Andrew Aude, in Happier Times, Before Anyone Could Argue Apple Pay Was a Monopoly 

A DF reader with a better memory than mine thought Andrew Aude’s name rang a bell, and lo, I mentioned him once before, while he was still a student at Stanford in 2014. Aude cleverly figured out how the ultimately-doomed, but then-nascent CurrentC payments app worked while it was still in invitation-only testing.

iOS 17’s Creepy-Sounding ‘Discoverable by Others’ Journaling Setting Isn’t Actually Creepy 

Speaking of The Wall Street Journal and Apple’s new Journal app, Joanna Stern has a great column about a creepy-sounding Journal setting:

You can turn on Journaling Suggestions. This recommends topics to write about based on things your phone (but not Apple) knows about you — music you’ve listened to, people you’ve called or messaged, photos you’ve recently taken, places you’ve visited, etc. You decide if you want to turn this on. When you first launch the Journal app, it will prompt you to do that. Those suggestions aren’t ever shared with Apple.

Here’s where it gets weird. When you go into Settings → Privacy & Security → Journaling Suggestions, you’ll see that Discoverable by Others is enabled by default — even if you never turned on suggestions. Under the setting it says, “Allow others to detect you are nearby to help prioritize their suggestions.” [...]

A company spokeswoman said claims on social media that Apple is sharing your name and location with others are inaccurate. The phone can use Bluetooth to detect the number of devices nearby that are in your contacts. It doesn’t store which of these specific contacts were around but instead may use this as context to improve and prioritize journaling suggestions, the spokeswoman said.

Here’s an example provided by Apple: Say, you hosted a dinner party at your house, with friends who are in your contacts. The system might prioritize that in the suggestions, as it knows from the head count that there was something different about that event. It wasn’t just your average night at home with your family.

This is a fine feature, and I think it’s fine that it’s on by default. But the description of the feature in Settings is just atrocious. It sounds creepy as hell. I suspect this is one of those cases where everyone at Apple involved with the feature knew that everything related to the new Journal app and associated new journaling-prompt APIs is, in fact, extraordinarily private. Just like with Health data, everything is stored on-device, including the keys, and iCloud sync is E2EE. Even if faced with a law enforcement warrant, Apple has nothing to turn over related to Journal.

But most people don’t know this. And many people — quite reasonably! — are deeply suspicious that all big tech companies are spying on them and play loosey-goosey with anything related to privacy. To someone at Apple — especially those who work on Health and Journal stuff — it’s absurd to think that Apple would even consider adding a setting to iOS that makes you personally “discoverable” by anyone, friends and strangers alike, if you’re simply within Bluetooth range of their iPhone. Let alone make that setting on by default!

But that’s exactly what the description of this feature in Settings → Privacy & Security → Journaling Suggestions sounds like. When describing features like this, Apple needs to presume that the user is assuming the worst.

Apple Sues Former Employee for Leaking to Reporters From The Wall Street Journal and The Information 

Joe Rossignol, reporting for MacRumors:

Apple this month sued its former employee Andrew Aude in California state court, alleging that he breached the company’s confidentiality agreement and violated labor laws by leaking sensitive information to the media and employees at other tech companies. Apple has demanded a jury trial, and it is seeking damages in excess of $25,000. [...]

In April 2023, for example, Apple alleges that Aude leaked a list of finalized features for the iPhone’s Journal app to a journalist at The Wall Street Journal on a phone call. That same month, The Wall Street Journal’s Aaron Tilley published a report titled “Apple Plans iPhone Journaling App in Expansion of Health Initiatives.”

Using the encrypted messaging app Signal, Aude is said to have sent “over 1,400” messages to the same journalist, who Aude referred to as “Homeboy.” He is also accused of sending “over 10,000 text messages” to another journalist at the website The Information, and he allegedly traveled “across the continent” to meet with her.

10,000 text messages seems like ... a lot? Makes me wonder if there was a personal aspect to that relationship, beyond leaking. MacRumors has posted a copy of Apple’s lawsuit, which includes this gem:

Apple learned of Mr. Aude’s misconduct in the fall of 2023. When Apple met with him to discuss his improper disclosures, Mr. Aude promptly confirmed his guilt through his actions, if not his words. At the start of his November 7, 2023 interview, Mr. Aude repeatedly denied that he had leaked any information to anyone. He also claimed that he did not have his Apple-issued work iPhone with him. Feigning the need to visit the bathroom mid-interview, Mr. Aude then extracted his iPhone from his pocket during the break and permanently deleted significant amounts of evidence from his device. This included the Signal app, which memorialized his history of leaking information to “Homeboy” (and likely others) via encrypted communications.

Part of the evidence Aude left behind were screenshots he kept of otherwise secure messages:

In connection with one leak, Mr. Aude admitted that he violated his obligations to Apple so he could “kill” products and features with which he took issue. As his frequent Google searches, article shares, and screenshots saved to his Apple-issued work iPhone reveal, vanity and personal enjoyment of the media’s attention also played a significant role in his malfeasance. In Mr. Aude’s screenshot below memorializing his exchange with the WSJ journalist, Mr. Aude exclaimed that he could not “wait for chaos to break out” in reaction to a forthcoming article reflecting his leaked information.

Worth noting that Aaron “Homeboy” Tilley was a reporter for The Information until September 2019, when he left to join the WSJ. Anyway, I’m sure the WSJ will help Aude out with his legal bills.

‘2023 MLS Cup Highlights’: 5-Minute Apple Immversive Video for Vision Pro Debuts Tonight 

Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors:

Apple announced today that the first Apple Immersive Video documentary for Vision Pro, featuring highlights from last year’s MLS playoffs, will debut tonight (March 28) at 6 p.m. Pacific. [...]

I’m excited to see the finished product — all of Apple’s immersive videos have been pretty amazing — but I have to point out that this five-minute highlight packages is being released 110 days after last year’s MLS Cup Final. That’s not great turnaround time. If immersive video for sports is going to be a thing, turnaround is going to need to be a lot faster.

In addition to the four-month turnaround time, there’s also the fact that five minutes is pretty short. Perhaps the single most surprising aspect of Apple’s launch plan for Vision Pro is the relative dearth of original immersive content. It’s the most compelling experience with the product but there’s hardly any of it. I would have thought Apple would drop new immersive content at least a few times per month, if not weekly, but this MLS Cup highlight film is the first new one since launch.

Kara Swisher Interviews Margrethe Vestager 

Terrific interview; Kara Swisher is so damn good at this. I learned a lot. Vestager comes across as very likable and very sharp. I disagree with her on quite a bit, but I like her. The segment on Apple’s Core Technology Fee was particularly interesting. (I remain of the opinion that the CTF will stand, with only minor tweaks.)

(Vox Media’s CMS (seemingly?) makes it maddeningly impossible to link to a single podcast episode, so here are direct links for Apple Podcasts and Overcast.)

The Talk Show: ‘Less Space Than a Nomad? Lame’ 

Jason Snell returns to the show to talk about the DOJ’s antitrust lawsuit against Apple. And sports gambling.

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Canva Acquires Affinity 

Affinity — makers of a terrific suite of design apps — back in September 2022, when the now-aborted acquisition of Figma by Adobe was announced:

Ain’t nobody acquiring us 😎

Affinity CEO Ashley Hewson today:

I am thrilled to announce that Affinity is joining the Canva family.


The EU’s Share of Apple’s Global Revenue

A few readers have asked about my speculation that Apple, along with the other DMA-designated gatekeepers (none of which are European companies of course), might reasonably pull out of the relatively small EU market rather than risk facing disproportionately large fines from the European Commission. The DMA allows the EC to fine gatekeepers up to 10 percent of global revenue (which would hit a hardware-based company like Apple particularly hard) for a first offense, and up to 20 percent for subsequent fines. But the EU represents only 7 percent of Apple’s revenue. That figure comes from CFO Luca Maestri on Apple’s Q1 2024 analyst call:

Amit Daryanani, Evercore: Fair enough, and then as a follow up, you folks have implemented a fair bit of changes around the apps for in Europe post the DMA implementation there. Can you just touch on what are some of the key updates and then Luca, does NetApp at all, do you see it having any significant impact financially to your services or the broader Apple P&L statement.

[Remarks from Tim Cook omitted.]

Luca Maestri: Yes, and Amit, as Tim said, these are changes that we’re going to be implementing in March. A lot will depend on the choices that will be made. Just to keep it in context, the changes apply to the EU market, which represents roughly 7% of our global absolute revenue.

