Linked List: April 2019

Tuesday, 30 April 2019

Eric Schmidt Is Leaving Google’s Board 

Google (well, technically, Alphabet):

After over 18 years on the Board, Eric Schmidt is not seeking re-election at the expiration of his current term on June 19, 2019. He will continue as a technical advisor to Alphabet. Eric has served as a member of the Board since March 2001. He was Google’s Chief Executive Officer from July 2001 to April 2011, and its Executive Chairman from April 2011 until January 2018.

“Eric has made an extraordinary contribution to Google and Alphabet as CEO, Chairman, and Board member. We are extremely grateful for his guidance and leadership over many years,” Hennessy said.

Is this weird? Schmidt is only 63 years old. But Google was never really his company — it’s always been Larry Page’s and Sergey Brin’s company.

Also years later, this whole “Alphabet” thing still sounds super weird to my ears.

Apple’s Quarter by the Numbers 

Jason Snell’s visualizations of Apple’s quarter are excellent, as usual.

Even though Apple no longer reports unit sales, they do still break down product categories by revenue. At 20% of the company’s revenue, Services now accounts for more revenue than Mac and iPad combined. And Wearables is now a full peer, revenue-wise, to Mac and iPad. Judging by Cook’s comments on the analyst call, I think the growth in Wearables revenue is being driven by AirPods — not that I think Watch isn’t still growing, but it sounds like AirPod sales are through the roof.

Apple Q2 2019 Results 

Apple:

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2019 second quarter ended March 30, 2019. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $58 billion, a decline of 5 percent from the year-ago quarter, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $2.46, down 10 percent. International sales accounted for 61 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Apple’s sub-head: “Services Revenue Reaches New All-Time High of $11.5 Billion”. Looks like a good overall quarter, and the stock has shot up 5% in after-hours trading. But without iPhone/iPad/Mac breakouts, these reports are boring.

Monday, 29 April 2019

Google Pixel Sales Maybe Not So Great 

So the conventional wisdom on this front is that $1,000+ phones are a bad idea. I think that’s the wrong take. That’s like saying $50,000+ cars, or $2,000+ laptops are a bad idea. Clearly there’s a market for premium phones, just like there’s a market for premium items in all sorts of markets.

I think Google’s problem with Pixel phone sales is two-fold. First, I just don’t think they feel like premium devices. They feel like $500 devices, not $800-1,000 devices. I’ve got a Pixel 3. It’s my favorite Android device ever, and the camera is great for stills. (Not so great for video — which Pixel aficionados tend to gloss over.) But it is not on par with iPhones quality-wise.

Second, Google has never really put their heart into marketing Pixels. They’ve never really tried to sell them. I think they have a great story to tell — if you love Google and Google services, the Pixel probably is the best phone for you. But they’ve never really made that case.

Saturday, 27 April 2019

Morning Brew 

My thanks to Morning Brew for sponsoring this week at Daring Fireball. There’s a reason over 1 million people start their day with Morning Brew — the daily email that delivers the latest news from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. Business news doesn’t have to be dry and dense.

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Friday, 26 April 2019

Facebook Users Morbidly Curious What Site Going to Do With Their Personal Data to Recoup $5 Billion Fine 

The Onion:

Wondering how the social media giant will unethically exploit their personal data next, Facebook users conceded Friday they are morbidly curious to see what the company does to them in order to recoup its losses following a $5 billion Federal Trade Commission fine. “I know I’m probably not gonna like it, but I have this deep, dark desire to know what kind of fucked-up shit they’ll do to violate our privacy this time,” said Cleveland-area Facebook user Lisa Wincheck, explaining that while it’s hard to imagine the social network doing anything worse than it already has, its history suggests it will once again produce a nefarious, probably illegal new way to monetize the intimate details of people’s lives.

Why Everyone Is Watching TV With Closed Captioning on These Days 

Jason Kottke:

As Sebastian Greger notes in his summary of the resulting thread, closed captioning is a great example of how accessibility features can benefit everyone, especially those who may have disabilities or limitations that aren’t typically acknowledged as such.

Such a great point about accessibility. It really is for everyone.

On the closed captions front — I use Apple TV’s “what’d they just say?” feature several times every episode watching Game of Thrones. I don’t know what they do with their audio but damned if the characters don’t all sound like a bunch of mumble-mouths a lot of the time. And last night I finally watched Netflix’s The Highwaymen (it was exactly as good as I expected going in, which is to say about a B-) and I had to leave closed captions on for entire scenes. I didn’t have the volume set particularly low, I just couldn’t understand what they were saying. If it weren’t for closed captions — and the ease with which Apple TV lets one toggle them — I’d have abandoned the movie and gone to bed.

YouTube Gamed Into Recommending Russian Propaganda on Mueller Report 

Guillaume Chaslot:

One week after the release of the Mueller report, which analysis of it did YouTube recommend from the most channels among the 1000+ channels that I monitor daily?

Russia Today’s!

This video funded by the Russian government was recommended more than half a million times from more than 236 different channels. [...]

Technology can enable two worlds:

  1. One where accountability keeps cheaters in check

  2. One where social media is manipulated by armies of fake accounts

I’m on Facebook’s case more frequently, but YouTube might be just as complicit in distributing massive-scale propaganda pushed by fake accounts they could surely detect but don’t in the name of the almighty god both companies worship: engagement. They both use devilishly clever algorithms to target this propaganda, not to flag it.

Apple Tops Laptop Magazine’s Rankings for Tech Support 

Apple tops the list, with Razer close behind, then there’s a big drop. So if you’re ever frustrated by Apple’s tech support, just think about how bad the other side has it.

Three Long-Time Designers Leave Apple’s Industrial Design Team 

Tripp Mickle, reporting yesterday for The Wall Street Journal:

Apple Inc.’s close-knit industrial design team is undergoing its most pronounced turnover in decades, marking a changing of the guard for the famed group that has defined the tech giant’s aesthetic and spearheaded the development of products including the iPhone.

Rico Zorkendorfer and Daniele De Iuliis, who together have more than 35 years of experience at Apple, decided to leave the company recently, people familiar with the departures said. Another member of the team with a decade of experience, Julian Hönig, plans to leave in the coming months, people familiar with his plans said.

I’m not sure I’d call it a “changing of the guard” but Apple’s ID team has been remarkably stable, and truly is close-knit.

More on iFixit Pulling Its Galaxy Fold Teardown 

Dieter Bohn, writing at The Verge:

Why is Samsung doing this? We’ve asked for comment, obviously, but we suspect an answer may not be forthcoming. That leaves us with a whole pile of possible reasons we can only speculate on.

On the charitable end of the interpretation scale is that Samsung is definitely reworking the Fold, the design will change, and Samsung doesn’t want to have a teardown out there for a device it isn’t ever going to ship. Possibilities get successively less charitable from there.

I don’t think that’s it. Who pulls a review? No one. It doesn’t matter — from iFixit’s perspective — if Samsung wants it pulled.

Perhaps the partner who provided the Fold to iFixit wasn’t supposed to, and Samsung is just enforcing a contract.

