Linked List: February 2025

Friday, 28 February 2025

Meta Apologizes for Error That Flooded Instagram With a Bit of the Old Ultra-Violence ★

Meghan Bobrowsky and Jeff Horwitz, reporting for The Wall Street Journal:

Meta apologized Wednesday night for what it said was an “error” that led to graphic and violent videos flooding the feeds of a vast number of Instagram users, including minors. The videos, which were recommended on some users’ Reels tab, included people who appeared to have been shot to death and run over by vehicles. Some of the recommended videos had “sensitive content” warnings on them while others didn’t.

A Wall Street Journal reporter’s account featured scores of videos of people being shot, mangled by machinery, and ejected from theme park rides, often back to back. The videos originated on pages that the reporter didn’t follow with names such as “BlackPeopleBeingHurt,” “ShockingTragedies” and “PeopleDyingHub.”

“We accidentally started showing people the absolute worst stuff available on our platform” is one hell of a glitch.

Microsoft to Retire Skype in May ★

Jeff Teper, president of collaborative apps and platforms at Microsoft:

In order to streamline our free consumer communications offerings so we can more easily adapt to customer needs, we will be retiring Skype in May 2025 to focus on Microsoft Teams (free), our modern communications and collaboration hub.

NPR:

Microsoft, which acquired Skype in 2011 for $8.5 billion, announced in a post on X on Friday that the iconic voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) service would soon go dark. It encouraged Skype users to instead migrate to a free version of Microsoft Teams — a communication app that helps users work together in real time.

In the more than two decades since it was founded, Skype has been largely overtaken by a bevy of competitors, such as FaceTime, WhatsApp, Zoom, and Slack.

The writing has been on the wall for a long time that Skype was no longer strategic for Microsoft. Really, even right after the acquisition, it never seemed Microsoft had any sort of plan for what to do with Skype — even though, at the time, it was their largest-ever acquisition.

But man, for a long while, Skype was singularly amazing, offering high-quality / low-latency audio calls at a time when everything else seemed low-quality / high-latency. I continued using Skype to record The Talk Show until a few years ago, and I can’t say I miss it. But I used Skype to record at least around 400 episodes — which means I’ve spent somewhere around 1,000 hours talking to people over Skype. I can close my eyes and just hear Skype’s kinda clunky but distinctive ringtone. In the early days of podcasting, seemingly every show used Skype because it was so much better than anything else. And it was free! It felt like the future. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that if not for Skype, podcasting would’ve been set back several years.

Meta Fired ‘Roughly 20’ Employees for Leaking ★

Alex Heath, reporting for The Verge:

Meta has fired “roughly 20” employees who leaked “confidential information outside the company,” according to a spokesperson.

“We tell employees when they join the company, and we offer periodic reminders, that it is against our policies to leak internal information, no matter the intent,” Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold tells The Verge exclusively. “We recently conducted an investigation that resulted in roughly 20 employees being terminated for sharing confidential information outside the company, and we expect there will be more. We take this seriously, and will continue to take action when we identify leaks.”

These firings, of course, are the follow-up to one of my favorite headlines so far this year: “Meta Warns That It Will Fire Leakers in Leaked Memo”. As I wrote in that post a month ago:

It’s not fear of getting fired that keeps employees at most companies from leaking. It’s that they find themselves aligned with the company’s mission. They feel like part of a team that they want to see succeed, and they naturally adopt an attitude of being a team player. Team players don’t leak the playbook because they don’t like the coach’s play-calling or how much playing time they’re getting. I’ve never gotten the sense that that sort of attitude exists at Meta.

I’m not sure this public crackdown will help. Meta seems to be leaning into fear to keep employees in line, rather than team spirit. Their war on leakers might prove about as effective as America’s decades-long “war on drugs”, that saw illegal drug use rise, not fall, even while our prisons filled up with non-violent drug-law offenders. What’s the Princess Leia line? “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.” One longtime reader, who works at Netflix, contacted me after my month ago post and observed:

That is such a great take on Meta’s leaks. Netflix stuff almost never leaks, because Netflix is a place full of people who don’t want to leak things. There are virtually no barriers, just a culture and collection of people who don’t do that.

Penalties are a deterrence. But the reason most people don’t commit crimes — whether it be shoplifting or murder — isn’t fear of the potential penalties. It’s that they’re good honest people who don’t want to steal (and definitely don’t want to kill anyone).

Framework Introduces New Laptops and First Desktop ★

Founder Nirav Patel, writing this week on Framework’s company blog:

We went live this morning at the Framework (2nd Gen) Event with our biggest set of announcements yet: Framework Desktop, Framework Laptop 12, and the new Ryzen AI 300 Series Framework Laptop 13. You can watch a recording of the livestream on our YouTube channel.

Sean Hollister has a good roundup of the announcements at The Verge. Back in 2021 when Framework debuted with their first laptop, I expressed pithy skepticism regarding their modular approach. I’m still skeptical, but it’s hard not to root for them and cheer for their success. In principle, Framework’s “everything is a swappable, replaceable module” approach to system design is a fun nerdy throwback to the days when it was expected that you could get inside any computer and replace or upgrade its components yourself. And Framework’s style of modularity is designed with ease-of-use in mind, like snapping Lego blocks together. But as Hollister points out, Framework still hasn’t shipped a promised GPU upgrade component for its now two-year-old Framework 16 laptop.

Also of note is how much Framework is building around chips from AMD, not Intel. Is there a single category where anyone would say “Intel makes the best chips for this”? In an alternate universe where Apple had never moved the Mac to Apple Silicon, I’m not sure if it would be tenable for Apple to still be exclusively relying on Intel for x86 chips. Intel’s chips just aren’t competitive with AMD’s.

Trump Claims to Have Spoken With Starmer Regarding Apple Encryption Backdoor Demand ★

Ben Domenech interviewed President Trump yesterday in the Oval Office, after Trump’s meeting with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The Spectator has published the entire transcript, and I read it so you don’t have to, to get the part about Apple and the UK’s encryption backdoor demand:

BD: But the problem is he runs, your vice president obviously eloquently pointed this out in Munich, he runs a nation now that is removing the security helmets on Apple phones so that they can —

DJT: We told them you can’t do this.

BD: Yeah, Tulsi, I saw —

DJT: We actually told him… that’s incredible. That’s something, you know, that you hear about with China.

It feels quite odd to strongly agree with Trump on something, but he’s not wrong about everything.

(Most of the interview is just bananas stuff, ping-ponging all over the place. I swear Trump even goes back to Hannibal Lecter, and his mistaken belief that political asylum policies are somehow related to foreign countries emptying their asylums for the criminally insane.)

What If, Indeed ★

Hamilton Nolan, in a 2021 piece for The Columbia Journalism Review, under the headline “Bezos Has Been Hands-Off. What if That Changes?”:

Bezos has given the paper the resources to be bigger and better, and, by most accounts, pretty much stayed out of the newsroom’s hair, besides appearing one day to present a bicycle to former editor Marty Baron. The Amazon boss has never been an overtly political man, except to the extent that he supports whatever helps him stay rich and take over the world with his robotic form of ultra-capitalism. But he is not inclined to spend his time on the phone haranguing Post editors about coverage decisions. When you are worth close to $200 billion, your time is too valuable for that.

There is no guarantee, however, that that will always be true. [...]

Discussing this question with nuance is not easy. The paper will always say that Bezos does not interfere. Bezos himself will always say that he does not interfere. Factions of the public on the right and the left will always hold that Bezos’s ownership inherently corrupts the paper’s coverage.

I do give Bezos credit for taking public ownership of his assertion of control over the paper’s opinion pages now. This is a major change, and he’s not trying to hide it or shy away from responsibility for it.

Jeff Bezos Takes Control of the Washington Post’s Opinion Pages; Asserts Exclusive Focus ‘In Support and Defense of Two Pillars: Personal Liberties and Free Markets’ ★

Jeff Bezos, in a memo he shared publicly on X:

I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning:

I’m writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages.

We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others. [...]

I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter. I suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t “hell yes,” then it had to be “no.” After careful consideration, David decided to step away. This is a significant shift, it won’t be easy, and it will require 100% commitment — I respect his decision. We’ll be searching for a new Opinion Editor to own this new direction.

He owns the paper, and the opinion pages are the traditional place for a newspaper’s owner to assert their beliefs. And while Bezos was famously hands-off for the first decade of his ownership (he bought the Post from the Graham family for $250 million in 2013), this latest dictum doesn’t feel out of the blue or surprising in the least. It feels like the natural culmination of his asserting control over the paper’s opinion pages that started with his blockbuster decision to nix the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris just a few weeks prior to the election, and reached a breaking point when the paper refused to run a cartoon by Pulitzer-winning Ann Telnaes that mocked Bezos (along with other billionaires) for paying into Trump’s inauguration committee racket — prompting Telnaes to resign in righteous protest.

How are remaining staffers at the Post taking this? Not happily. Reports Liam Reilly, media reporter at CNN:

Current staffers echoed those sentiments. Philip Bump, who writes the “How to Read This Chart” newsletter at the Post, asked Bluesky “what the actual fuck” five minutes after the announcement went out. Post tech reporter Drew Harwell on Bluesky shared a summary of comments on the story generated by the Post’s own AI tool that highlighted “significant discontent” from readers and “a strong sentiment of betrayal among long-time subscribers.” And, tellingly, David Maraniss, an editor at the paper, said on Bluesky that he would “never write for (the Post) again as long as (Bezos is) the owner.”

More tellingly, the Post’s own media critic, the excellent Erik Wemple, intended to write about the policy change but saw his own column spiked. It’s a good sign that things have gone off the rails when a publication’s own media critic is disallowed from writing about their own publication.

Gene Hackman Dies at 95 ★

Loved this remembrance by Manohla Dargis in The New York Times:

When Clint Eastwood needed a performer who could persuasively go boot-toe to boot-toe with him in his brutal 1992 western Unforgiven, he needed an actor who was his towering equal onscreen. Eastwood needed a performer with strange charisma, one who could at once effortlessly draw the audience to his character and repulse it without skipping a beat. This actor didn’t need the audience’s love, and would never ask for it. He instead needed to go deep and dark, playing a villain of such depravity that he inspired the viewer’s own blood lust. Eastwood needed a legend who could send shivers up spines. He needed Gene Hackman.

Just an unbelievable career, in such a wide variety of films. His roles in The Conversation, The French Connection, and Unforgiven are atop most people’s lists, and I do love each of those movies. But he was so good in everything. What a great Lex Luthor he was in 1978’s Superman. Mississippi Burning, The Royal Tenenbaums, Bonnie and Clyde, The Birdcage, Hoosiers. By chance, I just re-watched David Mamet’s Heist a few weeks ago. Like so many of Hackman’s movies, that’s another one that repays multiple viewings across decades.

Wednesday, 26 February 2025

Washington Post: ‘Biden Justice Department Downplayed U.K. Demand for Apple “Back Door”’ ★

Joseph Menn, reporting for The Washington Post:

The U.S. Justice Department told Congress in November there were no major disputes with the United Kingdom over how the two allies seek data from each other’s communication companies.

But at that time, officials knew British authorities were preparing a demand that Apple build a back door to its users’ encrypted data, according to people familiar with the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal department matters. [...]

The department said it reminded its British counterpart of the CLOUD Act’s “requirement that the terms of the Agreement shall not create any obligation that providers be capable of decrypting data.” The report did not mention the looming order, and said any demands for reduced security would come under Britain’s Investigatory Powers Act, and so were not within the scope of the CLOUD Act.

On Wednesday, Sen. Alex Padilla and Rep. Zoe Lofgren, both California Democrats, faulted the November certification, saying “it splits the finest of hairs” by suggesting that the CLOUD Act didn’t apply to any decryption order. The two lawmakers, who sit on the Judiciary committees in their respective chambers of Congress, asked Bondi to reconsider whether Britain was violating the Cloud Act by ordering a break to Apple’s encryption.

Two of the people familiar with the certification process said the FBI has pursued backdoor capabilities unsuccessfully in the United States and would have been in a stronger legal position to win that if Apple had already had to create such a mechanism for another government.

Just utterly disgraceful behavior from the Biden administration — choosing to look the other way at a clear violation of the CLOUD Act to help their purported buddies in the UK, at the direct expense of a US company’s autonomy and US citizens’ privacy. I don’t see how this dissembling can be defended. Upon learning of the UK’s odious demands on Apple, the Biden administration’s response wasn’t to defend Apple (or Americans’ privacy), but instead to try to hide it from Congress. Unreal.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard Suggests UK Broke Agreement in Secretly Demanding That Apple Build iCloud Backdoor ★

Zac Hall, reporting for 9to5Mac:

According to a letter seen by 9to5Mac, the Trump Administration is investigating whether the UK may have broken a bilateral agreement when secretly demanding that Apple build a global backdoor into iCloud.

