‘It Is Journalism’s Sacred Duty to Endanger the Lives of as Many Trans People as Possible’ ★

The Onion Editorial Board:

All great journalists, and even those lesser journalists who don’t work for The Onion, eventually ponder why we do what we do. Is the point of reporting to illuminate the world around us, so that we may make meaning of it? Or is it to cause people in minority groups to question their humanity and persuade others to demonize them? We know where we stand, proudly dreaming of genitals.

Research shows that trans people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to be the victim of a violent crime. We salute our colleagues across the media who are working tirelessly to make that number even higher.

OpenAI Might Be Making a Web Browser ★

Erin Woo, Sahil Patel, and Amir Efrati, reporting for The Information (paywalled, alas):

OpenAI is preparing to launch a frontal assault on Google. The ChatGPT owner recently considered developing a web browser that it would combine with its chatbot, and it has separately discussed or struck deals to power search features for travel, food, real estate and retail websites, according to people who have seen prototypes or designs of the products. [...]

Making a web browser could help OpenAI have more control over a primary gateway through which people use the web, as well as further boost ChatGPT, which has more than 300 million weekly users just two years after its launch. It isn’t clear how a ChatGPT browser’s features would differ from those of other browsers.

In a signal of its interest in a browser, several months ago OpenAI hired Ben Goodger, a founding member of the Chrome team at Google. Another recent hire is Darin Fisher, who worked with Goodger to develop Chrome.

But OpenAI isn’t remotely close to launching a browser, multiple people said.

Goodger and Fisher’s hirings weren’t secret — both keep up-to-date profiles on LinkedIn — and it’s not safe to assume that just because two people have previously created new web browsers that their new gig is creating a new web browser. But it sure feels like a good guess.

Fisher most recently was at The Browser Company for two years, working on Arc, an innovative browser that I admire for its originality but which simply did not click for me at all. The Browser Company is in flux, too, working both on Arc 2.0 and an as-yet-unnamed second project that might be a more traditional web browser.

Combine this with regulatory pressure on Apple’s Safari and especially Google’s Chrome, and it’s an exciting time for web browsers. It’s kind of wild how every few years the web browser market gets shaken up. The pattern that’s repeated several times is that just when the browser market seems settled — like the markets for, say, spreadsheets and word processors — there’s a period of flux and new entries shake up the market. There was a point where it seemed like Internet Explorer would be dominant forever; today it doesn’t even exist. There was a point where Firefox seemed entrenched on Windows; today it’s an afterthought. Today Chrome seems entrenched, as dominant as IE once was. Maybe not?

Monday, 25 November 2024

Apple TV’s Hardware Situation Is Fine ★

Mark Gurman, in his weekly Power On column:

The best scenario for Apple in TV hardware would be a cheap stick (perhaps with no physical remote — use your iPhone instead). It’s an idea that Apple marketing executives detest, but it would help the company quickly expand its presence. If consumers want more power and storage, they can opt for the current box.

At the top of the line, Apple could offer something like the new Mac mini, providing the best streaming quality and gaming options. For this exercise, let’s call these three tiers the Apple TV SE, Apple TV and Apple TV Max. It would use the same “good, better, best” strategy employed by the iPhone, Mac, iPad, AirPods, Apple Watch and even the Apple Pencil.

Neither of these suggestions make any sense. The only interesting thing about either idea is trying to decide which one is worse.

Streaming sticks are crap, and Apple doesn’t make crap. I also think streaming sticks are fast going the way of the dodo — they were a stopgap low-cost solution for when TV sets didn’t have “smart” experiences with built-in integration for major streaming platforms. Those built-in integrations obviate the need for streaming sticks, and Apple TV is now built into TVs from all major brands, including Samsung, Sony, LG, and Vizio. That’s the Apple TV app, not the full Apple TV tvOS platform, but that serves Apple’s needs. I don’t think it’s possible to provide a full-fidelity tvOS experience via a stick-sized computer that draws power from an HDMI port, and it’s certainly not possible to do so by omitting the goddamn remote control. Arguing that Apple needs to or even ought to built a cheap TV stick today is like those dumb columns from 2009 arguing that Apple needed to make a netbook to compete against shitty $300 laptops. Apple TV is to set top boxes as the Mac is to PCs — it’s never going to get a large share of the overall market, but it dominates the high-end of the market catering to people who actually care.