I think that last bit is close, but not quite right. The exact wording of iFixit’s explanation for pulling the teardown is worth parsing:

We were provided our Galaxy Fold unit by a trusted partner. Samsung has requested, through that partner, that iFixit remove its teardown. We are under no obligation to remove our analysis, legal or otherwise. But out of respect for this partner, whom we consider an ally in making devices more repairable, we are choosing to withdraw our story until we can purchase a Galaxy Fold at retail.

My bet is that their “partner” is in hot water with Samsung over their having handed the Fold unit over to iFixit. iFixit knows pulling the teardown makes them look bad, like they’re caving in to a demand from Samsung, but they’re doing it anyway to protect or perhaps even as a favor to this “ally in making devices more repairable”, a description I suspect might mean “someone who has in the past and might again in the future get us early access to hardware through unofficial channels”.

I.e., iFixit is doing a favor for their source, not a favor for Samsung, even though they know some will see it as a favor for Samsung.

Alternatively, the really bad look for iFixit is that their “partner” is a marketing firm that is also a partner for Samsung, and getting pre-retail-availability to iFixit was originally part of the marketing rollout for the Fold and iFixit is really just going along with this so that they keep getting pre-retail-availability access to Samsung devices.

It’s a bit inside baseball but the whole thing is just weird, because, as I said at the top, reviews just don’t get pulled unless the review itself — not the product — is flawed.

Casey Johnston Bought a 2018 MacBook Air and You Know Exactly Where This Is Going 

Casey Johnston, writing at The Outline:

Fueled by equal parts irrational hope I knew I shouldn’t trust and deep skepticism to which I should have listened, I bought the 2018 MacBook Air.

Sure enough, a couple months into owning this computer, the keys started to act up. As before, problems would come and go; the E or B key would be unresponsive for a day or so before whatever was jamming them up mysteriously went away. The spacebar was the worst offender. For a long while it doubled spaces from a single keypress, but only sometimes. Finally, it seemed to get something lodged under it big or annoying enough that it couldn’t shake itself loose, and I had to pound it to get a space out of it; for two days, my sentencescame outlikethis. I made a Genius Bar appointment.

These keyboards are the biggest mistake in Apple’s history.*

Even if they ship a truly new, reliable keyboard this summer (which I think they will, because if they don’t, it means they’re in deep denial of a huge problem), how long will it take for that new keyboard to roll out across the entire MacBook line? Even if Apple is on the case, hard at work on a new keyboard, there are likely to be brand-new MacBooks in the lineup with the unreliable butterfly keyboards for at least another year.

The real harm is to the long-term reputation of the entire MacBook brand.

* Or at least modern Apple history — post-NeXT-reunification. There’s no point comparing it to the Apple III or Lisa.

Kara Swisher: ‘Put Another Zero on Facebook’s Fine’ 

Kara Swisher, writing at The New York Times:

How can I describe the fine of between $3 billion and $5 billion that Facebook is likely to pay to the Federal Trade Commission — which will doubtlessly be touted as its largest ever — to settle the government’s inquiry into what the social networking giant called “our platform and user data practices”?

How about: It’s a parking ticket. Not a speeding ticket. Not a DUI — or a DUI(P), data under the influence of Putin. A parking ticket.

Exactamundo.

iFixit Removes Galaxy Fold Teardown 

iFixit:

After two days of intense public interest, iFixit has removed our teardown of Samsung’s Galaxy Fold. That analysis supported our suspicions that the device provided insufficient protection from debris damaging the screen.

We were provided our Galaxy Fold unit by a trusted partner. Samsung has requested, through that partner, that iFixit remove its teardown. We are under no obligation to remove our analysis, legal or otherwise. But out of respect for this partner, whom we consider an ally in making devices more repairable, we are choosing to withdraw our story until we can purchase a Galaxy Fold at retail.

I was — and remain — genuinely curious who supplied them with a unit. It couldn’t have been a review unit — those have to be returned and review terms always forbid taking devices apart. Maybe from a carrier?

Thursday, 25 April 2019

Billion-Dollar Fines Are Facebook’s Cost of Doing Business 

Jon Swartz, reporting for Barron’s:

Facebook stock was up about 8% in after-hours trading after the social networking giant reported earnings for its fiscal first quarter, despite its disclosure of a $3 billion charge related to legal expenses.

The back story. What data and security controversies? They may dog Facebook in the news and on Capitol Hill, but investors barely seem to care. Facebook shares have soared 39% in 2019.

A $3-5 billion fine is something, but it’s not a deterrent to Facebook’s privacy crimes. They’ve just factored this in as a cost of doing business, and investors see it that way too. A $3 billion fine simply isn’t commensurate with the startling revenue that Facebook generates.

The Talk Show: ‘Better Than Nothing’ 

John Moltz returns to the show. Topics include AirPods 2, Samsung’s Galaxy Fold debacle, the trove of iOS 13 and MacOS 10.15 leaks reported by Guilherme Rambo, and the future of iTunes.

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Wednesday, 24 April 2019

Microsoft Reports Strong Q3 2019 Results 

Microsoft:

Microsoft Corp. today announced the following results for the quarter ended March 31, 2019, as compared to the corresponding period of last fiscal year:

  • Revenue was $30.6 billion and increased 14%

  • Operating income was $10.3 billion and increased 25%

  • Net income was $8.8 billion and increased 19%

  • Diluted earnings per share was $1.14 and increased 20% [...]

“Demand for our cloud offerings drove commercial cloud revenue to $9.6 billion this quarter, up 41% year-over-year,” said Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft.

Azure is way up, but Office and even Windows are up too. Satya Nadella’s Microsoft is doing really well, and to me seems well-positioned for the future.

(One amusing side note: The press release was obviously written in Word and exported to HTML. Just look at the source. The items in the bullet list (which list is not an <ol> but instead a bunch of <span> elements) start with a Unicode middle dot followed by a space, then 7 consecutive non-breaking spaces. Microsoft is still Microsoft.)

NYT: ‘In Push for 2020 Election Security, Top Official Was Warned: Don’t Tell Trump’ 

Eric Schmitt, David E. Sanger, and Maggie Haberman:

Ms. Nielsen left the Department of Homeland Security early this month after a tumultuous 16-month tenure and tensions with the White House. Officials said she had become increasingly concerned about Russia’s continued activity in the United States during and after the 2018 midterm elections — ranging from its search for new techniques to divide Americans using social media, to experiments by hackers, to rerouting internet traffic and infiltrating power grids.

But in a meeting this year, Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff, made it clear that Mr. Trump still equated any public discussion of malign Russian election activity with questions about the legitimacy of his victory. According to one senior administration official, Mr. Mulvaney said it “wasn’t a great subject and should be kept below his level.”

Unsurprising, but jaw-dropping nonetheless. On the one side: hostile actions from our most dangerous foreign adversary and the integrity of our nation’s elections. On the other side: one man’s ego.

Monday, 22 April 2019

CNBC: ‘Apple Spends More Than $30 Million a Month on Amazon Web Services’ 

Jordan Novet, reporting for CNBC:

As Apple and Amazon compete for a greater share of consumer dollars and attention, they also have a particularly intimate business relationship: Apple is spending more than $30 million a month on Amazon’s cloud, according to people familiar with the arrangement.

Apple’s cloud expenditure reflects the company’s determination to deliver online services like iCloud quickly and reliably, even if it must depend on a rival to do so.

