Larry MacPhee: Technology

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11.28.2023 The Right to Repair

Among some technical people, a movement called "the right to repair" has taken hold. While Apple isn't the only tech company these people take aim at, Apple products are often criticized because Apple's designs are generally more difficult to service. It used to be the case that computers, particularly desktop computers, were easy to open up and were quite modular in design. One could replace a hard drive with a bigger one, upgrade the RAM, or add an expansion card to a standard slot. In some cases, even the CPU could be replaced! This was great because computers advanced rapidly, and upgrades could extend the life of a machine without requiring an entirely new purchase. The same was true for failed components, such as a bad stick of RAM, for example.

However, as technology has advanced, people have wanted, and tech companies have delivered, slimmer and more portable devices. Laptops are harder to work on than desktops for this reason. In recent years, Apple has taken the "slimmer is better" mantra to extremes, but at the cost of serviceability. While early laptops allowed the end user to replace and upgrade the RAM, hard drive, and battery via easily accessible expansion slots, the trend has been for these components to be soldered to the motherboard, or buried deep inside the case, making upgrades difficult. While companies like iFixit have provided excellent instructions on how to do these repairs, they require specialized tools, patience, good eyes, and a steady hand.

On mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, things are even worse. Circuit boards have gotten so dense with miniaturized components that the pins are extremely difficult to solder because they are so close together. Companies have even started using glue rather than screws, perhaps to discourage repairs but also because it's easier to put components together. But good luck taking it apart! Adding expansion slots to these devices would make them more bulky, and less water resistant. I have expected Apple for some time to come out with an entirely sealed iPhone, since wireless earbuds and wireless charging are now commonplace. Rather than soldering RAM and other components to the motherboard, a recent trend is to integrate these components directly into the board design, making devices smaller, more power efficient and allowing faster data transfers by eliminating buses that created bottlenecks.

But, under pressure from consumers and governments, the right to repair has gained some momentum, and Apple and other tech companies have made concessions with some products and some components. One way to look at it is as another revenue stream. Apple now sells certain parts, tools, and instruction manuals to those who wish to repair their own devices. And, if the end user breaks the device in the process, they still need to buy a new one. Another advantage of allowing the right to repair is that it avoids what could be a costly class-action lawsuit or product ban in certain regions if the company does not comply. The European Union is responsible for pushing the universal charging standard of USB-C, for example, and since Apple was already moving in that direction, it's easier to comply rather than make different versions of a device for different regions where the product is sold. It also allows Apple to make a profit selling everyone new USB-C cables, chargers, and peripherals even though the USB-A and lightning cables might have continued to work for years.

So, in summary, while I miss the ability to upgrade and repair my devices, I do want them to continue to get slimmer and more power efficient, so the solution I recommend is to purchase with future needs in mind for devices you plan to keep a long time, or buy only what you need right now and replace more often, since there's always something better right around the corner. But don't waste your time trying to repair your own devices unless you think that's fun.

02.21.2019 Cybersecurity and the Spanish Armada

In grade school, we learned about Sir Francis Drake, pirate or privateer, depending on who you asked, and his rout of the Spanish Armada in 1588, under adverse conditions and against all odds. The Spanish, rich with gold from the Americas, had more ships, bigger ships, more heavily armed ships, but the British man o' wars were more nimble, better manned, and used unconventional strategies that led to a decisive victory. Spain never recovered and Britannia ruled the waves for the next three hundred and fifty years.

Today, America has the most powerful military in the world and spends as much on "defense" as the next seven nations combined. No nation would be foolish enough to go head-to-head with America's military. But I sometimes wonder if we're falling for the same false sense of security as the Spanish did. No direct attack on the American military is likely to end well, but the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001, and the frequent cyber-attacks on our infrastructure, up to and including the possible tipping of the 2016 presidential election, have demonstrated a clear vulnerability that we have been slow to shore up.

