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Apple

It’s the iPhone 6 Plus for me…I think

After a few chats with AT&T and Apple online reps, some spreadsheet work to examine the costs, and much thinking, I've believe I've figured out how I'm going to order my iPhone 6 at 12:00am Pacific time tomorrow morning. Here's what I'm going to do…

I'm going to order the "contract free" 64GB iPhone 6 Plus directly from Apple. The phone is listed as "T-Mobile," but after chatting with Apple and AT&T reps, and hearing from people in the Twitterverse, it seems this will be usable on AT&T with a simple SIM card swap at the local AT&T store. And buying it off contract means I can keep my AT&T discount, as discussed in the above-linked article.

Update: Based on some comments on this article, I've changed my mind: I'm going to try AT&T Next 12. It can be paid off early without penalty, the total cost over two years is the same as buying up front, you still get the $25 monthly discount, and you save the up-front cost.

Why buy directly from Apple, and why choose the monstrous 6 Plus?

The Apple bit is simple: it's due to their friendly 14 day return policy. (I've also confirmed they'll take back an activated phone without any issues.) AT&T offers a return program, too, but there's a potential restocking fee for opened devices.

Buying from Apple gives me the chance to test the monster phone in my hands for a week or so before deciding if it's right for me. I've been "testing" this week with the cardboard-and-coin monstrosity seen at right. Somehow, it's not quite the same—though I think the call quality is a touch better than on my real iPhone badda-bing. I really need to have the beast with me for a week to see how it goes.

Why did I choose to start with the monster phone? First, because I'm really interested in the optical image stabilization feature, and want to see how it works in real life. Second, because I tend to think the Plus might be the rarer of the two phones, therefore harder to get if I do decide to do an exchange in a couple weeks. Finally, it's the most-different device from my current phone—if I'm going to make a change to something bigger, I might as well start with the really big one.

Of course, I may change my mind at 11:59pm tonight, and start with the smaller Six, with the option to return and replace for the Plus. I figure I've got about eight hours left with my two cardboard stand-ins (yes, I made one for the regular Six, too) before I have to make up my mind!



The AT&T Family Share Plan’s vanishing discount—don’t get burned

The popularity of this article led me to write two followups:

Please give these a read if you'd like to know even more about AT&T Next.

Tomorrow (starting at 12:01am Pacific time, apparently) you can order a new iPhone 6/6 Plus. But you probably already knew that. What you may not know is that if you're on AT&T's Family Share Plan, and you enrolled in that plan with phones on a two-year contract, you'll see a large increase in your bill if you upgrade to a new on-contract iPhone 6—even if your current contract has expired and you're now contract-free.

Why would your bill go up, simply moving from an older to a newer iPhone? That's never happened in the past. But we've not had the Family Share Plan in the past. And when AT&T rolled out this plan, they gave folks an incentive to move to it: they offered a discount for on-contract phones, from a $40 per month per device cost to either $25 (for under 10GB of shared data) or $15 (10GB or more) per month per device. So if you look at your bill, you'll see something like this:

That discount was applied to the under-contract (at the time) iPhone 5 I moved to the Family Share Plan; the other two lines we have in the plan show the same discount. But if I buy a new iPhone 6 under contract, the discount will go away. If we upgrade all three phones with contract iPhone 6's, that'd be another $75 per month!

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The strangest business meeting of my career

Back in mid-1993, I was working as a Financial Analyst for Apple in Cupertino; I'd been there for a few years, and had recently taken on a new role with a group called Software Dispatch. Software Dispatch was a new business, launched in those halcyon pre-Internet days, to distribute software on CD-ROM. And not just Apple software, but software from many different developers—there were over 80 signed up for the inaugural CD-ROM. (The official press release is an interesting read.)

On the CD-ROM, users would find encrypted versions of each app, along with a demo version they could use to try before they bought (see, Apple, you can sell software with trial versions!). If the user liked what they saw, they'd call a 1-800 number, pay with a credit card, and be given a decryption key to unlock their software.

