By John Moltz

August 25, 2023 1:49 PM PT

This Week in Apple: Press release excitement

Rumors this week indicate that not only will the cables that come with the iPhone 15s have different connectors, they’ll be different in between, too! We’re also hearing from totally reliable sources that the Vision Pro is way cool, and Apple is supporting a bill that could let you crack your iPhone open like a Penn Cove oyster.

So-called “cordless” phones

So about those new iPhone cables… Just like the iMacs of old, they come in colors. This probably just sounds like a gimmick, but think of how useful it will be in picking out the right cable from the drawer of white cables you already have. The new cables are:

1. Color-matched to your iPhone
2. Thicker and more durable
3. Longer than the cables that previously shipped with iPhones
4. Limited to USB 2.0 speeds
5. Flavored

I may have made one of those up. You think it’s the last one, but with the variety of USB-C cables available, can you be sure?

Colors are great, but if Apple wants to cause even less confusion it would probably be better if cables came with detailed descriptions of the cable’s capabilities up the side. Something like “THIS ONE WILL GIVE YOU POWER BUT SLOW DATA TRANSFER SPEEDS, SORRY, AND HAHA DON’T EVEN THINK OF TRYING TO CONNECT THIS TO A THUNDERBOLT DEVICE, FAM”.

In order to clear up this mess, Apple may also sell an optional iPhone 15 Pro USB-C Thunderbolt cable. SO THERE.

Wait, that doesn’t clear it up at all.

Color-matching cables to iPhones is cute, Apple, but maybe color-matching them to capability might be better.

Vision Pro FOMO

This week a press release from Apple highlighted a number of developers who had a chance to try out the Vision Pro, and what they had to say will astound you: They liked it!

I know, right? No one was more surprised than we were just now reading about the shocking results of this press release.

Sarcasm aside (just for a second, I promise, putting it… right… here), there’s no doubt that programming for an entirely new (OK, look, I’m going to use a buzzword but it’s an earned buzzword) paradigm (I’m terribly sorry) would be pretty cool. The last time developers probably had this experience was programming for iOS. Certainly the added effects of touch-based interaction must have been cool, but programming for mobile devices came with certain constraints. This is a redefinition of computing interaction models.

Despite all the excitement, the point of the press release is to highlight the availability and benefit of hands-on sessions, which some previous reports had indicated were not as well-attended as Apple might have liked. If you know of a better way to generate FOMO than by issuing a press release, I’d like to hear it.

(There are so many.)

Repair this

In a surprise move this week, Apple lent its support to a right-to-repair bill in California. According to iFixIt, the bill:

…enhances California’s warranty law and secures Californians’ right to fix a wide range of consumer electronics and home appliances. The bill would require manufacturers to provide parts, tools, and repair diagnostics necessary for both consumers and third-party repair providers to fix products, opening up a competitive repair market that is cheaper for consumers and better for the planet.

This is somewhat surprising, as Apple has fairly consistently opposed any legislation that it believes would make it harder for it to make devices that (and I am not actually quoting here) “would look all purdy-like.”

But, as John Gruber notes, this isn’t that surprising. It’s likely the company believes its current Self Service Repair program, which launched last year, satisfies the requirements of the law and would maybe just need to be expanded to other devices.

In other words, Apple can still make it a pain in the ass to repair its devices. And if you’re a glutton for punishment? Go for it, ace. Hope you like peeling off glue, champ. Proprietary screwdrivers? We’re shipping you a box full of ’em. Offering a sacrifice to Gildo, the god of self-repair, in hopes it’ll be successful? Not a bad idea, and we put a little shrine in the repair kit for doing just that.

In other words, this isn’t so much an about-face as it is finding a law that meets the company at the intersection of Customer Rights and Chamfered Edges.

[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.]