Hacking, like other forms of terrorism, is hard to anticipate, and retaliation is difficult because the attackers work from the shadows and often disguise their identities. It's also cheap. Our intelligence agencies tell us that the Russian and the Chinese governments sponsor these attacks but, of course, they deny them when confronted. The Chinese are also masters of industrial espionage, and we have only helped them in that pursuit by off-shoring so much of our high tech manufacturing to them. Think of the lost income to some of our biggest industries when the results of our expensive research and development projects are simply copied by a foreign competitor.

Hacking is much more than a nuisance. Used at the appropriate moment, it can represent a deadly threat. We know that bad actors working for foreign governments have probed the systems that control our power grid, our financial systems, and our communications networks. Imagine an attack that shuts down the power grid during a heat wave or a deep freeze. Imagine an attack that knocks out our 911 emergency system during a hurricane, or that disables the computer driven x-ray and MRI machines in our hospitals, or that turns all the traffic lights green at the same time. Think about the chaos that would ensue if banking records were deleted or encrypted and held for ransom? Even more frightening, image what might happen if hackers gained access to the control systems inside a nuclear power plant.

The so-called Internet of Things represents a new threat. As we add smart speakers (that are always listening), smart security cameras, smart faucets, smart locks, and smart thermostats to our homes and offices, we appreciate the convenience of being able to remotely control these devices from our smart phones. But most of these devices have very weak security, and tampering with them can cause more than just mischief. Have we considered the potential consequences if people with malicious intent can easily gain access to these devices? A 2015 demonstration of what can be remotely controlled on a fairly standard modern car is a frightening example. As autonomous, self-driving cars seem to be nearing reality, the risks only grow.

There's no doubt that our government is working on these risks, and that they're not tipping their hand about all that they are doing, or about all of the attacks that have been detected and quietly dealt with. It's also clear that we too are engaging in cyber-warfare, as the Iranians discovered when their uranium enrichment centrifuges were wrecked by the Stuxnet virus we introduced. Still, every time we throw a billion at another conventional weapons system, or lob a million dollar missile down on the cave of a Taliban warlord, I wonder if we're forgetting the painful lesson of the Spanish Armada. Our enemies are unlikely to wage war on the battlefields of our choosing. They will find the ones that give them the greatest advantage, and on which we are the least prepared.

03.13.2018 Streaming Music Services

There was a time, not too long ago, when Apple saved the music industry from ruin by introducing the one-two punch of the iPod (2001) and the iTunes Music Store (2003). Due to the advent of the recordable CD player in the late 1990s, the pirating and illegal distribution of music with free tools like Napster and Limewire was rampant, but Apple created an integrated hardware-software ecosystem that made it easy and affordable to purchase music, and to return most of the revenue back to the labels and the artists. Apple didn't need to make a lot of money from the music because they made a tidy profit selling the players. So, for over 10 years, Apple dictated the price of music and had so much clout over the resentful recording labels that, as digital video downloads started to go online, the motion picture industry vowed not to let Apple gain the same level of dominance over movies.

As often happens though, in the fast paced technology industry, while Apple was sitting back and the profits were rolling in on music downloads, the technology changed, and caught them flat-footed. The iPhone, introduced in 2007, started a new trend. Over the next few years, smartphones began to replace iPods as the devices where people listened to their music, and smartphones had limited storage capacity. Rather than store music on the device, a few innovative companies began to offer music as free streams with ads, or as ad-free streams by monthly subscription. This began slowly, and didn't seem like much of a threat at first, but Pandora, and later Spotify, began to gradually make a dent in the music download business, until download revenues peaked around 2012 and then began to fall off. (The reason it doesn't look like downloads are tailing off in the graph above is that the data points represent cumulative sales.)

I suspect that, around that time, Apple was trying to figure out what to do about streaming music, and may have spun up an internal development group to explore adding music streaming capabilities to the already bloated iTunes app. However, by 2014, they elected to use their large cash stockpile to buy a product rather than develop one, and they purchased Beats for the astounding price of $2.6 billion. Well, I guess they also got the headphones.

