In recent years, Apple has been criticized for trying to do too much, releasing OS updates with missing and/or delayed features. Or, worse, lots of bugs to drive users crazy. Despite assurances by Apple that its monitoring fewer problems nowadays, facts are nasty things that often get in the way.

Consider two embarrassing problems for macOS High Sierra, which was touted a mainly a performance update with few compelling new features. So imagine the bug where you could gain root access on your Mac without a password, or a related problem involving App Store preferences. There was silly stuff for iOS 11 too, a perfectly stupid autocorrect bug involving the letter “i.”

In other words, clearly obvious problems that you’d think a first-year programming student would discover in routine testing. How did Apple allow them to clear quality control without a WTF?

During the WWDC, Apple gave a compelling presentation about a new file system, APFS, which had already shown up in an iOS update and would finally premiere on the Mac. It would offer improved performance and security and I was anxious to see it in action.

Unfortunately the first release version was basically limited to SSDs. If your Mac had a Fusion drive, the combo of a large HDD and a small SSD, APFS didn’t survive the beta process. Apple said it would come in a future release, but four months later, with macOS 10.13.4 reportedly under beta test, it’s nowhere in sight.

Does that mean it won’t show up until macOS 10.14? Maybe never?

Unfortunately, the news media, when given the opportunity to talk to an Apple executive, seems to forget to ask questions about such matters. Evidently a new file system that will improve the reality of storage devices isn’t considered terribly important. To be fair, the debut of APFS on iOS and related gear occurred with little fanfare and almost free of glitches. But the storage device situation for Macs are far more complex and confusing, so I suppose I shouldn’t expect too much.

In any case, Apple has suffered from bad publicity for its lapses. I can agree with the suggestion that the OS developers are taking on too much and not being given enough time to get the job done.

Maybe Apple is getting the hint. There are published reports that some features expected for iOS 12 will be pushed off to iOS 13 to give the company additional time to deliver a more solid release. Such features reportedly include a new home screen, augmented reality enhancements, improved photo sorting, a long-awaited upgrade for Mail and other enhancements.

As a practical matter, I’d welcome improvements to Mail, which has changed only in modest ways over the years. It’s one of my two most used apps; the other being Safari.

But I have to say that, if true, Apple is taking the correct approach. Features should not be promised unless there’s a reasonable assurance they will be ready and working by the day of release, though I realize sometimes unexpected problems arise.

But it does remind me of a common problem that has afflicted Microsoft over the years, boasting of new Windows features that never seem to see the light of day.

Of course, Microsoft is rarely attacked for such lapses, or for OS updates that cause boot loops or the failure to get past a startup screen. I suppose that’s considered par for the course — for them. But as I’ve said many times, Apple is judged by a different set of rules. Rightly or wrongly, it is perceived as a builder of premium-priced gear, which means it has to meet higher standards.

So obvious carelessness in quality control, and being able to login without a password is about as bad as it gets, shouldn’t occur. Maybe the lack of APFS support for Fusion drives isn’t a serious issue for most people, but Apple needs to keep Mac users up to date on what’s going on.

Even if iOS, macOS, tvOS and watchOS become more reliable, Apple needs to be more proactive in describing changes. The lack of an explanation of how Apple prevented sudden shutdowns on iPhones with the iOS 10.2.1 update has caused no end of trouble. It’s not that throttling performance on devices with deteriorating batteries was a bad move, but a couple of sentences of explanation would have done a world of good.

True Apple has apologized, but it doesn’t seem to be enough. Even though the forthcoming iOS 11.3 release will allow you to check on battery health, and even switch off the controls that reduce performance, that hasn’t halted the class action lawsuits.

It has also been reported that the the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission may conduct an investigation to determine if Apple violated securities laws in failing to give adequate information in the release notes for the original 10.2.1 update.

I don’t pretend to know securities laws, but that seems a bit much. Apple might have to settle the lawsuits in some fashion, maybe with coupons for free battery replacements and such, but one hopes it’ll be an object lesson about not properly informing customers. That, and not trying to do too much with future OS releases, ought to really help as Apple takes on new projects going forward.

For over a year, there were complaints that Apple had some nerve to charge $1,000 for a new iPhone. Month after month, the same objections were raised, implying that Apple was gouging customers once more with overpriced gear. When the iPhone X arrived, at a starting price of $999, it merely confirmed the suspicions.

Forgotten in all this was the nasty fact that, not long before the unveiling of new iPhones last September, Samsung delivered the Galaxy Note 8, at a price just $50 less. Evidently the critics must believe that spending just $50 more must somehow cause a rip in the space-time continuum, or something equally nasty.

