{ "version" : "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1", "title" : "Daring Fireball", "home_page_url" : "https://daringfireball.net/", "feed_url" : "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/json", "authors" : [ { "url" : "https://twitter.com/gruber", "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "icon" : "https://daringfireball.net/graphics/apple-touch-icon.png", "favicon" : "https://daringfireball.net/graphics/favicon-64.png", "items" : [ { "title" : "‘Lengthy Memoranda and Gobbledygook Language’", "date_published" : "2024-03-19T03:59:59Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-19T05:02:19Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/18/gobbledygook", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/18/gobbledygook", "external_url" : "https://archive.org/details/Maverick1944MemoAboutGobbledygook", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\n
Maury Maverick, chairman and general manager of the Smaller War Plants Corporation, in a company-wide memo back in 1944:
\n\n\n\n\nBe short and use Plain English.
\n\nMemoranda should he as short as clearness will allow. The Naval \nofficer who wired “Sighted Sub - Sank Same” told the whole story.
\n\nPut the real subject matter — the point — and even the \nconclusion, in the opening paragraph and the whole story on one \npage. Period! If a lengthy explanation, statistical matter, or \nsuch is necessary, use attachments.
\n\nStay off gobbledygook language. It only fouls people up. For the \nLord’s sake, be short and say what you’re talking about. Let’s \nstop “pointing-up” programs, “finalizing” contracts that “stem \nfrom” district, regional or Washington “levels”. There are no \n“levels” — local government is as high as Washington Government. \nNo more patterns, effectuating, dynamics. Anyone using the words \n“activation” or “implementation” will be shot.
\n
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.)
\n\n(Also: Who had a cooler name? Maury Maverick or the Smaller War Plants Corporation?)
\n\nLink: archive.org/details/Maverick1944MemoAboutGobbledygook
\n" }, { "title" : "Apple Is Working on the ‘Viral Hit’ Problem With the Core Technology Fee", "date_published" : "2024-03-19T03:59:00Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-19T04:36:12Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/18/viral-hit-ctf-problem", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/18/viral-hit-ctf-problem", "external_url" : "https://mastodon.social/@stroughtonsmith/112118127201793072", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nSteven 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.”
\n\nLink: mastodon.social/@stroughtonsmith/112118127201793072
\n" }, { "title" : "[Sponsor] WorkOS", "date_published" : "2024-03-19T03:59:00Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-19T03:59:00Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2024/03/workos_7", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2024/03/workos_7", "external_url" : "https://workos.com/?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=q12024", "authors" : [ { "name" : "Daring Fireball Department of Commerce" } ], "content_html" : "\nWorkOS 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.
\n\nThe 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.
\n\nToday, hundreds of high-growth scale-ups are already powered by WorkOS, including ones you probably know, like Vercel, Webflow, and Loom.
\n\nLink: workos.com/?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=display…
\n" }, { "title" : "European Commission Holds ‘Apple DMA Compliance Workshop’", "date_published" : "2024-03-19T03:58:31Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-19T04:24:33Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/18/apple-dma-compliance-workshop", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/18/apple-dma-compliance-workshop", "external_url" : "https://twitter.com/KayJebelli/status/1769635526062043315", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nThis 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:
\n\n\n\n\nInteresting detail: the EC told Apple that they aren’t allowed to \nnotarize apps to protect users. So “government authorities are the \nones that are going to have to step up to protect” app developers \nand users from the risks of these 3rd-party apps.
\n
In other words, the EC has a problem 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.
\n\n\n\n\nPushed again on the CTF, Apple re-asserts that it is fully \ncompliant with the DMA. It isn’t charging an additional fee for \ninteroperability, but compensation for technologies that it was \npreviously monetising through its original model (effectively \ntolling digital app sales).
\n
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:
\n\n\n\n\nIt’s pretty incredible if you take a step back, in what other \nindustry do entire regulatory frameworks pop up to address a \ndispute between different businesses over the question of “Why \ncan’t I have gratuitous access to this infrastructure, at zero \ncost to myself?”
\n
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.
\n\nLink: twitter.com/KayJebelli/status/1769635526062043315
\n" }, { "title" : "Debugging the Voyager 1 From a Light Day Away", "date_published" : "2024-03-19T00:02:18Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-19T00:02:18Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/18/nasa-voyager-1-debugging", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/18/nasa-voyager-1-debugging", "external_url" : "https://blogs.nasa.gov/sunspot/2024/03/13/nasa-engineers-make-progress-toward-understanding-voyager-1-issue/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nDenise Hill, writing on NASA’s The Sun Spot blog:
\n\n\n\n\nSince November 2023, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has been sending \na steady radio signal to Earth, but the signal does not contain \nusable data. The source of the issue appears to be with one of \nthree onboard computers, the flight data subsystem (FDS), which is \nresponsible for packaging the science and engineering data before \nit’s sent to Earth by the telemetry modulation unit.
\n\nOn March 3, the Voyager mission team saw activity from one section \nof the FDS that differed from the rest of the computer’s \nunreadable data stream. The new signal was still not in the format \nused by Voyager 1 when the FDS is working properly, so the team \nwasn’t initially sure what to make of it. But an engineer with the \nagency’s Deep Space Network, which operates the radio antennas \nthat communicate with both Voyagers and other spacecraft traveling \nto the Moon and beyond, was able to decode the new signal and \nfound that it contains a readout of the entire FDS memory. [...]
\n\nBecause Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles (24 billion \nkilometers) from Earth, it takes 22.5 hours for a radio signal to \nreach the spacecraft and another 22.5 hours for the probe’s \nresponse to reach antennas on the ground. So the team received the \nresults of the command on March 3. On March 7, engineers began \nworking to decode the data, and on March 10, they determined that \nit contains a memory readout.
\n
Remind me never to complain about anything I’ve had to debug again.
\n\nLink: blogs.nasa.gov/sunspot/2024/03/13/nasa-engineers-make…
\n" }, { "title" : "★ My 2023 Apple Report Card", "date_published" : "2024-03-18T23:50:14Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-19T05:06:24Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/my_2023_apple_report_card", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/my_2023_apple_report_card", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nLast 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.
\n\nBy 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.)
\n\nWhen 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.
\n\nThe 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.
\n\nThe 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.
\n\nMacOS 13 Ventura and 14 Sonoma have both been fine releases. Reliable and (mostly) familiar.
\n\nThe 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.
\n\niOS 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.
\n\nThat 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?
\n\nThe 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.
\n\nWatchOS 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.
\n\nAirPods Pro 2 are just terrific, and the new Adaptive noise control mode is amazing for my day-to-day usage.
\n\nNo 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.
\n\nThe 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.
\n\nLots of great shows and movies on TV+. Slow Horses, Silo, Hijack, For All Mankind, and Killers of the Flower Moon were all standouts.
\n\niCloud remains secure, fast, and reliable. So much seamless continuity (including via Continuity-branded features) across devices.
\n\nBut 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.
\n\nI’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).
\n\nNo news is great news in this category.
\n\nI’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.
\n\nThird 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.
\n\nAnother 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.
\n\nWe’re living in sensitive times on other social issues, and Apple seems to be managing that very astutely and honestly.
\n\n\n\n " }, { "title" : "Is Apple Out of the Generative AI Game?", "date_published" : "2024-03-18T20:53:16Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-18T23:54:45Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/18/apple-out-of-ai-game", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/18/apple-out-of-ai-game", "external_url" : "https://mas.to/@carnage4life/112116603751149754", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nDare Obasanjo, on Mastodon:
\n\n\n\n\n2024 is the year Apple faced its limitations. First giving up the \ndream of competing with Tesla in EVs and now conceding it can’t \ncompete with Google and OpenAI in generative AI.
\n\nThis means iOS users end up winning as we get actual cutting edge \nfeatures and not Siri warmed over.
\n
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.
\n\nWe 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.
\n\nLink: mas.to/@carnage4life/112116603751149754
\n" }, { "title" : "Apple Researchers Publish ‘Breakthrough’ Paper on Multimodal LLMs", "date_published" : "2024-03-18T20:48:56Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-18T21:11:15Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/18/apple-mm1", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/18/apple-mm1", "external_url" : "https://venturebeat.com/ai/apple-researchers-achieve-breakthroughs-in-multimodal-ai-as-company-ramps-up-investments/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nMichael Nuñez, reporting for VentureBeat:
\n\n\n\n\nApple researchers have developed new methods for training large \nlanguage models on both text and images, enabling more powerful \nand flexible AI systems, in what could be a significant advance \nfor artificial intelligence and for future Apple products.
\n\nThe work, described in a research paper titled “MM1: Methods, \nAnalysis & Insights from Multimodal LLM Pre-training” that \nwas quietly posted to arxiv.org this week, demonstrates how \ncarefully combining different types of training data and model \narchitectures can lead to state-of-the-art performance on a range \nof AI benchmarks.
\n\n“We demonstrate that for large-scale multimodal pre-training using \na careful mix of image-caption, interleaved image-text, and \ntext-only data is crucial for achieving state-of-the-art few-shot \nresults across multiple benchmarks,” the researchers explain. By \ntraining models on a diverse dataset spanning visual and \nlinguistic information, the MM1 models were able to excel at tasks \nlike image captioning, visual question answering, and natural \nlanguage inference.
\n
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.
\n\nLink: venturebeat.com/ai/apple-researchers-achieve-breakthroughs…
\n" }, { "title" : "Gurman: ‘Apple in Talks to License Google Gemini’", "date_published" : "2024-03-18T19:17:31Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-18T21:03:51Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/18/gurman-apple-google-gemini", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/18/gurman-apple-google-gemini", "external_url" : "https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-18/apple-in-talks-to-license-google-gemini-for-iphone-ios-18-generative-ai-tools", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nMark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg:
\n\n\n\n\nApple Inc. is in talks to build Google’s Gemini artificial \nintelligence engine into the iPhone, according to people familiar \nwith the situation, setting the stage for a blockbuster agreement \nthat would shake up the AI industry.