As you can see from the second graph (data), Spotify is currently the dominant player, but the company has yet to make money, and has the worst reputation for underpayment of royalties to the recording studios and the artists. Pandora has been around the longest, but its rate of growth is linear, and fairly shallow. When Spotify arrived, it had better features and Pandora is only now adding some of those features. AppleMusic, the rebranded Beats Streaming Service, is experiencing rapid growth, and has almost hit 80 million users but, as you can see from the graph, Spotify is growing faster. There is speculation that Apple will, at some point, discontinue music downloads and that may force more iTunes users to streaming subscriptions, but whether they will move to AppleMusic or an alternative service makes this somewhat risky.

The regression for growth in all three services is linear, so projecting forward is easy enough unless something drastic happens. Watch those numbers over the next year or two. Both Spotify and Pandora have free (with ads) options, whereas AppleMusic has a 3-month free trial, but then you have to move to the paid service. The "freemium" model has become established in the web services economy as a way to hook people on the basic service and later convert them to paying customers. All of the services are comparably priced. Spotify's Premium service is $9.99/month. AppleMusic is $9.99/month or $14.99/month for a family subscription of up to 6 people. Pandora Plus (ad-free, but some restrictions) is $4.99/month, and Pandora Premium is $9.99/month.

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03.12.2018 The Butterfly Effect

Have you heard of the Butterfly Effect? It's the idea that small things can have big consequences, in the way that the flap of a butterfly's wings in South America can build to a hurricane that ravages the Atlantic coastline. Apple's recent laptop keyboards, in order to shave a few millimeters off the total thickness of the device, have abandoned the trusty scissor mechanism in favor of a new, lower profile, butterfly switch design. After being first introduced on the new MacBooks, this design has made its way into all of Apple's laptops, including the high priced Pro models that can run upwards of $3000. Unfortunately, after about six months, a serious design flaw has become apparent, and it's one that Apple quietly acknowledges but would rather not talk about. It would seem that tiny specks of dust, as insubstantial as the beat of a butterfly's wings, can gum up the switch mechanism and make the key unresponsive. That would be bad enough, but repairing the problem with compressed air is only occasionally effective, and the entire keyboard needs to be replaced when that doesn't work. If you don't have AppleCare, that's going to cost close to $1000. It is good to hear that Apple has patented a fix, because most of Apple's computer sales these days are laptops. It can't arrive too soon because, for many people, this will permanently damage Apple's reputation for reliable hardware. In the meantime, my advice is to avoid the entire MacBook and MacBook Pro line or, if you can't, be sure to purchase the 3-year extended AppleCare warranty and plan on making regular trips to the Apple store for service. Or just sing along.

Update: Apple just filed a patent for a keyless keyboard. How that might work would be to present pictures of keys on a pressure sensitive touchscreen that provides haptic as well as visual feedback when the target area is touched. Interesting idea. Virtual keys can't get crud stuck under them, and it would certainly allow for a thinner device, but I wonder how well this will work. It's worth pointing out that the trackpad already provides a haptic response when pressed, so this technology might be fairly far along and make an appearance within a year or two. It is a logical extension of the 3D touch technology deployed on recent iPhones.

11.14.2017 Pushing Computer Design Forward

There are two computers you could buy today that push the state of the art forward in significant ways. Neither is cheap, and neither is perfect. Neither is made by Apple. (I say that with some chagrin, because I am a long time Apple fan, and design is what they used to do best.) And chances are you haven't heard of either of them. The first is the Surface Studio, by Microsoft, aimed at graphic designers, and it's been out for about a year. The second is the Sprout, by HP, aimed at the education market, and it's been out since 2014. Both of these markets are former Apple strongholds, but no significant computer advance has come out of Apple in years. That timing coincides with the rise of the iPhone and the iPad where, clearly, most of Apple's R&D has been going. What I'm curious about is whether either of these new, striking, innovative computer designs will take off, or whether we're all so squarely in the "post-PC era" at this point that a computer, no matter how innovative, just doesn't matter much anymore.

