I am excited about Apple’s new M1 processor for its Macintosh Computers. I am excited about them even though this past late summer I purchased the 27-inch 2020 iMac for over $4k which has Intel processors. This iMac may be the last Intel computer that I ever purchase. That is because Apple’s M1 Processor is totalling kicking the ass of Intel’s processors. The M1 processor is currently in Apple’s newest MacBookAir, 13-inch Macbook Pro and Mac Mini. And from what people who purchased it are saying those Macs are as powerfull as the latest 16-inch Macbook Pros and iMac Pros. Crazy stuff. They probably already compete with my 2020 27-inch iMac which I loaded up with the i9 intel processors and best AMD video card and 128 GB memory. Crazy powerful. That is until Apple created the M1 processor based on the amazing processor chips in the iPhone and IPad.
The computer world, particularly Intel and those who rely on Intel should be shaking in their boots. Apple’s M1 processor uses less electricity and gives off less heat than Intel’s processor while being even more powerful. That spells big trouble if not death for Intel and those who rely on it.
During the pandemic, I have been using various computing devices at home. My work computer, which work has given me, is a relatively new HP laptop that has i7 Intel processors in it and anS SD drive plus about 16 gb memory. This is a pretty powerful computer given that I mainly use it for Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, browsers and Microsoft Word. But I hate it. I hate it because it is constantly using the fan because it gets really hot underneath. It is noisey and hot. Plus, I have to pretty much always keep it plugged in for power because the battery doesn’t last long — at most, 2 hours.
With the new M1 Processor that uses less electricty, the Macbook Air gets 18 hours without a charge and the 13-inch Macbook Pro gets 20 hours. The Macbook Air makes no noise as it doesn’t have to use a fan. The 13-inch Macbook Pro has a fan but it hardly ever kicks in. People in enterprise are going to be purchasing these M1 computers that Apple makes because they are quiet, give off no heat and have batteries that last very long as well as being very powerful.
This will break the Windows-Intel hold on computers in the work place. For decades, Microsoft and Intel held a monopoly on computers in the work place. Apple Macintoshes had at most a modest slice of that business, maybe 3% or 5% at best. But that grip is going to be smashed by Apple. The time is ripe as Microsoft sees the writing on the wall particulary as Apple dominates smartphones and tablets with the iPhone and iPad. In enterprise, most businesses use iPhones and iPads. Microsoft completely supports Apple’s devices. Microsoft is now going to the cloud for its business. Office 365 is in the cloud. So Enterprise has aleady been used to dealing with Apple devices, i.e. iPhones and iPads. With the Macs now using the M1 processors, Enterprise will probably start switching to Macintosh computers. Afterall, the Macs work well now with the iPhone and iPad. Among other things, the millions of apps on iPhones and iPads will now work on the M1 Macs. For enterprise, it will be easier to support Macs with M1 when they are already supporting iPhones and iPads rather then continuing to support Intel laptops. In addition, since the future of Intel is in doubt now, enterprise will probably rely on Apple, the most successful company in the United States.
These M1 chips growth will not stop in the enterprise. They will also grow and domominate in the cloud. Right now, Intel processors dominate the servers that run the web and the cloud. But the problem for Intel is that Apple’s M1 processors are much more efficient in terms of power versus electricty consumption compared to Intel processors. Anyone running a lot of servers will be compelled to purchase the more powerful and power efficient M1 processors from Apple. Apple sells MacMinis with the M1 processor for under $700. Look for these MacMinis ending up being used as servers.
Here is a video I made explaining why Epic Games recent federal court Antitrust case against Apple in the Northern District of California will fail. Check it out.
Here is what I state in the video.
Okay, so here’s the thing a couple of days ago, Epic Games sues Apple, and it seeks declaratory injunctive relief in federal court in the Northern District of California. And what my YouTube video is about is how this claim by Epic Games is not really an antitrust violation. There’s really no basis for this. And if you understand what antitrust is all about, you’ll see why this doesn’t make sense.
Now, here’s the thing with antitrust. So antitrust is when a company has a monopoly in a market and it takes that monopoly in the market and uses that to destroy some other market or to destroy some other entity that is trying to compete. And that’s what antitrust is all about. This goes back to the Sherman act way back at the beginning of the 20th century.
So Fortnite — that’s the game that Epic Games is famous for. So they released Fortnite which is the shoot ’em up game, multiplayer game and actually had it’s probably its greatest success on the iPhone. And what Epic Games is claiming is that it’s unfair for Apple to take 30% from selling the game in the App Store. So Epic Games is basically trying to get a court to say it’s illegal for Apple to charge 30% to any app that is being sold through the app store or 30% of the services. Also, what’s going on is Epic Games is trying to claim that Court should then tell Apple that they have to allow other stores to enter to sell apps on the iPhone. And they’re claiming that, you know, Apple has a monopoly over the iPhone.
Okay, let’s think about this. What does that mean? First you have to establish what is the relevant market? And does a company have a monopoly power in a relevant market? Right, but the key is what is the relevant market? Right. And monopoly power historically had been, you got to be significantly over 50% usually 60%, 70%, 80% or maybe 90%, dominating the market. Okay.
So what are things that are typically monopoly power? Well, your local electricity company like the one where I live in New York City: Con Edison provides electricity. The relevant market for electricity is New York City because I can’t really buy electricity from California. That is because Con Edison owns the wire lines, and I have to get it through Con Edison in New York. Now, the government regulates Con Edison, because otherwise Con Edison could just raise the price a lot. And we don’t have any real choice.
The fact that a company created a product doesn’t mean that it has a monopoly in the market. That wouldn’t make sense, right? Think about it. Does Nintendo have a monopoly power? Because it makes the Nintendo Switch or other Nintendo devices? No, because the market isn’t just Nintendo’s switch. Similarly, Microsoft doesn’t have a monopoly power because it has the Xbox because, you know, yes, it controls the Xbox. But the Xbox competes with other things. So Microsoft doesn’t have monopoly power over the relevant market.
So you have to figure out what is the relevant market. And one way economists historically have tested monopoly power is to do an analysis of, could the monopolist significantly raise prices, and its customers couldn’t leave, there is no place to go. So for example, we need electricity, where we live in New York City. Now Con Ed, if it wasn’t regulated by the government, they could raise the power and maybe some people couldn’t afford it and would have to shut off the electricity. But a lot of people would have no choice and would have to pay much higher electricity. And there’s really no other product that they could get in New York City. We don’t have fireplaces for heating up and it’s not really practical to use candles for light That would be an entity that would clearly have monopoly power.
Buried in Fortnite’s complaint against Apple — I’m reading it, it’s, well, it’s on the web, you can find it, I found it at unrealengine.com. But if you look in the complaint, a lot of it is how users don’t have choices. And it sort of puts down the quality of the App Store. Let me let me take some of the arguments one by one. Here’s the key thing. If you go to Section three, paragraphs 156 157 and 158. These are the paragraphs that are alleging that, you know, trying to convince the court why just the iPhone is the market. The Complaint alleges this heading entitled Competition In The Sale of Mobile Devices Cannot Discipline Apple’s Conduct in the iOS distribution, or iOS in an app payment Process market. So basically, it’s saying Apple’s mobile device customers face substantial switching costs and iOS lock in. So that’s one argument that they make. The second argument is that Apple’s sticky iOS ecosystem protects its dominance in the sales of mobile devices. And then the third point they make is information costs and other market inefficiencies in iOS, iOS distribution iOS in that payment process market.
So basically what they’re saying to the court is people who are iPhone users can’t switch can’t switch away from the iPhone can’t switch away from Apple’s devices, because they’re locked in and you know, they’re locked in because they have a lot of devices. They can’t switch. Now, I think this argument is ridiculous stretch and is kind of crazy. Okay, let’s take the situation with Fortnite.
First of all, I think most people would agree Fortnite the game is played by kids, a lot of teenagers, young kids, maybe even under 10 a lot of teenagers and maybe young adults. These kids are if they’re really passionate fortnight fans, they’re going to lobby their parents for an Android device. Now here’s the thing, Google kicked out Fortnite from the Google Store and Android, but Android allows you to side load apps and also Samsung has its own store and Fortnite is in the Samsung store. So, if you want to play Fortnite on a smartphone, you don’t have to stay with Apple, you can switch to Samsung phones and to other Android phones and get them on your device. This isn’t like the electric company, the electric company can raise the price a lot if its not regulated. There’s nowhere for me to go.
If I really want to use Fortnite and it’s not offered on the App Store for Apple, I can switch to an Android device and Android devices can be very cheap. And I can use it that way. So even now their complaint goes on at length trying to make arguments about how that’s impossible. Let’s take the first argument Apple’s mobile device customers face substantial switching costs and iOS locking. This is what Fortnite’s attorneys, a major law firm, is trying to argue:
So it’s Apple’s power and iOS app distribution market. And iOS in app payment processing markets is not constrained by competition in the sale of mobile devices, because Apple’s mobile device customers face high switching costs in are locked in to Apple’s ecosystem for at least six reasons. These costs make it more difficult for users to purchase a mobile device from a competitor after having committed to Apple’s mobile devices, thereby bolstering Apple’s market power.
