Month: December 2020

Living with the iPhone 12 Pro Max
iPhone 12 Pro Max transition

I moved to an Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max from an Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max. That’s an important factor to bear in mind when one sees phone comparisons. Secondly, I don’t earn my living doing phone reviews, so my reactions are likely to be less dramatic than a professional phone reviewer. Instead, I am trying to reflect a view of what its like to live with the device.

Smartphones overall

You would have to look pretty hard to find a dreadful premium or mid-range smartphone nowadays. Some of the lower end Motorolas are sluggish performers, have the build quality of an early Samsung Galaxy and a mic that cuts in and out. But for the average iPhone user, a phone that is five years old is still a cracking phone, that could go another few years with a replacement battery.

The cameras are more than adequate for snapshots or document scanning, but no amount of software will make up for the quality of the lens in a smartphone versus a semi-professional photographers camera. And for most people, that’s enough. Performance has reduced to incremental improvements in real world performance. And in this respect smartphones mirror personal computers; as the huge perceived performance gains of the early computers flattened out.

I no longer need a Mophie Juice Pack case to make the iPhone last through a work day like I did with the iPhone 3GS. Although for long trips away from my desk, I still a power pack and a cable in my bag. This is as much about having the reassurance of knowing that I can run down my battery with lots of Maps usage if I have to, rather than a real need. Increased battery life is partly a function of screen size. The larger the screen, the larger the battery. Device screen sizes have grown over the years. Secondly, chip design and system software have focused on power consumption as part of a decade plus long focus on computing power per watt.

I still miss the keyboard and form-factor of my old Nokia E90; despite its flaky Symbian software. But I no longer miss its superior battery life, or the ability to remove the battery and replace it with fully charged spare.

Out of the box

All of the iPhone 12 models come in smaller packaging than previous devices. The primary reason for this is Apple no longer supplies a USB charger. The excuse that Apple provided was that it was environmentally friendly. The problem with this is there are some awfully unsafe USB chargers available online as an alternative. The second thing that was missing from the box was a set of Apple wired earbuds. Again this was put down to being environmentally friendly by Apple. Though you could also come to two less flattering conclusions:
- Apple is converting an insignificant amount of Android users, but only converting existing Apple iPhone customers. So headphones with a Lightning connector wasn’t needed and Apple could save on costs
- It was a cynical ploy by Apple to drive AirPod wireless headphone sales even higher
I can understand why Chinese netizens considered both moves to Apple shortchanging customers. I agree with them.

China

It is also interesting to note that all the main live-streaming platforms in China simultaneously decided to cancel live-streaming of the iPhone 12 series launch.

Of course the Chinese government / Communist Party of China had nothing to do in coordinating this – honest….

Handset design

When you take the iPhone 12 Pro Max handset out of the box, you immediately notice its size and weight. It has steep stainless steel sides like an iPhone 4 on steroids.

iPhone 12 Pro Max view from the back of the phone

Usually the heft of a premium phone feels reassuring. But at first, holding the phone was a dissonant experience. There were a few reasons for this:

The change in design language from smooth round edges on handsets from the iPhone 6 onwards, to a flat edge of the iPhone 4 and 5.

It was the first time that an iPhone model has become thicker than the previous generation of iPhone.

The change in design with its thicker flat sides has little difference in putting on a protective case, but removing the case is noticeably harder.

After three days or so usage, the iPhone 12 felt perfectly normal as I got used to it.

Camera

As I said at the outset to this post, this like other modern premium smartphones, are good at taking snapshots. The main difference between my iPhone 11 Max Pro and iPhone 12 Max Pro was a slight increase in optical magnification. The rest of the mild photographic improvements were available in the iOS 14 software for both new and older iPhones.

Networking

The big selling point for Apple on the iPhone 12 Pro Max is its ability use 5G networks. The problem is that for consumers 5G doesn’t have a compelling killer application at the moment.

In that respect, it reminds me a lot of my time working with Cap Gemini as a client when video calling and Quibi like sports and entertainment clips were thought to be the killer app for 3G.

