This digest compiles the latest from Apple Insider.
Today’s Apple Insider Roundup
Two years after release, Apple still hasn't decided what to do with Apple Vision Pro
After an eight month wait, the Apple Vision Pro debuted on February 2, 2024. It’s still an immature product.
I decided to write a retrospective on the Apple Vision Pro release early last week for today’s February 2 anniversary. It hasn’t gone well.
If you’re of a certain age, you remember a Sesame Street bit, where a piano player couldn’t quite figure out the alphabet order. He’d smash his head on the piano, and Grover, or Kermit, or somebody would help him out, and the piano player would happily hammer along, in the proper order, no longer atonal.
Integrating home automations & Shortcuts with Matthew Cassinelli on this week's HomeKit Insider
On this week’s episode of the HomeKit Insider podcast, guest Matthew Cassinelli joins to talk about Shortcuts and home automations.
Co-hosting this week is Matthew Cassinelli. He previously worked at the app Workflow, prior to Apple’s acquisition.
He joined the Apple team as the Workflow app was converted into Shortcuts, before eventually setting out on his own. He’s now known as one of the biggest proponents of Shortcuts in the tech space.
How terrible – the insanely wealthy are confounded by Call Screening
The rich and the powerful demand immediate access to their lawyers and each other at all times — but apparently they just haven’t figured out how to have their assistants turn off Call Screening on their iPhones.
If you’ve noticed that you’re getting fewer spam calls on your iPhone lately, it’s because Apple added new screening tools in iOS 26. It’s also why you now more often see notifications with a transcription of call messages.
Given how phone lines are dominated by spam and it’s only getting worse with AI impersonating voices, this is overall a welcome feature. And if you need to take calls from unknown numbers, you can switch it off:
Subscriptions like Creator Studio are the future of Apple's revenue
The Apple Creator Studio is the latest in a long line of subscriptions for Apple products and services. You can guarantee Apple will do it more in the future.
Apple’s introduction of the Apple Creator Studio provided a way for consumers to gain access to Apple’s Pro tools like Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro across both Mac and iPad. While it’s certainly a good value package for users, it’s only part of its overall strategy to charge subscriptions for everything it offers.
Responding to a query about Apple subscriptions, Mark Gurman of Bloomberg mused on Sunday that subscriptions are the future of the company. It’s also a situation where it will try to increase its profits further by adding more to the packages.
AI demand forcing Apple to look for alternatives to TSMC
Apple is no longer the biggest client for chip foundry TSMC, and as it loses its stranglehold on the global supply chain, Tim Cook may have to turn to other manufacturers to meet demand for the iPhone and Mac.
As previously reported, Nvidia is now the single largest client for TSMC, but losing that top spot is causing problems for Apple. Specifically, it no longer has the buying power to commandeer TSMC’s entire output.
According to the Wall Street Journal, this means Apple is therefore having to compete for capacity with firms such as Nvidia, and it is not getting what it needs. Tim Cook alluded to this in Apple’s latest earnings call, dismissing questions about memory shortages by saying the company is more concerned with processors.
The person who could be Apple CEO: Who is John Ternus?
All things considered, John Ternus is the center of speculation as being the best and most likely choice for control of the company. Who is he, and how did he get here?
Apple, like many other massive companies with giant workforces and a decades-long history, have to plan for the future direction of the company. Part of that preparation involves determining who will take control as CEO after the current leader departs, and what to do to prepare for that inevitability.
For Apple and its aging leadership, Apple has to find its replacement for Tim Cook. Even though Cook probably won’t be retiring in 2026, the sheer size and number of moving parts at Apple means it has to prepare now, so there’s enough of a runway for the heir to the position to get ready, as well as the company itself, from 2027 onward.
End of today’s Apple Insider roundup.