This is interesting to think about. How much of this is strategy and how much is necessity? A decade ago, pre-iPhone, Apple was notoriously behind on large-scale cloud services. But AWS only got started as a service in 2006, the year before the iPhone debuted. It was based on infrastructure Amazon had been working on since the 90s, sure, but it wasn’t a service Apple could even consider until 2006.

iCloud was launched in 2011. That’s 8 years. If Apple is still largely reliant on AWS today, why? Maybe they just honestly figure they don’t need to do it all themselves. And $30 million a month may well make Apple one of AWS’s biggest customers, but that’s chump change for Apple.

Sunday, 21 April 2019

Agenda 

My thanks to Agenda for sponsoring last week at DF.

I keep thinking about this app. I love the idea of an indie app. Just the general idea of an app from a small team that does something useful in a very cool way. Agenda is like the canonical ideal of a modern indie app. It even has a perfect name and great app icons.

Agenda is an elegant note-taking app — for Mac and iOS — with a strong focus on dates. It has tight integration with your calendars, and — coming in a few weeks — will offer that same experience for reminders. Add reminders to your task lists, edit the due date, and check them off, all without leaving Agenda. Even better, you can do it without leaving the keyboard, because Agenda has a Markdown-like syntax that includes reminders.

Agenda is free to download and use forever. Get started by importing from Apple Notes or Evernote, and sync via iCloud or Dropbox. It’s my favorite new app in years.

Thursday, 18 April 2019

The Mueller Report 

We’ve all been bombarded by news alerts on Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel report today. I’ve spent most of my day reading it. I strongly suggest all of you do the same.

Yes, it’s effectively a book, and not a short one, but it is incredibly well written and structured. That’s not a surprise to me — we knew Mueller hired a team of excellent attorneys, and good lawyers are good writers. But the information density is very high — no summary or simple list of highlights can do it justice. It is 400+ pages not because it is padded with extraneous details or legal jargon, but because it contains 400+ pages of evidence and narrative. It reads almost like a novel.

And like any good novel, it begins with a bracing opening line:

The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.

‘15 Months of Fresh Hell Inside Facebook’ 

Hard to summarize this massive Wired cover story by Nicholas Thompson and Fred Vogelstein other than that Facebook is a terrible company run by terrible people, particularly Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. We all have a lot of reading on our hands with today’s release of Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel report, but this one is worth queuing up and setting time aside for. A few highlights:

In addition to general mendacity and capriciousness, Facebook decisions are often inept:

To define trustworthiness, the company was testing how people responded to surveys about their impressions of different publishers. To define news, the engineers pulled a classification system left over from a previous project — one that pegged the category as stories involving “politics, crime, or tragedy.”

That particular choice, which meant the algorithm would be less kind to all kinds of other news — from health and science to technology and sports — wasn’t something Facebook execs discussed with media leaders in Davos. And though it went through reviews with senior managers, not everyone at the company knew about it either. When one Facebook executive learned about it recently in a briefing with a lower- level engineer, they say they “nearly fell on the fucking floor.”

Zuckerberg was jealous of Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom:

Systrom’s glowing press coverage didn’t help. In 2014, according to someone directly involved, Zuckerberg ordered that no other executives should sit for magazine profiles without his or Sandberg’s approval. Some people involved remember this as a move to make it harder for rivals to find employees to poach; others remember it as a direct effort to contain Systrom.

And vindictiveness:

At Wired, the month after an image of a bruised Zuckerberg appeared on the cover, the numbers were even more stark. One day, traffic from Facebook suddenly dropped by 90 percent, and for four weeks it stayed there. After protestations, emails, and a raised eyebrow or two about the coincidence, Facebook finally got to the bottom of it. An ad run by a liquor advertiser, targeted at Wired readers, had been mistakenly categorized as engagement bait by the platform. In response, the algorithm had let all the air out of Wired’s tires. The publication could post whatever it wanted, but few would read it. Once the error was identified, traffic soared back. It was a reminder that journalists are just sharecroppers on Facebook’s giant farm. And sometimes conditions on the farm can change without warning.

Who believes this was a coincidence? Anyone?

‘Secrecy, Self-Dealing, and Greed at the N.R.A.’ 

Mike Spies, reporting for The New Yorker:

The N.R.A. and Ackerman have become so intertwined that it is difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. Top officials and staff move freely between the two organizations; Oliver North, the former Iran-Contra operative, who now serves as the N.R.A.’s president, is paid roughly a million dollars a year through Ackerman, according to two N.R.A. sources. But this relationship, which in many ways has built the contemporary N.R.A., seems also to be largely responsible for the N.R.A.’s dire financial state. According to interviews and to documents that I obtained — federal tax forms, charity records, contracts, corporate filings, and internal communications — a small group of N.R.A. executives, contractors, and venders has extracted hundreds of millions of dollars from the nonprofit’s budget, through gratuitous payments, sweetheart deals, and opaque financial arrangements. Memos created by a senior N.R.A. employee describe a workplace distinguished by secrecy, self-dealing, and greed, whose leaders have encouraged disastrous business ventures and questionable partnerships, and have marginalized those who object. “Management has subordinated its judgment to the vendors,” the documents allege. “Trust in the top has eroded.”

Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of people.

Amazon and Google Both Launch Ad-Based ‘Free’ Music Tiers 

Amazon:

And so, beginning today, customers in the U.S. who do not yet have a Prime membership or a subscription to Amazon Music Unlimited will now be able to listen to an ad-supported selection of top playlists and stations for free with Amazon Music on compatible Alexa-enabled devices.

Google:

Listening to music on your Google Home speaker right out-of-the-box seems too good to be true, right? It’s not! Starting today, YouTube Music is offering a free, ad-supported experience on Google Home speakers (or other Google Assistant-powered speakers).

Seems like the exact same thing from both companies: free streaming, but only using their respective smart speakers (so not on phones or computers), and with ads. Will be interesting to see just how many ads that is.

Facebook Says It ‘Unintentionally Uploaded’ 1.5 Million People’s Email Contacts Without Their Consent 

Rob Price, reporting for Business Insider:

Facebook harvested the email contacts of 1.5 million users without their knowledge or consent when they opened their accounts.

Since May 2016, the social-networking company has collected the contact lists of 1.5 million users new to the social network, Business Insider can reveal. The Silicon Valley company said the contact data was “unintentionally uploaded to Facebook,” and it is now deleting them.

Again I will say what few in the media seem willing to: Facebook is a criminal enterprise.

And, as per my previous item, is anyone willing to bet that the actual number is a lot higher than 1.5 million?

Facebook Updates Month-Old Post, Now Admits Millions, Not Thousands, of Instagram Passwords Were Stored in Plain Text 

Kurt Wagner, writing for Recode:

On the same morning Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian election interference finally became public, Facebook dropped some troubling news: Millions of Instagram users’ passwords were accidentally stored unencrypted on Facebook’s servers, which means Facebook employees could access them.

Facebook first announced late last month that it had stored hundreds of millions of user passwords unencrypted on its servers, a massive security problem. At the time, it said that “tens of thousands” of Instagram passwords were also stored in this way.