\n\nThe two companies are in active negotiations to let Apple license \nGemini, Google’s set of generative AI models, to power some new \nfeatures coming to the iPhone software this year, said the people, \nwho asked not to be identified because the deliberations are \nprivate. Apple also recently held discussions with OpenAI and has \nconsidered using its model, according to the people.
\n
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.
\n\nI 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.
\n\n\n\n\nAlphabet shares rose as much as 7.4% on Monday as the markets \nopened in New York. It was the biggest intraday gain since Feb. 2, \n2023. Apple was up 2.2%.
\n
Bloomberg gonna Bloomberg.
\n\nLink: bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-18/apple-in-talks-to…
\n" }, { "title" : "Nick Heer on the MacOS 14 Sonoma Typography Palette", "date_published" : "2024-03-18T18:55:16Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-18T20:38:49Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/18/heer-typography-palette", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/18/heer-typography-palette", "external_url" : "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/typography-palette-sonoma/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nNick Heer, Pixel Envy:
\n\n\n\n\nFor a long time, this palette was a dry list of checkboxes \nand disclosure triangles. A user would need to first know this \npalette exists, and then know what each option did. But, in a \nrecent version of MacOS, the palette has been updated with \nicons that more clearly display what will change. \nDepending on the font file in question, there are many \ndifferent options available, and the numerically differentiated \n“stylistic sets” have never been clear. This is much nicer.
\n
This is indeed a nice update to a little-known but wonderful standard feature in Cocoa’s text system. Who says AppKit is dead?
\n\n(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: “$ → $”.)
\n\nLink: pxlnv.com/linklog/typography-palette-sonoma/
\n" }, { "title" : "CloudSLAW", "date_published" : "2024-03-17T22:33:00Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-17T22:34:03Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/17/cloudslaw", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/17/cloudslaw", "external_url" : "https://slaw.securosis.com/?utm_source=df", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nMy thanks to Rich Mogull for sponsoring DF last week to promote CloudSLAW — Cloud Security Lab a Week. He wants to make cloud security knowledge accessible to anyone, with or without security or cloud experience, for free. CloudSLAW delivers a 15-30 minute lab to your inbox, RSS feed, or YouTube. You don’t need to be a tech pro, but, as Rich says, it helps to know the difference between an API and an IPA.
\n\nRich has taught cloud security around the world for over a decade. He’s also one of the preeminent writers about security issues in general, and Apple platforms particularly. If you’re a regular reader, you probably recognize his name: I’ve linked to articles by Rich dozens of times over the years, and he was my guest on The Talk Show just a few years ago. He knows his shit and he’s great at explaining it. CloudSLAW is his attempt to help anyone go from zero to hero on cloud security. Go ahead and sign up now — it’s free of charge.
\n\nLink: slaw.securosis.com/?utm_source=df
\n" }, { "title" : "Using ASCII Art to Work Around Content Restrictions in the Top 5 AI Chatbots", "date_published" : "2024-03-17T22:29:57Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-17T22:33:25Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/17/ascii-art-vs-ai", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/17/ascii-art-vs-ai", "external_url" : "https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/03/researchers-use-ascii-art-to-elicit-harmful-responses-from-5-major-ai-chatbots/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nDan Goodin, reporting for Ars Technica:
\n\n\n\n\nResearchers have discovered a new way to hack AI assistants that uses a surprisingly old-school method: ASCII art. It turns out that chat-based large language models such as GPT-4 get so distracted trying to process these representations that they forget to enforce rules blocking harmful responses, such as those providing instructions for building bombs.
\n
Such a silly trick, but it epitomizes the state of LLMs. It’s simultaneously impressive that they’re smart enough to read ASCII art, but laughable that they’re so naive that this trick works.
\n\nLink: arstechnica.com/security/2024/03/researchers-use-ascii-art…
\n" }, { "title" : "Why Mickey Mouse Is So Famous", "date_published" : "2024-03-16T22:57:09Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-16T22:57:09Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/16/mickey-mouse-sound", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/16/mickey-mouse-sound", "external_url" : "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_tT3R-Qrgw", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\n10-minute video by Phil Edwards positing that Mickey Mouse is a singularly famous character because of a technology breakthrough: synchronized sound.
\n\nLink: youtube.com/watch?v=i_tT3R-Qrgw
\n" }, { "title" : "★ Quickly Toggling Closed Captions on Apple TV (But Not in Netflix)", "date_published" : "2024-03-15T22:30:30Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-17T02:01:07Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/quickly_toggling_closed_captions_on_apple_tv", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/quickly_toggling_closed_captions_on_apple_tv", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nI 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.
\n\nBut 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.
\n\nTurns out there are two better ways:
\n\nIf you use the Control Center Apple TV remote control on your iPhone, there’s a dedicated “CC” button.
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.
\n\nPostscript: Ben Markowitz tried the captions accessibility shortcut in a dozen popular tvOS apps. Only works in Paramount+ and ESPN. Just terrible.
\n\n\n\n " }, { "title" : "‘The Gentlemen’ on Netflix", "date_published" : "2024-03-15T22:05:18Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-15T23:04:20Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/15/the-gentlemen", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/15/the-gentlemen", "external_url" : "https://www.netflix.com/title/81437051", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nNew series on Netflix created by Guy Ritchie (who directed the first two episodes as well). I’ve been a fan of Ritchie’s zany, violent crime movies ever since 1998’s Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, and The Gentlemen scratches the same itch. (Ritchie also made a movie called The Gentlemen in 2020, which I think takes place in the same cinematic universe as the show.)
\n\nI enjoyed this show so much, it took all my self-restraint not to stay up all night and binge it straight through. Funny, clever, exciting. Recommended.
\n\nLink: netflix.com/title/81437051
\n" }, { "title" : "The Wedge-Shaped M1 MacBook Air Lives On: At Walmart, Starting at $700", "date_published" : "2024-03-15T21:04:25Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-17T03:11:36Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/15/macbook-air-walmart", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/15/macbook-air-walmart", "external_url" : "https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2024/03/15/walmart-brings-the-popular-macbook-air-with-the-m1-chip-to-its-shelves", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nWalmart:
\n\n\n\n\nWalmart will begin selling MacBook Air with the M1 chip — continuing to deliver premium quality and unmatched affordability \nfor customers. MacBook Air features amazing performance and a long \nbattery life in its thin and light design. This is the first time \ncustomers can purchase a Mac directly from Walmart. The MacBook \nAir with the M1 chip is now available on Walmart.com and will \nsoon be available in select Walmart stores for only $699.
\n\n“Our mission at Walmart is to help customers save money so they \ncan live better — it’s not an either/or proposition. The very \nheart of that mission is the belief that customers should not have \nto sacrifice quality because of price,” said Julie Barber, \nexecutive vice president of Merchandising at Walmart U.S. “We’re \nworking hard to bring premium brands to our physical and virtual \nshelves, and we’re excited to work with Apple to do just that.”
\n
This is a big deal. When the M3 MacBook Airs arrived last week, Apple dropped the M1 Air from its lineup and moved the M2 Air to the magic $999 spot in the lineup. But it looks like Apple is going to keep producing the M1 MacBook Air for this deal with Walmart. These aren’t refurbs, or leftover stock (Apple hasn’t kept excess stock in inventory for bestselling products for decades — keeping inventory low is one of the hallmarks of Apple’s operations in the Cook era).
\n\nAnd while, yes, these machines are now over three years old, for $700 this is a great deal. That’s 30 percent less than the cheapest MacBook in an Apple Store. I’d bet serious money that a base M1 MacBook Air outperforms any other $700 laptop on the market. Show me another $700 laptop with a retina display. I’ll wait.
\n\nFascinating example of pricing-as-branding that Apple won’t sell this machine in its own stores, but will through Walmart — which doesn’t sell any other Macs.
\n\nLink: corporate.walmart.com/news/2024/03/15/walmart-brings-the…
\n" }, { "title" : "Privacy-Conscious EU Now Requires Developers to Include Mailing Address and Phone Number on App Store Listings", "date_published" : "2024-03-15T20:39:30Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-15T21:17:09Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/15/dsa-mailing-address-phone-number", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/15/dsa-mailing-address-phone-number", "external_url" : "https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/manage-compliance-information/manage-european-union-digital-services-act-compliance-information/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nApple Developer, “Manage European Union digital services act compliance information”:
\n\n\n\n\nYou’ll be asked to disclose whether or not you’re a trader under \nthe European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) in order to stay \ncompliant across regions when distributing on the App Store. If \nyou’re distributing content as a trader, the DSA requires that you \nprovide certain identification information, including address and \ncontact details, to be displayed on your App Store product pages \nto consumers in the European Union (EU). Confirm your trader \nstatus if you have at least one app that qualifies you as a \ntrader. You’ll then have the option to turn off or specify your \ntrader status for each specific app that you distribute. If you’re \nnot a trader, consumers in the EU will be informed that consumer \nrights stemming from applicable consumer protection laws won’t \napply to contracts between you and them.
\n\nHow to know if you’re a trader
\n\nThe DSA defines a trader as “any natural person, or any legal \nperson irrespective of whether privately or publicly owned, who is \nacting, including through any person acting in his or her name or \non his or her behalf, for purposes relating to his or her trade, \nbusiness, craft or profession.” If you have questions about your \nstatus as a trader, consult with your legal advisor.
\n
Clear as a bell, that definition. (Via Michael Tsai.)