So they’re basically saying again, that it’s very high switching costs. Now, I don’t think that’s the case. Okay. First of all, most people anyways after a couple of years, or if not every year, are upgrading their smartphone. It’s ike in some ways these smartphones are accessible luxuries that even people who are economically challenged go for, as well as middle class and upper class people. I remember years ago, I used to stand in line for the Apple store, you know, when that was a thing here in New York City and across the country. And I gotta tell you, it seemed to me there are a lot of people who were economically challenged, who are waiting for the 500 or $600 or $700 iPhone, and for good reason, because these devices are an incredible Information and Communication deal for people.
A lot of people who didn’t have a regular computer can afford a smartphone and particularly the iPhone. And even today, I think a lot of people upgrade every year or every other year or maybe every three years. But the thing is they have it’s not that expensive. The cell phone carriers are still doing these promotions where you get a free phone if you switch. So if you really wanted to switch, you could switch carriers and get a subsidized practically free Android or iPhone. T Mobile has these deals. So I’m not sure what switching costs now, in terms of the apps.
Well, one of the things this complaint doesn’t point out, you know, and what’s interesting that complaint at some point tries to compare the iPhone to the Apple’s Macintosh. And you know, the current Macs and long history of Mac’s Apple has an app store but also Apple allows people to download programs for the Mac from, from the web, or from alternative stores. Epic Games is saying that’s the way it should be. But here’s the thing for consumers. Apple’s App Store on iOS, which is exclusive has been better for consumers. Then this open system on the Mac, and the open system that was on Windows PC. And the best evidence of that is, look how cheap the programs are on the iPhone, compared to programs on the Mac. Programs on the Mac are much more expensive. You typically pay $10, $20, $30, maybe even $100. Well, you know, on the on iPhone, the biggest complaint has been a sort of, you know, the prices of apps keep going down and down and down and down. And developers can’t really charge that much money for an app like you can’t really, you never see somebody selling an app really for 100 bucks or 50 bucks on the iPhone. Instead, there’s a lot of free apps or $5 apps or a $10 app. And maybe if there was a really great you know, professional app Like, like ferrite, you know, that people use to edit audio and podcasts, you know, that might be $15. But if anything, these apps are really cheap. And, you know, I don’t use Android devices. But my sense is that the Android counterparts to a lot of these apps are also cheap. And don’t cost much. So if I wanted to, you know, if I really wanted if I was really into gaming, and you know, Epic Games basically says in its complaint that it wants to create, like its own store, on iPhone and sell other apps directly to people. Well, let’s say if they couldn’t do that. And they did that on Android, and I really loved Epic Games. I could easily switch. And I think a lot of people could just buy another Android device. It’s not that expensive to to play these games.
Let’s look at Section B in the complaint where Fortnite alleges that: Apple sticky iOS echo system protects its dominance in the sales of mobile devices. This is kind of a rehash of the other one, but it says Apple’s ability to raise customer switching costs creates customer lock into its ecosystem. iOS ecosystem is reflected in Apple’s ability to maintain its dominance in the sale of premium smartphones as well as in the sale of tablets. First, Apple’s iPhone dominates sales of premium smartphones. In 2019 alone, Apple’s global iPhone sales generated more than $150 2 billion in revenues. And in the first quarter of 2020, Apple was able to capture 60% of global premium smartphone revenue. Okay, so then it goes on to say that Apple maintains substantial operating profits ranging from 62 to 90%. And it goes on to say Apple has also been able to maintain its pricing power over many years. It’s then it’s then it sort of segues into that. But to say the high switching costs are obvious from empirical evidence. According to 2017 survey by Morgan Stanley 92% of iPhone users intending to upgrade with the next year indicate they would stick to an iOS device.
But wait a second, this evidence is not evidence of high switching costs. See, this logic doesn’t make sense. This is a survey that says a lot of iPhone users tend to stick to iOS devices and upgrade to a new one. And and then they’re arguing that’s a switching cost. It’s not a switching costs. People are happy with iOS devices. Apple makes a premium product. And the irony is the reason that Apple is making a premium product is because it curates the App Store and prevents crappy apps from coming in there. The curating prevents third party apps from over your device and hijacking it. Now what do I mean by that? Okay, now the Mac. And just like the PC for years was around before the iPhone, right? But the Mac just like the PC was susceptible to malware taking over your PC or Macintosh.
And even recently, you know, my teenage daughter I gave her gave her and my son 13-inch MacBook Pros a couple years ago. And my daughter, you know, who probably learned when she was younger how to use an iPhone before she used the Mac. She was clicking stuff on the internet with her MacBook Pro. And I’m telling you, malware got into her to her MacBook Pro, because she clicked on the wrong thing. And next thing you know, both browsers, both Chrome and Safari. were sort of hijacked by this fake Google thing that made it look like you were using Google. But you weren’t using Google, you were using some third party unrelated to Google hijacking your browser to think that it was using Google when it was using its own stupid malware.
This argument in the complaint that because so many people want to stick to the iPhone, there’s high switching costs, there’s no basis to say people are sticking with the iPhone because they don’t have a choice. This is kind of a logical if you think about it, right? What they’re trying to argue is, people don’t want to stay with the iPhone, but they’re forced to stay with the iPhone. But how are they forced to stay with it? Apple’s coming out every year with expensive iPhones for a premium and people they’re not getting the deal. No one’s giving like if there was a subsidy, right? What if If you could like somehow, you know, turn in your iPhone and get a huge subsidy for the more expensive iPhone, that’s why you would stay for it. That would be cheaper than buying an Android. But that’s not the case.
For iPhone users, they can now go to Android. You could go out right now and get a much cheaper Android device that will do a lot of the basic stuff that an iPhone does, right? But a lot of people are finding that it benefits consumers to use an iPhone, right? And how does it benefit the consumer? it benefits the consumer because Apple is investing a lot of its profits into creating better processors. So you get a much more powerful processor for your bang for your buck with an iPhone than you do with an Android device. I mean, now that’s well documented. I don’t know if the average consumer knows that. But the other thing is Apple does a really good job with the camera but then look the Google does with its with its camera, the Google phones right that are androids.
So what is it? I mean, the other thing that they don’t really talk about is great customer service. Apple has all these Apple stores, right? So you know, if you have a problem with your iPhone, you just go to a Genius Bar, and they take care of it. Android doesn’t have any genius bars. There’s no Google stores. There’s no Samsung stores, that you can just go in that that I know of, and solve that. So what is going on is that, to the extent people are sticking with the iPhone, it’s because there’s better customer service. And I’m telling you one of the better customer services, that Apple is curating the App Store.
Now remember, Apple has kicked off a lot of things from the App Store. Apple has, there’s no pornography in the App Store. There’s no you know, crazy apps that are like for like Nazis or something like that. Or, you know, Holocaust denying apps or anything like that. Now on a Foogle device, you can’t get it through Google Store because Google stores is trying to do curating just like Apple’s trying to do. But Android is an open system. So you could side-load pornographic apps. But here’s the other thing, an Android phone is more susceptible to malware being installed into it, because it can be side loaded. And by side loading it you can get into the system. And so that is a risk. That’s why if you see a lot of a lot of businesses and enterprise and government are using iPhones instead of Android phones because of the security.
So one of the reasons that the app store is closed is for that security and for that peace of mind. Take also an example customer service. Now remember a while back, Apple went to you know, allowing service by some games. Games like Fortnite, frankly, you know, make more money by selling points or coins or, or something in the game. And we know, you know, many years ago, there were these horror stories of kids buying games in the app store, and racking up huge, huge fees that with their parents credit cards, buying gold coins or something stupid like that in games, people were upset and people reached out to Apple, and Apple is the one who refunded those monies and cracked down on that practice.
Now, here’s the thing. Epic Games has its own store. Parents are going to have to rely on Epic Games to prevent that kind of abuse of children, where kids rack up and waste money on points on games. And, I mean, with me, I’m very strict with my kids in the sense that I don’t let them play games, where they’re gonna have to buy coins and wrap things up. Okay.
And so you know what Epic Games wants it? So Epic Games wants to do two things: it wants to not have the 30% fee. But let’s go back to that. If Apple has doesn’t have monopoly power, it can do whatever it wants. If Apple doesn’t have monopoly power over smartphones, it can if it wanted to kick out everybody out of the App Store, Apple could decide. Remember, the original iPhone didn’t have an app store. It just had a few of Apple’s own apps. And Steve Jobs said, Oh, people can download from a website, make a website, be an app on the iPhone, and you can still do that you can save any website, you know, look like it’s an app, but it can it can’t do much other than what the website does, because it can’t go into everything that’s in the iPhone.
If Apple doesn’t have monopoly power, it can do anything it wants. It doesn’t have to be fair to anybody. Apple can make deals and say okay, you know, Netflix is a big provider. I’ll give you a special deal. You guys are smart. All developers, they’ll give you a different now, people aren’t gonna like that maybe developers weren’t like that. And so for business reasons. Apple wants to be fair, but that’s for business reasons for you know, for the company.
Now, if you remember companies before they’re a monopoly, the whole point is to compete with the competition. And Apple has lots of competition. Lots in the sense of Apple is competing with Amazon. Apple is competing with Microsoft. Apple is competing with Google and Apple is competing with Facebook. Okay. And Apple has a lot of other count competition. Spotify is competing with Apple. But let’s take these other big entities. These other big entities are worth over a trillion dollars, just like Apple is worth over a trillion dollars. Apple is in ferocious competition with them and Apple does not have dominant market share of the smartphone market.