Short of complaints about Apple’s pricing decisions, and I grant they lean towards the higher end of the spectrum, there are constant reminders that any new Apple product is inevitably destined for failure.

So the iPhone X must be a loser because it’s just too expensive, and the alleged rushed decision to substitute Face ID for Touch ID due to technology limitations — as opposed to just being better — must somehow impact your privacy negatively. It doesn’t matter that Apple stores its biometric data in a secure enclave that’s not distributed outside of your device.

That both facial and iris recognition is so flawed on the Samsung Galaxy S8 and related models that you can defeat it with digital photographs is usually ignored. Google’s questionable relationship with user privacy is also often overlooked.

It must be all about Apple.

Now consider this: How long have you read dire news about the Samsung Galaxy supply chain? Even when sales aren’t considered very high, do you hear constant reminders that sales must have declined from previous years? No, Samsung is the company to beat, mostly due to selling loads of cheap gear and thus manufacturing larger quantities than Apple. But at much lower profit margins.

Now when it comes to rumors from Apple’s supply chain, the alleged bad news just never seems to end.

So we have yet another story — I hesitate to call it a report — claiming that Apple has been forced to seriously slash production of the iPhone X due to disappointing sales last year. This one comes from Japan’s Nikkei, which is a usual source of such claims.

Now lest I remind you, the Night Owl reported a while back that one sales metric, from CIRP, indicated that the iPhone X was second in sales through the December quarter, behind the iPhone 8 and ahead of the iPhone 8 Plus. That sure doesn’t sound disappointing to me.

Obviously the sales mix has to be different this time, because Apple was selling several lines of iPhones, the three new models for 2017, plus products going back to the iPhone 6s and the iPhone SE from 2015. So even if total iPhone sales were way ahead of the holiday quarter for 2016, individual models may otherwise have sold in fewer quantities.

I’m sure this is perfectly clear to you.

Besides, the Nikkei stories about slashed iPhone orders are repeated regularly. It happened last year too, and in previous years. I remember how Apple’s stock price suffered big time due to fake rumors about bad sales and huge supply cutbacks for the iPhone 5 in late 2013. Whether this was done to allow investors to manipulate the price and gain underserved profits by selling short is not something I am prepared to claim. I am not a market expert by any means.

I do understand that media outlets make mistakes, but it’s rare that fake news about Apple is ever corrected. If Apple’s market cap drops by billions of dollars due to erroneous reports about nonexistent or perfectly normal supply chain cutbacks, nobody pays the penalty. Eventually actual sales figures will be revealed, and the stock price, one assumes, will revert to its former level.

The problem is that the news media seldom has the time to do its research. Reports about Apple often lack a proper historical context, nor are corrections usually made when those reports are shown to be wrong. Such stories are usually treated strictly as current events with little or no perspective and only a rare followup.

This doesn’t mean that I am making assumptions about iPhone X sales, or the sales of any specific model, for the December 2017 quarter. I honestly have no idea what Apple will report on Thursday. It may well be that iPhone X sales didn’t meet expectations, although it may require looking through the fine print to see. But if average retail prices increase by a decent amount, you can probably assume that the sales mix favored more expensive models.

Some believe that the iPhone X was a grand experiment that may never be repeated. Reports that it will be discontinued when the new models come out this September convey the impression that it’s a dead end. It may just mean that there will be a 2018 version, but the original won’t be kept around and sold at a lower cost.

Of course, nothing is confirmed, and Apple is sure to adapt marketing plans over the year based on ongoing sales and what they expect to do going forward.

In the meantime, expect more bad news about Apple even if the real story paints a totally different picture.

With Apple’s quarterly financials due on February 1st, you can bet that analyst predictions will intensity. Did the iPhone X meet its alleged sales goals — something Apple never actually discloses — or was it an also-ran that’ll be discontinued this fall?

Or does all that merely mean that there will be a 2018 version, but last year’s model will not be kept on sale at a lower price? It’s way too early to guess at Apple’s upcoming product strategies, but the rumors will intensity going forward.

But one of the stranger articles I caught online was one suggesting Apple has “everyone confused about its looming earnings report.”

Continue Reading…

I don’t know how important this is to anyone, unless you’re a devoted Apple watcher. But it’s worth a read.

So Jason Snell of Six Colors, a former editor for Macworld, ran a survey involving a few dozen tech journalists, developers and podcasters, judging the worth of Apple products and services for 2017. It’s roughly, very roughly, the equivalent of a set of Rotten Tomatoes ratings.

