Top 5 of 2020
What. A. Year. In every sense, 2020 was without equal. It was a monumental year for Apple not just for what it released but also for their handling and retooling of the company's core processes and operations. It was also a year when nearly every taken-for-granted habit and routine were suddenly upended and where my delight in new Apple products was juxtaposed against the challenges of a global pandemic.
But while anxiously awaiting better days in 2021, I wanted to pay tribute to 2020 by reflecting on the top five (with a few honourable mentions) Apple "things" that stood out in this miserable year.
#1. M1 Macs & the Transition to Apple Silicon
There is something deliciously satisfying about seeing these former Mac flyweights outperform current $3,000 Intel MacBook Pros.
For at least the past half-decade, there have been rumours and debate swirling around whether Apple would ever transition its Mac line to ARM. We saw how ARM matured on the iPhone & iPad, but then we started to see Apple's A-Series chips surpass Intel's Mac offerings year-over-year. In these last couple of years, the question had shifted from "if Apple will transition…" to "when Apple will transition to ARM-based processors for the Mac?"
After a myriad of "are we there yet?" rumours, Apple finally announced the transition at this year's virtual WWDC event, stating that by the end of 2020, customers would see the first Macs using Apple's silicon! Details were scant, but by just tossing the iPad's A12Z processor inside the Mac mini developer kits, the results were impressive.
While we were primed for improvements in battery life and performance, I don't think anyone expected how significant these shifts would be. When the M1 MacBook Air, Pro, and Mac mini were announced in November, Apple touted double the battery life and 3.5-5x faster performance. These new Macs weren't just fast; they were stupid fast! One of my favourite pleasures following their release was watching reviewers become stupefied by the performance of these next-generation Macs. These are folks who live & breathe tech, and even their brains had growing pains adjusting to what they were seeing from these M1 Macs. With the shift to in-house silicon, Apple has flipped the PC world on its head by offering a device that defied the conventional tradeoffs of what we've come to expect from a computer.
#2. Apple’s COVID Response
You’re not trippin’, Apple & Google actually buddied to help tackle COVID-19.
Following Apple's COVID response in 2020 has been a remarkable, layered, and still unfolding event, deserving an entry in its own right. As the pandemic began to spread globally, Apple reinvented and rejigged many of its approaches and processes while developing technologies in the fight against COVID-19. In the end, the pressures of 2020 resulted in innovations that I am sure would not have occurred had the situation not demanded it.
Perhaps most notably, the Google & Apple collaboration developed a background exposure notification API that to date has been used by dozens of countries and installed on millions of devices to support COVID-19 contact tracing efforts. The COVID pandemic also forced Apple to take on a new approach to retail. First, there was the blunt closure of nearly all of Apple's retail stores in February & early March, followed by the gradual reopening of stores worldwide starting in April and unfolding to this day. During this time, Apple adjusted up its retail strategy, offering new services options including curb-side, storefront, appointment-only, and most recently, Apple Express, to help keep stores open and minimizing risk to customers and staff.
The full story of Apple's COVID response has countless more threads. Amid the pandemic, Apple retooled their product lines to create PPE face-shields when they were in desperately short supply, tasked their product teams to develop brand new face masks for employees, deferred Apple Card payments for over half a year to help those struggling financially, and released mobile trends and added COVID testing location data to Maps. I appreciated the stewardship Apple has taken this year in balancing their product interests while also supporting the fight to respond to COVID-19.
#3. Audio - HomePod mini & AirPods Max
One’s $99 while the other costs $549, but both are nearly impossible to find this holiday season!
I don't instantly associate Apple with music, but when I take a step back, I'm always struck by deep their inroads into music and sound production have gone. Of course, there's were the iPod & the iTunes music store, those iconic white earbud, their Beats acquisition, and then Apple Music.
But in recent years, Apple has also been tweaking and refining their computation audio technologies in a slow creep towards some remarkable sounding devices, all without a lot of fanfare. Think what you must about the HomePod, but the thing sounds amazing, and the fact that it can hear me whisper "hey Siri" across my kitchen while rattling my house at full volume astounds me every time. Then there is the fact that we've begun to take for granted how good the MacBook, iPad, and iPhone speakers sound, entirely sailing past the reality that so many laptops & tablets sound like muffled shit.
Their wireless headphones and mics are now some of the best in the business. Not only does their entire line of AirPods sound great, but technologies like transparency mode & noise cancellation see huge advancement with each new product release. And their pairing process and integration into the rest of Apple's ecosystem are second-to-none.
This year, Apple advanced their presence in the audio sphere with the HomePod mini, a $99 instant slam-dunk smart speaker that strikes the perfect balance of sound, size, and price; and the $549 AirPods Max released late in 2020. These two products widen Apple's net: first, by giving people access to a more affordable Siri/Apple Music-based smart speaker; and second: giving Apple's most conspicuous shoppers a stunning looking set of headphones with fantastic audio quality & highly-praised noise-cancelling and spatial audio technologies. People will gripe about the price, but I don't know of another product that offers this compliment of looks, brains, and sound quality in a single package.