And here’s what I’ll point out to you. Okay, so a little while back when another app was trying to claim, you know, antitrust violations. I did an article on my blog, MacsFuture.com Apple does not have monopoly power in the smartphone market. And that is the relevant market. There are charts. And so if you look at smartphone sales from the third quarter of 2007, through the fourth quarter of 2019, which is last year, you could see that Apple has anywhere from under 15% to a little over 20% of all smartphone sales, globally. Right. So I mean, the world is kind of integrated economically, and smartphone sales Apple is every year more than 23% in some quarters, it’s down below 15 or 12%. Obviously, its fourth quarter around Christmas time is the big one.
Now in terms of worldwide smartphone shipments, market share forecast, Apple is listed as having less than 15%. And the rest is really dominated by Android. Android has 85% of the market in terms of mobile operating system market share. Apple has less than 20% of the market share.
Now one thing that is true is in terms of profits made in the smartphone market. Apple, does have a majority of the profits, but that’s because it’s making premium phones and it’s making its own chip and It’s integrated. In other words, there’s no other company making its device, and also the operating system. I mean, Google is trying to do it. But in very small quantities, only a small quantity of the Android phones or pixel phones. And Google, I think, is outsourcing the actual manufacturing of the hardware. But Apple is making the hardware. It’s making the chips, it’s making the operating system and so it has more efficiencies in making these devices.
And I think because of that, it’s garnering more profit. It’s the premium now, but is that the relevant market, that they have a majority of the hardware profits in the smartphone market? I don’t think that’s the relevant measure of market and think about it. Think about it from Epic Games perspective. Epic Games, wants to be able to get to as many customers as It can. But Apple only has 20% of all smartphones. If Apple kicks it out, they’re still 80% of the other smartphones, right that Epic Games can sell to. So Apple can shut out Epic Games from a majority of all smartphone users, because it only controls maybe 20% of all smartphone users.
So then what’s the argument for Epic Games Epic Games? And I don’t think they’re arguing this in the complaint because they can’t, because they also sued Google. Right? But they can’t argue that the people who use iPhones are more likely to pay for games. And so that’s the more lucrative market and we’re being shut out of the more lucrative market. Well, I’m not sure for gaming if that’s true. I mean, I think there are a lot of gamers on Android.
And so that’s not the relevant market. But then here’s the thing. It’s not just smartphones and for gaming, right? mean, Epic Games a little too cute by half here. But the gaming market isn’t just smartphones, right? A lot of people play Fortnite on the PlayStation, on the Sony PlayStation, the Microsoft’s Xbox, I think even maybe Nintendo Switch, the Mac, the PC, all these other devices are gaming platforms. Windows is a huge gaming platform. And I’m sure a lot of people play Fortnite on that.
So when you factor that in, in the universe of gaming devices, Apple has only a teeny percent of installs. So can’t really shut out and dominate, right? Like if Apple was a monopolist truly in this market. For games, Apple would be able to dominate 80% of the market for games of the people playing in games and then shut out for it. Right, but it can’t.
What this really is, is that Epic Games, which grew in Apple’s App Store, and is now making hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars, is greedy, and doesn’t want to give Apple its cut of activity in the App Store. Now, regarding Apple’s app store, something like 80%, or 90% of the apps in the app store are free. And Apple’s doing all this backend work in terms of developing the technology for the developer tools like Xcode, and the API’s that come out every year that are revealed WWDC, lots of money is spent to do that. And for every game like Fortnite that makes money, Apple has all these free games that it’s supporting and those developers. Apple has an economic basis for charging 30%.
And then the other thing is if you look at this 30% cut, it’s not high. You know, if you go to Walmart and try to sell some product through Walmart, Walmart, I’m sure Walmart’s taking a significant cut out of that. And I’m sure Amazon takes a cut out of products that you’re trying to sell through Amazon. And you know, if you want to go in if I want if somebody wants to release an app into into Nintendo store, sure Nintendo’s taking a cut, Microsoft is taking a cut. Everybody’s taking a cut. So 30% is appropriate where Apple’s doing all the work in terms of collecting the money from users, providing the support is a reasonable fee.
Look, I think when a court looks at this case, the first thing they’re going to do is look at whether or not what first they’re going to decide what is the relevant market and I just think that the arguments that Epic Games is making — basically saying that the iPhone is itself a relevant market — are a big, big, big stretch. And I am going to follow this case, but I have a feeling that Apple is going to prevail on this. Apple may be worth close to $2 trillion. But it’s facing competition from other trillion dollar companies. And we’re not even talking about the Chinese companies that are out there that are worth, you know, maybe close to trillion dollars and are giants that are going to compete with the American companies. Apple’s a big company, but it still isn’t dominant in terms of market share. That’s why I think Epic Games is going to lose. We’ll have to see.
The latest rage among some developers on Twitter and the internet is to say that Apple is unfair for charging a 30% cut of selling apps or services through Apple iOS APP Store. Fine, it might be unfair, but sometimes business is unfair. But what really doesn’t make sense is that some developers are claiming that Apple is a “monopolist” and violating Antitrust Laws by charing 30% for app or services on the Apple iOS App Store. This makes no sense.
For example, this developer, Russell Ivonovic, said:
The issue is, Apple also makes the iPhone, and has mandated that there’s no other way to get software onto an iPhone except through their store. So what you have is the company which has a monopoly on installation of software on the iPhone, mandating that you use their store, and give them 30%. If you don’t like that deal, there’s no alternative available. It’s the definition of anti-competitive monopolistic behaviour: taking the market dominance you’ve created in one market, to give you an unfair advantage in another.
This logic makes no sense. It claims that because Apple makes the iPhone, and has an exclusive App Store for the iPhone, it is a monopolist and abusing monopoly power. By this logic, anyone who makes any device and any service that controls its device and service and limits what can go on that service is monopolizing its device and service and thus is a monopolist. By that definition, Nintendo is a monopolist because Apple, Google, and Microsoft and no one other than Nintendo can operate an App store for Nintendo devices. How about Walmart? By that logic isn’t Walmart a “monopolist” because Walmart controls what it sells in its stores? What if I want to sell a product in Walmart’s stores? Can I force Walmart to allow me to set up a stand in Walmart and sell it? No. That would be stupid.
It is well established in Antitrust Law that for a company to be deemed to have “monopoly” power, it must have more than 50% and closer to 80% and 90% in the relevant market. So there are two key things to properly define. First, what is the relevant market? And then what is that company’s market share in that relevant market.
Apple Does Not Have Monopoly Power In The Smartphone Market And That Is The Relevant Market.
What Rusty and other get wrong is that the relevant market is not iPhones in and by themselves. The relevant market is at the very least all smartphones, if not also all computing devices. Lets take the smartphone market. The smartphone market is dominated by two types of smartphones iPhones and Android Devices. These devices are so similar, that in the early days of Android, Apple engaged in major litigation with Samsung claiming that Samsung violating its patents on iPhones and iPhone designs so that customers couldn’t tell the difference between iPhones and Android. And if you go to websites and YouTube channels covering Androids, customers who are using Android smartphones claim Android smartphones are much better than iPhones.
So most customers would say the market between iPhones and Androids is very competitive. And in terms of market share, the data shows Android has a larger share of the market than Apple. In fact, data shows that Apple sold fewer than 30% of all the smartphones in recent quarters and years.
Rather than being dominant in the smartphone market, IDC’s data shows that the iPhone currently counts for only about 15% of all smartphones shipped worldwide and will fall to 13% in the coming years.
In terms of installed mobile operating systems world-wide, i.e. smartphones being used world-wide rather than ones just recently purchased, Apple has less than a 30% market share.
So with far less than 50% share in the smartphone market, there is no way any court can find Apple to have monopoly power in the smartphone market. And that makes sense. A monopolist is such that it can raise prices and customers have no choice but to pay the monopolist and can switch to another supplier . For example, ConEdison, the Electric Utility in New York City, is a monopolist in New York City. I have to purchase electricity through ConEdison. For that reason, the government regulates ConEdison’s prices. But Apple can’t raise the price of its iPhones and then require me to pay it. There are all those Android smartphones that my Android friends say are better than the iPhone. So if Apple raises the prices of its top new iPhone to $3000, I don’t have to purchase it. I can purchase the latest Samsung smartphone for $1500.
Apple Is Not A Monopolist Because Its IOS APP Store Is Better for Developers Than the Android App Stores.
Now Rusty Rants claims there is no other choice for developers than Apple’s App Store. But Rusty there is. You and other developers can make apps for the Android Store. It is a bigger market. There are man more Android customers than iPhone customers. Now those Android stores are not as lucrative. But that is because Apple made a better app store. And it is a better app store than the market for Apps on the Android smartphones, because Apple curates the iOS App Store to make sure there isn’t malware and other terrible apps on the app store. It is not a perfect, but many customers like it because Apple keeps iOS devices safe and not destroyed by malware.
Apple’s App store is more lucrative than the Android app market, because Apple’s exclusivity has made it a better store. Ironically, the very thing that some developers want to do, open up iPhones to have additional app store, or allow side loading, is the very thing that will destroy the quality of the iPhone experience and cheapen the quality of the iOS App store.
Developers who complain: “Cry my a river.” You don’t have to develop for iPhones, or smartphones. There are various other devices that you can develop for, like the Web, and Web apps, like plug-ins for WordPress, like apps for linux devices like Raspberry Pis.
