By John Moltz

April 12, 2024 2:00 PM PT

This Week in Apple: Coulda, shoulda, woulda

Apple’s had a rough start to 2024 but it’s not like everything’s peachy for either its competitors or the thorns in its side.

M-vy

Turn your mind back to the heady days of 2008: Barack Obama was running for president, the modern smartphone and the MCU were brand new, and all computers ran on Intel processors.

16 years later, it looks like someone flipped the game board over.

Apple, of course, makes its own computer processors now and is the one to beat in performance per watt, amperage, electrojule, what have you. This naturally has everyone else in a tizzy because it’s not the way things are supposed to be so there’s a certain amount of running around trying to do something about it.

Anything.

Google, gearing up for the wonderful new future where AI makes art and writes novels while we keep doing our taxes and digging ditches, is making its own chips. Microsoft, meanwhile, is holding up its ARMs and saying “Check out THESE guns!”

“Microsoft Says Windows Laptops With Snapdragon X Elite Will Be Faster Than M3 MacBook Air”

As you may recall, Apple shipped the M3 last year and Microsoft isn’t expected to announce these laptops until next month. Future products from Microsoft have been beating existing products from Apple since at least the Zune. The problem with Windows on ARM, of course, is that many of the Windows applications you know don’t run natively on ARM. But at least the OS will be fast.

Apple’s competitors better pick up the pace, though, because Mark Gurman says the M4 is already on the horizon.

Hey! Some of us don’t even have M2s yet! That’s just rude.

If you can’t beat ‘em, join someone else

Beeper made a big splash last year when it took on Apple by creating a series of increasingly desperate Rube Goldberg-esque attempts to get iMessage working on Android. Now the maker of the little app that couldn’t is trying something else. Getting acquired.

“Beeper was just acquired by Automattic, which has big plans for the future of messaging”

Automattic, owners of WordPress and Tumblr, has its eyes set on opening up messaging. Instead of having them siloed by device, vendor, and operating system, wouldn’t you like to get all your messages delivered to one place?

Sure. Can it be the bottom of the ocean?

Pop

They say shipping is hard. It’s probably even harder if the thing you worked so hard on gets universally panned.

“Humane AI Pin review: not even close”

Oh, nooo. Who could have foreseen thaaat?

We all did, yes.

Well, at least it’s not expen-

…$699 for the device and the $24 monthly subscription.

I write these columns. How can I not finish my own sentences? It doesn’t make any sense.

The idea behind the Humane pin is this: everyone hates their smartphones, right? (Shh.) So, let’s get rid of those god-awful things we can’t stand and… talk to a pin, I guess? I dunno, I didn’t make the thing.

The problem is, and it’s just a small one once you get past the premise, which, oof, also a problem because people love their smartphones…

It doesn’t work.

…there are too many basic things it can’t do, too many things it doesn’t do well enough, and too many things it does well but only sometimes that I’m hard-pressed to name a single thing it’s genuinely good at.

So, other than her husband getting shot, Mrs. Lincoln really did not like the play. Like, at all. Stilted writing, poor characterization, and the part of the Lieutenant was woefully miscast. Will not be seeing again.

You know, for other reasons than it reminding her of her husband’s tragic death.

But, yes, also that.

…should you buy this thing? That one’s easy. Nope. Nuh-uh. No way.

Not since the Essential Phone have we seen a hype bubble burst so beautifully. With the glorious effervescence of the Fire Phone, the Humane pin bubble has popped in a rainbow of colors, a spectroscopic feast for the eyes.

Then we all went back to looking at our smartphones.

[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.]