posts

Mark Gurman, writing at Bloomberg, about who could be the next CEO of Apple, assuming Tim Cook sticks around long enough for the torch to pass over Jeff Williams, who is 61 years old, just two years younger than Cook:

If Cook were to stay that long, people within Apple say, the most likely successor would be John Ternus, the hardware engineering chief. In a company whose success has always come from building category-defining gadgets, the ascension of a hardware engineering expert to the CEO job would seem logical. Ternus, who’s not yet 50, would also be more likely than other members of the executive team to stick around for a long time, potentially providing another decade or more of Cook-esque stability.

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This week on MPU:

Apple has unveiled new iPad Pro and iPad Air models. Stephen and David talk through the news and discuss why hardware isn’t at the heart of the iPad’s struggles.

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Today’s Apple event has come and gone, and in its wake are some new iPads, a slightly saner iPad lineup, and some questions.

The biggest one for me is this:

Does Apple know what the iPad actually needs?

Right before debuting new iPad Pros, John Ternus said that Apple was “gonna crush the limits of what you can do on iPad.”

As nice as the new OLED display looks, and no matter how powerful the new M4 may be, the iPad’s problem in 2024 — or another year for that matter — is the software. Fourteen years into its lifespan and the iPad still can’t seem to fully shake off its iPhone OS roots. Almost everything Apple has attempted to bolt atop iPadOS to make it more useful for more people has come with weird tradeoffs. Look no further than something like Stage Manager, or that just today Apple announced a version of Final Cut that can use external drives for project storage.

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Jason Snell has written what a lot of us have been thinking: that the best thing for the future of the iPad could be the Mac:

It’s funny how the Mac keeps coming back into this, isn’t it? There’s a good reason. The Mac is Apple’s do-it-all computing platform, and thanks to the boost from Apple silicon, it’s really doing better than ever. That mid-2010s malaise when it felt like Apple had no clear idea about the Mac’s future, which coincided with the possibility that the iPad would ultimately replace it, is gone.

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Apple Support:

Find out which iPad model you have.

I wonder how much more complicated this page will be in 24 hours.

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This week on MPU:

AI is suddenly everywhere, from online services and software to bespoke hardware products. This week, David takes Stephen on a journey to talk about the tools he has found useful, as well as what’s not ready for prime time yet.

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Jason Snell:

Apple announced its financial results for its second fiscal quarter of 2024 on Thursday. The company booked $90.8 billion in revenue (down 4% versus the year-ago quarter) with $23.6 billion in profit. Mac revenue was up 4%, presumably buoyed by the release of the M3 MacBook Air. iPad revenue crashed down to $5.6 billion, a 17% drop from the year-ago quarter and the weakest iPad quarter in four years. iPhone revenue was $46 billion, down 10% versus the year-ago quarter.

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John Voorhees:

One of the most controversial aspects of Apple’s response to the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) was the introduction of a Core Technology Fee (CTF), which must be paid by developers who opt into Apple’s alternative business terms. Today, in a post on its developer website, Apple announced changes to the CTF and regarding the treatment of iPadOS, which was added to Apple’s DMA compliance obligations earlier this week.

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Tom Lokhorst has put together a wonderful site that catalogs WWDC sessions dating back to the year 2000. I bet this one was fun.

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Somehow, we have arrived at episode 500 of Connected,¹ and I’m so glad Apple waited to release new iPads until next week, so we could play our traditional game before the event next week:

Apple’s first iPad event in over a year is next week, so the guys have dusted off their headphones and have made some picks ahead of May 7.

The Flexies got a little out of control this time. Between the three of us, we made 27 picks in that category alone.

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John Voorhees at MacStories:

Today, the European Union announced that it has added iPadOS to the products and services subject to the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The designation gives Apple six months to comply with the DMA.

iOS is already subject to the DMA, and Apple’s response meant that actions it took to comply with the law did not apply to iPadOS, leading to incongruous differences between the platforms. With the addition of iPadOS under the purview of the DMA, I expect some of those differences will need to be ironed out.

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Want to experience twice as fast load times in Safari on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac?

Then download Magic Lasso Adblock – the ad blocker designed for you. It’s easy to set up, blocks all YouTube ads, and doubles the speed at which Safari loads.

Magic Lasso Adblock is an efficient and high-performance ad blocker for your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It simply and easily blocks all intrusive ads, trackers, and annoyances in Safari. Enable it to browse in bliss.

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