It’s unclear whether Maestri was saying that the EU accounts for 7 percent of Apple’s worldwide App Store revenue, or 7 percent of all revenue, but I suspect it doesn’t matter, and that both are around 7 percent. App Store revenue ought to be a good proxy for overall revenue — there’s no reason to think EU Apple users spend any less or any more in the App Store than users around the world.

There’s some “7 percent sounds way too low” confusion that stems from the fact that Apple, in its quarterly consolidated financial statements, breaks results into five geographic regions: Americas, Europe, Greater China, Japan, and “Rest of Asia Pacific”. “Europe” accounts for somewhere around 25 percent of Apple’s global revenue. That’s the number most people think about. But there are a significant number of high-GDP countries in Europe that aren’t in the EU — the UK (most famously), Russia, Turkey, Switzerland, Norway, and Ukraine. More importantly, Apple’s “Europe” includes the entire Middle East.

So EU member states account for only 25–30 percent of Apple’s revenue from “Europe”, and just 7 percent globally. 7 percent is significant, to be sure, and in addition to users, there are of course many iOS and Mac developers in EU countries. I really don’t know what Apple pulling out of the EU would even look like, but it would be ugly. Could they merely stop selling the iPhone there but continue selling other products? Would that create a massive gray market for iPhones imported from outside the EU? How would Apple deal with the hundreds of millions of existing iPhone owners in the EU? I have no idea. It would be a mess, to be sure, but the DMA has already made doing business in the EU a mess for Apple and the other designated gatekeepers. But one can make the case — as Eric Seufert has — that American companies have to at least consider the fact that doing business in the EU isn’t worth the risk of fines so vastly disproportionate to the revenue they generate in the EU.

And it’s not like the risk is merely a first-offense fine of up to 10 percent of annual global revenue and a single second fine of up to 20 percent — there’s no limit to how many times the EC can fine a gatekeeper for non-compliance with the DMA’s arbitrary and vague rules.

The EC just fined Apple $2 billion for violating article 102(a) of their rules on competition, for hindering Spotify (a European company — surely a coincidence) in the music streaming market. The entirety of article 102(a):

Any abuse by one or more undertakings of a dominant position within the internal market or in a substantial part of it shall be prohibited as incompatible with the internal market in so far as it may affect trade between Member States.

Such abuse may, in particular, consist in:

(a) directly or indirectly imposing unfair purchase or selling prices or other unfair trading conditions;

Where “unfair” is never defined. That’s as specific as the law gets. Note too that the base penalty for this infraction, per the EC’s 2006 guidelines, was €40 million, but the EC raised the fine by a factor of 45× to €1.8 billion because the guidelines aren’t binding:

In addition, the Commission decided to add to the basic amount of the fine an additional lump sum of €1.8 billion to ensure that the overall fine imposed on Apple is sufficiently deterrent. Such lump sum fine was necessary in this case because a significant part of the harm caused by the infringement consists of non-monetary harm, which cannot be properly accounted for under the revenue-based methodology as set out in the Commission’s 2006 Guidelines on Fines. In addition, the fine must be sufficient to deter Apple from repeating the present or a similar infringement; and to deter other companies of a similar size and with similar resources from committing the same or a similar infringement.

Judging from the EC’s actions and statements, there’s no reason to believe that the EC will not pursue maximum fines under the DMA.1 


  1. In addition to weighing revenue generated in the EU vs. the risk of fines of 10–20 percent of global revenue, the designated “gatekeepers” are already paying significant penalties in terms of engineering resources. Every software engineer working on features related to DMA compliance is an engineer not working on new features or improving existing features for the non-EU world. I suspect Apple is currently spending more than a commensurate-with-revenue 7 percent of engineering resources on DMA compliance features and APIs. ↩︎


WWDC 2024: June 10–14 

No changes to the format: online conference with in-person attendance for the Monday keynote:

WWDC24 will include an in-person experience on June 10 that will provide developers the opportunity to watch the keynote at Apple Park, meet with Apple team members, and take part in special activities. Space will be limited, and details on how to apply to attend can be found on the Apple Developer site and app.

Announced pretty much right on schedule too. 2020 was an unusual year, to say the least, but starting in 2021 the WWDC dates were announced March 30, April 5, March 29, and now March 26.

Update: Greg Joswiak on Twitter/X:

Mark your calendars for #WWDC24, June 10-14. It’s going to be Absolutely Incredible!

“Absolutely Incredible” with capital letters. No idea what that could mean. A true puzzle for the ages.


European Commission Opens DMA Non-Compliance Investigations Against Google, Apple, and Meta

[See update below, regarding the EC’s threats.]

European Commission press release today:

Today, the Commission has opened non-compliance investigations under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) into Alphabet’s rules on steering in Google Play and self-preferencing on Google Search, Apple’s rules on steering in the App Store and the choice screen for Safari and Meta’s “pay or consent model”.

The Commission suspects that the measures put in place by these gatekeepers fall short of effective compliance of their obligations under the DMA.

You could have set your watch by this announcement dropping the week after the EC held compliance “workshops”. There was no way any of these companies weren’t going to be “investigated” and I doubt there’s any way they won’t eventually get fined. Whether any of them will ever need to pay those fines, that I wouldn’t bet on.

Alphabet’s and Apple’s steering rules

The Commission has opened proceedings to assess whether the measures implemented by Alphabet and Apple in relation to their obligations pertaining to app stores are in breach of the DMA. Article 5(4) of the DMA requires gatekeepers to allow app developers to “steer” consumers to offers outside the gatekeepers’ app stores, free of charge.

The Commission is concerned that Alphabet’s and Apple’s measures may not be fully compliant as they impose various restrictions and limitations. These constrain, among other things, developers’ ability to freely communicate and promote offers and directly conclude contracts, including by imposing various charges.

The EC is edging closer and closer to saying that successful platforms have no right to monetize their IP on those platforms. That’s exactly what a lot of anti-capitalist critics of these companies have been rooting for, but it would be a radical step.

The Commission has opened proceedings against Alphabet, to determine whether Alphabet’s display of Google search results may lead to self-preferencing in relation to Google’s vertical search services (e.g., Google Shopping; Google Flights; Google Hotels) over similar rival services.

The Commission is concerned that Alphabet’s measures implemented to comply with the DMA may not ensure that third-party services featuring on Google’s search results page are treated in a fair and non-discriminatory manner in comparison with Alphabet’s own services, as required by Article 6(5) of the DMA.

Google is already sacrificing results quality, and promoting results from some low-quality comparison sites in the name of compliance. And I don’t even know why this announcement from the EC mentions Google Flights, given that Google has removed Google Flights results from web search results in the EU.

Apple’s compliance with user choice obligations

The Commission has opened proceedings against Apple regarding their measures to comply with obligations to (i) enable end users to easily uninstall any software applications on iOS, (ii) easily change default settings on iOS and (iii) prompt users with choice screens which must effectively and easily allow them to select an alternative default service, such as a browser or search engine on their iPhones.

Apple’s idea is that out of the box, an iPhone presents a complete experience. This keeps coming up, but it’s worth reiterating that there were no third-party apps at all for iPhone for the first year. “A widescreen iPod with touch controls; a revolutionary mobile phone; and a breakthrough Internet communications device.” Music, video, web browsing, email, maps, text messaging, contacts, calendar, and more. These apps aren’t just developed in vacuums and bundled together on a device. On iOS these apps are designed to work together, integrated into a holistic experience. You can — and zillions of iPhone owners do — choose to use alternative apps, but the core apps in iOS are not, as the EU would suggest, a collection of shovelware.

But most of the built-in apps in iOS can be removed from your iPhone the exact same way you delete apps from the App Store. There’s a handful that can’t, among them: Settings, Camera, Photos, App Store, Phone, Messages, and Safari. You can remove those apps from your Home Screen, but they remain in your App Library. If the EC is really going to investigate Apple over removing default apps, I presume they’re thinking that Safari, in particular, needs to be deletable, because making it un-deletable is a form of preferencing? It’s all guess work. I further suppose they might want the App Store app to be deletable, but that’s a problem because it’s through the App Store that a user can re-install built-in apps they’ve previously deleted.

The Commission is concerned that Apple’s measures, including the design of the web browser choice screen, may be preventing users from truly exercising their choice of services within the Apple ecosystem, in contravention of Article 6(3) of the DMA.

