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Apple’s Workaround for the ITC’s Import Ban on Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2: Disabling the Blood-Oxygen Sensor in Software ★

Scharon Harding, reporting for Ars Technica:

Apple has developed a backup plan for if the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 are import banned again. As it currently appeals the US International Trade Commission’s (ITC’s) ruling that its watches violate a patent owned by Masimo, Apple has come up with a software workaround that strips its current smartwatches of their controversial blood oxygen monitoring capabilities.

That’s a good summary of Apple’s workaround from a writer who understands what she’s talking about. Apple will disable blood-oxygen monitoring via software.

Compare and contrast with Aaron Tilley’s report for The Wall Street Journal, under the jacktastically-wrong headline “Apple to Remove Blood-Oxygen Sensor From Watch to Avoid U.S. Ban” (News+ link):

Apple is removing a blood-oxygen sensor from some of its smartwatches to get around a patent dispute related to the technology, a step likely to avoid further sales disruptions but one that may raise questions about the company’s push into health. [...]

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, which is responsible for enforcing import bans, on Friday approved technical changes to the watches, including the removal of the blood-oxygen sensor, according to a Masimo filing on Monday. A decision on Apple’s request for a permanent stay on the U.S. ban during its appeal is expected in the coming days.

Ars includes a link to Masimo’s filing; the WSJ does not. Needless to say, Masimo’s filing does not say that Apple is removing the blood-oxygen sensor from these watches, because they’re not. They’re just disabling the sensors via software for watches sold in the U.S. — the only country where the import ban applies.

This is no little mistake on Tilley’s and the Journal’s part. Disabling a feature via software is one thing, and not that big a deal. Designing, engineering, and manufacturing entirely different hardware models without the physical sensors would be extraordinary. That’s just not how Apple works — they’re not set up to change manufacturing like that. Plus, if Apple merely disables the sensor via software, they can re-enable it via a software update in the future, once the dispute is settled. If they were to start selling Series 9 and Ultra 2 watches that didn’t have the sensor, those watches would never gain the functionality, even after the dispute is settled.

Aaron Tilley isn’t just a tech reporter for the Journal: his entire beat is covering Apple. And he seemingly has no idea how the company functions, because if he did, he’d have quadruple checked this “they’re removing the sensors” take before publishing it. But here it is a day after publication and his report has yet to be corrected. Pure jackassery.

Post-SCOTUS Ruling, Apple Releases Guidelines for ‘External Purchase Links’ in iOS Apps (Spoiler: They Still Demand the Same Commissions) ★

Apple Developer News:

In addition to using Apple’s convenient, safe, and secure in-app purchase system, apps on the App Store in the United States that offer in-app purchases can also use the StoreKit External Purchase Link Entitlement (US) to include a link to the developer’s website that informs users of other ways to purchase digital goods or services. To use the entitlement, you’ll need to submit a request, enable the entitlement in Xcode, and use required StoreKit APIs. Apple will review your app to ensure it complies with the terms and conditions of the entitlement, as well as the App Store Review Guidelines and the Apple Developer Program License Agreement. [...]

Your app must offer in-app purchases in accordance with the Developer Program License Agreement and App Store Review Guidelines, and may not discourage end-users from making in-app purchases.

Apple clearly had these updated guidelines ready to go, pending this week’s decision from the U.S. Supreme Court rejecting the remaining petitions from Apple and Epic.

Scroll down the page, then scroll some more, and you’ll get to the section on “Commission, transaction reports, and payments”:

Apple is charging a commission on digital purchases initiated within seven days from link out, as described below. This will not capture all transactions that Apple has facilitated through the App Store, but is a reasonable means to account for the substantial value Apple provides developers, including in facilitating linked transactions.

Apple’s commission will be 27% on proceeds you earn from sales (“transactions“) to the user for digital goods or services on your website after a link out (i.e., they tap “Continue” on the system disclosure sheet), provided that the sale was initiated within seven days and the digital goods or services can be used in an app. This includes (a) any applicable taxes and (b) any adjustments for refunds, reversals and chargebacks. For auto-renewing subscriptions, (i) a sale initiated, including with a free trial or offer, within seven days after a link out is a transaction; and (ii) each subsequent auto-renewal after the subscription is initiated is also a transaction.]

If you’re a participant in the Small Business Program, or if the transaction is an auto-renewal in the second year or later of an auto-renewing subscription, the commission will be 12%.

These commission rates apply to all amounts paid by each user net of transaction taxes charged by you. You will be responsible for the collection and remittance of any applicable taxes for sales processed by a third-party payment provider.

If you adopt this entitlement, you will be required to provide transaction reports within 15 calendar days following the end of each calendar month. Even if there were no transactions, you’re required to provide a report stating that is the case.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again now, and I’m sure I’ll have to say it again in the future: Apple’s 30/15 percent commissions from App Store purchases and subscriptions are not payment processing fees. They include payment processing fees, but most of those commissions are, in Apple’s view, their way of monetizing their intellectual property. And they see the entire iOS platform as their IP.

So developers who want to process payments on their own websites are still on the hook to pay Apple the same effective commissions, minus only 3 percent for the actual payment processing. And the truth is most of the time credit card processing costs more than 3 percent overall, after chargebacks and fraud are taken into consideration. Do more work and save no money — sounds appealing, no?

See also: MacRumors has PDF copies of Apple’s “notice of compliance” filing, and App Store VP Matthew Fischer’s declaration of compliance, both submitted to Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.

Disney Has a Good Disney+ App for VisionOS (and, by the Way, I Got Another 30-Minute Hands-On Experience With Vision Pro) ★

Disney:

At launch, viewers can transform their space into one of four Disney+ environments, bringing them even closer to the story. Each environment includes animations and sounds that make the space feel alive, and Easter eggs from films and franchises that will surprise and delight fans.

Available only on Apple Vision Pro, Disney+ subscribers will be able to stream the entire catalog — including thousands of TV shows and films, plus access to Hulu content for eligible Disney Bundle subscribers — from iconic environments with vivid details, including: the Disney+ Theater, inspired by the historic El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood; the Scare Floor from Pixar’s Monsters Inc.; Marvel’s Avengers Tower overlooking downtown Manhattan; and the cockpit of Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder facing a binary sunset on the planet Tatooine from the Star Wars galaxy.

