Categories
bad review revue

The Bad Review Revue

Despicable Me 4: “Talk about despicable.” — Zaki Hasan, San Francisco Chronicle

Doctor Jekyll: “You don’t call a movie Doctor Jekyll and expect that we won’t know what’s going in it.” — Mark Dujsik, Mark Reviews Movies

The Instigators: “Cannot live up to the Ocean’s movies of which Matt Damon and Casey Affleck are two of the 11. Perhaps they should not attempt heists without Brad Pitt or George Clooney.” — Fred Topel, United Press International

Harold and the Purple Crayon: “A film that pays lip service to the importance of creativity without ever displaying a demonstrable shred of it during its seemingly interminable run time.” — Peter Sobczynski, RogerEbert.com

Trap: “Trap is crap.” — David Poland, Hot Button

Categories
Apple finance

Apple Earnings Q3 2024

From Apple News:

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2024 third quarter ended June 29, 2024. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $85.8 billion, up 5 percent year over year, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $1.40, up 11 percent year over year.

Quarterly revenue of $85.8 billion sets a new record for a third quarter reporting. The third quarter is traditionally Apple’s quietest time of year for earnings.

Throughout the call the executives hailed “Apple Intelligence” as an exciting headwind moving into future earnings reports.

iPhone $39,296 million up 1%
Mac $7,009 million up 2%
iPad $7,162 million up 24%
Wearables, Home and Accessories $8,097 million down 2%
Services $24,213 million up 14%
Total Net Sales $85,777 million up 5%

Here are the Six Color Charts.

Categories
Apple

Apple Maps on the Web

From Apple Newsroom:

Today, Apple Maps on the web is available in public beta, allowing users around the world to access Maps directly from their browser.

Now, users can get driving and walking directions; find great places and useful information including photos, hours, ratings, and reviews; take actions like ordering food directly from the Maps place card; and browse curated Guides to discover places to eat, shop, and explore in cities around the world. Additional features, including Look Around, will be available in the coming months.

I think it’s worthy of saying “finally”!

Apple doesn’t hesitate taking the slow and steady approach when it comes to incremental improvements. If you’re still jaded by the less than stellar performance when Apple Maps premiered on iOS, it’s high time you start using the app. And starting now, if you’re wanting to share links to various locations or directions, you can do it on the web. It’s by far my favourite maps app.

(Previously: Apple’s New Map, Expansion #10 Canada)

Categories
Apple games

Delta 1.6 Adds iPad Support

The video game emulator Delta lets one play NES, SNES, N64, Game Boy, GBA, and Nintendo DS ROMs (which are easy enough to find online) on your iOS device. The newest version now supports iPadOS features such as full screen and runs multiple games at once. Thanks to airplay, the games can be streamed straight to your AppleTV or other supported device.

Trying to play old Nintendo titles with touch screen controls proved less than ideal but after I hooked up a bluetooth Xbox controller, I found the experience to be like I remembered. It gave me quite the dose of nostalgia. I still died on that very first Goomba in Super Mario Bros, though.

Categories
Apple

Jon Stewart on the Moment Things Went Bad with Apple

Jon Stewart, speaking in an interview on the The Town with Matthew Belloni podcast, reveals the moment he realized his relationship with the iPhone maker was destined for failure.

Categories
family life

Oh, the Places They Go

Yesterday, our six year old daughter along with our four year old son went on an adventure they had arranged for themselves.

My wife had just given them an old digital camera and they shot a few selfies with it. They also got new backpacks which they were quite excited about.

Two young children sit on a sofa with a digital camera set up on self timer mode takes their photo.
My sneaky kids excited about their (new to them) digital camera just before they went AWOL.

As I was getting ready for work I noticed they were up to something by the way they were whispering to each other with their new backpacks on and then kept quiet as I passed by them. I told them whatever they were up to, to cut it out and I headed out the door. I got a text from Andrea about a 10 minutes later on my commute to work:

The kids are just wandering around the neighbourhood somewhere. I’m about to get on my bike to go find them. I caught them at the corner walking away from our house with their backpacks on and yelled at them to come home and have breakfast now and they just kept walking like I didn’t even say anything. And they heard me because they turned around and looked at me while I was saying come home right now for breakfast

After contacting friends and neighbours and talking to everyone she ran into looking for them she even contacted the police to keep an eye out for them. I was getting updates by text and it was pretty stressful — even my co-workers who I was keeping updated about the search were bothered. I got a text an hour and a half later that our friend Chelsea found Nesslin (still in her pajamas) walking alone heading back to the house about two blocks from home. It turns out they had decided Nesslin would walk Ian to preschool (about 2km away) without parent permission or notification. They knew the way from the many times that Andrea had taken them by bike in the Chariot bike wagon.

I was annoyed that the preschool didn’t call immediately when they arrived. Ian’s preschool teacher claims that when Ian arrived at school she asked him where his mom was to sign him in and he told her that she was in the parking lot and said you [the teacher] would sign him in yourself. Sounds pretty conniving and atypical of my son to say the least.

Ian claims that’s not what he said because he was actually excited to tell the teacher that they had walked by themselves. My co-worker thinks I’m silly to believe my son over his teacher but I know what he’s like and he was pretty annoyed that his story and her story didn’t line up. When I asked him if he had been worried about getting in trouble as he walked to school he said they talked about that but decided that their teacher would be proud of them for walking on their own. I don’t want to accuse they teacher of anything but I am still annoyed that I will probably never know for sure.

The kids knew that their mom would be mad but they were surprised at the lecture they got from me when I got home from work. We are strickly a no hitting family but I told them that a co-worker of mine suggested I give them each a spanking for what they did. I was relieved to see them take this suggestion really hard and as they both broke into tears, I felt like the message was well received.

