous periods of time when innovation felt like an unstoppable force. In photography and music, there seems to be a trend where people are appreciating more and more a return to more ‘analogue’ habits, mindsets, and æsthetics. I’ve been doing the same even before it was cool, because I basically never stopped listening and buying vinyl records, CDs, and MiniDiscs. And I never really stopped engaging in film photography with 40–50-year-old equipment. With writing, I’m trying to go back to using pen & paper even more than before, as I found many many times that this really improves my creative process.

The return to more analogue and tactile ways of enjoyment and creation isn’t posturing for me, at all. Generally speaking, technology today wants to envelop us in immateriality. The more we are reduced to data, to numbers, to digital profiles, to code, the more we can be controlled and influenced. Material objects, and habits that can extract us from that sea of digital immateriality as frequently as possible, may be our most precious anchors against all this depersonalisation — which interestingly enough also appears at the intersection between technology and exhaustion.

Helvetica 12

August 4, 2023

by Riccardo Mori

Handpicked

I’m late to the tech news party. The weather here in Valencia has been literal hell for the past month. Combine that with bad, short sleep nights and an aching right upper arm, and you’ll understand just how poorly focused and barely functioning I have been lately. I’ve had enough energies to work and keep up with the news, but not to react to them promptly.

So, Microsoft is switching from Calibri to Aptos as their default font for Office documents. From their announcement blog post (curiously published on Medium):

For 15 years, our beloved Calibri was Microsoft’s default font and crown keeper of office communications, but as you know, our relationship has come to a natural end. We changed. The technology we use every day has changed. And so, our search of the perfect font for higher resolution screens began. The font needed to have sharpness, uniformity, and be great for display type. It was exciting at times, but also intimidating. How do you replace Calibri? How do you find that one true font that can take its place as the rightful default?

As we shared before, Microsoft commissioned five new fonts: Bierstadt, Grandview, Seaford, Skeena, and Tenorite. It was our hope that one of them would be our next default font for Microsoft 365. All of them were added to the drop-down font picker. From there, as you got a chance to use them, we listened to your impassioned feedback and chose the one that resonated most which was Bierstadt. But as there was a change of guard so too the name. Bierstadt is now known as Aptos.

I got acquainted with Calibri when I started using Windows more frequently from 2016 onwards, both for work-related reasons, and because an old hardware interest — vintage ThinkPads — coincidentally rekindled around the same time. I’ve found Calibri to be a good ‘work font’ — meaning I wouldn’t use it in a book design project, or for some other project involving distinctive typography. But it is a font that works well on screen and it’s easy enough on the eye when reading documents and at smaller font sizes.

I’ve examined the five candidates Microsoft commissioned in search for a Calibri replacement and I found them all decent for the purpose, with the strong exception of Tenorite, which doesn’t seem a good fit for the job. Remember, the purpose here is to provide a default document font that is a good workhorse for display type and text-oriented applications. It doesn’t have to be a fancy font for artistic typographic projects. It has to be pleasant, neutral, possibly readable at all sizes (but especially smaller sizes, say 14 points and below), and as Microsoft’s Si Daniels writes in the afore-linked post, have sharpness, uniformity, and be great for display type.

If I had to choose my personal favourite among those candidates, I would have opted for Seaford. Aptos’s character shapes have a roundness which I think works a bit against the font’s legibility when you read big chunks of text. Seaford’s character shapes have more movement and flow, and feel more airy when you read longer paragraphs. They hook your eye more as it parses the text, if you get my drift. But Aptos isn’t a bad final choice by any means.

I learnt about this font change via this post by John Gruber, and while I understood his critique, I don’t entirely agree with it, and especially his overall tone rubbed me up the wrong way. Remarks like, Companies that have taste do not conduct design via surveys or, But if Microsoft feels the need to chase fleeting fashion rather than timeless style, Aptos is the trendiest of the bunch are the typical jabs thrown at Microsoft I still sometimes hear from long-time Mac users who have been holding a grudge since the 1990s. Today’s Microsoft isn’t a tasteless company when it comes to hardware design. And you know what? They have been making interesting progress with regard to software design as well. It certainly feels Microsoft hasn’t rested on their laurels — or even regressed in certain areas — as Apple has with Mac OS’s UI.

But I’m digressing. Where I disagree most with Gruber is when he writes:

I don’t know why Microsoft states as fact that Calibri somehow needed to be replaced as their default font just because it’s 15 years old. A good default font should stand the test of time for decades, if not a literal lifetime.

