Linked List: January 19, 2024

Friday, 19 January 2024

Tim Bray:

But those Ten Blue Links surfaced by the PageRank-that-was had a special magic. I found them intensely human, a reflection of the voices populating what remains of the Web, the only platform without a vendor. This was true when I was there and I said so, but was laughed at.

And now, in Anno Domini 2024, Google has lost its edge in search. There are plenty of things it can’t find. There are compelling alternatives. To me this feels like a big inflection point, because around the stumbling feet of the Big Tech dinosaurs, the Web’s mammals, agile and flexible, still scurry. They exhibit creative energy and strongly-flavored voices, and those voices still sometimes find and reinforce each other without being sock puppets of shareholder-value-focused private empires.

That line: the Web’s mammals, agile and flexible, still scurry.

That resonates. I’d expand that to indie mammals, whether writing web or native apps — or often now, both. One of the indie mammals today, one that fits the bill for a “compelling alternative” to Google Search, is Kagi. I’d been using DuckDuckGo for many years as my primary search engine, but I switched to Kagi in the summer of 2022 and haven’t looked back. I’ve been paying $10/month for a Professional plan (unlimited searches per month, unlimited access to Kagi’s FastGPT and Universal Summarizer) and I’m this close to upgrading to the $25/month Ultimate plan just to support this crazy company.

Kagi search isn’t just good for a Google alternative, I flat out prefer its results to Google’s. Better results in a far better presentation. The only thing I find myself resorting to Google Search for are old links — when searching for news or specific articles that are, I don’t know, maybe more than 10 years old, no search engine seems able to compete with Google. But for everything else, I prefer Kagi. I go weeks at a time not using Google Search.

Kagi has no ads — it’s entirely supported by users paying for their excellent service. It’s never going to topple Google, but the man behind Kagi, Vladimir Prelovac, isn’t trying to. He’s just trying to make the best search engine — and web browser! — possible. Just trying to make something great for users.

I know: of all the things you thought you’d never pay for, a search engine is probably near the top of the list. But try Kagi out for yourself.

YouTube and Spotify Are Not Launching Vision Pro Apps Either ★

Mark Gurman and Ashley Carman, reporting for Bloomberg (Gurman has been killing it this week on the Vision Pro apps beat — he’s breaking all of these stories):

Google’s YouTube and Spotify Technology SA, the world’s most popular video and music services, are joining Netflix Inc. in steering clear of Apple Inc.’s upcoming mixed-reality headset.

YouTube said in a statement Thursday that it isn’t planning to launch a new app for the Apple Vision Pro, nor will it allow its longstanding iPad application to work on the device — at least, for now. YouTube, like Netflix, is recommending that customers use a web browser if they want to see its content: “YouTube users will be able to use YouTube in Safari on the Vision Pro at launch.”

Spotify also isn’t currently planning a new app for visionOS — the Vision Pro’s operating system — and doesn’t expect to enable its iPad app to run on the device when it launches, according to a person familiar with matter. But the music service will still likely work from a web browser.

Spotify’s fuck-you to Apple I don’t find surprising, given the longstanding animosity between them. But YouTube is a surprise to me, and it’s a sign of how profoundly different the relationship is between Google and Apple today from the pre-Android era. In 2007, before third-party apps were even supported on iOS, YouTube was a built-in app on the original iPhone. (Apple designed and made the app; Google provided the back-end APIs and, obviously, the content.) Then-Google-CEO (and then-Apple-board-member!) Eric Schmidt was invited on stage by Steve Jobs to demo the YouTube app and sing the praises of both the iPhone and the Apple-Google partnership. That Apple-made Google-supported YouTube app was still a built-in default app on iOS when the iPad launched in 2010.

So for both the original iPhone and iPad, YouTube was part of the system software. For Vision Pro, there’s no app at all, not even the iPad app.

Regarding Netflix’s pass on Vision Pro, a little birdie informed me that until this week, the Netflix iPad app was available for those with access to Vision Pro hardware, and it worked just fine. This birdie still has the Netflix iPad app installed on their Vision Pro. Perhaps people at Netflix would disagree with just how well it worked — I don’t know — but I get the strong impression that the decision was political/strategic/spiteful, not technical. Entertainment is not the sole purpose of Vision Pro, but it’s a major one — and surely the primary one for many buyers — and it’s launching without the two biggest video entertainment apps in the world. Apple expected Netflix’s iPad app to be there on launch day.

This isn’t a dealbreaker — watching Netflix through Safari should be OK (albeit without offline downloads, a huge factor for using Vision Pro on airplanes), and many people think of YouTube as a website, not an app. But there’s no way around it: this is a bad look for Apple, not for Netflix or Google. The buck stops with Tim Cook on this. He should have been on the horn with Ted Sarandos and Sundar Pichai and worked this out. It’s his company that’s launching a $3,500 headset.

It’s also worth pointing out that these corporate pissing matches are reciprocal. They work in both directions. I doubt we’ll see any calls for Netflix, YouTube, or Spotify to be investigated by antitrust regulators over their refusal to allow their iPad apps to run on Vision Pro. But imagine if Netflix and Spotify wanted to be on Vision Pro on launch day and Apple refused, to leave more room in the spotlight for Apple TV+ and Apple Music. Or what happens if the Vision platform becomes a huge hit, and only then do Netflix, YouTube, and Spotify submit native apps — and Apple turns them down, on the grounds of “Where were you when we needed you?” People would lose their shit. We might even get a testy tweet from Elizabeth Warren.