\n\nLink: developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/manage…
\n" }, { "title" : "’Objectified’ Turns 15, Streaming Free Through March 17", "date_published" : "2024-03-14T23:30:05Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-14T23:32:35Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/14/objectified", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/14/objectified", "external_url" : "https://www.ohyouprettythings.com/free", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\n\n\n\nObjectified (2009, 75 minutes) is a documentary film about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them. What can we learn about who we are, and who we want to be, from the objects with which we surround ourselves?
\n
A lovely film, and you can’t beat the price this week.
\n\nLink: ohyouprettythings.com/free
\n" }, { "title" : "Masimo Proves New Apple Watch Series 9 Units Still Have the Blood Oxygen Sensor", "date_published" : "2024-03-14T22:08:55Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-14T22:09:12Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/14/masimo-series-9-watch-hardware", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/14/masimo-series-9-watch-hardware", "external_url" : "https://ipfray.com/exclusive-if-you-recently-bought-an-apple-watch-in-the-u-s-youll-likely-get-pulse-oximetry-for-free-provided-that-apples-appeal-succeeds/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nFlorian Mueller, writing at IP Fray:
\n\n\n\n\nThe January 12, 2024 CBP order has recently been published (CBP \nwebpage). The parties’ filings with the appeals court were \nheavily redacted where they discussed the enforcement dispute over \nApple’s workaround. Now it’s a bit clearer what technical changes \nApple made and why they managed to get their workaround Watches \ncleared. There is some hardware “designation” in the newer Watches \nthat tells the software in those Watches not to perform pulse \noximetry although all of the necessary components are present. \nMasimo managed to reenable pulse oximetry, but only after \njailbreaking older iPhones and using them to manipulate the Watch, \nwhich constitutes a “significant alteration” of the product.
\n\nThe fact that Masimo could reenable the feature by running some \ncustom software on jailbroken older iPhones absolutely positively \nmeans that Apple itself can reactivate that feature for its \ncustomers in the event it prevails on appeal or, in the \nalternative, in late August 2028 at the latest (because the \npatents-in-suit expire then).
\n
It’s been pretty clear since January that the sensors in dispute are still present in newly-sold Apple Watches, and they’re simply disabled in software, but this seemingly confirms it.
\n\nLink: ipfray.com/exclusive-if-you-recently-bought-an-apple-watch…
\n" }, { "title" : "Speedometer 3.0 Browser Benchmark", "date_published" : "2024-03-14T21:58:54Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-14T21:58:54Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/14/speedometer-3", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/14/speedometer-3", "external_url" : "https://webkit.org/blog/15131/speedometer-3-0-the-best-way-yet-to-measure-browser-performance/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nRyosuke Niwa, writing on the WebKit blog:
\n\n\n\n\nAs announced on browserbench.org today, in collaboration \nwith other browser engine developers, Apple’s WebKit team is \nexcited to introduce Speedometer 3.0, a major update that \nbetter reflects the Web of today. It’s built together by the \ndevelopers of all major browser engines: Blink, Gecko, and WebKit \nwith hundreds of contributions from companies like Apple, Google, \nIntel, Microsoft, and Mozilla. This post is a deep dive into how \nthe collaborative Speedometer project improved the benchmark’s \nmeasurements methods and test content.
\n
I care about Speedometer not for comparing different browser engines against each other on the same machine (even though that’s Speedometer’s primary purpose), but as a benchmark for measuring CPUs. It measures something very real and utterly practical: how fast web rendering is in an actual browser.
\n\nLink: webkit.org/blog/15131/speedometer-3-0-the-best-way-yet-to…
\n" }, { "title" : "★ Apple Adjusts DMA Plan to Offer Direct Downloading of Apps From the Web (With a Big Asterisk), Custom Link-Out Screens, and Marketplaces Solely for the Distribution of a Developer’s Own Apps", "date_published" : "2024-03-14T03:43:22Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-15T01:41:56Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/apple_adjusts_dma_plan", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/apple_adjusts_dma_plan", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nApple Developer News, yesterday:
\n\n\n\n\nDevelopers who’ve agreed to the Alternative Terms Addendum for \nApps in the EU have new options for their apps in the EU:
\n\n\n
\n- \n
Alternative app marketplaces. Marketplaces can choose to offer a \ncatalog of apps solely from the developer of the marketplace.
- \n
Linking out to purchase. When directing users to complete a \ntransaction for digital goods or services on an external \nwebpage, developers can choose how to design promotions, \ndiscounts, and other deals. The Apple-provided design templates, \nwhich are optimized for key purchase and promotional use cases, \nare now optional.
These two tweaks follow three others from a week ago. The first new one, above, means a company like, say, Adobe or Microsoft, can offer a marketplace just for their own suite of apps. The second is a bigger concession — effectively, the elimination of mandatory Apple-designed scare sheets for link-outs to the web. It sounds like the second truly eliminates anti-steering provisions for developers who opt into the new EU rules.
\n\nAnd then, boom, the big one:
\n\n\n\n\nWeb Distribution, available with a software update later this \nspring, will let authorized developers distribute their iOS apps \nto EU users directly from a website owned by the developer. Apple \nwill provide authorized developers access to APIs that facilitate \nthe distribution of their apps from the web, integrate with system \nfunctionality, back up and restore users’ apps, and more. For \ndetails, visit Getting ready for Web Distribution in the \nEU.
\n
So direct downloads — single-app sideloading from developers’ own websites — are now an option. The devil is in those details though:
\n\n\n\n\nTo be eligible for Web Distribution, you must: [...]
\n\n\n
\n- \n
Be a member of good standing in the Apple Developer Program for \ntwo continuous years or more, and have an app that had more than \none million first annual installs on iOS in the EU in the prior \ncalendar year.
- \n
Agree to, among other things,
\n\n
- \n
Only offer apps from your developer account.
- \n
Be responsive to communications from Apple regarding your \napps distributed through Web Distribution, particularly \nregarding any fraudulent, malicious, or illegal behavior, \nor anything else that Apple believes impacts the safety, \nsecurity, or privacy of users.
- \n
Publish transparent data collection policies and offer \nusers control over how their data is collected and used.
- \n
Follow applicable laws of the jurisdictions where you \noperate (for example, the Digital Services Act, the \nGeneral Data Protection Regulation, and consumer \nprotection laws).
Be responsible for handling governmental and other \nrequests to take down listings of apps.
The eligibility requirement of having an app with over 1 million annual installations in the EU is a high barrier. The intention, obviously, is to limit web distribution to ostensibly trustworthy developers. But it’s sort of a catch-22: the entire feature is by definition intended for developers who want to distribute their apps outside Apple’s App Store (or anyone else’s EU app marketplace) — but the only way to qualify is to have at least one very popular app in the App Store or an app marketplace.
\n\nIf this change is at the behest of the EC, via back-channel feedback, the EC is seemingly only concerned with large developers. And to me it makes no sense that this change — a huge one — came from anywhere but back-channel communications with the EC. Apple’s presentation of its original compliance plan, just six weeks ago, went out of its way to emphasize that requiring all apps to go through a marketplace — and requiring stricter eligibility requirements for marketplace providers than regular developer accounts — was in the name of user security. If Apple had wanted to offer direct downloads of individual apps from developers’ own websites, they would have included this from the start. But given that the feature will be available “later this spring” — which I take to mean before WWDC — they were seemingly already working on it, preparing for the EC to say, publicly or privately, that the DMA requires it. But if Apple had wanted to allow web distribution, it would have been part of the initial announcement.
\n\nAlmost all the changes Apple has made to its compliance plan, so far, are merely policy changes. Marketplace providers no longer necessarily need to obtain a million-dollar stand-by letter of credit. Developers who opt into the new EU rules can now change their minds and go back to the original business terms. Corporations with multiple developer accounts can opt into the new rules on an account-by-account basis, instead of all-or-none. Companies can create marketplaces solely for their own apps. All just policy changes. And all of those policy changes quite likely are the result of direct feedback from developers. It’s easy to imagine that Apple never considered that a company with multiple developer accounts might want only to move some of those accounts to the new business terms. I don’t see why Apple would begrudge any of these changes, even an iota. They can be filed under “Sure, we just didn’t think of that.”
\n\nThat link-out screens may now contain promotional and pricing information, and don’t need to follow Apple’s templates — that’s a mere policy change too, but one I suspect Apple does begrudge. And it’s obviously something developers want. Do you want a very plain-looking, totally unbranded screen, that emphasizes more than anything that you’re leaving the safe confines of the Apple ecosystem? Or would you like to design your own screen, in your own style, with your own emphasis? This, to me, reeks of a change at the behest of the EC.
\n\nBut then there’s web distribution — that’s both a major policy change and a major technical one. (How will software updates work for web downloaded apps? For that matter, how will software updates work for marketplace apps themselves? Will the Foobar Marketplace app be able to somehow update itself? That doesn’t seem possible without running a background process.) And as I noted earlier, Apple specifically described direct web downloads of apps as a bad idea just six weeks ago.
\n\nI have no little birdie information on this, but Apple changing policy on this issue only makes sense if they have reason to believe the EC considers it mandatory under the DMA. That it will only be available to longstanding developers with at least one million-EU-downloads app may well be completely compatible with the DMA. There’s nothing at all in the DMA about the interests of small or indie developers.
\n\nAnd as Steven Sinofsky expounded upon at length in his analysis of the DMA, the DMA wants to have its cake and eat it too. It requires Apple both to open up iOS to additional methods of software distribution and to keep iOS as secure as possible. Allowing direct downloads, but only from already-successful developers, aligns with that. I suspect Apple was ready to go from the start with web downloads — they knew the EC might demand it — and so they opened their hand January 25 with the compliance plan they hoped would fly, and are ratcheting out, piecemeal, with additional changes in the direction of more openness, as they obtain feedback — both from developers, and whatever EC back channels they may have. (Officially, the EC doesn’t provide issue-by-issue feedback to its regulatory subjects.)
