Linked List: November 1, 2022

Tuesday, 1 November 2022

Rolex’s First Titanium Watch 

Blake Buettner, writing for Worn & Wound:

In a surprising move this morning Rolex, along with filmmaker/adventurer extraordinaire James Cameron, revealed a new Deepsea Challenge in the reference 126067. Rolex enthusiasts will immediately notice something new about that number, and that’s the 7 at the very end. That last digit denotes the case material, and until now a 7 has never been used. That’s because this watch represents the first commercially available Rolex crafted from titanium. That may be a first, but this really a reference that celebrates the past in a way rarely seen from the brand. That said, the most exciting details of this watch are what it might say about future releases.

The two most interesting new watches of the year, to me, are both exclusively made with titanium cases.

See Also: This video with James Cameron.

UI Browser’s Future 

Bill Cheeseman:

UI Browser 3 reached its end of life and was retired on October 17, 2022. It can no longer be purchased. The last release of UI Browser, version 3.0.2, will not be updated, and support is no longer available. Owners of an existing license for UI Browser can continue to download the UI Browser 3.0.2 disk image from Late Night Software’s Freeware website. It will remain available for a limited time. [...]

UI Browser 4 is now available for development as a public GitHub open source project, and it is open for discussion on the UI Browser Discussion page of the Late Night Software Forum. It is written in Swift. As initially posted, it is only minimally functional and requires much more work to become useful. (While many of the code files refer to UI Browser 3, they are in fact all part of UI Browser 4. Although they display a copyright notice, Bill Cheeseman and PFiddlesoft hereby dedicate them to the public domain.)

You may recall my post from back in April, when Cheeseman first announced his and UI Browser’s retirement, singing UI Browser’s praises. UI Browser is truly an astonishing utility, and I’m hopeful it now has a future.

Uber Tests Push Notification Ads 

Rebecca Bellan, reporting for TechCrunch:

Uber recently launched its new advertising division and in-app ads. Apparently, those ads aren’t staying within the app.

Instead, ads from other companies are being sent out as push notifications, much to the chagrin of some Uber users. Over the weekend, people turned to Twitter to complain about the notifications, sharing screenshots of ads, including one particularly popular one from Peloton that Uber had sent out. One of the primary complaints: notifications are being sent out when users aren’t engaging with the app.

A few weeks ago on my podcast, Nilay Patel and I speculated about Uber putting ads in the Dynamic Island after you’ve hailed a ride. This isn’t that, but it exemplifies why we singled out Uber as a potential abuser.

I wish I had more confidence that Apple will enforce the clear App Store guidelines that forbid this:

4.5.4 — Push Notifications must not be required for the app to function, and should not be used to send sensitive personal or confidential information. Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app’s UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such messages. Abuse of these services may result in revocation of your privileges.