The Guardian has run one of a seemingly endless string of Steve Wozniak articles, which you can find hurled across the internet, like so much toilet roll flung into a tree. This time, he’s moaning about Apple Watch, and specifically its shift into the jewellery market, where the unit you buy is as much about status as functionality.

You’d have to be naive to consider Apple wasn’t already somewhat in this space anyway. While I’ve long argued Apple kit is worth the outlay due to its broadly superior usability compared to rival products, there’s always been a hint of elitism about Apple. And purely within single Apple product lines, there’s clearly space for the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ — after all, there probably aren’t too many people buying the very cheapest iPhone or iPod because they really want that model. With Apple Watch bands, this is even more overt. On this concern, I somewhat agree with Woz, although Apple Watch remains only a small part of Apple’s business rather than something that drives the company.

The problem I have with the report is it highlighting two concerns that come up a lot in interviews with Woz, and then get widely reported as some kind of fact:

Well this isn’t the company that Apple was originally

Good. A stagnant company is one that fails. But also: what is the original Apple? Woz and Jobs in a garage, hacking away at the Apple Computer 1? The company that found a modicum of mainstream success in the Apple II? The company that created the Macintosh, but then found itself almost obliterated by the IBM juggernaut? The company that nonetheless instigated a desktop publishing revolution?

That only takes us through a small part of Apple’s history, but it showcases how the company has changed many times. And during the more recent Jobs/Cook run, we’ve seen shifts towards consumer computing, rethinking media industries, revamping mobile devices, and more. If we still had the company Apple was originally, would we have the iPhone?

or the company that really changed the world a lot

At which point did this stop? The Apple II? The Mac? The iPhone? The iPad? Where’s the cut-off point in Woz’s mind about Apple’s ability to be influential and change the way things are done?

I respect Woz and his various achievements, but it’s odd that so many column inches are reserved for the opinions of someone who has had almost nothing to do with Apple in three decades.

When iOS 9 hit beta last summer, I heard concerns from developers about Game Center. Never Apple’s most-loved app, it had seemingly fallen into a state of disrepair. In many cases, people were reporting it outright failed to work.

Six months later, little has changed. If anything, Game Center has gotten worse, with major problems increasingly widespread. These include the Game Center app launching as a white screen, and Game Center freezing the Settings app when you try to access its options.

You might wave this away as a trifling problem. If so, I imagine you don’t play games. Game Center isn’t just about logging highscores — it’s also crucial for the functionality of many turn-based multiplayer titles. Without Game Center, they cannot and do not work. Additionally, some games freeze on start-up, because developers had quite reasonably expected Game Center would at least be functional. This makes for angry users, who can’t directly contact developers through the App Store and therefore leave bad reviews. Developers are now updating their apps to effectively check whether Game Center is broken, flinging up a dialog box accordingly, and at least allowing players access.

This state of affairs is ridiculous. I have three working iOS devices, and only one now has a functioning Game Center. As someone who writes about iOS games for a living, this issue affects me professionally and impacts on coverage for developers, since I cannot write about games the broken Game Center is blocking access to. But more importantly, it makes me question Apple’s interest in fixing bugs, and especially dealing with anything relating to games.

If a critical bug blocked access to any other default app and caused countless other apps on the system to fail, would we still be waiting for a fix six months later? I’ve no idea whether there’s anyone senior at Apple responsible for and advocating on behalf of gaming. If not, Apple should do some recruiting, because right now it feels like the exec team doesn’t give a hoot about games and gamers, beyond the odd high-end title showing off the power of an iPhone or iPad at an Apple event.

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Further reading: TouchArcade thread Game Center Stopped Working, which has over 50 pages at the time of writing.

You have to take activist websites with a fistful of salt. Many are well-meaning, and some manage to instigate real change. But much of the time, they’re a means for people to think they’re engaged in activism, when they’re really only clicking ‘I agree’ before returning to gorge on YouTube videos of penguins being challenged by a rope.