Part of the reason these devices are interesting is that they run the full-blown Windows 10, and touchscreen support is built into the operating system. Apple, on the other hand, divided OS development into the touch-driven iOS for phones and tablets, and the mouse-driven macOS for legacy laptop and desktop devices. Up to this point, Apple's has been the more effective strategy, because software developers have not found many practical uses for the touchscreen version of Windows. But perhaps that's on the verge of changing.

surface studio

The Surface Studio transforms from a desktop to a drafting tablet

I'm intrigued by the Surface Studio because this machine, which costs between $3000 and $4000 depending on specs, runs Photoshop and Illustrator the way I'd want to use them if I was a graphic designer. You can use the machine in desktop mode with its display facing you, or you can easily swing the display down to become a sloped work surface. It's elegant in the way that Apple's computer designs used to be, and it looks like what the iMac should have become, but didn't, because the macOS painted them into a corner. However, we have several graphic designers in the office, and none want this machine. Granted, they are all Mac loyalists, but I'm surprised. Once you're running Photoshop or Illustrator, there's not much difference between a Mac and a PC. And neither of those mission critical apps is available on the relatively underpowered iPad Pro.

hp sprout pro
The HP Sprout Pro

The HP Sprout, introduced late in 2014, has a camera above the touchscreen display that points down at an active work surface. The camera allows you to take physical objects and convert them into 3-D digital ones. The pressure sensitive work surface is simultaneously a second display, a virtual keyboard, and a drawing tablet. The potential of this device is huge, and yet it's not easy to anticipate where it will go. A lot will depend on the level of committment and ongoing support it gets from HP, on the quality of the custom software developed for it, and on whether it gains a foothold in the education market. Starting at over $2000, and going to almost $4000 for the top of the line model, the Sprout Pro, no matter how cool, may be a tough sell in cost-conscious K-12 schools where Chromebooks that cost 1/10 as much are the most popular technology today.

10.23.2017 Osborne Effect?

Apple just announced the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X simultaneously. The 8 is no slouch. Twice as fast as the iPhone 7, it is a worthy upgrade, costs $650, is available now, but is reportedly selling poorly. The iPhone X is the next-gen phone; it will cost over $1000 and feature all of the newest technologies, and will be available in limited quantities beginning in November. Could Apple have committed the cardinal sin in the technology world? By pre-announcing a better device, as Osborne did in the early days of personal computers, they accidentally caused buyers to hold off and harmed sales of their current product. This won't kill Apple the way it did Osborne, but it's a rookie mistake. I must confess that it surprises me that there are a lot of people willing to pay over $1000 for a phone, but it's the only good explanation for why the 8 would be in lower than expected demand.