I got to try this during another hands-on Vision Pro demo in New York today. (Follow those links to Mastodon and Threads, where I’ve tried to answer every question asked by my followers.)

It’s 100 percent a gimmick, but it’s a really good fun whimsical gimmick, and the detail is extraordinary. It looks like you are there on Tony Stark’s helipad penthouse deck, with a towering view of Manhattan in front of you, and Stark’s apartment behind you. These are 360° environments. The Tatooine view in the landspeeder is right outside Mos Eisley, at dusk.

Does it make the movie you’re watching any better to see it while sitting in an immersive fantasy environment? No, of course not. But it’s a lot of fun, because it’s so intricately detailed and well-done. Did the Mac OS X Aqua user interface make Mac users more productive? Did the original iPhone work better because its interface looked so damn cool? No. But those UIs sure did make Mac OS X and the original iPhone more fun.

I don’t know why people lose sight of the fact that having fun is one of the very best parts of being a human. The Disney+ app for VisionOS is fun.

Tim Sweeney on the SCOTUS Ruling ★

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney:

The Supreme Court denied both sides’ appeals of the Epic v. Apple antitrust case. The court battle to open iOS to competing stores and payments is lost in the United States. A sad outcome for all developers.

Now the District Court’s injunction against Apple’s anti-steering rule is in effect, and developers can include in their apps “buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms, in addition to IAP”.

As of today, developers can begin exercising their court-established right to tell US customers about better prices on the web.

It’s sad for Epic, perhaps, and game developers in general, but I think overall this is a good day for developers, and a great day for users. In-app game purchases are already too predatory, as things stand — they’d get far worse if games on iOS were free to circumvent Apple’s system. If a developer wants users to sign up and pay on their website, they can now tell them so, in plain language, in the app.

The truth should never be against the rules. If you need to pay/subscribe on the app’s website, the app should be able to tell you that you need to pay/subscribe on their website.

Supreme Court Rejects Petitions in Epic v. Apple Antitrust Case, Largely a Win for Apple ★

Adi Robertson, reporting for The Verge:

The Supreme Court has denied a request to hear an antitrust dispute between Apple and Fortnite publisher Epic Games. It rejected two petitions, one from each company, this morning — leaving the case largely, but not entirely, a win for Apple. [...]

Even so, both rulings found that Apple had acted anticompetitively by barring developers from telling users about other payment methods. Apple was ordered to let them allow links and other “calls to action” that would bypass Apple’s payment system, discontinuing what are known as anti-steering policies. But the company spent years delaying parts of the change with legal appeals, winning a reprieve while the Supreme Court considered the case. Today’s denial seemingly runs out that clock, requiring Apple to reconsider the future of its anti-steering rules.

Apple’s intransigence on these anti-steering provisions has long baffled me. I’ve consistently argued that the rules should be simple: apps that want to accept in-app payments must use Apple’s IAP system, but apps should be free to inform users that they can sign up and pay on the web, outside the app. In-app: Apple’s platform, Apple’s payments system. Out-app: the open web, and apps should be able to steer customers there. If Apple’s in-app purchasing system is so easy to use, so reasonably priced for its benefits, and so trusted by users, it should be able to compete openly with the web. And I think Apple’s in-app payments do compare favorably to leaving an app to pay on the web, especially for games. But with true competition from web purchases that apps can steer users to, Apple’s commission rates, for apps other than games at least, would probably be lower. I’d argue that it’s unhealthy for a company to grow dependent on unnaturally high commissions protected by fiat policies, rather than set through open competition.

Perhaps Apple’s thinking was that they might as well try to hold the line on these anti-steering provisions for as long as they could, thinking that today’s outcome was the worst case scenario. But I think it’s been a bad look for the company for years, and invited additional regulatory scrutiny. Regardless of whether these anti-steering provisions are legally anticompetitive, they’re undeniably anticompetitive in the plain sense of the word. I genuinely believe the Supreme Court has done Apple a favor letting this ruling stand.

Apple Teases New Entertainment Experiences Launching With Vision Pro ★

Apple Newsroom, with some new content information for Vision Pro (finally):

With Apple Vision Pro, users can experience Apple Immersive Video, a remarkable new entertainment format pioneered by Apple. Apple Immersive Video features 180-degree 3D 8K recordings captured with Spatial Audio to transport viewers to the center of a place, moment, or story. At launch, users can enjoy a curated selection of immersive films and series on the Apple TV app at no additional cost.

That link has details about the debut titles:

• Alicia Keys: Rehearsal Room
• Adventure — adventure athletes in exotic locations
• Wild Life
• Prehistoric Planet Immersive — “Viewers will transport into the daily lives of dinosaurs, experiencing T-Rex teens crashing a quiet colony of pterosaurs on the beach until mama shows up to break up their party, and an intense battle between raptors and a pride of Triceratops in the forest.”

There’s only a handful of these new immersive experiences, but the main thrust of the Newsroom announcement is to emphasize that Vision Pro is a killer device for watching any movies or TV shows.

Monday, 15 January 2024

Hands-On at CES With the Clicks Keyboard Case for iPhone 15 Pro ★

Ben Schoon, writing for 9to5Mac:

For a case built for this express purpose, the keys are crucial to get right, and Clicks has nailed it, I think. The keys are rounded and have a bit of space in between each one, but the layout overall feels familiar and well done. The keyboard layout is also specifically designed to be really similar to the default iOS keyboard, which makes it feel all the more familiar.

Each key is also backlit and has an excellent tactile response. That’s the aspect I was most concerned about, and while some of the pre-production models were a little rough, the final version that I was able to test during my hands-on (not pictured) felt perfect. It was clicky and tactile without being loud or too hard to press. [...]

In my brief time using it, I’m very much of the opinion that Clicks is pretty much as good as this concept can be. It’s well-designed, comfortable to use, and hits all of the right notes.

Sunday, 14 January 2024

Meh ★

My thanks to Meh for sponsoring last week at DF. Meh is probably the best — and certainly the funnest — daily deal site on the web. Here’s their pitch, in their words:

You don’t want the daily deal at meh.com today.