You can develop for PCs and Macs. There are enterprise developers. The market for developers services is incredibly large and iOS developers are only a tiny slice of the developer market.
These complaints of Antitrust violations are ridiculous.
The cover and keyboard along with the trackpad together with the new operating system for the iPad makes the iPad Pro closer to being like a regular laptop but also like a great tablet. I used it with the 2019 12.9-inch iPad Pro. It works with last year’s iPad Pro along with this year’s iPad Pro.
I purchased the first 12.9-inch iPad Pro along with Apple’s first cover keyboard. I liked that cover keyboard that Apple made for the first iPad Pro but that cover keyboard has serious problems. First of all, the way it it was weighted was awkward so when you opened it up you always felt that iPad will fall out because you didn’t set it up correct. It felt like it was an origami puzzle. In addition, after a while, the connection between the cover keyboard and iPad Pro stopped working. The connection port on that older iPad Pro is on the bottom edge of the iPad Pro and it would connect with a slot on the seem of the keyboard cover. I still have both but the keyboard doesn’t work as the connection on the keyboard covers wore away and no longer work. The same happened to a second Apple keyboard cover I purchased. So it must be endemic for that keyboard model.
Before this year’s Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro, Apple created a new keyboard cover for the iPad Pro that solved a lot of the problems that the original keyboard cover had. The newer keyboard was stiffer. That keyboard is still sold and it is called the Smart Keyboard Folio. Instead of three origami parts that folded like the original, the newer keyboard had essentially two parts with one side slightly bending. Also, the connector port for the iPad Pro was moved to the flat part of the back of the iPad Pro instead of edge of the bottom of the iPad Pro. This makes the connection to the iPad Pro more stable and also less likely (I Hope) that the connection between the iPad Pro and keyboard cover doesn’t wear away easily like the first generation keyboard cover. Apple still sells that older keyboard cover (what I call the origami keyboard cover) for the cheaper and older generation iPads (the non-pro iPads and the 1st and 2nd generation iPad Pros). See here.
This year’s new Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro builds upon that Smart Keyboard Folio and adds additional features that make it much better.
First, the keys are much better. They have more depth and travel so they feel like real keys like the Magic Keyboard that Apple makes for the iMacs.
Second, there is a trackpad. It is a real clicking type trackpad and it is level throughout the rectangle. It works really well and you can swipe fingers similarly like the Magic Trackpad for the iMac, the MacBook Pros and MacBook Air. Apple upgraded the operating system for the iPad so it works well with mouses and trackpads. So this Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro has it all, a keyboard and trackpad.
Third, the keys have back lighting. This means you can now type in the dark and seek the keys. Prior keyboard covers that Apple made did not have back lighting. This is a big deal. Makes it even more like a laptop.
Fourth, the Magic Keyboard has a USB-C charging port on the left side which also passes through the charge to the iPad Pro. It is nice because it frees up the USB-C port on the side of the iPad and its lower to the ground and flat with the desk that you put this iPad Pro on. So the cable will not be up in the air connecting to the iPad.
Finally, the Magic Keyboard has a dock which makes the iPad Pro rock back and tilt up at a good angle to look at when you are typing. Some say it makes the iPad Pro look like it is floating.
This Magic Keyboard makes the iPad Pro an even better production machine. People who use the iPad Pro to do work will find it even easier to produce their work. This includes not only people who write on the iPad Pro, but also those who edit videos or audio like podcasts.
So what are some drawbacks?
First, these keyboard covers are very expensive. The one for the larger iPad Pro is $349. The version for the 11 inch iPad Pro is $299. Are they worth the money? You can use pretty much any keyboard and mouse and trackpad with the iPad Pro. I have a great mechanical keyboard from Keytron which pairs by Bluetooth to the iPad Pro and works well with it. But, Apple’s Magic Keyboard is easy to travel with the iPad Pro. You can close it up and it become like a slim book that you travel around with. You can’t easily do that with regular keyboards, mice and trackpads. And third-party companies that make similar keyboard covers are not as good as Apple’s Magic Keyboard. So this keyboard cover is good for someone who plans to move around and travel with their iPad Pro and also wants to easily work with it using the keyboard and trackpad. But you pay a pretty high price for it. I purchased the Keytron keyboard for under $100 and recently got Logitech’s MX Master 3 Mouse for $100. These are two great devices for working on computers and the iPads. But they are not as portable as the Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro. So you are paying for the portability when you pay $349 or $299 for these Magic Keyboards.
Another frustration is you cannot bend one of the covers fully behind the iPad Pro so that it is flush with the back. The original keyboard cover and the second generation keyboard cover allows you to do that. That allowed me to then use the iPad as just a tablet and get the keyboard out of the way when I didn’t need to use it. On the second generation it was awkward as the keys would be facing out on the back so when you held the iPad with one cover on the back your hand would be pressing down on the keys. The original origami keyboard cover for the iPad Pro had the keys facing in on the back side of the iPad Pro. This newest model doesn’t allow you to swing one side of the cover fully on the back. That means you cannot use the iPad as just a tablet unless you completely separate it from the Magic Keyboard. I don’t like that because I rely on the Magic Keyboard as a cover protecting the iPad. So the Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro is really less a cover for the iPad Pro then a highly portable and compact keyboard with trackpad. I guess Apple had to make it this way to make the structure of the keyboard cover stronger than the previous models. The origami keyboard cover was frustratingly unstable. This Magic Keyboard is heavy and well balanced. You can more easily balance it on your lap and type on it.
So who is this keyboard cover for? I would suggest it for anyone who is an iPad enthusiast and anyone who uses the iPad Pro as their main work or production device. If you do a lot of work on the iPad, you should definitely get this. Between using the keyboard, touchpad and touch screen, you have complete and easy control of the iPad Pro. Having the backlight and additional USB-C connection on the keyboard (it only charges and doesn’t send data) makes it easier to use the iPad Pro.
I should point out that Apple has three different covers for the iPad Pro.
If you are a hardcore iPad Pro user it might make sense to purchase not only the Magic Keyboard Cover but also the Smart Folio. The Smart Folio has no keyboard or trackpad. It is just a cover for the front and back. What is good about it it automatically shuts down the screen when you close the cover. Also, you can swing the cover on the front to the back and it is thin. So if you just want to use the iPad Pro as a tablet this Smart Folio will protect it. So I can see someone purchasing both the Magic Keyboard Cover and the Smart Folio. When they don’t need the keyboard and what to travel with the iPad Pro they may put the Smart Folio on it. When you need the keyboard and trackpad you take the Magic Keyboard Cover. Yes, you could get the Magic Keyboard Cover and just take out the iPad Pro naked when you want to use it just as a tablet. But some people, like me, would be afraid that the iPad Pro will be damaged it you don’t have a cover.
One thing to point out is that the Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro is pretty heavy:
The 12.9-inch iPad Pro and Magic Keyboard weigh in at 3 pounds (1362 grams), more than the 2.8 pounds (1290 grams) of the 13-inch MacBook Air but the same as the 13-inch MacBook Pro.
(The Verge). For that reason that is also why you can’t really hold the iPad Pro with the Magic Keyboard as a tablet. It is heavy, heavy as a 13-inch MacBook Pro. That is why I may purchase the Smart Folio to use the iPad Pro as a tablet when I want to be more mobile and protect it.
To sum it up, though it is expensive, the Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro is the best keyboard and trackpad when you want to be mobile with the iPad Pro. If you are never leaving your office with the iPad Pro, I would think about getting another keyboard or trackpad and a stand for the iPad Pro. But if you are ever going to move around and leave your home or office with the iPad Pro and want to type and do work on your iPad Pro, this is the device for you.
Okay, so what can you do during a pandemic to keep sane and mentally sharp? Answer: work on some technology projects. Even though that’s not your business and you’re not a technologist, working on some technology projects can keep you sane and positive during the shutdown when you are at home all the time. After all, you can’t go out, you can’t do much. You can’t travel. You can’t really walk around very much. What’s going on right now is that if you have a computer and it is connected to the Internet, this is your lifeline. But it is not enough to just consume. You can’t just watch Netflix all the time. You can’t just play video games all the time. You can’t just read news all the time. You have to do something to work your brain. You have to do something to grow. And one of the things that you can do without leaving your house, your place of shelter, is work on various technology projects. You can take on projects that will be helpful to you. And if the project isn’t helpful at the very least you learn a lot of about technology.
And it’s important to learn about technology because technology is everywhere. It has seeped everywhere in our lives. And one thing for sure, in this pandemic, technology is something we can rely on. Technology ultimately is going to be the thing that saves us. It will be some scientist or company using the latest technology in biology or chemistry or both who will make a breakthrough and create a vaccine that protects us.
In terms of what we’re relying on. Just look at companies like Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft. They’re the backbone of our survival right now, because they’re not going down. We are relying on them more and more. And because of that, it is helping us survive. We can communicate better with each other. We can do our job using technology. Look how Zoom has taken off for everyone, not just for businesses, schools are using Zoom. People are having private Zoom parties.
So over the last few weeks, I went on an epic adventure where I learned tech about the Internet and created projects.
So what kind of projects can you work on? Well, one thing to do is work on creating your own website. And I don’t mean do it the easy way where you go to a site like Squarespace or WordPress where they will host your website, and they will just make it easy to create a website through a few clicks. Don’t do the easy way like that. There are a number of reasons why not to do it the easy way. First it’s more expensive to create a website like that. Squarespace costs at least $12 per month. WordPress starts at $4 per month but quickly goes up if you want to add stuff to help your website.
