Linked List: February 2, 2023

Thursday, 2 February 2023

Federico Viticci: ‘The Practicality of Art in Software’ 

Federico Viticci:

We can’t talk about art in software in a vacuum. As a computer maker or app developer, you have to strike that balance between the aspirational and the practical, the artistic and the functional — the kind of balance that, by and large, Apple is achieving on the Mac. Unfortunately, when it comes to iPadOS, I feel like Apple has been prioritizing the artistic aspect over the functional, and it’s not clear when that will be rectified.

‘Twitter Is Killing Off the Fun Bots’ 

Katie Notopoulos and Pranav Dixit, reporting for BuzzFeed News:

Other bots are simply just fun. @ca_dmv_bot tweets out vanity plates that were rejected by the California Department of Motor Vehicles, along with the DMV’s reasoning. The bot’s creation was inspired by a Los Angeles magazine article about rejected plates, which revealed that they’re often incredibly funny.

Fantastic Twitter account, run by a 15-year-old kid.

Some bots are just pleasant and surprising additions to your timeline. Joe Schoech of Vermont runs @_restaurant_bot (random photos of restaurants from Google Maps), @_weather_bot_ (current weather conditions from randomized places around the world), @everygoodfella (screenshots of every second of the movie Goodfellas), and a few others. He also doesn’t plan on paying and is considering moving them all to Mastodon.

“It’s over,” he told BuzzFeed News. “Bots are maybe the best part about Twitter! I follow a ton of them, they’re cool and weird, and I will miss them. Fuck Elon, I never liked that guy.”

Amen, brother.

Onward to Mastodon.

Apple Q1 2023 Results 

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2023 first quarter ended December 31, 2022. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $117.2 billion, down 5 percent year over year, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $1.88.

“As we all continue to navigate a challenging environment, we are proud to have our best lineup of products and services ever, and as always, we remain focused on the long term and are leading with our values in everything we do,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “During the December quarter, we achieved a major milestone and are excited to report that we now have more than 2 billion active devices as part of our growing installed base.”

From Apple’s Consolidated Financial Statements (PDF), and Jason Snell’s ever-essential charts of that data:

  • iPhone revenue was down 8% year over year, seemingly attributable to COVID-19 production problems in China preventing Apple from meeting demand. (Also currency exchange rates hit Apple across the board.)
  • Mac revenue was down 29%, attributable, at least partially, to the just-launched-this-month new MacBook Pros and Mac Minis not having launched back in October. But I think Mac sales were destined to decline. They jumped two years prior during COVID lockdowns, when people who might otherwise have waited longer before buying bought new MacBooks for work-from-home and school-from-home. (Remember: the quarter prior to Apple silicon’s debut — despite the transition having been announced — was the best-ever quarter for Mac sales at the time.) And then sales got another one-time bump with the first generation of Apple silicon Macs, which many many people were waiting for.
  • iPad revenue was up 30%. It appears the new models that launched in October are successful.
  • Wearables revenue dropped 8%.
  • Services revenue grew 6%.

Not bad.

Meta Lost $13.7 Billion on Reality Labs in 2022 

Speaking of Meta’s quarterly results:

In its earnings report after the bell on Wednesday, Meta said its Reality Labs division, home to the company’s virtual reality technologies and projects, posted a $4.28 billion operating loss in the fourth quarter, bringing its total for 2022 to $13.72 billion.

As my recent writing suggests, I’m not sure what to expect from Apple’s upcoming headset. I sure as shit don’t expect them to lose $14 billion a year on it though.

Meta Reports Strong Earnings, Stock Jumps ~25 Percent 

CNBC:

Meta shares popped in extended trading on Wednesday after the company reported fourth-quarter revenue that topped estimates and announced a $40 billion stock buyback. Here are the results. [...]

  • Daily Active Users (DAUs): 2 billion vs 1.99 billion expected
  • Monthly Active Users (MAUs): 2.96 billion vs 2.98 billion expected
  • Average Revenue per User (ARPU): $10.86 vs $10.63 expected

Sure seems like it’s time for Zuckerberg to drop his whining about App Tracking Transparency. They still have an almost unimaginably massive audience — 2 billion users per day! — so surely there are ways to monetize that attention that don’t require cross-app tracking.

That ARPU extrapolates to about $45/year. Would you pay, say, $50/year to get an ad-free experience on Facebook’s products? A year or two ago I’d have said yes, just for Instagram. (My Instagram use has decreased significantly since then.) I realize they’re not going to offer that, but “average revenue per user” is an interesting metric.

See also: “The Inverse Cramer ETF remains undefeated.”

Twitter Is Turning Off All Free Access to Their APIs Next Week (Or at Least That’s the Plan as of Today) 

The Twitter Dev account:

Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API, both v2 and v1.1. A paid basic tier will be available instead.

At least they gave some notice this time, but it’s emblematic of how seat-of-Musk’s-pants the whole company is now that they can’t even say yet what that pricing will be.

You might be asking, “Wait a second, didn’t Twitter shut down all the APIs for developers a few weeks ago?” But those were just the APIs for full-fledged Twitter clients. Today’s announcement covers all the other ways Twitter APIs could heretofore be used for free. E.g. the bot I wrote back in 2010 to auto-tweet links to each new post on Daring Fireball — that bot will stop working next week unless I pay. I’ll wait to see what the prices are, but I doubt I’ll pay. (Update: Elon Musk, on Twitter, says “~$100/month”.)

There are zillions of tools and bots that use these APIs. Molly White posted a few examples. For example, Alt Text Reader is an automated account that sends back the alt text description for any image on Twitter (that has alt text). There are umpteen weather services, traffic alerts, and just plain fun goofy accounts that send automated tweets. Many of them are run for free and can’t pay; others just won’t pay. This will also break the ability to follow a Twitter account’s posts via RSS — a very cool feature in some feed readers like NetNewsWire.

I don’t know what Musk is thinking, but he obviously has the value proposition backwards. These accounts freely produce content Twitter users enjoy. If anything, Twitter should be paying them, not the other way around. It’s like if YouTube started charging creators to post their videos.

And, of course, another use case for these APIs are tools like Movetodon, that allow people new to Mastodon to find and follow the Mastodon accounts of people they follow on Twitter. Use it now, before it breaks. (And if you’ve already started using Mastodon and used Movetodon, remember that you can re-run it to find people who’ve started Mastodon accounts after the last time you checked.)