The reality is that it took wi-fi and 4G made video to make calls work, even then the product isn’t perfect. Shorter sellable video content is still looking for a market. 5G does have industrial niche market opportunities. Secondly, 5G network rollout means that there will be probably three generations of future iPhones before the 5G wireless function becomes useful. I still live in a neighbourhood in central London where I often lose 4G coverage. 5G will require many more cell sites to provide the same level of coverage.

Cellphone reception seems to be better; I don’t know if this is down to the handset or my carrier building out their infrastructure further during the lockdown.

My house has never had great cellphone reception during my time living here. It backs on to a railway line with overhead electrification and only had windows the side facing away from the railway. Yet I am now seeing two bars of signal in parts of the house where I previously would only have had Wi-Fi or a single bar of 3G.

Conclusion

Unsurprisingly, the iPhone 12 Pro Max is an accomplished handset. It offers good battery life, responsive performance, a great screen, a good camera and is well made. But there is insufficient reason to upgrade if you have an iPhone made in the last three years. You already have a good well made phone. It has a good camera and will run the latest version of iOS.

If your battery no longer holds the charge, the way it once did, Apple offers a service to replace the battery at a very reasonable cost.

More design related posts here.

More information and selected reviews

iPhone 12 launching without earbuds or wall chargers is compared to eating without chopsticks in China | South China Morning Post

Shenzhen/Huawei: the other Bay Area | Financial Times – The impression of military manoeuvres by alternative means was reinforced by Tencent, another Shenzhen resident. It was among big Chinese social and video platforms including iQiyi and Weibo, that simultaneously cancelled the livecast of Apple’s iPhone 12 launch

Kibbles & Bytes #1122: Apple Releases Four iPhone 12 Models and the HomePod mini – Don nails the assessment of 5G in the latest edition of his newsletter.

Daring Fireball: The iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro – interesting thoughts on the iPhone 12s. What Gruber doesn’t touch on is the radio improvements, particularly in 4G
December 30, 2020
Plastic surgery hack + more

Hackers threaten to leak plastic surgery pictures – BBC News – this follows on from the hack on Finnish mental health services. Given the link between plastic surgery and self image; black hat hackers have a lot of sustained leverage. More security related posts here.

Regulators tell Jack Ma’s Ant Group to rectify five problems – the five areas included: Ant’s inadequate governance; regulatory negligence; unlawful profit-seeking; monopolistic practices and; infringement of consumer rights, said China’s central bank vice governor Pan Gongsheng. China orders Ant Group to rein in unfettered expansion as regulators put up fences around financial risks | South China Morning Post – Ant must return to its origins in online payments and prohibit irregular competition, protect customers’ privacy in operating its personal credit rating business, establish a financial holding company to manage its businesses, rectify any irregularities in its insurance, wealth management and credit businesses, and run its asset-backed securities business in accordance with regulations, the People’s Bank of China’s deputy governor Pan Gongsheng said in a statement on Sunday.

Beijing launches antitrust investigation into Alibaba | FT – of course, its not political.

Who’s behind Marcus Rashford? – UnHerd – interesting profile of Roc Nation’s UK arm

SolarWinds Adviser Warned of Lax Security Years Before Hack – Bloomberg – I’d be surprised if there isn’t shareholder class action suits now

The OnlyFans revolution – The Face – Selena suggests we “talk about OF in a way that doesn’t glamourise the economics of the operation”. Instead, we need a more “nuanced conversation about the nuts and bolts of what the actual labour looks like. We aren’t seeing the injustices. It’s either focused on our trauma or on the glamorous hyperbolic examples, while most of us are somewhere in the middle.” There are many sides to running an OnlyFans that are less visible, including work that goes into maintaining a profile and the emotional labour involved in keeping up with fans. Historically, sex workers basically act as ad hoc therapists to their clients – it’s said to come with the territory, from escorting to camming to BDSM. And the “girlfriend experience” applies here too. A key part of the site’s success is one-to-one connection – often creators’ bios will explicitly state they talk with all their followers – for the right brands there is an opportunity for influence campaigns

North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts November 2020 Billings – Semiconductor Digest – generally a good sign for the global economic outlook. A dip in semiconductor equipment is usually the canary in the coal mine for global economic time.