And in the related footnote 3:

Apple’s default font (as seen today in apps like Pages, Numbers, and TextEdit, and in bygone times in apps like MacWrite and SimpleText) has been nearly unchanged since 1991 or so, switching only from Helvetica to its superior expanded sibling Helvetica Neue. Prior to Helvetica, the default font was Geneva, Susan Kare’s pixel font homage to Helvetica. No one is going to make a movie about Aptos.

A good default font should stand the test of time for decades, if not a literal lifetime. — Yes, generally speaking this is true. But we are talking about computer fonts designed mainly for display work. What worked well on computer displays from 20 or 30 years ago may not work as well on current displays, especially considering just how much their technology has evolved over the past three decades. What once was the entire screen of a Macintosh computer, it’s now as big as a postage stamp on the much bigger, much denser displays we use today. I don’t think Microsoft is “chasing fleeting fashion rather than timeless style”. They have realised that Calibri, while still being a nice font for its intended purpose, may not be the optimal choice for current displays. For me, it makes sense that, as technology evolves, certain elements that go with it have to evolve as well.

Having elegant, tasteful fonts in a computer system is certainly a good thing, but there’s a strong element of pragmatism here that shouldn’t be overlooked. These Office default fonts have to be ‘work fonts’. They have to keep working well in documents (especially on screen) as display technology evolves. Like system fonts. The system font of the original Macintosh was Chicago, which lasted until Mac OS 7.6. It was a great font that was very utilitarian and quite legible in the era of low-resolution displays and aliased fonts. But it definitely would not work in today’s Macs and on current displays.

After Chicago, Mac OS’s system font became Charcoal in Mac OS 8 and 9 (Charcoal’s design was essentially a refresh of Chicago and worked better on the Mac displays of the mid- to late 1990s). With Mac OS X came Lucida Grande — still my favourite — which lasted a long time, from Mac OS Developer Preview 3 to Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks included (about 13 years). Then we had an odd year, with Mac OS X 10.10 and Helvetica Neue as system font, to finally change with the Apple-designed San Francisco, appearing in Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan.

With that sore exception of Helvetica Neue, notice how all the changes in Mac OS’s system fonts have been necessary steps to maintain good legibility and accessibility as computer displays have evolved. And while as a personal preference I think Lucida Grande would still look great on current Macs, San Francisco is perfect on retina displays. When it comes to system fonts, Apple hasn’t “chased fleeting fashion rather than timeless style”, it has simply adapted as technology changed. It’s essentially the same thing Microsoft is doing with the transition from Calibri to Aptos.

Apple’s default font (as seen today in apps like Pages, Numbers, and TextEdit, and in bygone times in apps like MacWrite and SimpleText) has been nearly unchanged since 1991 or so, switching only from Helvetica to its superior expanded sibling Helvetica Neue. Prior to Helvetica, the default font was Geneva, Susan Kare’s pixel font homage to Helvetica. — Gruber here boasts Apple’s choices as being smart and superior compared to Microsoft’s. But while I agree that Geneva is a font that has aged incredibly well and is still very good and very legible at 12 points in TextEdit — unpopular opinion warning — I seriously question Apple’s judgement in sticking with Helvetica and Helvetica Neue as default font in TextEdit and the iWork apps for so long.

I always found Helvetica to be a good typeface at 16–18 points and above, and definitely more in print than on screen. I guess that Helvetica worked as system font in iOS 6 and earlier because it was used in bold style in many parts of the system; and the portable nature of iOS devices means you typically kept them closer to your eyes than a laptop or desktop computer display, and that really helps with a font’s legibility.

But Helvetica at 12 points, which obstinately remains TextEdit and other Apple apps’ default font after all these years, is not a good choice at all for reading and writing text on current displays. Even with the crispness of retina displays, it’s just too small and has poor flow — the tight spacing between characters in Helvetica leads to what I non-professionally call ‘type clumps’, letter groupings that are a bit more difficult to parse when reading text at small sizes because there’s simply too little space between them. At 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 points, Geneva is still a better font than Helvetica. Open TextEdit on your Mac and see for yourself.

Helvetica clearly didn’t work as system font when Apple introduced it in Yosemite, and the fact it only lasted one year is quite telling. (I was vigorously critic of Helvetica Neue as system font at the time). That’s why I find very curious that Apple keeps shoving Helvetica in our faces as default document font after all this time.

