Linked List: May 2024

Friday, 17 May 2024

Delta, the Emulator App, Changes Logo After Suggestion From Adobe Lawyers ★

This is one of those stories with no bad guy. Delta’s icon/logo was clearly supposed to represent an uppercase Greek delta (Δ). Adobe’s logo is even more clearly an uppercase A. But Delta’s Δ really does look too much like Adobe’s A. If I were an Adobe lawyer I’d have sent the same letter. (Note that Adobe’s lawyers made no threats and were nice about it.)

What’s funny though is that, taking colors into consideration, Delta’s icon looks more like an upside-down Verge favicon.

Sam Alito Flew Seditionist Flag Outside His House in 2021 ★

Jodi Kantor, reporting for The New York Times:

After the 2020 presidential election, as some Trump supporters falsely claimed that President Biden had stolen the office, many of them displayed a startling symbol outside their homes, on their cars and in online posts: an upside-down American flag.

One of the homes flying an inverted flag during that time was the residence of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in Alexandria, Va., according to photographs and interviews with neighbors.

How in the world did this not come to light before now?

“I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” Justice Alito said in an emailed statement to The Times. “It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”

Profile in courage.

Thursday, 16 May 2024

Netflix Strikes Three-Year Deal to Broadcast NFL Games on Christmas Day ★

Henry Goldblatt, writing for Tudum, Netflix’s splendidly named in-house blog:

Netflix has an early Christmas gift for you — but it won’t fit under the tree. On Dec. 25, 2024, we’ll be the global home of the NFL’s two Christmas Day marquee games: the Super Bowl LVII-winning Chiefs vs Steelers and Ravens vs. Texans. And mark your calendar for Christmas Day in 2025 and 2026 when we’ll be streaming at least one holiday game each year as part of this three-season deal.

My two questions:

First, who’s going to announce the games?

Second, how strong a bid did Apple make to get these games?

Samsung Pepsis Its Pants Again ★

Speaking of Apple’s “Crush” ad, Samsung has posted a “response”, depicting a woman guitarist sitting atop a paint-splash-strewn platform standing in for a hydraulic press, with the slogan “We would never crush creativity. #UnCrush”

Rather than sit back and enjoy Apple own-goaling itself last week, they couldn’t resist gracelessly piling on, accomplishing nothing but to remind everyone that they’re Pepsi to Apple’s Coke — content to sit in second place forever, copying not just Apple’s hardware and software designs, but even parodying Apple’s ads. This one is the equivalent of picking ideas out of Apple’s trash. Sad.

Update: This marketing strategy didn’t turn out well for Commodore.

New iPad Pros Perform Well in Bend Tests ★

Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:

The new iPad Pro is here and the inevitable YouTube stress tests are already online. JerryRigEverything and AppleTrack posted their bend test videos, and both seemingly came to the same conclusion: the new iPad Pro holds up well to extreme force and seems pretty resistant to bending during normal use.

AppleTrack repeated the same bends with the M2 iPad Pro and the new M4 iPad Pro to compare, and whereas the M4 iPad Pro came away almost unscathed, the M2 iPad Pro had a definitive curl in the corner near the cameras. JerryRigEverything praised the device for its “black magic levels of structural integrity”, at least when bent horizontally.

Good to know that they really are bend-resistant. But I can’t help but see some incongruity between the performative outrage over Apple’s “Crush” ad last week and the fact that the top-trending tech videos on YouTube today are of people destroying the very same iPads the “Crush” ad was promoting.

Wednesday, 15 May 2024

Instagram Cofounder Mike Krieger Joins Anthropic as Chief Product Officer ★

Mike Krieger:

Anthropic’s research continues to be at the forefront of AI. When paired with thoughtful product development, I [see] tons of potential to positively impact how people and companies get their work done. And as a two time entrepreneur, I’m particularly excited by how Claude, along with the right scaffolding and product features, can empower more people to innovate at a faster pace and at a lower cost.

Tangentially related: Anthropic shipped a native iOS Claude app two weeks ago.

Save the Date: The Talk Show Live From WWDC 2024 ★

Location: The California Theatre, San Jose
Showtime: Tuesday, 11 June 2024, 7:00 pm PT
Tickets: On sale soon
Special Guest(s): Working on it...
Previous Shows: On YouTube

Apple Stiffs Researcher on Bounty for iOS Kernel Vulnerability [Update: Resolved] ★

“Meysam”, on Twitter/X:

I reported CVE-2024-27804, an iOS/macOS kernel vulnerability that leads to the execution of arbitrary code with kernel privileges.

Will publish the POC soon.

Maybe there’s more to this story, but it sure is a bad look for a $3 trillion company to have a reputation for finding technicalities to avoid paying bug bounties.

I would think Apple would want to err on the side of being liberal with bug bounty payouts, to encourage researchers to report as many as they can find.

Update: Meysam:

seem Apple have concluded that the reported CVE is not exploitable and they are planning to update the description to accurately describe the issue as an unexpected system termination rather than arbitrary code execution, but for good faith they will reward me $1000.

And to be clear, Meysam seems genuinely happy with this resolution.

StopTheMadness Pro ★

The previous item was a good reminder that I haven’t linked to StopTheMadness in a while. I first recommended it back in 2018, and mentioned it again in 2022 after developer Jeff Johnson added a font substitution feature at my request. As I wrote then:

It’s such a little thing, and I know most people can’t detect the differences between Helvetica and Arial and don’t care, but it makes me so happy every day never to see the cursed fonts Arial and Courier New.

StopTheMadness Pro does so much more than that. I’ve been using it for so long now that I’m taken aback when I use a factory-fresh no-extension installation of Safari. StopTheMadness Pro is a canonical example of a great power user utility, and Johnson updates it with new features (and new workarounds for web development dark patterns) regularly.

$15 one-time purchase, with support for iOS, iPadOS, and MacOS — and (optional) iCloud sync for shared settings across all your devices. Highly recommended.