Here’s article 6(3) of the DMA, in its entirety:

The gatekeeper shall allow and technically enable end users to easily un-install any software applications on the operating system of the gatekeeper, without prejudice to the possibility for that gatekeeper to restrict such un-installation in relation to software applications that are essential for the functioning of the operating system or of the device and which cannot technically be offered on a standalone basis by third parties.

The gatekeeper shall allow and technically enable end users to easily change default settings on the operating system, virtual assistant and web browser of the gatekeeper that direct or steer end users to products or services provided by the gatekeeper. That includes prompting end users, at the moment of the end users’ first use of an online search engine, virtual assistant or web browser of the gatekeeper listed in the designation decision pursuant to Article 3(9), to choose, from a list of the main available service providers, the online search engine, virtual assistant or web browser to which the operating system of the gatekeeper directs or steers users by default, and the online search engine to which the virtual assistant and the web browser of the gatekeeper directs or steers users by default.

How this browser choice screen is non-compliant with the above article, I don’t know. And even in the announcement of their investigation, the EC doesn’t say. My best guess, having read Steven Troughton-Smith’s Whisper-generated transcript of last week’s Apple compliance “workshop”, is that the EC’s problem with Apple’s current browser choice screen is that the list of included web browsers in each EU member state is determined by which web browsers are most popular in each country — which in turn means the only browsers included are those which are already in Apple’s App Store. There’s no mechanism for a new browser that was never in the App Store to be included in the choice screen until a year after it becomes popular enough — via sideloading or distribution through alternative app marketplaces — to make the list. But DMA article 6(3) doesn’t actually say that. It just says the choice screens must include “a list of the main available service providers” — which is exactly what the iOS 17.4 browser choice screen does.

I’ll bet you, like me, took note of article 6(3)’s clauses regarding search engines and virtual assistants. Google Search is a designated “core platform service” and so Google, the gatekeeper that owns it, is obligated to include a choice screen for web search in Android. Apple is obligated to offer a choice screen for browsers, because Safari is a designated core platform service, but not for search, because Google Search is Google’s service, not Apple’s. But as far as I can see, there are no virtual assistants, on any gatekeeper’s platform, that have been designated core platform services, and so I don’t think either Google or Apple is obligated to provide a choice screen for them.

Update: Turns out Apple has already announced that it’s working to allow Safari to be completely uninstalled from iOS by the end of the year.

Back to today’s press release from the EC:

Meta’s “pay or consent” model

Finally, the Commission has opened proceedings against Meta to investigate whether the recently introduced “pay or consent” model for users in the EU complies with Article 5(2) of the DMA which requires gatekeepers to obtain consent from users when they intend to combine or cross-use their personal data across different core platform services.

The Commission is concerned that the binary choice imposed by Meta’s “pay or consent” model may not provide a real alternative in case users do not consent, thereby not achieving the objective of preventing the accumulation of personal data by gatekeepers.

I wrote about this last week — this is the argument that it’s insufficient for Meta to offer a fair price for a no-targeted-ads experience because the overwhelming majority of people will choose to use Meta’s platforms free-of-charge with targeted ads rather than pay. Nothing, seemingly, will do short of Meta offering its platforms both without charge and without targeted ads, even though non-targeted ads would, at best, generate only pennies on the dollar euro. Not only is the EC signaling that Meta isn’t allowed to set its own price for its own services — they’re seemingly arguing that Meta is obligated to provide its platforms effectively free-of-charge. That’s a radically anti-business stance for an ostensibly capitalist government body to take.


At the end of the EC’s press release come the threats. Quote from commissioner Thierry Breton:

“The Digital Markets Act became applicable on 7 March. We have been in discussions with gatekeepers for months to help them adapt, and we can already see changes happening on the market. But we are not convinced that the solutions by Alphabet, Apple and Meta respect their obligations for a fairer and more open digital space for European citizens and businesses. Should our investigation conclude that there is lack of full compliance with the DMA, gatekeepers could face heavy fines.”

First fine: up to 10 percent of the company’s global revenue. Subsequent fines: up to 20 percent. Not EU revenue, global revenue. This, from a bloc of countries that accounts for only 7 percent of Apple’s revenue. The EC clearly thinks these threats will get these “gatekeeping” companies to ask “How high?” when the EC demands they jump. (The DMA, of course, doesn’t specify how high they need to jump to comply.) Whereas the question they’re actually forcing these companies to ask is “Why are we doing business in the EU?” 


The Original Original ‘Apple Vision’ 

I thought going back to the 1990s was old, but here’s an Integer BASIC graphics and sound demo from 1978 named “Apple-Vision”. (Thanks to DF reader James Mitchell.)

Data Suggests Twitter/X Is Bleeding Users 

David Ingram, reporting for NBC News:

Data from two research firms and figures published by Musk and X suggest a deteriorating situation for X by some metrics. Musk has marketed it as the world’s “town square,” but in number of users it continues to lag far behind social media rivals that focus on video, such as Instagram and TikTok.

In February, X had 27 million daily active users of its mobile app in the U.S., down 18% from a year earlier, according to Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm based in San Francisco. The U.S. user base has been flat or down every month since November 2022, the first full month of Musk’s owning the app, and in total it’s down 23% since then, Sensor Tower said.

You know I’m skeptical regarding Sensor Tower’s data, but if they’re measuring all social network mobile app use the same way, it seems like a fair comparison against other social networks. And it jibes with my personal anecdata.

‘How Comics Were Made: A Visual History of Printing Cartoons’ 

Glenn Fleishman:

If you love newspaper comic strips, you will love my new book How Comics Were Made: A Visual History from the Drawing Board to the Printed Page. I’ve combined years of research and the diligent collection of unique comics printing artifacts with dozens of interviews with cartoonists, historians, and production people to tell the story of how a comic starts with an artist’s hand, and makes it way through transformations into print and, more recently, onto a digital screen. I need your help to make it happen!

The book will be a glorious full-color celebration of the art form, heavily illustrated from the 1890s to the present day with materials that you’ve never seen before, drawn from my personal collection and museums, cartoonists and their estates, and institutions around the United States. It will also feature never-before-published strips and versions of some popular comics.

I’m a sucker for labor-of-love books, and remain fascinated by the history of printing technology. So of course I’m backing Fleishman’s Kickstarter campaign. But I’ll bet a lot of you might share the same interest. Here’s a brief taste: “The Week in Doonesbury That Wasn’t” on YouTube.

The campaign is just over 75 percent funded with three days to go.

The Original ‘AppleVision’ Lineup 

I quipped in my post linking to Apple’s updated style guide that if Vision Pro had been a product from the 1990s, Apple might have named it “AppleVision”. Turns out Apple did make products under that name — a short-lived line of CRT displays. From a little birdie who worked on them:

It was an ill-fated (and largely disgraced) line of CRTs with automatic color calibration built-in. [...] The on-screen brightness and volume controls that still grace macOS today are there largely because of the AppleVision product, though an earlier form of them showed up on a 14” CRT just prior. Also, DigitalColor Meter (now styled as “Digital Color Meter”) came out of that software effort as well.

But the AppleVision displays were, despite a huge amount of innovation, extremely unreliable. It was the first time Apple had attempted to build a multiscan CRT on their own, and it turns out that multiscan CRTs are really, really hard to get right. Apple took a large (for the time, in the mid 90s) financial hit on the AppleVision 1710 and 1710av, in particular. The name was eventually abandoned as it had been tarnished beyond usefulness.

‘Harrison Bergeron’ 

The overriding gist of the DOJ’s lawsuit against Apple brought to mind, for DF reader E.G., Kurt Vonnegut’s dystopian short story Harrison Bergeron. Despite being an enormous Vonnegut fan, I couldn’t recall reading it before. It’s so apt. As E.G. quipped in his email to me, “Only in making all products, services, and experiences equally bad, will we have equality and fairness.”

There are a couple of plain text versions of the story on the web, but none that do justice to the story typographically. So, channeling my inner Dean Allen, I typeset one. Curl up with it on your iPad — or, dare I suggest, go old-school and print it out.

Update: “Harrison Bergeron” is included in Vonnegut’s short story collection Welcome to the Monkey House, available from Amazon, Bookshop, and Apple Books (which includes it in its free preview).

Digital Wallets and Per-Merchant Card Numbers 

Matt Birchler, writing at Birchtree:

It’s notable that it’s called a DPAN and not “the Apple Pay number” — it’s a generic term, and that’s because this is a standard feature of digital wallets everywhere, not just Apple Pay. Google Pay and Samsung Pay are the biggest other digital wallets in the U.S. and they both do exactly the same thing. While it’s not technically using a DPAN since the payment runs through different companies, Amazon Pay and Shop Pay buttons also obscure the actual FPAN (full card number) from merchants.