I found a way to host multiple sites for a total of $5 per month. More on that later. But the main reason not to use turnkey services like Squarespace or WordPress hosting is that you can learn to do it yourself with any server on the Internet. That way you understand what is underneath your website, the server itself.
What do I mean by that? Well, everything on the Internet runs on something you’ve maybe heard about called a “server.” A server, just like a butler server at a party, “serves” you something. But a server on the Internet serves you digital data when you go to that server. So when you go to an Internet website, a server somewhere is sending you digital data to your browser.
A server is nothing more than a computer somewhere connected to the Internet that is hosting the data that comes to your browser. Some servers actually are sending not digital data to your browser, but sending digital data to your app on your iPhone or iPad or Android device. Also, when you talk to Amazon’s Alexa device, the information that Alexa is giving comes from a server that Amazon has hooked up to the Internet. When you make a Zoom call, a server somewhere is making the connection for you with the people that you are calling on Zoom.
Now you could have a server at home. After all, your Windows computer or Mac is a computer. So your home computer can be a server. But if you want your server at home to serve digital data outside your home, you are in trouble. Trouble because the companies hooking up your home to the Internet, like Comcast and FIOS, they are making your address at home unstable for guests in the outside world to find it. That is because you have a dynamic IP address. You see all devices hooked up to the Internet have a unique IP address. The problem with trying to run a server from your home computer is that your Internet provider, i.e. Comcast, FIOS, etc, gives you a dynamic address. Your unique number changes. You need a “static” address for your server.
So if you really want to serve digital data to the outside world, it is best to get space on a server outside your home that is specifically set up to give you a static address so people can find you on the Internet. Now when you go to a company like Squarespace and open an account, that is what Squarespace is doing. It is giving you space on a server. But is also giving you other things, like services to make it easy to design and have your own website.
Once you have a server and a static server address, you also want to have a domain name. Now this you probably know. Right? Facebook.com is a domain name. Cnn.com is a domain name. Every website name you know on the Internet is a domain name. Now a domain name is not a server and a server is not a domain name. You have to pay an annual fee, usually around $10 to $15 per year, for a domain name that isn’t already used by someone or some company. There are various companies that can help you register and get a domain name. Squarespace does it as part of its service for hosting your website. But there are companies that do nothing but register and sell you the domain names. The company I use because it has a decent reputation (i.e. not trying to up-sell you all the time or making it hard to transfer your domain to another site) is Hover. You go to a service like Hover, and you try out different domain names to see if they are available. And you can also get domain name suffixes other than the traditional .com. They have .tv, .blog., even .poker and .bet. Be careful though. Some of those suffixes are very expensive annually. Go for the traditional suffix: .com. That is a classic.
Multiple sites for $5 per month on Linode
So how did I do it so cheaply? Well what I found out is that there are various companies which give you a good server that is cheap, but you don’t get the service that holds your hands to create a website. Think of it like this. When you buy food, if you go to a store that does wholesale rather than retail, you get a better deal. That is why Costco, e.g., has such good prices. Well regarding selling servers on the Internet, there are companies selling server services wholesale. Their market is not selling retail to you and me. Their market is really selling to developers and companies that need a lot of Internet servers. The biggest company doing this is of course Amazon.
Many years ago, Amazon realized it was really good with having servers on the Internet and having services on the Internet for its own Amazon website. After all, Amazon was selling zillions of books and then selling zillions of other things on its website. Amazon realized it was so good with servers for its own business that it realized that it could sell services to third-parties. Amazon created low-priced servers on the Internet for developers. That business is called AWS: Amazon Web Services.. AWS took off; particularly with developers making apps for the iPhone. They needed services on the Internet to send digital data to the their apps on the iPhone. AWS was a very good and cheap service to do so. You probably don’t know this, but many of the web services and apps are hosted on AWS. It is a huge business for Amazon.
Well others are competing with Amazon on that wholesale business. Microsoft pivoted from just focusing on Office and Windows to now providing Internet services for developers through its Azure service. Google has its Cloud service..
Now there are Internet hosting companies that are much smaller than these big three. Several years ago, I found a good deal at one called A Small Orange (ASO).. I got 5gb of server space for $5 per month. I purchased this originally to host a website for a relative who was a doctor because my relative didn’t have website. The website was just to have straight forward information about my relative’s office.
I created the website with what some would consider a non-traditional app to create websites: Hype by Tumult.. Tumult was created by some guys who had worked at Apple. Hype was created to create animations using HTML5 technology. Do you remember Steve Job’s April 2010 “Thoughts on Flash” announcement?. It is still on Apple’s website. Flash was that technology that created all those animations on the web starting back in the 1990s and continuing to a couple of years ago. Adobe owned that technology. Apple refused to allow the iPhone and iPad to run Flash on those devices browsers. This was a big deal back in the early days of the iPhone and iPad because some sites and content on the Internet could not be accessed because of the lack of Flash support. But Steve Jobs was adamant that Flash sucked. In his lengthy polemic against Flash in April 2010, he listed many reasons Flash was not good, including that is was proprietary and chewed up battery life. Jobs and Apple pointed out that HTML5 technology, which was open source and part of the backbone of the web, could work better and replace Flash.
Tumult was created to create an app on the Mac which could create HTML5 animations that could replace Flash animations. So I dabbled in this great app when it first came out. Using this app, I created a website with buttons and menus for different pages which I uploaded to ASO and linked up to a domain name I purchased at Hover.
After I created the relative’s website, I realized that in my ASO account I could create additional sites on the same 5 gb space. I also discovered I could do this through an interface app that ASO had for my server space called cPanel. cPanel is a graphical user interface app for your the server space so you can navigate easily your server and install apps. It is not free, but it came part of my ASO account. ASO must have paid the cPanel company that leases or sells that app. So why is there this cPanel interface?
It is there because pretty much all these servers run on an operating system called Linux. It was created by this guy back in 1991 named Linus Torvold. Practically every server on the Internet runs on a version of Linux. Since it is open sourced, developers and business have created “forks” of Linux over the years. On most servers on the Internet Debian or Ubuntu is used. The most famous fork of Linux is Android, which run the smartphones and tables competing with Apple’s iPhones and iPads.
So through this cPanel interface on ASO, I created two more websites using WordPress. One for my website MacsFuture.com and the other one for my kids’ sports. I wanted to created WordPress sites because for many years I read and heard how a big chunk of the web was WordPress sites. WordPress is so successful because it’s an open program. This is what Wikipedia says:
WordPress (WordPress.org) is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in PHP[4] and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database. Features include a plugin architecture and a template system, referred to within WordPress as Themes. WordPress was originally created as a blog-publishing system but has evolved to support other types of web content including more traditional mailing lists and forums, media galleries, membership sites, learning management systems (LMS) and online stores. WordPress is used by more than 60 million websites, including 33.6% of the top 10 million websites as of April 2019, WordPress is one of the most popular content management system solutions in use. WordPress has also been used for other application domains such as pervasive display systems (PDS). Wikipedia on WordPress(footnotes omittied).
So I had never tried a self-hosted WordPress before so I went for it. Because ASO had a cPane, in cPane there are different server apps that you can put into your server. It was pretty easy. And then, I hooked it up those two sites with domain names from Hover.com. So great, I then had two websites and my relative had one website on a $5 per month server from ASO. Everything was going well. Until …..
Last year, I realized that ASO was charging me more than $5 per month. Here is how much they were charging and the increases over the years.
ASO Charges
So you see it went from $40 to over $90 in a few years. But that isn’t what got me to finally switch my sites to another company that leases servers. It was SSL.
What is SSL? SSL is that lock you see on the domain address when you go to various websites.
That lock tells people going to your website that there is security on your site; particularly that you are who you claim you are. This is important if the people going to your site are putting private information on your site. For example, a bank which has customers logging in would want such security. Or if your site was collecting email address from people signing up for your site. You may have seen these locks on website address popping up a number of years ago. But the practice of having ssl certificates on sites took off and practically every site has that lock because Google says if you don’t have that lock then it would lower the score for your site:
Thursday, February 8, 2018
For the past several years, we’ve moved toward a more secure web by strongly advocating that sites adopt HTTPS encryption. And within the last year, we’ve also helped users understand that HTTP sites are not secure by gradually marking a larger subset of HTTP pages as “not secure”. Beginning in July 2018 with the release of Chrome 68, Chrome will mark all HTTP sites as “not secure”.
The “s” after http is what makes the lock. What is going on is that the connection to your site is being encrypted and a third-party service is giving you a certificate certifying that your site is encrypted. Over time, particularly since the summer of 2018, I realized my sites looked poor without being “https:” and having the corresponding lock. I Googled around and found that some hosting sites for servers, particularly ones that helped host self-serving WordPress sites, provided free SSL certificates. I checked with ASO, and they didn’t provide any free SSL service. In fact, they charged a substantial amount.
ASO Add Ons
As you can see, an add on service for an SSL would cost me $40 annually at the very least and a wildcard SSL even much more. The thing is I looked around and there is a free SSL certificate service called Certbot that is provided by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF is a highly legitimate nonprofit organization which among other things, protects the free use and free speech on the Internet. I looked around the web and found out that some server providers which had cPane installed provided an app on cPane to allow users to easily install a free Certbot SSL certificate for the self-hosted WordPress site. I checked ASO’s cPane and none existed there. I emailed ASO support and they confirmed they didn’t provide such a plug in for the free service.