Categories
Apple finance

Apple Earnings Report Q2 2024

Thursday’s press release from Apple Newsroom:

CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2024 second quarter ended March 30, 2024. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $90.8 billion, down 4 percent year over year, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $1.53.

The three month year over year from Apple’s consolidated statement:

iPhone $45,963 million down 10%
Mac $7,451 million up 4%
iPad $5,559 million down 17%
Wearables, Home and Accessories $7,913 million down 10%
Services $23,867 million up 14%
Total Net Sales $90,753 million down 4%

Despite earning less, the stock price jumped 6% on the news.

See the Six Color Charts.

Categories
podcasting

Money Stuff Podcast

I’ve been a fan of Matt Levine’s Money Stuff newsletter for the past few years. Today I learned that he and Katie Greifeld have started a new weekly conversational style Money Stuff Podcast based on his recent Money Stuff articles. In the first episode, Katie and Matt discuss a hot fund for private stocks, a clever/illegal crypto trade and super users of US government data. Also there’s some fake Cormac McCarthy.

Categories
Apple

Apple Sued for Monopoly

Last Thursday the US Department of Justice announced it was suing Apple for monopolizing smartphone markets within the United States. I’ve spent the last few days trying to wrap my head around how much of this is hype and how much is a legitimate public concern?

From the Office of Public Affairs | US Dept. of Justice:

The complaint alleges that Apple’s anticompetitive course of conduct has taken several forms, many of which continue to evolve today, including:

  • Blocking Innovative Super Apps. Apple has disrupted the growth of apps with broad functionality that would make it easier for consumers to switch between competing smartphone platforms.
  • Suppressing Mobile Cloud Streaming Services. Apple has blocked the development of cloud-streaming apps and services that would allow consumers to enjoy high-quality video games and other cloud-based applications without having to pay for expensive smartphone hardware.
  • Excluding Cross-Platform Messaging Apps. Apple has made the quality of cross-platform messaging worse, less innovative, and less secure for users so that its customers have to keep buying iPhones.
  • Diminishing the Functionality of Non-Apple Smartwatches. Apple has limited the functionality of third-party smartwatches so that users who purchase the Apple Watch face substantial out-of-pocket costs if they do not keep buying iPhones.
  • Limiting Third Party Digital Wallets. Apple has prevented third-party apps from offering tap-to-pay functionality, inhibiting the creation of cross-platform third-party digital wallets.

The complaint also alleges that Apple’s conduct extends beyond these examples, affecting web browsers, video communication, news subscriptions, entertainment, automotive services, advertising, location services, and more. Apple has every incentive to extend and expand its course of conduct to acquire and maintain power over next-frontier devices and technologies.

After investigating the top five complaints…

Blocking Innovative Super Apps: Super Apps provide multiple services including payment and instant messaging services, effectively becoming an all-encompassing self-contained commerce and communication platform that embraces many aspects of personal and commercial life. At the same time they are taking Apple to task, regulators in the US and Europe have also expressed concerns about the overall power of the such super apps and appear to be giving mixed signals over their concerns of privacy and monopoly powers.

Suppressing Mobile Cloud Streaming Services: Although Apple originally put up some roadblocks for Microsoft and its Xbox streaming services, it is now allowed on iOS1. Perhaps there are other services of which I’m not aware that apply here, but it sounds like this is an older grievance that has been rectified.

Excluding Cross-Platform Messaging Apps: Although iPhone’s green bubbles have been characterized as the epitome of Apple’s unfairness — reading into the complaint it appears it’s more about the lack of SMS support in public APIs so that other apps can choose to mix their own propriety message protocols with SMS the way iMessage does. I agree, Apple should open up both phone and SMS messaging for third parties.

Diminishing the Functionality of Non-Apple Smartwatches: This complaint boils down again to restrictions on the public API that Apple’s private APIs don’t have. Although I think it’s absurd to say third party smartwatches only run on bluetooth and “Apple recognizes users frequently disable Bluetooth on their iPhone without realizing that doing so disconnects their watch”2 and has therefore allowed syncing to continue with Apple Watch while bluetooth is disconnected. But really… who frequently disables Bluetooth?

Limiting Third Party Digital Wallets: As explained in the briefing, “Digital wallets are apps that allow a user to store and use passes and credentials, including credit cards, personal identification, movie tickets, and car keys, in a single app.” The complaint alleges that if “financial institutions offered digital wallets, then users would have access to new apps and technologies without needing to share their private financial data with additional third parties, including Apple.” I’d rather share my private data with Apple who believes that privacy is a human right vs. the retailers who are notorious for tracking users.

It appears there might be some legitimate monopolistic behaviour even though Apple doesn’t have a 95% monopoly control of the market the way Microsoft did during the case in 1998. I suspect there will be a few concessions but even in that case, in which Microsoft was found guilty, the end result3 was basically a mere settlement promise from Microsoft to straighten up and fly right. The remaining mystery is, even if Apple is found guilty, will the cure actually be worse for consumers??

  1. in select countries[]
  2. emphasis mine[]
  3. after appeals and technicalities[]
Categories
humor

Kottke’s Choppke’s

Jason’s fake restaurant idea made me laugh.

A couple of years ago, frustrated by a takeout Italian sandwich with unevenly distributed fillings, I had a wonderful, life-changing idea: chopped sandwiches. It’s like what you get at those chopped salad places but instead of chopping up all the ingredients and putting them into a bowl, you put them between two slices of bread or in a hoagie roll or whatever. That way, you get all of the elements of the sandwich — cheese, tomato, lettuce, dressing/mayo, onion, whatever — in every single bite. Yum.

It also made me hungry.