At least, you probably don’t, statistically speaking. But you should go look. Because if you do want it, you really want it, at least for this price. And the cost of checking is, what, 15 seconds of your life?

So go to meh.com. Decide you don’t want what we’re selling. Go back tomorrow. That’s the whole game.

Yours Truly on the Techmeme Ride Home Podcast ★

Brian McCullough had me and Chris Messina on the weekend edition of the excellent Techmeme Ride Home podcast to talk about Vision Pro’s launch (and for me and Chris to argue about hashtags). Fun show. You can even watch on YouTube if that’s your thing.

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Saturday, 13 January 2024

CNN: ‘FAA Keeps Boeing’s 737 Max 9 Grounded as It Reviews Inspections and Data’ ★

Pete Muntean, reporting for CNN:

The Federal Aviation Administration said on Friday that after reviewing Boeing’s instructions for inspecting grounded 737 Max 9 planes, it has decided to seek more information before allowing the plan to proceed. In a statement, FAA also said it would keep the Boeing 737 Max 9 “grounded until extensive inspection and maintenance is conducted and data from inspections is reviewed.”

The announcement comes exactly one week after the dramatic in-flight incident on Alaska Airlines flight 1282, when a part called a door plug was blown off the side of the plane. [...] 171 of the planes remain grounded in the United States as airlines Alaska and United await updated emergency inspection guidance from the FAA.

The FAA, yesterday:

After taking decisive and immediate action to ground approximately 171 Boeing 737-9 MAX planes, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) today announced new and significant actions to immediately increase its oversight of Boeing production and manufacturing. These actions come one day after the FAA formally notified Boeing that the FAA has launched an investigation into the company as a result of last Friday’s incident on a Boeing Model 737-9 MAX in which the aircraft lost a passenger door plug while in flight.

Something has gone deeply wrong at Boeing, a once-great company. This is exactly the sort of situation where government regulators are needed: for issues pertaining to safety.

The Mom and Son Sitting in Front of the Blown Out Window on Alaska Flight 1282 ★

Dominic Gates, reporting for The Seattle Times last week:

When the Boeing 737 MAX 9’s side blew out explosively on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 Friday evening, a 15-year-old high school student was in the window seat in the row directly ahead, his shoulder beside the edge of the gaping hole.

His mother, who was seated beside him, in the middle seat of row 25, described the moment as a very loud bang, like “a bomb exploding.”

As the air in the passenger cabin rushed out, the Oregon woman turned and saw her son’s seat twisting backward toward the hole, his seat headrest ripped off and sucked into the void, her son’s arms jerked upward.

“He and his seat were pulled back and towards the exterior of the plane in the direction of the hole,” she said. “I reached over and grabbed his body and pulled him towards me over the armrest.”

The boy had been wearing a T-shirt and a V-neck pullover windbreaker. Both were ripped off his body. “I could see his back,” Faye said. “My mind just assumed his shirt had been pulled up by me grabbing him. I did not know that it had been torn off. It didn’t even occur to me.”

A harrowing story. If his shirt and pullover were pulled off his body, and his seatbelt headrest sucked through the void, it sure sounds like he was nearly sucked out of the plane. Terrific reporting by Gates, too — the mother’s name is not publicly known, and she was initially resistant to tell her story to the press. She changed her mind only after Alaska Airlines put forth a version of events that made the incident seem far more tame than it clearly was. Good infographics, too.

Unmentioned in the story is whether the passengers near the door plug were wearing their seatbelts. I suspect they all were, perhaps luckily, because the plane had only just taken off and was still ascending to cruise altitude. In years past I’d often leave my seatbelt unbuckled mid-flight, other than when the pilot turned on the mandatory seatbelt light, but a few bouts of out-of-nowhere turbulence over the years changed my mind on that. Never in a million years would I have considered a scenario like this one.

Friday, 12 January 2024

Artifact Is Shutting Down After One Year ★

Kevin Systrom:

We’ve made the decision to wind down operations of the Artifact app. We launched a year ago and since then we’ve been working tirelessly to build a great product. We have built something that a core group of users love, but we have concluded that the market opportunity isn’t big enough to warrant continued investment in this way. It’s easy for startups to ignore this reality, but often making the tough call earlier is better for everyone involved. The biggest opportunity cost is time working on newer, bigger and better things that have the ability to reach many millions of people. I am personally excited to continue building new things, though only time will tell what that might be. We live in an exciting time where artificial intelligence is changing just about everything we touch, and the opportunities for new ideas seem limitless.

I am particularly proud of all the work our small team of 8 has accomplished. For instance, our app was recently named the everyday essential app of the year by the Google Play Store.

Winning an award on Android is a little like winning the Canadian Football League title. Artifact had great potential — no surprise given its pedigree: Systrom and Mike Krieger are hall of famers for Instagram — but never became a top-tier iOS app.

When it debuted a year ago, I called it a disappointment:

It’s just ads ads ads, interrupting seemingly every single article, every couple of paragraphs. This same “man, I miss ad blockers” feeling strikes me when I use Apple News too, but Apple News articles have way fewer ads, and better ads, than what I’m seeing so far in articles I read in Artifact. “Like Apple News but worse” is not a good elevator pitch. [...]

Instagram was an instant sensation because it was obviously such a premium experience. Great photos, with cool filters (which filters were necessary to make phone camera pictures look great a decade ago), a simple social concept, all wrapped in a great app. Artifact does feel like a nice app, but the reading experience, at least today, is anything but premium. It feels cheap. And the social aspect isn’t there yet.

I stuck with it all year, but have used it less than ever in recent months. In the first half of 2023, Artifact’s suggestions were improving steadily for me, but in recent months the quality of the suggestions dropped off a cliff for me. Lots of clickbait.

They added the social component, with the ability to post articles and add comments, but those features didn’t make the overall product any better. And while the core reading experience improved, it never improved to the point where it was as good as reading in Safari. Their refusal to focus on providing first and foremost a premium reading experience is exemplified by their own blog post announcing their shutdown. It looks like this on MacOS, and this on iOS. You literally can’t even read the first sentence of the article on the iPhone until you click the little box to dismiss Medium’s dickbox.

