Linked List: November 29, 2023

Wednesday, 29 November 2023

Jason Snell:

Castro has been a popular iOS podcast app for many years, but right now things look grim.

The cloud database that backs the service is broken and needs to be replaced. As a result, the app has broken. (You can’t even export subscriptions out of it, because even that function apparently relies on the cloud database.) “The team is in the progress of setting up a database replacement, which might take some time. We aim to have this completed ASAP,” said an Xtweet from @CastroPodcasts.

What’s worse, according to former Castro team member Mohit Mamoria, “Castro is being shut down over the next two months.”

I always appreciated Castro — it’s a well-designed, well-made app that embraced iOS design idioms. But as a user it just never quite fit my mental model for how a podcast client should work, in the way that Overcast does. I wanted to like Castro more than I actually liked it.

As a publisher, Castro was the 4th or 5th most popular client for The Talk Show for a while, but in recent years has slipped. Right now it’s 10th — but in a logarithmic curve. Overcast remains 1st; Apple Podcasts 2nd. The truth is, if not for Overcast, Castro would likely be in that top position, not shutting down. But Overcast does exist, and it’s the app where most people with exquisite taste in UI are listening to podcasts. There aren’t many markets where listeners of The Talk Show are in the core demographic, but iOS podcast apps are one. I can’t say why or precisely when, but somewhere along the line Castro lost its mojo.

I salute everyone who’s worked on it, though, because it really is a splendid app.

MacOS Security Prompts Need a Rethinking ★

Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors:

Last month I wrote about how Apple’s cascade of macOS alerts and warnings ruin the Mac upgrade experience. [...]

This issue was brought home to me last week when I was reviewing the M3 iMac and the M3 MacBook Pro. As a part of reviewing those computers, I used Migration Assistant to move a backup of my Mac Studio to the new systems via a USB drive. Sometimes I try to review a computer with nothing migrated over, but it can be a real slowdown and I didn’t really have any time to spare last week.

Anyway, by migrating, I got to (twice) experience Apple’s ideal process of moving every user from one Mac to the next. You start up your new computer, migrate from a backup of the old computer, and then start using the new one. There’s a lot that’s great about this process, and it’s so much better than what we used to have to do to move files over from one Mac to another.

And yet all of Apple’s security alerts got in the way again and spoiled the whole thing. Here’s a screenshot I took right after my new Mac booted for the first time after migration.

I went through the exact same thing. Except if I had taken a screenshot of all the security-permission alerts I had to go though, there would have been more of them — and Snell’s screenshot looks like a parody. Back in the heyday of the “Get a Mac” TV ad campaign, Apple justifiably lambasted Windows Vista for its security prompts, but that’s exactly the experience you get after running Migration Assistant on a Mac today. It’s terrible.

Don’t get me wrong: Migration Assistant is borderline miraculous. It’s a wonderful tool that seemingly just keeps getting better. But MacOS itself stores too many security/privacy settings in a way that are tied to the device, not your user account. There ought to be some way to OK all these things in one fell swoop.

As Snell says, setting up a new Mac should be a joy, not a chore. Migration Assistant takes care of so much, but these cursed security prompts spoil the experience.

The Perils of Charging for Emergency Services ★

Kyle Melnick, reporting last week for The Washington Post under the headline “A Toddler Was Taken in a Carjacking; VW Wanted $150 for GPS Coordinates, Lawsuit Says”:

Shepherd, who was four months pregnant, tried to fight off the man. But she was thrown to the pavement and run over by her own car as the man drove away with Isaiah in the back seat, authorities said. Shepherd thought she might never see her son again.

After Shepherd frantically called 911, investigators contacted Volkswagen’s Car-Net service, which can track the location of the manufacturer’s vehicles. They hoped to locate Isaiah.

But a customer service representative said that wouldn’t be possible because Shepherd’s subscription to the satellite service had expired, according to a new lawsuit. The employee said he couldn’t help until a $150 payment was made, the complaint said.

This perfectly illustrates the perils of Apple eventually charging for Emergency SOS satellite service. If Apple someday cuts off free service for compatible iPhones, eventually there’s going to be someone who dies because they chose not to pay to continue service. No one wants that.

Apple Extends Emergency SOS via Satellite for an Additional Free Year ★

Apple Newsroom, two weeks ago:

One year ago today, Apple’s groundbreaking safety service Emergency SOS via satellite became available on all iPhone 14 models in the U.S. and Canada. Now also available on the iPhone 15 lineup in 16 countries and regions, this innovative technology — which enables users to text with emergency services while outside of cellular and Wi-Fi coverage — has already made a significant impact, contributing to many lives being saved. Apple today announced it is extending free access to Emergency SOS via satellite for an additional year for existing iPhone 14 users.

My hunch on this is that Apple would like to make this available free of charge in perpetuity, but wasn’t sure how much it would actually get used, and thus how much it would actually cost. If they come right out and say it’s free forever, then it needs to be free forever. It’s safer to just do what they’ve done here: make it free for an extra year one year at a time, and see how it goes as more and more iPhones that support the feature remain in active use.

It’s a wonderful feature — quite literally life-saving in numerous cases — but it’d be hard to sell. It’s like buying insurance. People like paying for stuff they want to use, not for stuff they hope they never need. Obviously, people do buy insurance — Apple itself, of course, sells AppleCare — but how many people would pay extra for Emergency SOS? If Apple can just quietly eat the cost of this service, they should, and I think will.