Linked List: September 12, 2019

Thursday, 12 September 2019

Apple Arcade: 100 Games in 100 Seconds ★

Apple should have played this video in Tuesday’s event instead of wasting so much time on a handful of live game demos. This video conveys excitement, and makes it feel like there are going to be a lot of games with a lot of variety.

Ring Fit Adventure for Nintendo Switch ★

Neat idea — brings back a lot of the feel of the Wii. The Wii was great in a few ways, but it was unique in the way it made casual gaming physical. You really could work up a sweat playing a game.

(There’s something weird about the two spokespeople in the video, though. They’re impossibly cheerful. They have the feel of hostages extolling the virtues of Kim Jong-un’s hotel in Pyongyang.)

MG Siegler: ‘But Will They Go to 12?’ ★

Another solid piece on Apple’s event Tuesday, from MG Siegler:

The iPhone is now officially a camera. I mean, it has been a camera for a long time. The most popular camera in the world, as Apple is quick to point out each and every year, a decade on. But now it’s really a camera, as today’s keynote made clear. The key parts of the presentations for both the iPhone 11 and the iPhone 11 Pro were all about the camera. As Phil Schiller said in his portion: “I know what you’re waiting for, and I am too. Let’s talk about the cameras. Without question, my favorite part about iPhone.”

It feels like if Apple wasn’t so wedded to their own legacy branding — more on that in a bit — they would rename this thing the iCamera.

Just look at the back of these phones to see how central the camera systems are.

That was my main takeaway from today’s event, with a side of one more thing: Apple is so far ahead when it comes to their chips in these devices that they invited out their VP of Silicon to do a verbal victory lap. Was this aimed at Samsung? Google? Xiaomi? Qualcomm? Intel? Probably all of the above.

I’ve said it before and will say it again: imagine what the Android commentariat would be saying if the tables were turned, and it was Snapdragon chips that were years ahead of Apple’s A-series chips in every single regard: CPU, GPU, and power efficiency. The first question for anyone who wants to argue that Apple showed no innovation Tuesday is how to explain the A13’s astonishing dominance over every other competing chipset.

Ben Thompson: ‘The iPhone and Apple’s Services Strategy’ ★

Ben Thompson, writing at Stratechery, on Tuesday’s event:

That means that this year actually saw three price cuts:

First, the iPhone 11 — this year’s mid-tier model — costs $50 less than the iPhone XR it is replacing.

Second, the iPhone XR’s price is being cut by $150 a year after launch, not $100 as Apple has previously done.

Third, the iPhone 8’s price is also being cut by $150 two years after launch, not $100 as Apple has previously done.

I completely missed this.

Also a great observation about why Apple brought out Deirdre O’Brien at the very end of the event:

So, in the case of this slide, you can get an iPhone 11 and Apple TV+ for $17/month. […]

To that end, how long until there is a variant of the iPhone Upgrade Program that is simply an all-up Apple subscription? Pay one monthly fee, and get everything Apple has to offer. Indeed, nothing would show that Apple is a Services company more than making the iPhone itself a service, at least as far as the customer relationship goes. You might even say it is innovative.

Google-Owned Crashlytics Is Using Custom Fonts to Track Users ★

One of the things iOS has been sorely lacking for a decade is the ability for users to install custom fonts. Apple has put it off on the grounds that custom fonts open security and privacy holes. Proving Apple’s point, Google-owned Crashlytics is already abusing the feature to track users by installing a font with a custom identifier embedded. iOS 13 isn’t even out yet and they’re abusing this for tracking. Because these fonts are installed system-wide — which is the whole point of the feature, so users can use their custom fonts in any app that supports choosing a font — I believe any app can use Crashlytics’s font to uniquely identify users.

I haven’t tried this feature yet, but Apple’s developer documentation indicates that users are prompted to allow an app to install a font, so it can’t be done silently in the background. Most users, I suspect, would just allow this, thinking fonts are harmless — but at least those of you reading this are forewarned.

Update: Apparently this isn’t something based on iOS 13’s custom fonts feature, but instead based on an older iOS feature that allows custom fonts to be installed with a configuration profile. The basic fact remains: custom fonts, however they’re installed, are not meant to be used for tracking users.