The fact that ASO was charging me more than $90 per year and not even providing me with an easy way to install a free SSL certificate really bothered me. Then I took a look at Linode. For years I heard about Linode on podcasts as Linode sponsored a lot of tech podcasts. Linode I realized was for customers who are developers. Linode was really competing with Amazon’s AWS, Google Cloud and Microsofts Azure. The thing about Linode that caught my eye was it was cheap. Linode’s cheapest plan gave me 25 gb of storage on a server and 1000 Mbps out in speed all for $5 per month. By comparison, ASO only gives 500mb of space for $6.51 per month. $8.80 per month would get you just 5 gb of space. That was the plan I was on at ASO that was originally $5 per month when I signed up. Linode wasn’t offering me a cPane app for free with the server space I would lease. It turns out if I wanted a cPane I would have to pay extra. And that is part of the reason that ASO was charging more than Linode. Nor did Linode offer a free SSL certificate.
I decided to try Linode because. It had a community and answers on its website where you can find out information on how to set up a Linux server without using a cPane program. I had to figure out Linux commands to set up the Linode server. Then I had to figure out how to put SSL certificates on those severs.
I did it. I was able to transfer my sites from ASO to Linode. It wasn’t easy. It took time. But here is the important thing: It was really satisfying as I learned how to:
SSH communicate from my Mac to the Linode server.
Use the Terminal App on the Mac after SSHing to the Linode server to download and set up apps on the server using Linux commands.
Set up Apache on the Linux server to create virtual servers given I had only one LInode server and wanted to have more than one website on that server.
Download and install three WordPress sites from scratch.
Navigate in the server files and folder structure for WordPress.
Use Nano on Linux to edit and change the config documents for WordPress and Apache.
Configure MySql on the server as the databases for the WordPress sites.
Configure the DNS on Hover and Linode to set up the various domains I created on one Linode server.
After completing the set up of the various sites and setting up the domain connections, I still had to solve another problem: getting SSL certificates so I would have that lock symbol and the https addres for my sites. The great and free solution I eventually came across was to install the Certbot certificates using command line instructions on the Linode server through ssh connection through the Terminal app on my Mac. These free certificates only last three months but Certbot comes with commands where you can set up a “cron.”. Cron is a service on Linux where you can automatically run commands. So I set up a cron using Certbot so that Certbot will renew the certificates a week or two before the certificates would run out. Pretty cool.
So here you can see my https://macsfutures.com site all set up on Linode. But the fun and my learning did not stop there. I continued to explore.
Static Web Sites
While researching installing WordPress on Linode, I came across a trend that has been going on over the last five years or more: static sites. A number of bloggers and developers are arguing that static sites are faster and better on the web than dynamic sites. A dynamic site in contrast to a static site changes based on who goes to the site. So Facebook is a dynamic site because based on who goes to that site, the site changes. WordPress is a dynamic site because it uses a database, MySql, behind the website. It turns out, a number of geeks and others on the web figured out the websites that are static run faster on the Internet.
I learned that one static site publishing platform is called Hugo.. There is a website at https://gohugo.io where it says that Hugo is “The Word’s Fastest Framework for Building Websites.” It is written in Google’s developer’s language called Go. I was curious to try it because 1) it claims to be much faster, 2) you can write your posts as simple “Markdown” text files,” and 3) Linode’s new “Object Storage Plans,” can host static websites.
So let’s go through each of these. First, faster website. This one is easy. Why wouldn’t I want a faster website? If it’s quicker to load for users, users will like my website better. I hate going to websites that are slow. I hate websites that load all sorts of videos and crazy stuff and adds. Nice simple websites are the best.
Second. Hugo works with Markdown files. What is Markdown?
Markdown is a lightweight markup language, originally created by John Gruber and Aaron Swartz allowing people “to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).
The fact that Hugo worked with Markdown files appealed to me. I had played around with word processors that use Markdown for many years. On my Mac and my iOS devices I have long used Byword.. There are many apps on iOS and on the Mac that use Markdown. The beauty of Byword is that there isn’t hidden code and formatting such as in Microsoft Word or even Apple’s Pages program. You write in simple text. And if you are going to format it the code is simple and easy to read so it isn’t confusing. Hugo treats each Markdown text file you create as a blog post or a page on the Internet depending on what folder you put it in. It is a really simple concept. So writing in Markdown really appealed to me and is a plus for using Hugo.
Finally, if I can host a site on Linode’s Object storage, that is a great deal for website hosting. Linode gives you 250 GB of storage for just $5 per month. That is 10 times as much storage for the same price as its regular storage that can host dynamic sites like WordPress. Hosting sites cheaply on the Internet is pretty amazing after all. And the cheaper you can do it the more amazing it is. Technology is all about bringing efficiency and reducing the cost.
Think about how hard it was to publish anything so other people could see it. In the early 1700s, a young Benjamin Franklin wanted to run his own printing press and newspaper. He had worked for a press in Boston when he was a teenager. After he fled from Boston to Philadelphia, to get away from his domineering older brother, he wanted to use his experience in running press to create his own press. Franklin obtained significant funds, a fortune in todays funds, and travelled by boat all the way to London to purchase an old press and then transport it by boat to Philadelphia. The rest is history. He became a prominent publisher, inventor, legislator and founder of the United States. Read more on Franklin here
Today, you can run hundreds of sites each for under $20 day using Linode’s 250 gb Object Storage program for $5 per day. You could have all the static websites you create share the $5 per month storage on Linode. $60 per year divided by 100 sites is 60 cents per year. A domain for each site would be $15 per domain. This brings the cost to $15.60 per year for each domain. In terms of a device to set up the sites, you can get a cheap computer (like a chrome book) and use your phone’s hotspot or free Internet connection in a library or park. The friction to publish now is 1/millionth the friction that young Benjamin Franklin faced.
Hugo
Getting back to Hugo. You can install the Hugo publishing platform on your server or you can publish on your Mac and then have the static website it creates sync with your website. I decided to run it on my Mac. Here is how I did it.[3]
First, it involves using your Terminal App on your Mac. Remember what computer screens looked like before the Mac was created and Microsoft copied the Mac and created Windows? It looked like MS-Dos.
(Credit to the Interface Experience for the MS-Dos Photo.) Giving instructions by text is called using the “command line.” All of you using iOS devices, and Macs, Windows and Chrome computers may be oblivious to the subterranean world underneath the user interface. On Macs, the user interface is built on an older technology called UNIX. The operating system for the Mac is running on a relative of UNIX. UNIX was created by the telephone company’s computer lab back when there was one telephone company for the entire United States. The Terminal App is using UNIX like commands. Those commands are very similar to the Linux commands on a Linux server as they are both related to UNIX. Read more on Unix here.
For installing it on a Mac, the people behind Hugo suggested to first install Homebrew.. Homebrew is a package manager that allows you down load development software on your Mac or even Linux. The idea is once you install Homebrew you can then more easier install other things on your Mac. Here is the command on the Terminal App to do so. It is not for the faint of heart if you have never used the Terminal App before.
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"
Then after you install Homebrew, you use that to install the Hugo package on your Mac.
brew install hugo
Once it the Hugo publication system is on your Mac, you create a Hugo command in the terminal to create a new site, and it creates a folder on your Mac for the site with various folders. (Look here for various Hugo commands.)
This is what the folder looks like after you generate a site on Hugo.
The folder that is labeled “Public” is the web documents you put on your server. The rest of the folders are what Hugo uses to make the website. The folder Content is where the content you create, i.e. writing, photos, and videos, go into. And the Folder called Themes is where the different themes you can use to make your website are put. In Content folder there is a folder called Posts. This is where your blog posts go. Take a look at mine. What you see below are separate Markdown files. Each one is a separate post.
Hugo Content Folder
These Markdown files for each post take up hardly any storage space as they are pure text files. They are easy to back up and use if you change where your website will be.
As for themes, you download different Hugo themes people created and put them into the Themes folder. Then you open the config file and reference the theme you want in your Theme folder for that site. It’s a simple word reference. See:
I found this crazy Hugo.386 theme that makes your site look like the old 386 PCs, i.e. the ones with MS-DOS commands. I created a subdomain that shows off this Hugo theme here.. Here is a screenshot of this Hugo site.
Hugo Site
To add posts to this site, I add a new Markdown post file in the post folder. Then I run a command in the Terminal App to remake the site in the public folder, and then sync that folder to the server. If you run Hugo on the server, you can just add the Markdown file on the server’s Hugo content post folder and it will rebuild the site on the server.
Swift Static Site Publisher
After I successfully created a Hugo site, I then got interested in another program to create static websites. What caught my eye about it is that it used Apple’s Swift language to create a static site. It is called Publish by John Sundell and you get it on something called Github.com.
First thing first. What is Swift? Swift is Apple’s code language that Apple developed for developers creating apps and programs for IOS devices and Macs. Back on June 2, 2014, Apple announced Swift at the WWDC conference it holds every summer.. No one saw it coming. For years Apple and developers for the iOS devices and Macs used a language called Objective-C. Swift was supposedly to be simpler to use and be more powerful. Apple has been pushing everyone to use Swift and created an App on the iPad many years ago for kids and everyday people to use Swift, called Swift Playgrounds. Over the years, I have dabbled in learning Swift through that Playgrounds app.