Jeff Johnson: ‘Apple Started Cheating Me Out of App Store Bundle Purchases’ [Update: Resolved] ★

Jeff Johnson:

I’ve discovered that starting in February, Apple mistakenly subtracts the price of the previously purchased app twice from the proceeds of a “Complete My Bundle” purchase, thereby causing me to take a loss on each such bundle purchase. This accounting change has cost me thousands of dollars over the past few months.

Long story short, Johnson has a years-old Safari extension power user tool called StopTheMadness, which typically cost $10. Last year he released StopTheMadness Pro, which costs $15. Because the App Store doesn’t support upgrade pricing, Johnson created a bundle that includes both versions. Because StopTheMadness Pro is a superset of the non-pro version, the only reason the bundle exists is to allow people who previously purchased the regular version to upgrade to StopTheMadness Pro for the difference between $15 and the price they paid for the regular version.

The way it should work — and for the first few months of the bundle, did work — is that Apple should subtract the price the user originally paid from the $15 price of the bundle. Starting in February, Apple effectively began subtracting the price the user originally paid twice.

Surely this is a bug, not an attempt by Apple to swindle developers. But, how surprised are you that this bug, left unfixed, works in Apple’s favor, not the other way around? If Apple were erroneously paying developers too much, rather than too little, I’m guessing it would be fixed already.

Update: Jeff Johnson, a few hours after I posted:

Good news, everyone!

I just received a phone call from an Apple representative. They confirmed that there was indeed a software bug in the bundle pricing calculation, which was fixed yesterday. They also said that affected developers, such as myself, would be compensated for our lost revenue.

That’s all I know for now. I was told that I would also be receiving a follow-up email later.

The conversation was pleasant, and the Apple representative was very nice about it.

Casey Newton: ‘Google’s Broken Link to the Web’ ★

Casey Newton, with a sharp take on Google’s sprawling announcements at I/O yesterday:

This new approach is captured elegantly in a slogan that appeared several times during Tuesday’s keynote: let Google do the Googling for you. It’s a phrase that identifies browsing the web — a task once considered entertaining enough that it was given the nickname “surfing” — as a chore, something better left to a bot. [...]

This is such a keen observation. Part of what makes the web the web is that it’s very fun. Or at least was, and is supposed to be. The idea that people find it a chore now isn’t a condemnation of Google but the state of the web itself.

Still, as the first day of I/O wound down, it was hard to escape the feeling that the web as we know it is entering a kind of managed decline. Over the past two and a half decades, Google extended itself into so many different parts of the web that it became synonymous with it. And now that LLMs promise to let users understand all that the web contains in real time, Google at last has what it needs to finish the job: replacing the web, in so many of the ways that matter, with itself.

Oof. What a depressing vision.

Apple Announces New Accessibility Features for 2024 ★

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced new accessibility features coming later this year, including Eye Tracking, a way for users with physical disabilities to control iPad or iPhone with their eyes. Additionally, Music Haptics will offer a new way for users who are deaf or hard of hearing to experience music using the Taptic Engine in iPhone; Vocal Shortcuts will allow users to perform tasks by making a custom sound; Vehicle Motion Cues can help reduce motion sickness when using iPhone or iPad in a moving vehicle; and more accessibility features will come to visionOS. These features combine the power of Apple hardware and software, harnessing Apple silicon, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to further Apple’s decades-long commitment to designing products for everyone.

The timing of Global Accessibility Awareness Day (tomorrow) has turned this into a nice little tradition: each May, Apple gets to sort of unofficially kick off “WWDC season” with these announcements of upcoming accessibility features.

Monday, 13 May 2024

OpenAI Debuts GPT-4o ‘Omni’ Model ★

Kyle Wiggers, reporting for TechCrunch:

OpenAI announced a new flagship generative AI model on Monday that they call GPT-4o — the “o” stands for “omni,” referring to the model’s ability to handle text, speech, and video. GPT-4o is set to roll out “iteratively” across the company’s developer and consumer-facing products over the next few weeks.

OpenAI CTO Mira Murati said that GPT-4o provides “GPT-4-level” intelligence but improves on GPT-4’s capabilities across multiple modalities and media.

You should watch at least some of the 25-minute live-streamed announcement today, to see — and especially hear — some of the demos. GPT-4o is extraordinarily conversational, and the female voice they used is remarkably emotive. Response times seem very impressive, and in conversation GPT-4o allows you to interrupt it when it’s going in the wrong direction or just blathering.

But my first impression is that it’s too emotive — too cloying, too saccharine. It comes across as condescending, like the voice of a kind kindergarten teacher addressing her students. I suspect, though, that they turned that dial up for the demo, and that it could easily be dialed back. And it really is impressive that I can complain that it might be too emotive. Also impressive: GPT-4o will be made available to all users, including those on the free tier.

OpenAI also announced a ChatGPT Mac app, a sort of Spotlight / LaunchBar / Alfred / Raycast type thing that they’re even calling a “launcher”. It’s supposedly available now to a limited number of users, and rolling out to everyone in the coming months.

Nylas – Email and Calendar APIs ★

My thanks to Nylas for sponsoring last week at DF. Nylas recently launched v3 of their API. They rebuilt an already-great API platform with the developer experience and productivity in mind — redefining what a modern API should look like. Nylas offers a single great set of APIs for email, calendaring, and contacts.

Start building with Nylas today to discover why Nylas is trusted by 250,000+ developers at companies like Upwork, Wix, Salesloft, and Remax.

Friday, 10 May 2024

David Letterman in 2024: John Mulaney on ‘My Next Guest Needs No Introduction’ ★

Whole episode was great, but the intimate dinner with Letterman, Mulaney, and Mulaney’s dad was just amazing TV.

Mulaney’s own live talk show, Everybody’s in L.A., finishes its 6-episode limited run tonight, also on Netflix. We’ve been loving it.

David Letterman in 1985: Crushing Things With an 80-Ton Hydraulic Press ★

“If you want to have a good time, you can of course spend a lot of money going out to fancy restaurants with big floor shows, but I believe there’s more than enough good wholesome fun to be had with just a few close friends and an 80-ton hydraulic press.”

