Linked List: September 18, 2017

Monday, 18 September 2017

The Courage of Embracing the Notch ★

Marco Arment:

Apple just completely changed the fundamental shape of the most important, most successful, and most recognizable tech product that the world has ever seen.

That’s courage.

It is. But as I wrote when Phil Schiller used the word to explain why they removed the headphone jack last year, that took courage too. It takes courage to rob a bank too. The objection people had to calling the removal of the headphone jack “courage” is based on the notion that courage is always noble. You can despise the notch and/or think it’s the stupidest thing Apple has ever done, but still acknowledge that it took courage to embrace it.

My objection (again, after admittedly only spending 10-15 minutes with an iPhone X in hand) remains that Apple could embrace the notch on the lock and home screens, allowing for this new iconic silhouette, without embracing it all the time.

I suspect (or maybe it’s just hope) what might happen is something along the lines of the evolution of the new look-and-feel that debuted in iOS 7. With iOS 7, Apple took everything to an extreme. The thinnest, lightest fonts. The least amount of button-y shapes for buttons. The least amount of depth and texture in the interface. The most amount of translucency. Each year since then, iOS has turned the dial away from the extremes on all those things. iOS 11 goes so far as to make common use of very heavy, black weights of San Francisco in the UI. I think that could happen with the software’s handling of the notch.

Or maybe we’ll just get used to it quickly. I really don’t want to spend too much time ranting against something I’ve only used for a few minutes.

PixelCut’s Ultimate Guide to iPhone Resolutions ★

Helpful illustrated guide to the relationship between points, rendered pixels, and display pixels on all iPhones, including the upcoming iPhone X. They also have a nice illustration specific to the X.

The EFF Withdraws From the W3C Over Support for DRM ★

Cory Doctorow, in an open letter from the EFF to the W3C:

In our campaigning on this issue, we have spoken to many, many members’ representatives who privately confided their belief that the EME was a terrible idea (generally they used stronger language) and their sincere desire that their employer wasn’t on the wrong side of this issue. This is unsurprising. You have to search long and hard to find an independent technologist who believes that DRM is possible, let alone a good idea. Yet, somewhere along the way, the business values of those outside the web got important enough, and the values of technologists who built it got disposable enough, that even the wise elders who make our standards voted for something they know to be a fool’s errand.

I’m no fan of DRM. Who is? But I am a fan of practicality, and there are practical reasons why web browsers should be able to play DRM-protected content without using proprietary plugins. Netflix, for example, is never going to serve video without DRM. Or perhaps better put, movie and TV studios wouldn’t allow Netflix to do that. Nor would professional sports leagues or the Olympics.

So either you can watch Netflix in a web browser or you can’t. If your web browser doesn’t support DRM natively, then you have to use plugins. And plugins are rapidly going the way of the dodo bird, because they suck. Even Flash’s end-of-life has been announced. iOS and Android don’t even support browser plugins anymore — and together they dominate real-world usage.

I love the EFF and will continue to support them, but I’d rather see a world where Netflix and all the other DRM-protected streaming services still work in standards-based web browsers than a world where they don’t but where the W3C can claim a moral victory. If you think the open web is losing ground to native app-based platforms now, think about how bad it would be if you couldn’t watch Netflix or live sports.

I also think it’s silly to say DRM doesn’t work. It’s not perfect, and can be worked around, but it’s harder to pirate DRM-protected content than it is non-DRM-protected content. Just making it harder is “working” to at least some degree.

Update: In a series of tweets, Doctorow clarifies that it was the W3C’s refusal to seek compromises over the DMCA, not support for DRM in general, that led to the EFF’s decision to leave:

Significantly, refusal from DRM advocates to promise not to use the DMCA against security researchers, accessibility workers, archivists […] is an ominous sign that they want to reserve the right to execute exactly that power. Publishing EME after the refusal to deal on this is recklessness embodied: when someone tells you they plan to use the power you’re giving them, you should believe them.

I’ll leave the original post as-is, because I think it expresses well my thoughts on why the W3C should support DRM, but this DMCA issue is important, and now I’m uncertain how to feel about the EFF’s decision to leave. The DMCA is an odious — and I think unconstitutional — law. DRM should be protected by its encryption and longstanding copyright law. Anything that’s “fair use” under copyright law should be “fair use” with DRM content if the DRM can be circumvented.

Halo Top: Eat the Ice Cream ★

This is one of the best commercials I’ve ever seen. The less you know about it going in, the better.

Mystery of the Day ★

Mara Bernath, reporting for Bloomberg:

Swiss prosecutors are trying to figure out why someone apparently attempted to flush tens of thousands of euros down the toilet at a Geneva branch of UBS Group AG.

The first 500-euro ($597) bills were discovered several months ago in a bathroom close to a bank vault containing hundreds of safe deposit boxes, according to a report in Tribune de Geneve confirmed by the city prosecutor’s office. A few days later, more banknotes turned up in toilets at three nearby restaurants, requiring thousands of francs in plumbing repairs to unclog the pipes.

In all, police have extracted tens of thousands of euros in soiled bills, many of which appear to have been cut with scissors.

While destroying banknotes isn’t a crime in Switzerland, “there must be something behind this story,” said Henri Della Casa, a spokesman for the Geneva Prosecutor’s Office. “That’s why we started an investigation.”

I can’t figure out an angle on this one.

Update: All I’ve come up with is this: the perpetrator is an employee pissed off at their employer, the bank, and they thought they could get away with destroying this cash but not with stealing it.

Report Says Red Sox Used Fitbit, Not Apple Watch, in Sign-Stealing Scheme ★

The Score:

The device used by the Boston Red Sox in their infamous sign-stealing controversy has been revealed as a Fitbit product, according to a major-league source of Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe.

Though Fitbits are used as a tracker to measure an individual’s steps and levels of fitness activity, many products — specifically Fitbit Surge — can be synced with mobile devices and receive text messages.

This takes some of the fun out of this story. Now the Red Sox are just cheaters with bad taste in gadgets.

APFS Will Be for Flash Drives Only in First High Sierra Release ★

Juli Clover, reporting for MacRumors:

iMacs with Fusion Drives were converted to APFS during the beta testing process in the first macOS High Sierra beta, but support was removed in subsequent betas and not reimplemented.

With the release of the Golden Master version of the software, Apple has confirmed APFS will not be available for Fusion Drives and has provided instructions for converting from APFS back to the standard HFS+ format.

I have all-flash drives in both my MacBook Pro and iMac, but I’m not in any hurry to switch to APFS. And since drives that can be updated are automatically updated to APFS when you update to High Sierra, I’m in no rush to update to High Sierra. Don’t get me wrong, I’m looking forward to APFS. This just feels like something for which I’ll wait for 10.13.1.