Trump’s Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard wrote in a letter responding to Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona that she was not made aware of the UK’s secret demand by her UK counterparts. However, she suggested, the UK government may have broken a bilateral privacy and surveillance agreement in making the demand.

Gabbard’s letter is available here (and I’m hosting a copy). From her letter:

Thank you for your letter dated 13 February 2025 concerning reported actions by the United Kingdom toward Apple that could undermine Americans’ privacy and civil liberties at risk. I am aware of the press reporting that the UK Home Secretary served Apple with a secret order directing the company to create a “back door” capability in its iCloud encryption to facilitate UK government access to any Apple iCloud users’ uploaded data anywhere in the world. I share your grave concern about the serious implications of the United Kingdom, or any foreign country, requiring Apple or any company to create a “backdoor” that would allow access to Americans personal encrypted data. This would be a clear and egregious violation of Americans’ privacy and civil liberties, and open up a serious vulnerability for cyber exploitation by adversarial actors.

I was not made aware of this reported order, either by the United Kingdom government or Apple, prior to it being reported in the media. I have requested my counterparts at CIA, DIA, DHS, FBI and NSA to provide insights regarding the publicly reported actions, and will subsequently engage with UK government officials. The UK’s Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, also known as the Snoopers’ Charter, which I understand would be at issue, allows the UK to issue a “gag order,” which would prevent Apple or any company from voicing their concerns with myself, or the public. [...]

My lawyers are working to provide a legal opinion on the implications of the reported UK demands against Apple on the bilateral Cloud Act agreement. Upon initial review of the U.S. and U.K. bilateral CLOUD Act Agreement, the United Kingdom may not issue demands for data of U.S. citizens, nationals, or lawful permanent residents (“U.S. persons”), nor is it authorized to demand the data of persons located inside the United States. The same is true for the United States — it may not use the CLOUD Act agreement to demand data of any person located in the United Kingdom.

I’m so pleased by Gabbard’s response here, including making it public, that I’m gladly willing to overlook her “back door”/”backdoor” and “UK”/”U.K.” inconsistencies. (DF style is now to close it up: backdoor.)

Short of the UK backing down and retracting its secret demand for an iCloud backdoor from Apple, this is the best that Apple and privacy advocates could hope for. The gag-order aspect of the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act prevented Apple from even fighting it in court. But a US ruling that would hold it illegal for Apple to comply would put Apple in an impossible situation, where they can’t comply with a UK legal demand without violating the law of the home country. That would actually give Apple the ground to fight this in the UK.

It is not coincidental that UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is set to visit the White House tomorrow. This is a message in advance that the US considers all aspects of this demand on Apple unacceptable.

Downie 4 ★

I referenced Downie twice earlier today — once in my item linking to Charlie Monroe (developer of Downie) writing about the indie app business, and earlier in my post about using Downie to download the MP3 from Jony Ive’s interview on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs.

I somehow hadn’t heard of (or more likely, just hadn’t noticed) Downie until a few weeks ago, when I first came across Monroe’s blog post, via Michael Tsai. Here’s the pitch for Downie, from its website:

Ever wished you could save a video from the Internet? Search no more, Downie is what you’re looking for. Easily download videos from thousands of different sites.

That’s it. You give it a web page URL, and Downie will download any video (or audio) files embedded on the page. Downie offers all sorts of convenience features, like browser extensions, post-processing, and more. But the main interface is super obvious and easy.

For years, I’ve used the open source yt-dlp command-line tool for this task (and before yt-dlp, its predecessor, youtube-dl). When I saw Downie, I thought to myself, “That looks cool, but I don’t really download that many video or audio files to justify paying for a commercial app.” But then I slapped myself (figuratively) and I realized I should at least try it. I’m so glad I did. It’s like using Transmit instead of the command-line tools for secure FTP connections. It’s cool that the Mac has a Unix terminal interface and support for zillions of free and open source utilities, but the point of using a Mac is to use great Mac apps. And Downie is a great Mac app.

What I’ve found over the last month isn’t just that I enjoy using Downie far more than invoking yt-dlp, but that I use Downie more often than I used yt-dlp, because it’s so much easier and more reliable. For example, when I wrote about Fox Sports’s new scorebug that debuted in the Super Bowl, I used Downie to download local 4K copies of this month’s Super Bowl 59, along with Super Bowl 57 from two years ago, to compare Fox’s new scorebug with their previous one. Local video files are easy to navigate frame-by-frame to capture the perfect screenshot; YouTube’s website makes it impossible to navigate frame-by-frame.

Downie is a $20 one-time purchase (and is also included with a Setapp subscription). I’ve only been using it for a month or so, and I already feel like I’ve gotten $20 of utility from it. (I went ahead and bought Monroe’s other major app, Permute, too.)

Charlie Monroe: ‘A Few Words About Indie App Business’ ★

Charlie Monroe, developer of excellent apps such as Downie and Permute:

But also don’t do this alone. I work 365 days a year. Last year, I worked 366 days (2024 was leap year). I’m not saying that I work 8 hours each day, but even during weekends, holidays, vacation, I need to tend to support emails in the morning for an hour or so and then once more in the afternoon or evening. I cannot just take off and leave for a few days without seeing the consequences and going insane when I get back. I currently receive about 100 reports from my apps each day. Some are about license code issues, some are crash reports, some are Permute conversion issues, some are Downie download issues, but it all adds up to the average of the 100 reports a day.

If I were to leave for a vacation for 10 days… You do the math what would I be getting back to. Plus your users don’t want to wait for 10 days. Even 5 days. There are users who are unwilling to wait an hour and just don’t realize that you cannot be at the computer 24-hours a day and that you’re perhaps in a different time zone and sleeping. The unfortunate thing about this is that going through the support emails in my case is something that takes about 2-3 hours a day — which is not enough to hire someone and train them. Not to mention that most of the reports actually need some technical knowledge. So unless I would hire another developer, in the end, the really administrative stuff that someone could do instead of me is a 30-minute-a-day job.

I wouldn’t recommend never taking a complete break for anyone, but there are some businesses where someone needs to spend an hour-plus on certain tasks each day. If you’re a one-person operation, that person is you, even while on vacation. No one gets into indie development because they look forward to doing support, either. It’s the designing, programming, crafting, and refining of the apps that drives them. But it’s like being a musician or comedian in some ways. For those endeavors, the grind is traveling from one city to another for gigs. Or like running a restaurant, as dramatized on The Bear — prep work, cleaning, procurement, reservations, food allergies, more cleaning. It never stops. For indie developers, the grind is support. (Small restaurants typically close for a day or two each week; technical support email addresses don’t.) There’s just always a lot of menial work involved with being a professional artist. But that’s also why so many indie developers — like, seemingly, Monroe — find the endeavor worthwhile. Because artistic work is deeply fulfilling.

A while back — around 20 years ago, at the height of the “Delicious” renaissance in indie development for Mac OS X — there was a developer who burst onto the scene with a deservedly very popular app. It was gorgeous and fast. It had a lot fewer features than other apps in its somewhat-crowded category, but that was also part of the app’s appeal. It was like a sporty little roadster in a category full of practical sedans and trucks. He eventually came out with a second app, and it too was popular. His apps were sort of like Panic’s, aesthetically, I’d say. They not only looked cool, they were well-designed from a usability perspective too. This developer, so I’ve been told, spent almost no time at all on tech support from customers. How was this possible, a friend of mine asked him. Easy, this developer said. When the inbox for support emails looked full, he’d do a Select All, then Delete. Inbox zero.

This story has always made me laugh. It’s hilarious, in a way. But ultimately it was a sign that he just wasn’t cut out for the indie app business. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that his apps went dormant around 2010, and I haven’t heard of him or from him in like 15 years. He was super talented so I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s doing great work in some other business, perhaps inside a much bigger company, where developers and designers are isolated from customers, rather than enmeshed with them like indies inherently are.

xAI’s Grok-3 Jumps to the Top of AI Leaderboards ★

Alex Heath, writing for The Verge:

Just a few weeks after everyone freaked out about DeepSeek, Elon Musk’s Grok-3 has again shaken up the fast-moving AI race. The new model is ending the week at the top of the Chatbot Arena leaderboard, while the Grok iOS app is at the top of the App Store, just above ChatGPT. Even as Musk appears to be crashing out from his newfound political power, his xAI team has managed to deploy a leading foundational model in record time. [...]

While its Deep Research reports are nowhere near as in depth as OpenAI’s, Grok-3’s “thinking” capabilities appear to be roughly on par with o1, according to Andrej Karpathy, who noted in his deep dive comparison that “this timescale to state of the art territory is unprecedented.”

Benedict Evans, back in 2021, observed:

Elon Musk is a bullshitter who delivers. This breaks a lot of people’s pattern-matching, in both directions.

This summation of Musk is more apt, and more useful, today than it was four years ago. The Boring Company is seemingly a complete fraud, and he’s been making unfulfilled promises about Tesla “full self-driving” for over a decade. But Tesla Motors has done more to make electric cars mainstream than all other automakers combined. Starlink delivers extraordinary satellite Internet service, with no real competitors. SpaceX has rejuvenated the rocket industry. xAI seems to fall on the “actually delivers” side.

Twitter/X seems to fall squarely in the middle. It’s a mess in many ways, and seems not one iota closer to Musk’s promised vision of an “everything app”, but under Musk’s ownership it has been transformed, and while it isn’t more popular than it used to be, it also isn’t less (or much less) popular. It’s just a different somewhat scummier audience and vibe.

My betting money says the whole DOGE thing is very much on the bullshit side, but Musk’s overall track record spans the gamut from outright scams to extraordinary historic accomplishments. He’s such a prolific and shameless bullshitter that I wouldn’t take Musk at his word about anything, even what he had for lunch. But I’d be loath to bet against him on an engineering endeavor.

iOS Voice Dictation Bug (?) Briefly Flashes the Word ‘Trump’ When You Say ‘Racist’ ★

Chris Welch, writing at The Verge:

Apple has acknowledged a peculiar bug with the iPhone’s dictation feature that briefly displays “Trump” when someone says the word “racist.” The Verge has been unable to reproduce the issue, but it picked up attention on Tuesday after a video demonstrating the strange substitution went viral on TikTok and other social media.

The company provided a statement to The New York Times and Fox News confirming the bug. “We are aware of an issue with the speech recognition model that powers dictation, and we are rolling out a fix as soon as possible,” an unnamed spokesperson said, according to Fox News.

From the Times story:

The issue appeared to begin after an update to Apple’s servers, said John Burkey, the founder of Wonderrush.ai, an artificial intelligence start-up, and a former member of Apple’s Siri team who is still in regular contact with the team.

But he said that it was unlikely that the data that Apple has collected for its artificial intelligence offerings was causing the problem, and the word correcting itself was likely an indication that the issue was not just technical. Instead, he said, there was probably software code somewhere on Apple’s systems that caused iPhones to write the word “Trump” when someone said “racist.”

“This smells like a serious prank,” Mr. Burkey said. “The only question is: Did someone slip this into the data or slip into the code?”

Paul Kafasis (my guest on the latest episode of The Talk Show) captured a video of the glitch in action. I guess it could be a protest prank from a rogue employee, but I suspect it’s just a machine learning glitch — maybe caused by the fact that Trump’s name gets mentioned alongside “racist” so often? It’s definitely a little weird, but all sorts of things about Siri are a little weird.

Jony Ive on ‘Desert Island Discs’ ★

Desert Island Discs is a remarkably long-running BBC Radio interview program now hosted (or presented, if you will) by Lauren Laverne. The gimmick is that guests are asked to name eight songs, a book, and a “luxury item” they’d take with them if stranded on a desert island, and those picks — including playing the songs — are sprinkled throughout the interview. This week’s guest is Jony Ive, and it’s one of the best interviews with him I’ve ever encountered. Incredibly thoughtful and inspiring, and Laverne covers a lot of ground without ever seeming the least bit hurried.

A few highlights, from Ive:

I think that one of the struggles I have, though, is in some ways, I think ironically, I struggle with being present in the now because I spend so much of my life in my head in the future. The way I try to understand the future is I’m obsessed with the past. And so the bit that often gets missed out is right now.

I know that feeling.

Regarding his early years at Apple, before the reunification with NeXT and the return of Steve Jobs, Ive spoke about the company’s severe financial troubles skewing how it thought about products:

I think when you struggle, then a goal can become just commercial issues. I understand — I mean, if you’re losing lots of money, you’d like to stop losing lots of money. The problem there is it means you focus on money, and you’re normally losing money because the products aren’t right. And from ’92 to ’97, it was a very, very difficult season. One that I am so grateful for — but I still get the shivers sometimes.

