Linked List: December 21, 2022

Wednesday, 21 December 2022

Yours Truly on the Sub Club Podcast With David Barnard and Jacob Eiting ★

Sub Club:

On the podcast we talk with John about the far reaching implications of the European Union’s Digital Markets Act, how app developers should be thinking about the opportunities created, and why Apple making so much money from the App Store might be bad for Apple long-term.

That last point is the nut of it. It’s a nuanced argument, but I’ll go to the mat that the App Store’s financial success is the worst thing that’s happened to Apple this century. It’s a distraction at best, and a profound corruption at worst.

How Apple Names Things ★

Cool data visualization of Apple product trademarks by Nicolas Kruchten.

New De-Banding Feature in Pixelmator Pro ★

From the Pixelmator blog:

Color banding (or posterization) is a common type of image artifact especially noticeable in low-quality photos featuring gradients or large areas of solid color. Instead of smoothly blending together, colors jump abruptly from one shade to the next, forming distinct bands of color. While posterization isn’t particularly difficult to get rid of — you can blur it out or add noise to hide it — it is very much a labor-intensive task. Or, it was. With the magic of machine learning, we’ve been able to turn color debanding into an effortless, one-click process. And the results are simply incredible!

On the surface this might not seem like a particularly impressive machine learning feature, but if you’ve ever tried fixing a banding problem like this, you know how cool this is.

Ming-Chi Kuo: ‘Apple Will Likely Cancel or Postpone the Mass Production Plan for the 2024 iPhone SE 4’ ★

Ming-Chi Kuo, on Twitter:

My latest survey indicates that Apple will likely cancel or postpone the mass production plan for the 2024 iPhone SE 4. I think this is due to the consistently lower-than-expected shipments of mid-to-low-end iPhones (e.g., SE 3, 13 mini, and 14 Plus), as well as concerns that the full-screen design of the SE 4 will lead to an increase in higher costs/selling prices. As a result, Apple may need to reconsider the product positioning and return on investment for the SE 4.

The iPhone SE 3, with 2021’s A15 chip but still based on the iPhone 6/7/8 form factor, shipped in March this year. The rumor mill pegged the SE 4 to be based on the iPhone XR/iPhone 11 design — 6.1-inch “all-screen” design but not OLED — which makes a lot of sense for a form factor to move the SE to the post-home-button world. March 2024 is a ways off, so I’m thinking either Ming-Chi Kuo is just hearing chatter from suppliers and we’ll still see an XR/11-based SE 4 in 2024, or, if he’s right that it’s cancelled or postponed, then Apple will keep selling the iPhone SE 3 through 2025.

My gut feeling still says we’ll see a XR/11-based SE 4 with an A16 chip in spring 2024.

E.U. to Mandate ‘Easily’ Replaceable Batteries ★

European Parliament press release last week:

Three and a half years after the entry into force of the legislation, portable batteries in appliances must be designed so that consumers can easily remove and replace them themselves.

Pocketnow picked this up and speculates that “easily” here means something akin to the decades-ago era when you could just pop the back off of a phone without tools and swap the battery. That’s not going to happen. As pertains to Apple devices, I think “easily” is encompassed by the Self Service Repair program. Which, well, isn’t really easy. So I suppose we shall see what the E.U. intends here.

Google Appears on the Cusp of Securing NFL Sunday Ticket for YouTube ★

Joe Flint and Miles Kruppa, reporting yesterday for The Wall Street Journal (News+ link):

The National Football League is in advanced talks to give Google’s YouTube exclusive rights to NFL Sunday Ticket, a subscription-only package that allows football fans to watch most Sunday afternoon games, people familiar with the matter said.

Under the scenario being discussed, NFL games would be available to be streamed on two subscription services, YouTube TV and YouTube Primetime Channels, next season. [...] YouTube TV, a $64.99-a-month online bundle of cable channels, crossed more than 5 million subscriptions and trial accounts in June, according to the company. Primetime Channels, which launched in November, allows viewers to individually subscribe to more than 30 streaming services.

Sunday Ticket would be offered as an add-on to both services, the people familiar with the potential agreement said.

For most of the last year, the Sunday Ticket rights were considered Apple’s to lose, but in recent weeks it began to seem clear that Apple and the NFL couldn’t come to terms. One point of contention was pricing — not the annual price Apple would pay the NFL for the rights, but the price to be charged to fans to watch the games. According to a report from Sportico (paywalled; The Verge has a summary), Apple wanted to include the Sunday Ticket games as part of the basic $7/month Apple TV+ package. The NFL, apparently, wanted Sunday Ticket to remain a premium add-on no matter who obtained the rights.

More broadly, a CNBC report from back in October suggests that Apple wanted flexibility on what they’d be allowed to do with the rights — flexibility the NFL didn’t want to offer. From that October CNBC report:

Apple isn’t interested in simply acting as a conduit for broadcasting games, according to Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services. Cue oversees Apple’s media and sports partnerships and its streaming service, Apple TV+. Apple is looking for partnerships with sports leagues in which it can offer consumers more than standard rights agreements — such as having free rein to offer games globally or in local markets. Apple has that type of deal with Major League Soccer, a 10-year partnership that begins in 2023.

“We weren’t interested in buying sports rights,” Cue said this week at a Paley Center for Media panel in New York. “There’s all kinds of capabilities that we’re going to be able to do together because we have everything together. And so if I have a great idea, I don’t have to think about, OK, well, my contract or the deal of interest will allow this.”

Quora Is Beta Testing an AI Chatbot ★

Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo:

Today we are starting a beta test for a new product called Poe. Short for “Platform for Open Exploration”, it lets people ask questions, get instant answers, and have back-and-forth dialogue with AI. Poe will initially be available on iOS, and it will be invite only until we work out scalability, get feedback from beta testers, and address any other issues that come up. After we get through this phase, we will open up to everyone and add support for all platforms.

Way of the future.