No one is going to make a movie about Aptos. — What a stupid quip. Helvetica is a historically important typeface that has been used and abused for a very long time. Aptos is a computer font that’s been essentially designed for a specific purpose. It’s like comparing a classic car from Ferrari, Mercedes or Jaguar to a Chinese economy electric car.

It’s increasingly hard to be critical in tech

July 5, 2023

by Riccardo Mori

Tech Life

A couple of weeks ago I published two articles about Apple Vision Pro, the AR/VR headset Apple presented at WWDC23 at the beginning of June. In those articles I expressed and explained my general scepticism towards the product, but mostly towards the vision behind it, which I find — at least currently — lacking and unconvincing.

That’s not the first time I’ve criticised Apple, far from it, and therefore it’s not the first time I have had to deal with the subsequent backlash via email and private messages. I can deal with disagreements. I don’t expect every one of my readers (usual or new) to agree with me all the time. When the person who took the time to write me expresses their disagreement in a cogent, articulate manner, I’m very eager to listen. I’m not infallible and I might have missed some huge things in my analyses. It happens, and I can change my mind and opinions on something. If you write me to insult me or to say dumb things at me, you’re wasting your time, you’re showing me your colours, and the impact of what you say is less than zero.

But the negative emails and messages I’ve received after speaking my mind about Vision Pro are worth mentioning. Not because they’re particularly intelligent or articulate (most aren’t, I’m sorry to report), but because they’re emblematic of the way certain tech discourse is degrading nowadays.

I have used Apple products since the late 1980s. Back then, Apple wasn’t a giant, but an underdog, and I’ve experienced some of the worst moments in Apple’s history, when the company was actually doomed. Being a Mac user back then, when the platform was truly niche in a world surrounded by Windows and IBM PC-compatible hardware, was an interesting experience for sure. It created a strong community culture, because every time there was debate, we were always on the defensive. It was often frustrating, because back then the Mac was a demonstrably better platform, but convincing people to adopt it over the path of least resistance (Windows and the PC) was hard.

This, I think, created the basis of a ‘defence culture’ when it comes to Apple. The ‘other side’ called us zealots, drew religious parallelisms, called us a ‘cult’, and so forth. And sure, there were Mac users who really displayed a nasty, prejudiced, and even combative attitude towards the ‘PC Windows guys’, but for the most part (at least in my experience) Mac User Groups were occasions for like-minded people to meet and help one another, sharing tips and experiences, pointing people to certain software applications that might fit their needs and that they were unaware of. And the banter with Windows users was generally non-toxic (again, in my experience). And while I myself have been a so-called ‘Apple evangelist’ for a few years in the 1990s, my approach in trying to make the Mac platform more known and appreciated wasn’t blunt or confrontational. I always tried to demonstrate how certain tasks could be carried out more efficiently with a Mac, and how so many myths about incompatibilities between the Mac and the PC were indeed myths. But if someone was not convinced or simply could not afford to switch their entire business to the Mac (especially in the 1990s, where there was great uncertainty about the future of Apple as a company), I didn’t think less of them; I didn’t look down on them; and I certainly didn’t storm out of their offices insulting them for using Windows and PCs.

But that defence culture I mentioned before — it persisted over the years and grew stronger, layer after layer. And today we can see it at work every time there’s any kind of criticism or scepticism towards Apple or any of their products. A lot of die-hard Apple fans today display a level of close-mindedness and zealotry that sometimes is downright concerning. I’ve had interactions with some fans who literally represent the dictionary definition of fanatic (“a person filled with excessive and single-minded zeal, especially for an extreme religious or political cause”). People who will defend Apple no matter what, even when certain Apple practices can be consumer-hostile; even when certain design decisions (in hardware and software) are demonstrably misguided. People who consider whatever Apple makes to be the best product, the right product. People who essentially consider Apple a sort of infallible entity even when faced with obvious Apple screw-ups like bending iPhones or atrocious laptop keyboard design. They act like those religious fundamentalists who justify the evil in this world by telling you that their God operates in mysterious ways we mere mortals cannot comprehend, and that it’s all part of the plan.

This fanaticism and the toxicity it brings, this impoverishment of intelligent discourse in tech (in general, but especially when Apple is concerned) is extremely tiring and unproductive. Back to certain feedback I received about my articles on Vision Pro, let’s observe a couple of examples.