But what made the business really unique for Apple in 1993 was that Software Dispatch was planned for Windows machines, too. I still remember how odd it was to see Windows machines on developers' desks when I walked through our area—there just weren't many visible Windows machines on the Apple campus at that time. While Apple had little trouble signing up Mac software vendors for the CD-ROM venture, it was different on the Windows side. And that's what led to the strangest business meeting of my career…

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On the effect of stock splits

As a finance guy by training, I've always been fascinated by stock splits, such as the incredibly-rare seven for one split Apple announced yesterday. First off, just how rare is a seven-for-one split? Incredibly rare; since 1980, there have been only three splits bigger than that; all were ten-for-one splits.

By the books in Finance, a stock split adds no value to a person's shares, because it's simply a redivision of their current holdings. Consider someone holding 100 shares of Apple at yesterday's closing price of $524.75 per share:

  • Pre split: 100 shares * $524.75/share = $52,475.00 value
  • Post split: 700 shares * $74.9643/share = $52,475.00 value

The Finance books look at that, and say "no change in value, ergo, a stock split has no intrinsic worth." And they're right; there's been no change in value for any investor's holdings. But studies done over the years have shown that stock splits do have a positive impact on investor's holdings:

A 1996 study by David Ikenberry of Rice University measured the short and long-term performance of stock splits. His research included all the 1,275 companies whose stock split 2-for-1 between 1975 and 1990. Mr. Ikenberry compared the split stocks to a control group of stocks for similar-sized companies in similar sectors that had not split. His results were startling. The split stock group performed 8% better than the control group after one year, and 16% better after three years.

Why might that be? I'm sure the studies have detailed financial models to back up their findings, but to me, it boils down to two things…

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The Apple tax Apple laws Apple are Apple the Apple problem

Sorry for the bizarre headline, but I wanted to make sure I got the proper clickbait, er, SEO, er clickwhoring, er, credit for the following insightful observation. Which is this:

This anti-Apple tax article is full of the stupid

The author, one Lisa Sanders, states that she's now boycotting Apple due to their tax avoidance strategy:

Apple, it’s over. I’m breaking up with you. Because of your tax-ducking ways, I won’t buy another phone or computer or tablet or even song from you.

I hope Lisa is just as willing to give up products from Microsoft—I guess she's going to Linux?—which sheltered over $60 billion dollars in 2012, more than Apple's $54 billion that year. And she better not buy that Linux box from Dell, which sheltered $16 billion in 2012. And she better not use MySQL on that machine, because Oracle sheltered $21 billion. Also, no Western Digital hard drives ($5 billion). Oh, and those shoes? Better lose the Nikes, as they sheltered $6 billion. Credit cards? Citigroup ($36 billion), Bank of America ($19 billion), and JPMorgan Chase ($22 billion) are out; I guess Lisa is going cash-only.

All of the above data was found within 30 seconds of starting to search the web; the source for the numbers is Which Fortune 500 Companies Are Sheltering Income in Overseas Tax Havens? by the Citizens for Tax Justice.

Yes, Apple shelters taxes. Yes, it's very good at it. Yes, it sucks that they aren't paying their fair share. But the reality is that nobody in the Fortune 500 is paying their fair share. Why? Because they owe it to their shareholders not to do so. Lisa almost got that with her mention of Rand Paul:

At last year’s Senate hearings, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said that it would be malpractice for Apple to pay a penny more than the minimum its accountants say it owes.

That's exactly it, but not just for Apple, but for any publicly-held company. Just when I'm thinking she's going to get it, she…goes 100% the wrong direction:

Perhaps Paul feels that the company’s fiduciary obligation outweighs its obligation to help support the nation that made and continues to make its profitable activity possible.

That's how he feels because he's correct: The company's fiduciary obligation comes first, at least when compared to "voluntarily paying more tax than required." Companies like Apple already benefit the country to a tremendous degree. How? By employing people and paying them good wages. Those wages are taxed. The things people buy with those wages are taxed. Add up all those impacts, and Apple (and the others) are definitely helping the economy.

Any public Fortune 500 company is tasked with returning maximum value to its shareholders; that's why the list of abusers is so long and deep. Any company not taking advantage of legal tax reduction strategies isn't maximizing wealth for shareholders.

The problem isn't the companies, it's the tax law.

If we want to fix the problem, we need to fix the law that's allowing the behaviors. Period. Boycotting Apple because they're very good at taking advantage of legal loopholes isn't going to make them pay more in taxes. Change the law, though, and Apple (and everyone else) will do so, because none of these companies are willing to break the law to lower their tax bills.



iCloudy with a 100% chance of stupidity

I use a lot of cloud services for file storage, primarily Dropbox, but also Box and (begrudgingly, for certain shared projects) Google Drive.

