Linked List: November 28, 2022

Monday, 28 November 2022

Jason Snell:

John Gruber joins Jason on Upgrade for the first time. Topics include eWorld, Apple’s iPhone production problems in China, FIFA and Qatar and the World Cup, the reasons behind Apple’s sports ambitions, BBEdit, regular expressions, Perl and Python, MarsEdit, nanotexture displays, webcams, and the state of the art in ADB-to-USB adapters. Happy Cyber Monday to all those who celebrate!

Happy Cyber Monday, indeed. (Snell and I managed to squeeze this into a brisk 144 minutes.)

iPhone 14 Pro Assembly Hit by COVID Protests in China ★

Vlad Savov, reporting for Bloomberg:^*

Turmoil at Apple Inc.’s key manufacturing hub of Zhengzhou is likely to result in a production shortfall of close to 6 million iPhone Pro units this year, according to a person familiar with assembly operations.

The situation remains fluid at the plant and the estimate of lost production could change, said the person, who asked not to be named because the information is private. Much will depend on how quickly Foxconn Technology Group, the Taiwanese company that operates the facility, can get people back to assembly lines after violent protests against Covid restrictions. If lockdowns continue in the weeks ahead, production could be set further back.

I didn’t comprehensively check all colors, sizes, and storage capacities, but a quick check of a few iPhone 14 Pro configurations today all show December 28 as the promised delivery date. Apple, famously, under-promises and over-delivers on these delivery dates, but it’s still November and iPhone 14 Pro is in “Don’t count on this for Christmas” territory.

With a lot of products — like, say, laptops during the COVID lockdown — a delay like this just means the purchase will be deferred until the next quarter. Maybe you can’t get it now, but you’ll still buy it when it does become available. I’m not sure that’s true for iPhones that, if available, would be purchased as holiday gifts.

* You know.

Protests Erupt Across China ★

Vivian Wang, reporting for The New York Times from Beijing:

“We don’t want lockdowns, we want freedom!” the protesters shouted as they wound westward through one of the city’s neatly manicured embassy districts, where a Four Seasons hotel stands alongside humble shops selling traditional breakfast crepes. “Freedom of the press! Freedom of publishing!”

It was an extraordinary scene, rarely seen anywhere in China, let alone the capital, under Xi Jinping, the country’s authoritarian leader. But the elation of the moment was laced with anxiety about what, exactly, was happening. When some people began shouting explicitly political slogans, others urged them to remain more narrowly focused on opposing Covid controls. Even what to call the event depended on who and when you asked — was it a protest? Or just a vigil? [...]

When a police officer told people to stop chanting for an end to lockdowns, the crowd quickly pivoted. “Continue lockdowns!” they chanted, in an echo of the sarcasm that had spread online in recent days, as people shared overblown praise for the government to protest censorship. “I want to do Covid tests!”

Sarcasm, the gift that keeps on giving. See also: Chinese protestors are holding blank white signs:

“People have a common message,” said Xiao Qiang, a researcher on internet freedom at the University of California, Berkeley. “They know what they want to express, and authorities know too, so people don’t need to say anything. If you hold a blank sheet, then everyone knows what you mean.”

Some protesters told The New York Times that the white papers took inspiration from a Soviet-era joke, in which a dissident accosted by the police for distributing leaflets in a public square reveals the fliers to be blank. When asked, the dissident replies that there is no need for words because “everyone knows.”

Yahoo Takes Minority Stake in Ad Network Taboola (And, by the Way, Yahoo Is Still Around) ★

Lauren Hirsch and Benjamin Mullin, reporting for The New York Times:

Yahoo is deepening its push into digital advertising, even as its competitors warn that the market is faltering.

The internet pioneer, which was taken private in a $5 billion deal last year, is taking a roughly 25 percent stake in Taboola, the company known for serving up attention-grabbing links on websites, the chief executives of the companies said in an interview. The deal is part of a 30-year exclusive advertising partnership that allows Yahoo to use Taboola’s technology to manage its sizable business in native advertising — ads that have the characteristics of traditional news and entertainment content.

Sad but unsurprising that Yahoo — at one time the premier quality-content-on-the-internet property — is now looking to the lowest common denominator clickbait property Taboola for inspiration and revenue.

Should Be Easy, Indeed ★

Speaking of asininity (albeit, thankfully, not toxic in this case), over the weekend Elon Musk, responding to some idiot’s idea that “The man builds rockets to Mars, a silly little smartphone should be easy, right?”, offhandedly tweeted:

I certainly hope it does not come to that, but, yes, if there is no other choice, I will make an alternative phone.

This tweet offered a textbook test case for headline writers. The truth is simply that Musk claimed he’d “make an alternative phone” if necessary. Headline writers who failed the test went with statements of fact that Twitter would make an alternative phone, which, of course, is not going to happen. The hard part wouldn’t be the phone hardware; surely Twitter or Tesla or some new Musk-owned entity could easily slap their own brand on a white label Android handset. The hard part is that what he’s really talking about is making his own phone with his own app store. (Android phones that don’t play by Google’s rules also don’t get access to Google Play Services, which is effectively a closed-source segment of the Android operating system. Outside of China, I’m aware of zero successful Android phones that don’t use the Google Play app store by default.)

Perhaps he can just resurrect the Twitter Peek, though? Should be easy.

Today, in Twitter-Apple Drama ★

Elon Musk:

Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America?

What’s going on here @tim_cook?

I heard from a source who spent time working in Twitter’s ad products organization that Apple, until recently, was not just a big advertiser on Twitter, but the largest. The @apple account never posts regular tweets but frequently posts promoted tweets, and Apple heretofore had been a big spender on things like hashflags and custom like buttons, to promote major product introduction events.

Just last month there was an interesting micro-conflict because Apple paid to promote the #TakeNote hashtag for their “Take Note” announcement for new iPads, but the regular (unpaid) hashtag #TakeNote is a slogan long used by the NBA’s Utah Jazz.

Kara Swisher:

Frontloading a fight with @tim_cook with specious nonsense isn’t going to work. Why? For one, he’s not a manic toddler hopped up on Twinkies and weaponry cosplay. Plus, no advertiser like to spend their marketing money in Thunderdome of toxic asininity.

“Toxic asininity” is a keen description.

Anyway, Musk’s tweets today are mostly about Apple, including this gem:

Did you know Apple puts a secret 30% tax on everything you buy through their App Store?

Yes, I think I recall hearing something about this once.