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While you've been waiting for your iPhone 14 Pro, Apple has faced Foxconn delays, union issues, and a little taunting from Samsung.
If you feel like Apple hasn't released anything new in November 2022, then you're probably one of the many whose iPhone 14 Pro isn't out yet. Or maybe you have one, but for some strange reason, you're not stuck in a remote location away from cell service.
Apple's biggest launch this month for users has been the rather amazing Emergency SOS feature via satellite. Announced alongside the iPhone 14 lineup, the service was enabled for users in the US and Canada in November, and in some other countries in December.
You should hope that you never need the opportunity to call for help from the depths of the desert or high in the mountains, but you also know that this will happen to someone.
Emergency SOS
As soon as Apple introduced the crash detection feature, it was immediately and unfortunately tested in real crashes. While there were no incidents reported with Emergency SOS via satellite… in November.
However, they were in December, just a few days after the service was turned on.
Smaller scale launches
This is why emergency SOS is important if you are in an accident and this is the way you have to live to tell the story. For most of us, this is impressive, but we will never experience it.
Hence, it does seem like Apple didn't manage to release much in November, certainly not compared to October's set of new devices. Expected launches like Apple Music Classical didn't happen and we didn't see any M2 MacBook Pro releases either.
But for the Apple Watch Ultra, there was Oceanic+. Actually made by Huish Outdoors, it was introduced by Apple at the launch of the Watch as what turned the Apple Watch Ultra into a dive computer.
Oceanic+ App by Huish Outdoors
Samsung introduced ads and features
Meanwhile, Samsung introduced a phone feature that will be familiar to Apple users. Back Tap on iPhone, where you literally press on the back of the iPhone and it can launch accessibility features or shortcuts, is now on some Samsung phones.
Only Samsung seemed to hear that this feature was available and misinterpreted it as “unavailable”. The steps you have to go through to get this thing to work are ridiculous.
It's a problem with android features. You hear that Android does this and that, but it turns out that only some Android phones do it, and then with difficulty.
Which for some reason Samsung didn't mention in its “On the Fence” ad.
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Ignoring this issue, you might have to buy five different Android phones to get all the Android features that Android fans say are late, Apple is still late. This announcement shows that someone is literally on the fence and thinking about switching from iPhone to Android precisely because of these various features.
However, perhaps more importantly, he never makes the jump to advertising.
Apple doesn't care about Android
So Samsung mocks Apple with one hand and copies it with the other. Same old, same old, and Apple hardly cares about any of that.
However, Apple executives can be forgiven this month for not even noticing what Samsung is working on, as they should have been much more concerned about Foxconn not working at all.
Apple's largest iPhone maker is facing the shutdown of its largest iPhone factory due to China's stringent COVID-19 lockdown measures. While Foxconn has moved some iPhone production to India, it has never been enough.
Foxconn in Zhengzhou in happier times
For this reason, Foxconn said in November that its revenue growth projections were now nothing more than childhood dreams. And Apple has taken the rare step of issuing a statement about how lockdowns have affected iPhone 14 Pro production.
In short, the problem is probably that you can't get Apple's iPhone 14 Pro online before Christmas.
Foxconn has serious personnel problems
How can you As you can see, the restrictions in China were so strict that the local population rebelled about it. So did the Foxconn — but it turns out they had something to complain about.
Foxconn and the local government agreed on a “closed loop” system whereby workers could work in the factory and then sleep in factory dormitories. It doesn't quite feel like a dream job at the best of times, but November wasn't the best time.
While in the barracks, you are dependent on food supplied by the company, and in this case, supposedly, it was bad. The lack of food was almost the last straw, but not quite.
New riots broke out at the Foxconn factory in China's communist Zhengzhou. Violent clashes escalated from both CCP & Chinese rioters, tear gas grenades were fired when the Chinese rioters responded to the enemies with a fire detector. pic.twitter.com/5OU7dXAiiE
— Northrop Gundam (@GundamNorthrop), November 23, 2022
It looks like the real last straw came when Foxconn, despite all its problems, decided to build a few more. Although he later stated that it was a “technical error”, what happened was that the workers promised bonuses were changed into their contracts to make them unacceptable.
