Panel:
- Bart Busschots (host) – @bbusschots
- Guy Serle from the My Mac Podcast – @Macparrot
- Nick Riley – @spligosh
The show starts with a few quick followup stories before moving on to look at some notable Apple-related numbers, some Apple-related legal stories, some Apple HR news, and a few Apple Acquisitions that made the news in March. The five main stories are Apple’s Annual Shareholders Meeting, the new legal battle that’s kicked-off between Spotify and Apple, the new hardware Apple unexpectedly announced in the run-up to the March event, the services announced at the March event, and the resurrection of ‘keyboard gate’ as Apple’s 3rd generation butterfly keyboards continue to fail for some users. The show finishes with a quick rundown of some other smaller Apple-related stories that made the news in March.
You’ll find detailed show notes below the fold, and if you enjoy this free show, please consider clicking on the donate button at the top of the left side bar – the show is free for you to listen to, but not for Bart to Produce!
Followup
- Having recently arrived on Amazon Echo, Apple Music has now arrived on Amazon Fire TV too — www.macobserver.com/…
- Apple Watch irregular heartbeat notifications and Apple Watch 4 ECG support now available in 19 European countries (including Ireland 🙂) and Hong Kong — www.imore.com/…
Notable Numbers
- According to IDC, Apple topped the Smart Watch market in Q4 2018 by selling 10.4M Apple Watches — www.macobserver.com/…
- Apple Music Hits 40 Million Installs on Android, On Track for Best Quarter Yet — sensortower.com/…
Legal Latest
- Apple -v- Qualcomm
Apple HR News
Apple Acquisitions
- It has emerged that Apple bought 8 patents from the smart home security startup Lighthouse AI in late 2018 — 9to5mac.com/…
- Apple has acquired Laserlike, a Silicon Valley-based machine learning startup — www.theinformation.com/…
- Apple pays $5.6M to acquire Italian app backend startup Stamplay — appleinsider.com/…
Main Stories
- Apple’s Annual Shareholder Meeting was held on the 1st of March
- Shareholders voted against a proposal (Prop 5) by extreme conservatives to re-define diversity within Apple to include conservatives by a whopping 98.3% — www.macobserver.com/…
-
When speaking against Prop 5 Tim Cook spoke very eloquently about how Apple sees politics:
… We live in a very polarized world today. And, unfortunately, too often, people are identified in those respective camps, and the dialog that should take place to find that 99% or the 95% commonality or areas of interest doesn’t happen.
I don’t believe in that polarized world. I think it’s bad. I think it’s something I would love to help blow up …
What we do is we engage with people in all political parties. I’m a big believer in engagement. You can imagine if you’re a gay man from the South, you don’t exactly ask everybody whether you agree with that lifestyle, or you don’t have a lot of friends.
So I don’t check people at the doors as to who they are and what they believe. I care about skills and capabilities and contributions. I think that for us, we focus on policy things …
We are pro-environment. We are pro-immigration. We do believe in diversity in a strong way, in a broad way. We’re capitalists. We believe in privacy …
These things to us are not political things. They’re policies. We don’t look at the politics of it, we think about the policy of it.
- During the meeting Apple unexpectedly revealed some product news – video out over USB-C is coming to the iPad Pro — www.macobserver.com/…
- Spotify vs Apple: The future of music streaming set to play out in EU competition court — www.imore.com/…
- Blog post form Spotify CEO Daniel Ek — newsroom.spotify.com/…
- Spotify’s site (with video) laying out their argument — www.timetoplayfair.com/…
- Spotify CEO: Relationship With Apple ‘Completely Unsustainable’ — www.macobserver.com/…
- Apple’s official response — www.apple.com/…
- Opinion: On Spotify’s Complaints About the App Store — daringfireball.net/…
- Related: Spotify Takes on Apple Music in India, Get 1 Million Users in a Week — www.macobserver.com/…
- New Apple Hardware
- Apple cancels AirPower product, citing inability to meet its high standards for hardware — techcrunch.com/…
- All-new iPad Air and iPad mini deliver dramatic power and capability — www.apple.com/…
- Apple’s updated iPad Air and Mini support eSIMs — www.engadget.com/…
- All iPads now support an Apple Pencil, but figuring out which one is so confusing Apple added a special interception page when you try buy one — www.apple.com/…
- Both new iPads support the Logitech Crayon — www.imore.com/…
- The new iPad Air supports the Smart Keyboard from the old 10.5" iPad Pro — www.imore.com/…
- AirPods 2: Everything you need to know! — www.imore.com/…
- Apple Boosts iMac Performance with Faster Multi-Core CPUs — tidbits.com/… & Apple finally updates the iMac with significantly more powerful CPU and GPU options — arstechnica.com
- Apple quietly lowers MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and Mac mini SSD upgrade prices — www.imore.com/…
- Apple’s iPhone XS Smart Battery Case now comes in a cute Pink Sand color option — www.imore.com/…
- Apple freshens up Apple Watch band colors for spring — www.imore.com/…
- Apple’s ‘Showtime’ Event — www.apple.com/…
- All of Apple’s big announcements from the March 2019 event — www.imore.com/…
- Apple’s Services Event: Technology Must Have Underlying Values — www.macobserver.com/… & Apple Services Are All About Privacy — www.macobserver.com/…
- Apple debuts its own credit card with a physical version to complement the app — arstechnica.com
- Everything You Need to Know about Apple Card – Apple’s New Credit Card — www.macobserver.com/…
- How Apple Card works — techcrunch.com/…
- How does Apple Card’s cash-back benefits compare to the best cards on the market? — www.imore.com/…
- Goldman Sachs CEO Says Apple Card Will go Beyond U.S. — www.macobserver.com/…
- Mastercard Sees Other Banks Ditching Credit Card Numbers Like Apple Did — www.bloomberg.com/…
- Here’s how the physical Apple Card will be activated on iOS — 9to5mac.com/…
- Apple Arcade: Everything you need to know! — www.imore.com/…
- Apple News+: Everything you need to know — www.imore.com/…
- News app for Mac: The Ultimate guide — www.imore.com/…
- How to Sign Up For Apple News+ — www.macobserver.com/…
- All the magazines that come with Apple News+ — www.imore.com/…
- Does my Texture subscription carry over to Apple News+? — www.imore.com/…
- PSA: Don’t end your Apple News+ trial before the end — www.loopinsight.com/…
- Apple TV Channels
- Apple’s TV+: Everything you need to know! — www.imore.com/…
- Joanna Stern Resurrects Keyboard Gate
- Joanna’s WSJ Column on her on-going butterfly keybaord problems — www.wsj.com/…
- Apple apologises but insists the problem is only affecting a small number of users — www.macobserver.com/…
Quick Stories
- Apple Stores begin consumer friendly repairs of iPhones with third-party batteries while safety concerns swirl — 9to5mac.com/…
- Apple & Microsoft have teamed up to integrate Apple Schools with Azure AD to make it easier for schools to manage Apple IDs — www.macobserver.com/…
- Related: Jamf has partnered with Google to make it easier for schools and businesses that use G Suite to manage their Apple devices — www.macobserver.com/… & www.jamf.com/…
- Apple have released their 2019 Supplier Responsibility Report — www.macobserver.com/…
- Apple have announced that WWDC will take place from June 3 to June 7 in San Jose — www.imore.com/…