Linked List: February 13, 2025

Thursday, 13 February 2025

Apple and Google Both Return TikTok to App Stores, After Letter of ‘Assurance’ From Attorney General Pam Bondi ★

Jay Peters and Alex Heath, reporting for The Verge:

Nearly a month after it was banned in the US, TikTok has returned to the App Store for iPhones and other Apple devices as well as the Google Play store for Android phones and tablets.

The return follows US Attorney General Pam Bondi sending a letter to Apple assuring that it won’t be fined for hosting the app, according to Bloomberg, which first reported that the app would return.

From Mark Gurman’s brief report for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. will restore ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok to the US App Store on Thursday, following a letter from US Attorney General Pam Bondi, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

I’m surprised but not shocked by this. But I’d sure like to see what exactly that letter says. The PAFACA Act — the law that bans TikTok in the US now that the deadline has passed for ByteDance to sell it to a US company — hasn’t changed or been rescinded, and the current delay in enforcement has no basis in law. Neither Apple nor Google, wisely, have been talking publicly about this at all, but it seems clear that they’ve been acting in concert throughout the process. It is not a coincidence that they both de-listed and now re-listed TikTok simultaneously.

Also, still no idea how this is going to end, because I really don’t think the CCP is going to allow ByteDance to sell TikTok. And there are Republicans in the Senate — e.g. Tom Cotton — who stand behind the sell-or-you’re-banned law.

Quid Pro Cybertruck ★

Jack Ewing, reporting for The New York Times:

The department’s procurement forecast for 2025, which details purchases the agency expects to make, includes $400 million for armored Tesla vehicles. The document does not specify which Tesla model, but the electric Cybertruck, which has a body of high-strength stainless steel, would be the most suitable vehicle.

Mr. Musk spent more than $250 million to help elect Mr. Trump, who then appointed him as the leader of a cost-cutting initiative that’s been called the Department of Government Efficiency.

The purchase of Cybertrucks, an atypical choice for government armored transport, is likely to raise conflict of interest issues, especially as Mr. Musk trumpets his own efforts to root out what he regards as unnecessary spending.

“Likely to raise” is doing a lot of work there. There’s just no way this is good clean procurement and everyone knows it. Either Musk should run his businesses and have nothing to do with the government or he should defer from accepting any and all government contracts for his businesses. Even someone trying to do this ethically couldn’t manage it; it’s inherently unethical. It’s being reported that this deal started under the Biden administration, which is worth noting, but even if it did, clearly Musk should recuse Tesla from consideration.

One side is powerless, at the moment, to stop it, and the other side is in the midst of a full-on embrace of partisan corruption as policy. One thing that makes Trump so hard to reckon with is that his graft is right out in the open. He ran a luxury hotel with his fucking name on it two blocks from the White House during his first term, and everyone with business before his administration — like when T-Mobile was trying to get approval for its acquisition of Sprint — knew they were expected to stay there.

Pre-Trump, it was the “catching” of concealed dealmaking and bribery that signaled corruption being rooted out. But you can’t get “caught” doing something that’s right out in the open. We just have to call it what it is: abject corruption.

See also: Jimmy Carter’s 2017 op-ed: “You People Made Me Give Up My Peanut Farm Before I Got To Be President”.

Update: Bobby Allyn at NPR reports:

The State Department said Thursday it is abandoning plans of purchasing $400 million worth of armored Tesla vehicles after a public document detailing federal contracts for fiscal year 2025 gained wide attention.

That expected purchase of Teslas, which was slated for September of this year, is now on hold, according to the State Department, which now says it has no plans of fulfilling the contract.

Well then never mind. No corruption here. It’s all good.

Tim Cook, on His Favorite Website, Teases Apple Product Launch Next Week ★

Tim Cook, on X:

Get ready to meet the newest member of the family.

Wednesday, February 19. #AppleLaunch

Most people are guessing, I think correctly, that this is about the iPhone SE 4. We’re also right on schedule for the M4 generation of MacBook Airs, but I don’t think MacBook Airs would qualify for “newest member of the family”. They’re more like an updated version of the current member of the family. But the next-gen iPhone SE is going to be a very different iPhone SE — it will mark the end of the Home button and Touch ID. Maybe it won’t even be named “SE” but given a new name?

The “#AppleLaunch” isn’t merely a hashtag, but a “Hashflag” — a paid promotion with X that includes a custom emoji icon. For this one, it’s a shiny liquid-metal treatment of the Apple logo (screenshot). I don’t know what these “hashflag” promotions cost now, but when they launched a decade ago, AdWeek reported that the price started at $1 million. And you’ll never guess who has interrupted his busy day running the federal government to retweet it.

I don’t really get Apple’s angle on this return to advertising on X. Placating Trump through flattery and his “inauguration fund” racket, I get. He’s the president of the United States now and he’s nakedly corrupt and such a profound narcissist that simple abject obsequious flattery works on him. But why appease Musk too? Because Musk has Trump’s ear, I guess? (Feel free to substitute another piece of Trump’s anatomy if you think ear doesn’t properly convey their apparent power dynamic — which, in turn, might answer my question re: the need Cook sees to appease Musk.)

Apple Account Purchase Migration Doesn’t Transfer TestFlight Enrollments ★

Sean Heber, of The Iconfactory:

It appears that Apple’s new account migration stuff does NOT work for TestFlight access. That by itself is fine - whatever. The problem here is that it appears when someone does an account migration, it kind of half-migrates TestFlight somehow.

People are telling us their new email address to invite but TestFlight thinks they’re already a tester with that email address! So you can’t just reinvite them. It seems we have to filter for the user, remove them, then add them as a new tester.

Heber subsequently replied to his own thread:

lol - update. We tried this with a tester. I removed them from TestFlight and then re-added with their new email. They got the invite and then the TestFlight app said they can’t be added because they’re already on TestFlight with the email address that was just invited.

The workaround was to generate a public TestFlight link and use that. My guess is it uses some kind of token as a key for that system and not their email address. Seems to work around it. Except now there’s a public link. At least I can limit how many can use it and only those who migrated and need a reinvite will get this link for now.

His colleague Craig Hockenberry:

If you’re hearing from testers about being kicked out of TestFlight because of the new account migration stuff, DO NOT update their email. It’s a lot of work and will not help them.

For now, you MUST give them a public link, even if it’s a private beta.

TestFlight enrollment is on the list of things that you’re warned are not included with migration (the other two are personalized recommendations and the ability to edit App Store reviews you’ve left with your secondary account), but it sounds like the post-migration TestFlight situation is a little worse than just “not migrated, start over”. You need some actual assistance from the developer of each app you’re testing. (I’m an edge case, to be sure, but I’m enrolled in about 30 active TestFlights across Mac and iOS.)

Still, though, it seems like practical experience with this purchase migration has gone well for almost everyone. I think Apple might have nailed this.

Update, 14 February: Apple has added a new requirement before proceeding with migration:

You can’t migrate purchases if your secondary Apple Account is used with TestFlight for testing beta versions of apps from a developer. Open TestFlight and select Stop Testing for each app to remove it from your account.