On Thursday morning, Facebook updated its blog to say that, actually, “millions” of Instagram users, not “tens of thousands,” were impacted:

Since this post was published, we discovered additional logs of Instagram passwords being stored in a readable format. We now estimate that this issue impacted millions of Instagram users. We will be notifying these users as we did the others. Our investigation has determined that these stored passwords were not internally abused or improperly accessed.

Me, a year ago, regarding Facebook’s initial public estimate of the number of accounts harvested by Cambridge Analytica:

Do you want to bet it’s actually a lot more than 87 million, and they’ll announce that bigger number in a few weeks? The drip-drip-drip PR strategy is an old trick, and Facebook utilizes it every time they have bad news involving a number of users. First they announce a low number, then a higher number, and then an even higher number. Notice that their mistakes always — always — start low and then go high. They never once announce that their original number was too high.

The fact that they announced this update number the same day the Mueller report was released is not a coincidence. PR is PR and every company looks to put bad news in as good a light as possible. But most companies don’t outright lie the way Facebook continuously does. They completely lack credibility at this point.

Wednesday, 17 April 2019

Flagship 5th Avenue Apple Store Battling Bed Bugs 

Not a great week for Apple, really.

Pete for America’s Design Toolkit 

South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg’s campaign for the Democratic nomination in 2020 has gotten a lot of attention in recent weeks. I’m not yet picking a favorite in the race, but he’s certainly a compelling candidate, and an openly gay major party candidate is a first worth celebrating.

What I seek to direct your attention to today, however, is unrelated to politics or policy. It’s this branding site put together by his campaign. This is strong identity work. Just check out these per-state graphics, each of them hand-lettered with full credit given to the artists. This work is distinctive, attractive, and strikes me as pitch-perfect for Buttigieg’s personality and tone. It fits, which is a very hard thing to get right.

‘Don’t Buy a 5G Smartphone’ 

This piece by Ron Amadeo at Ars Technica was published in December, but I think accurately captures the state of 5G for 2019:

For 5G mmWave in 2019, we’re going to get thicker, hotter, more complicated phones that use more energy and cost more money. With no commercial devices to look at, the exact extent of all of these downgrades is still up in the air, but it’s undeniable that first-gen 5G hardware is going to be inferior to more mature 4G designs. With 5G networks only in their infancy and a supposed $200-$300 premium for 5G-compatible phones, this really doesn’t seem worth it for consumers.

Amadeo’s illustration showing how many extra chips a 5G phone needs today is a real eye opener. Qualcomm is motivated to move things forward as fast as they can, but this makes me think we might not see good 5G phones until 2021.

Samsung Galaxy Fold Is the Homer Simpson Car 

Points to Patrick Thornton for calling this back in February:

Some people are calling this ambitious. That’s only something that someone who has never built products would say. The correct term for the Galaxy Fold is prototype.

Galaxy Fold Doesn’t Fold So Good 

Dieter Bohn’s review unit broke after just two days:

It’s a distressing thing to discover just two days after receiving my review unit. More distressing is that the bulge eventually pressed sharply enough into the screen to break it. You can see the telltale lines of a broken OLED converging on the spot where the bulge is.

Seems like a widespread problem. Steve Kovach’s unit broke after one day, and so did Mark Gurman’s. Gurman says it comes with a screen protector that he peeled off but apparently wasn’t supposed to. Looks like the sort of thing you’re supposed to peel off.

Marques Brownlee peeled his off too and the screen broke. Now I’m starting to wonder if anyone’s review unit has not broken.

The Galaxy Fold didn’t look like a real product when Samsung announced it, and it looks less like a real product now that it’s in reviewers’ hands. This thing is supposed to ship in a week, starting at $1,980. I’ll go out on a limb and predict that’s not going to happen.

9to5Mac: ‘Apple Revamping Find My Friends and Find My iPhone in Unified App’ 

Guilherme Rambo, writing for 9to5Mac:

Apple also wants users to be able to track any item — not just their Apple devices — using this new unified app. The company is working on a new hardware product, known only as “B389” by the people involved in its development.

This new product will be a tag that can be attached to any item — similar to other products like Tile. The tag will be paired to a user’s iCloud account by proximity to an iPhone, like AirPods. Users will be able to receive notifications when their device gets too far away from the tag, preventing them from forgetting the item the tag is attached to. Certain locations can be added to a list of ignored locations, so that the item can be left at those locations without the user being notified. The location of a tag can also be shared with friends or family.

Combining Find My Friends with Find My iPhone (really, Find My Devices) and adding support for Tile-like trackers sounds like a great idea.

Rambo is absolutely on fire lately with these leaks from Apple. Would love to know the backstory on how he’s scoring them.

Tuesday, 16 April 2019

Intel to Exit 5G Smartphone Modem Business 

Intel news release:

Intel Corporation today announced its intention to exit the 5G smartphone modem business and complete an assessment of the opportunities for 4G and 5G modems in PCs, internet of things devices and other data-centric devices. Intel will also continue to invest in its 5G network infrastructure business.

This is, to say the least, rather shocking. It seems extraordinarily unlikely to be a coincidence that the announcement came the same day Apple and Qualcomm settled their lawsuit. A big factor in the high-stakes nature of the Apple-Qualcomm fight is that Apple’s reliance on Intel for 5G modems was looking like a serious problem. So my question is: did Apple settle with Qualcomm because Intel warned them they were getting out of the 5G modem business, leaving Apple with no other option? Or did Intel get out of the 5G modem business because Apple settled with Qualcomm?

My initial guess is it’s the former: Intel decided to get out of this market, and Apple got squeezed.

Ben Bajarin:

Now don’t be surprised if Apple buys some of, or all of, Intel’s modem business IP.

I predicted this years ago so fingers crossed my crystal ball was clear :)

That would fit with the Cook Doctrine of “owning and controlling the primary technologies behind the products [Apple] makes”.

Leakapalooza 

Guilherme Rambo, writing at 9to5Mac, has a veritable mountain of leaks regarding iOS 13 and MacOS 10.15. A few that caught my eye:

Another thing many iOS users complain about is the lack of a standard undo system, which on the iPhone and iPad currently requires physically shaking the device.

With iOS 13, Apple is introducing a new standard undo gesture for text input on the iPad. The gesture starts as a three-finger tap on the keyboard area, sliding left and right allows the user to undo and redo actions interactively.

This is interesting, and I’ve been on Apple’s case about Undo on iOS for a long time. But for text input, there’s already a standard interface on iPad — the little Undo and Redo buttons at the top left of the keyboard. A three-finger gesture doesn’t seem like an improvement.

Font management is getting a major upgrade on iOS 13. It will not be necessary to install a profile to get new fonts into the system anymore. Instead there will be a new font management panel in Settings. A new standard font picker component will be available for developers and the system will notify the user when they open a document that has missing fonts.

A true “finally” for this one. I know none of this is “easy”, and that fonts in particular are tricky security-wise, because they’re software. But man, it’s a little crazy that iPad has been around for nine years and Apple is only getting to “easy font installation” now. I’m tempted to make a Font/DA Mover joke.

Qualcomm and Apple Agree to Drop All Litigation 

Apple Newsroom:

Qualcomm and Apple today announced an agreement to dismiss all litigation between the two companies worldwide. The settlement includes a payment from Apple to Qualcomm. The companies also have reached a six-year license agreement, effective as of April 1, 2019, including a two-year option to extend, and a multiyear chipset supply agreement.