The lose-knit panel of judges rated the products and services on a one-to-five scale. One of the categories covers product reliability, and I’ll get to that shortly.

So here we go:

The report card gives Macs one of the lower ratings, Grade: C, with an average score of 2.9, compared to last year’s C-.

So why?

Well, I suppose it’s because Apple appeared to set aside the Mac in 2016 other than the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar and a very minor refresh for the MacBook earlier that year. For 2017, there were promises early on of a forthcoming Mac Pro, probably arriving in 2018, and a pro version of the iMac. Apple said they liked the Mac mini, and the statement was repeated by Tim Cook some weeks back. But it hasn’t been updated since 2014, and its future is still up in the air.

By WWDC time, Apple started to give the Mac some love. The notebooks and the iMac were updated, and the iMac Pro was announced, basically a Mac Pro in an all-in-one configuration. It shipped in December.

Perhaps the most negative reaction came from long-time tech pundit Andy Ihnatko, who concluded, “I can’t think of a more dispiriting year for Mac users… not in the iPhone era, anyway. In an age when Windows hardware is vibrant and flourishing, the Mac is looking shabby and forsaken.”

That’s pushing it, but it’s a provocative talking point from someone who is good at writing statements with provocative talking points.

The iPhone?

It got a Grade: A, with an average score of 4.4 (but why not a 5?).

The iPhone X got most of the love, but then there’s the Throttlegate mini-scandal, where Apple updated recent iPhones to reduce performance, make them slower, if the battery was dying. A new battery fixed the problem, but after being inundated with class-action lawsuits and lots of negative publicity, Apple apologized and agreed to cut the price of a battery replacement from $79 to $29 for a number of models, at least until the end of 2018. iOS 11.3, due out in the spring, will let you check battery health, and turn off the throttling feature if you don’t mind risking a sudden shutdown. For all that I wouldn’t award an A, but I wasn’t part of this panel.

The iPad earned a Grade; A- with an average score of 4.1. The iPad Pro, particularly the 10.5-inch model, got high marks, as did the improved multitasking in iOS 11, bringing a Mac-style Dock and other features to Apple’s tablet. After several years of steadily eroding sales, they finally improved by decent margins. What more can I say?

Also receiving a Grade: A-, but with an average score of 4.0, was the Apple Watch. But wouldn’t that make it a B+?

Regardless, it appears that the prospects for Apple’s smartwatch are improving, and maybe some users are learning to love it rather than like it. One panelist suggested that the LTE feature of the Series 3 is an improvement but it “hasn’t been the game-changer” that he expected.

Now I’m not a fan of Apple TV. It earned a Grade: C+, with an average score of 3.2. My feeling is that it’s an underachiever. The addition of 4K and HDR were helpful, and maybe it does deliver the best picture in its class, but it’s too expensive. $179 for 32GB? Give me a break.

If you’re invested in Apple’s ecosystem, I’d recommend it. Otherwise, Roku is probably the best alternative. Or if you have a smart TV with a decent interface and collection of streaming apps, you may not need a separate box. VIZIO’s  built-in Google Chromecast feature, which includes Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, VUDU and a few others, does the job for me. You can also use the TV maker’s SmartCast app for iOS and Android to cast loads of other apps. I haven’t touched my third-generation Apple TV since early December of last year.

Other ratings include a Grade: B- for cloud services with the usual criticisms for iCloud and its perennial failure to be as seamless and reliable as it should be.

Apple’s HomeKit, another underachiever, was rated Grade: C-, or an average score of 2.7. But it’s still early in the game.

At a time where tech gear may be of hit or miss quality, the Six Colors panel gave Apple a Grade: A- or average score of 4.0, for hardware reliability. One user complained about keyboards on the MacBook Pro misbehaving due to dust, a costly repair. One panelist complained he had to spend $450 because one keycap broke. That’s not right!

Echoing my article about the increasing frequency of iOS and macOS updates, the panel gave Apple a software quality rating of Grade: C- or an average score of 2.7. Apple has to do better.

Certainly the password bugs in macOS High Sierra, where you could gain root access without a password, and, in a similar bug, App Store preferences, make you wonder what’s going on at Apple. These are foolish glitches, and there’s no excuse for them. The panel mentions other issues, suggesting the maybe Apple is releasing too many updates too quickly to give them the proper fit and polish.

There are other ratings categories, including developer relations and Apple’s environmental and social impact. But the most troubling issues are still about software quality and iCloud reliability. Apple clearly has lots of work to do.