\n\nThe other change that suggests Apple is in unofficial contact with the EC regarding compliance is the “never mind” on PWAs. Beta versions of iOS 17.4 in the EU changed Home Screen web apps into bookmarks that open in a new tab in the user’s default browser. Apple made this change not because they want to “kill” web apps,1 but because they were under the impression that the DMA required them to either (a) have no Home Screen web app support at all in the EU, or (b) allow all third-party rendering engines to save PWAs to the Home Screen using their rendering engines. Option (c) — the status quo, WebKit-only PWA support on the Home Screen — is seemingly disallowed under the DMA, as it would constitute preferencing WebKit over third-party engines. Apple doesn’t have a system in place in iOS to allow third-party rendering engines to save web apps to the Home Screen, so, alas, (a) it was — no more PWAs in the EU. The DMA is not clear about much, but it is seemingly clear that gatekeepers cannot preference their own web browser or rendering engine. Allowing PWAs — but only via WebKit — is, obviously, showing preference to WebKit. Apple’s initial decision to remove PWAs in the EU sucked, but that’s because the DMA sucks, not because Apple hates or fears web apps. But I think what happened is that when the EC realized the DMA was going to result in a worse PWA experience, they let Apple know that WebKit-only PWAs would not be penalized.2
\n\nSo my gut feeling is that we’re seeing Apple adopt changes in response to unofficial feedback from the EC. If so, that suggests that the things Apple isn’t changing — like the Core Technology Fee — are either OK with the EC, or, if not, that Apple is willing to fight for them. Or perhaps we’ll be right back here with additional compliance plan changes every Tuesday for the next few weeks.
\n\nIf Apple wanted to kill web apps they’d have made this change worldwide in iOS 17.4, not limited to the EU. And they wouldn’t have been adding new web app features to WebKit, on both iOS and especially MacOS, just in the last year. But there exists a contingent of tinfoil-hat-wearing web app zealots who think PWAs are like this close to taking over mobile app development — the dream of write-once/run-everywhere just within grasp — and it’s mean old monopolistic walled-garden-defending Apple that’s holding them back, because PWAs threaten the App Store. That’s just nonsense. The truth is PWAs just aren’t popular. Almost no normal people use them, or even know they exist. “That’s because Apple is holding PWAs back by withholding features from WebKit”, goes the conspiracy thinking. Most recently, it was mobile push notification support. Then WebKit added that. It’s like desktop Linux getting popular, or Bluetooth getting reliable: always “next year”. Except with PWAs, web developers can imagine it’s somehow Apple’s fault, not the fact that users prefer idiomatic native apps from app stores — including on Android, which has always used Chrome’s web rendering engine, and which has all the features PWA advocates want from WebKit. ↩︎
\nI also suspect that Apple, eventually, will support PWAs in iOS in the EU using third-party browser engines, if possible. But it’s easy to see how complicated that could be. What happens if a user installs Chrome, then uses Chrome to install a PWA using Chrome’s Blink rendering engine, and then deletes Chrome from their iPhone? How does that PWA continue to function after its rendering engine has been removed from the system? It can’t just automatically fall back to using WebKit because (a) the PWA might be using features only available in Chrome (that’s the whole reason web developers are clamoring for third-party rendering engines); and (b) the PWA’s stored data is tied to the rendering engine that created it. This is not a simple problem to solve. ↩︎︎
\nCristiano Lima-Strong, Jacob Bogage, and Mariana Alfaro, reporting for The Washington Post:
\n\n\n\n\nThe House overwhelmingly passed a measure Wednesday to force \nTikTok to split from its parent company or face a national ban, a \nlightning offensive that materialized abruptly after years of \nunsuccessful negotiations over the platform’s fate. The \nlegislation, approved 352 to 65, is a sweeping bipartisan \nrebuke of the popular video-sharing app — and an attempt to \ngrapple with allegations that TikTok’s China-based parent, \nByteDance, presents national security risks.
\n\nFor years, lawmakers have been introducing proposals seeking to \nrestrict the company’s activities in the U.S., and finding limited \nmomentum. But these lengthy behind-the-scenes deliberations were \nhastened, lawmakers said, by the Biden administration’s growing \nsupport of the effort, coupled with concerns about TikTok’s \npotential to influence U.S. politics, which intensified after \nthe Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
\n\nPrivate briefings from national security and law enforcement \nofficials, including a classified hearing last week, served as a \n“call to action” for Congress to “finally” take a stand against \nTikTok, said Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), a member of the House \nEnergy and Commerce Committee. It’s unclear whether these meetings \nwith the FBI, Justice Department and Office of the Director of the \nNational Intelligence surfaced new evidence against the company.
\n
It seems pretty clear those briefings did surface alarming evidence. The two concerns about TikTok are that (a) the Chinese government is using it to surveil Americans; and (b) that it serves as a powerful propaganda vehicle for the PRC. It’s the latter concern — propaganda — that has had me calling for a TikTok ban (or divestiture by ByteDance) for years.
\n\nRemember too: China itself bans all foreign social networks. Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Twitter/X, Pinterest — none of them are available in mainland China. It’s bananas that we allow an algorithmically-driven social media app controlled by China here.
\n\nLink: washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/03/13/tiktok-ban-passes…
\n" }, { "title" : "The DMA Has Crippled Google Search in the EU", "date_published" : "2024-03-14T01:02:50Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-14T03:13:24Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/13/google-search-dma", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/13/google-search-dma", "external_url" : "https://blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/an-update-on-our-preparations-for-the-dma/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nOliver Bethel, legal director at Google, back in January, on changes to search results in the EU:
\n\n\n\n\nWhen you are searching for something like a hotel, or something to \nbuy, we often show information to help you find what you need, \nlike pictures and prices, as part of our results. Sometimes this \ncan be as part of a result for a single business like a hotel or \nrestaurant, or sometimes it can be a featured group of relevant \nresults. Over the coming weeks in Europe, we will be expanding our \ntesting of a number of changes to the search results page. We will \nintroduce dedicated units that include a group of links to \ncomparison sites from across the web, and query shortcuts at the \ntop of the search page to help people refine their search, \nincluding by focusing results just on comparison sites.
\n
Most of those comparison sites are garbage. I suspect these changes will make Google Search far less useful for hotels and shopping.
\n\n\n\n\nFor categories like hotels, we will also start testing a dedicated \nspace for comparison sites and direct suppliers to show more \ndetailed individual results including images, star ratings and \nmore. These changes will result in the removal of some features \nfrom the search page, such as the Google Flights unit.
\n
Unreal. Google Flights is the best cross-airline search tool I’m aware of. Years ago I used Hipmunk — which was great — but, alas, they shut down in January 2020. I presume people in the EU can still go to the dedicated Google Flights page, but just typing “PHL to SFO” on Google’s homepage or in your browser’s location field is what most people expect to work.
\n\nLink: blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/an-update-on-our…
\n" }, { "title" : "Google’s EU Choice Screens for Android, for Default Browser and Default Search Within Chrome, Only Show Up on New Devices", "date_published" : "2024-03-14T00:22:57Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-14T00:22:57Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/13/google-eu-choice-screens", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/13/google-eu-choice-screens", "external_url" : "https://www.android.com/choicescreen/dma/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nGoogle:
\n\n\n\n\nThe browser and search choice screens will begin appearing on new \ndevices distributed in the EEA on or after March 6, 2024.
\n
Not clear to me why Apple did this in a software update for all eligible iPhones, but Google is only doing it for newly-sold ones.
\n\nLink: android.com/choicescreen/dma/
\n" }, { "title" : "Over 15,000 Hacked Roku Accounts Sold for 50 Cents Apiece", "date_published" : "2024-03-13T19:29:36Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-13T19:29:37Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/13/roku-hack", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/13/roku-hack", "external_url" : "https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/over-15-000-hacked-roku-accounts-sold-for-50-each-to-buy-hardware/#google_vignette", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nBill Toulas, writing for BleepingComputer:
\n\n\n\n\nRoku has disclosed a data breach impacting over 15,000 customers \nafter hacked accounts were used to make fraudulent purchases of \nhardware and streaming subscriptions. However, BleepingComputer \nhas learned there is more to this attack, with threat actors \nselling the stolen accounts for as little as $0.50 per account, \nallowing purchasers to use stored credit cards to make illegal \npurchases. [...]
\n\nThe company says that once an account was breached, it allowed \nthreat actors to change the information on the account, including \npasswords, email addresses, and shipping addresses. This \neffectively locked a user out of the account, allowing the threat \nactors to make purchases using stored credit card information \nwithout the legitimate account holder receiving order \nconfirmation emails.
\n
More good news for Roku users, including the fact that Roku first discovered the hack in early January, and waited until now to notify affected users.
\n\nLink: bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/over-15-000-hacked-roku…
\n" }, { "title" : "Don Lemon Is Shocked — Shocked — That the Face-Eating Leopard Ate His Face", "date_published" : "2024-03-13T19:13:21Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-13T19:34:30Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/13/lemon-musk-twitter", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/13/lemon-musk-twitter", "external_url" : "https://www.threads.net/@karaswisher/post/C4djaMXOcQk", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nBack on January 10, Twitter/X and former CNN host Don Lemon announced a deal for Lemon to host a new show on the platform.
\n\nLast Friday Lemon interviewed Elon Musk for his first episode of the show. Not liking the questions he was asked, Musk cancelled the show the next day.
\n\nAgreeing to a deal with Musk is like agreeing to a deal with Trump. At best you’ll be paid pennies on the dollar, and probably will never see a nickel.