December 28, 2020
Cyberpunk and things that made my week

Cyberpunk history part one and two have been done by Indigo Games. I blogged about part one a while ago on the blog. But now I get to share both parts of this Cyberpunk history. The gap reflects the amount of time and effort that went into both series.

Part one covers cyberpunk culture up to the early 1980s.

Part two moves the cyberpunk story via personal computing, the end of the cold war, gulf war and mainstream Hollywood. I hadn’t made the Philip K Dick connection with Screamers. It also delves into a wide variety of early computer games that I didn’t know and the cult anime Armitage III.

I can’t wait until their next instalment drops. Watch this cyberpunk history instead of the staid Christmas TV programming. More culture related posts here.

Mercedes-Benz managed to create its own ‘Baby Yoda’ moment with the ‘plushie’ in this winter TV advert. However Mercedes don’t seem to have thought about how to exploit this cultural moment that they’ve created.

https://youtu.be/-bE16foH9m0

The Irish government’s department of foreign affairs has put together To Be Irish | at Christmas that provides an Irish experience to the COVID stranded diaspora. I’ve put together a playlist of Christmas music you can enjoy here.

The Korea Culture Centre has put together online experiences based on the works of Korean artists. More here. They’ve made an interesting use of video and VR type experiences in this work. The KCC has kept its artist curation at its usual high standard.

December 25, 2020
Looking back at 2020
Looking back at 2020 was based on desk research I undertook at the end of March through to the beginning of May this year for 90TEN; with a healthy dollop of hindsight added.

The first thing that I tried to make sense of was all the noise from experts who claimed that everything was going to change. Clearly that wasn’t going to be the case. But what would elements would be most affected? I narrowed it down to a combination of three factors:
- Demand side and supply side economic change
- Accelerating trends
- Behavioural change
Where you have an intersection of all three, then you are more likely to have lasting change.

Behavioural change on its own won’t work. When we had the Spanish flu, there was a similar level of masking and social separation. But what followed was the hedonism of the roaring 20s. But all three factors together would act as a push-and-pull on sustained behaviour change.

Thinking specifically about acceleration, we saw a number of things happen.
- Changes in sectors and practices that would have taken years have taken months. Such as the adoption of remote working practices
- Things that were on the edge suddenly became mainstream, like mask wearing that was previously only popular in east asian countries like Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan
The rise of e-commerce and food delivery was a classic edge case to mainstream move.

Looking back 2020, one of the topics is the speed of change in circumstances and the relative lack of change in human behaviour. One academic claimed that it revealed what really mattered to a population. Although this misses out that the competency of a government as a key determining factor.

Canvas8 presented a model of human behaviour during an epidemic, which I shared in looking back at 2020. This shaped a key part of my thinking around human behaviour.

Like the grief process, the pandemic human behaviour model starts with denial.

And then anxiety…

Adjustment is how people have adapted to the circumstances. Society as a whole is still under strain.

Life is reconsidered moving forward, a classic example of this would be the Wuhan EDM pool party held in the autumn.

The new normal where COVID-19 is now under control and will have shaped future consumer behaviour.

Canvas8 also mapped out likely consumer behaviour against the stages.

Consumers had a clear view of what they wanted from brands. Brands often struggled to match the expectations of consumers. Dettol’s UK marketing efforts being an exemplary example of how to get it wrong. Looking back at 2020, we had the opportunity to do fantastic marketing work utilising digital and TV platforms, but very little of that opportunity was utilised.

A couple of organisations deserve for their efforts to be highlighted. My former colleagues at LONDON Advertising used their own marketing during the middle of the crisis to demonstrate the power of marketing. Secondly, the IPA ran a sustained campaign in the FT promoting the power of advertising to the c-suite.

The economic factors that will be a driver in societal change, made up the third factor alongside behavioural aspects and acceleration of existing trends.

The initial economic forecasts were very negative which drove a ‘correction’ in the stock markets.

