The IT Nerd

Earlier this week, Apple announced that they are adding RCS which is Rich Communication Services to iPhone in a software update coming to the iPhone later in 2024. Now on the surface, this is a huge announcement. And to be clear it is. Apple has been resisting Google’s attempts to get them to support RCS for years. But Apple supporting RCS isn’t what you think it is. And to back that up, I want to dive into Apple’s statement via 9to5Mac, and I want you to pay attention to the section in bold text:

Later next year, we will be adding support for RCS Universal Profile, the standard as currently published by the GSM Association. We believe RCS Universal Profile will offer a better interoperability experience when compared to SMS or MMS. This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users.

Note the words RCS Universal Profile. This is a version of RCS that is supposed to play nice with devices on multiple platforms. You can get the TL:DR writeup about this here, or you can go deep into the weeds here. But here’s what you should care about. RCS Universal Profile gives phones that support it the following abilities:

The Universal Profile contains core features such as capability discovery (interoperable between regions), chat, group chat, file transfer, audio messaging, video share, multi-device, enriched calling, location share and live sketching. It also introduces the key enablers for Messaging as a Platform (MaaP). This includes support for RCS business messaging, Rich Cards, privacy control and spam protection.

There’s one thing that’s missing from that paragraph. Encryption. RCS Universal Profile unlike iMessage does not support encryption. That’s a major feature that’s missing which means that iMessage still wins because Apple can always play the security card. And Apple users tend to care about security. Thus on top of the fact that Apple isn’t going to do away with green bubbles, this really doesn’t change all that much. And I suspect that the fact that 87% of US teens get iPhones to not be a green bubble person will not change.

What’s the saying? The house always wins? That seems to be the case here.

A reader of this blog pointed me towards this website which appears to be legitimate. The website give details about a settlement related to several class action lawsuits filed in various Canadian provinces. Here’s the TL:DR:

Apple has agreed to pay between $11,137,500 CAD and $14,427,500 CAD (the “Settlement Funds”) in consideration of the full and final settlement of the claims of Class Members, including but not limited to the Class Action and the Proceedings (the “Settlement”). In return for the payment of the Settlement Funds, the Settlement provides that the claims of all Class Members asserted or which could have been asserted in the Class Action will be fully and finally released and the Class Action will be dismissed.

The Settlement is not an admission of liability, wrongdoing, or fault on the part of Apple, which denies the allegations against it.

The hearing to decide whether to approve the Settlement and the payment of Class Counsel Fees will take place on January 29, 2024 at the courthouse at 800 Smithe Street, Vancouver, British Columbia.

The people eligible for any settlement include anyone who owed an Apple iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, SE, 7 or 7 Plus smartphone device with iOS 10.2.1 or later (for iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, or SE) and/or iOS 11.2 or later (for iPhone 7 or 7 Plus) installed or downloaded, before December 21, 2017. In that case, that would be my wife and I which is why this will be on our radar screens.

The website then goes on to explain what the next steps are. At present there’s nothing that anyone needs to do unless they are going to opt out of this or object to this. Thus I would recommend keeping an eye on this website if you’re part of the class so that you get what’s owed to you.

Google for a while has been pressuring Apple to support RCS. But Apple has steadfastly resisted this. And the last time I wrote about this topic, I said this:

Apple has nothing to gain by supporting RCS. They are perfectly fine with the status quo as it works for them. And until there’s a real incentive to change course, they won’t. Google needs to sell them something other than “You could fix texting for Android users and to stop teenagers from bullying each other!” Because Apple won’t ever care about Android users. Except the ones that the can switch to an iPhone.

Well, my jaw hit the ground when I read this on 9to5mac:

In a surprising move, Apple has announced today that it will adopt the RCS (Rich Communication Services) messaging standard. The feature will launch via a software update “later next year” and bring a wide range of iMessage-style features to messaging between iPhone and Android users.

Apple’s decision comes amid pressure from regulators and competitors like Google and Samsung. It also comes as RCS has continued to develop and become a more mature platform than it once was.

The reason behind this move isn’t hard to figure out. The EU wants Apple to open up iMessage to others. Apple doesn’t want to do that so adding RCS to the Messages app allows Apple to say “look we support our standard, plus we support RCS and plain old text messaging. Are you happy now EU?” Now whether the EU would be happy with this is an open question. But I can see from Apple’s perspective how this is the “least worst option” for them. Let’s see how the EU reacts to this.

For a while now, Apple has been shipping 8GB of RAM on a number of their Macs. And I’ve been saying that that’s not enough RAM for anyone. Thus if you were in the market for a new Mac, you should get at least 16GB of RAM. Apple clearly has heard this and is pushing back hard on this. MacRumors posted a story recently where  Apple’s VP of worldwide product marketing Bob Borchers claimed that 8GB on a Mac is like 16GB on Windows:

Comparing our memory to other system’s memory actually isn’t equivalent, because of the fact that we have such an efficient use of memory, and we use memory compression, and we have a unified memory architecture. 

