Yours Truly Is Featured In the 2024 Six Colors Apple Report Card, Talking Accessibility

Jason Snell at Six Colors posted his annual Apple Report Card earlier this week. It’s a big deal because not only have I written for him once, but I’ve been participating as a years-long panelist tasked with grading Apple in the annual Apple Report Card. This year’s edition is a milestone, as it’s the series’ 10th anniversary, and I’m honored to have been part of it for much of its existence. For the uninitiated, Snell describes the Report Card as a way in which to “get a broad sense of sentiment—the ‘vibe in the room’—regarding the past year” of Apple from what he called a “hand-selected group” of people who follow the company extremely closely. There’s even a nerdy but cool data visualization of the results from this year’s survey.

Of course, my contribution to the Report Card is Apple’s performance on accessibility. What follows are my verbatim responses on the company’s progress spanning a slew of categories.

On the Mac. “I feel like the Mac is firing on all cylinders right now, thanks in large part to Apple silicon. While my daily driver machine is a 2019 Retina 4K iMac on Intel—I do have an M2 MacBook Air as well—the value proposition is off the charts, seeing it still going strong nearly 6 years after I bought it.”

On the iPhone. “The iPhone impresses every year in my eyes. I upgrade it every year not merely for journalism’s sake but because it’s my most important and oft-used computer.”

On the iPad. “I was gifted a 13″ M4 iPad Pro (with Magic Keyboard) for my birthday in September. The hardware, most especially the OLED display, is stunning. As to software, although iPadOS does exactly what I need it to do, there’s no question the pace of improvement needs to pick up.”

On Wearables. “Apple Watch, AirPods, and Vision Pro all are winners in general. The new Apple Watch’s bigger screen in a lightweight package is lovely, especially after wearing an Ultra for 2 years solely for its big screen. Vision Pro is the most accessible content consumption device I’ve ever used, but it is heavy, and the app story for streaming TV and movies feels thin other than TV+ and Disney+.”

On Home. “As an Apple user, I love the idea of HomeKit. The smart home makes tasks like turning lights on and off more accessible. What frustrates me, however, is its unreliability. I see ‘No Response’ statuses way more often than I’d like, and it sullies the overall experience.”

On Apple TV. “The Apple TV box is laughably over-engineered for what it mainly does: stream content. I appreciate the horsepower, to be sure, but the point stands. Software-wise, I’m still holding my breath for tvOS to have its iOS 7 moment. The grid of icons UI is good in some ways, but on a screen as large as a television’s, there is a lot of untapped potential. Widgets, etc.”

On Services. “I wish Apple would revisit the Apple TV branding to make it clearer. There’s the box and the streaming service, but I’d bet most people associate ‘Apple TV’ with TV+ instead of the box. The TV app adds more complexity and confusion in terms of naming.”

On World Impact. “From an accessibility standpoint, the AirPods Pro hearing aid feature has to exemplify Apple’s ethos of making the world a better place. It isn’t perfect, but the salient point is it’s tremendously significant the functionality exists at all. And it doesn’t take into account the continued work Apple did in 2024 to make its devices more accessible to the disability community. As I always say, Apple deserves more laudation in this realm than ‘gee whiz.’”