05.09.2017 Remember iPads in the Classroom?

photo credit: greatschools.org

Technology trends may be even more fleeting than Fall fashions. Only a few years ago, the iPad was being lauded as a textbook replacement, and large K-12 school districts were signing massive contracts to bring the iPad to the classroom. Much of that excitement has since fizzled. What went wrong? A mix of the usual suspects, I'm sorry to say. High cost and low durability were certainly factors. Kids don't take very good care of textbooks, and they are no better with fragile electronics; especially those with glass screens wrapped in a thin aluminum skin. Poor management tools also made it hard to keep a consistent set of apps loaded on the fleets of iPads. If Apple had kept working on iBooks and Configurator, maybe that problem would have gotten resolved over time, but they seemed to lose interest once the tools reached the "good enough" stage. (Configurator currently gets a 2.5 out of 5 star rating in the App Store.) Another problem is that the iPad was designed as a personal device, but the classroom need was for multi-user devices, so it wasn't a great fit. But what was probably the biggest issue is that classrooms needed machines for work, not play, and for creation, more than consumption, which is what the iPad is best at. Although Apple CEO Tim Cook disparaged the rugged, low-cost Chromebooks as only "test machines," these devices are much better suited to classroom needs than the shiny but somewhat impractical iPads. Many kids now have tablets at home, and what they use them for, mostly, is watching YouTube and playing video games. It should come as no great surprise, then, that kids want to use them the same way in the classroom, which is a problem for the teacher. The Chromebook, on the other hand, is something of a barebones laptop. With a battery that lasts all day, connected wirelessly to the Internet, and to the cloud-based Google Office Suite, these devices, with real keyboards, are not glamorous, but are great for taking notes, for writing papers, for making presentations, and for doing research on Wikipedia. Nobody wants to pull one out for fun! And while that may sound cynical, there's a time for play, and there's a time for work. Teachers can imagine lots of uses for Chromebooks. For iPads to be useful in the classroom, they had to be locked down so students couldn't have any fun with them, and without a keyboard or stylus, they aren't as easy to use for creating. The new iPad Pro has rectified those issues, but still costs at least three to four times what a Chromebook does. Moreover, the Chromebook management software treats the hardware as a multi-user device and it works like a dream. As Apple once had a lock on music, only to let it slip away as they failed to anticipate the next big thing, the classroom now belongs to Google.

09.09.2016 New iPhones

05.27.2016 Intuitive Design

04.12.2016 Fixing OS X

04.04.2016 Battle of the Pro Tablets

09.09.2015: Apple's Latest Releases

04.07.2015: Memo to Apple: You can be Too Rich and Too Thin!

03.01.2015: Apple Watch Pricing

12.23.2014: Mac OS X Version History


OS X Versions

Macs tend to last a long time. If you acquire an old one, which version of Mac OS X should you run? It's not simple because older machines won't run the latest OS, and Apple typically doesn't allow a machine to run an OS older than the one it first sold with. Sometimes you might need to keep an old Mac running for some critical piece of older software that has not been updated. If you need to keep running Classic (MacOS 9 or earlier) apps, then 10.4 "Tiger" is the last OS for your machine (unless you want to try emulation). If you have a Mac with a PowerPC processor (you can get this info from the Apple Menu, under "About this Mac") and you don't need Classic, then 10.5 "Leopard" is the end. 10.6 "Snow Leopard" is the last Mac OS version with Rosetta, the compatibility layer that lets newer Intel processor Macs run PowerPC programs. Snow Leopard was also just a really good one, so I'd recommend it for any old machine that can run it. You should continue to run Software Update with any Mac OS to patch security holes and install bug fixes. Nobody should be running 10.3 or older on any machine that can run a newer version of the MacOS. If holding back from the latest version of MacOS isn't appealing, another solution is to keep an old unupdated Mac around to run "legacy" apps.

Version Name Media
Features
10.0 Beta Kodiak 1 CD Public Beta
10.0 Cheetah 1 CD Wikipedia Link
10.1 Puma 1 CD Wikipedia Link
10.2 Jaguar 2 CDs Wikipedia Link
10.3 Panther 3 CDs Wikipedia Link
10.4 Tiger 1 DVD Last version with Classic (OS 9)
10.5 Leopard 1 DVD Final PPC version (G3, G4, G5)
10.6 Snow Leopard 1 DVD Intel only, with Rosetta emulator
10.7 Lion Download or USB Intel only, no PPC support
10.8 Mountain Lion Download or USB Many improvements over Lion
10.9 Mavericks Download or USB iOSification of the Mac
10.10 Yosemite Download The iOS 7 look comes to Mac
10.11 El Capitan Download Fixes for Yosemite
10.12 Sierra Download Siri for the Mac
10.13 High Sierra Download New APFS File System
10.14 Mojave Download Dark Mode
10.15 Catalina Download only 64-bit Apps, no more iTunes
11 Big Sur Download ARM support
12 Monterey Download Released Oct. 25, 2021
13 Ventura Download Release in 2022

