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Charlotte Henry

Charlotte is a media junkie, covering how Apple is not just a revolutionary tech firm, but a revolutionary media firm for TMO. She is based in London, and writes and broadcasts for various outlets.

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Articles by Charlotte Henry

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China iPhone 12 Shipments 12 Percent Down on iPhone X

Charlotte Henry ·

Current iPhone shipments in China are 12 percent down on the iPhone X series, according to a research note from Goldman Sachs seen by AppleInsider. It casts some doubt on the idea that we are in the midst of a so-called ‘super-cycle’.

Analyst Rod Hall analyzes the latest China smartphone shipment data for the month of May, which was recently released by the state-run China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT). Total handset units during the period clocked in at 23 million units, down 32% year-over-year. Hall points out that this appears to be the lowest shipment numbers for China since at least May 2014. Hall also says that re-opening “seems to have pulled demand forward quite a bit out of April and May,” but that the impact appears to have been short-lived. He suggests that China’s re-opening story could be a blueprint for how other countries fare when they re-open.

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Apple Music in India Getting Spatial Audio and Lossless

Charlotte Henry ·

Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos and lossless quality tracks have rolled out for Apple Music users around the world. Shortly, those in India will be getting these features too, iMore reported.

When Apple launched Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio for Apple Music last week, users of the music streaming service in India were disappointed to find that they were not included in the first batch of countries to receive the new features. Now, Apple has confirmed that, thankfully, that wait won’t be for too long. The company has confirmed on the Apple Music website in the country that both Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio are “coming soon” to users in India. While this usually means that a launch is imminent, Apple has not put an exact date on when Apple Music subscribers can expect the features to drop.

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Rep. Joe Morelle Introduces Right to Repair Legislation in House of Representatives

Charlotte Henry ·

National right to repair legislation was introduced in the House of Representatives on Thursday. It could compel firms to provide repair details and resources to both users and third-party technicians, AppleInsider reported.

Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) on Thursday introduced the Fair Repair Act, which requires device manufacturers to provide diagnostic and repair information, parts, and tools to third-party repair shops “in a timely manner and on fair and reasonable terms.” Additionally, the bill would allow the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to carry out enforcement by penalizing violators. The goal, according to Rep. Morelle’s office, is to empower small businesses and consumers to be self-reliant in the ability to fix their own devices without needing to go through official manufacturer or authorized repair channels.

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Netflix Takes Almost the Same Percentage of TV Usage as Apple TV+, HBO Max, Paramount+, Peacock and Discovery+ Combined

Charlotte Henry ·

Latest Nielsen figures show that streaming overtook broadcast in TV usage in May. The Hollywood Reporter noted that the figures also revealed that Netflix occupied just two percent yes of that usage than a number of rivals, including Apple TV+, combined.

Netflix also has reason to tout the Nielsen findings, as they show that the company accounted for 6 percent of all TV usage in May. That’s tied with YouTube (including the YouTube TV bundle) for first among streamers; each makes up more than a fifth of all streaming time on TV. Hulu (including its live TV service) took up 3 percent of TV time, Amazon’s Prime Video 2 percent and Disney+ 1 percent. All other streaming combined — including Apple TV+, HBO Max, Paramount+, Peacock and Discovery+ — made up 8 percent of of total usage.

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Even With Swift Playgrounds, iPad is Not a Developer’s Tool… Yet

Charlotte Henry ·

At WWDC 2021 Apple unveiled Swift Playgrounds 4 for the iPad. While it is a big step forward, The Verge reported that even when combined with the latest chip, the iPad is not yet a full-blown tool for developers.

Swift Playgrounds 4 isn’t the big announcement the developer community was waiting for. It has significant limits and lacks several advanced tools — debugging and profiling tools, versioning, storyboard integration, support for third-party packages, etc. “Swift Playgrounds is great for experimenting and debugging code, but it is missing many of the features … required to make fuller-fledged apps,” [Quo CEO Tucker] Haas explains. He says the program is “perfect for developing small utility applications, such as a to-do list, but currently incapable of building the next Angry Birds.”

 

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Apple is Coming After Substack and the Email Newsletter Industry

Charlotte Henry ·

At WWDC 202, Apple announced Mail Privacy Protection, which removes tracking pixels from emails. These are used by newsletter services to let the sender see how many people open a message, how often, and when. Thanks to the likes of Substack and Revue, this industry has seen a recent boom, and Chris Stokel-Walker investigated for Wired how Apple’s move might affect them and others.

The decision is made all the more significant when you take into account Apple’s stranglehold on the email ecosystem. Between the iPhone and Apple Mail apps, more than 60 per cent of all email accounts are opened in a piece of software controlled by Apple… The worry among newsletter publishers is that at a stroke, Apple is about to do the same thing to the newsletter industry, removing one of the major benchmarks upon which newsletter advertising is sold – and therefore, the production of newsletters is funded.