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Friday, 12 January 2024

Lineup Changes on Apple’s Board of Directors: Al Gore and James Bell Retire; Wanda Austin Joins ★

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced Dr. Wanda Austin, former president and CEO of The Aerospace Corporation, has been nominated for election to Apple’s board of directors. Dr. Austin brings decades of science and technology experience to her role, and she has a significant track record of advancing innovation and shaping corporate strategy.

As president and CEO of The Aerospace Corporation, Dr. Austin led an organization dedicated to supporting the U.S. space program and expanding opportunities for future exploration. She was the first woman and the first African American to hold the position. [...]

The board has a longstanding policy that directors generally may not stand for reelection after reaching age 75. As a result, Al Gore, who has served since 2003, and James Bell, who joined in 2015, will both retire from Apple’s board this year.

“We’re deeply grateful to Al and James for their many years of service to Apple — their insights, energy, and values have made us a stronger company in so many ways,” said Cook. “For more than 20 years, Al has contributed an incredible amount to our work — from his unconditional support for protecting our users’ privacy, to his incomparable knowledge of environment and climate issues.”

I strongly suspect that even if Gore had never joined the board, Apple would be a staunchly environmentally-minded company today, but surely Gore pushed them hard in that direction. And I think he was instrumental in Apple’s hiring of Lisa Jackson.

Thursday, 11 January 2024

From the DF Archive: Are There Any Tetris Games for Mac? ★

My recent spate of Tetris-related links got me thinking again about this post from 2018:

So as far as I can tell, not only is there no official Tetris for Mac, there are no Tetris-like games either. Back in the 90s, there were several really good Tetris games for the Mac. Anyone remember Wesleyan Tetris? It was a goofy version in which the developer, Randall Cook, would rudely critique your gameplay.

If The Tetris Company wants to protect the name “Tetris”, fine, but I think it sucks that there’s no good way to play the game on a Mac today. Every computer should have a good version of Tetris.

Not much has changed from 2018. There is an officially licensed game in the Mac App Store now: Tetris Beat. It’s part of Apple Arcade, so most of you can probably download it and play it. It’s not just plain Tetris — and whatever it is that it wants to be, it sucks. It doesn’t even let you customize the controls. It occupies 2.3 GB on disk after installation. For Tetris! Jiminy. Niklaus Wirth would be rolling over in his (fresh) grave if you told him a Tetris game took 2.3 GB on disk and made the fans get loud on an Apple silicon MacBook Pro when you play it.

The best options for just playing Tetris on a Mac are web games: Tetr.io and Jstris. (I presume both websites are hosted in countries outside the reach of litigious The Tetris Company.) Tetr.io offers “desktop” versions, but their Mac app is an Intel-only Electron app that instantly made the fans on my MacBook Pro veritably roar. It’s far better playing online in Safari, but Tetr.io is geared toward Tetris fanatics, not casual play. Jstris is simpler, but fundamentally exists as a platform for competitive online play. (Go to Play → Practice to just play single player.)

What a sad state of affairs. A hearty fuck you to The Tetris Company for ruthlessly shutting down hobbyist clones while refusing to license a decent official just-plain-Tetris Mac app.

Update: Hard to believe I didn’t come across this on my own, but it turns out The Tetris Company has a decent simple Tetris game on their own website.

Niklaus Wirth: ‘A Plea for Lean Software’ ★

From an essay Niklaus Wirth published in IEEE’s “Computer” magazine in 1995 (original PDF), some lessons learned in the development of Wirth’s Oberon system:

• The belief that complex systems require armies of designers and programmers is wrong. A system that is not understood in its entirety, or at least to significant degree of detail by a single individual, should probably not be built.

• Communication problems grow as the size of the design team grows. Whether they are obvious or not, when communication problems predominate, the team and the project are both in deep trouble.

• Reducing complexity and size must be the goal in every step — in system specification, design, and in detailed programming. A programmer’s competence should be judged by the ability to find simple solutions, certainly not by productivity measured in “number of lines ejected per day.” Prolific programmers contribute to certain disaster.

• Programs should be written and polished until they acquire publication quality. It is infinitely more demanding to design a publishable program than one that “runs.” Programs should be written for human readers as well as for computers. If this notion contradicts certain vested interests in the commercial world, it should at least find no resistance in academia.

Fruit Stripe Gum Discontinued ★

Emily Schmall, reporting for The New York Times:

Fruit Stripe, the striped chewing gum known for its short burst of flavor, has been discontinued after more than a half-century, inspiring nostalgic tributes across social media.

“Best two seconds of flavor you’ve ever had,” one Reddit user wrote on Wednesday. “R.I.P. to a legend.”

Rainbow-colored packs of Fruit Stripe gum first appeared in stores in the United States in the late 1960s. Ferrara, a confectioner based in Chicago, said this week that it had stopped making the product.

There were two kinds of Fruit Stripe: chewing gum and bubble gum. I could never decide which was better, so, of course, I always bought a pack of each. (Juicy Fruit, of course, is the superior fruit-flavored stick-shaped chewing gum.)

‘Trump Has Taken Presidential Immunity to Its Illogical Extreme’ ★

David A. Graham, writing at The Atlantic:

In a hearing before the D.C. Circuit Court, the former president’s lawyers argued that he should be immune from criminal prosecution for his role in the attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election. This argument has an obvious flaw: It implies that the president is above the law. Such a blunt rejection of the Constitution and the basic concept of American democracy is too much even for Trump to assert — publicly, at least — so his lawyers have proposed a theory. They say that he can’t be criminally prosecuted unless he is first impeached and convicted by Congress.

This argument is no less dangerous, as a hypothetical asked in court demonstrated in chilling terms. Judge Florence Pan asked Trump’s attorney, D. John Sauer, if “a president who ordered SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival” could be criminally prosecuted. Sauer tried to hem and haw his way through an answer but ultimately stated that such a president couldn’t be prosecuted unless he was first impeached, convicted, and removed by Congress.

“But if he weren’t, there would be no criminal prosecution, no criminal liability for that?” Pan pressed. Sauer had no choice but to agree, because acknowledging any exceptions would have blown a hole in his argument.