The telling word Ive used in that passage is “right”. He could have said the problem was that Apple’s mid-’90s products weren’t “good”, but he didn’t. Judging them as good or bad isn’t the correct framework. It’s that they weren’t right. There’s an inherent subjectiveness to rightness. A je ne sais quoi. The original iMac that started Ive’s long and remarkably fruitful collaboration with Steve Jobs wasn’t a hit because it was good, so much as because it was so obviously right.

(The BBC’s podcast feed for Desert Island Discs seems to run about a month behind the website, alas. I nabbed the MP3 from the BBC’s web page (using Downie) and uploaded the file manually to Overcast. Apparently the episode is also now available in the the BBC’s own BBC Sounds app.)

Apple Shareholders Resoundingly Reject Proposal to Ditch the Company’s ‘Inclusion and Diversity’ Policies; Trump Responds With His Usual Equanimity ★

Michael Liedtke, reporting for the AP:

Apple shareholders rebuffed an attempt to pressure the technology trendsetter into joining President Donald Trump’s push to scrub corporate programs designed to diversify its workforce.

The proposal drafted by the National Center for Public Policy Research — a self-described conservative think tank — urged Apple to follow a litany of high-profile companies that have retreated from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives currently in the Trump administration’s crosshairs.

After a brief presentation about the anti-DEI proposal, Apple announced shareholders had rejected it. In a regulatory filing submitted Tuesday evening, Apple disclosed that 97% of the ballots cast were votes against the measure.

President Trump, at 8am this morning, on his own very popular social network:

APPLE SHOULD GET RID OF DEI RULES, NOT JUST MAKE ADJUSTMENTS TO THEM. DEI WAS A HOAX THAT HAS BEEN VERY BAD FOR OUR COUNTRY. DEI IS GONE!!!

Needless to say, the National Center for Public Policy Research is a bunch of ding-dongs, and Trump has no idea, at all, what Apple’s actual policies and goals are for diversity — he just knows he wants them gone. (And I love the photo MacRumors’s Joe Rossignol chose for his report on this story.)

There does exist a formal world of DEI, right down to using that very acronym. Think of it as DEI™. Some universities seem overrun with it, despite results that strongly suggest it doesn’t work and some clearly objectionable dogmatic requirements. But there are obvious reasons any company (or university, or organization) ought to be concerned about diversity and inclusion, in the plain sense of those words. Not just ethical “the way things ought to be” reasons, but empirical studies have shown that diverse organizations are more successful.

It’s a spectrum. A lot of US universities are at the far left of that spectrum. The Trump administration and its proponents are, clearly, at the far right of that spectrum, where they’re seeking now to pressure companies into not even concerning themselves with “diversity” in the plainest sense of the word, and are scrubbing from government agencies words like “woman” and “disabled”. I’m being overly simplistic by presenting the left/right divide as unidimensional here. Trump, for example, has ushered in a very different “right” than that of, say, the Bush-Cheney era 20 years ago. But the DEI™ “left” is a very different left than the truly liberal free-speech left. Liberals object to DEI’s rigidity, dogma, and performative nature; Trump and his cohorts object to actual human diversity and inclusiveness.

Some big corporations, in recent years, veered pretty far to the extreme on “DEI initiatives”, and are using the current political moment to course correct back toward the (to me, sensible) center. But this course correction started long before Trump’s re-election. Here’s a CNBC story from December 2023 on Google and Meta scaling back formal DEI programs.

Apple, from my observations, has long charted its own consistent course on such matters, right down to calling their policies “Inclusion & Diversity” rather than the name-brand “DEI”. Apple didn’t lunge to the left at the height of the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, because they didn’t need to. And so they have no need to course correct now. Apple shareholders seemingly agree.

Tuesday, 25 February 2025

Yours Truly With Rene Ritchie Talking About the iPhone 16e ★: The advantage to having me on Rene’s show, rather than vice versa, is that he’ll push us through talking about a new iPhone model in 30 minutes. If I were hosting it’d be two hours. But the first hour would be about the whole James Bond film rights thing.

Monday, 24 February 2025

The Talk Show: ‘Nothing Is Possible’ ★

Special guest: Paul Kafasis. Special topics: Siri/Super Bowl nonsense, “Gulf of Mexico/America” nonsense, the iPhone 16e gets announced, and a veritable Bond villain buys the rights to the James Bond movie franchise.

Sunday, 23 February 2025

Linus Sebastian’s Thoughts After Switching to an iPhone for 30 Days ★

I’ve been meaning, since it came out in December, to link to this video from Linus Sebastian of “Linus Tech Tips” fame, and with the iPhone 16e dropping this week, now seems like a good time. It’s a common genre that dates back decades before YouTube was even a thing: longtime user of platform X switches to rival platform Y for a few weeks, and then explains what they liked, what they didn’t, what confused them, etc. This sort of thing always raises hackles because there’s a natural human tendency to get tribal — if not downright religious — about one’s platforms of choice. And Sebastian’s intro — playing to YouTube’s algorithm — frames it in a way that makes it seem like his overall take on iOS is going to be inflammatory. Right in the first 30 seconds of the 20-minute video, he says:

Just a few days into my iOS challenge I started to look a little differently at the Apple users in my life. They describe Apple products with marketing slogans like “it just works” as though they actually believe them, and it made me wonder, does Apple have one version of their products for the True Believers and then a different one for the scrubs like me? Because my time with the iPhone 16 Plus has been absolutely riddled with unintuitive design choices, unnecessarily limited functionality, and some of the weirdest bugs that I have encountered on a supposedly finished product in years.

The first time I watched the video, my finger started hovering to the close-tab button at this point. But that provocative opening isn’t really representative of Sebastian’s actual observations and complaints at all. It’s just the YouTube/social-media style. Me? I would start an essay, on, say, the things that bug me the most about Android, in the least inflammatory way possible, to open people’s minds and get as many Android proponents as possible to relax, and listen to my arguments. And then I’d try to make my case, building to a crescendo where I deliver my perhaps inflammatory conclusions only at the very end. YouTube works the reverse way — you start out in provocative fashion to raise hackles, because outrage drives engagement, but then sort of work your way back toward reasonableness.

Sebastian is a long-time Android user, but he’s not really a phone guy at all. He doesn’t review phones, typically. His own personal Android phone is several years old. His interest and renown is entirely in the field of PCs. So his video isn’t really “Android power user reviews iOS”, but more like “PC power user who is also an Android user tries an iPhone for a month”.

I like these sort of videos because I’m all-in on iOS at this point. I’ve kept an Android phone at my desk since the Google Nexus One in 2010, but the one still at my desk is a five-year-old Pixel 4. I feel more out of touch with the state-of-the-art on Android than ever. So a video like this, from the perspective of someone who is himself way out of date with the state-of-the-art on the iPhone side of the fence, is really interesting.

Sebastian winds up making a bunch of astute critiques of iOS and the iPhone experience. None of them were new to me, and none of them really left me with any sense of missing out by not being part of Team Android. But most of his complaints are completely legit — and a lot of them are things Apple should address. He complains repeatedly about iOS’s animated transitions making everything feel slow. That’s 100 percent true. As an everyday iPhone user I’m just completely used to that. But those animations really do make iPhones feel slower than they are. In terms of tech specs iPhones are literally the fastest phones on the planet. Apple’s A-series silicon is, and always has been, years ahead of the best silicon money can buy in an Android handset. But a lot of aspects of iOS feel slower than Android because of animated transitions which iOS (nor iPadOS) offers no option to speed up. It should. And the Accessibility setting to completely turn off animations doesn’t solve the problem; what I want, and I think what Sebastian wants, is faster animations. (Sebastian also justifiably complains about the fact that so many useful iOS settings are buried under Accessibility. Many of the settings in Accessibility are related to accessibility, but a lot of them would be better found in an “Advanced” section of Settings that doesn’t exist.)

Sebastian also correctly skewers iOS for its confusing audio volume settings; Android definitely wins here. Rearranging home screen icons sucks on iOS. CarPlay has annoying bugs. His fresh eyes were annoyed by something mine just accept: that Apple’s first-party apps tend to put their preference settings in the Settings app, but third-party apps tend to keep them in-app. (But now Apple is starting to do that too, with new apps like Sports.)

Give the video a watch. Again, it didn’t leave me with an iota of envy for life on the Android side of the fence, but it reminded me about a bunch of things on iOS that don’t make sense, and seemingly are the way they are only because that’s how they always have been.

Saturday, 22 February 2025

Going Deep on ‘Deep’ ★

Katy Steinmetz, writing for The Washington Post (via Mignon Fogarty):

But lately, one meaning has become trendier than the rest. Close ties to artificial intelligence have led to a surge in “deep” being used for AI-related endeavors, to the point that the word is fast becoming shorthand for “cutting-edge tech” — and is already starting to feel derivative. In 2025, “deep” is to the tech world what the plus sign (+) became a few years ago to streaming platforms such as AppleTV+, Disney+ and Paramount+.

It’s been confusing keeping track of the various deeps, just in the AI space alone:

DeepSeek — The Chinese AI lab that made waves with the launch of their “open reasoning” LLM R1 a month ago.
DeepMind — Google’s AI research lab, whose Gemini began offering a feature called “Deep Research” in December. The feature “uses AI to explore complex topics on your behalf and provide you with findings in a comprehensive, easy-to-read report.”
“Deep Research” — Also the name of a new feature OpenAI announced February 2, currently available exclusively to $200/month Pro users: “An agent that uses reasoning to synthesize large amounts of online information and complete multi-step research tasks for you.”
“Deep Research” — Also the name of a new feature from Perplexity, announced February 14: “When you ask a Deep Research question, Perplexity performs dozens of searches, reads hundreds of sources, and reasons through the material to autonomously deliver a comprehensive report.”
“DeepSearch” — New feature xAI announced this week alongside their very impressive new Grok 3 model, currently available in “beta”, ambitiously described as “a lightning-fast AI agent built to relentlessly seek the truth across the entire corpus of human knowledge.”
Deep Blue — The OG AI “deep” name holder, IBM’s chess-playing supercomputer that famously beat then-world champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match in 1997.
Deep Thoughts — Long-running Saturday Night Live bit from the great Jack Handey, a new one of which ran in last week’s SNL 50th anniversary special.

Update, 26 February: Another one! “Think Deeper” is Microsoft Copilot’s feature that’s basically what most other AI apps call “Deep Research”.

Friday, 21 February 2025

‘Ready’ Is the New ‘Approved’ ★

File this one under “precise words matter”. Remember the whole thing a few weeks back, where AltStore PAL — an EU alternative app marketplace for iOS — published Hot Tub, a hardcore porno app, and billed it as “approved” by Apple because that’s the word Apple used for apps that were merely notarized for distribution? I wrote then:

If we want to get nitty-gritty over verbs, I’d argue that Apple accepts apps — like Hot Tub — for notarization, not approves. Begrudging acceptance is more of a thing than begrudging approval.

AltStore’s Riley Testut today noted a change in Apple’s notarization confirmation emails.

February 11: “The following app has been approved for distribution”
February 19: “The following app is ready for distribution”

I only wish I’d thought of ready as an even more neutral-in-terms-of-conveying-approval word than accepted. I’d have bet my house that Apple would change this language in some way. Ready is perfect here — in no way a euphemism, but in no way conveying approval.

The 40th Anniversary of ProVUE at Macworld Expo ★

Jim Rea:

Forty years ago today the doors opened for the very first Macworld Expo in the Brooks Hall basement in San Francisco. For most of you this event probably seems like ancient history, somewhere back in the mists of time. But for me this was a very real and exciting event that I participated in as an exhibitor, the start of my amazing journey with the Mac community, a journey that continues on today.

As I recall there were two or three dozen software booths that first year. Some of the software on display included Multiplan (Microsoft), PFS:File, Think Tank, FileVision, Mac Slots, Habadex, Mac Draft, Mac Lion, Music Works, Click Art and of course OverVUE (the direct predecessor to today’s Panorama X). Of course all of these companies have long since disappeared, except for two — Microsoft and ProVUE Development. I’d say that’s a pretty nice club.

I’m quite proud to have kept ProVUE Development in the Macintosh database business every single day from then to now. The RAM based database concepts I started with in 1984 are still the core of the software today, of course much further developed. In fact, if you look at screen shots of the original OverVUE from 1984, and Panorama X from 2025, the family resemblance is unmistakeable. On the left is 68k assembly code using the original Mac ROMs, on the right is Objective-C using AppKit, but the concepts are the same. There are even databases that have been brought forward from the left all the way to the right — in continuous use over four decades!

There are old-school Mac developers still going strong, and there are old school Mac developers still going strong. I’m not sure about this “Microsoft” company, but ProVUE’s achievement here is quite remarkable. Read through for Rea’s 40% discount code to celebrate this 40-year anniversary. (Also, check out the screenshots and those crazy menu bar titles in the 1.0 version from 1984.)

