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Apple is more than just the iPhone manufacturer. This $2 trillion company's decisions impact many facets of technology, financials, and everyday life. When the company is rumored to be getting into something new, the entire world pays attention. And since 1997, AppleInsider has been covering this fascinating electronics maker from every possible angle. From details of the next-generation iPhone and MacBook to key indicators expected to drive the company’s stock price, AppleInsider Daily has you completely covered on a daily basis.
Welcome to the AppleInsider Daily podcast for Thursday, February 1st, 20-24. I'm Charles Martin, and we begin today with ... Apple’s holiday quarter results.
Despite beating analysts’ predictions for both revenue and profit in the fiscal Q1 2024 report, Apple’s stock took a small beating in the after-hours market because iPhone sales in China were down 13 percent year-over-year. That said, revenue was higher nearly everywhere else, and overall revenue rose of two percent year-over-year, with profits up over four percent.
Services once again managed double-digit growth, climbing 11.3 percent from the year-ago quarter, and Mac sales were up slightly while iPad sales continued their decline due to a lack up hardware updates. Despite the China sales drop, overall iPhone revenue was up six percent, and profits were up 16 percent.
Overall revenue was $119.58 billion for the holiday quarter, with a profit margin of 45.9 percent. Cook mentioned that Apple now has more than 2.2 billion active devices, which refers to iPhones, iPads, Macs and Apple Watches, a new record.
Meanwhile, It’s a full court press for tomorrow’s official launch of the Apple Vision Pro, a new product that when we first heard about it seemed destined to be a cult item for the idle rich, but with each passing day gently but firmly starts bringing the idea of spatial computing into the mainstream, and moving the entire industry into working on AR/VR wearables — and making the few that were already in that area, like Microsoft and Meta, rethink their existing products.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has given an interview to Vanity Fair talking about the road to the product debuting tomorrow, mentioning that the first prototype he tried wasn’t even a wearable. But his brief, virtual trip to the moon with that crude box with screens attached convinced him that Apple would get to where it is today in pushing AR/VR technology.
The article mentions that director James Cameron has called the Vision Pro experience quote religious unquote, while tech writer Om Malik said it was “amazing and incredible.” Apple’s Senior V-P of Worldwide Marketing Greg Joswiak says that a common reaction to first-time experiences with the Vision Pro is that people are left speechless, needing a moment to process what they experienced.
A few of our AppleInsider staff are getting access to a Vision Pro very shortly after launch, so we’ll be covering our experiences in detail over the next few weeks on the site. Be sure to check out the articles and our other podcasts for real-world advice and tips on this pioneering new Apple product.
As if on cue, some listings for the 600 native apps that Apple says will be available for launch day tomorrow are already going live. While the best way to find Vision Pro apps is by using the headset itself, a few discrete pages have shown up in Apple’s listings, such as for the Photos app.
We’ve also uncovered apps from Omni Group, astronomy and medical app developers, and what may become a sleeper hit category, shopping apps like J.Crew’s Virtual Closet, Wayfair Decorify, Lowe’s Style Studio, and Zillow Immersive. It should be noted that the Vision Pro can also run iPad apps in a 2D windowed environment, but Apple Arcade and a handful of other game titles like Skatrix Pro, Loona, and Foreflight’s Voyager are taking full advantage of the spatial abilities.
In a related story, Cook during the analyst call also spilled the beans on forthcoming generative AI features that are expected to be a major focus of the Worldwide Developers Conference in June . He said that the company had spent a tremendous amount of time and effort on many different AI-based projects, but didn’t want to create what amounts to a web-based toy like ChatGPT and its siblings.
One of the expectations is that Apple’s voice assistant Siri will be better able to answer random questions without referring users to the web. It is widely believed that the reason Siri is seen as being behind other voice assistants in this regard is, in short, Apple’s privacy policies about collecting personal data about its users — a barrier to personalizing and and selling profiles on users, as Amazon and Google do.
In Quick Notes, and in response to a question from an analyst, Cook has implied that there is no intention to license Masimo’s blood oxygen detection. Apple is currently having to block that sensor in the Apple Watch series 9 and Ultra 2 — only in the United States — because of the patent dispute with Masimo.
Cook said the company is focused on appeals, and noted that there are still many other reasons to buy the affected Apple Watch models in the US. Masimo has said it is willing to settle the case, but Apple has shown no interest in doing so, believing they can ultimately prove that their sensor tech for the feature will be proven to be original work.
Speaking of licensing, Qualcomm, in its own earnings call, noted that Apple has extended its deal with Qualcomm to cover its 5G modem patent license through March of 2027, two years longer than previously thought. Apple purchased Intel’s modem patents in 2019 to develop its own in-house modem, but has allegedly had problems with its development.
In other tech news, you don’t often hear about apps being removed from the App Store that don’t have the name “Tim Sweeney” attached to them, but sure enough there was one on Thursday. A dating app called “Wizz” was pulled from both Apple’s and Google’s stores after the National Center on Sexual Exploitation contacted the companies to let them know the app was being used for sextortion scams, a growing problem among young people and teens.
One of the features of Wizz was that it would randomly allow people the user didn’t already know or ask to meet, which the NCSE said was leading to grooming, abuse, and sextortion attempts. The French firm Voodoo, which publishes the app, has said it is in touch with both Apple and Google in order to quote clarify unquote the platform’s quote extensive safeguards unquote for users.
Finally for today, a requiem for a great machine. The very popular mid-2012 MacBook Pro, the last one with a built-in optical drive, has finally been declared obsolete by Apple. The company continued to sell that particular model in variations until 2017, which is why it is only just now sailing from the “vintage” classification to the “obsolete” list, meaning it is no longer eligible for service by Apple certified shops, and parts for it are no longer available directly from Apple, apart from the battery.
As the owner of a mid-2012 which continues working well to this day after upgrades to RAM and SSD storage, the machine is still operational albeit running offline from the internet due to its inability to upgrade the OS. I keep it around for a few old games and occasional retrieval of old files I didn’t migrate to my more recent machines.
Thanks to those upgrades, it still performs well — though at this point I wouldn’t dare stick a silver disc into the optical drive and expect to get it back. Still, it is a sentimental favourite, and I hope to keep it as an occasional trip down memory lane for as long as possible.
You can hear more news and analysis from AppleInsider on the WEEKLY AppleInsider podcast that’s out every Friday, as well as our HomeKitInsider podcast that's out every Monday -- links to both shows are in the notes for this one.
If you would like to support the AppleInsider Daily podcast, we are now accepting sponsorships. Contact information can be found in the show notes.
I've been Charles Martin, and THIS has been the AppleInsider Daily podcast for Thursday, February 1st, 20-24. Thank you for listening