As for Gurman’s high-end hardware idea, a Mac Mini starts at $600. What would be the point of connecting such hardware to your TV? A Mac Mini wouldn’t offer better streaming quality than the existing Apple TV 4K offers. 4K is 4K, and even older Apple TV hardware streams it perfectly. And while in theory an M4-powered Mac-Mini-caliber Apple TV could offer better gaming than the iPhone-13-era A15 Bionic chip in the current Apple TV 4K hardware, there are zero tvOS games today that target hardware like that, and there’d be little reason for game developers to target such an “Apple TV Pro” device because almost no one would buy one. Whatever the reasons are for gaming not being a big deal on tvOS today, the lack of a “pro” $500 or $600 hardware tier is not one of them.

I think Apple should get the entry price down to $99 (currently $129), and sooner or later they need to update the hardware, if only to support Apple Intelligence. (Perhaps to the A18 or A18 Pro next fall — the current A15 Bionic Apple TV 4K models came out one year after the chip debuted in the iPhones 13.) But the hardware story for Apple TV is fine.

Perhaps Acquiring Pixelmator Is Not About Competing With Photoshop and Lightroom, Per Se, but the Adobe Creative Cloud Bundle ★

Zac Hall, writing at 9to5Mac back in May 2023:

Now that Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for iPad are official, let’s talk about pricing. These apps coming out on a random day in May is surprising. Subscription pricing? Not so much. Nevertheless, pricing for these long overdue apps is interesting when you consider their Mac counterparts and the Apple One bundle.

First, let’s address the Mac apps.

How would Apple price Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for Mac if they were released today? In the era of service revenue, Apple would almost certainly charge a subscription fee for access rather than a one-time fee.

Mac users have had years of free updates to Logic and Final Cut Pro after paying once for each app. In fact, Logic Pro X will be a decade old in July, and Final Cut Pro X turns 12 next month. The price of Logic Pro for Mac today ($199.99) is the same as four years of subscribing to Logic Pro for iPad, and Final Cut Pro for Mac ($299.99) will equal six years of paying for the iPad version.

The iPad versions of Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro are both priced the same: $5/month or $50/year. There is no bundle to get both at a discount.

I was a little surprised when Apple announced Final Cut Pro 11 for Mac two weeks ago and didn’t announce a switch to subscription pricing. Instead, it remains a $300 one-time purchase, and for existing users version 11 is a free upgrade. Whether you like it or not, subscription pricing is no longer the future, it’s the present, and it’s the dominant model for professional creative tools today.

Adobe made this switch years ago, with a particular emphasis on the Creative Cloud bundle that includes their entire suite of apps — Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, Audition, Acrobat Pro, and more. You get access to Adobe’s entire suite for $90/month, or $60/month if you pay annually ($720/year). They currently offer a first-year 50 percent discount if you pay annually. A la carte, subscriptions to each app cost $20–$23/month, so the Creative Cloud bundle is a good deal if you use three of them, and a great deal if you use more than three.

Apple clearly understands the appeal of subscription bundles too, with Apple One. Despite the fact that Apple didn’t switch to subscription pricing for Final Cut Pro 11 for Mac, I still expect them to sooner rather than later, and if they do, I further expect a bundle. Apple is never going to offer a swath of creative tools as broad as Adobe’s, but the biggest missing pieces right now would be alternatives to Photoshop and Lightroom. My gut feeling is that’s why they acquired Pixelmator and Photomator. They could sell a bundle for, just spitballing here, $20/month or $200/year that would include the Mac and iPad versions of Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator, and possibly Photomator. Maybe throw in some extra iCloud storage.

Sunday, 24 November 2024

WorkOS ★

My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring last week at Daring Fireball. With WorkOS you can start selling to enterprises with just a few lines of code. It provides a complete User Management solution along with SSO, SCIM, and FGA. The APIs are modular and easy-to-use, allowing integrations to be completed in minutes instead of months.

Today, some of the fastest growing startups are already powered by WorkOS, including Perplexity, Vercel, and Webflow. For SaaS apps that care deeply about design and user experience, WorkOS is the perfect fit. From high-quality documentation to self-serve onboarding for your customers, it removes all the unnecessary complexity for your engineering team.

Check out WorkOS’s Launch Week announcements to see their latest.