I feel like this comes up a lot, but I can not stress enough to you how little merchants want to ever ever ever handle your actual credit card number. It adds so much risk on their end and modern payment acceptance tools make it easy to collect payment details in a way that makes sure as few people as possible have access to the real card info.

Gruber mentions banks absolutely not wanting to use DPANs themselves, but we actually don’t need to speculate about this, we have this info already. Numerous banks from Walls Fargo to Chase to Bank of America have (or had) digital wallets, all of which used DPANs to protect your plain text account number. Paze is what a few big U.S. banks use today and it of course uses DPANs as well. In fact the top reason they give for why you should use Paze is, “Paze does not share your actual card number with the merchant.”

The Exception That Proves the Rule: HP Sold PCs With iTunes Pre-Installed in 2004 

Apple press release from January 2004:

Working to provide consumers with the most compelling digital content whenever and wherever they desire, HP and Apple today announced a strategic alliance to deliver an HP-branded digital music player based on Apple’s iPod, the number one digital music player in the world, and Apple’s award-winning iTunes digital music jukebox and pioneering online music store to HP’s customers.

As part of the alliance, HP consumer PCs and notebooks will come preinstalled with Apple’s iTunes jukebox software and an easy-reference desktop icon to point consumers directly to the iTunes Music Store, ensuring a simple, seamless music experience. This offering is yet another way that HP is helping consumers enjoy more from their personal digital entertainment content.

My point stands that iTunes on Windows was successful largely from users who installed it themselves, but it’s worth a correction to point out that it was pre-installed on HP PCs for a while, and at the time HP was the second-biggest PC maker. Hard to believe I forgot this, because the most remarkable part of the deal wasn’t that HP pre-installed iTunes, but that Apple granted HP a license to sell HP-branded iPods.

WorkOS 

My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring last week at DF. WorkOS is a modern identity and user management platform that enables B2B SaaS companies to accelerate enterprise adoption. Free up to 1 million MAUs, WorkOS brings a modular approach to B2B Auth with enterprise-ready features like SSO, SCIM, and User Management.

The APIs are flexible and easy to use, designed to provide an effortless experience from your first user all the way through your largest enterprise customer.

Today, hundreds of high-growth scale-ups are already powered by WorkOS, including ones you probably know, like Vercel, Webflow, and Loom.

Seven Years of Institutional Anti-‘Big-Tech’ Bias at The New York Times Might Lead to Cognitive Dissonance 

Brian X. Chen — the “Tech Fix” columnist for The New York Times who is so unenthused about tech products that he advised readers to “just use flash” rather than upgrade their phone if their low-light photos look bad — in a column on Roku’s recent licensing shenanigans:

Roku’s no-good month stirred discussions in online forums about what it means when a company can essentially deactivate the device you paid for. That’s similar to how companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft can decide to stop issuing software updates for older devices, which gradually degrades their performance.

That’s just stated as fact. But here’s Chen back in 2017, in a column headlined “A New Phone Comes Out. Yours Slows Down. A Conspiracy? No.”:

The phenomenon of perceived slowdowns is so widespread that many believe tech companies intentionally cripple smartphones and computers to ensure that people buy new ones every few years. Conspiracy theorists call it planned obsolescence.

That’s a myth. While slowdowns happen, they take place for a far less nefarious reason. That reason is a software upgrade.

So getting software updates was the cause for slowdowns in 2017, but not getting software updates is now the cause in 2024. Got it.

New Humane Demo Video: ‘What Is Ai Pin?’ 

Humane is getting closer to shipping, and better at making videos. One clever trick each presenter in this new video does is continue talking to the audience while waiting for responses from the Ai Pin (which, it seems, can take a while).

The Verge: ‘CarPlay Is Anticompetitive, Too, US Lawsuit Alleges’ 

Andrew J. Hawkins, reporting for The Verge:

“By applying the same playbook of restrictions to CarPlay, Apple further locks-in the power of the iPhone by preventing the development of other disintermediating technologies that interoperate with the phone but reside off device,” the lawsuit says.

The inclusion of CarPlay, as well as digital key functions through Apple’s Wallet feature, came as a surprise to some analysts, who say that the DOJ may be misunderstanding the utility and functions of the phone-mirroring system.

This is especially true for the next-generation version, which prosecutors described insidiously as taking “over all of the screens, sensors, and gauges in a car, forcing users to experience driving as an iPhone-centric experience if they want to use any of the features provided by CarPlay.”

That’s misleading, said Sam Abuelsamid, principal analyst at Guidehouse Insights and an expert on vehicle software. “Even with the next-gen system, OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] don’t actually have to let Apple take over all the screens,” he said in an email. “They can limit the interface to whichever screens they want.”

“Misleading” is too kind. It’s just flat-out wrong. The biggest problem with CarPlay 2 is its relative dearth of adoption to date — previewed only by Porsche and Aston Martin, neither of which is even vaguely a mainstream brand.

Apple Style Guide, March 2024 Edition 

Another terrific resource from Apple’s documentation team, also available as a PDF. Apple has long made its style guide publicly available, but I suspect many people aren’t aware of it. The previous edition was from 2022.

Worth noting though that this is Apple’s style bible, and while most of it is inarguably good advice, some of it is simply arbitrary. For example, Apple famously styles some of its product names without title-casing them: Mac mini, iPod nano, macOS, visionOS, watchOS, etc. That’s purely style though, not spelling, and my style — like most publications — is to capitalize proper names.

A new entry, some of the idiosyncrasies of which many of you have likely already noticed in Apple’s marketing and documentation:

Apple Vision Pro — Always use the full name. In general references, don’t use the with Apple Vision Pro. It’s OK to use another article or a possessive adjective: Adjust the fit of your Apple Vision Pro.

You put on and take off Apple Vision Pro. When you have it on, you’re wearing it.

Put on Apple Vision Pro and adjust the fit.
Don’t run while you’re wearing Apple Vision Pro.

In text, don’t write the name Apple Vision Pro by combining the  symbol with Vision Pro.

Correct: Get started with Apple Vision Pro.
Incorrect: Get started with Vision Pro.

Don’t refer to Apple Vision Pro as a headset. In most cases, use the product name; in content where the name is repeated frequently, you can use device.

Outside Cupertino, no one eschews the in front of Apple product names when doing so sounds natural, and everyone calls the Vision Pro a “headset”, because, well, it is a headset.

(I keep thinking that if it had come out in the 1990s, it might have been named AppleVision Pro, closed-up and camel-cased, and also keep thinking that it kind of looks cool that way. Similarly: AppleWatch.)

Jason Snell on US v. Apple 

Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors, with a first take I found myself nodding my head in agreement with throughout:

For me, the most unexpected part of the document was the DoJ’s explanation that Apple’s success as a company largely stems from… the DoJ itself. It points out that Apple’s resurgence early in this century was due to the release of the iPod, which only became a hit when it arrived on Windows. The DoJ argues that the iPod’s presence on Windows was only due to Microsoft being under a consent decree from the DoJ for monopolistic behavior.

I don’t know enough about the specifics of the Microsoft consent decree to weigh in on the idea that an unconstrained Microsoft would have made it impossible for Apple to make the iPod compatible with Windows. It’s a pretty big hypothetical, and I’m skeptical, but I’m impressed that the DoJ would try to place its current case within the larger DoJ Connected Universe.

You don’t need to be a lawyer to see that this is a nonsensical claim. Microsoft played all sorts of hardball with Windows’s licensing to PC makers back in the 1990s, but nothing they did would have ever stopped Apple from making iTunes for Windows and allowing iTunes for Windows to manage an iPod connected over USB. That’s one thing Windows (and DOS before it) always was: open to third-party software, and open to connected peripherals. iTunes, to my recollection, was always software that users downloaded and installed themselves. iTunes was not pre-installed on PCs and thus subject to Microsoft’s licensing shenanigans (e.g. the way Microsoft used licensing discounts to discourage PC makers from shipping computers with Netscape pre-installed). At a technical level I don’t even see how Microsoft could have hindered iTunes or the iPod even if they had wanted to.

[Update: I forgot about the 2004 HP-iPod deal, which included pre-installing iTunes on HP PCs, but the larger point stands.]

What strikes me most about this document is that people… like using the iPhone? This suit (joined by 16 other attorneys general, mostly of blue states) has a political element to it, in the sense of trying to send a message that your government is looking out for your rights and protecting you from big, bad tech companies.