The most forgiving take on this argument is that Trump’s legal team doesn’t mean it, and they’re merely stalling for time — throwing as much shit as possible up against the appeals court walls, hoping to delay his umpteen trials until after his possible reelection in a year. But Trump himself clearly means it. (Barry Blitt’s cover illustration for The New Yorker this week is sublime.)

The best refutation of Trump’s argument that presidents are above the law, and accountable only to Congressional impeachment, comes from Representative Jamie Raskin, who points to the glaring game theory hole in this absurd argument: if it were true, the president could order the assassination of any congressperson who threatened to impeach or convict him. As Raskin concluded, “This is the GOP 2024.”

NanoRaptor’s Apple Pascal Poster Recreation ★

NanoRaptor:

For Niklaus Wirth, 1934-2024.

Apple’s classic Pascal poster, remade as a nice clean vector image. Print at any size with the PDF link.

Just beautiful.

Niklaus Wirth, Titan of Computer Science and Creator of Pascal, Dies at 89 ★

Liam Proven, in a nice obituary in The Register:

Swiss computer scientist Professor Niklaus Wirth died on New Year’s Day, roughly six weeks before what would have been his 90th birthday.

Wirth is justly celebrated as the creator of the Pascal programming language, but that was only one step in a series of important languages and research projects. Both asteroid 21655 and a law of computer design are named after him. He won computer-science boffinry’s highest possible gong, the Turing Award, in 1984, and that page has some short English-language clips from a 2018 interview. [...]

As described in C H Lindsey’s History of ALGOL-68 [PDF], when the ALGOL-W proposal was rejected, Wirth resigned from the committee, contributing a strong “Closing Word” to the November 1968 Algol Bulletin 29, containing gems such as:

I pulled out my copy of the draft report on ALGOL-68 and showed it to her. She fainted.

Instead, Wirth took his proposal, changed it to be somewhat less compatible with ALGOL, and released it in 1970 under the name Pascal.

Wirth’s Law encapsulates Wirth’s philosophy: “The hope is that the progress in hardware will cure all software ills. However, a critical observer may observe that software manages to outgrow hardware in size and sluggishness.” Or, as he rephrased it in his paper describing Project Oberon: “In spite of great leaps forward, hardware is becoming faster more slowly than software is becoming slower.” In many ways, this remains the fundamental problem of our entire industry. It’s a truism, and can only be mitigated.

He endorsed simplicity and clarity, and his languages and system designs exemplified those ideals. Studying computer science in the early to mid-1990s, I was among the last to learn Pascal as a teaching language. After outgrowing BASIC, I had actually started learning Pascal my senior year in high school, in a class with just two other students — thanks, Mrs. Spatz — and it was that class that made me want to study computer science in college.

And Pascal was to the original Macintosh what Objective-C was to Mac OS X — the language Apple established as the default for writing application software. Most of the apps that established the Macintosh as the platform for people with good taste in the 1980s and early 1990s were written in Pascal. THINK Pascal was an IDE years — maybe over a decade — ahead of its time. (There were good Pascal systems on the PC side of the fence too.)

Wednesday, 10 January 2024

13-Year-Old Prodigy Willis ‘Blue Scuti’ Gibson Is First to Beat NES Tetris ★

Jason Koebler, writing for 404 Media:

A 13-year-old competitive Tetris player has become the first known human to beat the game on the original NES by forcing it into a kill screen. In doing so, the player, Blue Scuti, broke world records for overall score, level achieved, and total numbers of lines in the 34-year-old game. Previously, only an AI had broken Tetris.

The feat took Blue Scuti about 38 minutes, as shown in a video he posted to his YouTube. As he nears the feat, Blue Scuti says “Oh I missed it,” after misplacing a block. He recovers, then says “Oh my God,” as it seems like he’ll be able to do it. “Please crash,” he says as the blocks careen down the screen impossibly fast. He gets another line and the game freezes: “Oh my God! Yes! I’m going to pass out,” he says. “I can’t feel my hands.”

From Sopan Deb’s story about Gibson for The New York Times:

Ms. Cox bought her son a version of a Nintendo console called a RetroN, which used the same hardware as the original Nintendo console, from a pawnshop, as well as an old cathode-ray tube television to help him get started. In a given week, Willis said, he plays about 20 hours of Tetris.

“I’m actually OK with it,” Ms. Cox, a high school math teacher, said. “He does other things outside of playing Tetris, so it really wasn’t that terribly difficult to say OK. It was harder to find an old CRT TV than it was to say, ‘Yeah, we can do this for a little bit.’”

Koebler’s story ends with a sad note: “Blue Scuti dedicated the game to his dad, Adam Gibson, who died in December.” My mom’s mother died when my mom was just 16, so I’m familiar, second-hand, with how devastating such a loss is. Young Gibson seems utterly delightful — a gracious champion — so we’d all be rooting for him anyway, but this adds a note of poignancy.

Recommended viewing: This 17-minute video from aGameScout is a wonderful, fun explanation of Gibson’s feat — it explains why NES Tetris was, for decades, thought to end at level 29; the new advanced controller techniques that allow elite players to blow past level 29; and suggests future accomplishments that remain unachieved.

Paku Paku — Pac-Man in One Dimension ★

More fun to play than you’d think. Via Andy Baio, who’s achieved a high score of 2,689 (!). I thought I did pretty well with a 167 288.

Update: My pal Michael Simmons scored 4,911 playing on his iPhone. Bastard. And, of course, some idle hands on Hacker News wrote a bot to play — just copy the JavaScript and paste it into your browser’s web inspector console. The bot just rang up a 46,372 for me. I love the web.

Tuesday, 9 January 2024

Humane Lays Off 4 Percent of Employees Before Releasing Its AI Pin ★

Alex Heath, reporting for The Verge:

Humane laid off 4 percent of employees this week in a move that was described as a cost cutting measure to those who were impacted, according to sources familiar with the matter. Employees were recently told by leadership that budgets would be lowered this year, said one of the people, who requested anonymity to speak without the company’s permission.

The cuts, which numbered 10 people, come ahead of the five-year-old startup shipping its first device: a $699, screenless, AI-powered pin that is pitched as a smartphone replacement.