Wes Anderson Made a Commercial – and Designed a New Pen – for Montblanc ★

In case you’re in need of a video-ad palate cleanser, you won’t find a commercial more delightful than this one.

Cinematography by Linus Sandgren, of No Time To Die and Saltburn fame. More details at Vogue Business, including the fact that Montblanc found out only on set that Anderson had designed his own pen, the Schreiberling (“Scribbler” in German).

Sam Altman Puts the Kibosh on Reuters Story Claiming OpenAI Is Launching a Search Engine Next Week ★

Sam Altman, on Twitter/X:

not gpt-5, not a search engine, but we’ve been hard at work on some new stuff we think people will love! feels like magic to me.

monday 10am PT.

Perhaps they’ve invented a way to type uppercase letters?

The Sound of Software ★

Andy Allen and Thomas Williams, from Not Boring:

Sound is an outcast in Software Design. We may embrace the aesthetics of animation and visuals, but sound is different. It’s intrusive. Unlike visuals on a screen, you can’t look away or ignore it. It’s enough to make you rip the batteries out of a toy or frisbee an iPad across the room (speaking from experience).

And yet, play a video game without sound and its powerful punch lands with no force. Without music, once moving moments in a film become dull, even comical (Jurassic Park, Rocky). Sound holds an immense power to elevate any experience — including the most boring of software.

Sound in software isn’t inherently bad. It’s just been really badly designed.

We use sound in every !Boring app, and many have called it out as one of their favorite aspects of our apps. We’ve learned a few things about when to use sound, how to design it, and how to implement it. When done right, sound unlocks a path to much richer software experiences.

Previously: “The World’s Most Satisfying Checkbox”.

Classic Marathon Is Now on Steam ★

Even the user manual brings back memories. (“This manual contains sarcastic language that some readers might find condescending.”) From the “Performance Notes” section:

For Power Mac Users
If you need more speed, you better call the Apple Dealer where you bought your computer, ’cuz he probably sold you a Centris in a Power Mac case. Keep in mind however, that as of System 7.5 the sound drivers in the Power Mac are still running under emulation. You will, therefore, see speed gains by decreasing the number of sound channels Marathon uses. [...]

For 68020 Mac Users (Mac II, LC, LCII)
Unfortunately you are at the bottom of the food chain here. You will probably want to run in low res at 50% screen size with no floor or ceiling textures, no music, one channel sound, and with the every other scan line option selected. In all honesty though, you’ll probably want to run on a Power Mac. Look on the bright side, Apple just lowered their prices again...

I owned an LC at the time, but played all my Marathon at the Drexel student newspaper on Power Macs. They really shouldn’t have even claimed it ran at all on 68020 Macs.

Pointless NYT Report Says Apple Plans to Improve Siri ★

The Times sent me a news alert for this story — under the three-way byline of Tripp Mickle, Brian X. Chen, and Cade Metz — but I don’t think there’s a single sentence of news in the entire thing. The gist of it is that Apple recognizes that ChatGPT makes Siri look even dumber than it did before and that they plan to use LLM technology to improve it. That’s it.

Determined to catch up in the tech industry’s A.I. race, Apple has made generative A.I. a tent pole project — the company’s special, internal label that it uses to organize employees around once-in-a-decade initiatives.

This is niggling, I know, but if “tent pole projects” only come once per decade at Apple, that means, by the Times’s count, there have only been 4 or 5 since the Macintosh debuted 40 years ago.

The truth is that in Apple lingo, tentpole is used to describe features, not projects, and they aim to ship around three or four tentpole features in every major release. The tentpole features are the ones that get the most time in keynotes. It’d be flabbergasting, given the current state of the tech world and Apple’s teasers, if a much-improved LLM-based Siri were not one of the tentpole features announced at WWDC next month.

(Bonus usage note: New Oxford American — the dictionary Apple licenses to include with MacOS and iOS — has the term as two words, “tent pole”, and thus hyphenated when used as a modifier. But Merriam-Webster closes it up, both as a noun and adjective. The Times isn’t nearly the bastion of consistency and quality that it once was, and, having dismantled its once-legendary copy desk 7 years ago, you’ll be unsurprised to know that in other recent articles tentpole has appeared in closed-up form.)

Reuters: OpenAI to Announce Google Search Competitor on Monday ★

Anna Tong, reporting for Reuters:

OpenAI plans to announce its artificial intelligence-powered search product on Monday, according to two sources familiar with the matter, raising the stakes in its competition with search king Google. […]

The announcement could be timed a day before the Tuesday start of Google’s annual I/O conference, where the tech giant is expected to unveil a slew of AI-related products.

Remember the thing about Netflix being in a race to become HBO before HBO could become Netflix? My money here is that Google can become OpenAI (with generative AI) before OpenAI can become Google (with search), because I just don’t think OpenAI has any sort of moat around ChatGPT. They’re ahead but everyone else is nipping at their heels.

But: Google has left itself vulnerable by allowing the quality of Google Search results to degrade so much in recent years. Google remains dominant in search, but their share has started dropping.

Update: Sam Altman says nope, not a search engine, but they are launching something new Monday.

Thursday, 9 May 2024

Logitech Announces Keyboard Cases for New iPad Air and iPad Pro Models ★

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

The Combo Touch for the 11-inch iPad Air is $200, while the Combo Touch for the 13-inch model is $230. The iPad Pro versions are priced at $230 and $260, respectively, for the 11-inch and 13-inch models. The keyboards can be purchased from the Logitech website.

Apple itself charges more for everything with the iPad Pro models — e.g. it costs $200 to add cellular to an iPad Pro, but only $150 to add cellular to other iPads — but I don’t think there’s any difference between Logitech’s Air and Pro models other than the depth of the case.

Update: The Combo Touch cases for the new iPad Pro models are not yet available to order.

The New iPads No Longer Include Stickers ★

Chance Miller, reporting for 9to5Mac:

In a memo distributed to Apple Store teams on Tuesday and viewed by 9to5Mac, Apple explained that Apple stickers will not be included in the box for the new iPad Pro and iPad Air. The company says that this is part of its environmental goals, as it strives to ensure its packaging is completely plastic-free.

