It’s time for our annual look back on Apple’s performance during the past year, as seen through the eyes of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people who spend an awful lot of time thinking about Apple.
This is the eighth year that I’ve presented this survey to a hand-selected group. They were prompted with 12 different Apple-related subjects, and asked to rate them on a scale from 1 to 5 and optionally provide text commentary per category. I received 55 replies, with the average results as shown below.
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Sponsor: MarsEdit 5⇢
MarsEdit 5 is a major upgrade to the preeminent Mac app for editing WordPress, Micro.blog, Tumblr, and many other types of blogs.
The new Microposting feature makes it “as easy to post to your own blog as it is to post to Twitter.” When MarsEdit 5 is running on your Mac, just press a configurable global keyboard shortcut, write out your latest thoughts, and instantly publish them to your blog.
Mac Power Users #678: Sales and Studies, with Kerry Provenzano⇢
Relay FM’s VP of Sales drops by the show to talk about her Apple gear, keeping multiple projects going at once and why she has built much of her workflow around Airtable.
Kerry is an integral part of Relay FM, and I’m glad we finally got her onto a show.
Ultra, Indeed⇢
Emma Roth, writing at The Verge:
Apple’s exploring the possibility of launching a more expensive iPhone “Ultra” above the iPhone Pro and Pro Max models, according to Apple tracker Mark Gurman. The high-end device could arrive as soon as 2024 with the iPhone 16 lineup.
Last September, Gurman predicted that an “Ultra” model could replace the Pro Max branding with this year’s iPhone 15, but his latest theory suggests that Apple wants to establish a more powerful — and more expensive — tier of iPhones. That means the device could have an even higher price tag than the iPhone 14 Pro Max, which starts at $1,099.
On Art and Stage Manager⇢
Federico Viticci, writing at MacStories:
There is no doubt in my mind that the essence of iPadOS – how menus appear, lists scroll, buttons are tapped, heck, even what a pointer should look like – has been designed with more taste, thought, and care than anything in Windows 11. There is no checklist that can quantify when an interface “feels” nice. The iPadOS UI, particularly in tablet mode, feels nicer than any other tablet I’ve tried to date.
Speaking of the Mac Pro...⇢
I was wondering how the 2019 Mac Pro’s lifespan was holding up compared to older models, and it’s not great. I can’t imagine Apple is happy that the Intel machine is still around.
Apple Looking at Delaying Updating High-End Mac Desktop⇢
The Mac Studio may follow in the Mac Pro’s footsteps with a longer-than-average lifecycle, according to Mark Gurman.
92 Moons⇢
Geeze, Jupiter, take a break.
Taking Stock⇢
Richard Fausset, writing at The New York Times:
Keedran Franklin, a community organizer and social justice activist, runs a South Memphis food truck these days called " The Check-in." The idea, he said, is not only to feed the people of Memphis, but also to ask them how they are getting by, emotionally and spiritually, in one of the poorest large American cities, and one of the most dangerous.
“It’s a combustion chamber of trauma — that’s what Memphis is,” said Mr. Franklin, 36. “We push it down and push it down, until it explodes. That’s what happened with Tyre.”
Apple Reports Q1 Earnings⇢
As usual, Jason Snell is on top of things over at Six Colors:
Apple on Thursday announced its fiscal first-quarter results, and it was a step backward. The company’s year-over-year revenue fell $6.7 billion, though with total revenue of $117.2 billion it was still the company’s second largest quarter ever.
Click through for loads of charts.
Twitter Replacing Free API With Unknown ‘Paid Basic Tier’ Next Week⇢
Jess Weatherbed, writing at The Verge:
Twitter will no longer provide free access to the Twitter API from February 9th. As announced by the official Twitter Developer account late Wednesday night, Elon Musk’s social media hobby will stop supporting free access to the Twitter API and will instead provide a “paid basic tier.” Twitter hasn’t provided any information regarding pricing, but said that it will provide “more details on what you can expect next week.”
PodSearch⇢
Back in 2017 I had created a site which took the the audio of some of my favorite podcasts and tried to make them searchable by passing them through an automated speech-to-text engine.
In the original version of this the transcription was done with very rough, slow, low accuracy system which resulted in transcripts that were fit for keyword searching but not much else.
Thankfully since then OpenAI has released Whisper a powerful speech-to-text engine that I can run right on my Mac and results in transcripts that are shockingly good. They aren’t quite at the level of a human transcriber but they get darn close in many instances. Getting close to the level where you could use them to grab a pull quote with only a little bit of tidying up to do.