Apple's week August 1: can't stop leaking

Leaks have always been a frustration point for companies like Apple. Once you're big enough to have a global supply chain, it's impossible to get by with zero information getting out.

That said, sometimes the leaks are coming from inside the house.

Apple also revealed how it's doing with combatting tariffs so far, and all things considered, not bad. However, we're only just seeing the effects of the tariffs on the economy, and price hikes are starting to show up across industries.

I'll also discuss Mark Zuckerberg's AI hallucinations and Apple's increasingly strong future in AI.

By the way, it's not worth a whole thing, but no, Apple isn't going to provide user data to the government for a new digital health initiative. It is going to implement the new systems for users to receive and share data to and from their healthcare providers, which already exists in Apple Health.

Your Apple Health data is end-to-end encrypted, so no, Apple can't share it with anyone.

iPhone 17 testing in the wild

Sure, we got a good look at what might be the orange color for iPhone 17 Pro Max this week, but more importantly, Apple itself has confirmed the new camera bar design. An Apple employee clearly testing the new iPhone was spotted holding a conspicuously concealed device in Union Square, San Francisco.

I know it's a small detail, but I love that the photo was captured by a full-fledged fursuiting furry. It's always a good reminder that the tech community encompasses multitudes.

Anyway, there was some debate over whether or not the photo was genuine, but Mark Gurman said it looked legit, so take it for what you will. It's certainly not an AI-generated image, anyway.

The black case obscured all details of the iPhone, but the placement of the LiDAR and flash clearly showed that there was a camera bar underneath.

Apple obviously has to test its upcoming iPhones in the wild before their release, and likely does at pretty significant volumes. It's just rare for this kind of sighting to occur because most iPhones look very similar to the previous model.

I'm excited for iPhone 17 Pro Max, and I'll likely stick with my boring black color. Can't wait to see Apple's take on the camera bar and how it might make the design look good, if it can.

Price uncertainty after a surprisingly healthy quarter

Apple made a ton of money in its fiscal Q3. It surprised Wall Street, especially on the strength of iPhone sales. Cook even confirmed that 1 out of 10 basis points is likely a result of people trying to get ahead of tariffs.

Speaking of tariffs, Apple took a whopping $800 million hit to its bottom line due to the tariffs, even with exceptions and India imports. The next quarter could see more pain, but it's all an unknown because there's no telling if we'll get a 25% or greater India tariff too.

I hope Apple can find a way to absorb the costs of tariffs without too much price fluctuation. However, there's only so far supply chain maneuvering can take you.

Price hikes have already started. Nintendo raised prices on the original Switch and Switch 2 accessories. Tariffs are forcing prices of things like Pampers, Charmin, Crest, and Tide to go up too.

Even if iPhone prices manage to hold steady, customers may not be able to afford their usual upgrades. It's going to be a weird year for iPhones for sure.

Messages and Mail

A story about Messages filtering disrupting political donation campaigns made me examine the feature further. It's still pretty barebones, even at this late stage in betas, but I like the implementation.

Apple has created a filtering system in Messages similar to the one it offers in Mail. Known senders, like ones you've messaged before or those in your Contacts, get their own space, then everything else is sorted into Unknown Senders, Transactions, Promotions, and Spam.

So far I've not had anything go to Transactions or Promotions. That's probably for the best, because I don't give out my number liberally and don't use Messages as an inbox for such.

However, companies are becoming more aggressive in wanting your number. Simplehuman sends me text messages about new trash cans, and I get the occasional text from my local bar about rewards I've earned.

These should fall into promotions, but the filtering doesn't seem to work yet. The Unknown Sender section is full of texts though, which I appreciate.

That brings me to Mail. I'm running a little experiment on Mail to see exactly how Apple expects users to utilize the sorting feature.

See, it's really interesting that I now have four inboxes that sort my mail automatically. However, I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to do with the mail after it's been sorted and read.

I know it's a silly thought, but I like thinking about how things are organized and why. If I go through my mail, read it, then sort them into folders, what's the point of the initial categorization beyond triage?

Triage is great, though. I love that I can now see that of the 20 unread emails, 18 are in the promotion category and can likely be ignored and trashed immediately.