Actually, 8GB on an M3 MacBook Pro is probably analogous to 16GB on other systems. We just happen to be able to use it much more efficiently. And so what I would say is I would have people come in and try what they want to do on their systems, and they will I think see incredible performance. If you look at the raw data and capabilities of these systems, it really is phenomenal. And this is the place where I think people need to see beyond the specs, and actually go and look beyond the capabilities, and listen to trusted people like you who have actually used the systems.

People need to look beyond the specifications and actually go and understand how that technology is being used. That’s the true test.

The problem is that this isn’t true.

macOS by itself takes up 5 or 6 GB of RAM by itself. Which means that when you open up a couple of applications or more, you will be using all 8 GB of RAM easily. At that point, the Mac will start using the hard drive to temporarily supplement the amount of RAM you have. This is called swap memory. To be clear swap isn’t entirely a bad thing, and all operating systems use swap memory. But any computer, regardless of what OS it is running, that is using swap memory to cover up the fact that it doesn’t have enough RAM isn’t a good thing as it negatively affects the performance of the computer overall. Now this issue really hit the public spotlight when Apple stopped using 2 NAND flash chips for storage in their base model M2 computers. I covered that here and here in case you want to go into the weeds on that. But here’s the TL:DR:

YouTube channels such as Max Tech and Created Tech tested the 256GB model with Blackmagic’s Disk Speed Test and found the SSD’s are about 30% slower than the M1 versions. This is due 256GB model is equipped with only a single NAND flash storage chip. The M1 version had two NAND chips that were likely 128GB each. This creates a RAID like setup that resulted in better performance. 

And that better performance extended to the swap memory. Because Apple cheaped out on using only one NAND flash storage chip, swap memory was way slower than it should have been. Which meant that any computer with 8GB of RAM was going to take a serious performance hit.

Fast forward to today. Apple now has the M3 processors out and they have two NAND flash chips in the base model. That means that this should be less of an issue because the storage has better performance. Right? Not so fast. MaxTech has put out a video where they ran a bunch of tests on an 8GB and 16GB M3 MacBook Pro and found that the 16GB model ran circles around the 8GB model due to the 8GB model needing to use swap memory constantly. Keeping in mind that the Macs were identical in every other way. The bottom line is that it pretty much tells you all that you need to know. Which is that 8GB is simply not enough for anyone regardless of what Apple says.

So, the question has to be asked. Why does Apple in 2023 produce computers with only 8GB of RAM? Who knows for sure because at the best of times that company is opaque at best. But if I had to take a guess, Apple is likely doing this to hit a price point to make their laptops look more competitive versus the competition. Sort of like car companies who advertise a “starting price” for their cars to hit a price point knowing full well that nobody will pay that because the want some creature comforts like air conditioning and a CD player.

Honestly, Apple is doing its customers a disservice by continuing to offer 8GB of RAM in their base models. And it isn’t helping the situation by coming out and basically saying that there’s nothing to see here when there is enough evidence to show that there is plenty to see here. Thus my recommendation for configuring a new Mac is going to remain in place. Which is that anyone buying a new Mac needs to get 16 GB of RAM at a minimum. Yes, you’re going to spend more money. But in my mind, it’s money well spent because you’re going to get better performance at the end of the day and you’re going to get a computer that has a bit more headroom.

Apple decided to hold an event last night called “Scary Fast” at 8PM EST. Which in itself was weird as Apple has never done a prime time event before. Plus they did it the day before Halloween. And it was over in 30 minutes. Which is the shortest Apple event that I can remember. But despite that, there were a couple of things that stood out. And a bunch of things that the Apple rumour mill predicted would happen. Let’s dive in to both:

• Apple Announced The M3 family of processors: As predicted by the rumour mill, Apple’s new M3 processors broke cover. Apple spent a lot of time comparing the M3 family of processors to the M1 family of processors. They also didn’t mention Intel all that often. My feeling is that they really want those of us with M1 based Apple hardware to upgrade. On top of that, I suspect they also want to get the last Intel holdouts to move to Apple Silicon. Here’s the TL:DR on this new family of chips:
  • The M3 chip has up to an 8-core CPU and up to a 10-core GPU with up to 24 GB of RAM
  • The M3 Pro chip has up to a 12-core CPU and up to a 18-core GPU with up to 36 GB of RAM
  • The M3 Max chip has up to a 16-core CPU and up to a 40-core GPU with up to 128 GB of RAM
  • All chips are on Apple’s 3 nanometer process which allow for lower power consumption and more density of the chip components.
  • The GPU supports  “Dynamic Caching” technology, meaning the GPU allocates the use of local memory in hardware in real time, ensuring only the exact amount of memory needed is used for each task. It also supports raytracing for higher quality graphics.
• Apple Announced The New iMac: The Apple iMac which hasn’t been updated since it was released in 2021 got the new M3 processor. Besides all the features of the M3 processor, it  also features Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 and still comes in the same colour selection as the M1 version.
• Apple Kills The 13″ MacBook Pro And Introduces A 14″ MacBook Pro With The M3 Processor: This is something that the rumour mill didn’t get right. Apple finally killed off the 13″ MacBook Pro which was a computer that I have argued that had no reason to exist. Twice. In its place, there’s now a 14″ model with the M3 processor.
• The 14″ and 16″ MacBook Pros have been refreshed with the M3 Pro and Max chips with a brand new colour called “Space Black”: I’m going to go out on a limb and say some people are going to upgrade simply for the colour alone. But you might want to hold off on doing so for reasons that I will get to in a minute.