I also use iCloud, but not in any way that would be considered a true cloud file storage service. I use it strictly as a sync service for contacts, calendars, reminders, notes, Safari; I also use Back to My Mac.

But that's it; I don't use iCloud for cloud-based file management at all. Why not? Because iCloud in its current implementation is chock full of the stupid, at least for those of us who still use and rely on OS X.

Stupid #1: Not enough free space, and too costly for more

A quick comparison chart shows just how far out of line iCloud is with other cloud-based services:

ProviderFreeTier 1Tier 2Tier 3
GBGB$/Yr$/GB/yrGB$/Yr$/GB/yrGB$/Yr$/GB/yr
Box10100$60$0.6001000$180$0.180------
Dropbox2100$100$1.000200$199$0.995500$499$0.998
Google Drive15100$24$0.2401,000$120$0.12010,000$1,200$0.120
iCloud515$20$1.33325$40$1.60055$100$1.818
Pricing sources: Box • Dropbox • Google Drive • iCloud
Note that you can get additional free space on Dropbox through referrals and uploading images; Box occasionally offers a promo with 50GB of free space.

Kirk McElhearn covers this price and space issue in more detail in his blog post, Why Does Apple Only Offer 5 GB Storage with iCloud?.

I agree with him; if iCloud wants to attract more users, it needs more free space, and more competitively priced upgrade plans.

Read on for more of the stupid…

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Macworld: 2013 writings

Macworld logoAll (or as many as could be found online) of my 2013 writings for Macworld.





So I’ve been doing this podcast thing…no, really!

As someone who works at home and has younger kids, I've found it difficult to get into listening to podcasts—it just seems there's never a good time for them. During the work day, I find it impossible to listen to a podcast, probably because my brain is easily dist…hey, look what's on reddit now…er, wait, what was I saying?

And in the evenings, the kids tend to take up much of the free time, and once they're in bed, I'm not usually in the mood to listen to a podcast.

In any event, given that background, you may find it surprising to learn that I'm involved in a new weekly podcast. Not only that, but that I've been involved for six full episodes now, as of this week's show. Surprising, indeed, but it's true.

Here's the tl;dr version: I'm co-co-hosting a podcast with Ian Schray (@idschray) and Tyler Poage (@tylerpoage). It's called The Committed. So what's it about? It's about tech, and things related to tech, and occasionally garbage cans (no, really).

We typically record on Monday, with the show being available on Tuesday. The exceptions are weeks where someone is traveling and unavailable, or if there's an event set for the Tuesday of that week (as with the upcoming October 22nd event). In those cases, we record on Tuesday for publishing on Wednesday.

During our roughly one-hour show, we strive to share useful information and tips in an entertaining manner—which are pretty much the objectives of every podcast ever created. But still, they're good goals to have, and we're doing our best to achieve them.

I'd love it if you could give us a listen and let me know what you think; never having done this on my own, I'm curious to know if you find what we're doing informative and entertaining—I think we've put together some good shows, but one's comments on one's own work don't really count as usable feedback.

Read on if you'd like more details about why someone who isn't an active podcast listener has chosen to become involved in podcasting, and for more information on the show, its focus, and the cast.
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Siri, why is Google voice search better than you?

In case you missed it, a month or so ago, Google added voice search capabilities to its free Google Search app for iOS devices. If you haven't tried this out yet, I highly recommend you do: I find it so useful I've given Google Search a spot in my Dock.

What's so good about Google's voice search, especially on a device that comes with Siri already? To demonstrate the answer to that question, I made a little video, wherein I used my iPad mini to ask both Siri and Google four questions:

How do you spell exuberant? Who won the Trailblazers basketball game last night?
How do you make vanilla ice cream? How high is Mount Kilimanjaro?

So how'd it work out? See for yourself…

Watch the full-size version
[mp4 only • 1024x768 • 11MB]

(Production aside: Yes, I realize you can use Siri from anywhere. I toggled back to the home screen each time simply to give different backgrounds to Siri and Google.)

Read on for my thoughts on how these two tools compare.

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