Christmas may be over, but several pesky ghosts are haunting Apple as 2024 approaches.
(Look, you’re trying to come up with a new holiday theme for a tech column. It’s not easy.)
As 2023 comes to a close, it’s time to look at Apple’s problems heading into 2024. Because that’s one thing we do.
The Beeper saga
Beeper Mini and Apple’s David and Goliath story seemed to be wrapping up in the final weeks of 2023. Beeper made a final push to allow messages from Android devices to appear in iMessage message threads as native to using jailbroken iPhones. It is very simple. You sign up with Beeper and they rent you a jailbroken for a monthly fee.
Of course, this will evolve.
Given this soft solution, you might have been excused for thinking we were done, but now it looks like the US government might get involved.
What? And after? The government requires that episodes of Star Trek continues become canon in the main Star Trek universe? Well, Beeper’s argument is that Apple’s position in the United States is large enough to make it a de facto monopoly.
This might be true if Apple were a small company. But this is not the case. They control over 50% of the US smartphone market and force customers to use the official Apple app to text…
It’s not a terrible argument. And do you really need or want to be able to identify Android users in your threads? This is not the case with Macalope.
The ban on the Apple Watch 9
Last week, Apple stopped the flow of Apple Watch 9s as it faced an imminent ban on the devices due to an International Trade Commission ruling that the blood oxygen sensor violated a patent it held by Masimo.
Apple said it hoped to get around the patent infringement by releasing a software update, but Masimo’s CEO seems to think it would take a magical software update that changes the hardware since his company’s patent covers both .
It was rather unexpected to see “The Year Without an Apple Watch” air this holiday season, but if Macalope had to guess, that problem would probably be solved by spraying Masimo in Apple’s face with a money-sucking hose instead of water. Watches must flow.
EU and other governments
Like that kid in math class who always reminds the teacher that he forgot to do his homework, the EU has constantly pissed off Apple about one thing or another for the past 5,000 years. The government of South Korea has also tried to stay in the game but, let’s face it, the EU has turned it into an art form.
IDG
All of these efforts seem to be undermining the things that matter to Apple: maintaining non-directive provisions and keeping other app stores away from iOS. But these changes are unlikely to have a significant negative impact on regular users. Quite the contrary. Either way, how Apple enables these features, if indeed it has to, will likely be in the most reluctant terms possible, to render any concerns about a threat to the user experience moot.
So while Apple would view this as a terrifying ghost from the Christmas future, complete with black robes and bony fingers silently pointing at things like USB C connectors, the rest of us view him more as a jolly man to barrel-chested like the ghost of the Christmas present. or Titus Burgess.
Note to producers planning holiday productions for next year: Titus Burgess nail like the ghost of the Christmas present.
Labor relations
It’s sad to see that labor relations will continue to be a problem for the world’s richest company next year. Not every problem Apple has can be solved by throwing money at it, but this is probably one of them and it’s a bad image for the company that it won’t consider doing at least that .
However, don’t let these holiday-themed ghosts scare you. Apple’s assets obviously exceed its liabilities. Indeed, with problems like these, who needs to worry?
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