Linked List: April 6, 2019

Saturday, 6 April 2019

My thanks to StackSocial for sponsoring this week at DF to promote their Epic Mac Bundle. It’s really an extraordinary deal — eight great Mac apps, including the award-winning apps Fantastical 2 ($49.99) and PDF Expert ($79.99), plus top-rated apps like Flux 7 ($99), Pagico 8 ($50), iStat Menus 6 ($15), and three more. The entire bundle is valued at $478.71 separately, but StackSocial has it for just $29.99.

If you just want one of these apps, like say Fantastical or PDF Expert, you’ll save money buying this bundle — and you’ll get all the other apps too.

Plus, DF readers can save an extra 20% with code “DARING20” at checkout. Act now — the bundle ends April 10.

Netflix Confirms It Killed AirPlay Support ★

Sean Hollister, reporting for The Verge:

Netflix confirmed to The Verge that it pulled the wireless casting feature this past week, due to what it’s calling a “technical limitation.” But it’s not the kind of technical limitation you’d think.

You see, Apple recently partnered with most of the major TV brands to allow AirPlay 2 to send shows directly to their 2019 TV sets with a firmware update later this year, but a Netflix spokesperson tells me AirPlay 2 doesn’t have digital identifiers to let Netflix tell those TVs apart — and so the company can’t certify its users are getting the best Netflix experience when casting to those new sets.

So now, it’s throwing out the baby with the bathwater and pulling the plug on AirPlay, period. “We can’t distinguish which device is which, we can’t actually certify the devices… so we’ve had to just shut down support for it,” a Netflix spokesperson says.

I don’t really blame them for calling it a “technical limitation”, but it’s a bit frustrating that they’re throwing out something that already works and has worked for years. And it makes it sound like it’s something they can’t do, rather than the truth, which is that they’ve chosen not to.

The Design of Apple Card ★

Arun Venkatesan:

As is expected from Apple, the card is unlike any other. At a close glance, the minutest details set it apart from the rest. Of course, the physical card hasn’t been released yet, but we can learn a lot from what Apple has shown in promotional material.

An obsessive dive into the details of Apple Card’s physical card.

The Talk Show: ‘Equally Confused’ ★

Special guest Peter Kafka — executive editor at Recode and longtime reporter in the fields of media and technology — joins the show to discuss the announcements at last week’s “Show Time” event: Apple News+, Apple Card, Apple Arcade, and Apple TV Channels and TV+.

Brought to you by these fine sponsors:

Away: Because this season, everyone wants to get Away.
Eero: Finally, Wi-Fi that works. Get $100 off a Wi-Fi system and a year of Eero Plus with code thetalkshow.
Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code talkshow for 10% off your first order.

Mashable: ‘Amazon Bought Eero for $97 Million and Employees Still Got Screwed’ ★

Rachel Kraus, writing for Mashable:

When Amazon announced a deal to acquire Eero, the maker of a groundbreaking WiFi system, it sounded like a classic Silicon Valley success story: a promising startup is acquired by the biggest bidder in the land, and everyone rolls around in cash. But that is not this story. This story is about investors losing tens of millions of dollars and dozens of employees left with meaningless stock.

According to confidential documents viewed by Mashable, Amazon acquired Eero for $97 million. Eero executives brought home multi-million dollar bonuses and eight-figure salary increases. Everyone else, however, didn’t fare quite so well. Investors took major hits, and the Amazon acquisition rendered Eero stock worthless: $0.03 per share, down from a common stock high of $3.54 in July 2017. It typically would have cost around $3 for employees to exercise their stock, meaning they would actually lose money if they tried to cash out.

Such a great product, but home networking is a brutal market to crack.