\n\nLink: threads.net/@karaswisher/post/C4djaMXOcQk
\n" }, { "title" : "Help Sarah Perez", "date_published" : "2024-03-13T19:00:31Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-13T19:00:32Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/13/help-sarah-perez", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/13/help-sarah-perez", "external_url" : "https://www.gofundme.com/f/yd78gx-sarah-and-josie-need-our-help", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nGoFundMe drive to help longtime (and oft-cited here at DF) TechCrunch reporter Sarah Perez and her daughter:
\n\n\n\n\nIn the early hours of March 13th, Sarah’s world turned upside \ndown. As the bright glare of flames illuminated her bathroom \nwindow, she was able to escape safety with her 14-year-old \ndaughter, Josie, and their dog Princess. They escaped the \nengulfing inferno just in time, but not without losing everything \nthey held dear.
\n\nThe fire department’s grim assessment confirmed the extent of the \ndevastation: severe structural damage rendered their home \nuninhabitable, leaving them with nothing but the clothes on their \nbacks. Sarah, a resilient single mother who has always worked \ntirelessly to provide for her family, now faces the task of \nrebuilding their lives from scratch.
\n
A lot of people, each giving a little, can make a big difference here.
\n\nLink: gofundme.com/f/yd78gx-sarah-and-josie-need-our-help
\n" }, { "title" : "iPulse for iOS", "date_published" : "2024-03-13T18:54:18Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-14T00:20:00Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/13/ipulse-for-ios", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/13/ipulse-for-ios", "external_url" : "https://blog.iconfactory.com/2024/03/22-years-later/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nCraig Hockenberry, writing at The Iconfactory blog:
\n\n\n\n\nWe released the first version of iPulse on a new operating system \ncalled Mac OS X in 2002. Our unobtrusive and stylish \nsystem monitor showcased the features of Apple’s new OS and was a \nhit.
\n\nNow, two decades later, we’re happy to announce that \ngroundbreaking product is coming to iOS and iPadOS. And just as it \ndid with macOS, it’s taking a new approach with its user interface \nto get the job done. An app that can monitor your device is a \ngreat thing to have when you need it, but can get in the way when \nyou don’t. On iOS we solved this problem by using Picture in \nPicture technology.
\n
$10 one-time purchase in the App Store. That’s a great deal for a great tool.
\n\nThere are zillions of “system monitor”-type apps in the App Store. Good luck finding one other than iPulse that works well, is attractive and well-designed, and has no ads.
\n\nLink: blog.iconfactory.com/2024/03/22-years-later/
\n" }, { "title" : "Steven Sinofsky: ‘Building Under Regulation’", "date_published" : "2024-03-13T01:53:43Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-13T19:21:36Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/12/sinofsky-building-under-regulation", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/12/sinofsky-building-under-regulation", "external_url" : "https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/215-building-under-regulation", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nSteven Sinofsky, back on January 27 (two days after Apple announced the first draft of their DMA compliance plans):
\n\n\n\n\nThis week Apple detailed the software changes that will appear in \nan upcoming release of iOS to comply with the European Union \nDigital Markets Act (DMA). As I read the over 60 pages of \nthe DMA when it was passed (and in drafts before that, little of \nwhich changed in the process) my heart sank over the complexity of \na regulation so poorly constructed yet so clearly aimed at \nspecific (American) companies and products. As I read through many \nof the hundreds of pages of Apple documents detailing their \ncompliance implementation my heart sank again. This time was \nbecause I so thoroughly could feel the pain and struggle product \nteams felt in clinging to at best or unwinding at worst the most \nsubstantial improvement in computing ever introduced — the \npromise behind the iPhone since its introduction. The reason the \niPhone became so successful was not a fluke. Consumers and \ncustomers voted that the value proposition of the product was \nsomething they preferred, and they acted by purchasing iPhone and \ndevelopers responded by building applications for iOS. The \nregulators have a different view of that promise, so here we are.
\n
Sinofsky warns that his essay is long, and it is. At over 18,000 words, it’s veritably booklet-length. But it’s really worth reading. I read it shortly after Sinofsky published it, and have been meaning to comment upon sections at length, but I might as well just link to it. Sinofsky, having been in charge of Windows when Microsoft went through the same sort of European Commission regulatory wringer Apple is now, is in a unique position to expound upon the dynamic. His focus on Apple’s “brand promise” with the iPhone, and how nearly every aspect of the DMA compliance plan breaks — or at least chips away at — that promise, is spot on.
\n\nThe whole point of the DMA is the EC asserting that they know better than Apple (and Google) how phones should work.
\n\nLink: hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/215-building…
\n" }, { "title" : "App Store WTF of the Week: DealMachine for Real Estate", "date_published" : "2024-03-12T19:11:06Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-12T20:14:41Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/12/dealmachine-wtf", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/12/dealmachine-wtf", "external_url" : "https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dealmachine-for-real-estate/id1136936300", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nMessage from a DF reader:
\n\n\n\n\nI came across an app that’s getting away with directly linking to \na website to start a subscription instead of IAP. It’s a \nstraightforward violation of App Store rules in the US. If you \nlook at reviews, a lot of people complain about fraudulent charges \nand not being able to cancel. But apparently Apple hasn’t stopped \nthem yet.
\n
I downloaded the app and signed up; immediately after confirming your email address, you get sent to a screen in the app where you choose from account tiers to begin a free trial. The lowest tier is $100/month, the highest is $500/month. And after making your selection, you get sent to this page on DealMachine’s website to pay using Stripe. (That link won’t actually work, because I omitted the tracking code portion of the URL for the throwaway account I created, so here’s a screenshot.) Not only are they circumventing in-app payments, they don’t even offer using them as a choice.
\n\nHere’s a review from their App Store Listing:
\n\n\n\n\nNo Customer Support / Rough
\n
\nTheir annual plan is over a thousand dollars. I haven’t used their service in\nmonths. The renewal comes around, they charge me another thousand\ndollars. I reach out to get a refund, all I get is a robot.
I don’t think DealMachine is a scam. Stripe is as legit as it gets. But when you handle payments on your own, you handle refunds and subscription cancellations on your own too. Renewal reminders too. And if you don’t send renewal reminders, customers don’t get them. And if you don’t feel like issuing a refund for a $1,000/year subscription that a customer wanted to cancel but didn’t, you can let the customer sort it out with their credit card company. All that stuff works awesome, from the user’s perspective, with Apple’s App Store payment system. So DealMachine offers a taste of what our friends in the EU may be getting from marketplace apps soon.
\n\nLink: apps.apple.com/us/app/dealmachine-for-real-estate…
\n" }, { "title" : "[Sponsor] CloudSLAW", "date_published" : "2024-03-12T17:31:57Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-12T17:42:36Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2024/03/cloudslaw", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2024/03/cloudslaw", "external_url" : "https://slaw.securosis.com/?utm_source=df", "authors" : [ { "name" : "Daring Fireball Department of Commerce" } ], "content_html" : "\nHey there Daring Fireball readers — Rich Mogull here. After years of reading DF I’m finally a sponsor! But for a personal passion project, not a product.
\n\nI want to make cloud security knowledge accessible to anyone, with or without security or cloud experience, for free. Cloud Security Lab a Week delivers a 15-30 minute lab to your inbox, RSS feed, or YouTube. You don’t need to be a tech pro, but it helps to know the difference between an API and an IPA.
\n\nI’ve taught cloud security around the world for over a decade. CloudSLAW is how I can finally help anyone go from zero to hero.
\n\nLink: slaw.securosis.com/?utm_source=df
\n" }, { "title" : "★ Once More Unto the Apple / Epic / European-Commission Breach, Dear Friends, Once More", "date_published" : "2024-03-12T03:59:00Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-13T19:15:59Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/once_more_unto_the_apple-epic-european-commission_breach", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/once_more_unto_the_apple-epic-european-commission_breach", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nThree weeks ago, when Epic Games announced their approval from Apple for a new Apple developer account, under Epic’s Swedish subsidiary, and their intention to use that account to create an Epic Games Store app marketplace in the EU, the assumption was that this had been approved at a high level inside Apple. It seemed pretty safe to assume that no one at Apple had forgotten who Epic is, and that was certainly how Epic presented it, starting with Tim Sweeney graciously describing it as “a good faith move by Apple amidst our cataclysmic antitrust battle”.
\n\nSo the conventional wisdom as to what has occurred from then forward goes like this:
\n\nThis list is largely true, but the problem is item 2. Epic, under the assumption or hope that the DMA demanded Apple permit them to open a store, had simply gone through the enrollment form on Apple’s developer website and paid the $99 annual fee. Per Sweeney, responding to a question from me tonight on Twitter/X, that was Friday, February 9, and their account was approved on the following Monday, February 12. Epic made their public announcement that they intended to create an Epic Games Store for iOS in the EU on Friday, February 16.
\n\nThat announcement, seemingly, was in fact the first time Epic’s plans came to the attention of Apple’s leadership. Schiller’s email to Sweeney was sent the following Friday, February 23, and concluded:
\n\n\n\n\nYou have stated that allowing enrollment of Epic Games Sweden in \nthe Developer Program is “a good faith move by Apple.” We invite \nyou to provide us with written assurance that you are also acting \nin good faith, and that Epic Games Sweden will, despite your \npublic actions and rhetoric, honor all of its commitments. In \nplain, unqualified terms, please tell us why we should trust Epic \nthis time.