Apple Tends to Do Right by Apps It Acquires

Sunday, 24 November 2024

My post this week about Shazam’s history got me thinking about Apple’s track record with acquired apps. Apple acquired Shazam in 2018, and soon integrated its capabilities into Siri. But they’ve also kept the Shazam app going, including the Android version. They even still have a standalone Shazam website. I’d say this has been an acquisition that’s made everyone happy: existing users still have a great Shazam app, and the core “What song is this?” feature has been made more available and accessible.

At the moment, outside Cupertino (and Lithuania) we’re left with uncertainty over the future of Pixelmator and Photomator after their announcement of Apple’s pending acquisition. In broad strokes, let’s consider the strategic reasons Apple might acquire an existing popular app — or in this case, apps.

Keep the app going under Apple’s ownership — Examples of this include Logic, which Apple acquired by purchasing parent company Emagic in 2002, and going back even further, FileMaker.
Shut down the app and bake the underlying technology into the OS — Examples: Siri and Dark Sky. Siri debuted as a standalone iPhone app in February 2010. Apple purchased the parent company two months later, and Siri appeared as “beta” software built into iOS with the iPhone 4S in fall, at which point Apple pulled the standalone Siri app from the App Store. I don’t recall Siri, as a standalone app, ever being all that popular. And whatever you think of Siri’s quality and utility over the intervening years, it’s the sort of thing that makes more sense as a system-level feature than as a standalone app. A lot of people have a lot of wishes for Siri, but I’ve never seen anyone say “I wish Siri were still just a standalone app.”

Dark Sky is more complicated. After acquiring it, Apple kept Dark Sky going as a standalone (and cross-platform) app, but only for a transition period. The purpose of the acquisition was to integrate some of Dark Sky’s forecasting technology into Apple’s own Weather app and the WeatherKit system framework available to third-party apps. Die-hard Dark Sky fans miss it, and some swear that WeatherKit’s warnings about imminent precipitation aren’t as accurate as Dark Sky’s were, but it’s hard to argue that Apple did Dark Sky users dirty.
Acquihire the developers and designers but scrap the app — This happens in the industry, but not with Apple. I can think of many examples of talented indie developers and designers closing up shop and going to work for Apple, but I can’t think of any good examples of a great popular app being shut down for this. The most tragic acquihire I can think of was when Facebook (now Meta) acquired Push Pop Press, an astonishingly talented team that had made a publishing tool for the modern age that might have been the most impressive software I’ve ever seen in my life. And, poof, the whole thing was just shuttered when the Push Pop team joined Facebook. Inside Facebook that same team created Facebook Paper, which espoused many of the principles that made Push Pop’s interactive publishing tool remarkable, but Facebook Paper, alas, was not long for this world. Facebook Paper was so good, so forward-thinking, so innovative, that it almost got me to create a Facebook account for the first time.
Buy the app out of anti-competitive spite simply to shut it down — The software industry is rife with acquisitions whose only purpose was to quash competition,¹ but I can’t recall a single example of Apple doing so. And in the case of Pixelmator and Photomator, it doesn’t make any sense — neither competes against anything Apple makes, and they’re exclusively available as apps on Apple platforms.

The bottom line is that what we, as users, hope for after a big company acquires a beloved app is for an outcome where the users of that app remain happy. That might mean just keeping the app going, like with Logic. Or it might mean scrapping the standalone app, but bringing the core features of the app into the OS itself, like with Dark Sky. Sometimes it’s a mix, though, like with Shazam. Another example like that is Workflow — which began life as a third-party automation utility for iOS, but which Apple acquired in 2017 and turned into Shortcuts. Anyone who liked Workflow surely loves Shortcuts — it’s far more powerful and capable as an OS-level technology from Apple than it ever could have hoped to have been as a third-party app.

