MacRumors

David Smith, the developer behind the popular Pedometer++ app for iPhone and Apple Watch, today shared some interesting user data that offers insight into Apple Watch adoption rates, and specifically, how quickly he's seen Apple Watch Series 3 adoption grow.

Smith looked at data collected from August 1, 2017 (a month before the debut of the Apple Watch Series 3) to March 14, 2018. During that time, he's seen rapid growth in the number of active Pedometer++ users who have an Apple Watch Series 3, and a steady decline in users who have an Apple Watch Series 0 or an Apple Watch Series 2, both of which are now discontinued.

Just under 35 percent of Pedometer++ users now have an Apple Watch Series 3, while around 24 percent have an Apple Watch Series 0, down from more than 40 percent in August of 2017.

According to Smith, he's been keeping a close eye on Apple Watch Series 0 usage rates because he's hoping that Apple will soon drop support for the original Apple Watch, which he describes as a "bit painful" to develop for.

It is just slow and honestly a bit painful to develop for. Even basic things like deploying your application to the watch can take uncomfortably long amounts of time. In daily use the Series 0 is probably "good enough" for many customers, especially with the speed/stability improvements added in watchOS 4, but as a developer I can't wait until I no longer have to support it.

By contrast, Smith says the new Apple Watch Series 3 is "a delight to work with" because it's fast, capable, and has LTE functionality that allows for new kinds applications. Smith is hoping watchOS 5 will drop support for the original Apple Watch, which is why he tracks falling Series 0 usage rates, but he does admit that the device is still adequate for many users who just need basic functionality.

When watchOS 5 launches, presumably this September, the original Apple Watch will be more than three years old, and Smith believes, that based on current trends, Series 0 usage could be as low as 15 to 20 percent in his Pedometer++ app, which presumably is reflective of overall usage rates.

For comparison's sake, Apple ended support for the original iPhone, released in 2007, in 2010 when the fourth-generation version of iOS was released. Support for the first-generation iPod touch, also released in 2007, ended with the same operating system update.

Apple ended support for the first-generation iPad, released in 2010, with the launch of iOS 6 in 2013.

Apple clearly has a history of ending support for first-generation devices after a few years, but it's not yet clear if the company will do the same for the original Apple Watch. Some of the original Apple Watch models, which were offered in 18-Karat gold, were priced at up to $17,000, so Apple could have unhappy customers when support for the device eventually ends.

For more of Smith's Apple Watch adoption analysis, make sure to check out his full blog post.

In addition to our standalone articles covering the latest Apple news and rumors at MacRumors, this Quick Takes column provides a bite-sized recap of other headlines about Apple and its competitors on weekdays.

Wednesday, March 14

- Why hasn't Samsung ditched the headphone jack yet? Daring Fireball's John Gruber remains convinced that headphone jacks are going the way of the floppy drive, but he explains why Samsung might not be ready to ditch the 3.5mm port yet, as Apple did with the iPhone 7 a few years ago.

Samsung is more of a "do what the customer is asking for" company; Apple is a "figure out what they’re going to want" company. Samsung’s customers aren't asking for the headphone jack to be dropped, so the path of least resistance is to just keep the jack. But looking at what's available on the market, a big problem facing Samsung (and the rest of the Android world) is that the USB-C headphone market is a mess — and expensive to boot. "No-name brand headphones at high prices" is a hard sell.

Commentary: Apple arguably has an advantage in this space thanks to its custom W1 chip, which provides a quick and seamless connection between Apple devices and its wireless headphones like AirPods and BeatsX.

- Dutch bank hints that Apple Pay could launch in the Netherlands next week: Dutch mobile bank bunq was recently added to the list of Apple Pay participating banks in Italy. When contacted by the Dutch blog iCulture.nl about the possibility of Apple Pay launching in the Netherlands, the bank said it could not share any details before a press conference it is holding March 20.

Commentary: During its earnings calls, Apple usually mentions a list of countries where Apple Pay is coming soon, and the Netherlands hasn't been one of them. If this rumor proves true, however, hopefully it signals a wider expansion of Apple Pay to other European countries like Germany and Poland.

