Majin Bu:

According to my source, Apple is gearing up for another major leap forward. With iPadOS 19 and iOS 19, expected in 2025, the gap between iPad, iPhone, and Mac continues to shrink. [...] One of the most exciting changes will benefit those using the iPad with a Magic Keyboard. When connected, the interface will adapt to show a menu bar at the top, just like on macOS, turning the iPad into a much more laptop-like experience.

Another key update is Stage Manager 2.0, an enhanced multitasking mode that activates automatically when the keyboard is attached. It will make managing apps and windows smoother and more productive than ever.

I don’t think it’s worth spending too much time thinking about these changes until we actually see what Apple is doing, but the menu bar is one of the great achievements in the history of UI design, and the Mac has always had the best design for a menu bar — at the top of the screen, not at the top of each window. Menu bars are such a great way to present and organize complexity. Moderately complex Mac apps typically have dozens of menu commands. More complicated apps can have 100 or more commands. I’ve never seen a plausible design for an app as complicated as, say, Xcode, BBEdit, or Photoshop without a menu bar. One of the reasons why Apple’s own apps are always better — and more capable — on MacOS than on iOS or iPad is that they’ve got more commands, better organized, because there’s a menu bar. Apple Notes, Apple Mail, the whole iWork suite — they’re all better on Mac, and they all have way more features on the Mac.

Reading a menu is also far more humane than scrutinizing icons. Sure, pick the handful of most-used commands and make them available in a toolbar of icons. But the full menu of commands should be written, not illustrated. You don’t order food in a serious restaurant by pointing at unlabeled pictures. You read the menu.

I know iPadOS today already supports a menu-bar-like HUD thing when you have a keyboard attached and hold down the Command key. I find that to be far less usable and far more distracting than a Mac-style menu bar. There’s a reason the Mac only shows you one menu at a time. Focus. The Mac menu bar is boring, but it’s boring in the best possible way. With the iPad’s current HUD menu, it’s like if the Mac dropped down every menu in an app at the same time. Presumably what Bu is describing is just making the iPad’s HUD menu present itself the way it should have from the start. I’ve always felt like iPadOS’s designers made the iPad’s HUD menu different from the Mac just to be different, not because it’s better — because I don’t see how it’s better in any way.

But the other problem is with the idea that iPadOS’s menu — whether as it stands today, as a HUD, or as this rumor suggests it might change, to be more like the Mac — is only available when you have a keyboard attached. Why shouldn’t users be able to access all menu commands when they’re just using the iPad via touch? It’s unnecessarily restrictive that the full list of commands in an app is only available when a keyboard is attached — especially for a device that many users never attach a keyboard to.

Bu continues:

iOS 19 isn’t being left behind. Source say that iPhones with USB-C will support external displays, offering a Stage Manager like interface. While not a full desktop mode, it will allow users to extend their screen space, great for presentations, editing, or enhanced viewing.

I often use my iPhone connected to a hardware keyboard, especially in the morning, while making coffee. And I seldom take an iPad with me when I travel any more — often/usually just my MacBook and iPhone. An iPhone with a Bluetooth keyboard is a great portable travel kit. (Apple’s own Magic Keyboard, for example, is remarkably lightweight.) All sorts of keyboard shortcuts that a Mac or iPad user is accustomed to work on an iPhone when using a keyboard, too.

But the one that’s missing that kills my productivity the most, takes me right out of the flow, is Command-Tab. It makes no sense to me why iOS doesn’t support Command-Tab. I personally don’t foresee ever attaching my iPhone to an external display (but I can see why some people would), but I really just hope that if this rumor comes to pass, it includes support for Command-Tab too.

Wayne Ma, reporting for The Information (paywalled, alas):

Earlier this year, Chinese authorities refused to allow one of Apple’s Chinese equipment suppliers to export machinery to India that Apple needed for the upcoming iPhone 17’s trial production, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter. So the supplier got creative.

It set up a front company in Southeast Asia to buy the machines. Once the equipment reached the Southeast Asian country, it went to a factory in India operated by Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that builds most of Apple’s iPhones in China, the people said.

Ian Malcolm: “Life finds a way.” So too with Apple getting what it wants.

India is already assembling between 30 million and 40 million iPhones a year — as much as one-fifth of the iPhone’s global production, according to people involved in Apple’s India supply chain. Apple is planning to increase iPhone production in India by around 10% this year, one of those people said. The company has a long-term goal of moving about half of its iPhone production out of China, according to other people involved in Apple’s supply chain. [...]

Increasingly, though, just getting that manufacturing equipment to India is a hassle. In many cases, Chinese authorities are delaying or blocking shipments of iPhone equipment to India without explanation, according to multiple people involved in iPhone production.

Foxconn has seen approval times from Chinese authorities for exporting iPhone-making equipment from its China factories to those in India rise from two weeks to as long as four months, one of the people said. They are also rejecting some export applications without explanation, the person added.

The equipment Chinese authorities are scrutinizing includes high-precision lasers that weld metal parts to the frames of iPhones, air leak test stations that measure how waterproof the devices are, and machines that can identify, grab and move parts from one location to another, known as pick-and-place machines, according to three people involved in iPhone manufacturing.

Hardball tactics on all sides here.

The Financial Times:

Apple plans to shift the assembly of all US-sold iPhones to India as soon as next year, according to people familiar with the matter, as President Donald Trump’s trade war forces the tech giant to pivot away from China.

The push builds on Apple’s strategy to diversify its supply chain but goes further and faster than investors appreciate, with a goal to source from India the entirety of the more than 60mn iPhones sold annually in the US by the end of 2026.

The target would mean doubling the iPhone output in India, after almost two decades in which Apple spent heavily in China to create a world-beating production line that powered its rise into a $3tn tech giant.

Andrew Leonard, writing for Salon back in 2013:

The first thing wrong with the stupidest article to be posted to the Internet in the year 2013 — and possibly the entire century — is the title: “I Was Quite Surprised By Some Things On My American Airlines International ‘Economy Class’ Flight.” Even setting aside the high probability that author Henry Blodget, the founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of Business Insider, wrote his account of the mild horrors of nine hours cramped in the cheap seats in order to purposely troll people like me who would ruthlessly mock him and thus drive even more traffic to his site, the low-rent search-engine optimization of Blodget’s headline would still be a crime against journalism. Blodget’s made many mistakes in the past, not least the dot-com boom-era stock hyping escapades that got him banned from the securities industry for life, but this inane tale of 34,000-feet-high horror marks a new low. The man should now be denied access to a keyboard for life, or until the heat death of the universe, whichever comes first.

My working theory has always been that both things can be true: Henry Blodget really is an idiotic jackass and he’s actually clever at crafting clickbait stories. One of Blodget’s complaints is that his laptop died after 3 hours, and he didn’t bring anything to read, leaving him 5 hours with nothing to do. I’m only slightly exaggerating when I say I’d be more likely to jump out of an airplane without a parachute than I would be to board a flight without plenty of stuff to read.

Jeff Johnson: The app in question is Virus Protection for Phone, which claims to be “Trusted by millions of users worldwide”. I don’t know whether that’s true, but for what it’s worth, the app is currently ranked #88 in the free utilities category of the United States App Store. According to AppFigures, Virus Protection for […]