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Apple spent December launching new Apple TV+ shows, improving apps, adding Matter to HomeKit, and missing two promised releases.
According to its own two-year schedule, Apple was to release the Apple Silicon version of the Mac Pro by June 2022. slipping away by December is normal.
Only Apple didn't release the new Mac Pro by the end of December, and it doesn't look like it's coming anytime soon. Apple also failed in its direct obligation to release the Apple Music classic.
Still, despite these two big blunders, Apple saw a lot of releases and improvements in December 2022. And Apple Music Sing too.
Apple Music Sing
Make sure you can sing better than Francisca Valenzuela before you hit that button
Definitely released to appease all those karaoke-loving, classical music fans, Apple has given Apple Music subscribers the ability to annoy everyone within a five-block radius by replacing the singing voices of artists on their own.
And by the way, no. You can't remove an artist's voice and, without making a sound yourself, get an instrumental track to use as a ringtone.
Obviously.
But Apple has taken dozens of clips from upcoming Apple TV+ shows and stitched them together into a video clip that regular TV channels show to advertisers. Apple is now a television network, this cannot be ignored.
Releases big and small
A smaller scale of Apple releases this month a sound has been added for Find My on Mac. From the latest version of macOS, you can get Find My to make your AirTags play sound.
No one knows why he couldn't always do it.
Whereas many people understand very well why the liberation of Matter matters. Homekit used to be its own little island, while Alexa and Google were more successful but no less problematic.
Now read on. With the release of Matter and all the smart home firms you've ever heard of agree to support it, things will work better. And eventually, this business of having to double-check whether a device works with HomeKit or not will come to an end.
In practice, this does not work so well yet. But these are the first days.
So we'll have to wait a while until moving to Matter improves HomeKit, and as it happens, we'll also have to wait until 2023 to see the benefits of something else huge.
Advanced data protection has already begun to improve the security of the iPhone, and you know that should be a good thing, because the FBI is soaring about it.
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Additional data protection Apple extends the ability to store our data in an encrypted form. This is one of several new Apple security improvements that will be implemented in the coming months.
Not everyone is happy with Apple security
A consequence of how the new secure encryption works is that Apple has officially abandoned its previously controversial plan to scan user images for CSAM. Child sexual abuse material is already being scanned by other firms, but Apple got in trouble for offering it — and now also for refusing it.
Australia's e-safety commissioner Julie Inman Grant says Apple and Google's child abuse prevention practices are “alarming”.
However, they are also curious. It's easy to see why the new security improvements make CSAM scanning difficult to say the least, but it's much harder to see why Apple didn't know its own security update was coming.
Another month, another union problem
Strikers at the Brisbane Apple Store in October 2022. Source: Cameron Atfield, Sydney Morning Herald
It's true that Apple ended the year with just as many retail workforce problems as before. during 2022. For example, workers in Australia went on strike on Christmas Eve.
However, retail employees are not the only ones who are unhappy with Apple. There is also a special case where former Apple engineer Paris Campbell claimed she was wrongfully fired.
Campbell posted a video on TikTok to help people learn about iPhone Activation Lock and how scammers are trying to get you to take it off. She later said that Apple subsequently ordered her to remove the video and threatened her with disciplinary action “up to and including termination.”
However, in December 2022, her wrongful termination claim was not related to this video or this threat. Instead, she says the layoff was due to COVID-related sick leave.
It's hard. But at least Campbell definitely has the right to talk about it, because Apple commissioned a study that says he's very good at not stifling employee speech.
However, they would have said so.
More unexpectedly, news continued to leak about the conditions at Foxconn's (alleged) hell site at the Zhengzhou manufacturing facility. Sick workers are reportedly forced to continue working on the iPhone production line.
Apple and Ericcson play well
If the staff or the union issues show absolutely no sign of ever being resolved, at least December showed us that Apple could make a deal. In particular, Apple and Ericcson can do it, and it only took a few months of international lawsuits and counterclaims.
It happened that Apple licensed some Ericsson patents for a certain number of years, and then the license expired. Instead of simply extending it, both sides provided their lawyers with every possible defense that proved the other side was wrong about everything.
Then after a while everything was settled and now Apple has a new license.
No, sorry, wait. This is exactly what happened in 2015.
The same thing happened again in 2022, which definitely culminated in a new deal between companies and maybe a really big party for lawyers.