“The settlement includes a payment from Apple to Qualcomm” is my favorite sentence so far this week.

Here’s more from The New York Times:

The provisions of the deal announced on Tuesday suggest at least a partial victory for Qualcomm’s patent-driven business model, which has also attracted harsh scrutiny from regulators like the Federal Trade Commission in a separate case awaiting a federal judge’s ruling. Qualcomm’s shares, which have been hurt by the two-year dispute with Apple, jumped 23 percent on word of the settlement.

In agreeing to settle the case, Apple tacitly acknowledged it was able to live with Qualcomm’s business model — assuming the price of Qualcomm’s royalties is more to Apple’s liking. The parties disclosed no financial details, but a slide they distributed Tuesday said the deal “reflects value and strength of Qualcomm’s intellectual property.”

Monday, 15 April 2019

Jamf Now 

My thanks to Jamf for sponsoring last week at Daring Fireball. For many people, I.T. is a task and not a career. It’s time to get your nights and weekends back. Finally.

Jamf Now is a simple, cloud-based solution designed to help anyone set up, manage, and protect Apple devices at work. Easily configure company email and Wi-Fi networks, distribute apps to your team, and protect sensitive data without locking down devices.

Daring Fireball readers can create an account and manage three devices for free. No credit card required. Each additional device starts at just $2 per month.

Friday, 12 April 2019

Neue Haas Grotesk, the Other New ‘Helvetica’ 

Following Monotype’s marketing, yesterday I described Helvetica Now as “the first new version of Helvetica since Helvetica Neue 35 years ago”. As a few type-minded readers pointed out, this ignores Christian Schwartz’s 2010 Neue Haas Grotesk, which is a modernized Helvetica in everything but name:

The digital version of Helvetica that everyone knows and uses today is quite different from the typeface’s pre-digital design from 1957. Originally released as Neue Haas Grotesk, many of the features that made it a Modernist favorite have been lost in translation over the years from one typesetting technology to the next.

Type designer Christian Schwartz has newly restored the original Neue Haas Grotesk in digital form — bringing back features like optical size variations, properly corrected obliques, alternate glyphs, refined spacing, and more.

Many similarities to Helvetica Now, including separate text and display versions, and alternate glyphs such as a straight-legged ‘R’.

Jackassery Never Goes Out of Style 

Daniel Newman, writing for MarketWatch, with “7 reasons investors should worry” about Apple:

3. Apple has an identity crisis. When Apple was a challenger brand, it disrupted. It innovated. It had to “think different” and be a rebel. The moment Apple became the incumbent, it lost its identity, its sense of purpose and its vision. That’s why Apple is trying to be everything now: a credit-card company, another Netflix, the Reader’s Digest of news (leading HSBC to downgrade the stock), maybe an AR company, maybe a car company... Worst of all, Apple keeps looking to the past for ideas instead of the future. Steve Jobs had vision. Tim Cook has spreadsheets. Spreadsheets don’t make great Apple products. Vision does.

I read this piece a few hours ago and decided to ignore it. But this one paragraph kept gnawing at me. In one paragraph Newman argues that during Apple’s good old days, it disrupted and innovated. And then one sentence later he’s arguing that the company is lost because it’s entering the fields of AR and cars. And how are AR and autonomous vehicles “the past”? It’s one thing to contradict oneself paragraphs apart, but it takes quite a mind to contradict oneself so completely in a single short paragraph.

In for a penny, in for a pound, so let’s look at Newman’s next “reason” too:

4. Apple keeps missing the boat on innovation. Steve Jobs was a market-creator. His model was to build entirely new markets out of new product categories with potential. Apple’s success was predicated on a mix of calculated risk and impeccable timing. Today, Apple no longer seems able or willing to create new markets in which to grow. It should have been the smart home company, not Amazon or Google. It should already be the Mixed Reality (XR) company, but for all the rumors, Apple has yet to produce a revolutionary XR product leaving the likes of Microsoft, Facebook, and Magic Leap to lead in this category.

To write this paragraph, Newman had to ignore Apple Watch, which is now a bigger business than the iPod ever was — and is still growing. AirPods are another ignored hit. With the “mixed reality” stuff I guess he’s talking about headsets, which, yes, Apple doesn’t make. But it’s not like Microsoft’s or Facebook’s VR headsets are hit products. And I guarantee there are more people using AR thanks to ARKit on iOS than on all other platforms combined.

And Magic Leap? Really?

CoreAnimation Bug in MacOS 10.14.4 

Ken Case, writing on The Omni Blog:

It’s incredibly rare for us to have to do this, but I need to let our Mac customers know that the 10.14.4 version of Mojave which shipped a few weeks ago (on March 25, 2019) has a drawing bug which makes windows with large CoreAnimation layers fail to draw. In particular, OmniOutliner and OmniPlan customers have been telling us that since upgrading to 10.14.4, they will open some documents and end up seeing… nothing. Perhaps some empty borders around the window. (Or if another window is dragged over the space where that window should be drawing, they’ll see a trail of its old pixels.) This is most likely to affect customers who are using older hardware, but it also affects large documents on newer hardware.

We’re working with Apple to get this resolved as soon as possible, but for now it appears there’s nothing we can do to resolve this on our own.

Bugs happen, but with all the ongoing consternation regarding Apple’s (and particularly the Mac’s) software quality, it’s a little worrisome to see this in a .4 release. A .4 release of the OS should be peak stability.

And the big problem for Omni Group customers hit by this is that there is no easy way to revert from 10.14.4 to 10.14.3, and Apple has encouraged users to turn on auto-updates to new OS releases.

‘Foxconn Says Empty Buildings in Wisconsin Are Not Empty’ 

Nilay Patel, on Foxconn’s response to The Verge’s investigation into their Wisconsin scam:

Today, Foxconn responded to that piece by... announcing another innovation center in Wisconsin, this one in Madison, the state’s capital. The building, which currently houses a bank, actually sits directly across the street from the Capitol building, and it will continue to house the bank because Foxconn did not announce when it would be moving in.

Here are some other things Foxconn did not announce: how much it had paid for the building, how many floors of the building it would occupy, how many people would work there, or what those people would be doing.

It did announce that it would be rebranding the building “Foxconn Place Madison,” however.

It’s like Foxconn is a stage magician, and Wisconsin paid $4.5 billion to see an elephant disappear from the stage. But two years later, there still is no elephant, it seems ever more clear that they never had any intention of even showing an elephant, let alone making it disappear, and now that people are calling them on it, they’re like, “We are definitely going to make an elephant disappear from this stage, but hey — how about a card trick?”

The Verge Digs Into Foxconn’s Wisconsin Con Job 

In-depth investigation by Josh Dzieza for The Verge:

The secrecy and vagueness are frustrating to critics. How do you prove that Foxconn won’t build an enormous LCD factory during an industry glut or create a research campus larger than MIT in rural Wisconsin other than by pointing out that experts — and even, occasionally, Foxconn executives — say it makes no sense?

State House Minority Leader Gordon Hintz recently appointed himself to the board of WEDC, and Foxconn’s continued promises of 13,000 jobs make him palpably furious. Speaking in slow, measured tones in his Madison office as he packed for a trip, he said the state needs to “right-size” the project to something realistic, likely a few hundred research jobs, and that Foxconn needs to be honest about its plans. “For something that had a 25-year payback, building a factory because the president wants you to for reasons that have nothing to do with market viability is insane.”