During the last year, one of the podcasts I have been listening to is called Stacktrace, which is hosted by two developers, John Sundell and Gui Rambo. These two young developers are very entertaining. Rambo is from Brazil and he helps out the website 9to5mac.com by looking deep into beta IOS systems for clues for what Apple is working on in the future. Sundell is a Polish developer who also runs the great Swift website Swift by Sundell. He gives tips on the Swift language and it is a great resource. It is John Sundell who during the last year created an application called Publish which uses the Swift Language to create a static website. His own website, Swift by Sundell is built with that Swift language tool. Having had success building a Hugo website, I thought what the heck, let’s try building one with Swift.
Publish by John Sundell
So John Sundell created this Swift language Publish program. You have to download it from Github.[4]. Similar to Hugo, you can download using commands on the Terminal Program on the Mac. There is one difference though. Because this Publish program uses Swift, you need to make sure you have Xcode on your Mac. Xcode is Apple’s program for developers to create apps on the IOS devices and also programs on the Mac. So similar to Hugo, after you use Publish together with Xcode it creates folders on your Mac. It looks like this.
Swift Site Folder
Like with Hugo, the Content folder is where you put the content for your website. And again like in Hugo you put Markdown files to create your posts.
This is what the content folder looks like.
Content
What goes onto your website is in the “Output” folder. This is where it differs from Hugo which calls it its “Public” folder. Now I don’t think you can run this on a server unless the server has Xcode or something that executes the Swift language. Most servers run on Linux. There are places you can rent Macs as servers. For example there is Macstadium where you can rent a Mac as a server. But that is much more expensive for a minimum plan compared to Linux as MacStadiums cheapest plan is around $80 per month for a Mac Mini. So publishing a Swift static website would require you to sync the Output folder on your Mac with your server. [5]
So I created a Swift static website successfully and I am hosting it as a subdomain. You can see it here.. It has a rather simple looking design , which you can see here.
Swift Site
Jitsi
The adventure didn’t stop there. I kept stumbling upon things to try out on the $5 Linode server I rented. Now during this pandemic everyone is using live video programs to connect with each other. People are using FaceTime and Skype. But Zoom became very popular because it is easy to use. Then I heard about this service, Jitsi, which is open source and is supposed to be very secure. So what is Jitsi? In the open source entity’s own words:
Jitsi is a set of open-source projects that allows you to easily build and deploy secure video conferencing solutions. At the heart of Jitsi are Jitsi Videobridge and Jitsi Meet, which let you have conferences on the Internet, while other projects in the community enable other features such as audio, dial-in, recording, and simulcasting.
So why should you install Jitsi on your own server? You can make calls for free using Jitsi’s own website. It works with the Jitsi app on the iPhone which you can get here. They also have an Android App.. The reason to get Jitsi installed on your own server is 1) it is more secure, and 2) how cool would that be? It is more secure on your own server because you control your server. You don’t have to worry that someone at Jitsi is eavesdropping on you. With Zoom or other services you don’t control the server that your calls are going through. Same with FaceTime or Google Meet. They are all going through a third company’s server. Here you can install Jitsi even on a server in your home. The Second reason to install it on your own server is it is cool to do so. You can tell people you have your own video calling service. So I decided to go forth and install Jitsi.
It wasn’t that hard to install Jitsi. The Jitsi website gives you the instruction to install it on a Debian or Ubuntu server here. I installed it as a subdomain on one of the sites I had on Linode.
One of the problems I had after I installed it is that the initial set up allows anyone to make a video call. I didn’t want that as I have a small server and if people I didn’t know were using it it could rack up my server bill. I found this video from early April 2020 from Nerd on the Street on Youtube very helpful for configuring Jitsi after I had it up and running.
His video showed me how to configure Jitsi so that a call could only be initiated with my password. So Jitsi works on the server I am leasing. But because it is the cheapest server and is small, I don’t think it can take a lot of calls at the same time. I would have to upgrade the power of my server if I want to make many calls.
Nextcloud
The adventure didn’t stop at Jitsi. I was recently listening to this podcast. Release Notes. One of the hosts runs a business on the Internet where he makes websites for professionals, tax accountants. I realized listening to him that his business involves creating WordPress sites on a Linode server. I heard this after first transferring my sites to LInode. On this podcast, I heard he created for his customer a service on their website where their customers could upload documents to them. In other words, his tax accountant customers could have their own Dropbox or iCloud built into their site. The way he did this was using an open system called Nextcloud.. As stated on its website:
Share and collaborate on documents, send and receive email, manage your calendar and have video chats without data leaks. As fully on-premises solution, Nextcloud Hub provides the benefits of online collaboration without the compliance and security risks.
Basically, Nextcloud is an open source system taking on big players like Microsoft, Google and Apple and allowing anyone to host cloud services on their own servers. You can use what ever you want.[6]
So I installed Nextcloud on my own site as a subdomain. It is really cool. When you open it, feels like you have your own Microsoft company on your website. Here is a screenshot.
Nextcloud
Next Cloud has apps for the Mac and iOS and other devices. After I downloaded the Nextcloud app on my Mac it created a folder named Nextcloud. That folder on my Mac automatically syncs with my Next Cloud app on the server. So I have my own iCloud or Dropbox. This is really cool. You can invite users. According to Nextcloud, it is really popular in Europe particularly Germany and a lot of universities and companies use it. I don’t know why schools and companies don’t use it here. They could save so much money that they are paying to Microsoft and Google.
Finally, I should mention the one purchase I made during this crazy adventure: Panic’s Transmit 5 program for the Mac. For most of this technology adventure, I was mainly using the Terminal App on my Mac to navigate the folders and files on my Linode server. It was a real pain as you have to type out commands to get to the right folder. Then I remembered that for many many years, the bloggers and podcasters who love Apple and Mac always praised the Transmit program. I checked it out and purchased it. It was a godsend. It is basically a powerful Graphical User Interface for connecting to servers with SSH connections and navigating and editing files on servers. On its fifth generation, It is a well polished and beautiful app.
Once I started using Transmit to connect to my LInode server, it made life much easier. Transit has a feature where if you have to use the Terimal to make commands on the server, you can go straight from a folder on Transit app to the Termina and put the path from from the server on Terminal. This makes navigating the server much much quicker than doing it with command line instructions on Terminal.
Conclusion
There are many adventures in technology. Our ancestors like Ben Franklin went on their own adventures with tech. It is unfortunate that we are living through this virus pandemic that is destroying lives and taking away our normal life in the outside world. But many of us, with decent computers and Internet connections, are lucky. There are adventures and learning available on our finger tips. Use this time to explore what you don’t know. Take on a project. Take it on just to learn something and see if you can build it. Having set up various WordPress sites, created a Hugo static site, created a Swift static site, created a Jitsi server, and created a Nextcloud server, and all the while reduced my server cost by going to Linode and most importantly, got those SSL locks on my domain addresses, I am now at the end of this adventure.
Aaron Swartz is the genius on the Internet who was prosecuted for trying to make public research university publications that are subsidized by the Federal Government. He committed suicide when the prosecutors insisted he go to jail. Read more on Swartz here. ↩
Github is a famous website for developers. There you can work on codes for programs and apps or web development and work with other developers. It has been around for a long time. Microsoft purchased Github in 2018 for $7.5 billion. That is how popular it was. ↩
You probably can’t run this Publish Swift program on a non-Mac like Windows as you need something to compile the Swift language which requires Xcode from Apple. ↩
I found out that Nextcloud is an off shoot of OpenCloud, and that both were created by this man, Frank Karlitschek, a highly talented German developer. He is a big believer in open systems and individuals taking back control of their data. ↩
I have been playing around a lot with Siri Shortcuts on the iPhone. Recently I set up two shortcuts to use the SSH script in Siri Shortcuts to wake up my 2010 iMac and to also put it to sleep. It sends a terminal command over the ethernet port to wake up and sleep the Mac. It is really cool. Makes you feel like you are in the future.
Here is the video
Apple’s September announcement event is like a holiday for me. It is tech Christmas for me. For many years now, I look forward to September because that is when Apple announces a new iPhone. And many people in the media or my friends always say Apple’s new iPhone isn’t that much better than last year’s iPhone so why should anyone upgrade? But I point out to my friends that Apple’s iPhone is much better upgraded every year. Compare it with PCs. Back in the 1990s, everyone would get excited every year when company’s like Dell, HP, IBM, Compaq, etc would upgrade every year with a better processor from Intel. You would get a more powerful PC. And the processors would be maybe 20% more powerful. But then it leveled off.
But Apple has been killing it every year upgrading the iPhone. Most people don’t understand that. They look at the design and say Apple’s iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 looks just like the iPhone XS or XR from last year. Big deal. But the real magic is the technology in that rectangular slab. With the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11, Apple has updated 4 things that are much better than last year’s phone: 1) the camera, 2) the processors, 3) the battery, and 4) the screen. The Camera (Cameras)
The cameras are upgraded from last year. The iPhone 11 is the price of the XR (actually a lower price than iPhone XR), but it now has 2 cameras on the back of the iPhone compared to 1 last year. And the iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max now have 3 cameras on the back compared to 2 on the XS and XS Max.
The front-facing camera now has a 12 mp camera rather than a 7 mp camera. And the front camera now records video in higher data, like 60 frames per second and 4k.