Yankees Loosen The Boss’s Facial Hair Policy ★

Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner:

“In recent weeks I have spoken to a large number of former and current Yankees — spanning several eras — to elicit their perspectives on our longstanding facial hair and grooming policy, and I appreciate their earnest and varied feedback. These most recent conversations are an extension of ongoing internal dialogue that dates back several years.

“Ultimately the final decision rests with me, and after great consideration, we will be amending our expectations to allow our players and uniformed personnel to have well-groomed beards moving forward. It is the appropriate time to move beyond the familiar comfort of our former policy.”

The appropriate time to change this was years ago, but better late than never. It’s the most Yankees story possible that this policy change is much bigger news than the fact that the team today also signed manager Aaron Boone to a two-year extension through the 2027 season. MLB reporter Bryan Hoch:

The grooming policy dates to George M. Steinbrenner’s purchase of the team. As the legend goes, its roots grew in 1973, when Steinbrenner observed his team on the first-base line for Opening Day against the Cleveland Indians.

Steinbrenner was not yet “The Boss,” so new in the role that he could not identify the players by their faces. Instead, he focused upon their hair — unkempt mustaches, mutton chops and shaggy locks. He scowled, scribbling uniform numbers on a scrap of paper urgently dispatched to manager Ralph Houk. Tell these men to get a haircut, Steinbrenner commanded.

My favorite Yankee, Don Mattingly, not only ran into grief over this policy with George Steinbrenner, but again with the next team he played for.

Thursday, 20 February 2025

Barbara Broccoli on Amazon, in Private: ‘These People Are Fucking Idiots’ ★

Erich Schwartzel and Jessica Toonkel, reporting for The Wall Street Journal back on December 19, under the headline “Where Is James Bond? Trapped in an Ugly Stalemate With Amazon” (News+ link):

Nearly three years after Amazon acquired the right to release Bond movies through its $6.5 billion purchase of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio, the relationship between the family that oversees the franchise and the e-commerce giant has all but collapsed. The decaying partnership has scuttled any near-term hope of a new Bond film — a black eye for Amazon’s ambitions in Hollywood, since at the time of the MGM sale, the Bond franchise represented a significant share of the $6.5 billion the company paid for the studio.

When it comes to Bond’s future, the power lies in the hands of Barbara Broccoli, who inherited the control from her father, Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, and who for 30 years has decided when a new Bond movie can go into production. She has told friends she doesn’t trust algorithm-centric Amazon with a character she helped to mythologize through big-screen storytelling and gut instinct. This fall, she characterized the status of a new movie in dire terms — no script, no story and no new Bond.

To friends, Broccoli has characterized her thoughts on Amazon this way: “These people are fucking idiots.”

One way out of a stalemate, apparently, is to sell. Here’s Broccoli’s public statement today, accompanying the news that Eon Productions has reached a deal that shifts creative control over the franchise to Amazon:

“My life has been dedicated to maintaining and building upon the extraordinary legacy that was handed to Michael and me by our father, producer Cubby Broccoli. I have had the honor of working closely with four of the tremendously talented actors who have played 007 and thousands of wonderful artists within the industry. With the conclusion of ‘No Time to Die’ and Michael retiring from the films, I feel it is time to focus on my other projects.”

Broccoli’s brother Michael Wilson was ever so slightly more magnanimous in his statement, saying “Therefore, Barbara and I agree, it is time for our trusted partner, Amazon MGM Studios, to lead James Bond into the future,” but it’s rather striking that Broccoli said not a word about Amazon in her statement, and Wilson’s praise only went so far as the lone adjective trusted. But the lie to Wilson’s attempt at even slight magnanimity is that Eon Productions and Amazon were never partners. It was the old MGM Studios, before Amazon’s acquisition, that was Eon’s partner from the very beginning (1963’s Dr. No).

I meant to post a link to this WSJ story when it broke, and mistakenly thought I had, but it slipped through the cracks around the holidays. But I’ve had a bad feeling about the franchise’s future ever since.

Leaked Image of the First Post-Humane-Acquisition Product From HP’s Printer Division ★

Didn’t take them long to start having an impact inside HP.

(Direct link to image, for those who can’t or don’t want to see the original on X.)

Amazon MGM Studios Takes Creative Control Over James Bond Franchise ★

Alex Ritman, with blockbuster news at Variety:

Amazon MGM Studios is set to take creative control of the James Bond franchise. The shock announcement — which is sure to shake and, indeed, stir the industry — was made Thursday, alongside the news that long-time producers and custodians of 007, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, would be stepping back.

As per details of the historic agreement, Amazon MGM Studios, Wilson and Broccoli have formed a new joint venture to house the James Bond intellectual property rights. The three parties will remain co-owners of the iconic franchise but Amazon MGM will have creative control.

The villains in Bond stories are often bald billionaire industrialists who either build rockets or own media companies, with lasciviously-dressed women on their arms. It’s hard to imagine how we could come closer to a real-life Bond villain taking control of the franchise. (At least it wasn’t Musk.)

“Nepo babies” is a term that tends only to be used pejoratively, but family ownership is a proven model to nurture and maintain — to protect — exceptional companies with exceptional cultures. Berkshire Hathaway owns several where their agreements not only allowed, but encouraged, the families to maintain control post-acquisition. See’s Candies comes to mind. This letter from Warren Buffet describes their strategy. But Berkshire is itself an exceptional company. Most corporate conglomerate acquisitions of creator/family-run endeavors wreak devastation upon everything that made those smaller operations unique and special. Look at what’s happened to The Washington Post now that Bezos owns it. There’s much to complain about The New York Times in general, and current publisher A.G. Sulzberger in particular (sixth generation of family control since Adolph Ochs bought the paper in 1896), but The Times is still The Times.

Heretofore, Barbara Broccoli did that with the 007 franchise. The output was uneven under her and Wilson’s producing stewardship, but the Daniel Craig era was a splendid return to form. There’s no other movie franchise like it. The closest is Mission Impossible but that franchise is a distant second place, in my mind. It lacks a certain magic, a timeless but yet somehow always modern je ne sais quoi of the 007 franchise. Always the same, but somehow always fresh.

I expect Amazon to bleed it dry, alas. Spinoffs and “universe” expansion galore, of generally low quality in all regards: writing, casting, production values. But most of all I expect they’ll make the same fundamental mistake Disney has made with Star Wars — instead of leaving us craving more, they’ll produce as much dreck as they can and leave us saying “enough, stop”, with the occasional gems fighting for attention in a river of downright embarrassing unwatchable crap. Somehow they managed to ruin Boba Fett.

What’s the best original show or movie Amazon has ever made? The Peripheral was pretty good but they cancelled after its first season. Reacher is fun but it’s junk-food fun, not serious fun. Amazon taking control of James Bond is like McDonald’s taking over a great steakhouse chain like Del Frisco’s.

I have a bad feeling about this.

Wednesday, 19 February 2025

‘Oh, the Humane-ity’ ★

MG Siegler:

A regular person might read that headline and think, “wow, a startup sold for nine-figures — impressive.” Of course, it’s not impressive in this case. It’s a fire sale for a company that has been under duress for months after their product, the Ai Pin, failed to catch fire in the market. Actually, that’s not technically true. There was a literal risk of fire when charging the device, which led to a recall. And so you’ll forgive me for sort of re-using a headline here — but this situation is much more akin to the Hindenburg disaster from which the phrase originates.

When ‘FAQ’ Stands for ‘Fucking Angry Questions’ ★

From Humane’s “AI Pin Consumers FAQ”, which they link to with one of the best euphemisms of the year thus far — “We understand this transition may be difficult, and you may have questions”:

Key Dates to Remember:

Effective immediately: Ai Pin is no longer available for new purchases.

February 28, 2025 at 12pm PST: Ai Pin devices will no longer connect to Humane’s servers, and .Center access will be fully retired.

February 28, 2025 at 12pm PST: All customer data, including personal identifiable information (PII), will be permanently deleted from Humane’s servers.

This was a $700 purchase (for the matte black base model — polished metal ones were $800) with a mandatory $24/month service charge (which included cellular networking) and extra battery “boosters” were $70. Customers who bought when it launched last April have spent at least $1,000, but probably more, all told. Humane gave them 10 days notice before the thing turns into a brick.

Will I receive a refund for my Ai Pin?

Refunds are only available for customers who are still within the 90-day return window from their original shipment date. You are eligible to receive a refund if your product shipped on or after November 15th, 2024. All device shipments prior to November 15th, 2024 are not eligible for refunds. All refunds must be submitted by February 27th, 2025.

Translation: tough shit.

Will my Ai Pin work with another cellular provider after the shutdown?

No. Once the service is discontinued, your Ai Pin will no longer function as a cellular device or connect to Humane’s servers. This means no calls, texts, or data usage will be possible. [...]

Can I still use my Ai Pin for offline features?

Yes. After February 28, 2025, Ai Pin will still allow for offline features like battery level, etc., but will not include any function that requires cloud connectivity like voice interactions, AI responses, and .Center access.

You can check the battery of a device that no longer offers any useful functionality. I get it, companies go bust, and when they go bust, their services go bust with them. But this is exactly the sort of outcome that made Humane’s AI Pin seem more like a scam than a product all along.

Tuesday, 18 February 2025

We Found the Sucker Willing to Buy Humane, and as Promised, I’m Going to Be Insufferable, Because of Course It Was HP ★

Brody Ford, reporting for Bloomberg:

HP Inc. will acquire assets from Humane Inc., the maker of a wearable Ai Pin introduced in late 2023, for $116 million.

The deal will include the majority of Humane’s employees in addition to its software platform and intellectual property, the company said Tuesday. It will not include Humane’s Ai pin device business, which will be wound down, an HP spokesperson said.

Humane’s team, including founders Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, will form a new division at HP to help integrate artificial intelligence into the company’s personal computers, printers and connected conference rooms, said Tuan Tran, who leads HP’s AI initiatives. Chaudhri and Bongiorno were design and software engineers at Apple Inc. before founding the startup.

Yours truly, last May, when news broke that Humane was looking for a buyer, “seeking a price of between $750 million and $1 billion in a sale”:

I suspect they’ll sell for a pittance — way less than the $230 million they’ve raised. I just don’t see what they have to offer. Humane doesn’t own the AI that powers the AI Pin — that comes from OpenAI, which seemingly not only doesn’t want to buy Humane, but is supposedly in exploratory talks with Jony Ive’s LoveFrom to design and build their own AI devices. The laser projector idea seems to be a bust, and the hardware’s battery life is measured in hours between battery pack swaps.

Off the top of my head, the only company that could afford a $1 billion-ish price for Humane and is dumb enough to do it is HP.

Well, at least we can say HP was smart enough not to spend $1 billion on this. But they were dumb enough to bring into their company Chaudhri, who was described to me, by someone who worked with him at Apple (and a person whom I’ve never heard badmouth a single other former colleague), as “an utter fraud”. But a fraud whose personal website is an inadvertent testimony to the lunacy of the U.S. patent system — that it serves ego inflation, not innovation.

But who knows? Maybe I’m all wet and Humane will prove to HP what NeXT proved to Apple, and we’ll all be hanging on every thread of Imran Chaudhri keynotes in a few years and he’ll lead HP back to greatness. (Almost laughed spittle onto my screen there.)

MapQuest’s ‘Name Your Own Gulf’ ★

I cracked wise in a footnote yesterday about MapQuest still being around, but it turns out they’re not only still around, and they’re not only still labelling the Gulf of Mexico by its world-recognized not-stupid name, but they’ve actually built an entire website that perfectly jibes with my closing argument — to wit, that this whole thing is objectively hilarious and that mockery is our best tool to subvert a kakistocracy. Bravo.

A map showing the Gulf of Mexico labelled “The Gulf of the Perdue Wonderchicken”.

Sunday, 16 February 2025

‘The Hardest Working Font in Manhattan’ ★

Extraordinary illustrated essay by Marcin Wichary, documenting a typeface — and its long, fascinating, splintered history — that exemplifies the difference between beautiful and pretty. The beauty in Gorton isn’t just in its plainness and hardworking mechanical roots — it’s in the history of the 20th century itself. Gorton became such a part of the world that the bygone world of the previous century imbues how this font makes me feel.

Do yourself a favor and read this one in a comfortable chair, with a tasty slow-sipping beverage, on a screen bigger than a phone. Everything about this piece is exemplary and astounding — the writing, the photography, the depths of research. But most of all, Wichary’s clear passion and appreciation. It’s a love letter.

Clerk ★

My thanks to Clerk for sponsoring last week at DF. Integrate authentication and user management services with applications made for the Apple ecosystem with Clerk’s iOS SDK. Built with Swift, Clerk’s SDK adheres to modern standards, delivering the idiomatic and consistent developer experience you expect from Clerk.

Clerk’s iOS SDK makes use of the latest in Swift networking, allowing your code to be as readable and expressive as possible. Authenticate with your favorite social providers in just a few lines of code. Let the iOS SDK take care of managing your users’ authentication state so you can get back to building your app.