Hintz believes Foxconn is trying to slow-walk the project until 2020, continuing to use it to win Trump’s goodwill in the trade war and waiting to see who’s elected.

Foxconn scammed Republican officials, pure and simple — local, state, and federal. The LCD factory that President Trump declared “the eighth wonder of the world” still doesn’t exist and likely never will. It’s a scam Foxconn has played around the globe.

Previously at DF:

Julian Assange, Houseguest From Hell 

BBC News:

More details emerged later, when Foreign Minister José Valencia told Congress that Assange had been using a mobile phone not registered with the embassy, repeatedly insulted the mission’s workers - reportedly calling them US spies - and damaged the facilities by riding his skateboard and playing football, despite being told not to do so.

Cleaning staff, Mr Valencia said, had described “improper hygienic conduct” throughout Assange’s stay, an issue that a lawyer had attributed to “stomach problems”. One unnamed senior Ecuadorean official told AP news agency that other issues included “weeks without a shower” and a “dental problem born of poor hygiene”.

Interior Minister María Paula Romo then complained that Assange had been allowed to do things like “put faeces on the walls of the embassy and other behaviours of that nature”.

Sounds like a lovely fellow.

Thursday, 11 April 2019

Helvetica Now 

Monotype has released the first new version of Helvetica since Helvetica Neue 35 years ago:

Helvetica Now is a new chapter in the story of perhaps the best-known typeface of all time. Available in three optical sizes — Micro, Text, and Display — every character in Helvetica Now has been redrawn and refit; with a variety of useful alternates added. It has everything we love about Helvetica and everything we need for typography today. This is not a revival. This is not a restoration.

This is a statement.

It’s good, I think. A lot of what they’ve done for the alternative glyphs — like the straight-legged ‘R’ and rounded-dotted ‘i’ and ‘j’ — remind me more than a little of Apple’s San Francisco. I’m not saying Monotype drew inspiration from San Francisco — only that I think both type families are skating to where the puck is going for modern sans serifs. All of Helvetica Now still feels like Helvetica to me, which is exactly as it should be.

$299 for the entire family of 48 fonts, and through May 24, it’s available for just $149. An insta-buy for yours truly.

See also: William Joel’s interview at The Verge with Monotype type director Charles Nix.

Old Hoss Radbourn: 59 or 60 Wins? 

Alex Bonilla, writing at the Sports Reference Blog:

Keen-eyed Baseball-Reference users have written us asking about an update made to the statistics of Hall of Fame pitcher Old Hoss Radbourn. In the past, we had displayed Radbourn with 59 wins in his 1884 season with Providence. However, in a recent update, Radbourn has been bumped up to 60 wins.

Before we delve into what the correct number is, let’s zoom out a bit, first.

Radbourn — whom all baseball fans should follow — reacting to the news:

Pleased to become the only hurler to win games in the 19th and 21st centuries.

‘Apple and the Craftsmen’ 

Martin Feld, writing at Lounge Ruminator:

It is the fourth point above — star power — that brings me to the second reason that Apple chose to host the event:

because it could.

Apple not only wanted to show how its work with various creatives and firms fits into the current culture of tech, it wanted to show that it is a cultural institution in its own right. I believe that this is what many tech writers and commentators missed during this event, with their typical focus on Apple as a product company. Apple is broader and more multifaceted now than it ever has been before and it has enormous brand power.

I think he’s onto something with this point.

How to Tip 

Alan Sytsma, writing for Grub Steet:

For 14 months, this CNBC story on tipping has been lying dormant, just waiting for the Internet Outrage Machine to find it. This week, it was found, and yet another tipping debate — if that’s what you want to call it — exploded. The whole thing was exactly as dumb as you’d expect. Tipping is very easy, but for anyone who still doesn’t get it, Grub Street has assembled this helpful FAQ.

Do I have to tip?
Yes.

It’s so complicated.
It’s not. When you eat and drink at a restaurant or bar or café or whatever, where servers accept tips, you will leave a tip, and that tip will be 20 percent of the total bill, including tax and whatever you’ve spent on alcohol.

This is how I’ve tipped my whole life: 20 percent on the final bill, tax included. That’s it. For outstanding service, or if you receive complimentary dishes or drinks, you tip on top of that. Don’t give me any Mr. Pink shit — this is how the system works, and if you tip less than 20 percent on your final bill you’re stiffing your server.

If I have it with me, I tip in cash.

This whole thing is U.S.-centric, of course, but let me add that while I understand how strange U.S. tipping culture must seem to someone from another country, it’s not complicated, and in my experience, typical service in U.S. restaurants is far better than in other countries. Fundamentally I think the basic idea works, insofar as it incentivizes superior service.

Butt-Head Astronomer 

Speaking of early 90’s Apple code names, it’s always fun to revisit the story of Carl Sagan and the Power Mac 7100.

WALT – Crude 1993 Apple Prototype of a Mac-Based Desktop Phone 

Sonny Dickson has a video of a strange 1993 Apple prototype in action:

Manufactured largely from PowerBook 100 parts, all framed with a specialized version of Mac OS Classic that is customized with WALT bootup text and specific WALT related language. [...]

The way I’ve come to think about the W.A.L.T. is as a classic Mac blended with a Newton and a desk phone — it features a full array of the typical interface ports of its time, featuring SCSI, VGA out, and external audio. What’s even more interesting is that it ran HyperCard instead of Apple’s better known Finder interface.

In spirit it’s certainly more Newton-like than Mac-like, but technologically it’s clearly just a PowerBook 100 running a customized version of System 6 and the software is all just HyperCard.

Assuming the 1993 date for this prototype is correct, it’s a sign of Apple’s early 90’s dysfunction that this turd was produced and shown in public, given that the actual Newton shipped in 1993. It feels like something someone in the Mac division ordered up to show that the Newton shouldn’t even be made because the Mac could do everything the Newton could do. But it obviously couldn’t. Everything is painfully slow on this WALT prototype, and stylus input is a joke — the stylus is just directing the Mac’s mouse pointer around the screen, slowly. (System 7 shipped in 1991, so it’s also telling that this prototype purportedly from 1993 was running System 6 — System 6 was a bit closer to the metal and thus faster.) The whole UI seems crude compared to the Newton’s elegance.

Still — fascinating that something like this can still boot and run. And I presume from the Orlando-area map on the startup screen that the name “WALT” was homage to Walt Disney, and that “Wizzy Active Lifestyle Telephone” was just a (terrible) backronym.

Wednesday, 10 April 2019

Poorly Researched Men’s Fiction 

Evan Allgood, writing at McSweeney’s:

The deers, famously self-assured creatures, didn’t budge. They were awake now, munching happily on some squirrels they’d killed for food, the carnivores. But now they were the squirrels in this equation, which felt somehow ironic. I reached for that old liquid courage — a dented flask full of industrial-strength Jeff Daniels. Then I lined up those deers, took a breath, and pushed the trigger. There was no kickback.