In a text message, Bongiorno told me that the cuts were “not communicated as a layoff” to those who were impacted, despite sources telling me that they were — both verbally and in writing. “It goes without saying that, like every company, we have a responsibility to remain prudent and proactive, ensuring we have the right roles, right people, and the right structure at every juncture,” she said.

Layoffs are never good — and layoffs before shipping the company’s first product are a particularly bad look — but 10/250 employees really does sound more like belt-tightening. But I do not think their AI Pin preorder numbers have set the world afire, nor do I think the company’s investors are interested in funding them further. (Sam Altman, Humane’s largest shareholder, is reportedly working with Jony Ive and LoveFrom on “AI hardware”. To me, that’s far more of a warning sign about Humane than their laying off 10 employees.)

Hey Calendar App Is Now in the App Store ★

David Heinemeier Hansson:

I’ll admit it was a bit cheeky to make our new HEY Calendar app “do something” by including Apple’s own history as a preview for people who don’t have an account. And I didn’t give the gambit better than 30% odds of succeeding, but lo and behold, it did! Apple has approved our app, and it’s now available in the App Store!

Sanity prevails — but at least I got a good headline out of the story.

Passenger’s iPhone Survived, Intact, 16,000-Foot Fall From Alaska Airlines Plane ★

Sean Bates, on Twitter/X:

Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly in tact!

Not only was the phone still in working order — it was seemingly unscathed. It has a case and a screen protector, but landing on grass was surely a huge factor. Just amazing.

When I first saw this story, I was skeptical, wondering how Bates got past the lock screen. But the phone had no passcode, as Bates described in a follow-up video. I find that almost as crazy as the phone surviving a 16,000-foot drop, but I’d probably be shocked to know how many people rock the no-passcode lifestyle. I just don’t get it, given how Face ID makes it feel like you don’t have a passcode.

(Judging by this thread, it’s also apparently quite common for people to turn off Auto-Lock in Settings → Display & Brightness.)

Alaska and United Airlines Report Loose Parts in Boeing 737 Max 9 Door Panels ★

PBS News Hour:

Federal investigators say a door panel slid up before flying off an Alaska Airlines jetliner last week, and they are looking at whether four bolts that were supposed to help hold the panel in place might have been missing when the plane took off. The comments Monday from the National Transportation Safety Board came shortly after Alaska and United Airlines reported separately that they found loose parts in the panels — or door plugs — of some other Boeing 737 Max 9 jets.

“Since we began preliminary inspections on Saturday, we have found instances that appear to relate to installation issues in the door plug — for example, bolts that needed additional tightening,” Chicago-based United said.

Alaska said that as it began examining its Max 9s, “Initial reports from our technicians indicate some loose hardware was visible on some aircraft.”

This tidbit seems nutty to me:

The jet involved in Friday’s blowout is brand-new, having been put in service in November. After a cabin-pressurization system warning light came on during three flights, the airline stopped flying it over the Pacific to Hawaii. Some aviation experts questioned why Alaska continued using the plane on overland routes until it figured out what was causing the pressurization warnings.

Homendy said Monday, however, that NTSB has seen no evidence to link the warnings with the blowout of the door plug.

There may be no evidence yet, but what are the odds that a door plug that blew off a brand-new jet mid-flight — in a fleet of planes they’ve now discovered have loose bolts holding those doors in place — wasn’t to blame for the cabin-pressurization warnings? And, even if it’s true that the pressurization warnings were unrelated to last week’s incident, that’s even worse for Boeing — that would mean they have a problem with these door plugs and an as-yet undetermined other problem. I’m surprised that Boeing’s stock is only down ~8 percent.

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Monday, 8 January 2024

‘Get Ready’ ★

Apple’s first commercial for Vision Pro is (a) perfect, and (b) a splendid callback to the iPhone’s “Hello” ad. Not a bad list of movies to watch, either.

(I’d bet money that Joz — a Michigan nut — has it debuting during tonight’s college football championship.)

Fantastical ★

My thanks to Flexibits for sponsoring the previous two weeks at Daring Fireball. Fantastical isn’t just the best calendaring app for iOS and Mac; Cardhop isn’t just the best contacts app for iOS and Mac — these are two of the best apps in the world today, period.

And, lo, Fantastical is no longer just for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. From Apple’s Newsroom announcement about Vision Pro pre-orders and availability today:

An infinite canvas for productivity: With key productivity and collaboration apps like Fantastical, Freeform, JigSpace, apps from Microsoft 365, and Slack, Apple Vision Pro is an ideal productivity tool for everyday tasks.

I believe this means that Fantastical is the first third-party VisionOS app Apple has ever mentioned. Can’t wait to see it.

2023 was a huge year for Flexibits, and they have a terrific year-in-review blog post that runs down all the details. But the highlights are obvious: excellent support for widgets (on all platforms, including interactive widgets on the latest OSes) and Live Activities on iOS. They also added several improvements to their Openings feature that lets people find meeting times that work for everyone.

Flexibits has a killer offer for DF readers: 20 percent off for up to two full years, both for new and current Flexibits subscribers. I just used the code to renew my own annual subscription. Even if your subscription isn’t due for renewal yet, you can apply the code now. But act fast — the deal is only good through the end of day Tuesday.

The CEO of HyperVerse, a Collapsed Crypto Ponzi Scheme, Does Not Appear to Exist ★

Sarah Martin, reporting for The Guardian:

A man named Steven Reece Lewis was introduced as the chief executive officer of HyperVerse at an online global launch event in December 2021, with video messages of support from a clutch of celebrities released on Twitter the following month, including from the Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and actor Chuck Norris. [...]

Guardian Australia has confirmed that neither the University of Leeds nor the University of Cambridge has any record of someone by the name Steven Reece Lewis on their databases. No records exist of Steven Reece Lewis on the UK companies register, Companies House, or on the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Adobe, a publicly listed company since 1986, has no record of any acquisition of a company owned by a Steven Reece Lewis in any of its public SEC filings. It is understood that Goldman Sachs could find no record of Reece Lewis having worked for the company. Guardian Australia was unable to find a LinkedIn profile for Reece Lewis or any internet presence other than HyperVerse promotional material.