- Amazon considered buying Texture before Apple deal: "Next Issue Media LLC, owner of Texture, hired investment bank Moelis & Co. in the past year to advise on a sale process, said the person."

Commentary: Amazon already operates a Texture-like service called Kindle Unlimited, which provides subscribers with access to over one million e-book titles, thousands of audiobooks, and select magazines on Kindle Fire, iOS, or Android smartphones and tablets for $9.99 per month.

- Apple details Intelligent Tracking Prevention 1.1: All partitioned cookies are treated as session cookies and are not persisted to disk. Domains with a pending purge will not be able to set new cookies and their existing cookies are not sent in requests. These updates are available in Safari 11.1 on iOS 11.3 beta and macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 beta, as well as in Safari Technology Preview.

Commentary: Intelligent Tracking Prevention is a Safari privacy feature which detects domains that have the ability to track the user cross-site and either partitions or purges the associated website data. The feature is designed to stop companies from invasively tracking customer web browsing habits across websites.

For more Apple news and rumors coverage, visit our Front Page, Mac Blog, and iOS Blog. Also visit our forums to join in the discussion.

The Information has published an in-depth look at how Siri has transitioned from one of Apple's most promising technologies into a "major problem" for the company. The article includes interviews with a dozen former Apple employees who worked on the various teams responsible for the virtual assistant.

The report claims that many of the employees acknowledged for the first time that Apple rushed Siri to be included in the iPhone 4s before the technology was fully ready, resulting in several internal debates over whether to continue patching up the half-baked product or start from scratch.

Siri's various teams morphed into an unwieldy apparatus that engaged in petty turf battles and heated arguments over what an ideal version of Siri should be—a quick and accurate information fetcher or a conversant and intuitive assistant capable of complex tasks.

The team working on Siri was overseen by Apple's then iOS chief Scott Forstall, but his attention was reportedly divided by other major projects, including the upcoming launch of Apple Maps. As a result, Forstall enlisted Richard Williamson, who was also managing the Apple Maps project, to head up the Siri team.

According to the report, several former employees said Williamson made a number of decisions that the rest of the Siri team disagreed with, including a plan to improve the assistant's capabilities only once a year.

Williamson, in an emailed response to the report, wrote that it's "completely untrue" that he decided Siri shouldn't be improved continuously.

He said decisions concerning "technical leadership of the software and server infrastructure" were made by employees below his level, while he was responsible for getting the team on track.

"After launch, Siri was a disaster," Mr. Williamson wrote. "It was slow, when it worked at all. The software was riddled with serious bugs. Those problems lie entirely with the original Siri team, certainly not me."

Forstall and Williamson were both fired by Apple in 2012 following the botched launch of Apple Maps on iOS 6. The former employees interviewed said they lamented losing Forstall, who "believed in what they were doing."

Another interesting tidbit is that the Siri team apparently didn't even learn about the HomePod until 2015. Last year, Bloomberg News reported that Apple had developed several speaker prototypes dating back to 2012, but the Siri team presumably didn't know due to Apple's culture of secrecy.

In a sign of how unprepared Apple was to deal with a rivalry, two Siri team members told The Information that their team didn't even learn about Apple’s HomePod project until 2015—after Amazon unveiled the Echo in late 2014. One of Apple’s original plans was to launch its speaker without Siri included, according to a source.

The report says that Siri is the main reason the HomePod has "underperformed," and said Siri's capabilities "remain limited compared to the competition," including Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.

The most notable failure in Siri's evolution is that it still lacks the third-party developer ecosystem considered the key element of the original Siri vision. Apple finally launched SiriKit in 2016 after years of setting aside the project and shifting resources away to other areas. […]

But SiriKit has yet to fulfill its promise. So far it includes just 10 activities—Apple calls them "intent domains"—such as payments, booking rides, setting up to-do lists and looking at photos. Several senior engineers who worked on SiriKit have left Apple or moved off the project.

Some former employees interviewed noted that "while Apple has tried to remake itself as a services company, its core is still product design."

Apple responded to today's report with a statement noting Siri is "the world's most popular voice assistant" and touted "significant advances" to the assistant's performance, scalability, and reliability.