#4. Apple’s Virtual Events
Apple held a virtual WWDC keynote & developer seminars this year, and followed that up with three more online presentations in the fall of 2020.
If an in-person WWDC is never announced, does that mean it was never cancelled? Earlier this year, there was a lot of uncertainty around whether Apple would host a worldwide developers conference amid a worldwide pandemic. Obviously, travel and public gatherings were out of the question, so then how do you effectively disseminate all these tentpole announcements that will outline Apple's software roadmap for the next 12-months?!
First, start with one of the most stunning studios Apple had at their disposal: the whole of Apple Park. Next, add a fast-and-fluid pace, a ton of cinematic polish, and just a pinch of Federighi moxie (to make it just a bit spicy), and you get one of the most engaging two-hour WWDC presentations Apple has ever had. I needed to watch the event a second time to retain everything they announced since I missed it the first time on account of the presentation's wow-factor.
In the months that followed, Apple would host three more events in the space of 56 days, each with highly polished & engaging videos to announce their new products, and with views of Apple Park that our prying, public eyes would otherwise never get to see. The dilemma for Apple heading into 2021 and beyond is whether they’ve painted themselves into a corner due to the calibre of these events and how they will respond once in-person events are a thing again.
#5. iPhone 12
This year’s iPhone 12 lineup is giving off some strong iPod nano vibes.
When Apple introduced the plastic iPhone 5c alongside the iPhone 5s, I couldn't help think the 'c' stood for 'cheap' (that might explain why it didn't sell that well). And over the past couple of years, Apple has begun experimenting with multiple iPhone tiers debuting each year. Alongside the OLED iPhone XS was the iPhone XR (what did the 'R' stand for?), and finally, in 2019, Apple dropped the suffix by introducing the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro. This naming convention seemed to suggest the iPhone 11 was the regular iPhone, and if you wanted something a little more premium, you could move up to the iPhone 11 Pro. While this classification convention made sense, confusion came about because the iPhone 11 was bigger than the 11 Pro but was still rocking the older LED screens, leaving the iPhone 11 feeling more dated than the 11 Pro felt pro.
With the iPhone 12, Apple dispersed any confusion about what iPhone most people should get: if you're upgrading, get the 12. It featured an OLED display, and many of the sought after features that in previous years might inch someone towards the Pro. The default now becomes the 12, and upgrading beyond that requires considering how the Pro’s improvements over the 12 match your use-case.
Honourable Mention
iPad Magic Keyboard: If I had made an Apple Top 6, this would've made the list. Amid an ominous & uncertain month, Apple decided to completely overhaul cursor support on the iPad with iOS 13.4 and introduce the Magic Keyboard with scissor keys (YAAS!) and a mini trackpad. With cursor support, rather than a copy-and-paste job for how a cursor operates on the Mac, Apple discarded any previous conventions and went back to the drawing board to rethink precisely how a cursor was on a touch platform should function. This accessory has broadened my use of the iPad Pro even further and has made extended writing & editing sessions a joy (or at least as joyous as editing can be).
Ted Lasso: Ted Lasso takes top spot as my favourite show of 2020. Ted Lasso features a brilliant, heartwarming story filled with intelligent comedy and oozing with charm. It sets a high bar for the type of quality original programming that I hope to see more of from TV+.
Death of Butterfly: When Apple refreshed the MacBook Air & 13" Pros in the spring of 2020, it also did away with the last remnants of the butterfly keyboard that has been in Apple's product line since 2015. It took half a decade to get rid of it, but it's finally gone, and the world is a better place for it! Like a bad relationship, I had somehow convinced myself that it really wasn't "that bad." After having the keys fail on my MacBook earlier this fall, turning me towards using the iPad Pros Magic Keyboard more, I came to my senses and realized how wrong I had been all this time!
iPhone SE: Apple delivered a fantastic offering with its second-generation iPhone SE. Featuring their (at the time) latest A13 chip and dropping the cost to $399, Apple introduced a very compelling phone that will easily last most users 3-5 years before they'll want to consider replacing it.
iPhone 12 mini: The adorableness of this full-featured iPhone 12 is essentially how the 12 mini snuck its way into the honourable mentions list.
Apple Marina Bay Sands & Central World: Apple opened two of their most outstanding retail locations this year in Singapore & Thailand earlier this year. Marina Bay Sands is a giant sphere floating on water, while Central World is a giant Apple treehouse on steroids!
MagSafe Duo: I put the MagSafe Duo last on the honourable mentions so that you wouldn't think I was an unhinged idiot had you seen it earlier on and stop reading. Listen, I am not arguing it's anything like what AirPower promised to be, nor do I disagree that the price (& lack of charger) is abhorrent. All I'm saying is that after years and years of trying to get some sort of charging device out, Apple finally gave us their "less ambitious AirPower". Like the student who hands in an assignment three days late… at least we got something. Was it what we wanted? No. Was it what 2020 deserved? Absolutely.