What happens when that collides with a product that has extremely high customer satisfaction ratings? Those of us in the know are well aware of all the ways that Apple plays hardball, and understand that the company is so powerful that really the only way it will be convinced to change its ways is under threat of government intervention. But will American iPhone users feel like the government is on their side, in taking on an American tech giant that makes a product they actually enjoy using?

I wonder very much about this too. The biggest US antitrust case in my lifetime was the breakup of Ma Bell, a.k.a. AT&T Classic. The “phone company” was universally reviled at the time, if only for the exorbitant long-distance phone call rates they charged. Ma Bell was both unpopular and inarguably a monopoly — the Bell system was the only way to place telephone calls.

I think the public, by and large, was ambivalent about Microsoft’s monopoly abuse in the 1990s. But Apple is popular, the iPhone in particular. And many of the complaints lodged by the DOJ regarding the iPhone are for the very things that make it popular.

Merrick Garland’s Remarks on the Lawsuit Against Apple’s Supposed Monopoly 

Attorney General Merrick Garland:

When an iPhone user puts a credit or debit card into Apple Wallet, Apple inserts itself in a process that could otherwise occur directly between the user and card issuer. This introduces an additional potential point of failure for the privacy and security of Apple users.

Apple Pay through Wallet obfuscates your actual credit card numbers, which retailers infamously use to track customers. It’s far more private than using your credit card itself. I highly doubt any banks or credit card issuers would do this themselves if given access to NFC tap-to-pay.

[Update: Whoops, I was wrong about that. Matt Birchler, who works in the payments industry, has a great explainer about how this works, and it turns out major banks and credit cards do generate per-merchant “DPAN” numbers for tap-to-pay transactions. I stand by my argument that Apple Wallet is at least as, if not more secure than, any digital payment app provided by a card issuer.]

And that is just one way in which Apple is willing to make the iPhone less secure and less private in order to maintain its monopoly power. The Supreme Court defines monopoly power as “the power to control prices or exclude competition.”

As set out in our complaint, Apple has that power in the smartphone market.

Defining the iPhone as a monopoly when it has somewhere around 55 percent market share in the U.S. is obviously the first thing the DOJ needs to prove. Microsoft had roughly 95 percent market share of the PC operating system market when the DOJ sued them in the late 1990s. The DOJ tries to get around the uncomfortable fact of Apple’s mere 55 percent share by defining a market for “performance smartphones”. I don’t really see how Apple has any power over the price of phones made by other companies.

Now, having monopoly power does not itself violate the antitrust laws. But it does when a firm acquires or maintains monopoly power — not because it has a superior product or superior business acumen — but by engaging in exclusionary conduct. As set out in our complaint, Apple has maintained its power not because of its superiority, but because of its unlawful exclusionary behavior.

Completely backwards. Superiority is exactly what made the iPhone what it is — superior hardware, superior software, superior integration. Even a superior retail experience. Not only is the DOJ’s take on the iPhone’s success a complete misunderstanding of the actual market dynamics for phones, it’s flabbergastingly insulting.

U.S. Department of Justice Sues Apple, Accusing It of Illegally Abusing an iPhone Monopoly 

David McCabe and Tripp Mickle, reporting for The New York Times:

The lawsuit filed Thursday focuses on a group of practices that the government said Apple had used to shore up its dominance.

The company “undermines” the ability of iPhone users to message with owners of other types of smartphones, like those running the Android operating system, the government said. That divide — epitomized by the green bubbles that show an Android owner’s messages — sent a signal that other smartphones were lower quality than the iPhone, according to the lawsuit.

But of course SMS is a vastly lower-quality platform than iMessage. Without having read the actual lawsuit yet, I’m curious what they think Apple should do differently on this front. Is Apple obligated to ship an iMessage client for other platforms? For free?

Apple has similarly made it difficult for the iPhone to work with smartwatches other than its own Apple Watch, the government argued. Once an iPhone user owns an Apple Watch it becomes far more costly for them to ditch the phone.

Apple peripherals and Apple software exclusive to Apple devices is, in a nut, what Apple does and what has made their products popular. This summary reeks of technical naivety. The DOJ is alleging that, for example, Apple Watch and iPhone work better together than third-party watches with iPhones not because of specific integration, but because Apple is locking third parties out. Same with Tile trackers vs. AirTags. The only alternative would be to allow third parties to install system software extensions on iOS, like on a Mac or PC.

Watching the DOJ press conference (transcripts of the prepared statements, including Attorney General Merrick Garland’s, are here), there’s a strong undercurrent to the DOJ’s argument that iPhone users are, en masse, trying to switch to Android but finding it too difficult and expensive. That’s not based on reality. Every customer satisfaction survey I’ve seen, from 2007 onward, has shown iPhone owners to be overwhelmingly happy. It’s not just the most successful consumer electronics product in history — perhaps product, period — but it’s arguably the most liked.

Apple Support: ‘Manuals, Specs, and Downloads’ 

New home page for Apple Support documentation. Worth a bookmark.

Update: It’s so comprehensive that it has tech specs — but alas, not the documentation — going back to the original 1984 Macintosh.

Keyboard Maestro 11 

Another recent-ish update to one of my essential Mac utilities:

Keyboard Maestro 11 expands on the powerful base of previous versions, improving the editor, adding many new actions and triggers, New Macro Wizard, a new Security preference pane, a keyboardmaestro command line tool, support for Apple Text Recognition, and more. Keyboard Maestro 11 requires macOS 10.13 High Sierra or later.

My number one tip for anyone looking to up their Mac power-user game is to get Keyboard Maestro. It’s like having super powers. $36 for a new license, $25 to upgrade. And of course there’s a free trial.

BBEdit 15 

BBEdit 15.0.2 just shipped, which reminded me that I never linked to BBEdit 15. Most interesting and useful to me, among many new features:

There’s a new document type, “ChatGPT Worksheet”. This is created from File → New as with other document types, and provides an interface for conversational exchanges with ChatGPT. In order to use this feature, you will need a ChatGPT account, and an API key. [...]

ChatGPT worksheets work similarly to a shell worksheet: type something in, and press the Enter key to send it to ChatGPT. (You can also use the “Send Command” keyboard equivalent, as set in the “Worksheets” section of BBEdit’s “Menus & Shortcuts” preferences. The default for this command is Control-Return.) After some period of time, you’ll receive a response which BBEdit will insert into the document window.

If you wish to cancel your request before the response arrives, Command-period or Control-C will do that.

Responses from ChatGPT are automatically quoted, as long as the worksheet’s language is set to “Markdown”. If you change the worksheet’s language, this quoting will not occur.

(Since worksheets are Markdown, you can use “Preview in BBEdit” on a worksheet to visualize it.)

Because chats depend heavily on history, a worksheet saves your prompts and the server’s responses. Thus, the document size will grow over time and context is preserved, even if you delete previous prompts and responses from the text area.

BBEdit ChatGPT worksheets are my favorite interface to ChatGPT in general, but they particularly shine when using ChatGPT for programming advice. It’s so convenient to have the chat in a freeform format right there in your text editor.

Other tentpole new features include a minimap palette, customizable cheat sheets, and significant improvements to “projects”. BBEdit remains my favorite app in the world. $60 for a new license, $30 to upgrade from an older version, or $4/month or $40/year from the Mac App Store.

See also: Michael Tsai and Jason Snell.

Nvidia Keynote Fills 11,000-Seat SAP Center 

Asa Fitch, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (News+):

The Nvidia frenzy over artificial intelligence has come to this: Chief Executive Jensen Huang unveiled his company’s latest chips on Monday in a sports arena at an event one analyst dubbed the “AI Woodstock.”

Customers, partners and fans of the chip company descended on the SAP Center, the home of the National Hockey League’s San Jose Sharks, for Huang’s keynote speech at an annual Nvidia conference that, this year, has a seating capacity of about 11,000.

Professional wrestling’s WWE Monday Night RAW event took place there in February. Justin Timberlake is scheduled to play the arena in May. Even Apple’s much-watched launch events for the iPhone and iPad didn’t fill a venue this large.

Apple never tried to fill a venue that large for a keynote (the big keynotes at Macworld Expo and WWDC, in Moscone West and the San Jose Convention Center, were capped at about 4,000 to 5,000), but surely could have. But the point stands: Nvidia has the world’s attention, and deservedly so.