Other examples:

Beats, which Apple acquired for $3 billion in 2014, remains the largest acquisition by price in Apple’s history.² Beats Music became the foundation for Apple Music.
Speaking of music, iTunes began life as SoundJam MP, a third-party MP3 player for the Mac. iTunes was more than just a rebranding — it was a complete redesign and rethinking of SoundJam — but it basically served the same purpose that SoundJam did. (The other option Apple considered was purchasing Panic, whose Audion was SoundJam’s arch-rival.)
Final Cut was an acquisition — Apple bought it from Macromedia in 1998. But it’s a weird one, because Apple purchased it and hired the team before it had even shipped. The acquisition wasn’t just the foundation for the Final Cut Pro we know today, but for iMovie too.
TestFlight was an acquisition, and like Siri and Workflow/Shortcuts, is the sort of concept that requires being a first-party product to achieve its goals.
Shake, a professional video compositing tool, is a rare sad trombone. Apple acquired parent company Nothing Real in 2002, but discontinued Shake in 2009. Some features live on in Final Cut Pro but it does not seem like a successful acquisition for anyone who loved Shake.³
In 2021 Apple purchased Primephonic, and turned it into Apple Music Classical in 2023. Seems like a complete win for Primephonic fans.
Apple made a slew of small acquisitions that have all been funnelled into improving Apple Maps. E.g., Embark, which was a standalone app for transit information and seems to be the foundation for Apple Maps now having good transit features.

It’s commonplace in the industry for a large company to acquire a small company that makes a very cool app, and then somehow ruin that app. Sometimes by transmogrifying it beyond recognition, but oftentimes through disinterest or neglect. And Apple is a very large company, and Pixelmator is a small company with two very cool apps. But an examination of Apple’s acquisition history doesn’t give me any reason for alarm. Apple really does tend to do right by cool app acquisitions.

Apple respects the art of making great apps. Pixelmator in particular is simply too good to scrap, and Apple hasn’t made its own bitmap image editing application since, I think, MacPaint. Something like Pixelmator really would slot right in next to Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro as an Apple “pro tool”. Whether they’ll keep the name, I don’t know, but I think the app will be released under Apple branding as a Photoshop competitor, for Mac and iPad. (Pixelmator for iOS currently runs on both iPads and iPhones, but Apple’s own pro tools, Final Cut and Logic, are iPad only.)

I’m less sure if Apple has the appetite to keep Photomator going, to compete directly against Lightroom — a market Apple simply walked away from when they discontinued Aperture 10 years ago. But perhaps they now regret walking away from Aperture. I’m just not sure how close Photomator is to being a credible alternative to Lightroom.

The other path would be to retire both apps and fold the best features and technology (like their ML Super Resolution upsizing) into Photos, and/or into the system-level Core Image framework available to all apps on all of Apple’s platforms. I can see how the best of Photomator could make its way into Photos. That’s not true for Pixelmator. The acquisition just doesn’t make sense to me unless Apple wants to make Pixelmator an Apple-branded pro tool. We’ll find out next year. ★

I still can’t fully forgive Adobe for doing this with FreeHand when they acquired Macromedia in 2005. Macromedia was Adobe’s arch-rival in creative design tools, and FreeHand was Illustrator’s arch-rival in the vector graphics market. FreeHand made sense to me in a way that Illustrator never did. It was so good. ↩︎
The largest acquisition by importance in Apple’s history, of course, was their $400 million deal to reunify the company with NeXT at the end of 1996. That’s beyond dispute. That was arguably the most impactful acquisition in the entire history of computing. But I’d also argue that it’s almost beyond dispute that the acquisition of PA Semi for $278 million in 2008 was far more important than the Beats acquisition. That paved the path for Apple Silicon, an initiative whose importance to Apple’s success in the years since would be hard to overstate. ↩︎︎
How’s this for an eye-opener on how the market for professional software has changed, quoting from Wikipedia: “Version 2 was released in early 1999 for Windows NT and IRIX, costing $9,900 US per license, or $3,900 for a render-only license. Over the next few years, Shake rapidly became the standard compositing software in the visual effects industry for feature films. In 2002, Apple Computer acquired Nothing Real. A few months later, version 2.5 was released, introducing Mac OS X compatibility. To strengthen the Mac’s position in production studios, the Mac version held a price of $4,950 (equivalent to $8,385 in 2023), and users of the non-Mac operating systems were given the offer of doubling the number of licenses at no extra cost by migrating to Mac OS X.” $5,000 a seat as a 50 percent discount! ↩︎︎

Friday, 22 November 2024

Shazam Hits 100 Billion Song Recognitions ★

Apple Newsroom:

Shazam has now officially surpassed over 100 billion song recognitions since it launched. To help put that into perspective:

That’s equivalent to 12 songs identified for every person on Earth.