Nonetheless, I have a modicum of respect for a few of these sites, although in the case of SumOfUs, it would be more accurate to say that I had respect. And that’s because its new campaign, Keep the standard headphone jack in your iPhones!, is asinine clickbait of the type usually reserved for Forbes and Business Insider. Perhaps they should all join forces!

The campaign starts off in a calm and measured manner, with a photo of some headphones and the thoughtful, reasoned headline:

Apple is ditching the standard headphone jack to screw consumers and the planet

This is the sort of thing guaranteed to bring on board execs at Apple.

 

The petition text itself then begins (emphasis as per original web page):

Apple is about to rip off every one of its customers. Again.

Again. Apple just can’t stop ripping off everyone of its customers. Bought an iMac? Idiot! Apple ripped you off! Again. Even if you’ve never bought anything from Apple before, because Tim Cook probably has a time machine and will dump you in an infinite loop, in order to keep making that purchase and ripping you off — forever. That’s how nasty and evil Apple is.

If the rumours are true,

This being a great way to kick off a campaign, because, as we know, every Apple rumour has a 100 per cent hit rate.

the new iPhone 7 will have a non-standard, proprietary headphone jack — making every pair of headphones on earth useless.

This is true. As soon as Apple introduces a non-standard headphone jack, it will also emit a specialised EMP burst of some kind from every new iPhone, rendering all old headphones useless. They won’t work on other kit, and there’s no way whatsoever Apple would release any kind of adaptor that would allow you to use old headphones with the new input.

Not only will this force iPhone users to dole out additional cash to replace their hi-fi headphones, it will singlehandedly create mountains of electronic waste — that likely won’t get recycled.

The second I get an iPhone 7, I and every other iPhone 7 owner, will immediately throw out all our old headphones. SumOfUs has spoken.

There’s only one reason for this change:

The march of technology? Trying to make the iPhone better? Realising a port has run its course, and wanting to do something different?

to leverage Apple’s market share in order to extract even more profit from its customers.

Ah — of course! Silly me!

With virtually no third-party manufacturers ready to fill the new market gap, Apple stands to make a killing while we — and our planet — pay the price.

No third parties will be able to make Lightning headphones! And OUR PLANET WILL SUFFER. Presumably, iPhone 7 will also come with a built-in laser that automatically blasts nearby trees into oblivion while Siri cackles menacingly.

Apple, don’t repay iPhone users’ loyalty by ditching standard headphones and fuelling the e-waste crisis. Bring back the standard earphone jack.

The one that, currently, no-one knows whether or not it’s actually going or gone anyway.

This is right out of the Apple corporate playbook. A few years ago it swapped out the original iPod-dock connector with a new one, making countless cords, cables and chargers obsolete — for limited performance improvement.

“I don’t understand any of the benefits of the new Lightning connector, and will ignore its gradual rollout across a much larger range of Apple products, thereby making it a good thing in the long run. Also, Apple is evil because it embraced USB with the original iMac and didn’t stick with ADB. AND WHERE IS THE FLOPPY DRIVE IN MY NEW MACBOOK, TIM COOK?”

The screws in Apple products can’t even be opened with a traditional screwdriver — making it harder to repair a product you paid for.

SumOfUs is going to have a major shock the next time their new car/television/almost any piece of modern electronics breaks.

This decision will also have huge ramifications for climate change. According to the United Nations, up to 90% of the world’s electronic waste is illegally traded or dumped each year. We need to bring more care and attention to this growing issue — not aggravate it through reckless, profit-driven decisions that will deliver countless perfectly useable items straight to the landfill.

“Hey, Martin, do you have that generic piece of actually important and broadly relevant information about illegal electronic waste trade we can cut into this? I’ve just realised we’re 200 words deep and are 98 per cent froth. That’s at least five per cent too much froth, even for an anti-Apple tirade. Thanks.”