If you’re a developer looking for a modern, full-fledged user management and authentication SDK, check out Clerk.

The Best ‘Saturday Night Live’ Sketches, According to the People Who Made Them ★

Alan Siegel at The Ringer:

Ahead of ‘SNL50,’ we asked Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, Bill Hader, and more to tell us which of their sketches they hold closest to their hearts. [...]

There’s no magic formula, but the most transcendent sketches — the ones we reference and quote, even years later — often share two traits. Just ask Seth Meyers, the show’s head writer and “Weekend Update” anchor for a decade. “A lot of great SNL sketches are both obvious and unexpected,” he says. “You have to combine the two to make it rise above what, you know, could be a very good sketch.”

Fun read with some great video clips. Really looking forward to the SNL50 special tonight.

Gurman: ‘Apple’s Long-Promised AI Overhaul for Siri Runs Into Bugs, Possible Delays’ ★

Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc.’s long-promised overhaul for the Siri digital assistant is facing engineering problems and software bugs, threatening to postpone or limit its release, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Shocker.

Apple Research Paper Documents Anthropomorphic, Emotionally Expressive Robot Lamp, à la Pixar’s Luxo ★

New research published from Apple machine learning researchers Yuhan Hu, Peide Huang, Mouli Sivapurapu, Jian Zhang:

Nonverbal behaviors such as posture, gestures, and gaze are essential for conveying internal states, both consciously and unconsciously, in human interaction. For robots to interact more naturally with humans, robot movement design should likewise integrate expressive qualities — such as intention, attention, and emotions — alongside traditional functional considerations like task fulfillment, spatial constraints, and time efficiency. In this paper, we present the design and prototyping of a lamp-like robot that explores the interplay between functional and expressive objectives in movement design.

I enjoyed seeing something Luxo-esque made real, and the paper itself is fairly readable — and worth skimming at least for the illustrations. But I’ll wait for an actual product to get excited. Unlike marketing concept videos, I don’t think publishing academic research is harmful to a company — and in fact, as has been much discussed regarding Apple’s institutional penchant for secrecy, it’s seemingly essential for Apple to not only permit but encourage this, to recruit top-tier talent in the fields of machine learning and artificial intelligence. But publishing academic research is closer to publishing marketing concept videos than it is to releasing an actual product. Which is to say it doesn’t count.

Saturday, 15 February 2025

Martin Pilkington, Longtime Stalwart of the Mac and Apple Developer Community, Dies From Cancer ★

Sad news, posted to his Mastodon account:

Martin passed away yesterday, peacefully in his sleep. He was a true fighter until the bitter end but he is now pain free and at peace.

He’d been remarkably open about his battle against cancer, including the fact that he knew the end was near.

I linked to his software and writing several times over the years. He was a Mac developer’s Mac developer, with an eye for details, and his own work was infused with fine craftsmanship. His “Xcode 4: The Super Mega Awesome Review” back in 2011 was a genuine work of art and service to the community (linked with brief commentary), and he rightfully skewered Apple’s Catalyst Mac port of the Developer app in 2020 (linked with significant commentary).

Rest in peace, and my best and warmest thoughts to his friends and family.

Netflix Deeply Regrets Accidentally Making Netflix a Better Product for Its Customers ★

Joe Rosensteel:

Netflix deeply regrets accidentally making Netflix a better product for its customers. It temporarily pushed out a change that let people see Netflix shows in the Apple TV app, a change people have been asking for since the debut of the Apple TV app in 2016 with its Up Next queue and content aggregation features. Fortunately, Netflix swiftly corrected the error before too many of its users could experience anything approaching joy, or satisfaction with Netflix. Customers should definitely drop the issue and not press Netflix to turn the feature that certainly exists back on.

I see why Netflix is sticking to its guns on this one, but they’re on the wrong side. Apple TV users were overjoyed yesterday when the Netflix app briefly started integrating with the TV app for “what next”, etc. Steven Aquino described it as “jubilance”.

Only a small subset — perhaps, by Netflix’s grand global scale, downright minuscule — of Netflix users use Apple TV hardware. But those of us who do, do so because we love it. Most people think “Why pay extra for yet another box to connect, yet another remote control, yet another thing to learn, when Netflix and most other popular streaming services are just built right into my TV?” Apple TV users go the extra mile to buy the extra box — which isn’t cheap — because they have good taste and want an experience that is superior in all regards: technically, UI-wise, and privacy-wise.

So it’s not just a random small subset of its users that Netflix is disappointing by refusing to adopt the idiomatic conventions of good tvOS citizenship, it’s the subset of users who care the most, for good reasons. It’s a lot like making a Mac-like Mac app rather than serving Mac users warmed-over cross-platform slop. Or, as MG Siegler put it when he updated his post after it turned out this was a rug pull, “Fucking fuck, fuck, fuck. Do these fucking idiots know how stupid this looks and is?”

Financial Times: ‘Is Corporate America Already Souring on Trump?’ ★

Guy Chazan, Amanda Chu, and Joshua Franklin, reporting for the Financial Times (left-wing anti-capitalist fake-news ideologues):

In private conversations, some Wall Street executives go much further. One senior investment banker says the disorder and unpredictability of Trump’s actions — and those of Elon Musk, the billionaire Tesla chief who has become one of his most senior lieutenants — was greater than many business leaders had anticipated.

“With hindsight we did not appreciate the nature of what the administration was going to be like,” the banker says. “I do believe they are hurting their stated objectives of peace and prosperity.”

Via Nilay Patel, who quips:

These dummies could have had a compliant corporate Dem with literal Uber lobbyists on her staff and instead they did school shootings and measles.

Key Codes 2.2.2 ★

Many Tricks:

Key Codes displays information about the characters you type, as you type them into the log window. For each key, you’ll see its Unicode value, key code, and any modifiers.

Unless you’re a developer or script/macro tinkerer, you probably don’t need Key Codes. But when you do need it, it’s a godsend. There’s nothing else like it (anymore). Just a perfect little utility that the clever folks at Many Tricks have made available free of charge for a long time. (Available in the Mac App Store, too.)

Friday, 14 February 2025

Unpaid ‘Special Factory Employee’ ★: I’m a sucker for anything Cookie Monster, but this one really slaps.

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.

Wednesday, 12 February 2025

Apple Has Resumed Advertising on X for the First Time Since Late 2023 ★

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

Apple this month started advertising on X for the first time in more than a year. The company had stopped advertising on the social media platform in November 2023 following controversial remarks made by its owner Elon Musk.

For example, the @Apple account is running an ad promoting Safari’s privacy features. The ad was spotted by MacRumors contributor Aaron Perris. The @AppleTV account has also been running ads for the Apple TV+ show Severance.

The November 2023 outrage was in response to, among other things, Musk replying “You have said the actual truth” to a tweet from a rando that stated “I’m deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don’t exactly like them too much. You want truth said to your face, there it is.”

Musk clearly learned his lesson. Since then, he’s been lying low, out of the public eye, and refraining from any sort of controversial statements or actions. He barely even tweets anymore. The one and only time I can recall him even being in the news in the last 18 months was this year-ago profile in the Wall Street Journal documenting Musk’s health and nutrition regimen. So it’s all cool now and Apple feels comfortable advertising on the social network Musk wholly owns.

The Apple TV App Is Now Available on Android ★

Apple Newsroom:

The Apple TV app is now available to download from Google Play on Android mobile devices — including phones, tablets, and foldables — offering Android users access to hit, award-winning Apple Original series and films on Apple TV+, along with MLS Season Pass, the home of Major League Soccer.

Available around the world, the Apple TV app for Android was built from the ground up to deliver Android users a familiar and intuitive interface. Android users can subscribe to Apple TV+ and MLS Season Pass using their Google Play account on Android mobile and Google TV devices. Apple TV+ also offers a seven-day free trial.

The Apple TV app on Android includes key features like Continue Watching to pick up where a user left off across all their devices, and Watchlist to keep track of everything they want to watch in the future. The app streams seamlessly over Wi-Fi or a cellular connection, and includes the ability to download to watch offline.

One thing that’s funny about this press release is that no one from Apple is quoted in it. Not just not Eddy Cue, but no one, not even a lieutenant under Cue. The second-paragraph quotes from executives are where these press releases contain their superlatives proclaiming how awesome the news is. E.g. last week’s announcement for the new Apple Invites app — the second paragraph is a quote from Brent Chiu-Watson, a senior director of product marketing. They didn’t want to include one of those sugary quotes saying how frigging awesome it is that there’s now an Apple TV app for Android, and that it works great and if you use an Android device you can still have a great Apple TV experience.

But the Apple TV app does seem frigging awesome, and it does seem like if you use an Android device you can now have a great Apple TV experience. Here’s Dan Seifert, longtime writer and editor for The Verge, who left for a position at Google as “product critic” a year ago:

thrilled to see Apple TV land on Android devices today!

it’s an excellent Android citizen too:

themeable app icon: ✅
PIP support: ✅
offline downloads: ✅
foldable posture support: ✅

(Also perhaps ever so slightly interesting that in its announcement, Apple positioned “foldables” as an entirely separate third category from phones and tablets. I wouldn’t make a big deal of that — I’m not sure how else they could mention that the app supports “foldable posture”.)

I’m most curious about why it took so long for this to happen. Apple Music launched (albeit as a beta) for Android almost 10 years ago. (Eddy Cue then: “The menus will look like Android, you know the little hamburger they use on the top. It’ll definitely feel very much like an Android app.”) And, what I think is a related question as to why this took so long: Is Google taking its usual Play Store cut from subscriptions to TV+ made in the app?

How WikiTok Was Created ★

Benj Edwards, writing at Ars Technica:

The original idea for WikiTok originated from developer Tyler Angert on Monday evening when he tweeted, “insane project idea: all of wikipedia on a single, scrollable page.” Bloomberg Beta VC James Cham replied, “Even better, an infinitely scrolling Wikipedia page based on whatever you are interested in next?” and Angert coined “WikiTok” in a follow-up post.

Early the next morning, at 12:28 am, writer Grant Slatton quote-tweeted the WikiTok discussion, and that’s where Gemal came in. “I saw it from [Slatton’s] quote retweet,” he told Ars. “I immediately thought, ‘Wow I can build an MVP [minimum viable product] and this could take off.’”

Gemal started his project at 12:30 am, and with help from AI coding tools like Anthropic’s Claude and Cursor, he finished a prototype by 2 am and posted the results on X. Someone later announced WikiTok on Y Combinator’s Hacker News, where it topped the site’s list of daily news items.

“The entire thing is only several hundred lines of code, and Claude wrote the vast majority of it,” Gemal told Ars. “AI helped me ship really really fast and just capitalize on the initial viral tweet asking for Wikipedia with scrolling.”

At first I read that as the project taking from noon until 2am to launch, and I was impressed. Then I re-read that and realized it was just 90 minutes. Jiminy. Programming with AI assistance is just gobsmacking.

WikiTok – Web App With TikTok-Style Interface for Exploring Random Wikipedia Articles ★

WikiTok is the creation of Isaac Gemal. The premise is that it’s a TikTok-style interface for random articles from Wikipedia. One thing at a time on screen, swipe up to scroll down to the next item whenever you’re ready, and you can keep going forever if you want. But instead of videos that tend toward mindless media-diet calories, these are facts. WikiTok has no videos at all — each item is just a full-bleed image and a summary factoid. (And, of course, a “Read More” link to open the full Wikipedia entry in a new browser tab.) It’s not going to beat the actual TikTok on engagement, but TikTok can’t beat WikiTok for mental nourishment. It’s like choosing to snack on something that isn’t junk.

WikiTok works on any size device, but like TikTok, it’s clearly meant to be used on a phone. Save it to your home screen, and it’s like having an app. During this interim between the NFL season and March Madness (and after that, baseball) I’ve freed up a space on my first home screen from Apple Sports, and for the moment, I’ve put WikiTok there. I don’t know how long it’ll last. The “hit rate” for things that actually interest me is kind of low — but maybe that’s what TikTok itself is like? And, every time I launch it, I learn something interesting within a few swipes. There’s no algorithm powering what it shows, but I wish there were — I’d switch in a heartbeat to a fork of WikiTok that learns, even just a little, what sort of stuff actually interests me. Give it a try. WikiTok’s debut seems especially well-timed at the moment, given the alternative experience of checking the news.

If I could bend Gemal’s ear for just one moment, I’d beg him to consider changing the name from WikiTok to WikTok. That needless middle i syllable strikes a discordant note. Say what you want about TikTok, but it’s a great fucking name. Verbally, WikiTok sounds like WikiTalk, which sounds like what Wikipedia editors might call the meta-discussion “Talk” pages for each entry. WikTok, on the other hand, works well both visually and verbally as a parallel to TikTok.