A man who doesn’t actually exist sounds like the perfect CEO for any cryptocurrency company.

Also: Looks like the Woz and Norris “endorsements” were scripts they were paid to read through Cameo.

Finally, Our First ‘Finally’ of the Year Nominee for 2024 ★

Apple, back at WWDC, announcing Vision Pro (italics added):

Apple Vision Pro starts at $3,499 (U.S.), and will be available early next year on apple.com and at Apple Store locations in the U.S., with more countries coming later next year.

Subhead at The Verge, today:

After previewing the VR headset in June 2023, Apple’s $3,499 Vision Pro is finally scheduled to go on sale

BBC News, too: “Apple Vision Pro: $3,499 Headset Finally Gets Release Date”.

The announcement dropped at 9:00 am ET on the first non-holiday Monday of the year.

Vision Pro Pre-Orders Start January 19 (Next Friday), Available Starting February 2 ★

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced Apple Vision Pro will be available beginning Friday, February 2, at all U.S. Apple Store locations and the U.S. Apple Store online. [...] An all-new App Store provides users with access to more than 1 million compatible apps across iOS and iPadOS, as well as new experiences that take advantage of the unique capabilities of Vision Pro. Pre-orders for Apple Vision Pro begin Friday, January 19, at 5 a.m. PST.

A hearty thanks from we East Coasters.

Pricing and Availability:

• Apple Vision Pro will be available starting at $3,499 (U.S.) with 256GB of storage. Pre-orders for Apple Vision Pro will begin on Friday, January 19, at 5 a.m. PST, with availability beginning Friday, February 2.

During the Vision Pro segment of The Talk Show Live From WWDC 2023, I started describing Vision Pro as “a product coming next year, or early next year, I forget which...”, and Greg Joswiak and Mike Rockwell, in unison, interrupted me to say “Early next year.” I then asked for further clarification on the definition of “early”, and laughter ensued — but Apple wasn’t kidding. This is pretty much as early as early could be in 2024.

• ZEISS Optical Inserts — Readers will be available for $99 (U.S.), and ZEISS Optical Inserts — Prescription will be available for $149 (U.S.).

It’s new territory for a device to cost more if you require corrective lenses, but it’s the nature of Vision Pro that it will not fit over glasses, so there’s no way around this. People accustomed to $10 readers from the drug store may be surprised at these prices, but these $100–150 seems fair for high-quality lenses. I suspect, though, that there will spring a cottage industry for lower-priced third-party lens inserts.

I still have questions about how buyers will provide their prescriptions to Apple. In most countries, people can just buy corrective glasses and contacts lenses without a prescription, but the U.S. — ostensibly the land of freedom — requires a doctor’s prescription. (Ophthalmologists have a strong lobbying group.)

• Apple Vision Pro comes with a Solo Knit Band and Dual Loop Band — giving users two options for the fit that works best for them. Apple Vision Pro also includes a Light Seal, two Light Seal Cushions, an Apple Vision Pro Cover for the front of the device, Polishing Cloth, Battery, USB-C Charge Cable, and USB-C Power Adapter.

Also unclear at the moment: How many different Light Seals are available? What app will online buyers use to scan their faces for sizing? How much will extra Light Seals (for additional users) cost?

And how much will the storage tiers above 256 GB cost? Here are Apple’s current price deltas from 256 GB for iPad Pro and iPhone 15 Pro:

	iPad Pro	iPhone 15 Pro
512 GB	$200	$200
1 TB	$600	$400
2 TB	$1,000	—

Saturday, 6 January 2024

President Biden in Valley Forge: ‘Democracy Is Still a Sacred Cause, and There’s No Country in the World Better Positioned to Lead the World Than America’ ★

Remarkable speech by President Biden, on the eve of the third anniversary of Trump’s Capitol insurrection:

Let’s be clear about the 2020 election. Trump exhausted every legal avenue available to him to overturn the election. Every one, but the legal path just took Trump back to the truth, that I’d won the election and he was a loser.

Well, so knowing how his mind works now, he had one, he had one act left. One desperate act available to him, the violence of January the sixth.

Since that day, more than 1,200 people have been charged with assault in the Capitol. Nearly 900 of them have been convicted or pled guilty. Collectively to date, they have been sentenced to more than 840 years in prison.

What’s Trump done? Instead of calling them criminals, he’s called these insurrectionists patriots. They’re patriots. And he promised to pardon them if he returns to office. Trump said that there was a lot of love on January the sixth.

The rest of the nation, including law enforcement, saw a lot of hate and violence.

The AP has a transcript, but I suggest watching it. Biden gets it. Democracy is our sacred cause. It’s that simple. Trump lost, and he tried his ham-fisted best to stay in office anyway. Quoting Biden: “We all know who Donald Trump is. The question we have to answer is: Who are we?”

Nancy Pelosi: ‘Three Years After January 6’ ★

Nancy Pelosi, writing in The Atlantic:

The threat to our democracy is real, present, and urgent. The parable of January 6 reminds us that our precious democratic institutions are only as strong as the courage and commitment of those entrusted with their care. We all share a responsibility to preserve American democracy, which Lincoln called “the last best hope of earth.”

Thursday, 4 January 2024

From the DF Archive: Mobile Phone Keyboards, Circa 2009 ★

Yours truly, back when the iPhone 3GS was new:

I think the question boils down to whether Apple is making a mistake by not making an iPhone with a hardware keyboard. I’m convinced the answer is no — that (a) there will never be an iPhone with a built-in hardware keyboard; and (b) Apple will not suffer for it. [...]

Are software touchscreen keyboards good for everyone? Certainly not. But this is another aspect of the Apple Way. Apple tries to make things that many people love, not things that all people like. The key is that they’re not afraid of the staunch criticism, and often outright derision, that comes with breaking conventions.

Holds up. In 2023 it seems wild that Apple’s all-in bet on touchscreen keyboards for iPhones was controversial at all, let alone the subject of vociferous debate for years.