Apple Stores, however, are receiving shipments with a limited quantity of Apple logo stickers that can be distributed to customers who buy a new iPad Pro or iPad Air, but only upon request. So, if you buy an iPad Pro or iPad Air from an Apple Store, you can request an Apple sticker at the time of purchase.

When Apple Stores run out of their supply of stickers, they can order more from Apple.

Boo hiss. The fun of those stickers outweighs their environmental impact. Seriously, who thinks including a couple of stickers in the box is hurting the environment?

Apple’s ‘Let Loose’ iPad Event Was Shot on iPhone — With Panavision Lenses ★

Stu Maschwitz, writing at Prolost:

After Apple released a behind-the-scenes video about the production of “Scary Fast,” the Internet did its internet thing and questioned the “Shot on iPhone” claim, as if “Shot on iPhone” inherently means “shot with zero other gear besides an iPhone.” These takes were dumb and bad and some even included assertions that Apple added additional lensing to the phones, which they did not.

But for “Let Loose,” they did.

“Let Loose” was shot on iPhone 15 Pro Max, and Apple informed me on background that for several shots where a shallow depth-of-field was desired, Panavision lenses were attached to the iPhones using a Panavision-developed mount called the “Lens Relay System.” This rig is publicly available for rent from Panavision today, although not currently listed on their website.

Nice scoop. Also:

In fact, “Let Loose” is the first Apple Event finished and streamed in HDR, pushing the iPhone’s capture abilities even further than “Scary Fast.”

‘Goodbye to Apple’s Smart Keyboard Folio’ ★

Chris Welch, The Verge:

Then there was the fact that the folio keyboard was so damn light. It kept the iPad Pro feeling like an iPad in my bag. That has never, ever been the case with a Magic Keyboard attached. When it goes on, you’ve entered MacBook weight territory. I’m not saying there’s any problem with that, but with the Smart Keyboard Folio, there was something special about toting around such a powerful combo that always stayed so airy on my back.

At best, Apple is being somewhat stubborn in assuming that every iPad Pro buyer wants the tablet to feel like a laptop (and be a similar weight to one) whenever a keyboard is attached, which is what the Magic Keyboard gets you. If you want to view it with more pessimism, the company is intentionally doing away with what was a compelling, more affordable accessory — one that was easy to take anywhere — in hopes that more people will cave and fork over $300 for the only first-party keyboard that’s available for the new Pro.

I suspect if it had been more popular, Apple would have made new ones for the new iPads. But I know Welch is not alone in his affinity for it. The textile-covered keyboard was far from ideal for typing feel, but the whole point of the Smart Keyboard Folio was to be a “good enough” keyboard when you need it — and the nature of that sort of keyboard made it perfect for use in a kitchen, with wet or dirty fingers. It was a keyboard cover you could just leave on your iPad all the time — and the Magic Keyboard isn’t that.

Is the ‘Crush’ Backlash a Dead Canary in the Apple Brand Coal Mine? ★

David Heinemeier Hansson:

This should all be eerily familiar to anyone who saw Microsoft fall from grace in the 90s. From being America’s favorite software company to being the bully pursued by the DOJ for illegalities. Just like Apple now, Microsoft’s reputation and good standing suddenly evaporated seemingly overnight once enough critical stories had accumulated about its behavior.

It’s not easy to predict these tipping points. Tim Cook enthusiastically introduced this awful ad with a big smile, and I’m sure he’s sitting with at least some sense of “wtf just happened?” and “why don’t they love us any more?”. Because companies like Apple almost have to ignore the haters as the cost of doing business, but then they also can’t easily tell when the sentiment has changed from “the usual number” to “one too many”. And then, boom, the game is forever changed.

Ever since this controversy regarding the “Crush” ad erupted yesterday, I’ve been wondering the same thing. As I wrote yesterday, when I first saw the ad during the keynote, I didn’t think twice about it. It didn’t strike me as particularly clever, but I didn’t suspect for even a second that it might prove even slighty controversial. It just didn’t strike a nerve for me. But clearly it struck a nerve for many, evoking negative emotional responses — which for a brand like Apple’s, makes it ipso facto a failed ad.

But Apple could have used this exact same concept for any previous “thinnest ever” iPad. They could have used this exact same commercial for the original iPad in 2010 — a device that doesn’t seem thin or light by today’s standards but was rightly considered remarkably thin and light at the time it launched. You can paint, you can draw, you can edit photos and video, you can make music, you can play games — all in this single incredibly thin device. That’s not a new message for iPads.

Would this exact same commercial have evoked the same collective response in 2010? I’m going to say no, it would not have. What about in 2018? I’m going to say ... probably not? Something has changed. Part of it is that our culture has changed. I don’t think many people 10 or 15 years ago would have seen dissonance between Apple’s oft-professed sustainability ideals and a commercial celebrating the destruction of artistic tools and objects. And the bigger change is the recognition that computers are eating the world. In 2010 it was seen only as cool that computers were doing more and more stuff. Today there’s widespread uncomfortableness, perhaps outright concern, that the digital world is consuming the analog one. It plays differently today than a decade ago to emphasize that an iPad can replace a veritable truck-full of artistic tools and toys.

But part too is that Apple’s position in our culture has changed. They’re no longer, and never again will be, the upstart. They’re The Man now. They’re part of the firmament of our entire society, not just the tech world. When you’re on top, everyone guns for you.

Apple Apologizes for ‘Crush’ Ad: ‘We Missed the Mark With This Video, and We’re Sorry’ ★

Tor Myhren, Apple’s VP of marketing communications, in a statement to Ad Age:

Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world. Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.

Not just an apology, but an apology attributed to a person. That’s how you do it.

The standard shouldn’t be never to make a mistake. It’s to make as few mistakes as possible, but quickly recognize, acknowledge, and address the ones you do make.

(Via 9to5Mac, which helpfully quotes Myhren’s entire statement. Ad Age’s paywall offers zero free page views.)

