According to published reports, Apple has seeded a brand new macOS High Sierra update to developers. and public beta testers should have at it shortly. This one, 10.13.4, will put up warnings that Apple plans to remove support for 32-bit apps.

Says Apple:

To prepare for a future release of macOS in which 32-bit software will no longer run without compromise, starting in macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 a user is notified on the launch of an app that depends on 32-bit software. The alert appears only once per app.

Now it’s perfectly normal for Apple to remove support for older apps and features. macOS Lion, released in 2011, removed support for Rosetta. That was the app that allowed you to run PowerPC apps on an Intel-based Mac. Since Apple went Intel in 2006, you’d think that five years would be quite enough, but some apps never made the transition. As for 32-bit apps, by 2007 all Macs supported 64-bit, which should have been a proper incentive for all developers to get with the program.

So I suppose it makes sense, except, of course, if you are saddled with an older app that’ll never be updated, and you’ll have to seek an alternative. Or not use High Sierra’s successor, 10.14, which is probably the release that will eschew 32-bit apps.

But the issue that has reared its ugly head is not that Apple has released several updates in nearly four months, it’s that older macOS versions have seen fewer updates in the same period of time. Is there some deep, dark reason why 10.13.4 is on the horizon so soon, relatively speaking?

On online blogger has actually posted a chart that records the update pace compared to an earlier macOS release. Maybe that person has enough spare time to engage in such chores. Maybe it’s a case of idle curiosity, or maybe it’s a case of wondering why.

So is Apple more aggressive to remove bugs more quickly nowadays, so users won’t have to suffer with them, or are there more bugs in the newer release?

I would suppose that a better solution would just be to examine the release notes and see how many issues have been fixed with each release. What I see is that the number is fewer, although I’m not necessarily considering the severity. Some of those bugs were foolish, such as the one that allowed you to gain root privileges on your Mac without a password, or the ability to do the same with App Store preferences.

Security fixes include several for that notorious CPU bug, involving two issues dubbed Meltdown and Spectre. Although some uninformed members of the media incorrectly claimed the bug primarily affected Apple gear, that fiction is no longer being repeated. Regardless, these issues were not Apple’s fault, but the company is to be commended for taking charge of the situation and explaining what it planned to do.

Even if High Sierra and older OS versions getting those fixes were otherwise pristine, these issues would have to be addressed. Apple refers to the process as “mitigate,” since the fixes do not completely eliminate the problems.

There is, however, the perception that High Sierra has been especially buggy, but other than the password issues and security fixes, that doesn’t seem to be correct. I’m only an example of one, but our readers haven’t complained about its reliability, and I haven’t had any particularly unusual problems, and I’ve been using it since early in the beta process (but not originally on my work Mac).

What I’m actually waiting for is Apple’s promised fix for the inability to convert a Fusion drive to the Apple File System (APFS). The feature was there at the early stage of the beta process, but removed because it was buggy. Indeed, when you reverted your Mac to HFS+ before installing the final release of High Sierra, you had to undergo a more complicated reformatting maneuver that required some Terminal commands.

When High Sierra was released, Apple software engineering chief Craig Federighi said support for Fusion drives would come “in a future update,” but nothing has been heard since. Evidently it has taken longer for Apple to make the process reliable. For now APFS, which promises improved security and performance, is designed strictly for Macs with SSDs and, of course, iPhones and iPads. A regular hard drive can be converted, and evidently reliably based on my brief tests. The Fusion drive’s combination of HDD and SSD, however, is evidently the sticky wicket.

It’s not that my iMac is going to suffer from the lack of APFS support, although my aging 2010 17-inch MacBook Pro, outfitted with an SSD a few years back, converted in perfect form and continues to run reliably.

But it would be nice if Apple gave us an update on the status of the ability to convert Fusion drives to APFS. Or maybe the question isn’t being asked by many people, as I’ve seen very little mention about the topic in tech publications. That, of course, is not going to encourage Apple to continue to work on the problem, so maybe it’ll be set aside for High Sierra’s successor.

In addition to throttling performance of older iPhones due to failing batteries, one especially ill-informed tech pundit has now come up with a silly claim that wireless charging and fast charging somehow makes batteries wear out faster. But, it seems, only if those features are offered on an Apple product.

You with me so far?

