Linked List: June 23, 2020

Tuesday, 23 June 2020

Coming Tomorrow: The Talk Show Remote From WWDC 2020 ★

I don’t often post to the DF YouTube channel — but when I do, it’s usually good. Or it’s just something silly. But tomorrow it’s going to be good.

Apple: What’s New in Developer Technologies ★

Apple Newsroom:

SwiftUI introduced developers to a modern UI framework that made it more intuitive than ever to build sophisticated app UIs. This year, new life cycle APIs let developers write an entire app in SwiftUI, and share that code across all Apple platforms. Developers who have already started with SwiftUI will easily be able to add new features to their existing code, and a new Lazy API ensures enormous data sets will offer great performance.

I still can’t quite put my finger on where SwiftUI fits in the grand scheme of things alongside Catalyst, but this is a big year-over-year step forward. And I just could not resist quoting the bit with “Lazy API”. (See Larry Wall’s “three great virtues of a programmer”.)

Additionally, two changes are coming to the app review process and will be implemented this summer. First, developers will not only be able to appeal decisions about whether an app violates a given guideline of the App Store Review Guidelines, but will also have a mechanism to challenge the guideline itself. Second, for apps that are already on the App Store, bug fixes will no longer be delayed over guideline violations except for those related to legal issues. Developers will instead be able to address the issue in their next submission.

Both of these changes sound great. The second one means bug fix updates (which are often security updates) won’t be held up by Apple while a broader dispute over App Store compliance is being resolved or negotiated. The first sounds like an even bigger concession on Apple’s part, but let’s see how it works in practice. If this is more than just lip service, wow, that’s huge.

Senate Republicans Propose Law to Outlaw End-to-End Encryption ★

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee press release:

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and U.S. Senators Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) today introduced the Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act, a bill to bolster national security interests and better protect communities across the country by ending the use of “warrant-proof” encrypted technology by terrorists and other bad actors to conceal illicit behavior.

This is breathtaking. At least they’re being somewhat clear here: they’re proposing outlawing all end-to-end encryption. Encryption that is “warrant-proof” is everything-proof — there are no decryption keys in the middle. Encryption that can be undone at the behest of a lawful warrant can also be undone by anyone with access to the keys.

At the risk of oversimplifying things, it’s worth pointing out that you can’t just “add a backdoor” to a proper end-to-end encryption scheme. It’s the nature of the design not just that there are no backdoors but that there can be no backdoors. You can prove it, cryptographically, which is how you can trust it.

The Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act is a balanced solution that keeps in mind the constitutional rights afforded to all Americans, […]

Nope.

while providing law enforcement the tools needed to protect the public from everyday violent crime and threats to our national security.

Read the room, Republicans.

The bill would require service providers and device manufacturers to provide assistance to law enforcement when access to encrypted devices or data is necessary — but only after a court issues a warrant, based on probable cause that a crime has occurred, authorizing law enforcement to search and seize the data.

That’s how the law works today. What these fools are proposing is to make it illegal to build systems where even the company providing the service doesn’t hold the keys.

The best hope for this legislation is that it’s mere posturing by Republicans.

WWDC 2020: The Little Stuff You Might Have Missed ★

Dan Moren, writing at Six Colors:

Apple effectively killed 3D Touch last year by replacing it with the haptic touch feature in the iPhone 11 line, but it looks like its old-friend/the-same-exact-feature-with-a-different-name Force Touch is not long for the world either. MacRumors reports that watchOS 7 is shifting developers away from using the Force Touch interaction, in favor of exposing those features in other ways.

Gotta say, I’m not broken up about that. Force Touch was clever, but too often it concealed features that were not easily discoverable.

I agree. It’s a very clever idea, and on the Watch in particular it makes for an effective use of severely limited screen real estate. But for most users, if they can’t see it, it might as well not be there. I think most Apple Watch users are completely unaware of any of the features exposed by Force Touch.

Monday at WWDC in Under Two Minutes ★

Killer “day one in a nut” of the major news from yesterday — from our old friend Serenity Caldwell. Works well both as a high-level summary for anyone who missed the keynote, and as a refresher for those of us who did watch but lost track of everything new.

As a side note, I love that Serenity gets credit for this video, as well as the fact that everyone in yesterday’s keynote got on-screen credit by name. A subtle but very welcome change.