Past trends indicate that these kind of crises cause an economic decline that countries bounce back from. However a lot of the change happening is non-COVID related or only tangentially related like China’s escalating trade sanctions on Australia.

Post COVID-19 economic impact is like dropping industry sectors in a time machine. The kind of change that would normally have taken years to run its course has happened in months. What is more worrying is the amount of unsustainable debt that has been taken on board by businesses across sectors. Over time this will benefit larger established businesses over smaller, or newer ones.

I put in an extra section into looking back at 2020 about the young because the insights challenge many of marketers holy cows in terms of views on younger members of society.

Telemedicine attitudes and usage shows that the heuristic of young people being technology adopters doesn’t hold up. Which is usually presumed in sentiment around digital natives.

The resisters shatters a stereotype of young people being progressive, purpose driven people. And they are media literate and media savvy by nature. Yet they are exhibiting behaviours that would be more in tune with older people with reactionary views.

I put in the links to the sources that I mention in the presentation. However I formed my views by looking at much more material. Just over a gigabyte of data sources that relate to COVID-19 which I went through is on Google Drive. Everything from consumer behaviour to economic data is available here. The looking back at 2020 presentation is available for download here. (More on issues related consumer behaviour here.)
December 25, 2020
Private sector control + more things

China’s Xi Ramps Up Control of Private Sector. ‘We Have No Choice but to Follow the Party.’ – WSJ – In some cases, it is taking charge entirely of companies it regards as undisciplined, absorbing them into state-owned enterprises. – Push driven by a concern over the private sector business owners being unpredictable and not trusted. They think a centrally planned complex economy is the way forward; with the private sector playing a subservient role at best. This view has been strengthened by the state engineered swift recovery from COVID-19. I presume that they consider that China’s place in global supply chains, big data and machine learning will solve a lot of the problems that bedevilled previous centralised economic planning systems like what happened in the Soviet Union. More economics related content here.

Party Committees See Rising Prevalence in Private Sector | Marco Polo – China clamping down on private sector

Google AMP gets a shock to its system as advisor quits, lawsuit claims foul play • The Register

Quick Thoughts on the Russia Hack – Lawfare – interesting post on the SolarWind hack based attacks

North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts November 2020 Billings – Semiconductor Digest – this looks good in terms of world economic growth

China-Europe Trade Forum Canceled After China Sought to Bar Critics – WSJ – Officials familiar with the exchange say the two people Beijing wanted to exclude from this year’s virtual event were Reinhard Bütikofer, the European Parliament’s chairman of the EU-China caucus who has publicly criticized Beijing over Hong Kong and its treatment of the Uighur minority; and Mikko Huotari, the head of Merics, a German think tank critical of the Chinese Communist Party. – China is depriving itself of unvarnished information about how it is viewed. A recipe for miscalculation in policymaking. Mainland Chinese contacts fail to understand why they don’t seem to have friendly relations with other nations anymore, despite Chinese achievements

Huawei, 5G, and the Man Who Conquered Noise | WIRED – Steven Levy explains Erdal Arikan’s breakthrough in information theory well. What’s interesting is how the west has abandoned long term research projects. Arikan took 20 years for his breakthrough. In an American university you wouldn’t get, or maintain tenure doing that

‘Made in Hong Kong’ prestige provides springboard for retailers Watsons, Sa Sa to find success in Greater Bay Area | South China Morning Post – ‘Made in Hong Kong’ prestige provides springboard for retailers Watsons, Sa Sa to find success in Greater Bay Area. Well-known Hong Kong retailers are aggressively expanding in the bay area, where the prestige of their brands makes them a hit with mainland consumers. The city’s retail sector has been devastated by the coronavirus keeping deep-pocketed mainland tourists away – if true, I don’t seeing it being a defensible differentiation in the medium to long term

MindGeek: the secretive owner of Pornhub and RedTube | Financial Times – Porn pioneered elements of the global online advertising industry such as targeted advertising, pay-per-click and email marketing and is today a substantial part of the internet economy

Gen Z: the rising power in Chinese market and their 7 digital lifestyles – ChoZan – not the greatest guide to life stage trends in China

December 21, 2020