Guilherme Rambo: ‘MacOS 10.15 to Include Standalone Media Apps, Splitting iTunes’ 

Guilherme Rambo, writing at 9to5Mac:

The new Music, Podcasts, and TV apps will be made using Marzipan, Apple’s new technology designed to facilitate the porting of iPad apps to the Mac without too many code changes. It’s not clear whether the redesigned Apple Books app will also be made using the technology, but given that the redesign came to iOS first and its usage for the other apps, it’s likely that this new Books app will also be using UIKit.

Nothing surprising here, but it leaves the $64,000 question unanswered: will these apps be more like dumbed-down iPad apps on the Mac, or more like smartened-up Mac apps on the iPad? Dumbed-down iPad apps on the Mac is, if anything, a generous description of the News, Stocks, Home, and Voice Recorder apps we got with 10.14.

With the standalone versions of Apple’s media apps coming to the Mac, it’s natural to ask: what about iTunes in macOS 10.15? According to sources, the next major version of macOS will still include the iTunes app. Since Apple doesn’t have a new solution for manually syncing devices such as old iPods and iPhones with the Mac, it’s natural to keep iTunes around a little longer.

Makes sense. Let the new apps serve as front-ends to Apple’s media services, and let iTunes stay as a media player for audio and video files on your Mac.

Event Horizon Telescope Captures First-Ever Black Hole Image 

Sarah Kaplan and Joel Achenbach, reporting for The Washington Post:

“You’re basically looking at a supermassive black hole that’s almost the size of our solar system,” or 38 billion kilometers in diameter, said Sera Markoff, an astrophysicist at the University of Amsterdam.

The image shows the boundary between light and dark around a black hole, called the event horizon — the point of no return, where the gravity of the black hole becomes so extreme that nothing that enters can ever escape. At the center of the black hole, time and space become so curved upon themselves that the laws of physics break down completely.

Tuesday, 9 April 2019

‘Commander in Cheat’ 

The Guardian has an excerpt from Rick Reilly’s new book, Commander in Cheat:

Somebody should write that the way Trump cheats at golf, lies about his courses, and stiffs his golf contractors isn’t that far from how he cheats on his wives, lies about his misdeeds, and stiffs the world on agreements America has already made on everything from Iran to climate change.

“Golf is like bicycle shorts,” I once wrote. “It reveals a lot about a man.”

You could write a book about what Trump’s golf reveals about him.

Here it is.

My copy arrived a few days ago.

Steven Troughton-Smith Thinks iTunes Breakup is Nigh 

Steven Troughton-Smith, on Twitter:

I am now fairly confident based on evidence I don’t wish to make public at this point that Apple is planning new (likely UIKit) Music, Podcasts, perhaps even Books, apps for macOS, to join the new TV app. I expect the four to be the next wave of Marzipan apps. Grain of salt, etc.

And yes, this means the much-discussed and long-awaited break up of iTunes. Finally!

Makes a lot of sense — we’ve all been waiting for the breakup of the monolithic iTunes app on Mac for years. In theory, what makes sense are separate apps for Music, Podcasts, and TV — and Apple has already announced that a new Apple TV app for Mac is coming this fall, presumably with MacOS 10.15. It also makes sense that these apps would be created using the upcoming fully-fledged UIKit for Mac stuff. (What we’ve been calling Marzipan for the last year is just one part of a much bigger story.) If Troughton-Smith is correct, we might even get betas of these apps in the 10.15 betas this summer.

Apple Drops $99 Data Migration Fee for New Macs and Repairs 

Adam Engst, writing at TidBITS:

Apple has dropped the $99 fee that it previously charged for migrating data from an old Mac to a newly purchased machine. TidBITS reader and TekBasics consultant David Price wrote to tell us that he has generally advised clients to pay Apple to migrate data to newly purchased Macs, but when he accompanied his brother-in-law to pick up a freshly migrated iMac last week, Apple informed him that there was no charge for the service.

I contacted an Apple Store Operations Specialist, who confirmed the policy change.

I had no idea they previously charged for this.

Scheme to Swap Fake iPhones Adds Up to $900,000 Loss for Apple 

Rick Rojas, reporting for The New York Times:

The con was simple: Send a fake iPhone to Apple claiming that the device would not turn on and that it was under warranty, and not long after, a genuine replacement arrived in the mail. It was a scheme that federal prosecutors said two college students in Oregon repeated on such a scale that it amounted to nearly $900,000 in losses for Apple as they sent in hundreds of counterfeit phones. [...]

Records provided to investigators by Apple allowed them to connect Mr. Jiang to 3,069 iPhone warranty claims through his name and his email, mailing and IP addresses. All of them indicated “No Power/Wired Charging Issues” as the reason for the claim.

More than 1,500 of the claims were rejected, but nearly just as many were approved, with a new phone sent out. An Apple representative told an investigator, according to court records, that a key element of the scheme’s success was that the phones were inoperable, which meant the replacement process would begin before technicians could figure out they were counterfeit.

I don’t know how long these guys thought they’d get away with this, but I’d have guessed they’d have been flagged a lot sooner than 1,500 replaced iPhones and 3,000 attempts at the scam.

Ming-Chi Kuo: Mini-LED 31.6-inch Apple Display by Q3 

Benjamin Mayo, writing for 9to5Mac:

TF Securities’ Ming-Chi Kuo has released a report which lays out Apple’s product interest in mini-LED technology. Kuo says that Apple will launch a 31.6-inch (6K resolution) external display in the second or third quarter of 2019 and feature a mini-LED backlight.

This would be the standalone Pro display to go along with the new Mac Pro. If it’s on pace to ship in Q3 then it’s almost certainly going to be unveiled at WWDC in June.

Saturday, 6 April 2019

StackSocial’s Epic Mac Bundle 

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.
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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.

Thursday, 4 April 2019

BBEdit Returns to the Mac App Store 

Bare Bones Software:

When the Mac App Store debuted in 2011, BBEdit was one of its first products available for sale. However, due to technical and business constraints we encountered in the store, we decided to withdraw BBEdit from the Mac App Store in 2014.

Following BBEdit’s exit from the Mac App Store, we had many conversations with our customers, and with Apple, regarding the issues that we had encountered with the store.

In the spring of 2018, Bare Bones and Apple announced that, subsequent to the release of macOS Mojave (10.14) and the accompanying refresh of the Mac App Store, BBEdit would be returning to the store.

This was made possible by changes to the OS itself which allow Mac App Store versions of BBEdit to function to their fullest extent while complying with Mac App Store rules; as well as changes to the Mac App Store business mechanics which make it possible for us to distribute our software through the Mac App Store as part of a sustainable business model.

They’ve made this work by using a subscription model for the Mac App Store version: $40/year or $4/month — a veritable bargain.

The App Store has welcomed BBEdit back warmly, with a nice top-of-the-front-page feature on developer Rich Siegel and BBEdit’s incredibly long history as a Mac stalwart, along with two other features: “BBEdit: A Writer’s Secret Weapon” and “Tame Your Text Files” — both good guides to BBEdit’s rich feature set. (Those App Store articles will open in the App Store apps on Mojave or iOS.) Even a nice tweet from Phil Schiller.

This welcome news coincides with today’s 12.6.3 update for all BBEdit users, which, as ever, is accompanied by copiously detailed release notes.