Update 25 March 2025: I deleted the web app bookmark today, too frustrated by its inability to learn what I’m actually interested. Something like WikiTok, but with some smarts, could be so great.

Allison Johnson Reviews the Samsung Galaxy S25 and S25 Plus: ‘Incredibly Iterative’ ★

Allison Johnson, writing at The Verge:

Samsung’s Galaxy S-series is in its software era. Maybe the whole smartphone industry is, too, save for a few phones with hinges (Samsung’s included). But overall, we have exited the hardware-driven innovation cycle and are firmly in the midst of a software-based one. If you want proof, the Galaxy S25 and S25 Plus are a good place to start. [...]

This was all true of the S24 and S24 Plus and the S23 and S23 Plus. I couldn’t give you a good reason why the S25 stands out compared to Samsung’s last three generations of S-series phones. I don’t think Samsung can, either, because its entire sales pitch for the S25 revolves around software and AI capabilities — much of which will almost certainly be ported to previous S-series phones in short order.

When an innovative device form factor settles into maturity, the shift from groundbreaking new hardware dropping every few years to iterative evolution stands out. The heady, go-go years of iPhone-derived touchscreen smartphones (including iPhones themselves) weren’t that long ago. Iterative evolution is, let’s face it, more boring. Or at least it’s not exciting. But it’s inevitable.

The laptops that established the form factor were the PowerBook 100 series, which Apple shipped at the end of 1991. (Before the PowerBooks, laptops generally lacked built-in pointing devices, and were more like briefcases. Apple’s own 1989 Macintosh Portable was more like a suitcase.) Steve Jobs pulled the original MacBook Air out of its manila envelope in January 2008. Everything since then, for laptops, has been iterative.

The stretch from PowerBook 100 series to MacBook Air was about 15 years, give or take. The “smartphones are boring now” complaints really started to hit a few years ago — about 15 years after the 2007 original iPhone. Somewhere in the second decade is when year-over-year changes start to become more and more iterative. But compound interest generates tremendous wealth over time. People wrongly think Apple’s success is forged mostly by spectacular groundbreaking products, but the true key to their success is nonstop iterative improvement. That, as I wrote in 2010, is how Apple actually rolls. You wouldn’t want to use a 2010 MacBook Pro today. There will be small generational leaps and innovations to come (including, perhaps, an “iPhone Air” this year — and future leaps like 2020’s debut of Apple Silicon), but the wheels of technological progress are mostly done wowing us with one-, two-, and maybe even three-year improvements to phones. But trading in a phone older than that should continue to pack a significant amount of wow. So it goes.

Johnson:

Maybe this says more about what passes for a “small” phone in 2025, but the Galaxy S25 is secretly the best small Android phone you can buy in the US. That’s probably not intentional — more like a victory in a war of attrition. Google’s phones since the Pixel 5 only come in big and bigger, and niche small phone options like the Asus Zenfone have dropped out of the race. By merely continuing to exist with a 6.2-inch screen, the smaller S-series model has become the default option if you don’t want a huge Android phone.

Google’s Pixel 9 and 9 Pro have 6.3-inch displays, not too much bigger than the S25, but the trend is clear. All phones are getting bigger. Everyone knows the 5.4-inch iPhone 12 and 13 Minis weren’t hits, sales-wise, but the people who preferred them absolutely loved them. I’ll bet some of you are reading this, nodding your heads, with your aging 12/13 Minis still in your pockets, dreading the day you upgrade — knowing that the longer you wait, the larger the “smallest” new iPhone will be. Maybe this year’s much-rumored thin-is-in “iPhone Air” will take some of the sting out of that.

The Information: Apple Chooses Alibaba as AI Partner in China ★

Qianer Liu and Jing Yang, reporting for The Information (paywalled, alas — MacRumors summary):

Apple has recently started working with Chinese internet and e-commerce giant Alibaba Group to roll out artificial intelligence features in China, according to one person with direct knowledge of the decision. The move is part of Apple’s strategy to offer more compelling software features to counter declining sales in the country, where it faces increasing competition from domestic brands like Huawei and Vivo.

Apple and Alibaba have submitted the Chinese AI features they co-developed for approval by China’s cyberspace regulator, the person added, indicating that the partnership has gained significant progress. [...]

The iPhone maker began testing different AI models from prominent Chinese AI developers beginning in 2023 and last year selected Baidu as the primary partner, said two of the people. But the collaboration ran into snags because Baidu’s progress in developing its models for Apple Intelligence fell short of Apple standards.

As a result, Apple in recent months started to consider other options, assessing models developed by Tencent, ByteDance, Alibaba, as well as Deepseek, said two people with direct knowledge of the matter. Apple eventually passed over Deepseek’s models because the Deepseek team lacked the manpower and experience required to support a large customer like Apple, said one of the people.

Tuesday, 11 February 2025

iTools, Apple’s Original ‘Internet Strategy’, From January 2000 ★

From the Apple Newsroom archive, dateline “Macworld Expo, San Francisco — January 5, 2000”:

Apple today took the wraps off its highly anticipated Internet strategy, introducing a new category of Internet services called iTools; a completely redesigned Apple.com web site featuring iReview and iCards; and a multi-year partnership and investment with Earthlink for Internet access (see related release).

iTools is a revolutionary new category of Internet services that takes advantage of Apple’s unique technology on both ends of the Internet — the operating system on the client side (Mac OS 9) and the services software running on Apple’s Internet servers (iTools). Providing the software on both ends of the Internet offers Apple the unprecedented ability to offer services impossible to implement solely on Internet servers.

“Our new iReviews, iCards and the revolutionary iTools offer amazing new ways for Mac users to take full advantage of the Internet,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s iCEO. “Mac users can now do things on the Internet that Wintel users can only dream of.”

It’s striking in hindsight how much Apple, circa 2000, was unabashedly the scrappy underdog. If an announcement is truly highly anticipated you don’t have to describe it as “highly anticipated”. And that Jobs quote, including the colloquial “Wintel”.

And from the feature list:

Mac.com, an email service run by Apple. Mac.com gives users an exclusive address on the Internet and works with standard POP email clients, such as Outlook Express, Eudora and Netscape Communicator. Mac.com users can easily set up automatic replies and forwarding of their email to other email addresses, and configure Outlook Express for their Mac.com mailbox from a simple web page.

So I misremembered the timeline of how I got into my bifurcated Apple Account situation earlier today (but I was correct in that post to be uncertain of the timeline). My @mac.com address did predate the debut of the iTunes Music Store, but I’ve had it since iTools was announced in January 2000, not when .Mac (worst Apple name ever?) was announced in July 2002. (Thanks to Thomas Brand for reminding me.) The branding evolution is:

iTools (2000) → .Mac (2002) → MobileMe (2008) → iCloud (2011)

It took Apple a decade to get from iTools to iCloud, but iCloud has proven to be a winner. It’s interesting to think of the “Internet moment” circa 2000 compared to the “AI moment” today. Circa 2000, the hot new companies didn’t make computers or devices, and they didn’t make software that ran on consumer devices. They made websites and web apps that ran in browsers on devices.

The bear case against Apple then was that they’d missed the boat on the big new thing, and their core strengths were no longer relevant. Pretty much the same bear case now re: AI. The difference is that Apple today is not only not a “scrappy underdog” — they’re the most valuable company in the world.

Apple Completes Pixelmator Acquisition ★

Juli Clover, reporting for MacRumors:

Pixelmator last year announced that it was being acquired by Apple, and today the company confirmed that the acquisition has been completed after Apple received regulatory approval. The Pixelmator for iOS, Pixelmator Pro, and Photomator apps were today updated with a new splash screen announcing the deal.

Previously: “Pixelmator Acquired by Apple; Future of Their Apps Uncertain”. Apple being Apple, they still haven’t dropped a clue what they’re going to do with Pixelmator (the namesake app) or Photomator.

Apple Support: ‘About Migrating Apple Account Purchases Between Accounts’ ★

New Apple support document dropped today:

You can choose to migrate apps, music, and other content you’ve purchased from Apple on a secondary Apple Account to a primary Apple Account. The secondary Apple Account might be an account that’s used only for purchases. You’ll need access to the primary email address or phone number and password for both accounts, and neither account should be shared with anyone else. Learn more about how to migrate purchases.

At the time of migration, the Apple Account signed in for use with iCloud and most features on your iPhone or iPad will be referred to as the primary Apple Account.

At the time of migration, the Apple Account signed in just for use with Media & Purchases will be referred to as the secondary Apple Account.

This might be the “finally” to end all finallys. I really never thought I’d see this day when Apple finally made this possible. This document presents a solution to a situation I’ve been in (and with each subsequent media purchase, digging deeper into) for over 20 years.

This whole thing started so long ago that I can’t even recall exactly how I got into this. As best I can recall it went something like this. When Apple launched the iTunes Music Store in April 2003, I created my store account using an @daringfireball.net email address. In some sense that seems like an odd choice in hindsight, insofar as that’s my “work” address, but at the time (even though Daring Fireball was less than a year old) it felt like my best “forever” email address. I felt very certain from the start I’d be doing this forever.

I chose to use my DF email address for the iTunes Store in 2003 despite the fact that I had created my @mac.com email address in the summer of 2002 when Apple launched .Mac — a few weeks before I launched Daring Fireball. I signed up for .Mac to get a good username, “just in case” (although I didn’t score “gruber” — someone beat me to it, despite the fact that I signed up during or soon after the end of the keynote in which .Mac was announced), but I never anticipated using it much. But .Mac became MobileMe, MobileMe became iCloud, and iCloud now is one’s primary Apple Account. 20 years ago it just wasn’t clear at all that the .Mac account I created would be so central to being an Apple platform user for decades to come.

So fast forward to today, and I’ve had two Apple Accounts on every device I use for the last 20-or-so years. One for “Media and Purchases” (my original iTunes account, using the @daringfireball.net address), and my primary Apple ID (the @mac.com address). All my purchases — all the music, books, apps, subscriptions, and thousands of dollars in movies that I’ve purchased with that iTunes account over the years — are using an Apple Account that’s not my iCloud account.

Apple has made this bifurcation work pretty well over the years, seemingly not just because many longstanding customers are in the same boat as me, but many Apple employees are themselves passengers on that boat. “Just make it so you can transfer purchases from a secondary old account to your primary one” sounds easy, conceptually, but apparently it was devilishly tricky under the hood.

But it seems Apple has figured it out and implemented a solution. I’ll wait and let others try this before I do (if it ain’t broke don’t fix it), but if any of you try this, I’m curious how it goes — especially if you’re part of a family sharing group.

(Via Chris Espinosa, who I suppose counts as both a longstanding employee and customer.)

‘The Wild True Story Behind Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl Halftime Show’ ★

Angela Watercutter, with a great behind-the-scenes look at the Apple-Music-sponsored halftime show by Kendrick Lamar:

While “making it work” means one thing when you’re putting on a Madonna concert or the Democratic National Convention, it means something different when you’re trying to squeeze it into a national title match between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles. For one, you have to get all of the staging, lights, dancers, and the artist themselves onto the field in 7.5 minutes and then get them off 6 minutes after the final note. For another, you have to do all of this on a field where the biggest NFL game of the year is being played — without screwing up the turf.

It seems like a great ongoing relationship for Apple Music to sponsor these halftime shows. Amazon Prime has Thursday Night Football, and Google’s YouTube TV has the NFL Sunday Ticket package (which Apple seriously bid for, but didn’t get). That leaves Apple TV+ as the biggest streaming platform from a big tech company that doesn’t have any NFL games. Sponsoring the Super Bowl halftime show gives the NFL a relationship with Apple.

And Apple seems happy to let the shows themselves be artist-centric. This was Kendrick Lamar’s show, presented by Apple Music — not Apple Music’s show featuring Kendrick Lamar. I could be wrong, but I think the old Pepsi halftime shows were more Pepsi-centric, more focused on spectacle than showmanship. There were some small lyrical adjustments, but those might have been at the NFL’s behest more than Apple’s. Apple let Lamar do his thing, despite the fact that the target of his enmity, Drake, was literally the artist who Apple invited on stage at WWDC 2015 to introduce Apple Music.

Saturday, 8 February 2025

Eddy and Tim’s Excellent Super Bowl Adventure ★

Looks like more of an Eddy scene than a Tim scene, but everyone’s having fun. There’s a reason this is the 11th Super Bowl held in New Orleans.

Should be a good football game, too. The Chiefs and Eagles are both very good teams (and both very well-run franchises). There’s a strong case to be made that these are the two best teams in the NFL this season. And without question they’re two of the top four (I’d add the Bills and Ravens). If you’re only a casual fan, you might think that happens every year. A championship game, ideally, would always feature two of the very best teams. But that’s often not the way it works out. This year it did. What’s similar about both the Chiefs and Eagles is that both teams are full of surprises and tricks — they often do things no one would expect. But even more often, they do exactly what everyone expects them to do, the most predictable thing possible, and it just can’t be stopped even when the other team knows it’s coming. Anyway, I’m picking the Birds.

