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Stronger than expected quarter.

Note that gross margin is higher than last year. Impressive cost control on the product side while investing in services and broader R&D. Likely a lot of cash is going into Vision Pro and the refresh of products for next couple of quarters going into the holiday period.

My feeling is that the emerging market story of growth is akin to the early hockey stick growth of the services division. In the early days of services it was a curiosity but over time became an increasingly highlighted item in the results. The upside in emerging markets is incredible as the population is increasing in affluence and Apple products being aspirational and relatively accessible compared to other aspirational and status products.

The enterprise story for Apple is something they have been successful in growing but still feels like a hobby in Apple’s go to market vs a concerted push. End users are more responsible for their inroads than their strategy. Apple could likely offer a cybersecurity value add managed service for Apple centric firms that could help the SME segment immensely. This would likely goose the gross margins quite materially. Cybersecurity is the fastest growing segment for Microsoft as a comparison. Apple does a lot of good in security, but mostly transparent to the end customer. 

My wish for apple is to make their platform strategy more multi-polar and make the Home and Watch first class citizen sub platforms and thus equal peers to the iPhone and iPad. 

Apple’s push of manufacturing into India is a fantastic move and will incentivize India’s authorities to make Apple’s expansion there successful. They can likely take many pages out of their China playbook and implement in India to a similar effect of growth over time. Many emerging market countries called out in the earnings call are high population growth countries with young populations that provides a glide path for growth of the TAM in these countries.

Hearing test functionality like a beep test where you tap as soon as you hear a sound would be amazing feature and seems likely to be software only update (??).

The ear is also a centre of balance and maybe there is a way to combine AirPods and iPhone or Apple Watch for gait+balance tests for early warning on a range of conditions related to viral infection of the ear that impacts balance.

I am very much not an expert on any of this, my assumption is that adding a gyro + accelerometer to the AirPods would enable a lot of head/neck analytics, posture checks, balance etc. Such sensors may even help detection of nerve conditions that cause small involuntary movements of head or neck.

chronically tilted head may indicate asymmetry in neck muscle tone/tension causing chronic headaches. If able to model the hunch forward over keyboard and tilt head upwards to see screen then could measure time spent with subocciptiales in contracted state and increased improper load on neck vertebrae and posture associated issues such as rhomboid tension for a long time in a lengthened and weakened state which is another major cause of discomfort and back pain.

Apple seems to be wizards at miniaturisation and I sincerely hope they pursue health aggressively in their products as they have an opportunity to positively influence the lives of over a billion people.

A15 has better instruction set architecture, neural engine and process node than A13, right? Much better battery life and more oomph.

If they are giving the neural engine a boost then we are in for a treat as Siri on the Apple Watch will become more meaningful and offline. Maybe this is the extra muscle the Apple Watch needs to throw off the shackles of iPhone and become a stand alone platform segment.

Very good news if true.

WWDC is like Christmas for me.

I am less interested in any new hardware announcements than to see what the evolving iCloud vision is and how some of the satellite devices will evolve into stand alone platform segments inside the iCloud universe.

Would love to see Apple unleash two platforms that can really shine even more in the iCloud constellation. 

Apple Watch
Apple HomeKit
Apple Siri

Apple Watch - would love to see it become a full featured citizen completely stand alone from the iPhone and double down on health features including expansion of their current hobby on mental wellbeing.

Apple HomeKit - Seen lots of rumors of HomeOs and frankly it is time to own the home instead of letting Amazon and Google run it in so many homes, Amazon is currently blinking with massive layoffs in their smart speaker division and Alexa service. Seize the moment and ramp the Apple Home eco system.

Apple Siri - Siri is an amazing interface for convenience but like most voice UIs have been completely made into toys by GPT4 and its cousins. We need a massive boost and turnaround of Siri to become something more than a voice based green screen terminal for simple commands. 

I am paying for AppleOne today and also GPT4 and would absolutely support a monthly add on to AppleOne if Siri got a major GPT boost. Similarly would pay for a Home service add on if compelling.

Here is hoping.

Lockbit coming to Macs is a logical conclusion of their strategy to monetise. The group is very successful.
Historically the Mac community have been lulled into a sense of false security and safety so I think Lockbit and their affiliates will be very very successful targeting our community.

A couple of things to bear in mind when it comes to highly organised and resource rich cyber crime groups:

1) Any security control that you have the criminal groups have access to and can quality test their exploits, second stage loaders and persistence implants. I.e. AV etc are largely useless and you need tech that works on process / program behaviour. These can also be bypassed so it is an arms race.

2) MacOS and iOS is increasingly targeted for exploit research which can be seen in the increasingly frequent emergency point releases due to exploits in the wild of critical and sometimes zero interaction bugs.

3) Ransomware gangs partner with groups that sell access, be it insiders or a group that has gotten access to your infra or management consoles. This means they sometimes spend time to learn your organisation and backup strategies plus also exile and threaten to leak your data as a secondary way to extort you.

4) There has never been a stronger argument to invest in security keys for iCloud than now.