Not to worry, I’ll attempt to make it all clear to you as much as I can.

So we know that the new iPhones support fast charging. When it comes to so-called wireless charging, it’s actually not something you couldn’t get before, but you needed a special case to do it. Now it’s native and since it supports an industry standard protocol, Qi-based wireless inductive charging, you don’t have to wait for Apple to deliver its promised AirPower charging pad. There are plenty out there.

Now the article in question, again not being linked, makes a deal out of Throttlegate, the so-called scandal involving Apple reducing performance on iPhones with failing batteries. Somehow this leads to fears about the “pressures that more power-thirsty devices is placing on batteries,” which means, in short, that the batteries of the newest iPhones must wear out much faster.

How long is the inevitable? “…the battery inside your new iPhone 8 or iPhone X might be worn out in under a couple of years.”

Now I’m sure you know that there are no magic bullets in battery technology. They all wear out after a given number of charge cycles, so why should it be all about Apple anyway?

Stick with me, because our aimless blogger reminds us that an iPhone battery — and most any smartphone battery for that matter — “is designed to retain up to 80 percent of its original capacity at 500 complete charge cycles.” That’s from Apple, so you can believe it.

So how does this all get out of sorts? Well, it appears that the argument is that, since it takes less time to charge the iPhone 8 and iPhone X, you will, therefore, charge them more often and thus wear out the batteries faster. This must be some kind of major scandal, particularly because the blogger was frightened to discover that he had charged his iPhone’s battery more often then he expected.

Now I should point out that Apple has kept estimated battery life pretty consistent over the last two generations of the product. You will get more battery life out of an iPhone 8 Plus than the regular iPhone 8; it lasts about the same as the previous model.

So even if the fast charging cycle is shorter, the battery won’t have to be replaced more frequently. That’s the fatal flaw.

Unfortunately, our aimless blogger never actually considered any of this, or chose not to. Sure, I’d love to get two or three days out of a single charge, but it’s not happening. Since the batteries are actually a little smaller, it means Apple has found ways to make power utilization more efficient, touting the same battery life for the iPhone 8 as the iPhone 7.

Besides, Apple has no exclusive with fast charging and inductive (wireless) charging. Lots of other smartphones have had these features for years, yet we don’t have the aimless blogger raging about wearing out those batteries faster because you charge them faster. Indeed, the lack of logic is so obvious, I wonder how that column ever got past the editors of the major tech portal on which it was posted.

Now it’s certainly true that competing smartphones do tout longer battery life. But not, obviously, more charge cycles since the batteries are more or less the same. Ideally, Apple ought to find ways to stuff a bigger battery into an iPhone without changing the size that much. Maybe someday there will be a revolution in technology that will allow you to get several times more battery life with shorter charging cycles and more of those cycles.

Indeed, my part-time ride hailing gigs with Lyft and Uber definitely demonstrate the shortcomings of current batteries when you use them under heavy load for hours on end. While I’m running the navigation feature full bore, I’m lucky to see three or four hours before I have to attach a charging cable to my iPhone. If I have the need to replace the battery sooner, so be it. It’ll be a business expense obviously.

But maybe Apple can find a way to reduce the power requirements for the GPS and the third parties who make the navigation software I need will make them more efficient, so they don’t wear out the battery quite so quickly. That would certainly be a helpful development since millions of people with smartphones do this kind of work, or something similar.

I am, however, looking forward to the promised iOS update that will allow me to keep tabs on battery health, so when the time comes, I’ll be ready to replace the battery and get on with my life.

And wait for the next lame fear-mongering blog about Apple. I should see one any day now.

You’ve heard the stories. The iPhone X, which didn’t go on sale until early November, did surprisingly well through the rest of the year. Or maybe not. Maybe it was a poor seller, and thus Apple might have to rethink its strategy about a next generation iPhone.

Some analysts claim that the evidence from the supply chain indicates that Apple might be flush with unsold iPhone X inventory and thus cut way back in orders for the current quarter. But it’s also true that sales for a March quarter are always lower overall for Apple than a December quarter. This should be obvious, but the supply chain stories still appear every so often.

Regardless, Apple plans to announce its financial results on the afternoon of Thursday, February 1st. Until then, the best we’ll get are independent and inconsistent surveys or educated or not-so-educated guesses. So what’s the latest?