A person would need to use Shazam to identify a song every second for 3,168 years to reach 100 billion.

Shazam launched in 2002 as an SMS service in the UK, and back then, music fans would dial 2580, hold up their phones to identify music, and receive the song name and artist via text message. Shazam’s following and influence continued to grow in the years that followed, but it was the 2008 debut of the App Store and introduction of Shazam’s iOS app that brought its music recognition technology to millions of users. By the summer of 2011, Shazam had already recognized over 1 billion songs.

I had no idea Shazam started in the pre-iPhone era of mobile phones, getting audio via a phone call, and sending results via SMS. Clever! That takes me back to Moviefone — the service we’d dial in the 1990s to get theater listings and showtimes. You’d call your city’s local Moviefone number — almost certainly using your landline — navigate a menu (“Press 1 if you know the name of the movie you’d like to see...”), and Moviefone would tell you which theaters were showing it, at what times. It sounds archaic but it was great, and they did a great job with the phone menu user interface so you could navigate it quickly.

It also reminds me of the very early days of IMDB, which preceded the web. You could send an email to IMDB with the name of a movie in the subject, and IMDB would email you back with all the information it had about that movie.

Android Authority Reports Google Has Cancelled the Pixel Tablet 2 ★

Mishaal Rahman, reporting yesterday for Android Authority:

Android Authority has learned that Google has canceled the Pixel Tablet 2, the presumed name of Google’s second-generation Pixel Tablet. This is disappointing for Pixel fans who were waiting for Google to refresh its first-generation Pixel Tablet with a newer chipset, a better camera, and, more importantly, an official keyboard accessory. [...]

Last week, I shared what I learned about the Pixel Tablet 2 from a source within Google. I deemed this source to be very credible given my past history with them as well as the fact that they were able to share unreleased images of the device with me (which I obviously did not publish to protect their identity). After the publication of this article, however, I learned from my source that Google had decided to cancel its plans to release the device, citing concerns that the company would lose money on it.

“Concerns that the company would lose money on it” and 9to5Google’s framing of the same news as “profitability concerns” are fun euphemisms for “no one wants an Android tablet”.

This comes on the heels of news just this week that Google is supposedly “fully migrating ChromeOS over to Android” — but somehow not “merging” them — with the specific goal of better competing against the iPad. So a generous read might be that Google is scrapping the Pixel Tablet 2 because that device was planned to run Android (as the existing Pixel Tablet does) but now Google is rejiggering their tablet and laptop hardware roadmaps with the upcoming ChomeOS-migrated-to-not-merged-with-Android OS in mind.

A less generous read is that Google is afflicted with institutional ADHD and generally acts with no apparent strategy. They’ve kept their focus on annual updates to the well-regarded Pixel phones for 8 years now, but haven’t managed to make them hit products. With the rest of their hardware, their strategy has been about as coherent as their comically chaotic efforts in messaging apps.

Thursday, 21 November 2024

‘The Blurred Line Between X and the Trump Administration’ ★

Mike Masnick, writing for MSNBC:

Turns out for the “Twitter Files” crew, “creeping authoritarianism” isn’t so creepy when it’s your team doing the creeping.

Before, we were told that White House officials’ merely reaching out to social media companies about election misinformation was a democracy-ending threat. Now, the world’s richest man has openly used his platform to boost one candidate, ridden that campaign’s success into the White House himself, and ... crickets. The silence is deafening.

There isn’t even a suggestion that Musk should have to divest from his ownership of X. No one expects that. There is no discussion of how Musk set up an entire account on his own platform for his own “Department of Government Efficiency” and gave it a “gray” check mark — denoting it as a verified government entity.

The silence or cheers from “Twitter Files” writers and boosters over this merging of private and public interests — which they deemed a threat to Western civilization, when it wasn’t even happening — is credibility-destroying. They were simply a convenient political cudgel, quickly abandoned as soon as an actual government-social media alliance benefited their side.

A man named Frank Wilhoit coined an oft-cited adage in 2018 that I find profound, particularly when it comes to the absurd hypocrisies of the Trump era in American politics: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

But it’s not just laws, although laws are where the stakes are highest. It’s everything, including conventions and norms.