Crushed-Into-a-Handheld-Gadget Commercials ★

Andy Allen found a 2008 LG phone commercial that’s pretty much the same concept as Apple’s new “Crush” ad. And here’s a 1998 Nintendo commercial in which a bus full of Pokemon get smushed into a Game Boy.

Quinn Nelson on the New iPads and iPad Peripherals ★

Lots of nerdy details on both the tandem OLED “Pro XDR Ultra Max Plus Extreme” display technology (I think that’s the marketing name?) and TSMC’s next-gen 3nm process used to fabricate the M4 chips.

Wednesday, 8 May 2024

John Ternus as Apple CEO? ★

Mark Gurman, writing at Bloomberg, posits that John Ternus might be the leading candidate to succeed Tim Cook as CEO:

“Tim likes him a lot, because he can give a good presentation, he’s very mild-mannered, never puts anything into an email that is controversial and is a very reticent decision-maker,” says one person close to Apple’s executive team. “He has a lot of managerial characteristics like Tim.” Christopher Stringer, a former top Apple hardware designer, called Ternus a “trustworthy hand” who’s “never failed with any role he’s been elevated to.” Eddy Cue, the Apple executive known as Cook’s closest confidant, has privately told colleagues that Ternus should be the next CEO, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

I wouldn’t have linked to this if not for the above line about Eddy Cue. If Cue is telling people that, that means a lot. No executive at Apple is more juiced-in company-wide than Cue. Cook’s first action as CEO was to promote Cue, and Cue was arguably just as tight with and trusted by Steve Jobs.

Apple’s ‘Crush’ Ad for the New iPad Pros Is, Well, Getting Crushed ★

Todd Spangler, writing for Variety:

An Apple commercial for the new iPad Pro tablet showing an industrial press literally crushing a TV, musical instruments, books and more ignited an angry backlash among many in Hollywood and other creative industries.

The ad, titled “Crush!”, shows an array of various objects — including a record player, a piano, a guitar, an old TV set, cameras, a typewriter, books, paint cans and a classic arcade game machine — getting compressed into (voila!) the new iPad Pro. The spot is soundtracked to Sonny and Cher’s “All I Ever Need Is You.”

But the ad has been interpreted more as a visual depiction of the tech industry’s devastation of cultural industries. “The destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley,” actor Hugh Grant commented on X.

Personally, I didn’t think twice about this spot when it ran during the keynote yesterday. I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it either. I sort of like seeing things get smashed, run over, or, best of all, dropped from rooftops, and that’s really all I took from it at the moment. But a lot of people find the spot unpleasant, if not downright disturbing, not because they’re bothered by seeing stuff get smushed but because of the implied message. To wit, as Grant quipped, that technology not only replaces analog instruments and objects of artistic expression, but destroys them.

Thought about that way, it’s clearly a mistake — the vivisection of technology and liberal arts.

The best response is this “fixed it for you” version from filmmaker Reza Sixo Safai, simply running the commercial backwards (and choosing a better Sonny and Cher song). Same message, but emphasizing creation rather than destruction.

‘Slop’ as a Neologism for Mindlessly Spewed AI-Generated Content ★

Simon Willison:

I’m a big proponent of LLMs as tools for personal productivity, and as software platforms for building interesting applications that can interact with human language.

But I’m increasingly of the opinion that sharing unreviewed content that has been artificially generated with other people is rude.

Slop is the ideal name for this anti-pattern.

Not all promotional content is spam, and not all AI-generated content is slop. But if it’s mindlessly generated and thrust upon someone who didn’t ask for it, slop is the perfect term for it.

Endorsed.

Marvel Studios Announces ‘What If…? — An Immersive Story’, Exclusively for Vision Pro ★

Marvel:

Marvel Studios and ILM Immersive announce What If…? — An Immersive Story, the first-ever interactive Disney+ Original story coming exclusively to Apple Vision Pro. Fans will be invited to step inside the Multiverse like never before and have the chance to dive into an immersive, narrative-driven and innovative story in mixed reality. Connected to the critically acclaimed Disney+ Original animated series What If…?, Marvel.com was given a first look at the hour-long experience, diving into what fans can expect when it is released soon as a new app for Apple Vision Pro.

WSJ: Apple Is Developing AI Chips for Data Centers ★

Aaron Tilley and Yang Jie, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (News+):

Apple has been working on its own chip designed to run artificial-intelligence software in data-center servers, a move that has the potential to give the company an advantage in the AI arms race.

Over the past decade, Apple has emerged as a leading player designing chips for iPhones, iPads, Apple Watch and Mac computers. The server project, which is internally code-named Project ACDC — for Apple Chips in Data Center — will bring this talent to bear for the company’s servers, according to people familiar with the matter.

Project ACDC has been in the works for several years and it is uncertain when the new chip will be unveiled, if ever.

Another rebuttal to the whole “Apple is behind on AI” discourse. Apple is just doing things their own way, at their own pace, and they’re not going to talk about any of it in advance. Custom chip development is slow, expensive, and indicates an extreme commitment.

As for the “ACDC” codename, if I didn’t know any better, I’d half wonder if Jim Dalrymple took a job on Apple’s silicon team.

Tuesday, 7 May 2024

TikTok Sues US Government Over Forced Divestiture and Potential Ban ★

Sapna Maheshwari and David McCabe, reporting for The New York Times:

TikTok sued the federal government on Tuesday over a new law that would force its Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the popular social media app or face a ban in the United States, stoking a battle over national security and free speech that is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.

TikTok said the law violated the First Amendment by effectively removing an app that millions of Americans use to share their views and communicate freely. It also argued that a divestiture was “simply not possible,” especially within the law’s 270-day timeline, pointing to difficulties such as Beijing’s refusal to sell a key feature that powers TikTok in the United States.

Must be nice for a Chinese company to be able to sue the government and make arguments on freedom of speech grounds.

Nintendo Pre-Announces Switch Successor’s Announcement ★

Nintendo, on Twitter/X:

This is Furukawa, President of Nintendo. We will make an announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year. It will have been over nine years since we announced the existence of Nintendo Switch back in March 2015. We will be holding a Nintendo Direct this June regarding the Nintendo Switch software lineup for the latter half of 2024, but please be aware that there will be no mention of the Nintendo Switch successor during that presentation.