On the Ever-Increasing Accuracy of Weather Forecasts 

Hannah Ritchie, writing for Our World in Data:

It wasn’t until 1859 that the UK’s Meteorological Service (the Met Office) issued its first weather forecast for shipping. Two years later, it broadcasted its first public weather forecast. While meteorological measurements improved over time, the massive step-change in predictions came with the use of computerized numerical modeling. This didn’t start until a century later, in the 1960s.

Forecasts have improved a lot since then. We can see this across a range of measurements, and different national meteorological organizations. The Met Office says its four-day forecasts are now as accurate as its one-day forecasts were 30 years ago.

When I was a kid it was a running gag that weathermen were always wrong. I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone joke about weather forecasts being useless. Over the last 40 years, 7-day forecasts have gone from a coin toss to “highly accurate”. (Via Kottke.)

Reuters: ‘EU’s Vestager Warns About Apple, Meta Fees, Disparaging Rival Products’ 

Foo Yun Chee, again reporting for Reuters, after an exclusive interview with Margarethe Vestager, EU commissioner and renowned user-experience designer:

A new fee structure includes a core technology fee of 50 euro cents per user account per year that major app developers will have to pay even if they do not use any of Apple’s payment services, which has triggered criticism from rivals such as Fortnite creator Epic Games.

Vestager said the new fees have attracted her attention.

“There are things that we take a keen interest in, for instance, if the new Apple fee structure will de facto not make it in any way attractive to use the benefits of the DMA. That kind of thing is what we will be investigating,” she told Reuters in an interview.

There are already several marketplaces that have announced plans to open: AltStore, Setapp, Mobivention, and of course Epic’s game store, to name four. So the CTF obviously isn’t making it “not in any way attractive to use the benefits of the DMA”. But whether this is Vestager’s code-speak for “We’re going to declare the CTF non-compliant not because it violates the terms of the DMA but simply because we don’t like it”, I don’t know.

From a transcript of yesterday’s workshop on Apple’s DMA compliance plans, the opening remarks from the EC included this gem: “The reason is that we want to achieve compliance with the spirit of the DMA not just with the letter.”

That’s not how the rule of law works in the U.S.

Vestager expressed her reservations on Meta’s new fees. The company earlier on Tuesday said it has offered to almost halve its monthly subscription fee for Facebook and Instagram to 5.99 euros from 9.99 euros but Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems said the issue is not about the level of the fee.

“I think there are many different ways to monetize the services that you provide. Because one thing are the very targeted advertising that builds on data being consumed. Another way of showing your advertising is to make that contextual,” she said. “So I think it’s important to continue the conversation with Meta and we will assess also finally, what is the next push in order for them to be compliant with the DMA.”

If the EC wants to ban targeted advertising, they should pass a law banning targeted advertising. But they haven’t. Targeted advertising is legal in the EU; Meta simply has to offer users a reasonable opt-out. It seems like Vestager is hinting that the only acceptable opt-out — “spirit”-wise — is non-targeted advertising that generates only pennies on the dollar compared to Meta’s incredibly lucrative targeted ads. This is quite a message the EC is sending to businesses around the world.

Vestager also warned companies against discouraging users from switching to rivals by disparaging them, saying this kind of behaviour could trigger an investigation. Apple has said some of its changes could expose users to security risks.

“I would think of it as unwise to say that the services are not safe to use, because that has nothing to do with the DMA. The DMA is there to open the market for other service providers to get to you and how your service provider of your operating system, how they will make sure that it is safe is for them to decide,” she said.

So it doesn’t matter whether sideloaded apps are dangerous, or, say, that third-party browser engines may adversely affect battery life — Apple can’t make honest recommendations to its customers if those recommendations would discourage switching. Even though the entire reason many, if not most, people choose Apple products is that they trust Apple. The EU is not, obviously, America, but holy hell does it sound wrong to my American ears to claim it’s illegal for a company to offer customers the truth. (And this is exactly why I’ve been so adamantly opposed to Apple’s own anti-steering rules in the App Store all along.)

Meta Offers to Reduce No-Ads Subscription Fee for Facebook and Instagram in EU, but Critics Want No Fee at All 

Foo Yun Chee, reporting for Reuters from day 2 of the EC’s DMA compliance workshops:

Meta Platforms has offered to almost halve its monthly subscription fee for Facebook and Instagram to 5.99 euros from 9.99 euros, a senior Meta executive said on Tuesday, a move that aims to address concerns from privacy and antitrust regulators. The price cut follows mounting criticism from privacy activists and consumer groups about Meta’s no-ads subscription service in Europe, which critics say requires users to pay a fee to ensure their privacy. Meta launched the service in November to comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which curbs its ability to personalise advertisements for users without their consent, hurting its major revenue source. [...]

Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems said the issue is not about the fee.

“We know from all research that even a fee of just 1.99 euros or less leads to a shift in consent from 3-10% that genuinely want advertisments to 99.9% that still click yes. The GDPR requires that consent must be ‘freely’ given,” he said, referring to the EU privacy legislation.

“In reality it is not about the amount of money — it is about the ‘pay or okay’ approach as a whole. The entire purpose of ‘pay or okay’ is to get users to click on okay, even if this is not their free and genuine choice. We do not think the mere change of the amount makes this approach legal.”

Consider Meta’s average revenue per user (ARPU) per quarter by region. For the US and Canada, it’s about $50–60 per quarter, or over $200 per year per user. In Europe, with its stagnant economy, it’s about $20 per quarter and rising. (This number is probably inflated by wealthier non-EU countries in Europe, particularly the UK, but Meta doesn’t break out ARPU by country.) So €10/month was a reasonable deal, especially when extrapolating Meta’s ARPU trendline. €6/month is a veritable bargain — users who opt to pay would be generating slightly less than average revenue, but gaining a no-ads experience. (Sorry for mixing euros and dollars here, but they’re close enough at the moment — $1 ≈ €0.92 — to treat them interchangeably for ballpark comparisons.)

But Schrems’s argument, seemingly, is that Meta should be required to offer a no-tracking version of Instagram and Facebook completely free of charge. Meta could show ads to those users, but not the sort of ads that actually generate money. “Why can’t you just sustain your business with non-personalised ads without charging a subscription?” was, according to Kay Jebelli’s live coverage of the workshop, an actual question asked today. Next up: free ice water in hell?

Privacy fundamentalists seem upset that when given the choice between a free service with personalized ads (and tracking to do the personalization), and paying a fair fee for a service, the overwhelming majority choose the personalized ads.

The Sun: Aaron Taylor-Johnson to Take the Role of James Bond 

Howell Davies and Ellie Henman, reporting for The Sun:

Brit actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson is taking his martinis shaken, not stirred, after being formally offered the job as the new James Bond. Insiders said the Kick-Ass movie star is expected to accept the role as 007, taking over from Daniel Craig, who has played MI6’s most famous spy for 15 years.

Eon Productions, which makes the spy thriller films, is on course to start shooting this year.

A source said: “Bond is Aaron’s job, should he wish to accept it. The formal offer is on the table and they are waiting to hear back. As far as Eon is concerned, Aaron is going to sign his contract in the coming days and they can start preparing for the big announcement.”

Take it with a grain of salt, as The Sun is a News Corp tabloid and there are conflicting reports from more reputable publications, but I loved Taylor-Johnson in Bullet Train (and loved Bullet Train itself). I could endorse this casting.

VisionDevCamp: March 29–31 in Santa Clara 

VisionDevCamp:

VisionDevCamp is a not-for-profit developer event focused on creating applications for Apple Vision Pro and visionOS. Attendees are encouraged to develop native visionOS, Unity PolySpatial, and web applications during the event.

Registration is open, and costs just $100 — and that includes six meals over the weekend. From the team behind the long-running iOSDevCamp (which is so long-running it began as iPhoneDevCamp — before iOS had its name).

‘Lengthy Memoranda and Gobbledygook Language’ 

Maury Maverick, chairman and general manager of the Smaller War Plants Corporation, in a company-wide memo back in 1944:

Be short and use Plain English.

Memoranda should be as short as clearness will allow. The Naval officer who wired “Sighted Sub — Sank Same” told the whole story.

Put the real subject matter — the point — and even the conclusion, in the opening paragraph and the whole story on one page. Period! If a lengthy explanation, statistical matter, or such is necessary, use attachments.

Stay off gobbledygook language. It only fouls people up. For the Lord’s sake, be short and say what you’re talking about. Let’s stop “pointing-up” programs, “finalizing” contracts that “stem from” district, regional or Washington “levels”. There are no “levels” — local government is as high as Washington Government. No more patterns, effectuating, dynamics. Anyone using the words “activation” or “implementation” will be shot.