The Internet Archive Unveils Marble Bust of Aaron Swartz ★

Zara Stone, reporting for The Standard:

“There’s a renaissance happening now in Aaron Swartz-land,” said Lisa Rein, the co-founder of Creative Commons, a nonprofit devoted to expanding public access to information. She founded Aaron Swartz Day in 2013, an annual hackathon and tribute held on his birthday. There’s now an Aaron Swartz Institute in Brazil, a documentary, multiple books and podcasts — even an Aaron Swartz memecoin (“Do not buy,” she warned).

Aaron, I know, would have laughed at that.

Emmett Shear, the former CEO of Twitch and a partner at Y Combinator, was one of the few people who knew Swartz personally. “I’m glad he’s become a symbol, he would approve of that,” he shared, his voice slightly breaking. “I really miss him.”

I miss him too. Man. But I find it weird that there were only “few people who knew him” at the event. So many people knew him. That’s part of what made Aaron Aaron — he knew everyone interesting on the internet.

I’m not so sure, either, that he’d approve of all this, his status as a symbol to a generation who never knew him, only of him. I don’t think he’d disapprove, either, because the folks holding him up as an icon — internet freedom and preservationist zealots — are, thankfully, aligned with Aaron’s own righteous obsessions. But I think he’d be a little weirded out. He wasn’t a “I hope they erect a larger-than-life statue of me” sort of guy. And if he had been, we wouldn’t have loved him like we did. It’s just a terrible thing that we lost him so young.

TikTok Is Now Distributing Its Android App for Installation via Sideloading ★

TikTok, on X:

We’re enhancing ways for our community to continue using TikTok by making Android Package Kits available at http://TikTok.com/download so that our U.S. Android users can download our app and create, discover, and connect on TikTok.

Tens of millions of users installing a binary straight from the Chinese Communist Party right to their phones — what could go wrong?

They also link to this support document on their website, which includes these instructions for iOS:

To access TikTok on iOS devices:

Go to www.tiktok.com/download.

Tap Add TikTok to Home Screen and follow the steps to create a shortcut to TikTok.com to the home screen on your device.

Which is another way of saying “Use the web app”, which is actually safe. I don’t know if they’ve always had this web app version of the app or if they scrambled to put it together during this standoff, but it’s not bad. But it’s got some very obvious layout glitches. (If you’re a regular TikTok user, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how this mobile web app compares to the actual native iOS app. Let me know.)

I suspect something is going to give on this standoff. Either (a) China relents and actually sells to a U.S. company, and TikTok comes back to the App Store and Play Store; or (b) Trump’s extralegal extension expires with no sale and Oracle and Akamai are forced to pull the plug on ByteDance’s cloud services in the US. Another extension is another possibility, of course, but I think Republican China hawks like Tom Cotton only have one grace period in them. We’ll see.

If I’m wrong and TikTok remains in this half-zombie state in the US — unavailable in the App Store or Play Store, but operational if you have the app installed on your phone — it’ll be interesting if TikTok is the app that makes the mass market actually care about the lack of sideloading on iOS. It’ll be interesting too if sideloading on Android goes mainstream because of this. This could be a fascinating experiment. Proponents of Apple permitting Mac-style software distribution on iOS often argue that normal people, who aren’t technically adept or savvy — simply won’t do it, because they don’t care enough to jump through the hoops and click through the warnings about the risks of sideloading. But maybe TikTok is so popular it could break through. Not to mention the fact that ByteDance can use TikTok itself to algorithmically boost pro-sideloading videos, and perhaps even push a trend that if you care about TikTok, you should switch to Android.

Jason Snell Went There, Calls for iOS to Follow the Mac Model for Software Distribution ★

Jason Snell, in a column for Macworld back in November (same column at Six Colors, for members):

This is an important moment. Apple has built two separate models for running software on our devices. In one, there’s a gradient of trustworthiness that strongly encourages users to stick to the safe, well-lit paths–but allows competitors to go their own way and users to make different decisions than Apple would prefer they make. And, yes, at the extremes, users can behave in ways that might open them up to danger, but only after many warnings. It’s a very good system. Apple built it that way because it cares about the Mac, the Mac ecosystem, and Mac users.

Of course, the other model is the one we’re familiar with from iOS: There’s only one layer and Apple entirely controls it. Even though we’re spending thousands of dollars to own devices that can run software developed by clever people from all over the world, Apple believes that only it should be able to determine what kinds of apps are allowed, that it should always be cut in on the revenue of every financial transaction inside those apps, and that if it doesn’t like anything about a developer’s app, it can demand it be changed or the app made to disappear into oblivion.

That both of these approaches come from the same company is… kind of staggering, to be honest. [...] I know which Apple-built approach should be the model for the future of software on computing devices. The good news is that Apple has already built it. The era of top-down control of our devices needs to end. The Mac is the model.

I’ve been itching to link to this since he wrote it, but I was torn between the urge to write something long, or just link to it and keep my commentary short. Short it is, for now. I don’t think Snell is wrong. I know many — perhaps most? — of you reading this agree with him. I’m quite certain that if iOS shifted to Mac-style rules for software distribution, I personally would enjoy it with zero downsides — I’d gain access to software previously unavailable from the App Store (we could make Kotoba a simple download, for example), new software that never existed in the first place due to App Store rules would spring into existence, and I’m quite confident I’d personally never once be tricked or fooled into installing even a single piece of software I’d later come to regret. So if Apple were ever to follow Snell’s advice — whether by a change of mind in Cupertino, or begrudgingly at the figurative gunpoint of government regulation — I would personally come out happier for it. So too, probably would you.

But I don’t think Apple should do this, because I think there are tens of millions — maybe hundreds of millions — of iPhone users who would wind up installing apps they’d come to regret having installed. An updated, longer take from me on this will have to wait, but for now, I direct your attention to these previous takes on at least some aspects of this:

June 2021: “Annotating Apple’s Anti-Sideloading White Paper”
November 2021: “Craig Federighi’s Sideloading Keynote at Web Summit”
January 2024: “Coming to Grips With Apple’s Seemingly Unshakable Sense of Entitlement to Its Commissions From Third-Party iOS Apps”

‘Torrenting From a Corporate Laptop Doesn’t Feel Right’ ★

Ashley Belanger, reporting for Ars Technica on new details from an authors group lawsuit alleging Meta trained its AI models on a trove of pirated books:

Last month, Meta admitted to torrenting a controversial large dataset known as LibGen, which includes tens of millions of pirated books. But details around the torrenting were murky until yesterday, when Meta’s unredacted emails were made public for the first time. The new evidence showed that Meta torrented “at least 81.7 terabytes of data across multiple shadow libraries through the site Anna’s Archive, including at least 35.7 terabytes of data from Z-Library and LibGen,” the authors’ court filing said. And “Meta also previously torrented 80.6 terabytes of data from LibGen.”

Supposedly, Meta tried to conceal the seeding by not using Facebook servers while downloading the dataset to “avoid” the “risk” of anyone “tracing back the seeder/downloader” from Facebook servers, an internal message from Meta researcher Frank Zhang said, while describing the work as being in “stealth mode.” Meta also allegedly modified settings “so that the smallest amount of seeding possible could occur,” a Meta executive in charge of project management, Michael Clark, said in a deposition.

Now that new information has come to light, authors claim that Meta staff involved in the decision to torrent LibGen must be deposed again because the new facts allegedly “contradict prior deposition testimony.” Mark Zuckerberg, for example, claimed to have no involvement in decisions to use LibGen to train AI models. But unredacted messages show the “decision to use LibGen occurred” after “a prior escalation to MZ,” authors alleged.

Regardless of how you feel about AI training on public data, you have to be a zealot not to acknowledge that a lot of stuff falls into a gray zone. Torrenting 81 terabytes of pirated books is not in the gray zone. It’s hilarious to imagine Zuckerberg giving the OK to pirate all these books, just not from the office.

Friday, 7 February 2025

Apple Settles Lawsuit Against Former Employee Who Leaked to The Information and WSJ ★

Joe Rossignol, reporting for MacRumors:

Last year, we reported that Apple sued its former software engineer Andrew Aude for providing journalists with confidential information about the company’s future plans, including details about the Journal app, Vision Pro headset, and more.

As reported by 9to5Mac, the Superior Court of Santa Clara County on Thursday dismissed the lawsuit after Apple and Aude reached an agreement to resolve this matter. The court document for the case’s dismissal does not provide any specific details about the agreement, but Aude issued a public apology on the same day.

Aude’s apology, on X:

I spent nearly eight years as a software engineer at Apple. During that time, I was given access to sensitive internal Apple information, including what were then unreleased products and features. But instead of keeping this information secret, I made the mistake of sharing this information with journalists who covered the company. I did not realize it at the time, but this turned out to be a profound and expensive mistake. Hundreds of professional relationships I had spent years building were ruined. And my otherwise successful career as a software engineer was derailed, and it will likely be very difficult to rebuild it. Leaking was not worth it. I sincerely apologize to my former colleagues who not only worked tirelessly on projects for Apple, but work hard to keep them secret. They deserved better.

We don’t know the terms of Aude’s agreement with Apple that ended the lawsuit, but it’s good to see he and the company remain on close enough terms for Apple to have helped him craft that apology. (Either that, or Aude should have worked in Apple’s comms department, not engineering.)

Here’s my post from last March when the lawsuit was filed, which includes a few of the juiciest nuggets, including this, from Apple’s filing:

Apple learned of Mr. Aude’s misconduct in the fall of 2023. When Apple met with him to discuss his improper disclosures, Mr. Aude promptly confirmed his guilt through his actions, if not his words. At the start of his November 7, 2023 interview, Mr. Aude repeatedly denied that he had leaked any information to anyone. He also claimed that he did not have his Apple-issued work iPhone with him. Feigning the need to visit the bathroom mid-interview, Mr. Aude then extracted his iPhone from his pocket during the break and permanently deleted significant amounts of evidence from his device. This included the Signal app, which memorialized his history of leaking information to “Homeboy” (and likely others) via encrypted communications. [...]

In Mr. Aude’s screenshot below memorializing his exchange with the WSJ journalist, Mr. Aude exclaimed that he could not “wait for chaos to break out” in reaction to a forthcoming article reflecting his leaked information.

End-to-end encrypted comms don’t help much when you save screenshots of those chats to your work-issued company-controlled device.

And my own closing:

Worth noting that Aaron “Homeboy” Tilley was a reporter for The Information until September 2019, when he left to join the WSJ. Anyway, I’m sure the WSJ will help Aude out with his legal bills.

Tuesday, 4 February 2025

Tim Sweeney on the Apps With Porn in Apple’s App Store ★

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, on X:

Apple is being extremely disingenuous in attacking the European Union here. The iOS App Store hosts the Reddit app, which provides access to massive amounts of porn. Apple knows this, permits it, and gave Reddit a 17+ (!!!) rating and Editors Choice award. [...]

As a recently deleted (by who?) post on the r/iOS subreddit explains, Apple’s iOS App Store welcomes apps that host tons of porn, as Reddit does, as long as the majority of the content isn’t porn, and the app has controls to hide the porn.

Sweeney has a real point here, and it really is a bit of a conundrum. I’m not sure what he’s alluding to with the “by who?” parenthetical, but I don’t think one deleted Reddit thread on the topic was the result of Apple dispatching some Men in Black agents to knock on Reddit’s door. Reddit is full of non-deleted threads from people asking variations of the same question. And the press has been covering the saga for a decade.

But how is it possible that these super popular platforms have apps in the no-porn App Store while hosting tons of porn? It’s an issue with Reddit, with Tumblr (multiple times), and apparently especially so with X (fka Twitter). (I’m not trying to feign prudishness here, but I’ve heard, several times, that you really don’t want to go looking for NSFW content on X because what you’ll find is ... something.)

I think Sweeney’s synopsis captures Apple’s de facto policy accurately, with the exception that they don’t welcome apps that host porn (so long as the app has controls to hide it, and if the adult content is effectively a side hustle in the overall context of the app), but tolerate it. It’s a de facto policy of tolerating unadvertised pornographic content on platforms that are too big to ban from the App Store without generating far more of an outcry than any controversy over the side-hustle porn will.

Some banks are too big to fail. Some platforms are too big to ban. Apple won’t say that, but that’s clearly the tacit policy. It’s not confusing that the exceptions are super popular apps — they are exceptions because they’re super popular. And it’s absolutely not a policy of looking the other way — Apple’s policing of the situation is an enormous never-ending pain in the ass for the platforms involved. To see NSFW content in the iOS Reddit app, for example, you need to be signed in, and enable an off-by-default setting. Tumblr does similar. You can’t just download the Reddit or Tumblr apps from the App Store and innocuously find yourself viewing pornography.

