Rich Mogull, over at Macworld, wrote a great piece about how Apple actually cares about users privacy. It's a great read, and Rich pulls together a few solid facts to support a theory I've had for a while about trusting my data to Apple. Namely, that Apple doesn't make any money from selling me out (iAds excluded). They're making enough money on hardware that services like iCloud can be included gratis, without paying in data.

It's also worrisome. Apple is very much a luxury brand. The Apple Tax is a real thing, and even with the recent price drop on the 11" MacBook Air, you can get a full-featured Windows laptop for less, with a bigger screen. While the security conscious smartphone Blackphone may not occupy a luxury niche, and is a bit rough around the edges, it's not available through any carrier with a subsidy. This means a privacy-minded user would have to cough up $629 minimum for a secure phone.

In other words, if you're cost conscious, you can't afford to be privacy conscious.

Competing with free is always a difficult proposition. You can push on the privacy aspects like with Microsoft's “Scroogled” campaign, but that $0 price tag is so awfully tempting. People will sign on that dotted line without a care in the world what they're giving up, so long as it's free. Google and Facebook are masters of consumer psychology in that regard, offering compelling, quality web services for the price of data. Which, if you understand the Faustian bargain you're getting into, isn't so bad.

We already know, however, that most people don't know. Or, if they do, they don't bother to do anything to limit access. Part of why Windows PCs are often so much cheaper than comparable Apple hardware is not just cheaper components and volume pricing, but because they often come pre-loaded with privacy killing crapware that hardware manufacturers are paid for. Short of reinstalling the operating system as the first step in setting up a new machine, there's little that can be done to stop this practice.

I worry that we're heading for a new class divide in technology, where the poor, the cost-conscious, or the apathetic are surrendering more than they think. Meanwhile, those of us in our high-price luxury computing world—centered around Apple—can avoid the privacy crushing juggernauts. Are Apple users going to be the digital Eloi to an Internet of Morlocks? Not any time soon. There's enough Apple users who happily tie into Google's web services (author included) that it's not going to change overnight. But Apple making the slightly more privacy conscious Bing the default search in Yosemite and iOS 8—and adding the private search engine DuckDuckGo as an option could be the start of a trend.

“Unbundling” is the buzz word du jour for apps. A service or product with multiple functions splits out those functions into their own apps. High profile examples include Foursquare spinning out their check-in service into an app called Swarm, Facebook decoupling their messaging app, Google breaking up Google Docs on iOS, and Apple spinning off their Podcasts app. Publishers are doing something similar, launching apps that focus on niche topics, or just quick dose reading experiences. Unbundling isn’t just occurring in monolithic apps and services. Upstarts launching minimal single-purpose apps are “unbundling” as well. It’s enough of a trend that VC Mark Andreesen considers the ultra-minimal messaging app Yo to be the next step.

7/And yes, Yo unbundles the creation & existence of a message from the contents of a message, unbundling Whatsapp and Twitter :-).

— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) June 24, 2014

I’m not going to harp on Yo, except to point out that Yo is ambiguous enough that content and context will need to be bundled back in by its users. Otherwise, the future of Yo-style messaging looks pretty bleak. Though a joke, the previous link illustrates a big problem with The Great Unbundling, that of cognitive overload. Simplicity only works to a point. To stay with messaging, decoupling a message from its content introduces a lot of ambiguity. The closest example is the infamous Facebook “Poke.” Ostensibly designed to signal a friend that hasn’t updated their status in a while, its actual purpose was ambiguous enough that users created one: to solicit sex. If Yo is the first in a wave of content and context-free “messaging,” others will follow suit. Imagine a world where if you send a “Sup” instead of a “Yo” to an acquaintance or co-worker, it ends up misconstrued as a come-on, or something illicit. You’ll be begging to bundle content again.

There’s also the problem of proliferation. My iPhone home screen only holds 20 apps, while each page in Android’s app drawer holds about the same, depending on implementation. A user has to search, scroll, and remember which new app does the one thing that they used to do in the other app that doesn’t. Ordinary users learn how to use technology with a task-based mindset. Change one thing: add a step, move an icon, and they have to relearn the task all over again. One advantage of smart phone and tablet UIs is that they lend themselves well to fast task-based learning. It will still mess someone up to drop a change like splitting app functionality. Aaron Walter of MailChimp makes a point in a great essay on app unbundling:

Customers who use unbundled app suites may find jumping between apps tedious. It adds extra seconds to a workflow, which isn’t appreciated in the short sessions so common to mobile devices.