\n
It doesn’t make any sense for Schiller to have asked that on February 23 if any senior Apple executives had considered the implications — including Epic’s history of performative non-compliance with the App Store’s terms — and explicitly approved Epic’s new developer account two weeks earlier. Florian Mueller was the first observer to note this, in a post on his new site Games Fray on March 6, this past Wednesday:
\n\n\n\n\nThe original grant of the developer account appeared to be a sign \nof a potential improvement of their relationship, but that may \nhave been the result of an oversight as opposed to a conscious \ndecision by Apple’s executives and lawyers to give Epic a chance \nto prove to be a reliable app store operator in the EU. Right \nafter the developer account was announced (February 16, 2024), \nEpic’s Swedish subsidiary applied for a DMA consultation slot, and \nfive days later apparently saw that the request had been turned \ndown. Those consultations are offered by Apple to organizations \ninterested in exercising certain rights under the DMA with a view \nto alternative app stores. The fact that they weren’t going to \ntalk to Epic about this was already a first negative sign.
\n
Stephen Warwick, reporting for iMore, followed up on Florian’s speculation and confirmed it:
\n\n\n\n\nApple has confirmed to iMore that Epic Games Sweden entered the \nDLPA without any executive review on Apple’s part, confirming \nMueller’s suspicion.
\n
To be clear, regardless of executive review, “Apple” had approved Epic Games Sweden’s developer account. But that approval was seemingly automated, or mostly automated, and only after that did Apple executives and lawyers engage Epic in any back-and-forth regarding assurances of future compliance with Apple’s DMA guidelines.
\n\nSo the real order of events is something more like this:
\n\nI.e., while Apple as an institution granted, revoked, and under public pressure reinstated Epic’s new account, from the perspective of Apple leadership, they only revoked a new account that had been created through an automated system — not for criticism, per se, but for the same reason Epic’s Fortnite developer account remains revoked and Fortnite remains unavailable on Apple platforms worldwide: for the 2020 Fortnite IAP Trojan horse stunt. The “colorful” tweets Schiller quoted and which Apple’s attorney cited were mentioned as proof that Epic hadn’t changed, not as the reason for revoking the new account.
\n\nI’m farting into the wind by writing about this somewhat subtle distinction, because the conventional wisdom isn’t going to change. Almost everyone paying any attention at all to this will continue to believe, forever, that Apple executives granted Epic a new developer account and then revoked it because Tim Sweeney tweeted things Apple didn’t like about their DMA plans.2
\n\nThe bottom line remains as I concluded Friday: Apple played this whole thing terribly. The automated developer program enrollment form — the one that gave Epic the impression they’d been granted express permission to proceed with building an iOS marketplace for the EU — is Apple’s. The whole App Store bureaucracy is Apple’s. (Or as Sweeney aptly called it tonight, “Apple’s App DMV”.)
\n\nAt the beginning of Apple attorney Mark Perry’s letter terminating Epic’s new developer account, he lays bare Apple’s thinking:
\n\n\n\n\nIn the past, Epic has denigrated Apple’s developer terms, \nincluding the Developer Program License Agreement (DPLA) as a \nprelude to breaking them.
\n
To Apple executives, it might have made sense to cite in their correspondence with Epic their ongoing denigration of Apple’s developer terms, as evidence that Epic remains recalcitrant and untrustworthy. To almost everyone outside Apple Park, however — most especially (a) third-party developers who have been, for years, souring on Apple’s App Store policies; and (b) EC commissioners, who are ebulliently roasting Apple as a regulatory target and feasting on the resulting publicity — it looks not like a policy of “We’re not going to reinstate Developer Program privileges to a proven rule-breaker whose stated goal was then, and remains now, to break our control over our own platform”, but instead a retaliatory policy of “We’ll terminate the account of any developer who speaks out against us.”
\n\nThat Apple couldn’t see how this would play is on them.
\n\nI asked Sweeney on Twitter/X about the approval timeline, wondering whether it was measured in mere hours (or minutes, even) or days. If it had been immediately, or nearly so, wouldn’t it seem likely to have been part of an automated approval for new developer accounts, not a dramatic change of stance on Apple’s part regarding Epic Games post-Fortnite IAP lawsuit? Apple fought hard in court — US court, of course, which now matters — to assert its right to revoke Epic’s Fortnite developer account and permanently ban Fortnite from the App Store. But if Sweeney is correct and the approval of the new account came three days after enrollment — even if over a weekend — it seems reasonable for Epic to have assumed they were cleared. Not that Apple had a change of heart, but that Apple accepted that the DMA changed the ground rules in the EU.
\n\nWhich, it is now clear, the DMA has indeed done. ↩︎
\nApple attorney Mark Perry’s letter to Epic’s attorneys informing them Apple was terminating Epic’s new developer program account cited just one tweet, in which Sweeney embedded a photo of the two Steves working on an Apple II. Sweeney doesn’t mention either Steve by name, but added the photo after writing:
\n\n\n\n\nApple is a few bold and visionary decisions away from being the \ncompany they once were and that they still advertise themselves to \nbe: beloved brand to consumers, partner to developers, and \noverlord to none.
\n
The clear implication being that Apple was different — and better — under Steve Jobs. But, Jobs is the guy who, in February 2011, emailed this to Eddy Cue and Phil Schiller:
\n\n\n\n\nI think this is all pretty simple — iBooks is going to be the \nonly bookstore on iOS devices. We need to hold our heads high. One \ncan read books bought elsewhere, just not buy/rent/subscribe from \niOS without paying us, which we acknowledge is prohibitive for \nmany things.
\n
So one can imagine that if you worked with Jobs personally, considered him a friend, and continue to miss him dearly, you might be a bit annoyed — to say the least — by Sweeney’s insinuation that he knows how Jobs would proceed today with the App Store better than you. ↩︎︎
\nBenjamin Mayo, reporting for 9to5Mac:
\n\n\n\n\nApple is said to be testing an AI-powered ads platform with a \nselect group of partners, via Business Insider.
\n\nThe AI tool chooses where to place ads in the various App Store \npromoted ad placement slots. Right now, this is seemingly being \nused to improve advertiser campaign performance for App Store \nSearch Ads. However, Business Insider speculates the technology \ncould eventually be used elsewhere as Apple gradually expands its \noffering of ad-supported services.
\n
If this AI system is so smart, I suggest Apple use it to figure out how to run the App Store without any ads at all.
\n\nLink: 9to5mac.com/2024/03/11/report-apple-testing-ai-powered-ads…
\n" }, { "title" : "Steven Spielberg, FineWoven Case Owner, Photographs His Hamburger at an Oscars Party Using an iPhone 15 Pro", "date_published" : "2024-03-12T02:47:51Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-13T19:16:47Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/11/spielberg-finewoven", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/11/spielberg-finewoven", "external_url" : "https://twitter.com/etnow/status/1767076793696370832", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nZoom in on that first image and you can see his case is rather stained.
\n\n(Thanks to DF reader Harrison Krebs.)
\n\nLink: twitter.com/etnow/status/1767076793696370832
\n" }, { "title" : "Roku Locks Devices Until Users Agree to New Terms of Service", "date_published" : "2024-03-11T19:46:06Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-11T19:48:33Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/11/roku-tos", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/11/roku-tos", "external_url" : "https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/03/disgraceful-messy-tos-update-allegedly-locks-roku-devices-until-users-give-in/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nScharon Harding, reporting for Ars Technica:
\n\n\n\n\nThis month, users on Roku’s support forums reported \nsuddenly seeing a message when turning on their Roku TV \nor streaming device reading: “We’ve made an important update: \nWe’ve updated our Dispute Resolution Terms. Select ‘Agree’ to \nagree to these updated Terms and to continue enjoying our products \nand services. Press * to view these updated Terms.” A large button \nreading “Agree” follows. The pop-up doesn’t offer a way to \ndisagree, and users are unable to use their device unless they hit \nagree. [...]
\n\nRoku has further aggravated customers who have found that \ndisagreeing to its updated terms is harder than necessary. Roku is \nwilling to accept agreement to its terms with a single button \npress, but to opt out, users must jump through hoops that include \nfinding that old book of stamps.
\n\nTo opt out of Roku’s ToS update, which primarily changes the \n“Dispute Resolution Terms,” users must send a letter to \nRoku’s general counsel in California mentioning: “the name of each \nperson opting out and contact information for each such person, \nthe specific product models, software, or services used that are \nat issue, the email address that you used to set up your Roku \naccount (if you have one), and, if applicable, a copy of your \npurchase receipt.” Roku required all this to opt out of its terms \npreviously, as well.
\n
Requiring a written letter (and a copy of the purchase receipt — how many people keep that for what may well be a years-old purchase?) is just a huge “fuck you” to their customers.
\n\nLink: arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/03/disgraceful-messy-tos…
\n" }, { "title" : "★ Sponsorship Openings at Daring Fireball and The Talk Show, Early 2024 Edition", "date_published" : "2024-03-09T23:32:34Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-10T04:41:35Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/sponsorship_openings_early_2024", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/sponsorship_openings_early_2024", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nAfter being sold out for months, the upcoming sponsorship schedule at DF is unusually open at the moment — including this upcoming week.
\n\nWeekly sponsorships have been the top source of revenue for Daring Fireball ever since I started selling them back in 2007. They’ve succeeded, I think, because they make everyone happy. They generate good money. There’s only one sponsor per week and the sponsors are always relevant to at least some sizable portion of the DF audience, so you, the reader, are never annoyed and hopefully often intrigued by them. And, from the sponsors’ perspective, they work. My favorite thing about them is how many sponsors return for subsequent weeks after seeing the results.
\n\nIf you’ve got a product or service you think would be of interest to DF’s audience of people obsessed with high quality and good design, get in touch. And again, this coming week remains open.