Must be Big News for Beloved Tablets Day.

Techmeme’s Roundup of Commentary on Apple’s ‘Let Loose’ iPad Event ★

Gurman’s last-minute “Maybe they’ll have the M4” might be the greatest rumor scoop in recent memory. A fella could lose his shirt betting against him lately.

Monday, 6 May 2024

Erasable Logo on Apple’s Homepage ★

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Hovering over the Apple logo and moving the mouse allows the current artwork to be erased and replaced with a new logo design. Apple created a total of six logos for the May 7 “Let Loose” event, and the interactive eraser cycles through those options.

Would be cool if Apple’s managed to pull off being able to use the end of the new Pencil as an eraser, just like a real pencil.

Fitting Facts to the Narrative at The Washington Post ★

From a Washington Post story headlined “Apple Is Behind in AI and Killed Its Self-Driving Car Project. What’s Next?”:

The company’s Greater China region, which encompasses mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, has long been one of Apple’s most crucial growth zones. But growing pressure from a handful local rivals — including Shenzhen-based Huawei, which surmounted U.S. sanctions aimed at slowing its advance in late 2023 by producing a smartphone with a domestically made processor — cut sharply into Apple’s market share in the region earlier this year.

Data from market research firm Counterpoint Research indicated that Apple’s sales in China dipped by nearly 20 percent in the first quarter of 2024, a shift that senior research analyst Ivan Lam attributed partially to “Huawei’s comeback.”

The full scope of the company’s decline in China became clear Thursday, when Apple reported an 8 percent revenue dip compared to a year earlier.

It’s inexplicable that the Post included a paragraph with projections from Counterpoint claiming iPhone sales in China were down 20 percent even after Apple reported its actual results for the quarter. Jason Snell, over at Six Colors:

Finally, I particularly enjoyed the exchange between Wells Fargo’s Aaron Rakers and Cook in which Rakers asked Cook to explain Apple’s results compared to the data reported by independent research groups that suggested iPhone sales were falling apart in China. Apple’s actual numbers weren’t that bad, and in fact, Apple trumpeted how well the iPhone was going in urban China.

“I can’t address the data points,” Cook said. “I can only address what our results are, and you know, we did accelerate last quarter. And iPhone grew in mainland China, so that’s what the results were. I can’t bridge to numbers we didn’t come up with.”

That’s about as savage a shade-throwing as you’ll get on an Apple analyst call.

iPhone grew in mainland China last quarter but even after Apple announced that — in a legally-binding context — they went with made-up projections from Counterpoint to fit their narrative that Apple is in trouble.

While I’m being grumpy, I’ll even take issue with the notion — which the Post leads with in its headline — that Apple is “behind in AI”? It is true that Apple doesn’t offer an AI chat product like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, or Google’s Gemini. But do we expect Apple ever to offer such a project? Apple doesn’t have a web search engine but no one is arguing that Apple is “behind” on search. (App Store search results quality is another issue.) Apple doesn’t offer turnkey cloud computing services like AWS or Google Cloud either. Are they “behind” on that? When it comes to the products Apple already sells, how are they “behind on AI”? Are iPhone users missing out on AI features available only to Android users? No. Are MacBook users missing out because Apple hasn’t added a dedicated AI key to their keyboards?

I get that people see AI as a frontier that is transforming the industry, and Apple hasn’t revealed any new plans or features yet. But I’d say Apple is silent on AI, not behind. When iOS and Mac users are missing out on features that are only available on other platforms, that’s when I’d say Apple is behind.

Logitech’s Mouse Software Now Includes ChatGPT Support, Adds Janky ‘ai_overlay_tmp’ Directory to Users’ Home Folders ★

Stephen Hackett, writing at 512 Pixels:

I know AI is all the rage right now and having a deal to bring ChatGPT into your software is trendy, but including a tool like this in what is basically a mouse driver is ridiculous. I’m not opposed to using AI in software. I’m just opposed to when it shows up as an unexpected, poorly-implemented feature in software that doesn’t need it.

At least Logitech’s Mac developers did such a bad job with it, that it was easy to spot.

Logitech committed a bunch of sins with this mouse driver. First, it just seems ridiculous to add an AI prompt feature to a mouse driver. Second, no matter what the feature, it’s wrong to add a top-level folder to a user’s home directory — and it’s especially wrong to give such a folder a dumb name like “ai_overlay_tmp”.

It’s more common for poorly-programmed Mac software to create such folders with a leading dot in their names, an age-old Unix convention that tells the Finder to treat them as “invisible”. But that’s poor form on MacOS too. Support folders should be organized in standard sub-folders inside the user’s Library folder. Open Terminal and type ls -a at the root of your home folder and you’ll probably see a lot of detritus that ought to be inside your Library folder.

Hackett has switched from Logitech’s mouse software to the excellent SteerMouse, an excellent $20 mouse driver that supports just about every mouse in the world. I’ve been using and wholeheartedly recommending SteerMouse for nearly 20 years.

It’s also the case that even with a third-party mouse, you might not want any third-party driver software at all. MacOS’s built-in mouse software recognizes most mice. I rely on SteerMouse not because my mouse has lots of buttons (it doesn’t), but to get fine-grained control over the speed and acceleration of the pointer. SteerMouse lets me set my mouse to go way, way faster than the built-in Mouse panel in Settings does — something I’ve done for decades to reduce wrist fatigue and pain. I can move my pointer from corner to corner across my Studio Display by moving my mouse just a few centimeters.

The problem is, many people — perhaps especially people whose computing experience was forged on Windows — wrongly assume that if you buy a Brand X mouse, you need to install Brand X’s software to use it. For Logitech mouse users, that means AI software they neither want nor need running in the background, and an ugly cryptically-named temp folder stinking up their home directory like a squatter.