People will, of course, muddle through as they always do. But, if unbundling doesn’t benefit the end-user, who does it benefit? App makers benefit from new downloads, and new avenues to collect data and serve ads. It’s good for juicing stagnant numbers, too. No wonder Mark Andreessen is a fan. Unbundling works best for people when it offers a net benefit to the user. Andreessen talks about how Google unbundled search, but in doing so it provided a better search. Facebook unbundled finding people from Google, but still provided a compelling place for people to go to. The new unbundled apps can offer an easier way to do the same old thing, but not all do. This is why the emphasis on unbundling makes me skeptical. I figure one day the novelty will wear off, the numbers will be juiced as much as possible, and the Swarms and Yos of The Great Unbundling will looked on as a failed experiment. If I’m proven wrong, I’ll be chagrinned, but the world will keep spinning.

The new, discounted iMac has the RAM soldered to the logic board. The Surface 3 is nigh-unrepairable.. We’re increasingly being locked out of the inside of our computer hardware, and there’s precious little we can do about it. These are symptoms of the appliance-ificiation of technology, which is itself a symptom of mass-adoption of technology by ordinary people instead of hobbyists. A personal computer is more akin to a refrigerator, or a washing machine to many users. They want something that works, something that’s in their price range, and they don’t want to have to open it up to fix it when it breaks.

Considering that so many technology people like myself came up in an era where owning a computer was both a mark of the sort of person we were and required learning the ins-and-outs of computer maintenance, this shift has unmoored more than a few. Witness the gnashing of teeth from the iFixIt team with each, increasingly unfixable revision of Apple hardware, or Andy Ihnatko’s frustration about the retina MacBook Pro’s omitting the Ethernet port. [1] I’ve been bitten by the unfixable nature of Apple hardware twice in recent months. My iPhone 5S was completely replaced twice. One due to a broken screen, which on the 5S can no longer be swapped out. Second, due to a fault with the vibrator motor in my replacement.

The truth is, annoying as it may be, people like us are increasingly the minority. Most people want their tech to be small, light, and cheap like kitchen appliances. Most people don’t care about upgradability and repairability. How many people fix their own cars—or even change their own oil? Even in the enterprise world, it’s easier and faster for IT departments to swap out broken hardware than fix it. And if “BYOD” becomes common, the onus will be on the end user who will just replace it. Laziness will win, at least as long as typical consumer priorities remain the same.

It’s something that Phonebloks and Google’s Project Ara miss, even beyond the technical issues of speed and power consumption. If the priorities of users are cost and size, it can become more expensive to work in expandability and repairability over a closed system. At the very least, it’s more parts that could break. The priorities of hackers, tech hobbyists, and others who bemoan the appliance-ificiation of technology are different than the priorities of the growing mass market. Either their priorities will have to change, or we will. My money isn’t on the former.

Most smartwatches don’t succeed as either watches, or smart devices. Fancy graphical displays and UIs drain battery and add bulk. Pushing a button just to get the time, or anything else, defeats the role as a watch. One workaround to the problem is using a low-quality screen, like the Pebble, that’s easy on the battery. That’s only enough to make it last a week. Finally, someone’s approached the problem from the other direction. The recently announced Withings Activité is an analog watch with a fitness tracker inside. It looks amazing, it lasts a year on a watch battery, and it’s even water resistant. It’s also going to retail for nearly $400, but it’s a start.

Sure, it’s not as versatile as a Galaxy Gear, or even a Fitbit Force, but it succeeds as a watch, and the Withings Pulse is a decent enough clip tracker that The Wirecutter is willing to suggest it. If the Activité’s innards are based on the Pulse, we’re off to a good start on the technology side. It’s the fashion side that really has me intrigued, especially after reading Khoi Vinh’s excellent essay on the role of fashion in wearable devices. If there’s one thing that unites the current crop of wearable devices, be it a fitness tracker, a smartwatch, or Google Glass, it’s that none are terribly attractive. The most aesthetically pleasing to me is the Jawbone UP24, which is a minimalist wristband. It succeeds as fashion because it’s about as invisible as you can get without being a clip-on device.