10.20.2014 FOMO Culture

10.15.2014 It's been way too long.

10.13.2014 Malware and the Mac

10.12.2014 And the beat goes on...

10.05.2014 The Vision Thing

09.30.2014 WATCH?

03.31.2014 Microsoft makes an important decision

03.10.2014 A Match Made in Consumer Electronics Heaven!

01.30.2014 Macintosh is 30 years old!

01.15.2014 CES 2014 Trends

11.21.2013 The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

07.13.2013 Why Microsoft's re-org won't help, but what might!

07.11.2013 It's not whether but when the post-PC era arrived!

06.23.2013 Apple's Yin and Yang

03.05.2013 Eleven years of iTunes

03.03.2013 Say goodbye to Macintosh?

02.28.2013 Time for some new Apple Ads

02.27.2013 Yahoo!?

11.03.2012 When form deviates from function

09.14.2012 Three rants for the price of one!

06.14.2012 Microsoft in a Pickle

04.13.2012 Mobile Device Platform Wars

04.02.2012 Having Our Cake and Eating it Too

01.18.2012 iTextbooks?

01.03.2012 Fanboys & Fandroids

11.10.2011 iPad + AppleTV + HDMI LCD Projector = Wireless Projection

11.01.2011 Dual boot computer lab management

10.05.2011 Thanks for everything, Steve!

10.04.2011 Oh no, it doesn't have a 5 on it!

10.04.2011 Stuff you "must" have. Stuff you no longer need.

10.03.2011 Why discontinuing the Zune is a "Big Deal"

09.29.2011 Multi-touch Tablet status report

08.01.2011 Essential Tech Tools for the Modern Traveler

08.01.2011 Trouble with Skype

07.31.2011 When does a standard emerge?

06.17.2011 Forecast: Cloudy Skies

06.17.2011 King of Cats?!?

05.12.2011 ChromeBook: Another Google misstep?

05.11.2011 Tablet Wars

01.30.2011 Too much of a good thing

01.15.2011 WinClone, I hardly knew you!

12.02.2010 Facebook vs. Google

12.01.2010 The Web is dead. Who stands to inherit?

11.02.2010 Triple Boot Machine

07.12.2010 Wireless Woes

06.30.2010 iPad Roadtrip

06.29.2010 The Mac is dead. Long live the Mac.

04.13.2010 Apple II Forever? No Thanks

03.07.2010 The Walled Garden of Good and Evil

02.28.2010 Smartphone Wars: Survivors and Casualties

02.23.2010 Why the AppleTV is still a "hobby"

02.13.2010 Kindles, iPods, razors and blades

02.10.2010 iPad Arrives; threatens Kindle and Flash

10.20.2009 New MacBook: Better in Every Way? Not!

10.18.2009 Trouble with Time Capsule!

10.13.2009 Top 10 Reasons to Get A Mac

10.13.2009 Apple Education Licensing Program

09.30.2009 What is the point of iWork?

09.23.2009 So now Microsoft's got a tablet concept?!

09.09.2009 New iPods, More Capacity, Same Prices

08.13.2009 More thoughts on the coming MacBook Touch

06.20.2009 The soon to be announced "MacBook Touch"?

06.12.2009 Apple refreshes laptops, creates giant hole in Product Grid

04.15.2009 Netbooks and Hackintoshes

06.18.2009 Closer to wanting an iPhone, no closer to wanting to pay $80/month for a data plan.

03.29.2009 TCO: Total cost of ownership.

Mac Clones and Hackintoshes

Cinema Displays, Old and New

Firewire: 1999-2008 RIP?

BootCamp, Parallels or VMWare?

News flash: AAPL anounces amazing stuff. Stock price plummets.

AppleTV? Sold! To the highest bidder. And good riddance.

MobileMe? Bite Me!