Tell Apple to respect its customers and our planet. Keep the standard headphone jack.

So here’s the thing: I actually agree with that last bit — and I’m not alone. Kirk McElhearn outlined for Macworld why the jack should stay, and it’s hard to argue with the points he and others make, notably: thinner devices than the iPhone 6s have a standard headphone jack; a Lightning headphone adaptor would likely need to be a DAC (and could be expensive); one port means no simultaneous charging/headphone use; and it’s an expected ‘default’ these days that exists on pretty much every major piece of consumer and computing tech.

But that doesn’t mean SumOfUs should clickterbate all over a site that’s supposed to be responsible. Still, you can guarantee that if the iPhone 7 shows up, headphone jack intact, the site will nonetheless claim victory, even though its likely impact would have been akin to the level of intelligence and rationality shown in its campaign: zero.

I missed this a few days ago (9to5Mac), but it turns out Guitar Hero finally showed up on the Apple TV App Store. Announced during the new Apple TV reveal, I wondered how Activision would get the thing working when Apple about-faced on a rule allowing devs to require an external controller for their games. The thought of Guitar Hero on the Siri Remote (which, frankly, isn’t much cop for gaming full-stop) baffled.

The answer is Apple’s seemingly subtly changed its rule that all games must support Siri Remote, by adding in white ink on white paper “unless you happen to be a massive company that already had a huge IP in development that wouldn’t work solely with the Siri Remote, OBV“.

It’s the right decision, of course. Apple blocking Guitar Hero from Apple TV would be stupid. But it’s maddening that other developers are not afforded the same flexibility.

The concept of multiple-app multitasking is something that’s very much stuck in people’s minds as the ‘proper’ way to do computing. It never used to be like this. A computer would run an app. If you were fortunate to have relatively powerful hardware, you could switch between several apps. But computers became increasingly powerful, the interfaces became more complex, and displays got bigger. Now, you can pepper your screen with tiny windows from a dozen apps, flicking your eyes between them.

People argue this is great, because it enables you to be productive, but it also reduces your focus. And focus is one of the things I really liked on first getting an iPad. The device became whatever app was running. And when I started using the iPad for creative tasks, I wasn’t repeatedly distracted by something wanting my attention. (This has been eroded somewhat by notification systems, but they can easily be silenced.)

Apple has subsequently brought this system ‘back to the Mac’, with its full-screen mode, but only now has the idea of using apps side-by-side headed in the other direction. With iOS 9’s Slide Over feature, a temporary overlay can be dragged in and then dismissed, enabling you to quickly get back to your original app. Split View gives you a full two-up view, which is far more flexible than how iPads were yet still retains a sense of focus, for example enabling you to simultaneously view a writing app and reference material, but not 50 other apps as well.

Slide Over’s more of an oddball. It’s designed for temporary access to something, without entirely removing attention and focus from the original app you were using. But it’s the interface that troubles me. Drag in from the right and the Slide Over column appears. Compatible apps appear to be listed randomly. There’s no search. You therefore have to scroll through the list to find whatever you want, in a manner alien to almost everything else Apple offers.

On launching an app, everything works fine (well, mostly), and when you bring back Slide Over again, the app will be ready and waiting. Close the app by dragging downwards and you’re back into randomsville, with the exception of apps you’ve previously used, which are listed from the bottom of the column upwards, in order of previous use.

I imagine Apple’s thinking is Slide Over should only be used with a very small number of apps, and the previous three are visible when you view their icons in the scrolly column. That’ll be enough for some people, but not anyone who uses a wider range of products. Even now, I have 32 compatible apps in the list. What happens when many dozens of apps are compatible? First-use of Slide Over will be atrocious. Finding anything will be a massive pain. Here’s hoping iOS 9.1 or a subsequent update brings some kind of search or filtering for Slide Over, otherwise it’ll never reach its full potential, and forever be merely a feature stymied by your inability to perform a basic search.