Ryan Seacrest Tried Making an iPhone Hardware Keyboard Case 10 Years Ago ★

If the aforelinked new Clicks keyboard case for iPhones rings a bell, here’s Jon Fingas reporting for Engadget 10 years ago:

The market for keyboard-equipped phones may be on the wane, but don’t tell that to Ryan Seacrest — the American Idol host is convinced that messaging mavens need real buttons. To that end, he’s jumping into hardware and launching the Typo Keyboard for the iPhone 5 and 5S. The Bluetooth case turns an Apple handset into a makeshift BlackBerry Q10, complete with backlit, sculpted keys that cover up the iPhone’s home button (there’s a small substitute key); we hope you don’t need multitasking, folks. The Typo Keyboard will make its formal debut at CES in early January, and it should ship that month for $99.

The Typo keyboard was doomed in more ways than one: it used unreliable battery-draining Bluetooth, not a wired connection; iOS didn’t have good hardware keyboard support at the time; and, as Fingas alludes in his description above, the Typo keyboard’s design covered the iPhone’s home button. That was pretty much a dealbreaker for the iPhone 5S, which introduced Touch ID.

Even worse, the shell of the company that was once the mighty BlackBerry sued Typo for patent infringement, won, and eventually drove Typo out of business. (Kudos to NBC News for that “Seacrest Out” headline.)

Clicks: New Hardware Keyboard for iPhone ★

I never even owned a smartphone with a hardware keyboard, but as soon as I saw this I wanted one: Clicks is a new $139 hardware keyboard case for the iPhone 14 Pro, 15 Pro, and 15 Pro Max (that one will cost $159 — Max phones have max prices). One of the creators of the project is Michael “MrMobile” Fisher, who, of course, created a YouTube video for the project. (One of his co-creators is CrackBerry Kevin — so there are some serious “hardware phone keyboard aficionado” bona fides on the team.)

I don’t know how much I’ll wind up using it but it looks fun, useful, and clever — and I’m just a sucker for upstart indie hardware projects. Clicks is even a great name. There’s no Bluetooth involved — it connects via Lightning or USB-C, just like any hardware keyboard can via a cable. If you’ve never connected a hardware keyboard to an iPhone before, you might be surprised how many keyboard shortcuts there are (Command-Space for Spotlight, Space and Shift-Space for paging down and up in Safari, Command-H to go to the Home screen, and more.)

You’ll never guess which color I pre-ordered.

The Talk Show: ‘Halos and Harps’ ★

Apple’s 2023 year in review, with Callsheet developer Casey Liss.

Sponsored by:

• Memberful: Monetize your passion with membership. Start your free trial today.
• Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code talkshow for 10% off your first order.

‘Like I Said Many Years Ago, I Never Had a Problem With Drugs, Only With Cops.’ ★

I stumbled across an old note where I’d stashed some favorite quotes from Keith Richards; figured I’d append a few of them to my post from a few weeks ago on his 80th birthday.

Wednesday, 3 January 2024

Tip of the Day: Finding Unknown ‘Items’ in Your iCloud Photo Library ★

For at least a few years, I’ve been mildly annoyed by the fact that my iCloud Photo Library reported containing something like “50,783 Photos, 3,643 Videos, 2 Items”. The counts for photos and videos weren’t the problem — the problem was the “2 Items”. What were they?

Caleb Hailey had the same problem, and posted a super-simple solution to Mastodon: a custom smart album for Photos for Mac with a dozen or so criteria like this:

• Filename does not include “.jpeg”
• Filename does not include “.png”
• Filename does not include “.heic”

and so forth. A few minutes of busy work and I found my culprits: two AAC audio files that were each just a few seconds long, and seemingly empty. I have no idea how or when they got into my Photos library but I’m delighted to have them gone.

Worth pointing out: You don’t need to build up a list of every single filename extension that’s an image or video that you do want to keep in Photos. Once I built up a list of excluded filename extensions that whittled the list of matching items to 32, I just went through the items visually. The two AAC files stuck out like sore thumbs.

Also worth pointing out: You cannot create smart albums in Photos on iPadOS or iOS. Only MacOS. (Same thing goes for smart mailboxes in Apple Mail.) Apple still treats the iPad and iPhone as baby computers.

See also: A similar problem I had back in 2016, in which I had five unnamed items in my Photos library that could not be synced to iCloud. The solution to that one was also a smart album — and thus also a problem that could only be solved using a Mac.

Sunday, 31 December 2023

Fantastical ★

My thanks to Flexibits for sponsoring last week — and, spoiler, next week — at Daring Fireball. Fantastical isn’t just the best calendaring app for iOS and Mac; Cardhop isn’t just the best contacts app for iOS and Mac — these are two of the best apps in the world today, period.

2023 was a huge year for Flexibits, and they have a terrific year-in-review blog post that runs down all the details. But the highlights are obvious: excellent support for widgets (on all platforms, including interactive widgets on the latest OSes) and Live Activities on iOS. They also added several improvements to their Openings feature that lets people find meeting times that work for everyone.

Through the end of next week, Flexibits has a killer offer for DF readers: 20 percent off for up to two full years, both for new and current Flexibits subscribers.

Friday, 29 December 2023

‘Poor Charlie’s Almanack’ (and the Tragic State of E-Books) ★

When Charlie Munger — Warren Buffet’s longtime partner at Berkshire Hathaway — died last month at 99, I mentioned that a new edition of Poor Charlie’s Almanack was about to be published by Stripe Press (a subsidiary of the very same Stripe of e-payments renown).

The hardcover edition is out, but Stripe has also made the entire book available on this marvelous website. The site is beautiful, fun, and clever, and reminds me greatly of the web edition of The Steve Jobs Archive’s Make Something Wonderful. Both are damning condemnations of the state of e-books.

Regarding Make Something Wonderful, Sebastiaan de With wrote:

It’s hard to capture the delight of a real book, but this website does a fantastic job coming close. Lots of delightful, thoughtful little details.

I say “ebook” because it isn’t a word used anywhere on the website, likely for good reason: there are no good ebooks. The ePub file lacks all the delight of the beautiful website. Books on Apple Books are objectively worse than their written counterparts. This might be nicer.

Kindle editions are even more primitive, design-wise. Compare the Kindle preview of Poor Charlie’s Almanack to the website edition. It’s like comparing a matchbook to a blowtorch. With the e-book editions — Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, whatever — you can merely read these books. With the web editions, you experience them.

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