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iPhone

  • Introducing the Rabbit R1, an AI-powered gadget that can use your apps for you

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    1 min read

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    theverge.com – Priced at $199, the Rabbit R1 features a 2.88-inch touchscreen, camera, and built-in assistant that uses your existing subscriptions and services. Its ambitious design hints at a potential future as a smartphone alternative.

  • Photos of the rare P-series iPhone prototypes running Acorn OS

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    2 min read

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    The iPhone has no doubt been a crazy success since the early days. But how did the iPhone end up being such a success? Speculation, rumors and the lack of a design-first company in the market left Apple wide-open to squeeze into a already crowding market of cell phones and catalyze the smartphone industry into the behemoth that it is today. It took years of research, iteration and trial and error to produce the first iPhones. Apple was prototyping devices in secrecy with fabricators in China as early as 2005 with Foxconn and Pegatron. Looking back, we can see the design lineage and early ideas that were afoot in the company.

    Early on, there was a bet that the clickwheel, an invention of the successful iPod could be re-used in the iPhone. Thanks to @DongleBookPro, and (a few others over the years), we have some interesting images of late Acorns OS. Apple installed numerous diagnostic tools on these devices such as fabricator diagnostics, carrier and engineering diagnostic UI. Hap Plain of Cult of Mac put together this video showing just how rudimentary some of these early P-series iPhones worked here:

    The rudimentary touch-operated Acorn OS that ran on these prototypes eventually were refined and became the much beloved iOS. For further reading I recommend 9to5mac’s piece on the history behind Acorn OS and how it came to be.

  • Will Netflix survive the streaming wars?

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    2 min read

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    The short answer: it’s unclear.

    What is clear, is that the streaming wars are becoming increasingly expensive. Everyone is vying for the customer’s prime-time attention. Just to watch the latest new original series X on streaming service Y is a mind-bending calculation. Just between those two variables alone, and conservative estimates on new original content: roughly 10 services with original content, 5 new series per year at 10 episodes each, comes to about 250 episodes to stream. That’s roughly 250 hours worth of content to stream pear year. America’s greatest export is after all, entertainment.

    That’s a lot to keep up with, and that doesn’t even include cable studio production releases that come from favorites such as FX or SYFY.

    Professor Scott Galloway makes a great point that SVODs that have an economic flywheel (e.g. companies that attract customers via Prime or iPhone sales, and enjoy the benefits of staying within those ecosystems such as Prime Video or Apple TV+ respectively) are immune to economic downturns. A couple of obvious giants that fit that mould are Amazon and Apple:

    Chart: No Mercy / No Malice, Professor Scott Galloway

    Following that rubric, Disney+ doesn’t enjoy the flywheel designations and Netflix is experiencing an especially painful truth — producing original content is very expensive:

    I’m not even sure Netflix gets out alive. Netflix is now the US economy, vulnerable to a spike in interest rates as it takes on increasing amounts of debt to fund staggering investments in original content. The original gangster can’t rely on gross margin dollars from Mandalorian action figures, handsets, or paper towels (no flywheel). The key question is can Netflix’s first-mover advantage/skill be replicated in other markets.

    If Netflix isn’t careful, when the next recession or economic downturn hits, (reminder: the American deficit is nearing $1 Trillion) it’s entirely possible that Netflix won’t survive.

  • Foxconn’s production continues to be recalled as Coronavirus takes hold

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    2 min read

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    Apple generates $27M in profit every couple of hours.

    That’s important to understand because the fuel for that economic furnace is powered by people. You’d think it’s devices (and it is really), but at the end of the day, it’s people who assemble these ivory devices. Apple’s device sales generate the bulk of their cash. That’s why Apple has been focused on other revenue segments such as services and entertainment recently. Foxconn, is Apple’s primary fabricator and production darling, located in Shenzhen.

    The majority of confirmed COVID-19 cases are in China, and as The People Republic of China contains its spread, only a fraction of workers are allowed to go back to work. Foxconn is deeply affected by this. Only about 10% reported back to work in Shenzhen last week. That’s painful for Apple, but for Foxconn, every day they aren’t producing, it eats into their margins as production estimates slip. They’ve begun to recall workers back to their factories in phases according to the Financial Times.

    If only Foxconn would’ve built this mysterious factory in Mount Pleasant sooner. In fact, Foxconn has yet to manufacture a single thing in Wisconsin at all. They risk losing their Republican-apportioned tax credits and now they risk their razor-thin margins due to an outbreak that could have been contained much sooner.