Well, there’s a report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, a Chicago-based firm that researches the consumer market.

The survey, released on January 22nd, covers total iPhone sales in the U.S., concluding that the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and the iPhone X delivered 61% of Apple’s smartphone sales in the December quarter. This compares to last year, where the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus received 72% of total sales.

But the two sets of numbers cover entirely different situations, since Apple had additional models available this year, dating back to the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. So there isn’t a direct comparison. In any case, the iPhone 8 got 24% of the total, the iPhone 8 Plus got 17%, and the iPhone X got 20%.

According to Mike Levin, a partner and co-founder of CIRP, “Older models held their own. iPhone 7 and 7 Plus grabbed almost one-quarter of sales in the quarter, and the two-year old iPhone 6s and 6s Plus accounted for 8% of sales. Apple priced these older models attractively, with little visible physical difference among the 6, 7, and 8 series models. Even the older, smaller-format SE maintained a meaningful share of total sales.”

Of course, the iPhone X was on sale five fewer weeks than the other 2017 models during that quarter; they went on sale in late September. Does that mean sales totals might otherwise have exceeded the iPhone 8 had the iPhone X gone on sale earlier? That seems very probable.

It also demonstrates a preference for larger displays. Between the iPhone 8 Plus and the iPhone X, the totals reached 37% of current models. In my routine travels around the Phoenix metro area, I see larger iPhones of one sort or another more often than not. It’s not a survey, of course, but it may be that lots of people are willing to put up with the inconvenience of carrying them around in exchange for more screen real estate.

Again, the CIRP survey strictly focuses on the U.S. How the most expensive iPhone ever did elsewhere around the planet can only be estimated. Don’t expect model breakdowns from Apple. At best there will be a statement from Apple that it was pleased as punch, more or less, with the demand for the iPhone X.

But it’s significant that the costliest iPhone may have matched or exceeded the sales numbers of the cheapest model in the 2017 lineup had it been on sale longer. That is an extremely interesting development, and it only gives Apple an incentive to build even more expensive smartphones.

In fact, current chatter has it that this fall’s iPhone lineup will include an iPhone X Plus, meaning a larger model that will no doubt be at least $100 more expensive than the regular model. Compare that possibility to the way the iPhone X’s expected price freaked out Apple’s critics for so long. How could the company dare charge just shy of $1,000 for a smartphone when the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 listed for $50 less, as if that was a significant difference.

I don’t recall anyone complaining that Samsung charges prices in the range of Apple’s for competing gear. It’s all on Apple, even when you have such contradictions.

There are also rumors that Android smartphone makers are working hard to mimic Apple’s Face ID feature that includes the TrueDepth camera. Supposedly Apple is now a couple of years ahead of the competition, so after all those complaints that facial recognition would be a failure, inferior to Touch ID, that attitude has changed now that the feature has been shown to be mostly successful.

Whereas the facial recognition of the Galaxy S8 can be fooled with a digital photograph, Face ID appears to require a difficult-to-create 3D mask to bypass security. Then again, if all one wants to do is break into a single iPhone X, I suppose one might confront the user with a deadly weapon and save the time and trouble.

I’ve talked to a number of iPhone X users, all of whom say Face ID is nearly perfect in daily use. You look at it, and it works, even if you are with or without eyeglasses, and nighttime recognition also appears highly efficient. While identical twins, or parents and children who really look alike, might also fool Face ID, one hopes family members would respect one another’s privacy. Well, at least most of the time.

In a recent TV interview, Apple CEO Tim Cook wrongly suggested that customers were properly informed about the iOS change that resulted in throttling performance on iPhones with failing batteries. Unfortunately, the interviewer failed to correct him or make much of an effort to ask proper follow-up questions.

Now Apple did mention a change, first for the 10.2.1 update in 2016, that it was addressing a sudden shutdown problem on some units. But there was no disclosure that the fix meant that performance would be reduced to eliminate the problem. Another sentence or two about the fix reducing performance to regulate power use would have been appropriate, as would an explanation that the user should have the battery checked and see if it needed to be replaced.

Two sentences, and a load of problems and suspicions would have been avoided. There would probably not have been dozens of class action lawsuits and possible other actions against Apple for allegedly engaging in a planned obsolescence scheme.

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