80-year-old advice that holds up today. Also: this is the first known use of gobbledygook, a fabulous word with no true synonym. (Thanks to DF reader David Wooten for the link.)

(Also: Who had a cooler name? Maury Maverick or the Smaller War Plants Corporation?)

Apple Is Working on the ‘Viral Hit’ Problem With the Core Technology Fee 

Steven Troughton-Smith posted this great clip from today’s Apple DMA compliance workshop held by the European Commission. AltStore founder Riley Testut — who is apparently ready to go with a launch of the AltStore as an app marketplace in the EU — asked about the “viral hit” problem with the Core Technology Fee. E.g. what happens if a small developer — or even a kid in the proverbial garage — gets a 10-million-download hit and suddenly owes Apple 4.5 million euros? Apple’s Kyle Andeer (VP of legal) gives a too-long answer but ends with, “This is something we need to figure out. And it is something we’re working on. So I would say on that one, stay tuned.”

European Commission Holds ‘Apple DMA Compliance Workshop’ 

This was an opportunity for critics of Apple’s DMA compliance plans to address questions to representatives from Apple. There’s video of the 9-hour workshop, but it’s locked behind a password (insert joke about the EC’s support for openness here). I can’t imagine sitting through that, even at 2× speed. Lucky for us, Kay Jebelli followed along live and took copious notes in a thread on Twitter/X:

Interesting detail: the EC told Apple that they aren’t allowed to notarize apps to protect users. So “government authorities are the ones that are going to have to step up to protect” app developers and users from the risks of these 3rd-party apps.

In other words, the EC has a problem with Apple doing any vetting whatsoever on apps distributed outside the App Store. The EC will take care of making sure malware, phishing, scams, clones, IP rip-offs, and pirated apps aren’t getting through. This also means that apps distributed outside the app store will be able to use private APIs. One can argue that what Apple is calling “notarization” in its DMA compliance plan is actually just a less extensive form of app review, but without this step, Apple has no oversight over software distributed outside the store at all. That seems to be exactly what the EC is saying the DMA demands. I don’t think this is going to go well.

[Update, March 20: Jebelli, in a follow-up: “Looking through some of what else has been put out, I could have misheard, and the point was that notarization doesn’t address all of the risks of alternate distribution, and it’s these other risks where governments will have to step up (not due to total removal of notarization).” So it looks like Apple’s plan to notarize and inspect all apps remains.]

Pushed again on the CTF, Apple re-asserts that it is fully compliant with the DMA. It isn’t charging an additional fee for interoperability, but compensation for technologies that it was previously monetising through its original model (effectively tolling digital app sales).

We know from today’s workshop that (a) Apple has already gotten specific pushback from the EC on aspects of its DMA compliance plan; and (b) Apple continues to think the CTF is perfectly cromulent under the terms of the DMA. That to me says the CTF is going to fly. The idea that the entire CTF is disallowed under the DMA is an argument that the DMA disallows a company from monetizing access to its own platform and IP. EC fans may be surprised to hear this but the EC is a capitalist body. I really don’t think they want to send a message to the world that the EU will strip companies of their own platforms. As Jebelli writes in an aside in his thread:

It’s pretty incredible if you take a step back, in what other industry do entire regulatory frameworks pop up to address a dispute between different businesses over the question of “Why can’t I have gratuitous access to this infrastructure, at zero cost to myself?”

The crybaby Spotifys in the EU have already gotten a lot from the EC protection racket, including a large number of huge concessions in Apple’s DMA compliance plan. Not paying anything to Apple under any condition is all they’ll settle for though.

Debugging the Voyager 1 From a Light Day Away 

Denise Hill, writing on NASA’s The Sun Spot blog:

Since November 2023, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has been sending a steady radio signal to Earth, but the signal does not contain usable data. The source of the issue appears to be with one of three onboard computers, the flight data subsystem (FDS), which is responsible for packaging the science and engineering data before it’s sent to Earth by the telemetry modulation unit.

On March 3, the Voyager mission team saw activity from one section of the FDS that differed from the rest of the computer’s unreadable data stream. The new signal was still not in the format used by Voyager 1 when the FDS is working properly, so the team wasn’t initially sure what to make of it. But an engineer with the agency’s Deep Space Network, which operates the radio antennas that communicate with both Voyagers and other spacecraft traveling to the Moon and beyond, was able to decode the new signal and found that it contains a readout of the entire FDS memory. [...]

Because Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, it takes 22.5 hours for a radio signal to reach the spacecraft and another 22.5 hours for the probe’s response to reach antennas on the ground. So the team received the results of the command on March 3. On March 7, engineers began working to decode the data, and on March 10, they determined that it contains a memory readout.

Remind me never to complain about anything I’ve had to debug again.


My 2023 Apple Report Card

Last month Jason Snell published his annual Six Colors Apple Report Card for 2023. As I’ve done in the past — 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018 — I’m publishing my full remarks and grades here. I’m late publishing this year because I forgot to last month. On Snell’s report card, voters give per-category scores ranging from 5 to 1; I’ve translated these to letter grades, A to E.

Mac: A

By the end of the year, every single Mac in the lineup, save one, is arguably in the best shape that model has ever been. (Spoiler: the exception is the Mac Pro.)

When Apple Silicon debuted at the end of 2020, Apple started consumer-grade models first, with the regular M1 chips, and the M1 Pro/Max/Ultra chips followed the next year. That pattern repeated with the M2 generation. But at the end of 2023, Apple debuted the M3 generation of Apple silicon starting with the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros (with M3 Pro/Max chips), along with a lesser 14-inch MacBook Pro with the regular M3. It makes more sense for the MacBook Pros to get a new generation of chips first than for the MacBook Air. And these are the best MacBook Pros ever.

The 24-inch iMac skipped the M2 generation but got an update to the M3, along with Apple making it as clear as possible that they have no plans to make a 27-inch iMac with Apple silicon. I’m OK with that — I think a Studio Display with a Mac Mini is a better solution. And those who miss the iMac Pro of the Intel era are better off with a Studio Display and Mac Studio.

The Mac Pro is the only sour note in the lineup. It finally came to Apple silicon (hooray), but spec-wise it’s pretty much a Mac Studio with advanced I/O options (boo). If your work requires high-end I/O, that’s great. But if not, it’s hard to see anything the Mac Pro offers that the Mac Studio doesn’t, other than a higher price and consuming a lot more space on or under your desk. Even if this first Apple silicon Mac Pro is a disappointment though, I say it’s great news overall, because it’s a sign that Apple still wants the Mac Pro in its lineup. At some point in the next year or two, I expect Apple to unveil a Mac Pro with specs that race ahead of the Mac Studio. It’s just obviously the case that Apple silicon isn’t there yet.

MacOS 13 Ventura and 14 Sonoma have both been fine releases. Reliable and (mostly) familiar.

iPhone: A

The new iPhone 15 lineup is great, especially the 15 Pro models, which Apple changed from heavy polished stainless steel to lightweight brushed titanium. The weight reduction is dramatic, and the titanium feels so much nicer in hand.

iOS 17 (can you believe it’s up to 17 now?) feels like what it is: a stable mature operating system. Apple has gone through two major transitions with iOS: the ground-up UI redesign with iOS 7 (can you believe that was 10 years ago?) and the all-screen, no-more-home-button system redesign with the iPhone X. Nothing major has changed since, and nothing seems to need to. The switch from Lightning to USB-C was, overall, no big deal controversy-wise, and enabled new features like recording ProRes video directly to an attached SSD.

iPad: C

That there was no new iPad hardware this year makes it hard to give it a high grade, so a gentleman’s C it is. Worse, the existing lineup is rather confusing. iPadOS remains fine, but to me still seems like the no-man’s land platform: nowhere near as capable productivity-wise as a Mac; nowhere near as portable as an iPhone. Next year better bring clarity and some “wow” to the iPad lineup. I’d love to see a completely rethought Magic Keyboard — perhaps a combination keyboard/trackpad that works just as well with a Vision Pro as with an iPad?

Watch: B / Wearables (including Watch): B

The Series 9 models don’t look any different from Series 8, and the Ultra 2 doesn’t look any different from the Ultra 1, but inside, the new S9 SiP chip provides noticeably better battery life — which at this point is really one of the platform’s only weaknesses.

WatchOS 10 is the biggest re-think of the software platform ever. Far more colorful, a bit more “computer on your wrist”, and I think widgets are generally more useful on Apple Watch than apps are.

