Last April I was worried the $10,000+ Apple Watch Edition would alienate Apple’s core customers. Separating technology enthusiasts and everyday people from a company that once prided itself upon making “the computer for the rest of us.”

I wasn’t alone.

Estimates “Apple Watch revenue will be dominated by the gold Edition units” were overly optimistic. Just 10 months after its release, Apple began removing mention of the Apple Watch Edition from its retail stores and website.

At a time when Apple has just launched its cheapest ever iPhone, and when Phil Schiller caused a few raised eyebrows over what some interpreted as an elitist remark, Apple seems to be aiming for a more egalitarian image where the Apple Watch is concerned.

Apple has quietly revamped the Apple Watch section of its website, rendering the Edition almost invisible unless you specifically go looking for it. In addition, we’re hearing reports that Apple’s most expensive Watch is also being removed from some retail store displays …

It doesn’t look like 18K gold has a bright future at Apple. That is why I was surprised to hear of a new Apple Watch Edition announced at Apple’s September 7th Special Event.

John Gruber tells us more:

Gold is out. Taking its place as the Series 2 Apple Watch Edition is a white ceramic model. In person it is gorgeous, and feels great. The price is a non-ludicrous $12491299 (3842 mm). It seems pretty clear that everyone who looked at the original Edition prices ($10,000–20,000) and said “No one is going to buy those” was proven correct. This $1,000–1,500 range feels about right for the high-end Apple Watches.

Even though I was never an Apple Watch Edition customer, I am glad to hear gold is out and the price has returned to pre-ludicrous levels. As a flagship product, the new Apple Watch Edition in ceramic feels much more like an forward-facing Apple product than the anachronous 18K gold models that proceeded it. With four times the hardness of stainless steel and virtually scratch proof, ceramic is the kind of fashion statement I hope makes its way into future Apple products.

I also agree with John. The “Apple Watch Edition could just as well be called Apple Watch Jony Ive Edition.”

Ive is famously fascinated with using new materials. The original Edition lineup may well have existed not so much because Apple believed they would sell in significant numbers but because Jony Ive wanted to work with gold, and the watch is the only Apple device to date where gold made even a lick of sense. This white ceramic has Jony Ive written all over it.

If Apple Watch Edition gives us a glimpse into the future of Apple’s product and keeps Jony Ive happy that is alright by me.

I have been waiting all Summer for the introduction of the iPhone 7. Not because I plan on buying an iPhone 7, but because I wanted to hear Apple’s reason for removing the headphone jack from their flagship phone.

Here’s what Phil Schiller had to say about the subject during the September 7th Apple Special Event:

Now some people have asked why we would remove the analog headphone jack from the iPhone. […] The reason to move on — I’m going to give you three of them, but it really comes down to one word: courage. The courage to move on, do something new, that betters all of us. And our team has tremendous courage.

Many of the people I interact with on Twitter found Phil’s explanation of ‘courage’ to be a little obtuse and a tad bit arrogant. Heck even I used Phil’s explanation to poke fun at Apple’s expense. But if there is anything worth waiting for after an Apple event, besides the new products, it is John Gruber’s analysis of the show.

This time around John, with the help of 9To5Mac, reminds us of another time Apple used ‘courage’ to support their decision to leave something out.

We’re trying to make great products for people, and we have at least the courage of our convictions to say we don’t think this is part of what makes a great product, we’re going to leave it out. Some people are going to not like that, they’re going to call us names […] but we’re going to take the heat [and] instead focus our energy on these technologies which we think are in their ascendancy and we think are going to be the right technologies for customers.

I like John’s comparison of Apple removing Flash, better than I like John’s comparison of Apple removing the floppy drive. But in either case Apple was right “to push the industry toward something much better.” Especially if the next best thing is an open standard like HTML5 video instead of proprietary Flash; but even if the next best thing is a licensed technology like rewritable CDs instead of the outdated floppy.