Whatever it is you think the Biden administration did to nudge Twitter (and other social media platforms, but let’s stick to Twitter/X) to clamp down on what the administration perceived as “misinformation”, it pales in comparison to Musk taking ownership of the platform and turning it into a clear pro-Trump platform for this election. I’m not saying that was illegal, or should be made illegal. I’m saying that the entire argument over “The Twitter Files” was that the former leadership of Twitter put their thumb on the scale to comply with the wishes of the Biden administration. I’m with Masnick — I don’t think that even happened, really. But even if you buy into “The Twitter Files” thesis, it was about a thumb on one side of the scale. And then Musk bought Twitter, renamed it X, and dropped an anvil on the other side of the scale. The “Twitter Files” argument wasn’t that the wrong side of the scale was advantaged by a bias, it was that platform owners should scrupulously avoid any vague hint of a bias at all. But now here we are with Elon Musk serving as a de facto member of Trump’s 2.0 administration and none of the same critics even see a problem.

The hypocrisy is baked into their worldview. So however we counter it, it can’t be by merely pointing out their hypocrisy, because they don’t see it and they don’t care. My biggest quibble with Masnick’s piece is in the headline (which, perhaps, he didn’t write): the line between X and the incoming Trump administration hasn’t been blurred — it’s been erased.

Regarding — and, Well, Against — Substack

Wednesday, 20 November 2024

Anil Dash, “Don’t Call It a Substack”:

We constrain our imaginations when we subordinate our creations to names owned by fascist tycoons. Imagine the author of a book telling people to “read my Amazon”. A great director trying to promote their film by saying “click on my Max”. That’s how much they’ve pickled your brain when you refer to your own work and your own voice within the context of their walled garden. There is no such thing as “my Substack”, there is only your writing, and a forever fight against the world of pure enshittification.

I am upset by the above, but only insofar as I’m jealous that I had never thought to make the analogy to an author telling people to “read my Amazon”. A publication on Substack is no more “a Substack” than a blog on WordPress is “a WordPress”. It’s really quite a nifty — but devious — trick that Substack has pulled to make this parlance a thing.

Substack is, just as a reminder, a political project made by extremists with a goal of normalizing a radical, hateful agenda by co-opting well-intentioned creators’ work in service of cross-promoting attacks on the vulnerable. You don’t have to take my word for it; Substack’s CEO explicitly said they won’t ban someone who is explicitly spouting hate, and when confronted with the rampant white supremacist propaganda that they are profiting from on their site, they took down... four of the Nazis. Four. There are countless more now, and they want to use your email newsletter to cross-promote that content and legitimize it. Nobody can ban the hateful content site if your nice little newsletter is on there, too, and your musings for your subscribers are all the cover they need.

I know quite a few people whose opinions I admire who feel the same way as Dash here. I’ll disagree. I think Substack sees itself as a publishing tool and platform. They’re not here to promote any particular side. It makes no more sense for them to refuse to publish someone for being too right-wing than it would for WordPress or Medium or, say, GitHub or YouTube. Substack, I think, sees itself like that.

You might disagree. Like I said, I know a bunch of good, smart people who see Substack like Dash does, and refuse to pay for any publication on Substack’s platform because of their “Hey we’re just a neutral publishing platform, not an editor, let alone a censor” stance. What I can say, personally, is that I read and pay for several publications on Substack, and for the last few weeks I’ve tried using their iOS app (more on this in a moment), and I’ve never once seen a whiff of anything even vaguely right-wing, let alone hateful. Not a whiff. If it’s there, I never see it. If I never see it, I don’t care.¹

What I object to isn’t their laissez faire approach to who they allow to publish on their platform, but rather how they present all publications. People do call the publications on Substack “Substacks”. And Substack publications do all look the same, most of them right down to that telltale serif typeface, Spectral,² which is kerned so loosely it looks like teeth in need of orthodontia. It’s not an ugly font, per se, but it is very distinctive, which contributes, I think significantly, to the blurring of the branding line between Substack publications as discrete standalone independent entities or as mere sections under “Substack” as an umbrella publication.

Substack, very deliberately, has from the get-go tried to have it both ways. They say that publications on their platform are independent voices and brands. But they present them all as parts of Substack. They all look alike, and they all look like “Substack”. I really don’t get why any writer trying to establish themselves independently would farm out their own brand this way. It’s the illusion of independence.