SoundSource 4 

Huge update to Rogue Amoeba’s audio management utility for the Mac — the “What’s New in Version 4” page is a long read even for existing SoundSource readers. And if you’re not familiar with SoundSource, their description is spot-on: “Sound control so good, it ought to be built in”.

Basically, SoundSource is a menu bar app that gives you quick access to input and output devices, and level settings, and lets you apply equalizer effects — both system-wide and on a per-app basis. All with a thoughtful, intuitive interface.

SoundSource is also a great example of a distinctive, branded UI that still looks and feels in every way like a standard Mac app. $29 for new users, $19 upgrade for existing SoundSource 3 users.

Cardhop for iOS 

What Fantastical is to Apple’s Calendar app, Cardhop is to the Contacts app — a vast improvement over a built-in system app, with a very convenient natural language parser for doing everything from searching to creating. That’s no surprise, since Cardhop is from Fantastical’s developer, Flexibits.

Everything great about Fantastical is there in Cardhop — thoughtful interaction design, gorgeous appearance, and terrific attention to detail. They’ve also made a cool intro video, and Ryan Christoffel has a detailed review at MacStories.

And it’s just a one-time purchase for $4 in the App Store. Ridiculously cheap.

Shocker: Barr’s Summary of Mueller Report Might Be Fishy 

Ellen Nakashima, Carol D. Leonnig, and Rosalind S. Helderman, reporting for The Washington Post:

“There was immediate displeasure from the team when they saw how the attorney general had characterized their work instead,” according to one U.S. official briefed on the matter.

Summaries were prepared for different sections of the report, with a view that they could made public, the official said.

The report was prepared “so that the front matter from each section could have been released immediately — or very quickly,” the official said. “It was done in a way that minimum redactions, if any, would have been necessary, and the work would have spoken for itself.”

Mueller’s team assumed the information was going to be made available to the public, the official said, “and so they prepared their summaries to be shared in their own words — and not in the attorney general’s summary of their work, as turned out to be the case.”

Imagine the right’s reaction if there had been a two-year independent counsel investigation of Barack Obama, led by Robert Mueller, regarding election malfeasance and obstruction of justice, and when completed, attorney general Eric Holder released nothing but his own 4-page summary that basically said “nothing to look at here”.

I’m sure that would have flown.

I don’t know if it’s going to happen in days, weeks, or months, but the Mueller report will be released. This Barr summary is such a ham-fisted gambit — it really doesn’t make any sense at all if the report actually looks good for Trump.

Wednesday, 3 April 2019

‘Heaven or High Water’ 

Sarah Miller, writing for Popula:

“Sunny day flooding” is flooding where water comes right up from the ground, hence the name, and yes, it can certainly rain during sunny day flooding, and yes, that makes it worse. Sunny day flooding happens in many parts of Miami, but it is especially bad in Sunset Harbour, the low-lying area on Miami Beach’s west side.

The sea level in Miami has risen ten inches since 1900; in the 2000 years prior, it did not really change. The consensus among informed observers is that the sea will rise in Miami Beach somewhere between 13 and 34 inches by 2050. By 2100, it is extremely likely to be closer to six feet, which means, unless you own a yacht and a helicopter, sayonara. Sunset Harbour is expected to fare slightly worse, and to do so more quickly.

Thus, I felt the Sunset Harbour area was a good place to start pretending to buy a home here. Amazingly, in the face of these incontrovertible facts about the climate the business of luxury real estate is chugging along just fine, and I wanted to see the cognitive dissonance up close.

Just a terrific (but terrifying) piece of writing.

Millions of Facebook Records Found on Amazon Cloud Servers 

Bloomberg*:

Researchers at UpGuard, a cybersecurity firm, found troves of Facebook user information hiding in plain sight, inadvertently posted publicly on Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud computing servers.

Mark Zuckerberg, one year ago:

We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you.

I agree with Zuckerberg.

* You know.

Facebook Demanding Some New Users’ Email Passwords 

Kevin Poulsen, writing for The Daily Beast:

Facebook users are being interrupted by an interstitial demanding they provide the password for the email account they gave to Facebook when signing up. “To continue using Facebook, you’ll need to confirm your email,” the message demands. “Since you signed up with [email address], you can do that automatically …”

A form below the message asked for the users’ “email password.” [...]

The additional login step was noticed over the weekend by a cybersecurity watcher on Twitter called “e-sushi.” The Daily Beast tested the claim by establishing a new Facebook account under circumstances the company’s system might flag as suspicious, using a disposable webmail address and connecting through a VPN in Romania. A reporter was taken to the same screen demanding the email password.

They’re just fucking with us now.

Tuesday, 2 April 2019

MacBook Keyboard Reliability Dark Matter: People Just Living With Broken Keyboards 

David Heinemeier Hansson, writing at Signal vs. Noise:

So here’s some anecdata for Apple. I sampled the people at Basecamp. Out of the 47 people using MacBooks at the company, a staggering 30% are dealing with keyboard issues right now! And that’s just the people dealing with current keyboard issues. If you include all the people who used to have issues, but went through a repair or replacement process, the number would be even higher. [...]

But as always, in a time of crisis, the event itself is less indicative of the health of a company than the response. Is Apple going to accept that they’re currently alienating and undermining decades of goodwill by shipping broken computers in mass quantities?

Hansson used the headline “The MacBook Keyboard Fiasco Is Way Worse Than Apple Thinks”, but I suspect it’d be more accurate to say that it’s way worse than Apple admits. They don’t need to look at the number of support incidents from customers. Almost everyone at Apple uses MacBooks of some sort. They know from their own use of the product how problematic reliability is.

And how much worse the new arrow key layout is compared to the old inverted-T layout, how much developers miss a hardware Esc key, and the general sentiment regarding the Touch Bar. And while I know some people prefer these new low-travel keys, I feel confident that most people do not.

Monday, 1 April 2019

From the Euphemism Hall of Fame 

Pedro Canahuati, VP of engineering for security and privacy at Facebook, in a post titled “Keeping Passwords Secure”:

As part of a routine security review in January, we found that some user passwords were being stored in a readable format within our internal data storage systems.

This post is from March 21, but I missed this particular item. What’s so delicious is that by “some” they mean 600 million. You know, some.

Small Stickers on the Ground Tricked Tesla Autopilot Into Steering Into Opposing Traffic Lane 

Cory Doctorow, writing at Boing Boing:

Researchers from Tencent Keen Security Lab have published a report detailing their successful attacks on Tesla firmware, including remote control over the steering, and an adversarial example attack on the autopilot that confuses the car into driving into the oncoming traffic lane.

The researchers used an attack chain that they disclosed to Tesla, and which Tesla now claims has been eliminated with recent patches.

Regular autonomous driving, in honest non-adversarial conditions, is a hard problem to solve. But these sort of “What if someone maliciously tries to screw with the autonomous system?” scenarios are terrifying.

Bragi Exits Wearables; Sells Dash Business to Mystery Buyer 

Hugh Langley, writing for Wareable:

Bragi, creator of the Dash wireless earbuds, has made an exit from the consumer market.

The company confirmed to Wareable that it sold its product business to “a third-party buyer” in March this year. Bragi will continue to license its IP and AI, but it will no longer be creating new devices, company CEO Nikolaj Hviid confirmed.

Previously on DF: August 2016 and July 2017.