The S year

Oct 25, 2018

There were more things to read than to write following Apple's Gather Round event.
I myself watched the keynote over the course of the following days while commuting, just to enjoy the show and keep traditions alive. I said I hoped the first 20 minutes would pass by quickly, and indeed they did, what took forever was the second part of the presentation… but let's go with order.
I am to split my impressions in 2 different articles, here's part 2/2.

iPhone Xs and Xs Max

What once would have be the star of the show, ended up occupying the most boring part of the keynote. Those were the minutes that didn't pass. I was so bored, I rejoiced watching a downloaded video so that I could skip through the presentation to avoid the sections I could't stand (hello demos!).
I read many reviews and articles about these phones and yes, if I were to buy one now and had the money, I probably would go for the Xs over the X. Yet, the most stressed on features simply don't interest me. I surely appreciate the possibility to take better pictures on the fly, but that's just not my priority. Am I amazed by what they can accomplish? Surely am, I just can't appreciate all the added values they seem to infer to it.

Few days ago, after reading what there was to read, I headed to morrik.me. I hadn't read Riccardo Mori website in years, but this time I needed the different point of views I know Riccardo has. There, I finally found how I was feeling:

But at some unspecified point halfway the event, I realised just how bored I was feeling. I had prepared myself with a good cup of coffee, and I was alert and in a good mood when the event started. Yes, the names of the new iPhones had leaked — even an image of the new XS and XS Max, and another of the new Apple Watch Series 4. I didn’t mind. Design is how it works. I was curious about the details, the features. Did they manage to get rid of the iPhone X notch? No, the promo image was a bit deceiving, leaving the notch hidden, a shadow camouflaged in darkness. But after the soothing Apple Watch segment presented by Jeff Williams, and at some point while Phil Schiller was rattling off the iPhone XS technical specifications, I was there, finding myself watching this event more because I felt I had to, than because I felt engaged and amazed by what was presented, and how it was presented.

Riccardo has some other strong points I agree with, this though is the most fitting.
iPhones are going to be sold even just because they are called that, and with no doubts they are among the best smartphones in the world. It's just that this "S year" feels "S"er than usual. Will it matter for sales number? I doubt. ASP has also increased, so investors will rejoice of increased cash flow.
As of names, I just can't get Mariah Carey off my head every time I think that "All I want for Xs Max is you, uuu, uu babe!"

The more I think about the keynote, the more I suspect something got axed and left a blank space that needed to be filled. I know the venue is theirs and nowhere is written how long a keynote must last, but why show the purportedly new AirPods in the intro video and not introducing them on stage? Yes, there's an event coming up in a week, but the AirPods make more sense introduced alongside iPhones and Watches rather than iPads and Macs to me.

One last thing: for the first time, Apple is selling two version of the same phone whose only difference is screen size, not features. The Plus lineup always had something more than their smaller siblings, a choice that could be seen as unfair: why should I miss some functionalities if I just like smaller phones?
The fact that the Xs Max drops that difference makes total sense to me, leaving the choice only to size and screen real estates. This is apparently the reason why they called it Max: it doesn't have anything Plus, it is just Max.

iPhone Xr

iPhone Xr could have been felt as the one more thing if surprise wasn't spoiled, I guess.
It is very interesting as a product, maybe even more when compared to the other components of the lineup, and releasing it about a month after the Xs is a great commercial and industrial move from Apple.

As a product, iPhone Xr is quite interesting: it has the same A12 processor found in the Xs line, but drops high end features like OLED display and second rear-facing camera.
The Xr also puts the Xs into perspective and confirms the choices made by Apple last year. The first is that the technologies the X brought are here to stay; they said it last september and confirmed this year when no new iPhone has an home button or TouchID. The second most interesting is that, for the second year in a row, they are releasing an higher and a lower version of the iPhone. Last year's X and this year Xs are the cutting edge ones, made for the ones who care about latest and greatest, with high attention to finishes, materials and details. This year's Xr is what the 8 was last year: not necessarily the latest and greatest, but surely the second-best phone on the market, secondo only to the X/Xs, and much cheaper. Even better this year, they share the same horsepower the A12 brings.