What concerns me is the real incentive behind Apple’s new found courage. Is it about pushing the status quo to accept open standards like Bluetooth or selling proprietary technologies like Lightning headphones and the W1 wireless chip in Apple Airpods? You might say these things are only half measures until Bluetooth catches up. But I don’t see Apple licensing Lightning ports on other phones or W1 chips on other headphones anytime soon. In fact as Apple has grown larger, I would argue the incentive behind more of their courageous decisions is less about promoting open standards and more about securing technological lock-in.

Don’t believe me? Just look as far as FaceTime, Messages, and iCloud. Who wins, Apple or its customers, when the headphones customers buy and the social networks customers adopt only work on Apple devices?

Apple may “make decisions that they know will provoke outrage just because they think it’s the right thing to do.” And most companies will do anything to avoid controversy. But what company wouldn’t provoke a little outrage or controversy if they thought they could get away with it? Especially if getting away with it meant maintaining a status quo with them in control?

By removing the headphone jack Apple is not only showing us they have the courage to push the human race forward, but that they are brave enough to profit from the proprietary post headphone jack future they are asking the world to create.

Ii his article ‘New Apple,’ Stephen Hackett tells us what makes the Apple of today different from the Apple he discovered in the early 2000’s.

Apple of today is different. It’s not only one of the world’s largest companies, it’s been that way for some time. Employee head count has swelled and the company is pushing into services more than ever before, all while juggling more products than ever.

As a fan of early 2000’s Apple, I often reminisce of a time when Apple was the underdog. When its low marketshare and outspoken CEO taught us to ‘Think Different.’ When choosing a computer meant picking between Home or Pro — laptop or desktop. iOS had not been invented yet.

Today’s Apple doesn’t face the same challenges. It doesn’t need to shout in shades of brightly colored plastic to be heard. Today’s Apple is a market leader, with products reaching every price point. Whose actions speak louder than words, with or without a keynote address.

Increased marketshare and a larger audience aren’t the only things that make ‘New Apple’ feel different. Tim Cook has lead Apple in a new direction. Apple is no longer just the sum of its products or the strengh of its people. Under Tim’s leadership today’s Apple is a voice for diversity, fitness, and envionmental awareness. Apple would not have the same voice if Steve Jobs was still in charge.

Like Stephen and myself, you might celebrate Apple’s new voice while still identifying with the old Apple.

I may personally identify more with a smaller company with more fight in it, it’s impossible to deny that New Apple is a greater force for good in the world. We have Tim Cook to thank for that. His unwillingness to conform to Jobs’ image has proven to be his greatest strength, and one that I think Steve himself saw and appreciated.

Here’s to another five years of Tim Cook.
nLong live New Apple.

The Apple en.wikipedia.orgwikiLightning_(connector text: Lightning connector) was introduced on September 12, 2012 to replace the 30-pin dock connector on the iPhone 5. It went on to replace the 30-pin dock connector on all new Apple products including popular accessories like the Apple Pencil, Magic Keyboard, and Siri Remote.

More compact than the 30-pin dock connector, the Lightning connector can be inserted with either side facing up. But as far as Apple’s customers are concerned, that is where Lightning’s advantages end.

The 30-pin dock connector introduced new capabilities by extending the existing 30-pin layout and utilizing dedicated hardware on the device. The Lightning connector emulates these capabilities across Lightning’s 8-pins by way of the device’s on board CPU. Often this emulation requires including expensive integrated circuits inside the Lightning adapter itself. This is one reason why Lightning adapters often cost more than their 30-pin counterparts.

The other reason is the Apple MFi Program. The MFi Program is a licensing program that third-party manufacturers must join in order to produce Lightning compatible accessories. Failure to pay the MFi Program tax could prevent a manufacturer’s Lightning accessories from working with Apple devices. The program is enforced by the use of DRM. But even after the DRM was hacked, Lightning accessories that do much more than USB are still complicated to produce.