But once moved or trashed, that categorization is lost. It's pretty fleeting, and I don't know why I don't like that about it. Perhaps if I could have an automation run like "Send all read mail in Transactions to a Transactions folder at midnight each day." That would make more sense and make it feel more like a mail sorting system.

I've spent the last year manually sorting the mail found in these categories. I either trash, archive, or move it to a folder, depending. But then that leaves my inbox categories empty.

So, in the last couple of weeks, I've just been leaving all my read mail in the inbox. They stay in the categories and sort automatically into an "older messages" section.

Since Apple doesn't define how it expects users to use these features, I figured this might be a use case and one worth exploring. So far it's proven interesting since my Primary inbox stays empty and the others stack with email that's sorted by sender.

My iTunes receipts all get grouped together, as do my daily USPS updates on incoming mail. It all sorts itself and gives me quick access to history with each sender.

I still sometimes trash or archive mail in this system, but only when it's something that's truly trash and unwanted in the organization. If I find myself deleting from the same sender multiple times, I unsubscribe, block, etc.

It's still early days, but I am liking this system. Maybe it's a tad messy, I'm not sure yet. But I can always select all and send to the folders I normally would and start fresh. For now, I'm letting Apple Mail categories handle it.

Zuck's artificial imagination

I've been mulling over writing something about middling the response to Alexa+ has been, especially now they're considering embedding ads into conversations with the chatbot. Then Mark Zuckerberg steps in with some nonsense about artificial superintelligence, which still doesn't exist and likely won't without some goalpost shifting.

I don't have time to dig into the details today, but between the continued nonsense executives are overpromising about AI and the crickets we're hearing over poor launches like Alexa+, it's becoming clear that the AI hype bubble is deflating. I've been banging the same drum loudly for a couple of years now – Apple isn't behind, AI is overhyped, and we need to treat it as it is, a good tool.

Human productivity can increase with properly utilized AI. It reminds me of the folk tale about John Henry going up against a drilling machine (People my age may have been exposed to that story via Tall Tale on Disney). It's a classic because he ultimately keels over after beating the drill (depending on the version), proving that man can overcome machine.

Today, the competition against AI can be settled without much effort. Simple math can defeat AI, so no need for any folktale sacrifices.

It's incredible that Meta is spending billions in pursuit of its latest obsession. The Metaverse was fictional, never materialized, and flopped. Now here we are years later, and Meta is pursuing yet another fictional technology that may never materialize.

I fully expect that Meta will be the first company that claims it has reached superintelligence in its models. What that looks like is indeterminable. I'm certain it won't be whatever people expect, but instead be a silly milestone that is slightly better than what AI does today.

Whether or not it is truly past human intelligence will likely be unknown. But be sure whatever test Zuck gives his AI, it'll be one that ensures it comes out on top.

3 billion iPhones

Speaking of AI, Apple recently sold its 3 billionth iPhone. That's an incredible milestone considering it seems to be accelerating with each billion it sells.

The first billion arrived in 2016, nearly ten years on the market. Then 2 billion was hit in 2021, just five years later. Now 3 billion has been reached in just under four years.

The milestone arrives at an interesting inflection point for Apple, and I can't help but wonder about the next billion. I fully suspect Apple Intelligence and Apple's role in AI will help drive that next billion, which could be hit in 2028.

Yes, to many casual observers, Apple Intelligence isn't in a great spot. It isn't an advanced chatbot or coding copilot. Apple isn't even trying to claim it'll take over the human race or end hunger.

But Apple Intelligence is being useful to its users. It's also private and secure, which is more than most of these AI companies can claim.

The next year of Apple Intelligence could be rather transformative if everything is executed in a timely manner.

In order, we'll see:

• third-party developers gain access to foundation models in iOS 26
• Personalized Siri and AI launch (in 2026) utilizing on-device data privately
• Third-party AI like ChatGPT come to Private Cloud Compute

The ultimate result will be Apple's ecosystem being the only one that offers users access to Apple Intelligence, which knows everything about the user via on-device data, third-party models running on renewable energy in private servers that have access to world knowledge, and developers that can tie it all together with interesting apps.

Apple seems to be the only company out there that sees AI for what it is – a tool it can provide to users. And if it can do so while upholding its core values of privacy, security, and renewable energy, then it'll be well ahead of any other company in the space, at least for consumers.