pdnoble

On an aesthetic note: I had immediately ordered a midnight blue custom configuration, which looks terrific in marketing photos, despite warnings re fingerprints by those at the introduction. THEY WERE, OF COURSE, ABSOLUTELY RIGHT! I just went to the Apple Store and the Midnight Blue display unit, on display for just one hour, looked absolutely awful. Covered in fingerprints. By far the worst affected color. Even space gray seems unaffected. I immediately cancelled the order and reordered in the traditional Silver. The good news: my delivery is unaffected: August 1-8. The traditional silver anyhow still looks, to my eye, the best by far, putting fingerprints aside.

For anyone interested, there is an excellent book: ‘How Music Got Free by Stephen Witt’ that recounts the development of MP-3 and AAC audio compression at the Fraunhofer Institute in the 1980s. Turns out Philips put pressure on them to support MP-3 because it included their patents. AAC was considered a slightly more refined algorithm, which Apple adopted. 

30 million more subscribers, not subscriptions: 30 million Apple device owners buying services for the first time this quarter.

30 million new subscriptions would be inconsequential considering there are more than 1 billion discrete Apple customers: would mean less than 3% of Apple customers purchased new services. 

The other content consumption category with great spacial potential is live sports. I would predict that this will prove to be a big AVP demand driver and that it has been a key motivation for Apple's move into sports streaming rights. They are already experimenting with capturing soccer (MLS) and basketball, from what I have read. Being Apple they are no doubt refining production techniques and other aspects of live spacial content creation, distribution and consumption before introducing a polished platform. Also the acquisition of secondary spacial streaming rights, e.g., market speculation re collaboration with Disney or outright purchase of ESPN.

I can't think of a sport that wouldn't benefit from spatial consumption: from field games to X Games, from golf to FI, with basketball an obvious early candidate in terms of simplicity of production: a single court-side camera would allow a viewer to experience the game from the best seat in the arena (and yes, we have all seen the photos of the court-side Apple spacial camera(s)). 

Apple Music is a wonderful service, delivering hi res content, but if you want to stream this hi res content to a high end audio system that will actually allow you to HEAR the hi res content, YOU CAN'T! Nearly four years after Apple upgraded its Apple Music content, AirPlay 2 still streams hi res content as a distinctly low res AAC 256kbps stream.

There is one wired work around, connecting a USB-C iOS device (or Mac) to a coax cable, allowing full 24/192 courtesy of ArkLove, which you can buy on Amazon. (There is also a USB-C to optical cable available, but the Toslink standard does not consistently deliver 24/192, from what I understand.)

So for anyone investing thousands or tens of thousands in wireless streaming capable audiophile systems, such as KEF (e.g. LS60) wireless speaker systems and NAD streaming amplifiers - where high end audio is heading, you are stuck between low res wireless streaming and wired hi res. This is an Apple confined issue with no work around, from what I understand. None. KEF, NAD and others have solutions for other streaming services, such as Tidal. (NAD BluOS does allow a Mac to be integrated as a wireless source, I believe, but the value of wireless is being able to use an iOS mobile device as a source.)

Hello, Apple! We can stream Apple Music losslessly to a HomePod but not to our high end audio systems where we can actually hear and appreciate hi res audio! 

Someone on the cleaning crew could be a plausible explanation for why it might have ended up later in Newark.