Hundreds of Foxconn workers were said to have rioted at first, but then, as the situation calmed down, — and Apple apparently sent the command to the — everything has changed. Foxconn decided to pay out about 20,000 rioters on the condition that they leave the company.
We will never know what the Apple team told Foxconn, and we will never know if that team also spoke to workers.
It would be funny if they told the workers to unionize.
Speaking of staff
Unions and Apple is a topic that won't go away, but November seemed to shed a special light on him. It was also the month that Apple Glasgow became the first UK Apple Store to unionize.
Apple Glasgow
Here's the thing. Once upon a time, Apple Store employees were ambassadors for how Apple works.
Usually this would mean that they advise customers to buy something else if it is right for them. This month we've heard stories about sales promotion, forcing upsells, and laminated tree diagrams designed to motivate employees to sell, sell, sell.
Apple Stores has been remarkably successful without copying other retailers. Now he's copying them, and he's doing it at a time when retail is struggling and mass selling techniques only work in the very short term at best.
Perhaps in the past, unionization meant bringing in a third party, which worsened the relationship between Apple and its staff. This is certainly the position of Apple today, but from what we learned in November, there is no connection.
For example, this month, one employee said that complaining to Apple about something was like “writing Santa,” despite all the benefits she brought.
Apple Head of Retail Deirdre O'Brien
Whereas if unions weren't going to help, Apple wouldn't spend money on hiring lawyers who destroy unions. Also, as we also heard this month, Apple will not be sending out anti-union managers to its stores.
Or just that. Earlier this year, Apple increased the starting pay for retail employees from $20 to $22 an hour.
Perhaps Apple would have done it anyway, in an economy where it lays off people and cuts hiring. Perhaps it's completely coincidental that the promotion happened while employees were talking to the unions.
Speaking of layoffs
Apple's staff relations have indeed been much better this month, than they were on Twitter. But then the new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, found a unique way to alleviate staff problems – — shooting at them.
Reports vary as to how many Twitter employees have been fired, not least because Musk keeps hiring some back when he figures out what they've been up to all day. But it is sometimes said that 70% of Twitter employees have left.
In November, it seemed increasingly likely that Twitter itself might disappear from the App Store. While Tim Cook has publicly stated that he expects Twitter to continue moderating its content, Twitter has not publicly moderated its content.
And you knew Twitter was in danger because Musk went on the offensive, in almost every sense of the word. Musk can't win the argument that he doesn't allow hate speech on Twitter when he allows hate speech, so he adopted a politician's approach.
Musk tried to change the battlefield. Twice.
First, he briefly spoke out against what he called Apple's “hidden tax” — the 15% to 30% commissions Apple charges for being on the App Store. This is so well known that it requires a hitherto unfamiliar definition of the word “hidden.”
When that didn't work, Musk made the argument that Apple had suspended ads on Twitter, so Apple is against free speech. Perhaps you could make a really poignant argument that it's a cost to advertisers who support the service, which is why Apple removed that support.
But you didn't buy it, just like no one else. Similarly, no one will buy a phone with Twitter if Apple drops the service.
We'll never know if Musk had a third pointless battlefield because on the very last day of November he was called to Apple Park.
He pictured it as Tim Cook giving him a personal tour of Apple Park, but it's more like he was sent to the director.
November was a heavy month
There were some lighter ones moments of November 2022 and perhaps even a small but promising glimpse into the future.
This game is a glimpse of the world's first foldable iPhone, other than that, it wasn't made by Apple. And it's not very good.
But as an example of engineering prowess and hard work, it was uplifting. Also, you realized how much you need a real foldable iPhone.
Foldable iPhone
However, Apple continues to offer other things instead, such as MagSafe. That is how, in November 2022, a man was able to fish his lost iPhone out from under the floorboards.
It's still not clear why he didn't just lift the floorboard, but here it is.
By the way, in November 2022, a particular reporter last saw one of his AirPods. While reporting live on the rise in crime, a bird stole a journalist's AirPod right out of his ear.
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There might be some symbolism in there. But let's instead turn our attention to December 2022, when it looks like Apple has so much more to release.