But don’t forget the processors that work with the cameras. I won’t go into the details about the camera processors but the bottom line is they have been greatly updated from the XS and XR iPhones. And those new processors in all the iPhone 11s do things the iPhone XS and XR cannot do. 2 Video Recording at the same time!
Among the things they can do is record videos at the same time from 2 cameras. FILMIC, which has a great professional app in the iPhone for video recording, showed on the stage during Apple’s event that its app will be able to show what all 4 cameras on the iPhone 11 Pro is showing and on the fly you can record 2 of the video streams at the same time. This is a big deal. Before with devices, you could record two videos at the same time but then you would have to sync them. Now the syncing is automatic.
So this will be great for sports and event recording and vlogging. I record my kids playing tennis. But it’s hard to record the entire court. If you go to one end you get the back of one player and the other player is far away. But now you could stand right at the net and record both half’s of the court and show it split-screen.
Similarly, vloggers will love this. They can record them talking and recording where they are and quickly edit the back and forth view or do picture in picture.
Night Mode
The new processors and extra cameras allow the iPhone 11s to take great pictures in low light. Apple calls this tech “Night Mode.” This is what Apple says about it on its site:
Major Upgrade to the screens for the iPhone 11 Pro.
Another major reason to upgrade if you use the phone a lot is that the screens for the iPhone 11 is not much much better. Without going into the technology, the screen can get much brighter than the iPhone XS. Why should you care? You should care because when you are outdoor in the bright sun the screen will be easier to see. Also, whey you watch movies on your iPhone 11 Pro it will look much better.
Battery
Another key reason to upgrade to an iPhone 11 from last year’s phone is the battery. All three iPhone 11s have much better batteries. In particular, the iPhone 11, which is the upgrade from the iPhone XR, now has a battery that lasts 1 hour more from the XR. The iPhone 11 Pro, which is the upgrade from the iPhone XS, has a batter that is 4 hours more than the XS. And the iPhone 11 Pro Max? That phone now lasts 5 hours more than last years iPhone XS Max. If you use your phone a lot during the day, you might want to upgrade alone for the better battery.
Processors and other technology
But another reason to upgrade is the processors. The processors are more powerful, And when they are more powerful, you can do more with them. You can edit videos quicker. You can edit photos quicker.
But it’s not just batteries. Apple has upgraded the wifi technology so you can get faster data from wifi. So if you use your wifi at home or at work to stream video or transfers large files, it will go faster.
But other technology: The A1 chip. Apple added a chip, that makes the iPhone 11 more location-aware. It can be used when you do Airdrop on another phone. One problem now with Airdrop is when there are a lot of iPhones around with Airdrop, you see many iPhones in your Airdrop screen. But now with the A1 chip, if you point your iPhone to the iPhone you want to Airdrop, it will bring that iPhone to the top of the iPhones you see on the screen. But this technology is what Apple is going to use when it comes out to tokens. It will allow your iPhone to quickly find those tokens in the room.
Conclusion
Overall, if you are a heavy iPhone user, it is worth upgrading to the iPhone 11, in particular the iPhone 11 Pro. You get a better camera for taking pictures and video, you get a faster processor for all the work you do, you get a better screen, and you get a much better battery. That alone is worth upgrading.
CultofMac.com website has a nice article here referencing this Github page here maintained by Mathias Bynens that show you all sorts of Terminal Commands on the Mac to customize the Mac. It is a great resource. The Github page is incredibly in-depth. There are all sorts of commands you which allows you to make all sorts of changes to the OSX and Apple programs on the Macintosh. For a power user of the Mac this is an amazing resource.
Here are some that caught my eye as being really useful:
# Disable hibernation (speeds up entering sleep mode)
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0
# Set Desktop as the default location for new Finder windows
# For other paths, use `PfLo` and `file:///full/path/here/`
defaults write com.apple.finder NewWindowTarget -string "PfDe"
defaults write com.apple.finder NewWindowTargetPath -string "file://${HOME}/Desktop/"
Check out the CultofMac site and the Github site for more information. Really helpful.
I don’t think it’s hyperbole to argue that the Mac probably wouldn’t have survived without Office, and possibly without a good version of Office. And in 1997 Apple wouldn’t have survived if the Mac platform hadn’t made a resurgence. Apple’s own iWork suite — Pages, Numbers, Keynote — didn’t ship until 2005. Microsoft Office singlehandedly kept the Mac as a credible platform for classic productivity apps for 8 years.
I disagree with John Gruber that Microsoft Office was key to keeping Apple alive in the late 1990s. Definitely Microsoft investing in Apple having Office programs on the Macintosh helped Apple. But the thing is Microsoft Office, particular Microsoft Word on the Mac sucked compared to Microsoft Office and Microsoft Word on Windows back then. Among other things, if you used Microsoft Word on the Mac and then sent the file to your Windows computer, there were problems with the compatible format. I hardly ever used the Office program on the Mac because I was worried that the Word file would screw up the format when I opened it on Windows.
For decades I have been using Windows at work (for my day job) and at home using a Macintosh. And only in the last 10 years or so has using Microsoft Word on Mac worked well with Microsoft Word on a Windows computer. Back in the late 1990s people who really wanted to use Microsoft Office were definitely getting a Windows computer. No one in enterprise was using a Mac back then if they were mainly using the Microsoft Office. People were getting the Mac because they were enthusiastic about it or because they were working on media, like with video or photos or web etc. For me, I knew that Office sucked on the Mac for many many years. Microsoft Office was so bad on the Mac for so many years that most people wanted to use a virtual computer on their Mac to run Windows and Windows Office. That is how bad Office on the Mac was.
Now the Office Program on the Mac is much better. But I would say that is during the past 10 years. And it is certainly much better on iOS and on the iPad.
Along with being a big fan of Apple, I am a fan of MacStories.Net and Federico Viticci who founded that Apple-centric website from Italy and his writing. What caught my eye recently was a great review of the PCalc App’s update (version 3.8) to take advantage of the APIs that Apple recently in IOS 12 regarding Siri Shortcuts. Federico really praised how PCalc integrated setting up Siri Shortcuts in the app and he said it was a great model for other apps. Federico also gave an example about how cool the automation will be in iOS 12 with the Siri Shortcuts and the Shortcut app that Apple released. You can read Federico’s article here. One of the things Federico highlighted was the the PCalc app now allows you to create Siri Shortcuts using the clipboard in iOS as an input. And he gave an example where PCalc can convert currency to another currency using input from copying a number to the clipboard. He then explained that after you create some Siri Shortcuts for PCalc, you can then see those Shortcuts in the Shortcut App that Apple created and then you could chain together the shortcuts and name the combination for a shortcuts for that combination. Basically, the idea is that you can pick a number for the currency you want to convert, and then it will convert it to various currency using the Shortcut App and the Shortcuts that are in PCalc that you created. So I tried doing that but I ran into a problem. When I used the Shortcut App and selected PCalc Shortcuts, the problem was that once it converted one number, it than put the answer in the clipboard, and so the next conversion, rather than using the original number in the clipboard used the new number in the the clipboard. For example, I experimented with converting Euro’s to British Pounds and also to the U.S. Dollar. The input was 100 Euros. It converted to Pounds correctly, 88.88 Pounds, but then used that number to convert to dollars, instead of 100 Euros. So on Twitter I reached out for assistance from Federico and the developer of PCalc, James Thomson, was kind enough to respond also. Here is what he said. So James Thomson confirmed that the way PCalc works is that the output is added to the clipboard. Referring to features in the Shortcuts App, Mr. Thomson suggested the following that could be a possible fix. Well with that solution, I found a workaround. And while I used the clipboard, I also added a feature where the Shortcut prompts me to fill in a number for the Euro, and then it first tells me that the first conversion number was an English Pound, and then when I was ready give me the Pound conversion number, and then tells me the next conversion is the U.S. Dollar, and the answer for the conversion to the Dollar, and then tell me the next conversion was the Chinese Yuan, and then the conversion answer. In the Shortcut App here is how I did it. First, I used the scripting function “Ask for Input” where I set the question for the prompt to be “Enter Euro.” That prompts an input and I set the value to “number” as I want a number, the value of the Euro I want to convert. Then I add the script “Get Variable” and I set the “Magic Variable” to the “Ask the for Input.” This grabs the input and then passes on that variable to the next step, the script “Copy to Clipboard.” The number I input becomes a variable which was then pasted into the Clipboard. Because when I first did this the output was just a number without a label, I inserted a script to first label what the next number that was shown would be. So I installed a script “Show Result” and typed in Pounds. This shows the word “Pound” before the conversion number is revealed. The next step was that I added the Siri Shortcut I created in PCalc, which take the variable I added to the clipboard and converting the Euro number to the Pound number. I repeated these 5 steps for the conversion to Dollars and Yuan. So all together 15 steps. The trick is because each time, the “Get Variable” is set to “Ask for Input” and then pastes into the clipboard, the clipboard for the subsequent conversions is not the output from PCalc’s prior conversion, but instead the original input that I typed in. That way, for example, if I convert 100 Euros, each conversion uses my original 100 Euro input. Here is a video showing how it works. ScreenRecording_09-17-2018 20-24-45.m4v I agree with Federico that PCalc’s implementation of Siri Shortcuts is really great. You should check out Macstories.net and PCalc.
