iPhone

I wrote a piece yesterday after news broke that Apple is near closing on a deal that would make them owners of Beats for a bit of spare change, $3.2 billion. I highlighted a few reasons why this doesn’t seem to add up, and those are still valid.

Reports seem to be hinting more and more strongly that this is legit, but it still isn’t quite settling right for me. In one camp, you’ve got those that believe the headphones are the primary driver for the deal (Ben Thompson for one). In another (perhaps larger) camp, you’ve got those that think it is for the music streaming service.

The first, and by far the strongest, reason that Apple might not be in a rush to deploy a mobile payment/wallet solution is that the margins are extremely low. They’re even lower if you’re paying with a credit card since those companies already take a cut.

Google Wallet hasn’t exactly taken off. Square is growing in larger cities, but it is far from ubiquitous. So why would Apple bother? If there isn’t much money to be made and previous attempts are less than successful, what’s to be gained?

The iPod, iPhone, and iPad are unequivocally considered to be profound and world-changing technological breakthroughs that forever changed the world we live in. They sell by the millions and account for staggering quarterly revenues.

The funny thing is, none of them really sold well on the first generation. The first iPod is barely a blip on the sales radar coming in well under a quarter million units.

If we reported on every screen size, material, product, and mold shape that Apple has tried, it would be like drinking from a fire hose. I’m not saying new screen sizes won’t appear in new devices eventually, but let’s be realistic.

• iPad “Pro” - Nope*.
• Larger iPhone - likely in the next 2 years. I would expect an announcement related to vector-izing graphics in the OS to be part of this.
• Smart “Watch” - I don’t see what Apple has to gain here. I think Gruber’s idea of a new iPod with a watch strap is more likely, but even that isn’t something I’d bet on. Once battery technology improves, I think this could change. Right now the batteries needed are far too large for a device worthy of the Apple brand.

*The time frame on the “nope” projection is 2-3 years. Not happening.

There is no doubt that privacy is getting more visibility than ever with the NSA leaks of late. A lot of people are opting for more secure services, apps, and hardware. This often comes at a price as these services are harder to engineer and maintain, they’re not usually given away for free. The exception is Kim Dotcom’s MEGA service with 50GB of free ultra secure cloud storage.

AT&T announced sponsored data plans today that allow providers to pay for the data that you use on your mobile device while using their services. Imagine streaming Netflix without it counting toward your 2GB data cap, seems neat right? Well the financial savings represent the most obvious upside, the privacy issue presents the largest down side. Your data and your usage are now bought and paid for by someone else, meaning they own it.

If you’re a Twitter user, you need to be using Tweetbot 3.0. It isn’t just the best Twitter client, which it is by a long shot, it is my favorite iPhone app period. The iPad version is still on 2.0 with the pre-iOS 7 design, and even that is a league above most other Twitter clients. When I did a trial switch to Android, the lack of Tweetbot was among my top complaints, I found myself not wanting to use Twitter anywhere near as much without it.

I’m not saying it’ll never happen (though at this point I don’t see why they would), but this 2014 bigger iPad rumor is laughable. Not happening.

Regarding the larger iPhone… I see this being more of a potential, but the screen resolution situation would be a mess. I think if they do this, they’ll also introduce some API to make apps render with vectored graphics or something.