Vector

Apple is planning a special event for the week of March 25, 2019, reportedly for their new subscription news and video services. The pubs will be there. The stars will be there. Less certain: iPads, AirPods, and any other hardware.

So, what does that means and what all else could we see?

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Confession: I've been saying for years that Apple would never make iMessage for Android because it would hurt the overall value of iPhone and, for the last decade, iPhone is where the vast majority of Apple's money has come from.

But, with the saturationing — the phone business hitting maturity — and Apple increasingly turning towards its ecosystem — additional products like Apple Watch and AirPods yes, but also and especially services like Apple Pay and the upcoming Apple television shows — that could all change.

Apple has long been offering Apple Music on Android, and has recently announced iTunes for Samsung televisions. Yeah. Samsung. iTunes. Stop the record and rewind that. As well as AirPlay and HomeKit for LG, Vizio, and Sony.

So, could cross-platform iMessage finally start making the kind of sense that does?

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Amazon is buying eero. And, if my Twitter feed is any indication, a lot of you are hella mad about it.

Here's why, how it all goes back to Apple, and whether or not AirPort should consider not just a comeback, but become a full suite of Apple Home products.

Yeah, it's like that.

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LINKS:

• Amazon to Acquire eero to Help Customers Better Connect Smart Home Devices
• RIP AirPort Base Stations: Why Apple is exiting the Wi-Fi router business
• Best Wi-Fi Router in 2019
• Best Mesh Wi-Fi Router Kits

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When news broke that Angela Ahrendts was leaving Apple, things got hectic. There'd been almost no advanced word and so it caught almost everyone by surprise. And then it caught fire.

What followed was a fascinating — and somewhat grotesque — glimpse into our collective psyche as the internet stumbled all over itself to rush out its hottest of takes about Ahrendts leaving — many absurd, reflective, projective, and in general little to do with Ahrendts and a lot to do with our own damage and frustrations.

So, what's really going on?

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Look. I know new iPhones are still like 8 months away. You know that I know that. But it's not about me and it's not about you. It's about the rumors. Apparently, nobody bothered to tell the damn rumors. So, here we are, more than half a year out, and we're already talking not about the new iPhones but the next ones.

So, let's just agree that this is both a little silly and a lot awesome, and kick right into it.

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Rene gets together with AR/VR expert, Russell Holly, to talk about the current state of augmented reality and the possibilities for the future.

Recorded live in Florida at MoNaCon2019 — Mobile Nation's internal company gathering.

LINKS:

• AR Apps for iOS
• @RussellHolly on Twitter

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* Kinda. It's complicated. Just hit play... Many years ago, longer than ago than most people would think, I heard that Apple was already experimenting with folding phones. It makes sense. They were experimenting with bigger phones back in the iPhone 4 days already, long before they shipped iPhone 6. It took that long until Apple was happy with the technology. Same with OLED in iPhone X. I imagine they've been experimenting with folding devices, off and on, for just as long. Maybe longer. Trying to figure out something that's not just different but significantly better than what they can do without folding. And yeah, sure. Foldables aren't new. Humanity has been folding things for… as long as we've had things to fold. Books are the classic of example. But it doesn't stop there. We've folded wallets, we've literally got things called folders, and we even fold up our clothing and our food. With electronics, we've been folding computers in half for decades — we call them laptops — video games since the Gameboy advanced, and our phones since the early days of cellular. Yeah, hello Moto. But this is about what comes next...

Costs. Subsidies. Exchange rates. Margins. Ultimately, none of that matters. Even if iPhone price increases were in line with inflation and the increases in quality and diversity of components and new features, and we factored out exchange, and we didn't give a damn about margins, it wouldn't matter.

Pricing is physiological more than mathematical. In the market, perception really is reality.

And the perception among many is that iPhone prices have gotten too high.

Tim Cook addressed exactly that during Apple's Q1 2019 conference call this week.

So, what are he and Apple going to do about it?

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A serious bug has been discovered in FaceTime's new Group Calling feature that can be exploited to allow instant access to your microphone and, potentially, your front-facing camera.

I asked Apple about the bug and they provided me with the following statement.

"We're aware of this issue and we have identified a fix that will be released in a software update later this week."

So, what the hell is happening and what can you do about it in the meantime?

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There were rumors for years that Apple was working on a phone but Purple, the iPhone project, never really leaked. There were rumors for years that Apple was working on a watch but Gizmo, the Apple Watch project, never really leaked.

At least nothing even close to Titan, which many people have assumed is the Apple Car project but is kind of something much bigger, exactly what Apple and Tim Cook have called it: an autonomous technologies project.

That we keep getting reports on the inner workings of a special projects group within Apple is surprising. That Apple commented on it is startling. We'll get to that in a hot minute but, first, what is Project Titan really? And why does it seem to be changing year after year?

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