I own two watches: one is a Swiss Army analog quartz watch, which I wear for dressier occasions. The other is a Casio F–91W, the choice of discriminating terrorists. I wear them, yes, as fashion, but also for utility. It’s still easier to look at this thing on my wrist to check the time than it is to pull my phone out of my pocket and tapping the sleep button. No matter how complicated the innards might be, the surface purpose of a watch, as technology, is simple: show me the time. That level of simplicity and focus will help define what becomes a mainstream device, should wearable devices catch on. Craig Hockenberry’s theoretical iRing hits on this just a bit. Combining Apple’s existing flair for minimal designs with an equally minimalist set of functions would allow them to make a simple device. If it has to be a watch, why not just put it under the surface of a decent quality, simple, quartz analog watch? It’s not crazy—we know Jony Ive already likes analog watches.

One of Apple’s tricks is that, while they do sometimes drop something as mindblowing as an original iPhone on us, most of their new products are just a push into the adjacent possible. They combine a lot of pre-existing technologies with a knack for aesthetics and UI that other companies miss, and they often do so in ways that seem painfully obvious in hindsight. Truth is, if it really were that obvious, we’d all be wearing analog watches that are also smart pedometers and wrist mounted notifications for our phones. Or something else we hadn’t thought of. When, or even if there’s an “iWatch,” it’s going to be something that executes on an existing set of ideas in a new way that won’t be obvious at first. We’ll feel the impact later. Especially when the price comes down.

Until then, if anyone wants to let me borrow $400, I’ll totally pay you back.

I don’t write software for the Mac, or iOS, or at all, for that matter. I write HTML, CSS, and I know how to build WordPress themes, and some other useful stuff. So, I’m not the target audience for the WWDC Keynote, but devoted Apple fan as I am (and have been since 2005), I had to tune in. Two hours later, Im more excited for the future of the tools I use every day than I have been since switching from Linux. As a user of the Holy Trinity of Apple Hardware, Mac, iPhone, and iPad, I’m in a good place to see some serious benefits from the latest updates when they finally drop.

iOS has always had massive untapped potential, and with iOS 8, it looks like Apple’s taking most of the brakes off. As an iOS Power User (or at least aspiring Power User), who keeps Launch Center Pro and Drafts in his dock, the possibilities of what the new Extension functionality can do are mind-blowing. Being able to access my 1Password keychain without leaving Safari, and using TouchID to unlock it, will completely change how I do web browsing on my iDevices. And, I’m willing to bet the folks at Smile flipped their lid over the news too. At last TextExpander touch will not have to rely on hacks to work. (Well, maybe.) Plus, if the iCloud stuff works as good as it looks, I may finally have the Dropbox replacement I want without the ethical conundrums.

The Mac’s played second fiddle to iOS, but now iOS and the Mac are getting tied deeply together. Yes, there’s a new UI for the Mac, and it makes Mavericks look like iOS 6 in comparison, but Continuity is where the magic really happens. If it works half as well as they make it out to work in the demos, I may never cast even the wariest of eyes at an Android device for the rest of my computing life. I’m genuinely curious about the Handoff API, and if third party developers will have access to it. If I can start writing a piece on my iPad in Editorial, and seamless switch to my Mac or iPhone, that would be incredible. We’re still a ways from Joshua Topoloksy’s “Continuous Client”, but Apple’s getting closer than anyone else.

They can do it, because everything is integrated. Yes, Apple wants to keep us all in their world, but I don’t think they need any new, exciting, hardware to make it happen. If Apple lands the execution on the software side, the capabilities they unlock in the hardware lines they have now, even with the most incremental hardware upgrades on the iOS side, they’ll have a platform that blows Android and Windows out of the water. Without the control of the entire experience on hardware and software, it’s infinitely more difficult to make things work as well as Apple, and their third-party developers can. I can’t wait to see how this changes how I work, and I know I won’t be alone.