The first trend in some of the responses is people who are offended because they think that, in criticising Vision Pro, I want to put myself in a holier-than-thou position. One wrote me: It’s like telling me I’m a moron for loving Vision Pro and for thinking AR is the future. In this case, I wrote back: If this is your sole takeaway from my articles, then yes, you’re kind of a moron.

Now, wisecracking remarks apart, it’s fascinating to me how these people are projecting my criticism towards a product and transforming it into a criticism towards their personal choices and towards them as people. It’s as if they’re worried that, by criticising a product they love, you (and others who criticise it) directly hurt the enjoyment they get out of it, or even contribute to its future failure or disappearance. I hope you realise how this kind of reaction strongly reminds of children’s behaviour.

I always tend to be specific and explicit in my analyses. If I had wanted to criticise or mock those who unconditionally love Vision Pro and the idea behind it, I would have clearly done so. My doubts about Vision Pro are mine and mine only. The fact that this thing, and the ‘vision’ behind it, has yet to convince me is something entirely subjective. But at least I have tried to analyse and express why I find it lacking and unconvincing. Instead, all the negative reactions to my criticism have been simplistic, dogmatic, aggressive, black-or-white stances.

And we come to the second trend in such responses, exemplified by what another guy wrote me: How can you be so sure Vision Pro’s gonna be a flop? Note, I never wrote or implied that Vision Pro is going to be a flop. But I appreciate the doubting attitude and the search for an honest exchange of views. The problem is his next sentence: Vision Pro will definitely be a success like the iPhone. You see what the problem is here, right? I am not allowed to be ‘so sure’ about something (I’m not, by the way), but this guy, oh he is certain Vision Pro will be a success. It feels indeed like arguing with a member of a cult. There is no further elaboration past the dogmatic stance. You’re interacting with someone who’s covering their ears and going la-la-la while you’re trying to have a discussion.

Tech discourse today is progressively going down the drain, and for many reasons. Here are a few I have noticed, in no particular order of importance:

Many tech pundits aren’t candid or candid enough in their observations because they don’t want to lose access with big tech companies. They tread carefully. While I understand this to an extent, on the other hand it’s not helpful or conducive to a healthy debate. Prominent tech pundits are read and followed by many people, and whether they like it or not, they’re influencers. And if a company — especially Apple — introduces questionable changes in its hardware or software, such issues have to be surfaced and criticised. Instead, it’s not infrequent that I read opinion pieces where the pundit of the day basically makes excuses for the company. When some aspects of a product aren’t particularly strong, the pundit will often observe that the company knows what they’re doing, and that they’ll straighten things out eventually.
Some tech pundits also tend to avoid making certain critiques that sound too stark and countercurrent because they don’t want to look like fools when they later find themselves on the wrong side of history. So, instead of openly calling bullshit on certain things, they prefer a more concessive approach. “I’m not much of a fan of this new feature, change, etc., but it’s no big deal and I can adapt”, “We have to remember that this is just beta software / a first-generation product, and surely it’ll get better with time”, and so forth. So, when design atrocities like the notch on the iPhone or on MacBooks become non-issues because the public largely doesn’t care (and even if customers cared the only option for them would be to not purchase the product — and many people just cave when faced with this all-or-nothing proposition), they can say I told you it wasn’t a big deal. Hey, good job pundit, here’s the medal you wanted so badly. I’ll get back to this point later.
As Josh Calvetti quite aptly put it in a Mastodon reply, people assume opinions are inherently an attack on their preferences, and thus them. This reflects an even bigger problem — the inability to engage in critical thinking, which starts by taking the time to read and understand what’s in front of you before broadcasting your knee-jerk reaction. I’m not a sociologist, I don’t know if this problem is connected with the fact that today the way people consume content and the way their attention is constantly fragmented leads them to favour shorter and simpler stuff that is easy to digest and therefore easy to react to in a similarly superficial way, but I’ve been noticing an increasing avoidance of deeper discussions or deeper conversations. Long-form pieces are a bore — hence the infamous TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) acronym — so people seem to always want the Cliff’s Notes version. There can’t be meaningful debate when one part doesn’t even want to actually listen to the other. Put simply, it’s tribalism.

Back to point 2 above, and back to Vision Pro specifically, another type of feedback I received about my criticism of the headset is from people who sort of want to defuse the whole discussion by saying essentially that any criticism towards Vision Pro is moot. Why? They cite past Apple products that were initially criticised for this or that reason, and say that such products became huge successes anyway, so the pattern is bound to repeat once again for Vision Pro. Remember the reactions and the criticism when the first Mac was introduced? Remember what journalists and the competition said about the first iPod? Remember those fools who criticised the iPhone for not having a physical keyboard? — they say — Haha, where are those people now?