\n\nAlso, sponsoring The Talk Show is a great opportunity for a lot of the same services and products that sponsor the website. And because there are up to three sponsors per episode, the price is significantly lower than the weekly sponsorship of the entire site. Advertising in the podcast industry is going through upheaval, and my show is really feeling it. Those of you who listen to ATP know they are too, and I’ll bet the same is true for just about all your favorite ad-based podcasts. What I’ve seen, in broad terms, is that the early years of podcasting were indie across the board — indie podcasters with indie sponsors. Then, when podcasting exploded in popularity, advertising agencies stepped in, and most spots on my show — and most spots on the shows I listen to — were sold to internet startup brands through ad agencies. The brands and products were great — companies like Warby Parker eyeglasses, Casper mattresses, Hullo pillows, you know the type — but dealing with ad agencies was (and remains) a much, much bigger hassle than dealing with smaller independent companies directly (which is how I sell almost all my weekly sponsorship spots).
\n\nSo if you have an app, product, service or whatever that you think is a good fit for Daring Fireball, I encourage you to consider a sponsorship of The Talk Show. Small indie products have been vastly underrepresented amongst The Talk Show sponsors in recent years, but I hope to change that. Again, the number of repeat sponsors is the best proof I can offer that it’s a great value. (Those big brands going through ad agencies track their results.) I don’t sell the podcast sponsorships myself, so if you’re interested, get in touch with Elaine Pow at Neat.fm. There are a bunch of openings in the next few months, and we’re happy to offer a discount to first-time sponsors to fill them.
\n\nI kind of hate writing these sponsorship-pimping posts, but my job, from an accounting point of view, is an ad salesman, not a writer/podcaster. The obvious truth is that I should be publicly promoting these sponsorships — both on the site and the podcast — far more often than I do. (I’d have been fired from this sales job years ago if I had a boss.)
\n\n\n\n " }, { "title" : "‘Your Father Wanted You to Have This When You Were Old Enough’", "date_published" : "2024-03-09T18:52:22Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-09T19:00:57Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/09/beer-me-obi-wan-kenobi-youre-my-only-hope", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/09/beer-me-obi-wan-kenobi-youre-my-only-hope", "external_url" : "https://kottke.org/24/03/beer-me-obi-wan", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nJason Kottke:
\n\n\n\n\nWhen the Star Wars films aired in Chile, instead of cutting away from the movie for commercial breaks, the TV station “seamlessly” inserted ads for Cerveza Cristal beer. We’re talking Obi-Wan opening a chest to find a lightsaber for Luke and instead it reveals an ice-chest full of beer. Or the Emperor Force-reaching for a lightsaber and a can of beer flies into his hand.
\n
These commercials aired like 20 years ago, but went supernova-viral last week. It’s impossible to explain how that works, but they deserved to go crazy viral. They’re so goddamn funny, even though you know the gag.
\n\n(Sidenote: Pitch-perfect redesign over there at the home of fine hypertext products since 1998.)
\n\nLink: kottke.org/24/03/beer-me-obi-wan
\n" }, { "title" : "★ Apple Reinstates Epic’s EU Developer Account", "date_published" : "2024-03-08T18:46:31Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-08T22:10:21Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/apple_epic_reinstatement", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/apple_epic_reinstatement", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nApple has told us and committed to the European Commission that \nthey will reinstate our developer account. This sends a strong \nsignal to developers that the European Commission will act swiftly \nto enforce the Digital Markets Act and hold gatekeepers \naccountable. We are moving forward as planned to launch the Epic \nGames Store and bring Fortnite back to iOS in Europe. Onward!
\n
\n\n\nThe DMA went through its first major challenge with Apple banning \nEpic Games Sweden from competing with the App Store, and the DMA \njust had its first major victory. Following a swift inquiry by the \nEuropean Commission, Apple notified the Commission and Epic that \nit would relent and restore our access to bring back Fortnite and \nlaunch Epic Games Store in Europe under the DMA law.
\n\nA big win for European rule of law, for the European Commision, \nand for the freedom of developers worldwide to speak up. \n#FreeFortnite!
\n
This is in response to a tweet, just yesterday, from Thierry Breton of the European Commission (emojis and hashtags untouched):
\n\n\n\n\n🚨Under the #DMA, there is no room for threats by gatekeepers to \nsilence developers.
\n\nI have asked our services to look into Apple’s termination of \nEpic’s developer account as a matter of priority.
\n\nTo all developers in 🇪🇺 & 🌍: now is the time to have your say on \ngatekeepers’ compliance solutions!
\n
(I had a version of this post almost ready to publish before I ran out of gas late last night; I seemingly can’t write fast enough to keep up with Apple’s EU regulatory adventure. Today’s Dithering is, I think, a particularly good episode and still relevant, but its shelf life of being up-to-date on the news was about 6 hours.)
\n\nTheory A: Apple is playing grandmaster-level chess, and orchestrated this entire back-and-forth to give the EU a high-publicity win — “Look, the DMA, just one day old, is already working, showing that we can push Apple around” — regarding an Epic Games Store that Apple should have just let through from the start. It’s a lot of publicity for a thing that I don’t expect will amount to a significant concession by Apple.
\n\nTheory B: Apple is flailing erratically trying to deal with their loss of autonomy.
\n\nI vote B, because to me the real win for Apple would have been just letting Epic use their Swedish subsidiary to open an iOS games store without the back-and-forth. If Apple had gone that route, the European Commission could still have taken credit for proof of the DMA’s effectiveness, and Apple would look like they were complying graciously with the law. But the way things actually played out makes clear they’re complying begrudgingly, and, worse, plays into the worst assumptions about Apple’s institutional arrogance and vindictiveness.
\n\nApple seems to have been particularly wrong-footed (to borrow a sports analogy even EU citizens might get) by this Epic thing. Again, I think Apple should have let Epic open an Epic Games Store in the EU. I think Apple could have just made clear from the moment they announced their DMA compliance plans that Epic remained ineligible for a developer account because of their flagrant violation of the App Store rules four years ago. The EC might have — and I think would have — forced Apple to relent on that, but it could have been adjudicated without any implication of spite or pettiness on Apple’s part.
\n\nBut instead Apple played it the worst way possible: They let Epic’s Swedish subsidiary open a new Apple Developer Account, and proceed far enough toward building a games store that Epic announced it, and only then revoked Epic’s developer account, while almost literally justifying it not on the grounds that Epic can’t be trusted because they’re an egregious rule breaker, but instead because Tim Sweeney continued to voice his strident (or if you prefer, colorful) opinions about the App Store being an illegal monopoly. Apple doesn’t revoke developer licenses for criticizing Apple. But a lot of people — including the EC! — now think Apple did just that.
\n\nHow was a “priority” investigation by the EC not going to happen the way Apple played this? If Apple had just let Epic proceed from the start, they’d have looked magnanimous. They even had Tim Sweeney calling it “a good faith move”. But as it stands, Apple looks bitter, and from the EC’s perspective, in need of close policing.
\n\n\n\n " }, { "title" : "Signal Introduces Usernames", "date_published" : "2024-03-06T23:00:41Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-06T23:00:42Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/06/signal-usernames", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/06/signal-usernames", "external_url" : "https://signal.org/blog/phone-number-privacy-usernames/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nSignal:
\n\n\n\n\nUsernames in Signal do not function like usernames on social media \nplatforms. Signal usernames are not logins or handles that you’ll \nbe known by on the app — they’re simply a quick way to connect \nwithout sharing a phone number. [...]
\n\nUsernames simply allow you to initiate a connection on Signal \nwithout sharing your phone number, and Signal’s robust privacy \nsafeguards remain unchanged. Signal is built so that we do not \nknow who you message, what you say, which group chats you \nparticipate in, who’s in your contact list, and more.
\n\nIf you want to create a username, you can do so in Settings > \nProfile. A username on Signal (unlike a profile name) must be \nunique and must have two or more numbers at the end of it; a \nchoice intended to help keep usernames egalitarian and minimize \nspoofing. Usernames can be changed as often as you like, and you \ncan delete your username entirely if you prefer to no longer \nhave one.
\n
Clever solution. Especially given that these usernames aren’t like social media handles, I particularly like the “every username gets at least 2 digits appended” rule.
\n\nLink: signal.org/blog/phone-number-privacy-usernames/
\n" }, { "title" : "How iOS Is Determining Eligibility for Alternative App Marketplaces in the European Union", "date_published" : "2024-03-06T22:28:21Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-06T22:28:22Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/06/ios-app-marketplace-eligibility", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/06/ios-app-marketplace-eligibility", "external_url" : "https://support.apple.com/en-gb/118110", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nApple support document:
\n\n\n\n\nTo reflect the Digital Markets Act’s changes, users in the \nEuropean Union are able to install alternative app marketplaces \nand install apps offered through alternative app marketplaces in \niOS 17.4 or later. The country or region of your Apple ID must be \nset to one of the countries or regions of the European Union, and \nyou must be physically located in the European Union.
\n\nYour device eligibility for alternative app marketplaces is \ndetermined by using on-device processing, with only an indicator \nof eligibility sent to Apple. To preserve your privacy, Apple does \nnot collect your device’s location.
\n\nIf you leave the European Union for short-term travel, you’ll \ncontinue to have access to alternative app marketplaces for a \ngrace period. If you’re gone for too long, you’ll lose access to \nsome features, including installing new alternative app \nmarketplaces. Apps you installed from alternative app marketplaces \nwill continue to function, but they can’t be updated by the \nmarketplace you downloaded them from.
\n
How long is “too long”? What a confusing mess this is shaping up to be.
\n\nLink: support.apple.com/en-gb/118110
\n" }, { "title" : "Meta’s Plans for E2EE Messaging Interop for WhatsApp and Messenger", "date_published" : "2024-03-06T22:20:23Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-06T22:20:50Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/06/meta-messaging-interop", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/06/meta-messaging-interop", "external_url" : "https://engineering.fb.com/2024/03/06/security/whatsapp-messenger-messaging-interoperability-eu/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nEngineering at Meta:
\n\n\n\n\nTo comply with a new EU law, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which \ncomes into force on March 7th, we’ve made major changes to \nWhatsApp and Messenger to enable interoperability with third-party \nmessaging services. [...]