Apple created Lightning to retain control of its products They did so from a position of power. Designing the next interface for the world’s most popular phone, tablet, and digital music player. Unlike the iMac’s early adoption of USB, no suitable alternative was available at the time. Standards driven USB 3.1 and the reversible Type-C connection were still over two years away. Apple needed a smaller, convenient, future-proof connector in time for the introduction of the new thinner iPhone. What better way to ensure that Apple’s products have the features they need and at a schedule of Apple’s choosing, than to design a extensible connector and control the delivery of its capabilities. Lightning is that connector.

I am not surprised Apple is removing the headphone jack from the iPhone 7 and replacing it with the existing Lightning connector. But I don’t think the removal of the floppy drive from the iMac is a comparable analogy.

The headphone jack’s popularity isn’t in decline. It has not been superseded by technologies like the ZIP drive, magnetic optical, and rewritable CD. Nor is it a legacy port, kept on for compatibility. If anything its popularity has increased in recent years with the surge of mobile devices and the digital music revolution. If anything its capabilities have grown with the introduction of an on board microphone, and remote control.

Apple has two reasons to get rid of the headphone jack. One is to ensure even greater control over its platform by getting more third-party accessory manufactures to join the MFi Program. The other is to announce a new feature of the upcoming iPhone 7 that would not be possible if the headphone jack is included.

Either way the Lightning connector is here to stay.

Ben Brooks brought this post by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes to my attention.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is a long-time Windows power user who now prefers OS X, iOS, and Android for their simplicity and reliability.

My primary work system is a MacBook Pro, and in the ten months I’ve had it it’s flawlessly done everything I’ve asked of it, from run Microsoft Word to render 4K video. I’ve lost count of the number of notebooks I’ve owned over the years, but this MacBook Pro is, by far, the most reliable system I’ve owned, and I put part of that down to the fact that it doesn’t run Windows.

And, on tablets:

My experience of Windows on tablets closely resembles that of my ZDNet colleague James Kendrick. Bottom line, they let me down too much to want to bother with them. Why would I trade a reliable iPad or Android tablet for an unreliable Windows 8.1 tablet? Why trade a tablet that just works for one that regularly sends me on quests, roaming the Internet looking for the right elixir to fix the system?

My question for Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is “WHY IS THIS NEWS TO YOU?” Despite your claims to have had some “rock solid” Windows NT 3.5/4.0/2000 systems in the past, you also say say “of all the desktop operating systems that I’ve used, the modern Windows operating system is by far the most fragile.”

You place the blame on Microsoft “for not putting enough effort into hardening the system, reducing the effect that fault – in particular software faults – have on the system, and providing better information when things go wrong.”

And you place the blame on “the vast ecosystem of hardware and software [Windows] has to support, and partly it is down to the years of legacy that each version drags behind it.”

I hate to tell you Adrian but WINDOWS HAS ALWAYS BEEN THIS WAY!

When you plunk down your $199.99 for the latest Windows 8.1 Pro, Business, Core, or whatever Microsoft is calling it these days, WINDOWS IS WHAT YOU ARE PAYING FOR! You are paying for the hardware compatibility, the vendor ecosystem, and the legacy software support you want. But you are also paying for the troubleshooting, the frustration, the malware, the terrible battery life, and the ambiguous error messages that send you circling all over the internet. The only reason you are aware of it now, is because you have recently tried a closed systems like OS X and iOS where the software and the hardware are developed together to work for you.

I always laugh at Windows users who have problems with their computers. After all THIS IS WHAT THEY PAID FOR! If you are are not up for the challenge of tweaking the Registry, diagnosing bad drivers, removing spyware, or rebuilding your system to avoid bit rot then you bought the wrong operating system. After all there are less time-consuming options out there like OS X, and iOS with free in-person training, and free support.

I feel bad for Adrian, that after spending 10,000+ hours mastering Windows he finally found a platform that works for him. But at least he got what he paid for.