I absolutely despise that a Substack publication’s home page is, typically, nothing more than a sign-up field for your email address to get the publication by email, and a small “No thanks” link to actually read the damn thing. Half the time when I see that page, I just close the tab out of spite. In what world is “No thanks” a good link to convey the meaning “Let me read the thing I came here to read”?

Substack’s app, along with the company’s home page, defaults to presenting itself as a Twitter-like short-form posting platform. As if what we need right now is another Twitter-like platform. But especially: why would anyone want to participate in a social platform tied to one specific publishing platform? It doesn’t make any sense to me, as a reader, nor do I see the appeal to writers on the platform. It only makes sense strategically from Substack’s own perspective. If, as a writer, your feedback and social interaction with your audience is tied to Substack’s own social graph, your publication is tied to Substack, too. It’s so transparently a lock-in play that it’s almost hard to object to it. It’s right there on the tin. But it’s not hard at all to just not use it.

Substack no longer even hosts a majority of the newsletter-style writers I subscribe to. Casey Newton moved Platformer from Substack to Ghost in January. Craig Calcaterra moved his excellent baseball-focused-but-with-heavy-dashes-of-politics-and-pop-culture Cup of Coffee from Substack to Beehiiv in January as well.³ Molly White runs Citation Needed on Ghost. My newest paid subscription is to CNN expat Oliver Darcy’s new media-industry focused Status, for which he chose Beehiiv. And of course there’s my friend and Dithering co-host Ben Thompson, whose Stratechery, running on his own platform Passport, not only long predates Substack but served as their model to replicate. (Substack’s pitch deck was “Stratechery in a box.”) All of these sites look distinctive, with their own brand. All of them offer much better subscription and delivery management interfaces than Substack.

My advice to any writer looking to start a new site based on the newsletter model would be to consider Substack last, not first. Not because Substack is a Nazi bar, which I don’t think it is at all, but simply because there are clearly better options, and the company’s long term goal is clearly platform lock-in. ★

I feel the same way about social media platforms. Are there people I find objectionable on Mastodon, Bluesky, Instagram, and Threads? Definitely. On YouTube? Even more definitely. Do I care? No, because I tend never to see their posts, and when one pops up, I can block or mute them, and I never see them again. That’s in contrast with X, the former Twitter, where the top replies to many posts are from first class shitbird trolls. More and more I simply find X an unpleasant place to devote any of my attention, and so I go there less and less. I don’t eat at restaurants whose food I dislike, and the food at X tastes bad and is only getting worse. ↩︎︎
A free Google font, which says something about Substack. ↩︎︎
Coincidentally, Calcaterra is moving Cup of Coffee from Beehiiv to Ghost this coming week. Mainly out of some frustrations with email delivery reliability at Beehiiv, but also because Ghost seems more flexible. ↩︎︎

Wednesday, 20 November 2024

Apple Is Selling Apple News Ads Directly for the First Time ★

Sara Fischer, reporting for Axios:

Apple has started selling its own advertising inventory for Apple News, two sources familiar with the effort told Axios. It’s pitching new ad units that it hopes will maximize revenue for itself and its publishing partners. [...]

Publishers will get a 70% cut of the ad revenue sold by Apple within their articles.

They will get a percentage of the ad revenue sold by Apple within the Apple News feed, dependent on engagement with their content.

Apple News publishers will continue to receive 100% of the revenue from the advertising that they sell against their content in the app.

Apple News+ is a really good product. Scanning its main Today tab in the morning has become my modern-day equivalent of scanning the front page of a printed newspaper — a way to get a sense of what’s going on in world news. There’s a level of editorial curation and presentation in Apple News that I don’t think has a peer. Apple News itself doesn’t publish or report anything, but there’s clearly a talented, level-headed editorial team that is picking and choosing the most important and most interesting (which are often very different things) stories from a wide variety of sources. So maybe a better analogy to the bygone era of print isn’t scanning the front page of a newspaper, but rather stopping at a good big-city newsstand where you could scan the front pages of a slew of newspapers from around the country (and world).

I don’t look to Apple News for anything related to tech. I definitely want to do that via RSS (which for me means NetNewsWire), the web (Safari), and social media. But for national, world, and general interest news, Apple News is really good. I don’t know what it’s like without a News+ subscription, but with one, it’s truly excellent. And a News+ subscription gets you access to a bunch of great publications with paywalls on the web.

