Vector

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234: AirPods: The Future of Ear Computing Feb 18, 2019

Show notes

I can imagine, certainly not today or tomorrow, but one day, AirPods that contain a W5 or some other alphanumeric chipset, that slip into your ears and, through a combination of gestures and Siri — or better yet, SiriOS — can stream music, podcasts, and audio books straight from the clouds and into your ears.

And, the day or a few days after that, when they can not only send and read all your messages and mail, add all your reminders and appointments, but stream full-on audio augmented reality as well for everything from turn-by-turn mapping directions to interactive fitness workouts.

So, yeah, first like iPods. Then like JARVIS. Like HER.

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AirPods (2019) Preview

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233: Apple March 2019 Event Preview Feb 15, 2019

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Apple is planning a special event for the week of March 25, 2019, reportedly for their new subscription news and video services. The pubs will be there. The stars will be there. Less certain: iPads, AirPods, and any other hardware.

So, what does that means and what all else could we see?

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232: iMessage for Android — I was WRONG Feb 13, 2019

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Confession: I've been saying for years that Apple would never make iMessage for Android because it would hurt the overall value of iPhone and, for the last decade, iPhone is where the vast majority of Apple's money has come from.

But, with the saturationing — the phone business hitting maturity — and Apple increasingly turning towards its ecosystem — additional products like Apple Watch and AirPods yes, but also and especially services like Apple Pay and the upcoming Apple television shows — that could all change.

Apple has long been offering Apple Music on Android, and has recently announced iTunes for Samsung televisions. Yeah. Samsung. iTunes. Stop the record and rewind that. As well as AirPlay and HomeKit for LG, Vizio, and Sony.

So, could cross-platform iMessage finally start making the kind of sense that does?

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231: Amazon Buys Eero — Why People are SO ANGRY Feb 12, 2019

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Amazon is buying eero. And, if my Twitter feed is any indication, a lot of you are hella mad about it.

Here's why, how it all goes back to Apple, and whether or not AirPort should consider not just a comeback, but become a full suite of Apple Home products.

Yeah, it's like that.

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230: Why Angela Ahrendts Left Apple Feb 10, 2019

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When news broke that Angela Ahrendts was leaving Apple, things got hectic. There'd been almost no advanced word and so it caught almost everyone by surprise. And then it caught fire.

What followed was a fascinating — and somewhat grotesque — glimpse into our collective psyche as the internet stumbled all over itself to rush out its hottest of takes about Ahrendts leaving — many absurd, reflective, projective, and in general little to do with Ahrendts and a lot to do with our own damage and frustrations.

So, what's really going on?

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229: iPhone 11 (2019): The Breakdown Feb 06, 2019

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Look. I know new iPhones are still like 8 months away. You know that I know that. But it's not about me and it's not about you. It's about the rumors. Apparently, nobody bothered to tell the damn rumors. So, here we are, more than half a year out, and we're already talking not about the new iPhones but the next ones.

So, let's just agree that this is both a little silly and a lot awesome, and kick right into it.

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228: Bonus — Storytelling, Gaming, and Beyond with ARKit Feb 05, 2019

Show notes

Rene gets together with AR/VR expert, Russell Holly, to talk about the current state of augmented reality and the possibilities for the future.

Recorded live in Florida at MoNaCon2019 — Mobile Nation's internal company gathering.

LINKS:

AR Apps for iOS
@RussellHolly on Twitter

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227: Foldable Phones are the Future* Feb 04, 2019

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* Kinda. It's complicated. Just hit play... Many years ago, longer than ago than most people would think, I heard that Apple was already experimenting with folding phones. It makes sense. They were experimenting with bigger phones back in the iPhone 4 days already, long before they shipped iPhone 6. It took that long until Apple was happy with the technology. Same with OLED in iPhone X. I imagine they've been experimenting with folding devices, off and on, for just as long. Maybe longer. Trying to figure out something that's not just different but significantly better than what they can do without folding. And yeah, sure. Foldables aren't new. Humanity has been folding things for… as long as we've had things to fold. Books are the classic of example. But it doesn't stop there. We've folded wallets, we've literally got things called folders, and we even fold up our clothing and our food. With electronics, we've been folding computers in half for decades — we call them laptops — video games since the Gameboy advanced, and our phones since the early days of cellular. Yeah, hello Moto. But this is about what comes next...

226: Was iPhone XS priced too high? Feb 01, 2019

Show notes

Costs. Subsidies. Exchange rates. Margins. Ultimately, none of that matters. Even if iPhone price increases were in line with inflation and the increases in quality and diversity of components and new features, and we factored out exchange, and we didn't give a damn about margins, it wouldn't matter.

Pricing is physiological more than mathematical. In the market, perception really is reality.

And the perception among many is that iPhone prices have gotten too high.

Tim Cook addressed exactly that during Apple's Q1 2019 conference call this week.

So, what are he and Apple going to do about it?

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225: Serious FaceTime Bug: Apple shut it down and is fixing it but... Jan 29, 2019

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A serious bug has been discovered in FaceTime's new Group Calling feature that can be exploited to allow instant access to your microphone and, potentially, your front-facing camera.

I asked Apple about the bug and they provided me with the following statement.

"We're aware of this issue and we have identified a fix that will be released in a software update later this week."

So, what the hell is happening and what can you do about it in the meantime?

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