Yours Truly on ‘First Ones’ ★

Brian McCullough at the Techmeme Ride Home podcast has a new YouTube series, “First Ones”, where he asks his guests for their firsts — first computer, first movie in a theater, etc. Guests so far, in addition to me, include Guy Kawasaki, Bluesky CEO Jay Graber, Ed Zitron, and more. Very fun.

Apple Watch Ultra’s Best Feature: Battery Life ★

Jason Aten, writing for Inc.:

I don’t run marathons or climb mountains or dive. I don’t often find myself in remote locations in precarious situations. I joked that, for me, the Apple Watch Ultra will be the perfect thing to wear while other people are working out. Like, for example, when I’m keeping track of my daughter’s cross-country race splits.

When I first started wearing the Ultra, I was sure the most useful feature was what Apple calls the Action Button. I still think the ability to assign a dedicated button to things like starting a workout or a stopwatch is great, but there’s a far better feature, and the most surprising thing is that Apple isn’t making a big deal of it at all.

That’s the fact that the Apple Watch Ultra has ridiculous battery life, at least by Apple Watch standards. Yes, Apple has said that the Ultra has the best battery life of any Apple Watch. But Apple is dramatically underselling the battery life on its new flagship wearable, claiming it gets 36 hours. In my experience, it got more than 60 hours.

Two thoughts about this:

Perhaps Apple underplays the Ultra’s battery life so as not to make the battery life on the regular Series 9 models look bad? From my experience while reviewing the original Ultra, I could get two days of battery life on a single charge even while wearing it to sleep.
The battery life on all Apple Watch models from the last few years offers a stark contrast to the dedicated AI gadgets we’re starting to see, like Humane’s AI Pin and Rabbit’s R1 handheld dingus. It goes under-remarked-upon that Apple is really really good at making computer hardware, and particularly at making small computer hardware.

Boring News: Vision Pro Sales Are Going Just About as Expected ★

Ming-Chi Kuo, two weeks ago:

Apple has cut its 2024 Vision Pro shipments to 400–450k units (vs. market consensus of 700–800k units or more). Apple cut orders before launching Vision Pro in non-US markets, which means that demand in the US market has fallen sharply beyond expectations, making Apple take a conservative view of demand in non-US markets.

Neil Cybart, on Twitter/X:

Ming-Chi Kuo’s numbers and statements regarding Apple Vision Pro sales don’t make sense. [...]

Interestingly, when framing a 400K to 450K unit sales figure for Vision Pro in 2024 (which would actually be a good result), Kuo compares the range to a made up consensus figure of 700K to 800K unit sales. I don’t recall anyone running with such a high sales range for Vision Pro in 2024. Instead, Kuo himself actually claimed back on Feb 28th that a few suppliers were planning for 700K to 800K production. That’s not the same as a sales forecast. Far from it. Kuo would know that too, so one is left to assume he’s purposely being misleading.

Ming-Chi Kuo occasionally uncovers legitimate scoops from Apple’s Asian supply chain. Ming-Chi Kuo also regularly inserts his own name into the news when he has no legitimate scoops. This is one of the latter. There was no “market consensus” that Apple would sell 700–800K Vision Pro units in 2024. In fact, the reporting has been around the 400–450K range since last summer.

The Financial Times, back on 3 July 2023:

Two people close to Apple and Luxshare, the Chinese contract manufacturer that will initially assemble the device, said it was preparing to make fewer than 400,000 units in 2024. Multiple industry sources said Luxshare was currently Apple’s only assembler of the device. Separately, two China-based sole suppliers of certain components for the Vision Pro said Apple was only asking them for enough for 130,000 to 150,000 units in the first year.

TheElec reported last June that Sony only had the capacity to manufacture 900,000 OLED panels per year for Vision Pro, which, if true, would cap Vision Pro headset production at 450,000 units. The Information reported in August that this display bottleneck “is one reason why Apple plans to make fewer than half a million Vision Pros in the first year of production”.

Meta Threatens to Pull WhatsApp From India Over Encryption Battle ★

Russell Brandom, reporting for Rest of World:

IT rules passed by India in 2021 require services like WhatsApp to maintain “traceability” for all messages, allowing authorities to follow forwarded messages to the “first originator” of the text.

In a Delhi High Court proceeding last Thursday, WhatsApp said it would be forced to leave the country if the court required traceability, as doing so would mean breaking end-to-end encryption. It’s a common stance for encrypted chat services generally, and WhatsApp has made this threat before — most notably in a protracted legal fight in Brazil that resulted in intermittent bans. But as the Indian government expands its powers over online speech, the threat of a full-scale ban is closer than it’s been in years. [...]

It’s not clear how the courts will respond to WhatsApp’s ultimatum, but they’ll have to take it seriously. WhatsApp is used by more than half a billion people in India — not just as a chat app, but as a doctor’s office, a campaigning tool, and the backbone of countless small businesses and service jobs. There’s no clear competitor to fill its shoes, so if the app is shut down in India, much of the digital infrastructure of the nation would simply disappear. Being forced out of the country would be bad for WhatsApp, but it would be disastrous for everyday Indians.

One thing to remember is that this isn’t so much a conflict between what the law demands and what Meta chooses to do, but rather a conflict between what the law demands and the secure-by-design nature of WhatsApp. There is no “traceability” switch that Meta could flip but is choosing not to. They’d have to build a completely new, insecure-by-design, protocol to comply with this law.

Kolide ★

My thanks to Kolide for sponsoring last week at DF. Deepfakes are good and only getting better. In real life, people only detect voice clones about 50% of the time. You might as well flip a coin. And that makes businesses extremely vulnerable to attacks.

In the “classic” voice clone scam, the caller is after an immediate payout (“Hi, it’s me, your boss. Wire a bunch of company money to this account ASAP”). Then there are the more complex social engineering attacks, where a phone call is just the entryway to break into a company’s systems and steal data or plant malware (that’s what happened in the MGM attack, albeit without the use of AI).

But the good news is that we can be trained to learn how to identify suspicious phone calls — even when the voice sounds just like someone we trust. If you want to learn more about Kolide’s findings, read their report exploring the details of audio deepfakes.