  • The Motorola RAZR is Back

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    3 min read

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    Chaim Gartenberg for The Verge reports:

    The hinge is also a bit stiff so you won’t be able to just whip it open with a flick of a wrist — closing it with one hand also involves some more finger contortions to start the closing action. It’s just more practical to close it with your other hand.

    Even with these caveats, the whole opening and closing mechanism is supremely satisfying to do, with crisp snaps in both directions. Snapping the phone shut to hang up on a call is a particular delight; there really is no better way to end a call than the classic flip phone snap, and it’s excellent to see that Motorola has kept it alive here. The hardware feels great, too, with solid-feeling stainless steel and glass on the outside and a wonderfully textured back that’s nice and grippy, which is essential for not dropping it while flipping it open and shut. (It is a fingerprint magnet, though.)

    A freaking… hinge! Did you hear that?!

    Photo: The Verge

    Pretty wild right? What year is this? Check out The Verge’s review video below. At the 1:20 mark, Chaim makes a fantastic point. All the other foldables seem to have run into the same problem. They all have terrible hinge designs, among other unmemorable product design issues. For other unknown reasons, most of the other devices fold hamburger style instead of hotdog. Perplexing really. Remember the Samsung Galaxy Fold? It was atrocious, and If you recall, it failed spectacularly.

    Sure, the new RAZR isn’t exactly the most beautiful smart device either. It does after all run on Android and will likely employ Google RCS. Nonetheless, it does raise some eyebrows. It brings Motorola back into the fray, and it brings the flip back to smart phones in such a memorable way. One major upside for this design? No more glass screens, which means no more cracked screens for those that fumble (myself included). I think that’s a bright future we can all hope for.

    Overall, I’m not sure if I would love it owning a RAZR (I never owned the original RAZR in the first place, but I did own a Sidekick 3 once upon a time), but it has certainly piqued my interest. I think it’s entirely possible that this foldable mobile-device paradigm just might make a comeback. What do ya’ll think?

  • A Visual History of the iPhone’s Camera Bump

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    1 min read

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    Photo by @benjaninja8 via Imgur:

    iPhone camera placement and product design, 2007 – 2019.

  • General Magic – Trailer

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    2 min read

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    General Magic was probably the single-most important project of the 20th century. Originally spun out of an internal Apple project. The at-the-time CEO, John Sculley later joined the board of General Magic and despite Apple’s minority stake in General Magic, attempted to cannibalize their research and neuter their products:

    Even though the company folded shortly after the dot-com bust in 2004, the spoils of their research and development gave us Palm’s Pilot, RIM’s BlackBerry, Apple’s iPhone, and countless other products that we now collectively call: the smartphones. Veterans of General Magic are, to say the least, numerous:

    But wait, there’s more:

  • What Does the iPhone X Mean for Web Browsing?

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    2 min read

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    This is fine right?

    iPhone X renders webpages with literal white bars on the sides pic.twitter.com/ztcWetrLPo

    — Thomas Fuchs (@thomasfuchs) September 13, 2017

    Uhmmm…

    "The notch was a good idea" —Apple fanboys, 2017

    I present to you Exhibit A pic.twitter.com/HzQLwBrbDC

    — @jedmund (@jedmund) September 12, 2017

    I mean as hilarious as these hot-takes are, just how serious is Apple taking this heat? Well, in their documentation they have clearly defined safe-areas to lock-in content in our familiar-yet-safe rectangle we're fond of.

    A safe-area example and Auto Layout grid columns.

    I think designers are going to have to get creative to deal with this. Thankfully app designers can look to web design for inspiration. Lots of wonderful solutions are just waiting to be discovered.

    Apple apparently has some yet-to-be-released Safari documentation about how to handle full-width designs as their Apple TV 4K seems to take advantage of this. Check it out:

    Apparently there is a way to set the background color, e.g. the Apple TV 4K page does it. pic.twitter.com/Am3xn6wjRp

    — Thomas Fuchs (@thomasfuchs) September 13, 2017

    I have a feeling that it's just the background-color of the document body, but we'll find out sooner than later. I think this is a real challenge, but in the beginning it's going to be a bit rough out there. I'm going to do a deep-dive into the Human Interface Guidelines and documentation next.