\n\nTo interoperate, third-party providers will sign an agreement with \nMessenger and/or WhatsApp and we’ll work together to enable \ninteroperability. Today we’ll publish the WhatsApp Reference Offer \nfor third-party providers which will outline what will be required \nto interoperate with the service. The Reference Offer for \nMessenger will follow in due course. [...]
\n\nIn order to maximize user security, we would prefer third-party \nproviders to use the Signal Protocol. Since this has to work for \neveryone however, we will allow third-party providers to use a \ncompatible protocol if they are able to demonstrate it offers the \nsame security guarantees as Signal.
\n
Unclear to me whether these third-party providers will, somehow, only function in the EU, or if Meta is opening this up worldwide. Also unclear to me is who benefits from this?
\n\nLink: engineering.fb.com/2024/03/06/security/whatsapp-messenger…
\n" }, { "title" : "Here’s the New iOS 17.4 Default Browser Nag for iPhone Users in Europe", "date_published" : "2024-03-06T22:05:37Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-06T22:39:29Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/06/ios-17-default-browser-nag", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/06/ios-17-default-browser-nag", "external_url" : "https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/6/24092026/heres-the-new-ios-default-browser-nag-for-iphone-users-in-europe", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nThomas Ricker, writing for The Verge:
\n\n\n\n\nIt’s DMA day in Europe, and I’ve immediately been prompted to \nchoose a default browser after updating to iOS 17.4. The list is \npopulated with “the most downloaded browsers on iOS in that \ncountry in the prior year.”
\n
This screen is ridiculous. I find it hard to believe that anyone thinks this sort of user experience is anything but confusing to a typical user. Someone who’s been using Safari for a decade, and doesn’t even know what a “default browser” is, might have to scroll below the fold to even see Safari as an option, depending on the random order.
\n\nFrom Apple’s developer documentation for this screen:
\n\n\n\n\nUp to 11 of the most downloaded browsers on iOS in that country in \nthe prior year that meet the above criteria will be selected for \nthe browser choice screen in addition to Safari. Apple will update \nthe list of browsers eligible to be shown on the choice screen \nonce per calendar year.
\n\nThe current list of browsers shown on the browser choice screen \nper country are below. The lists below are in alphabetical order, \non a user’s device browsers will be shown in a randomized order \nper user. Click on a country below to jump to it.
\n
If this is a good idea for web browsers, why stop there? Why not mandate the same sort of choice screen for every app? Mail, Calendar, Notes, Weather, Camera — why not require all of them to show a choice screen for picking a “default”?
\n\nLink: theverge.com/2024/3/6/24092026/heres-the-new-ios-default…
\n" }, { "title" : "Vision Pro’s Battery Indicator Is Confusing", "date_published" : "2024-03-06T21:15:16Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-06T21:15:17Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/06/vision-pro-battery-indicator", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/06/vision-pro-battery-indicator", "external_url" : "https://support.apple.com/en-us/117740", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nApple, in a support document on charging Vision Pro:
\n\n\n\n\nThe light next to the battery’s USB-C port can give you a quick look at the battery’s current charge state when you’re not wearing Apple Vision Pro. The light turns on briefly when you connect the battery to the USB-C Charge Cable, when you disconnect it, and when you move or gently tap it.
\n\nHere’s what the light means when you first connect the battery to power, or if you move or tap the battery while it’s charging:
\n\n\n
\n\n- Green for several seconds: the battery is charged to capacity.
\n- Amber for several seconds: the battery’s charge level is less than 100%, but has enough charge for you to use Apple Vision Pro.
\n- Amber pulsing slowly: the battery’s charge level is too low to power your Apple Vision Pro. Keep charging the battery for 10 minutes, or until the light shows amber steadily (not pulsing) when you tap the battery.
\nHere’s what the light means when you disconnect the battery from power, or if you move or tap the battery while it’s not connected to power:
\n\n\n
\n- Green for several seconds: the battery is charged to 50% or higher.
\n- Amber for several seconds: the battery’s charge level is between 5% and 49%.
\n- Amber pulsing slowly: the battery’s charge level is too low to power your Apple Vision Pro. Charge the battery for 10 minutes, or until the light shows amber steadily (not pulsing) when you tap the battery.
\n
This seems like it could and should have been so much simpler. Why not have 4 lights instead of one, representing 25/50/75/100 percent charge levels? It seems like madness that green means “charged to capacity” when plugged in, but “50% or higher” when not. That’s a big difference!
\n\nLink: support.apple.com/en-us/117740
\n" }, { "title" : "Television for Vision Pro", "date_published" : "2024-03-06T19:44:38Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-15T21:28:16Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/06/television", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/06/television", "external_url" : "https://sandwich.vision", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nSpeaking of new apps from recent guests on my podcast, Adam Lisagor has created a new app for Vision Pro that he introduces thus, with a clever one-minute video:
\n\n\n\n\nWelcome to the future of television. I call it ... Television.
\n
The gimmick is that Television offers an assortment of realistic-looking televisions, old and new, and you can just place them in the world around you. You can watch videos from your Photos library, and, starting with the 1.1 update, from YouTube and other web streaming platforms.
\n\nI don’t know if this is a useful way to watch video but I’m certain that it’s fun. And I think fun is exactly what we need from developers in the early days of a new platform. In a weird way, that stupid beer-drinking iPhone app mattered. I think Television matters the same way. It’s joyful to plop a realistic old-time CRT TV on your desk. I get why Apple didn’t go this way — with skeuomorphic VR objects — with the system design of VisionOS, but that just means the opportunity is there for the taking for third-party developers.
\n\nIt’s just fun.
\n\nLink: sandwich.vision/
\n" }, { "title" : "Setapp Mobile", "date_published" : "2024-03-05T03:44:00Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-09T23:37:48Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/04/setapp-mobile", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/04/setapp-mobile", "external_url" : "https://macpaw.com/news/setapp-ios-beta-announcement", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nMacPaw:
\n\n\n\n\nMacPaw’s Setapp is the first subscription-based platform offering \na curated collection of Mac and iOS apps to users. The platform \nempowers developers by aligning rewards with apps’ usage and \nmarket value, thus fostering a thriving ecosystem of innovation. \nNow, Setapp will be available directly on iOS devices, allowing \nfor a more integrated and convenient user experience. This \nexpansion promises a diverse selection of premium applications for \nusers and a supportive environment for developers.
\n
EU-only, of course. But so much for the notion that “no one” is going build an alternative app marketplace under Apple’s DMA compliance proposal.
\n\nLink: macpaw.com/news/setapp-ios-beta-announcement
\n" }, { "title" : "Project Tapestry", "date_published" : "2024-03-05T03:34:42Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-05T03:39:34Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/04/tapestry", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/04/tapestry", "external_url" : "https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iconfactory/project-tapestry", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nThe Iconfactory:
\n\n\n\n\nWhat if you had one app that gave an overview of nearly everything that was happening across all the different services you follow? A single chronological timeline of your most important social media services, RSS feeds, and other sources. All of the updates together in one place, in the order they’re posted, with no algorithm deciding what you should see or when you should see it.
\n\nThat’s what we’d like to build.
\n
Already funded, but the stretch goals are sooo… good.
\n\nLink: kickstarter.com/projects/iconfactory/project-tapestry
\n" }, { "title" : "M3 MacBook Airs Are Out", "date_published" : "2024-03-04T17:54:07Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-04T17:54:08Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/04/m3-macbook-air", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/04/m3-macbook-air", "external_url" : "https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/03/apple-unveils-the-new-13-and-15-inch-macbook-air-with-the-powerful-m3-chip/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nApple’s Newsroom post announcing the speed-bumped M3 MacBook Airs has an entire section about “AI”:
\n\n\n\n\nWorld’s Best Consumer Laptop for AI
\n\nWith the transition to Apple silicon, every Mac is a great \nplatform for AI. M3 includes a faster and more efficient 16-core \nNeural Engine, along with accelerators in the CPU and GPU to boost \non-device machine learning, making MacBook Air the world’s best \nconsumer laptop for AI. Leveraging this incredible AI performance, \nmacOS delivers intelligent features that enhance productivity and \ncreativity, so users can enable powerful camera features, \nreal-time speech to text, translation, text predictions, visual \nunderstanding, accessibility features, and much more.
\n\nWith a broad ecosystem of apps that deliver advanced AI features, \nusers can do everything from checking their homework with AI Math \nAssistance in Goodnotes 6, to automatically enhancing photos in \nPixelmator Pro, to removing background noise from a video using \nCapCut. Combined with the unified memory architecture of Apple \nsilicon, MacBook Air can also run optimized AI models, including \nlarge language models (LLMs) and diffusion models for image \ngeneration locally with great performance. In addition to \non-device performance, MacBook Air supports cloud-based solutions, \nenabling users to run powerful productivity and creative apps that \ntap into the power of AI, such as Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft \n365, Canva, and Adobe Firefly.
\n
Link: apple.com/newsroom/2024/03/apple-unveils-the-new-13-and-15…
\n" }, { "title" : "WorkOS", "date_published" : "2024-03-04T17:34:02Z", "date_modified" : "2024-03-04T17:34:02Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/04/workos", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/04/workos", "external_url" : "https://workos.com/?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=q12024", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nMy 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.
\n\nThe 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.
\n\nToday, hundreds of high-growth scale-ups are already powered by WorkOS, including ones you probably know, like Vercel, Webflow, and Loom.
\n\nLink: workos.com/?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=display…
\n" } ] }