AltStore PAL Is Free of Charge, Thanks to ‘MegaGrant’ From Epic Games ★

Apple, in its media statement re: Hot Tub (the you-have-to-admit-it’s-a-fun-name hardcore porn app now available in the AltStore PAL alternative app marketplace in the EU), closed its statement with the following: “The truth is that we are required by the European Commission to allow it to be distributed by marketplace operators like AltStore and Epic who may not share our concerns for user safety.”

On X, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney wrote:

Contrary to Apple’s false statement, the Epic Games Store doesn’t carry this app, doesn’t carry any porn apps, and has never carried porn apps.

Epic Games does run an alternative app marketplace for iOS in the EU, and Sweeney is correct that neither Hot Tub, nor any other porno apps, are in it. But what Apple is alluding to here is Epic’s financial backing of AltStore by way of an “Epic MegaGrant”. AltStore announced the grant back in August:

GOOD NEWS EU 🇪🇺 For innovation in app distribution, Epic Games has granted us a MegaGrant grant that we plan to use to cover Apple’s Core Technology Fee going forward — and we won’t take it for granted!

What does this mean? AltStore PAL is now FREE — no subscription necessary 🎉

Prior to the grant, AltStore PAL charged €1.50 per installation to cover Apple’s Core Technology Fee, the rules for which have gotten more complicated since originally announced, but for app marketplaces themselves (like AltStore PAL) costs €0.50 per-user per-first-installation per-year. After the grant from Epic, AltStore PAL became a free download.

Is it fair for Apple to lay AltStore PAL’s content decisions at Epic’s feet? I’d say it’s more fair than describing Hot Tub as “approved” by Apple for having been notarized.

Dithering ★

If you enjoy podcasts, you should subscribe to Dithering, the twice-weekly 15-minutes-on-the-button podcast I do with Ben Thompson. Dithering as a standalone subscription costs just $7/month or $70/year. (It’s also included in Ben’s excellent Stratechery Plus bundle.) People who try Dithering seem to love it, too — we have remarkably little churn.

If you’re on the fence, subscribe for a month and you’re only out $7 — but I bet you’ll stick around. Trust me. And thanks to everyone who’s already subscribed.

Monday, 3 February 2025

LBJ on the Difference between Republicans and Democrats ★

The LBJ Presidential Library, regarding a largely ad-libbed address Lyndon Johnson gave to a group of 150 non-incumbent Democratic candidates for Congress in 1966:

He talked about the difference between Republicans and Democrats: “We’re for something, and they are against everything. Mr. Rayburn was asked one time, ‘What do you think — after 50 years — is the primary difference between the Republican and Democratic parties? Is it the tariff?’

“‘No.’

“‘Well, what is the difference?’

“Mr. Rayburn replied, ‘I’ll tell you the easiest and best explanation — one that I have observed, and I came here during Woodrow Wilson’s administration. They hate all of our Presidents.’

“He said, ‘I didn’t hate Harding. I felt sorry for him, but I didn’t hate him.’ He said, ‘I didn’t hate Coolidge. I thought he was totally inadequate to the responsibility, but I used to go down and eat scrambled eggs and just watch him. He never said anything. You couldn’t tell what he thought of anything.’

“He said, ‘I didn’t get angry with Hoover. Everything in the country folded up and we had bread lines all over the country and everybody in the Southwest was chasing rabbits in order to eat. But I didn’t hate him. We tried to help him. But look what they did to Roosevelt when he came in. They were after his wife. They were after his daughter. And they finally got down after his dog.’”

And LBJ pointed toward the South Lawn where his beagles were kept and said: “And I’ve got three of them out there to jump on if they want to.”

He talked about the difference between constructive action and obstructive action: “Any jackass can kick a barn down. But it takes a carpenter to build one.”

Much has changed in the last 60 years. Much has not.

‘Apple in China’ – New Book by Patrick McGee, Coming in May ★

Speaking of books, Simon & Schuster announced a new one:

Apple isn’t just a brand; it’s the world’s most valuable company and creator of the twenty-first century’s defining product. The iPhone has revolutionized the way we live, work and connect. But Apple is now a victim of its own success, caught in the middle of a new Cold War between two superpowers.

On the brink of bankruptcy in 1996, Apple launched a new strategy to outsource its manufacturing. After experimenting in eight countries, nearly all of its operations were lured to China by the promises of affordable, ubiquitous labour. As the iPod and iPhone transformed Apple’s fortunes, their sophisticated production played a seminal role financing, training, supervising, and supplying Chinese manufacturers — skills Beijing is now weaponizing against the West.

Apple in China is the sometimes disturbing and always revelatory story of how an outspoken, proud company that once praised “rebels” and “troublemakers” — the company that encouraged us all to “Think Different” — devolved into a silent, passive partner to a belligerent regime that increasingly controls its fate.

I’ve long been a fan of McGee’s work as the Financial Times’s Silicon Valley correspondent. Two years ago, the Financial Times ran a good two-part series by McGee that seemingly started him down the path to this book: “How Apple Tied Its Fortunes to China”, and “What It Would Take for Apple to Disentangle Itself From China”. Both are worth reading. This chart from the first report shows just how reliant Apple remains on Chinese manufacturing, and this one from the second shows just how remarkably profitable the iPhone is.

Rick Reilly’s ‘Commander in Cheat’ ★

Speaking of cheating, my favorite book from Trump’s first term was Rick Reilly’s Commander in Cheat, which I linked to, with an excerpt still available at The Guardian, when it came out in 2019. I’ve been a fan of Reilly’s writing since I was a teenager and he was the back-page columnist for Sports Illustrated; this is the book Reilly was born to write. I just picked my copy off my shelf and started to re-read it, and got sucked right back in. Posting this link is my way of forcing myself to put it down until tonight.

(Main link here is an Amazon affiliate one, which will make me rich if you purchase through it. If you prefer not to buy books from Amazon, here’s a link to Bookshop.org.)

Elon Musk Cheats at Video Games ★

Drew Harwell, at The Washington Post (gift link, via Harwell himself on Bluesky — which seemingly uses a ludicrously long 397-character token in the URL):

But after poring over his live-streamed gameplay, online sleuths recently made a shocking accusation: Musk had cheated. They suspected that he had pursued a widely mocked tactic known as “boosting,” paying strangers to play his character and rake in loot so that, when he logged in, he could face challenges with the most powerful gear.

Musk fought the allegations before ultimately confessing in messages this month. “It’s impossible to beat players in Asia if you don’t,” he wrote. A few days later, his character could be seen chasing treasure through the game’s sulfuric caverns while Musk was in the Capitol Rotunda, attending President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Every cheater’s story is the same: “I’m not cheating, and I’m offended you’d accuse me.” Then, presented with incontrovertible proof, “I had to cheat because everyone else is cheating so it’s the only way to win, and anyone who isn’t doing it is a simp.” But the simple truth is that cheaters are rotten people, and most people naturally despise cheating.

But watching Musk’s streams, Jake began to suspect foul play. The billionaire did amateurish things, such as failing to drink mana flasks when he needed them and trying to pick up items when his inventory was full. And he made comments that struck devoted players as clueless, saying, for instance, that his character’s “Hand of Wisdom and Action” gloves, which rank among the game’s most valuable items, “could be better.” A normal gamer could write these off as simple flubs in the heat of battle, Jake said. But Musk was supposedly a global grand master, and gamers at that level don’t make these kinds of mistakes.

“It’s like if you said you’re the number two truck driver in the world … and when you try to get the truck to turn on, the windshield wipers start going,” Jake said. “It just felt like there was no way this guy did this.”

When Jake posted a thread on Reddit documenting Musk’s “suspicious” gameplay, the accusations kicked up a firestorm, with “Path of Exile 2” fans scraping through the streams Musk had posted to X for clues of what some were calling his “stolen valor.” [...]

By paying someone else to earn him his high-level gear, they said, he had removed most of the challenge — only to boast how quickly he had beaten others who played fair and square. One poster on a Diablo subreddit called it “unbelievably pathetic” that the world’s richest man would feel “the need to cheat” in a video game to “claim he is good at something” most people “couldn’t care less about.”

It’s the boasting that’s most revealing.

It’s a trope as old as fiction itself that villains cheat at everything. Auric Goldfinger cheated at golf, famously. And in Ian Fleming’s Moonraker (but not the movie), the whole plot was driven by M’s suspicion that mysterious millionaire (the billionaire of the 1950s) industrialist Hugo Drax was cheating at cards at their gentlemen’s club. He assigned Bond to figure out how he was cheating, and Bond stumbled into Drax’s plot to annihilate London. Drax, you see, is in fact a Nazi. And his industry: rocketry.

‘Don’t Believe Him’ ★

Ezra Klein in an audio essay/transcribed column at The New York Times:

That is the tension at the heart of Trump’s whole strategy: Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality. He is hoping that perception then becomes reality. That can only happen if we believe him. [...]

What Trump wants you to see in all this activity is command. What is really in all this activity is chaos. They do not have some secret reservoir of focus and attention the rest of us do not. They have convinced themselves that speed and force is a strategy unto itself — that it is, in a sense, a replacement for a real strategy. Don’t believe them.

It is easy and quick, often instantaneous, to destroy things. It is hard and slow work to build new things, and often even harder and slower work to improve existing ones.

I had a conversation a couple months ago with someone who knows how the federal government works about as well as anyone alive. I asked him what would worry him most if he saw Trump doing it. What he told me is that he would worry most if Trump went slowly. If he began his term by doing things that made him more popular and made his opposition weaker and more confused. If he tried to build strength for the midterms while slowly expanding his powers and chipping away at the deep state where it was weakest.

That’s the optimistic take — Trump and his new administration are trying to manically (or is it maniacally?) punch their way to a first-round knockout. They’re utterly unprepared for a 15-round grueling slog. The pessimistic take is that the first-round knockout might happen.

The ultimate power in America isn’t our political or legal systems. It’s our culture. Our collective attitudes. We, collectively, are quite obviously very bad at history, because we, collectively, clearly forgot how chaotic a Trump presidency is after just four years, and we forgot how much we dislike chaotic leadership. But we know what we don’t like and we’re vocal about it. He’s not doing anything to increase his slim margin of popularity, and is already doing a lot of things to lose it. He was never once popular during his first term — not at the start, not in the middle, and definitely not at the end. Right now is the most popular he’s ever been, with a net approval of around zero. That’s the high water mark for Trump — just ever so barely popular enough to win an election.

Sunday, 2 February 2025

Cabel Sasser: ‘The Snacks & Cereals of 2024’ ★

A delight, as usual.

(My one suggestion for 2025’s list: My Dad’s Chips. Holy hell are these good potato chips. I’ve got a particular weakness for the French Onion ones. Chef’s kiss. Distribution seems mostly limited to the northeast for now.)

WorkOS Radar ★

My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring last week at DF. Does your app get fake signups, throwaway emails, or users abusing your free tier? Or worse, bots attacks and brute force attempts?

WorkOS Radar can block all this and more. Their simple API gives you advanced device fingerprinting that can detect bad actors, bots, and suspicious behavior.

Your users trust you. Keep it that way. Check out WorkOS Radar today.

Swift Playground Gets an Update and Loses Its Plural ★

Interesting detail with the latest update to Apple’s app for learning and tinkering with Swift: it’s now named Playground, singular, not Playgrounds, plural. I’m not going to argue that much should be made of the name change, but I like it. The app is the playground — a place for playing with Swift — not a factory for making playgrounds.

Where Are the Bluesky Clients? ★

Parker Ortolani:

Mastodon clients have become the new UI playground in the same way that Twitter clients used to be. But what I can’t wrap my head around is the business decision of developers to lean into Mastodon clients versus Bluesky ones. Fortunately some progress seems to be starting to be made with apps like PinkSky that replicate the Instagram experience but using Bluesky as the backend. There are also a handful of clients like Skeets and GraySky, but nothing that approaches the quality of some Mastodon clients or the legendary Twitter clients of old. They’re okay, but they’re not worth dropping the official client. Other apps like OpenVibe and Reeder are designed to combine feeds from multiple services and they do work with Bluesky. But they’re not dedicated clients. I want Tweetbot or Twitterrific, but for Bluesky. I’m not seeing that yet. The opportunity is clearly there, it has tens of millions of users making it three times the size of Mastodon.

One thing all the existing nascent Bluesky clients lack is timeline position saving/sync — so when you leave the app and come back later (with sync, even on a different device) you can pick up reading exactly where you left off. I find it hard to imagine paying for a Bluesky client that didn’t do this.

Update: About a month ago, Skeets developer Sebastian Vogelsang posted a thread about running into API limitations trying to implement position-saving, a feature that’s in beta, and available to Skeets Pro users. I’m giving it a shot.