Apple long-time strategy has been to cannibalize its products before someone else does, and this is what I think the Xr is aimed at: it serves as an "affordable" iPhone for those who don't want or can't spend a fortune on an iPhone Xs. It surely does cannibalize sales of the Xs, but most surely cannibalizes other companies' sales.
With this goal in mind, selling them in different colors collects the 5c heritage and places them in the informal, easy-going part of market. If the iPhones Xs are suits, elegant and refined, the Xr are cool sweatshirts for the masses, the casual, the colorful.

The X/Xs are made of "surgical grade stainless steel", they are heavy to infer a sense of value. The Xr is made of aluminum, lighter and more informal, but sharing the same internals.
Do you see some familiarities with something else Apple makes?
What if we called the X/Xs just iPhone (or better Apple iPhone) and the Xr Apple iPhone sport?

A12

iPhone 3GS was the first "S" product, and the S stood for speed. Over the years, not all "S" iPhones have had a focus on speed, and the "S" has become more a synonim for refinements rather than speed. This year could have been no exception, if only the A12 didn't show up.
Apple's silicon team is doing marvels year over year. The A12 is over 40% faster than its predecessor and the first commercial 7nm silicon on the market.
I don't have the competence to talk much about it, so please head to Anandtech for the deepest dive you will find.

As the years pass and major incremental steps to the A processors come out, the difference between a desktop processor and the ones Apple makes is narrowing. The A11 was already as fast as the low end Intel processors found in the MacBooks and the new A12 is beating even the shining iMac Pro in certain tests. All this said, it's hard to believe ARM Macs are that far down the line, specially since RISC instruction set has long been highlighted as more future-proof than CISC's, and the big energy efficiencies the A-series processors are showing make perfectly sense in a world of laptops and energy saving.

iOS and macOS

What I think embodies the S concepts wholly, what makes the two "S" souls merge is the software Apple has released.
If you look at the "S" under the refinements light, both OSes deliver. iOS 12 and macOS Mojave both are refinements over last year predecessors, and that's a good thing.
Nowadays operating systems are mature and solid, not in need for some dramatic improvement on the exterior. Let's take Mojave: one could argue the most prominents features are mainly aesthetic; better, they are functional being aesthetic. Dark mode serves Pro users who want to focus more on content, stacks solve a long standing Desktop issue, continuity gains some new features, and so on. Nothing is as dramatic as, say, Spotlight introduction, but rather some consistent work on core technologies to move the OS forward. Same could be said for iOS 12, since it too refines what iOS 11 had, fixing longstanding bugs and annoyances.
If you look at the "S" under the speed light, both OSes deliver too, since refinements made on sourcecode often mean higher code efficiency and, thus, speed. Since installing iOS 12 on my iPhone 7, I felt a difference similar to the gains I had when I installed an SSD on my aging 2012 MacBook Pro. Speed from refinements was the feature iOS12 was mostly marketed with, especially for older hardware.

Final remarks

A Tick-tock approach has long been a common practice in the industry, most notably Intel has had it in place for several years. Tock years are for big advancements, tick years for refinements in the technology. Apple has too been on a similar schedule lately, with iPhones following this alternance since the iPhone 3 and 3S, and macOS following it too since Leopard and Snow Leopard.
Is it good? That's not ours to say, Apple is a big and complex company that few of us really know how works. To me, I'd even prefer more tick-refinements years than tock ones softwarewise, with long awaited features still waiting to show up - namely a way to fix file corruption by the filesystem. Hardwarewise, S years allow refinements to products and manufacturing, both improvements that end up showing in the hands of users.

The iPhone X has set a new course for iPhone developments and this years Xs and Xr have show it to be true. Most refinements will be not much notable, and that's good. In the meantime, Apple silicon team is forging unbelievable year-over-year improvements that really make forget we should be in a S year.
As of software, refinements mean longer life for older models too a key feature to break this nonsense marathon into changing perfectly functional devices. And this, in the end, is something good for wallets but mostly for the environment.

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