By John Moltz
May 12, 2023 12:44 PM PT
This Week in Apple: Finally Cut Pro
This week Apple gets around to making its own dog food and eating it too, iPhones take over the U.S. market, and it may soon be time for that “Cheers” re-watch you’ve been thinking about for years.
Can I get a “Finally.”?
Yes, this week Apple announced that Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro would be coming to the iPad. Now we can put the rest all the arguing over whether or not you can get work done on an iPad hahaha just kidding—we’re going to be arguing about that for the rest of our natural lives (and unnatural lives, if uploaded intelligence becomes a thing).
In a new move for Apple apps, both will only be available via a subscription, but the prices are quite reasonable at $4.99 a month or $49 a year. You don’t even have to be a professional to afford that. That’s doable even on just a fessional salary.
Because everything has to be taken in the context of products Apple hasn’t announced yet, Mark Gurman speculated that the two apps could conceivably run on the much-rumored Apple headset. I look forward to years of arguing over whether or not you can get real work done on your face.
The company also used the announcement to snare a leaker and the leaker’s sibling using a canary trap consisting of a combination of false release dates for each of the new apps. When the rumor-publishing sibling claimed the apps would be coming on the incorrect dates, Apple was able to identify their sister as the leaker.
Thanksgiving this year is going to be very awkward for at least one family, if it even happens at all.
We’re num-ber one! We’re num-ber one!
The iPhone has had long had a minority share in the smartphone market but now, at least in its home market, that’s no longer true:
While US iPhone shipments also fell, they did so more slowly than the smartphone market as a whole – enabling Apple to boost its market share from 49% in Q1 2022, to 53% in the same quarter this year.
In retrospect, it seems sort of natural that as the smartphone market has matured, the more staid, reliable platform — the one often accused of being boring for not shipping features before they’re completely ready — would start to do better. People just want phones that work.
You know, most of the time.
Smartphone evolution hasn’t completely stalled. This week Google announced the Pixel Fold which, get this, folds. Its screen also has pixels, so who says there’s no truth in advertising?
If we’re keeping track of technologies Apple’s behind in — I have a three-ring binder full of them! — this is considered by many to be another. Ming-Chi Kuo and Ross Young both believe that Apple won’t ship its first foldable product until 2025 at the earliest.
That is if you don’t count iPod socks.
That’s right. An iPod socks joke. I’m bringing it back.
There are at least a couple of reasons for that, though. Apart from Apple’s usual conservativeness in shipping technologies that might not be all there yet, it’s hard to get foldable screens in the kind of volume Apple would need. At the price points foldable phones hit — the Pixel Fold starts at $1,799 — one wonders how many of these screens even Apple would need, but it’s certainly a lot more than Google.
My innie is on strike
Gather ye television shows while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying and, uh, well, there’s a writer’s strike is the point I’m trying to get to, so you might run out of shows this fall. Not only are shows like ”Daredevil: Born Again” and ”The Last of Us” running on those other streaming services affected, but so are shows you get from your favorite fruit-themed company in a very plus manner.
Such as… “Production of Apple TV+ show ‘Severance’ suspended amid writers strike.”
Oh, that’s just great. Now where am I going to get my weekly dose of existential dread and loathing of late stage capitalism? Reality? I mean, yeah, I could do that, but that’s even more depressing than watching “Severance”. Too real, man.
Nobody likes their favorite shows being delayed, but writers are an incredibly important part of the production process and deserve to get paid fairly. As streaming services have proliferated, that hasn’t happened:
Since 2018, inflation-adjusted pay for screenwriters has fallen 14%, according to the guild. For writer-producers, pay has sunk 23%.
That’s not sustainable and it’s not fair.
Look, it’s not like the writer’s union is asking for tips. Cough.
But if any of the writers of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” are looking for tips, I have a lot of ideas. Call me.
[John Moltz is a Six Colors contributor. You can find him on Mastodon at Mastodon.social/@moltz and he sells items with references you might get on Cotton Bureau.]