"We have made significant advances in Siri performance, scalability and reliability and have applied the latest machine learning techniques to create a more natural voice and more proactive features," Apple wrote in its statement. "We continue to invest deeply in machine learning and artificial intelligence to continually improve the quality of answers Siri provides and the breadth of questions Siri can respond to."

The full-length article is a worthwhile read for those interested in learning more about Siri's internal struggles and shortcomings.

The Information: The Seven-Year Itch: How Apple's Marriage to Siri Turned Sour

Apple CEO Tim Cook has commemorated the life of theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, who died early Wednesday at the age of 76. "We will always be inspired by his life and ideas," he said on Twitter.

Hawking was diagnosed with the degenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, at the age of 21. He was given just a few years to live, but battled the illness for more than five decades.

Yesterday, it was discovered that a Mac App Store app called Calendar 2 had implemented a cryptocurrency mining feature that users could elect to use to unlock in-app features rather than paying cash, raising questions about whether Apple planned to allow such apps in the Mac App Store.

Calendar 2 was mining a digital coin known as Monero, and initially, Apple was slow to respond to questions from Ars Technica about whether or not such a feature was permissible, resulting in the app staying in the Mac App Store for a good 24 hours after Apple knew of its existence. Shortly after widespread media reports about the cryptocurrency mining feature circulated the app disappeared from the Mac App Store, but at the time, it was not clear if it was Apple that removed the app or the app's developer.

As it turns out, the app was indeed pulled by Apple. According to Greg Magarshak, CEO of Qbix, the company behind the Calendar 2 app, Apple removed the app from the Mac App Store for violating rule 2.4.2, which states that apps should not put an unnecessary strain on device resources.

Design your app to use power efficiently. Apps should not rapidly drain battery, generate excessive heat, or put unnecessary strain on device resources.

The Calendar 2 app was supposed to be using currency mining as an opt-in feature, but it was riddled with bugs causing the mining feature to use excessive resources and run regardless of whether or not users opted in, which is what drew so much attention to it. Just before the app was pulled from the Mac App Store by Apple, Magarshak promised to remove the feature from future versions of Calendar 2 because of these issues.

As of today, the Calendar 2 app is back in the Mac App Store. Magarshak said on Twitter that he worked with Apple to get a new version of the app released that has no mining features. As an apology for the snafu, all Calendar 2 users, new and old, will be provided with upgraded features for free for a year following the app's next update. Calendar 2 uses should update immediately as the older version of the app continues to include the miner.

Though the cryptocurrency mining feature made it past Apple's review team and into the Mac App Store, it appears that based on Apple's response and the rule violation cited, Apple will not be letting Mac App Store apps use background cryptocurrency mining as a way to unlock premium features within apps.

In addition to our standalone articles covering the latest Apple news and rumors at MacRumors, this Quick Takes column provides a bite-sized recap of other headlines about Apple and its competitors on weekdays.

Tuesday, March 13

- Apple CEO Tim Cook visits Capitol Hill: Cook was spotted in the U.S. Capitol with senators Mark Warner (Democrat-Virginia) and Richard Burr (Republican-North Carolina). He reportedly had lunch with Warner.

- Apple hires Golden State Warriors executive as events director: Apple has hired Gail Hunter, who was vice president of public affairs and event management of the NBA's Golden State Warriors team. Hunter will serve as Apple's director of events effective March 19, according to the team.

Commentary: Hunter will join Apple just under three months prior to its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June, the company's largest event of the year. The report doesn't mention what her responsibilities will be.

- Apple supplier Wistron secures land to build new site in southern India: The contract manufacturer has received approval to build a new facility roughly 40 miles from Bengaluru, in the Indian state of Karnataka.

Commentary: Wistron will likely use its new facility to expand its iPhone SE assembly work. India charges a 20 percent duty on imported smartphones to encourage companies to manufacture products within the country.

- Apple expands rollout of Apple Music for Artists, a dashboard that provides artists with insights about how often their music is played and purchased, listener demographics, and more. A few thousand artists were invited to test the beta in January, and now additional artists can reserve a spot.