This is a shallow and childish stance. It’s like starting to watch a superhero movie, then quickly skipping to the end and declaring See? The good guys won anyway, eventually. Yeah, they did. But what about the characters’ development? What about the choices they made? What about their flaws? A hero can win in the end, but their character’s flaws remain. A product can be a huge success eventually, or even relatively quickly, but that doesn’t mean it’s flawless.

Again, I’ve owned Apple products since the late 1980s, and I had used Apple products even before that. I read negative articles about the first Mac, the first portable Mac, the first RISC Mac, the iMac G3 (which was the first Mac after Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997), the first iPod, the first iPhone, the first iPad, the first Apple Watch… Some criticism was indeed superficial, uninformed, misguided and even downright trollish. But some critics also made valid points. The fact that those Apple products became successful later doesn’t make such points less valid.

Criticism isn’t a zero-sum game. It’s not a matter of winning and losing. A successful product may be successful despite having some design flaws. Its success may make some of such flaws less relevant, but it doesn’t make them disappear. And pointing out those flaws doesn’t make someone ‘wrong’. And pointing out those flaws doesn’t mean someone ‘doesn’t get technology’.

People also often react to criticism as if the critic were just posturing and taking a contrarian stance simply for the sake of sounding different than the mainstream choir of opinions. And while it’s true that there are quite the contrarians out there who share their hot takes betting on the chance that a product might actually fail, to then gloat and bask in their I‑told-you-so attitude, there are also people — like yours truly — who prefer to share their doubts and criticism towards what they have before their eyes right now, and aren’t even concerned whether the product will be a success or not.

Example 1: When the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were announced, I criticised them for being too big. I thought their size would make them more difficult to handle, and the interface more awkward for one-hand use. Those iPhones were a huge success commercially, and initiated the unstoppable trend of big iPhones that continues to this day. And big iPhones are still a success, but that doesn’t invalidate my initial criticism directed at the iPhone 6 and especially at the 6 Plus. The iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max are still difficult to handle, and their interface remains awkward for one-hand use. You can barely take a photo using just one hand with these beasts.

Example 2: The notch, both on iPhones and especially MacBooks, is a terrible design element and a terrible design decision (as I pointed out here and here). No one denies the great success both notched phones and laptops have had, but that doesn’t automatically make their notch a good design element or decision. The Dynamic Island is an ingenious workaround for sure, but I’d vastly prefer to see and interact with a display devoid of interfering elements.

And another thing: criticism — as far as I’m concerned, and especially when writing about Apple stuff — is never intended to be an attack against what you like, or your preferences, or you as a person. Usually the subject of my criticism is specified right there in the article I’m writing, without subterfuge or intellectual dishonesty. When I wrote those aforementioned pieces criticising the notch in MacBooks, I remember getting some feedback like this: Your piece sort of makes me feel judged by deciding to purchase a MacBook with a notch, almost as if I were told that I have bad taste when it comes to design. I can understand that someone might feel like this, but in cases like this, if you stop and think about it, it’s clear that the sole target of my criticism is Apple. It’s their design decision. It’s they who force their design choices on customers in a take-it-or-leave-it fashion.

In a recent conversation with a friend, he asked me tongue-in-cheek, Aren’t you tired of being a tech critic? And I jokingly replied that It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. On a more serious note, it’s not that I love to always look for something to criticise and I still do enjoy technology and tech gadgets. I’m very happy with my new M2 Pro Mac mini, and just the other day I’ve finally upgraded my Sony WH-1000MX3 noise-cancelling headphones by getting the WH-1000MX5 — and I’m really satisfied with them: they’re a noticeable improvement over the MX3 with regard to noise-cancelling technology and sound quality.

However, what I’m noticing nowadays more and more frequently is just how uncritically accepting so many people are when it comes to technology and tech products/services. I personally feel it’s a dangerous attitude that leads to technology and big tech companies controlling our lives, where the opposite should be true (that’s why I’m generally in favour of legislation regulating what tech companies are allowed to do). And before we get to yet another misunderstanding: no, I’m not judging you and your love for all kind of tech gadgets. But if your position is to tell me I should just ‘enjoy life’ and approach these things in the same uncritical way as you do, then I’m afraid we’ll have to agree to disagree.