The end of the year is near and comes with a host of articles looking back at both the year that was in Apple news and the year that will be. And who am I to look for such a trend?
2022 may have been dominated more than anything else by economic challenges for Apple, including global supply chain disruption, ongoing pandemic issues and, of course, inflation. . But despite what market watchers charmingly call “headwinds,” the company persevered and delivered another impressive slate of products, with the financial performance to back it up.
As for the major changes the company itself has made in 2022, they might not always be obvious at first glance. You can’t always tie these decisions directly to Apple’s continued success. These are more often the kind of small moves that lead to big changes later down the road.
Security and Prosperity
Over the past decade, Apple has increasingly positioned itself as a bastion of privacy and security in a digital world that increasingly wants your information. And while the company may rightly lay claim to this mantle, its often direct promotion of this facet has left it ripe for the skewer when its march hasn’t lived up to its rhetoric. The company has certainly taken up residence this year – increased App Store ads on the one hand, lingering questions about iOS data leaks on the other – but it’s hard to say the he company has not doubled its efforts to improve the security of its devices.
Apple
Last week we saw the start of the rollout of Advanced data protection, which finally gives users the ability to encrypt their iCloud backups, closing a loophole that allowed access to data (such as cloud-based iMessage) that would otherwise be considered end-to-end encrypted. But that’s just the crowning glory of a handful of the company’s other major security improvements. This fall, iOS 16 and macOS Ventura rolled out support for access keysa technology that Apple (and other technology companies) hope to supplant the password. The company has also introduced a Lock Mode which aims to protect the platform’s most targeted users by disabling certain features that could be exploited by high-level attackers.
Security is a game of cat and mouse; there’s no resting on your laurels, as those looking to find vulnerabilities certainly aren’t. But Apple’s overall security push this year goes a long way to ensuring the company delivers on the advertising promise that what happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone.
Spread it around
There’s probably no bigger story in the world of Apple this year than the company’s supply chain. While it may not be a hot topic, the infrastructure used to build and ship the company’s products is absolutely critical to its success. And with the continued COVID lockdowns in China, the pressure on Apple to Start expanding where critical components are built and its products assembled has only increased.
The process of building infrastructure is slow and incremental, but it’s clear from Apple’s decisions this year that it’s serious business. TSMC’s new semiconductor plant in Arizona is just one example: while it won’t supply a significant chunk of processors for Apple products in the near term, it’s a concrete step toward reducing dependency to a single region (and, in the case of its semiconductor production, a single country).
Similarly, Apple has started looking to countries like Vietnam and India to build some of its products: mostly for smaller volume items like the iPhone SE and AirPods at the moment, but it’s difficult not to see these products as trial balloons for larger infrastructure investments. .in the future.
Manufacturing is one place where Apple’s legendary penchant for control actually opened up trouble for them: its connections in China gave it so much ability to dictate exactly how its products were built that it was willing to ignore the risk of putting so many eggs in one basket. But as they say, the best time to diversify your manufacturing outside of China was yesterday, the next best time is today.
Attack of the Big Mac
Last year I dubbed Apple’s most exciting Mac product line-no small feat for a device whose 40th anniversary is not far away. 2022 has done nothing to dissuade me from this trend: although it doesn’t provide the huge chunk of Apple’s revenue that the iPhone does, the Mac has continued to grow this year, buoyed by several versions of important products.
The Mac Studio’s appearance this spring came as a surprise even to many Apple watchers, but the impressive performance and expandability it brought was enough to satisfy all but the most demanding users. (And, in retrospect, it was also right to troubleshoot them since the promised silicon Apple Mac Pro still hasn’t appeared.) The June announcement of the M2 MacBook Air also showed that Apple was committed to doing advance its development of internal processors. . , although the aforementioned COVID lockdowns appear to have prevented it from upgrading other models in quick succession. And with the Studio Display, the company has finally answered the hopes of many Mac users who yearned for a quality display to accompany their computer, without the price tag of the Pro Display XDR. All of this shows a big investment from Apple in the Mac lineup, with the promise of more to come.
Apple launched a redesigned MacBook Air that helped drive the company’s momentum with its Macs.
IDG
Even though Apple It missed the promised date for the transition of the entire Mac line to Apple silicon in two years, well, that’s only a tiny bit, with the Mac Pro and Mac mini Intel the only legacy products left. But complaints about the overdue deadline have been rare, a testament to the overall success of the product line.
The next twelve
And that’s 2022 in a nutshell. Of course, more has happened in the world of Apple: increased scrutiny from regulators around the world, forcing the company to start considering changes to its business models, has closely followed the Apple Watch Ultra, which gave this wearable line a much-needed boost, and there was ultimately a price hike for Apple’s services as revenue growth in this category began to slow.
The next 12 months are likely to be no less eventful, which means a lot to look forward to. Next week, I’ll detail three things to watch as we flip the calendar back to 2023.
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