Now with that out of the way, here’s what the rumour mill didn’t get right:

• There was talk that Apple was going to move all its accessories such as keyboards and mice to USB-C. That did not happen.
• There was talk that Apple was going to drop a new iPad mini on the world. That didn’t happen either.
• There were less reliable rumours that a 32″ iMac was going to appear. That never materialized.

Next is some random stuff that the Mac media has noticed:

• MacRumors has noted that the new MacBook Pros have 20% brighter displays. But they also note that the M3 Pro has 25% less memory bandwidth than the M1 Pro or M2 Pro version. What kind of difference the latter makes in the real world is unclear. But on the surface, that to me is a huge incentive to not upgrade if you’re going for the M3 Pro. My advice would be to stay tuned to Tech YouTube and the Mac media who will benchmark these machines to death and get all the answers for you before you spend your hard earned money.
• 9to5Mac is reporting that the “Space Black” model is not really black. It’s more like a dark grey. Thus those who want a black MacBook Pro are still going to have to pay a visit to dBrand to get hooked up.
• The 14″ MacBook Pro with the M3 processor only has two Thunderbolt ports according to MacRumors which is a limitation of the M3 processor. I don’t see this as a big deal as the target audience will likely not care about this.

Finally, the entire event was shot on the iPhone 15 Pro Max. And Apple has a behind the scenes video that is currently private on YouTube, but has been found and surfaced to the public:

So, what are your thoughts on the “Scary Fast” Apple event? Share your thoughts below in the comments and let’s get a discussion going.

Almost a year ago, I had a problem adding credit cards to Apple Wallet after a repair of my 2021 MacBook Pro. After going back and forth with Apple Tech Support on this, Apple accused me of running “beta” software which was a complete lie on their part. You can read all about the repair experience, which was bad along with Apple Support lying to me here. But I want to focus in on the latter issue which is the inability to add credit cards to my MacBook Pro. First this issue seemed to get resolved when I installed macOS Sonoma. That implies that Apple fixed something in Sonoma. Thus if you have this issue, try installing Sonoma to see if that fixes thing for you as I had people email me asking for help with this issue as I wasn’t the only one that has experienced this.

That brings me to the something that I tripped over on Reddit recently. It appears that I am not the only person who has had Apple accuse them of running beta software. Take this example from the Apple Watch forum:

Now this could be considered an isolated incident. But as I like to say, something happening once is a fluke. Something happening twice is a pattern. And here’s a second example that illustrates a pattern:

This suggests to me one of two things is at play here. The first is that Apple as an organization is having a failure to communicate. That’s bad if that’s the case because not being able to disseminate information affects the customer experience which is something that Apple claims to care a lot about. That seems to be backed up by this comment:

That’s a big problem if that’s accurate.

The second thing that could be at play here is that Apple’s staff is simply using this excuse to avoid troubleshooting an issue that they have no clue how to troubleshoot. That’s worse than the above because that illustrates that Apple is okay with their employees lying to customers. I say that because Apple claims that all calls to technical support are recorded which implies that they should be reviewed for quality and corrective action taken if there are issues. But I guess that isn’t happening as if it was, I would not be here talking about this. On top of that, there doesn’t seem to be any quality control for retail staff as they are parroting the same lines. That’s very troubling as all of this shows that Apple has taken several steps back in terms of the customer experience. And this isn’t a new problem for Apple as my wife discovered when she became a victim of “battery gate” which happened years ago.

For a company that claims to care about the customer experience, Apple is really coming up short here. Which is a massive disservice to their customers, and a radical change from the days when Apple had the best technical support and the best retail staff in the business. If I were Deirdre O’Brien who is the Senior Vice President of Retail at Apple, I’d really be looking into these sorts of claims that are becoming more and more frequent in places like Reddit and figure out what needs to be done to change course here, and fast. And I would copy and paste that for whomever runs their tech support as well. Because what’s clear here is Apple is failing its customers. And at some point, their customers will not stand for this and take their dollars elsewhere.