AirPods Pro 2 are just terrific, and the new Adaptive noise control mode is amazing for my day-to-day usage.

Apple TV: B

No news on the hardware front this year, but it wasn’t needed. The big change in tvOS is moving the iTunes Movie and TV stores into the TV app. Overall that’s a wash for me, but it’s slightly irritating insofar as I really only ever buy or rent movies nowadays — my TV-show-watching goes through streaming apps. But the “Store” tab in the TV app gives prominent placement on the main screen to a row full of popular TV shows. All I want to see are movies.

The best change in tvOS this year, though, is that the circular up/down/left/right wheel on the remote now works like it should have all along: you can run your finger around it in circles to scroll and scrub, just like using the scroll wheel on an iPod of yore. No idea why it didn’t work like this all along, but I’m sure glad it does now.

Services: B

Lots of great shows and movies on TV+. Slow Horses, Silo, Hijack, For All Mankind, and Killers of the Flower Moon were all standouts.

iCloud remains secure, fast, and reliable. So much seamless continuity (including via Continuity-branded features) across devices.

But I’ll repeat this gripe from previous years: it’s miserly that Apple is still offering only a mere 5 GB of storage at the free tier, and have left the paid-tier storage allotments unchanged since like forever. I wonder how many zillions of iPhone users out there don’t have device backups because they only have a free iCloud account with 5 GB? The Apple One bundle is a good deal, but the free iCloud tier should be genuinely useful for backing up a modern iPhone.

HomeKit/Home: C

I’ll repeat my line from last year: Big picture, this whole thing still feels like it’s always poised to get good “next year”. 2023 wasn’t that year (again).

Hardware Reliability: A

No news is great news in this category.

Software Quality: B

I’ll keep it short: I have concerns and complaints about aspects of the direction Apple’s software design is headed (or in some ways, has been now for years), but their software reliability has been very good for me.

Developer Relations: C

Third year in a row with the same comment: Resentment over App Store policies continues to build. Frustrations with the App Store review process seem unimproved. Apple’s goal should be for developer relations to be so good that developers want to create software exclusively for Apple’s platforms. The opposite is happening.

Social and Societal Impact: A

Another repeat comment, but another good year on this front: Climate/carbon is the societal area where a company like Apple can and should make the most difference, and I’m hard-pressed to think how they could be doing more than they are, practically. 2023 saw the launch of several entirely carbon-neutral Apple Watch configurations.

We’re living in sensitive times on other social issues, and Apple seems to be managing that very astutely and honestly. 


Is Apple Out of the Generative AI Game? 

Dare Obasanjo, on Mastodon:

2024 is the year Apple faced its limitations. First giving up the dream of competing with Tesla in EVs and now conceding it can’t compete with Google and OpenAI in generative AI.

This means iOS users end up winning as we get actual cutting edge features and not Siri warmed over.

I agree that Apple users win either way — either Apple builds out its own best-of-breed generative AI system, or they license the best one(s) from whoever makes them. But it could well be like maps. Lean on Google or others until the in-house project is ready to go. (Put aside the fact that Apple was forced to switch to their own maps a year or two before it was ready.) Or compare it to Apple building Macs on Intel’s x86 architecture until three years ago.

We are only in the very early days of LLMs and generative AI, and the only moat that seems to exist is large-scale data center processing power, not the models themselves.

Apple Researchers Publish ‘Breakthrough’ Paper on Multimodal LLMs 

Michael Nuñez, reporting for VentureBeat:

Apple researchers have developed new methods for training large language models on both text and images, enabling more powerful and flexible AI systems, in what could be a significant advance for artificial intelligence and for future Apple products.

The work, described in a research paper titled “MM1: Methods, Analysis & Insights from Multimodal LLM Pre-training” that was quietly posted to arxiv.org this week, demonstrates how carefully combining different types of training data and model architectures can lead to state-of-the-art performance on a range of AI benchmarks.

“We demonstrate that for large-scale multimodal pre-training using a careful mix of image-caption, interleaved image-text, and text-only data is crucial for achieving state-of-the-art few-shot results across multiple benchmarks,” the researchers explain. By training models on a diverse dataset spanning visual and linguistic information, the MM1 models were able to excel at tasks like image captioning, visual question answering, and natural language inference.

Summary thread on Twitter/X from team member Brandon McKinzie, Hacker News thread, and roundup of commentary from Techmeme. The consensus is that this paper is remarkably open with technical details.

Gurman: ‘Apple in Talks to License Google Gemini’ 

Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. is in talks to build Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence engine into the iPhone, according to people familiar with the situation, setting the stage for a blockbuster agreement that would shake up the AI industry.

The two companies are in active negotiations to let Apple license Gemini, Google’s set of generative AI models, to power some new features coming to the iPhone software this year, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private. Apple also recently held discussions with OpenAI and has considered using its model, according to the people.

Apple’s own LLM efforts seem directed toward on-device processing, but there are some AI tasks that require enormous cloud computing resources, which Apple simply doesn’t have (and likely doesn’t want to build) the infrastructure for. As Ben Thompson noted in today’s Stratechery daily update, it’s quite possible that Google alone could handle such features if built into iOS — OpenAI is currently struggling under load at times, without the veritable avalanche of traffic that would come from integration into iOS.

I could also see Apple negotiating deals to use multiple AI providers behind the scenes, treating them like white-label providers, while presenting the features to users under the Siri brand. Apple used to — and might still? — do something similar with cloud storage providers like AWS and Azure.

Alphabet shares rose as much as 7.4% on Monday as the markets opened in New York. It was the biggest intraday gain since Feb. 2, 2023. Apple was up 2.2%.

Bloomberg gonna Bloomberg.

Nick Heer on the MacOS 14 Sonoma Typography Palette 

Nick Heer, Pixel Envy:

For a long time, this palette was a dry list of checkboxes and disclosure triangles. A user would need to first know this palette exists, and then know what each option did. But, in a recent version of MacOS, the palette has been updated with icons that more clearly display what will change. Depending on the font file in question, there are many different options available, and the numerically differentiated “stylistic sets” have never been clear. This is much nicer.

This is indeed a nice update to a little-known but wonderful standard feature in Cocoa’s text system. Who says AppKit is dead?

(One gripe I have is that the small caps options are no longer labelled “small caps” — you just sort of have to know what they are from the glyphs alone. And, oddly, on my Mac, for many but not all fonts, instead of seeing “A → A” to indicate small caps, I see a dollar sign: “$ → $”.)


Quickly Toggling Closed Captions on Apple TV (But Not in Netflix)

I know it’s a trend for people to just leave closed captions enabled whenever they’re watching TV, even for shows and movies in which they can easily understand the dialog. I can’t do that though, because I find captions highly distracting if I don’t need them.

But while watching the aforelinked The Gentlemen on Netflix this past week, I found myself toggling captions on and back off frequently, as I couldn’t understand the cockney accent spoken by many characters. So when a scene with cockney-speaking characters would start, I’d swipe up on the Apple TV remote, and toggle the on-screen “CC” button in the Netflix app. When the scene ended, repeat. I tried just leaving captions on, but I really do find it unbearably distracting when I do understand what’s being said. This made me think there has to be a better way to toggle captions than manually swiping and clicking on the Apple TV remote touchpad.

Turns out there are two better ways:

  1. If you use the Control Center Apple TV remote control on your iPhone, there’s a dedicated “CC” button.

  2. In tvOS, go to Settings → Accessibility → Accessibility Shortcut, and set it to “Closed Captions”. Now you can just triple-click the Menu/Back button on the remote to toggle captions. (On older Apple TV remotes, the button is labelled “Menu”; on the new remote, it’s labelled with a “<”.)

But here’s the hitch: Netflix’s tvOS app doesn’t support either of these ways to toggle captions. Netflix only supports the on-screen caption toggle in their custom video player. I get why Netflix and other streaming apps want to use their own custom video players, but it ought to be mandated by App Store review that they support accessibility features like this one.

You can also toggle captions using Siri on the remote: “Turn on captions” or “Turn off captions” (or use the word “subtitles”). And the coolest feature: “What did he/she/they just say?”, which rewinds 15 seconds and temporarily turns on captions. All cool features which seem to work in all major tvOS streaming apps, including Netflix — but no excuse not to support the triple-click accessibility shortcut and the CC button in the Control Center remote.

Postscript: Ben Markowitz tried the captions accessibility shortcut in a dozen popular tvOS apps. Only works in Paramount+ and ESPN. Just terrible.