Sunday, 5 May 2024

‘Boba Fett? Boba Fett? Where?!’ ★: I think this “May the Fourth” nonsense has gotten out of hand but this commercial from Apple is chef’s kiss. So fun. (Via Dan Moren, who points out a bunch of Easter eggs.)

Friday, 3 May 2024

Three-Year Gap Between Vision Pro 1 and 2? ★

Mark Gurman:

The good news for Meta is it could have plenty of time to pursue that goal. Apple’s latest Vision Pro road map doesn’t currently call for a second-generation model until the end of 2026, though the company is trying to figure out a way to bring a cheaper version to market before then. Apple is still flummoxed by how exactly to bring down the cost, I’m told.

If true this seems utterly bizarre. That would be close to a three-year gap between today’s first-generation Vision Pro and a second-gen model. Think about the iPad Pro. The ones on sale today, which we all presume will be replaced four days from now, were released in October 2022. That’s 18 months. And the general consensus is that the iPad Pro has gone a long time between updates.

“Late 2026” would presumably mean October or November 2026. That’d be 33 or 34 months after the release of the first-gen Vision Pro. So imagine the Vision Pro being as long-in-the-tooth as the iPad Pros are today and still being almost a year away from an update. That makes no sense. To everyone outside Apple it would, quite reasonably, look like an abandoned platform. They kind of did exactly that with the HomePod, but Vision was introduced as a major new platform, not a peripheral. Why wouldn’t there be at least a speed bump from the M2 to M3 or something between now and late 2026? Waiting until the end of 2025 would be a long (nearly two-year) gap; the end of 2026 might as well be forever from now.

A yearslong gap until the next Vision Pro might make sense if there were a, say, Vision Air on the roadmap for 2025, but Gurman says Apple doesn’t know how to make such a thing yet.

Thursday, 2 May 2024

Annotating Tim Cook’s Remarks on the Q2 Analyst Call ★

From Six Colors’s transcript of Apple’s financial results conference call:

Keep in mind, as we described on the last call, in the March quarter a year ago, we were able to replenish iPhone channel inventory and fulfill significant pent-up demand from the December quarter COVID-related supply disruptions on the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max. We estimate this one-time impact added close to $5 billion to the March quarter revenue last year. If we removed this from last year’s results, our March quarter total company revenue this year would have grown. Despite this impact, we were still able to deliver the records I described.

Excuses are cheap, but this really is a credible explanation.

We continue to feel very bullish about our opportunity in generative AI. We are making significant investments, and we’re looking forward to sharing some very exciting things with our customers soon. We believe in the transformative power and promise of AI, and we believe we have advantages that will differentiate us in this new era, including Apple’s unique combination of seamless hardware, software, and services integration, groundbreaking Apple Silicon with our industry-leading neural engines, and our unwavering focus on privacy, which underpins everything we create. [...]

Turning to Mac, March quarter revenue was $7.5 billion, up 4% from a year ago. We had an amazing launch in early March with the new 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air. The world’s most popular laptop is the best consumer laptop for AI, with breakthrough performance of the M3 chip and its even more powerful neural engine.

This doesn’t sound to me like a man about to announce iPad Pros with M4 chips. The present-tense “industry-leading neural engines” to me says Apple feels good about the AI capabilities of the devices already in our hands. What makes for a good “AI computer” are the very same things that make for a good computer, period.

However, we still saw growth on iPhone in some markets, including mainland China, and according to Kantar, during the quarter, the two best-selling smartphones in urban China were the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro Max.

It’s somewhat interesting to me that those are the two iPhone models: on the consumer side, the smaller-display iPhone 15; on the pro side, the big-display iPhone 15 Pro Max. The cheapest iPhone 15 model and the most expensive one.

Apple’s Regional Segments for Financial Reporting ★

My recent focus on the European Union’s DMA and the notion that, if the EU pushes too hard, Apple might pull back from sales in the EU, had me looking at how the company defines the “Europe” segment in its financial reporting. On the surface one might think that Apple’s “Europe” is just the EU plus the United Kingdom and Norway. But it’s actually much bigger than that: it’s all of Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and India. (Last I checked Africa is a pretty big continent, and India a pretty populous country.)

Today’s financial report for Q2 FY2024 got me wondering how exactly Apple defines its other regions. From their 2023 10-K (PDF):

The Company manages its business primarily on a geographic basis. The Company’s reportable segments consist of the Americas, Europe, Greater China, Japan and Rest of Asia Pacific. Americas includes both North and South America. Europe includes European countries, as well as India, the Middle East and Africa. Greater China includes China mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Rest of Asia Pacific includes Australia and those Asian countries not included in the Company’s other reportable segments. Although the reportable segments provide similar hardware and software products and similar services, each one is managed separately to better align with the location of the Company’s customers and distribution partners and the unique market dynamics of each geographic region.

“Japan and Rest of Asia Pacific” are two segments, but that clause is one of those examples that exemplifies why the Oxford Comma ought to be house style everywhere — as written, sans comma, that could easily be misread as a single segment.

Apple Q2 2024 Results ★

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2024 second quarter ended March 30, 2024. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $90.8 billion, down 4 percent year over year, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $1.53.

Net sales year-over-year by product (from Apple’s consolidated statement):

	Percentage	Dollars
iPhone	-10%	-$5.4B
Mac	+4%	+$0.3B
iPad	-17%	-$1.1B
Wearables, etc.	-10%	-$0.8B
Services	+14%	+3.0B

And by region:

	Percentage	Dollars
Americas	-1%	-$0.5B
Europe	+1%	+$0.2B
Greater China	-8%	-$1.4B
Japan	-13%	-$0.9B
Rest of Asia Pacific	-17%	-$1.4B

Credit where credit is due: IDC’s projection that iPhone sales were down 10 percent year-over-year was spot-on.

And Tim Cook’s decade-ago decision to focus both the company and investors’ attention on Services looks ever more prescient. As it stands, a 4 percent overall drop in revenue makes for an ever-so-slightly bad quarter. If not for Services growth, however, this would’ve been a not-so-slightly bad quarter.