Commentary: Apple has also refreshed the look of its Apple Music and iTunes Store badges for artists and affiliate partners, shortly after updating its Made for iPhone, iPad, and iPod logos for certified accessories.

For more Apple news and rumors coverage, visit our Front Page, Mac Blog, and iOS Blog. Also visit our forums to join in the discussion.

With its new Galaxy S9 and S9+, Samsung debuted AR Emoji, a feature that mimics Animoji, the animated emoji characters that Apple introduced alongside the iPhone X.

In our latest YouTube video, we compared Samsung's new AR Emoji on the Galaxy S9 to Apple's Animoji on the iPhone X to check out the similarities and differences between the two features.

Samsung's AR Emoji, while similar to Animoji, don't have the same kind of underlying technology powering them, so the facial expressions AR Emoji can replicate are far more rudimentary. While Animoji on the iPhone X can mimic subtle expressions, on the Galaxy S9, AR Emoji have trouble with anything that isn't exaggerated, better recognizing movements like a blink or an open mouth than something more subtle like a wink or an angry face.

There are a limited number of Animoji available, though, and that's where Samsung has Apple beat. There are more AR Emoji character options to work with, and in fact, you can even create a custom Bitmoji-style character modeled after your own face.

Characters can be customized with unique facial features, clothing, skin tone, and more, plus your recordings with AR Emoji aren't limited to 10 seconds -- you can record for as long as you want. You can also add stickers, and there are Bitmoji-like pre-made GIFs to send to people.

All in all, AR Emoji seems to have more in common with Snapchat than with Animoji. Those aforementioned stickers are similar to the Snapchat filters that let you add sunglasses, cute animal faces, and more to your own face and can't be compared to anything offered natively by Apple.

It's worth noting that third-party apps like Snapchat on iPhone X can also take advantage of the TrueDepth camera for filters that better fit the face, while on Samsung devices, Snapchat filters and AR Emoji stickers look much less natural.

As is typical, Samsung wins out in customizability, but Apple has the edge when it comes to the underlying technology. What do you think of AR Emoji compared to Animoji? Let us know in the comments.

Apple today announced that its 29th annual Worldwide Developers Conference will kick off on Monday, June 4 and will last through Friday, June 8 with the conference to be held once again at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California.

Developers can register to attend starting today, and Apple says registration will be open until Thursday, March 22 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time. As is typical, Apple will be selecting WWDC attendees using a lottery system due to the popularity of the conference.

Tickets will be priced at $1,599, and only developers who win Apple's ticket lottery will be able to purchase a WWDC ticket. To enter the lottery, developers must have been a member of the Apple Developer Program or the Apple Developer Enterprise Program as of March 13, 2018 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time.

Developers who are chosen through the WWDC ticket lottery will be notified by March 23 at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time. Apple also plans to make up to 350 WWDC Student Scholarships available this year for students and members of STEM organizations. Scholarships provide a free WWDC ticket, free lodging, and free one year membership to the Apple Developer Program.

Scholarship submissions will open on Monday, March 26, 2018, and students will be asked to build an interactive scene in Swift playground that can be experienced within three minutes.

Apple uses its Worldwide Developers Conference to introduce new software, to debut new hardware products, and to network with thousands of developers from all over the world. This year, Apple is expected to introduce iOS 12, macOS 10.14, tvOS 12, watchOS 5, and new software for the HomePod.

Apple will hold a keynote event on Monday, June 4, where we will get our first glimpse at new software products and perhaps some new hardware. Rumors suggest Apple could use the event to introduce new lower-cost MacBook Air models and refreshed iPad Pro models equipped with Face ID.

Last year was the first year that Apple held its Worldwide Developers Conference at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California rather than at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, and it appears the new location will be used for the foreseeable future.

Apple says that developers who are not chosen to attend the conference and "Apple enthusiasts everywhere" will be able to live stream the conference through the Apple Developer website or through the dedicated WWDC app for iPhone, iPad and Apple TV.

Those who are not picked for WWDC are also able to attend alternate events throughout San Jose during the week of WWDC, such as AltConf, which was announced this morning. Tickets to AltConf, which allows developers to mingle and provides a venue for watching the keynote and other WWDC events, are free. AltConf will take place from June 4 to June 7.