Battery? What Battery? Oh, That Battery. ★

Lauren Goode, writing at Wired:

Apple seems to not want you to notice the battery. The external battery pack barely appears on the product page on Apple’s website, showing up only at the end of a photo gallery at the bottom of the page. And in demo sessions this week, Apple told journalists they were not allowed to snap photos or capture any video of the hardware, an unusual rule for a press briefing. Instead, the company had its own photographer take photos during the Vision Pro demos. Every photo you’ve seen this week of reporters sitting on a couch while wearing the headset were shot by Apple.

Notably, the battery pack doesn’t appear in any of them. One attendee chose to run the attached cable down the back of his sweatshirt. In another shared image, of The Verge’s Nilay Patel, the cable is clearly visible, but the photo is cropped to avoid showing the battery pack. Chokkattu experienced this too; he set the Vision Pro’s battery pack on the couch cushion next to him during his demo, but in the photo Apple shared with us, the offending pack is cropped out of the frame.

To Apple’s credit, they weren’t at all cagey about this when they took my picture using Vision Pro Tuesday. They asked if I’d like photos taken by their photographer (who used an iPhone 15 Pro), I said sure, and they suggested draping the battery cable behind my back. It’s not just Apple being weird about the external battery; it’s that the external battery is weird. So of course their photography is going to de-emphasize it.

Almost every first-generation product has things like this^* — glaring deficiencies dictated by the limits of technology. The original Mac had far too little RAM (128 KB) and far too little storage (a single 400 KB single-sided floppy disk drive). The original iPhone only supported 2G EDGE cellular networking, which was unfathomably slow and didn’t work at all while you were on a voice call. The original Apple Watch was very slow and struggled to last a full day on a single charge. The external battery pack — which only supplies 2 to 2.5 hours of battery life — is that for this first-gen Vision Pro. Also, the Vision Pro headset itself — without any built-in battery — is still too big and too heavy.

Paul Graham has a wonderful adage:

Don’t worry what people will say. If your first version is so impressive that trolls don’t make fun of it, you waited too long to launch.

* The original iPod is the exception that proves the rule. That little thing was, as Steven Levy’s excellent book aptly declared, perfect.

More on Apple’s Software Workaround for the Apple Watch Import Ban ★

From an updated footnote in Apple’s “How to Use the Blood Oxygen App on Apple Watch” support page:

The ability to measure Blood Oxygen is no longer available on Apple Watch units sold by Apple in the United States on or after January 18, 2024. These are indicated with part numbers ending in LW/A.

Apple refuses to say so, but it seems clear that this is a software change. These new watch units still have the blood-oxygen sensor, but the sensor is disabled by software. This workaround definitely does not apply to already-sold watches, even after those watches upgrade to future versions of WatchOS. The reason why is that the ITC injunction is an import ban. Apple is banned from importing watches that violate Masimo’s patents. Units that have already been sold aren’t affected by an import ban.

The software workaround is clearly distinguishing which watches can continue to use the blood-oxygen sensor and which can’t by checking the device identifiers or serial numbers or something. This is why it took Apple a few weeks to come up with this solution: they needed to retool production to produce units with distinguishable part numbers. It would have been trivial to just disable the sensor on all watches, old and new alike, with a WatchOS update. (Although existing owners would likely refuse to update.)

Apple also refuses to say so, but it seems clear that these new units will have the blood-oxygen sensors enabled in a future software update if and when they win on appeal or otherwise settle with Masimo. I’m pretty sure that’s just a question of when, but maybe it’s an if.

(Because the ban was instituted by the International Trade Commission, I believe Apple could tell Masimo to go fuck themselves if Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 were manufactured in America, because an import ban wouldn’t matter.)

Masimo CEO on Apple Watch Blood-Oxygen Sensor: ‘I Really Feel Wholeheartedly That Consumers Are Better Off Without It’ ★

Mark Gurman and Edward Ludlow, reporting for Bloomberg:

Customers should buy pulse oximeters from Masimo or others instead, [Masimo CEO Joe] Kiani said in an interview Thursday on Bloomberg TV. “Apple is masquerading what they are offering to consumers as a reliable, medical pulse oximeter, even though it is not,” he said. “I really feel wholeheartedly that consumers are better off without it.”

Apple said that Kiani’s claims are false and that its watch’s blood oxygen feature is accurate, works very well for customers and in some cases can save lives.

Tell us what you really think, Joe.

Masimo’s CEO said he hasn’t spoken to Apple personally about a settlement, and that nobody from Apple has reached out about coming to an agreement.

“There are court-ordered mediations that I cannot get into that have been held before,” he said. “And there will be additional meetings probably in the future.”

Kiani added that he doesn’t consider those meetings to be steps toward settling litigation. Apple disputed Kiani’s characterization that nobody from Apple has reached out, saying that the company has held a mediation and that a future meeting has been set.

One of the most frequent questions I’ve been getting from readers this week is basically, “Why the hell hasn’t Apple paid to settle this, or just bought the entire company?” I have no idea, but the above sounds like neither side is close to settling.