The biggest Apple news of the week concerned something that Apple never released and Apple never even talked about. But given the thousands of people hired by Apple over the last decades, many of them former employees of other car manufacturers, and the disclosures that Apple has to make to authorities that it was testing autonomous vehicles on roads, it was an open secret that Apple has been developing a car. As first reported by Mark Gurman of Bloomberg and then widely reported by numerous other news outlets, Apple finally decided to pull the plug on its electric car project this week. Brian X. Chen and Tripp Mickle of the New York Times wrote an extensive article about the situation based on lots of off-the-record interviews. (That's a gift link so you can read it even if you don't subscribe.) Why did Apple give up the project? This one sentence says it all: "If it ever came to market, an Apple car was likely to cost at least $100,000 and still generate razor-thin profit compared with smartphones and earbuds." In 1997 at Apple's WWDC conference for developers, Steve Jobs famously said: "People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things." I think it made sense for Apple to explore this area, but after a decade of not getting to a shipping product that makes sense, it looks like Apple made the right decision. Some of the reported 2,000 employees working on the Apple Car will probably lose their jobs, but many are being offered positions working on AI issues for Apple, which I'm sure was a big part of making an autonomous car. If the end result is that Apple devotes more focus to products that make more sense for the company and those products are even better with more people working on integrating AI, then that will definitely be a good thing. Indeed, John Gruber of Daring Fireball floated a theory that Apple executive Kevin Lynch has spent the last few years figuring out who to use the Apple Car technologies in other Apple products. And now, the rest of the news of note from the past week:
- iOS 17.4 is not out yet, but Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reports that Apple has already published the full release notes. It will include new Emojis, transcripts in the Apple Podcasts app, caller identification for Apple-verified businesses, and more. And if you live in the EU, Apple is adding support for third-party app stores.
- Another change in iOS 17.4 is that the Messages app will remain secure even if attacked by a quantum computer. No, quantum computers don't exist yet, but defenses against them are already possible. John Gruber of Daring Fireball wrote a post that quotes Apple's (good) explanation of this technology and then further explains what is going on.
- Here is a brief Public Service Announcement on the Apple AirPods Pro and Windows 11. I recently upgraded my work computer to Windows 11, and when I tried to pair AirPods Pro, I put the AirPods into pairing mode (by holding down the button on the back) but they would never appear in the Settings app in Windows for me to select them. After trying the same thing at least two dozen times, on the next try, it worked. If you have difficulty pairing AirPods Pro to Windows 11, my advice is to keep doing the same thing over and over again until it finally works.
- In a series of two videos, a person who posts YouTube videos under the name Practical Matters shows in the first video how he accidentally dropped his Apple Vision Pro onto a hardwood floor, shattering the front of it, and shows in the second video how he attached the replacement part that he received through Apple Care.
- Mike Wuerthele of AppleInsider suggests five famous places that would be perfect environments for Apple to add to the Apple Vision Pro. I agree with all five suggestions.
- In an article for Six Colors and Macworld, Jason Snell explains that Apple Stores should be doing a better job helping people choose the right Light Shield sizes for an Apple Vision Pro. I agree. When I first pre-ordered mine using the app, the app scanned my face and announced my size to be 25W. When I visited an Apple Store on the day that the product was released, I expected someone to let me try different shields to find the right fit, but that never happened. And then, after reading Jason's article, I used the app to scan my face again multiple different times, and now the app says I should get a 21W. My current Vision Pro seems to fit fine so I guess the 25W is okay, but would a 21W be better? I don't know. If any of you have changed Light Shield sizes over the last few weeks, I'd love to hear about your experience. (For Jason Snell, who started with a 24W and was then told that a 21W would be better, he tried out the 21W and decided that the original 24W was better.)
- The Patently Apple website discusses Apple patents that could allow you to visit a virtual Apple Store using the Apple Vision Pro.
- Apple released two videos to tell the story of two people in Australia whose lives were saved thanks to an Apple Watch: Lexie's Heart and Bruce and the Roo.
- And finally, New Orleans is not a city that one traditionally associates with amazing museums, but the National World War II Museum is an amazing, multi-building facility with incredible exhibits and artifacts. It is as impressive as any Smithsonian museum. And it definitely makes a trip to New Orleans worth it, even if one sets aside everything else that the city has to offer for tourists. I've been visiting the museum since it opened on June 6, 2000, in part because, until she passed away a few years ago, my grandmother (who met my grandfather during the war) worked at the museum as a volunteer every Monday. Perhaps in part because of my frequent trips to the museum, I've been really enjoying the Apple TV+ show Masters of the Air. (My son loves watching it too.) David Show of Cult of Mac reports that Apple TV+ will soon release a documentary about the real pilots who inspired the series, along with interviews with Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. I have no doubt that it will be a first-class production, and I look forward to watching it when it premieres on March 15. Here is the trailer for the documentary, called The Bloody Hundredth:
