Episode 53 – Apple in India, Facebook News Feed Changes

Our News Roundup this week covers three topics: Microsoft’s announcement that Windows 10 now has 350 installations; Twitter’s addition of stickers to photos shared through the platform; and Amazon’s new strategy for selling third-party Android phones with ads on the lock screen.

Our Question of the Week is “How is Apple doing in India, and how can it do better?” It builds on research Jan has been doing over the last few weeks on what Apple might do to boost its fortunes – and specifically the iPhone’s fortunes – in India. We talk about the unique characteristics of the Indian market, and how it’s different from China; the state of the smartphone market in India; Apple’s current position there; and four major themes around how Apple can accelerate growth and increase its addressable market there.

Our third segment covers the changes Facebook announced to its News Feed algorithm on Wednesday, the reasons for the move, and the likely implications for users, for publishers, and for Facebook. As usual, we wrap up with a Weekly Pick, this week two items recommended by Aaron.

I want to briefly thank all those who helped me in my research for this episode and my weekly Techpinions column, which also went up today on the same topic, including Shibesh, Harshil Shah, Sudeep Mishra, Sascha Pallenberg, Viranch Damani, Varun Krishnan, Nitin Alabur, and others. Your help and insight is much appreciated.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson@aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

Episode 52 – Differential Privacy, macOS Sierra Reviews, iPhone 7 Reports

We returned to our usual format this week, kicking things off with a News Roundup, and including a Question of the Week and Weekly Pick.

Our News Roundup covered three topics: Instagram’s release of user numbers, including 500 million monthly active users and 300 million daily active users; Tencent’s acquisition of a majority stake in Supercell for $8.6 billion; and BlackBerry’s earnings.

Our Question of the Week is: “How can differential privacy make my life better?” Aaron did a bunch of homework on this concept, which Apple introduced to many of us at WWDC last week but has actually been around for much longer. He tells us what differential privacy is, what some of the real-world applications are, and the benefits and limitations of this approach. We’ve included some links to some of Aaron’s reading material in the show notes.

Lastly, we discussed some other topics relating to WWDC which we didn’t get to last time or which have emerged since last week’s episodes, including the reviews of the macOS Sierra release which came out this week, and reports from the Wall Street Journal that Apple’s next iPhone will largely stick to the iPhone 6 and 6s form factor while ditching the 3.5mm headphone jack. We wrapped up the episode with our Weekly Pick, this week a recommendation from Jan.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson@aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

Episode 51 – Themes from WWDC 2016

This episode is entirely devoted to covering the 2016 edition of Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), which we previewed last week. Rather than go through chronologically, as we often do with these episodes, or even by product/platform, we felt it might be more interesting to pick up on four big themes from this event and discuss those, incorporating a lot of the biggest announcements in the process. The four themes are:

  • Openness, or loosening the reins – which includes the new Siri, iMessage, and Maps extensions; making Apple’s apps deletable; and the new lock-screen UI for VoIP apps
  • AI and deep learning and pushing back against the narrative that Apple is behind – including advances in Siri, Photos, QuickType, and the concept of differential privacy
  • Things that should have happened sooner – or, as Aaron named this segment, “Finally” – watchOS 3 and its new app and dock model; single sign-on and the Remote app for tvOS; the Home app for setting up and controlling HomeKit devices; Siri on the Mac; the Apple Music redesign; and split-screen view for Safari tabs
  • Reinforcing the ecosystem – including Auto-Unlock; the iCloud Universal Clipboard; Apple Pay on the web; Siri on the Mac; and iCloud syncing of the Desktop and Documents folders.

We spent the bulk of the time talking about these themes, but spent a little time up front talking about the structure and tempo of the event, and a little at the end debating the magnitude of these year’s announcements. The topic of WWDC will likely spill over in some form into next week’s episode too, as we didn’t cover all the major news in this episode.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson@aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

  • Apple’s WWDC site, with all videos from the conference
  • Episode 33 (iMessage as a Platform), something we discussed earlier and was featured in a big way at this year’s event
  • Episode 50, our WWDC preview episode from last week.

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

Episode 50 – Our First Year, WWDC Preview

This week’s episode marks the one-year anniversary of the first episode, with both episodes offering previews of Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). It’s also episode 50 (we skipped the weeks of Christmas and New Year).

Given the anniversary, we thought it would be fun to do a little retrospective of some of the things we’ve covered on the podcast over the past year, and so we made that another topic of discussion on the latest episode. There’s now a permanent page on the site where you can easily see a full listing of past episodes, so you can easily browse them. But we spent some time highlighting some of our favorite episodes from the past year, as well as discussing the past year in consumer tech. Links to the episodes we mention are below in the show notes.

If, for whatever reason, you don’t feel like reminiscing with us, you can skip to 21:20, when we start talking about this year’s WWDC. Specifically, we talk about Siri and digital assistants in general, something Jan’s been asked about a bunch in the lead up to WWDC by reporters. Secondly, we talk about iMessage and the prospects for iMessage as a platform, something we discussed in Episode 33. We also talk through iOS getting more pro features, what we might see in tvOS and watchOS, Apple Music, the App Store changes announced this week, and the fact that we’re unlikely to see any new hardware announced.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson@aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

Episode 49 – State of the Smart Home, Mary Meeker’s Deck

This week’s News Roundup covered three topics: Microsoft’s deal with Xiaomi to share patents and pre-install Office and Skype on Xiaomi devices; rumors of a new 5K display from Apple; and a new EU Code of Conduct on policing hate speech signed by major American tech companies. We discuss the ins and outs of each of these stories and their implications.

Our Question of the Week is “What’s the state of the smart home, and how will it change?” This topic builds off a recent piece Jan wrote for Techpinions which was syndicated to Recode, titled “The Smart Home is Stuck“, in which Jan argued that the most high-profile element of the smart home market – the retail purchase, self-install segment, is stuck at the early adopter phase. However, we also discuss the other major segment in the market, which is the service-based alternative, which sees devices professionally installed and managed, and charges monthly service fees rather than a one-off device purchase fee. This part of the market, exemplified by companies like Vivint, AT&T, and Alarm.com (through a white label model) is performing much better. We talk about how this situation might change over time, some of the other dynamics, and potential future innovations in the space.

Our third topic is a discussion of analyst Mary Meeker’s most recent slide deck, which provides a 200-slide overview of major trends in the internet and related fields, and was presented at the Code Conference this week. We focus on three of the trends she identified – ad spend, cars and technology, and China – and discuss each of these in some detail.

We wrap up with our Weekly Pick, which is something of a follow-up to an earlier recommendation from Aaron.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson@aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.