If you cemented your opinion of Apple News years ago and tuned out, you should give it a fresh look — especially if you have a “free” News+ subscription via Apple One.

But, my god, the ads suck — low-rent and highly repetitive. I posted screen recordings over the summer illustrating this. It seems like recently, though, I’ve seen fewer ads, and they’ve gotten less repetitive. I just spent a few minutes now perusing the Today tab while writing this post, and I read a bunch of articles without seeing any ads at all. For me at least, the Apple News ad experience seems to be getting better already. But there’s still so much room for improvement.

Whenever I write about this, some readers will comment that, to their minds, a paid subscription like Apple News+ should bestow a completely ad-free experience. That’s how streaming video and music subscriptions tend to work, but even there — as I just posted regarding Disney+ — many people are choosing lower-priced streaming subscriptions subsidized by ads. The economics for ad-free news just don’t work, and never have. News+ isn’t like TV+, where Apple owns or has paid for the rights to all of the content.

Bob Iger Inadvertently Reveals Percentage of Disney+ Subscribers on Ad-Supported Tier ★

Dade Hayes, reporting for Deadline:

Fielding a question from a Wall Street analyst about the growth outlook and pricing strategy of Disney+, Iger divulged how many Disney+ subscribers take the ad-supported tier in the U.S. (37%) and globally (30%). The disclosure was unusual in the streaming sector. Netflix, for instance, has never broken out a similar percentage, preferring instead to report monthly active users of its ad tier (as it did earlier this week).

When the Q&A with analysts moved to the next question and CFO Hugh Johnston was giving his answer, Iger’s voice suddenly could be heard on the call. “I don’t know if I was supposed to disclose those AVOD numbers,” he said, before Johnston continued speaking.

Looking at Disney+’s pricing page (and ignoring the wide assortment of bundle offers), their ad-supported “Basic” tier costs $10/month; their ad-free “Premium” tier costs $16/month or $160/year.

Tuesday, 19 November 2024

‘Can You Take a Photo of Us?’ ★

Delightfully clever sketch from Tiny Idea.

‘Inside the Rather Bizarre Relaunch of Jaguar’ ★

James Baggott, writing for Car Dealer Magazine:

Jaguar unveiled a new look, logo and direction for its cars at what was quite possibly the most bizarre automotive media launch I’ve ever attended — here’s what happened.

Embargoed until today, the event felt like a hallucinogenic sci-fi movie where the presenters were only allowed to speak in marketing babble. Unveiling a new concept car — the details of which are still under embargo until December 3 — Jaguar’s passionate team spoke for most of the day about how they plan to ‘delete ordinary’ and ‘live vivid’. Whatever that means…

In what, at times, felt like a drunken dream, Jaguar personnel walked journalists through its plans to ‘reimagine’ the much-loved brand over the next few years. Calling it a ‘complete reset’, McGovern at one point told journalists that his team had ‘not been sniffing the white stuff — this is real’.

Translation: they’ve all been sniffing a metric ton of the white stuff. This looks like the identity for a women’s razor brand or something. Certainly not the identity for a longstanding British sports car company.

Lulu Cheng Meservey:

Jaguar already nailed their marketing decades ago, and given the demand for nostalgia, now would’ve been the perfect time to revive it.

Instead, the sad irony is that their “Copy nothing” campaign abandons their own originality in favor of a fad that peaked during the pandemic.

Dr. Oz

Tuesday, 19 November 2024

The Hollywood Reporter, which of course is where one now goes to find news of incoming Executive Branch appointments and nominations, “Trump Nominates Dr. Mehmet Oz to Run Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services”:

“America is facing a Healthcare Crisis, and there may be no Physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to Make America Healthy Again,” Trump said in a statement. “He is an eminent Physician, Heart Surgeon, Inventor, and World-Class Communicator, who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades. Dr. Oz will work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake.”

He added, “He won nine Daytime Emmy Awards hosting The Dr. Oz Show, where he taught millions of Americans how to make healthier lifestyle choices, and gave a strong voice to the key pillars of the MAHA Movement.”

I met Dr. Oz ten years ago. It was after the Apple event on Tuesday, 9 September 2014, at the Flint Center in Cupertino, where Apple unveiled Apple Watch after introducing the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Apple had erected a startlingly large temporary building in front of the Flint Center, which, post-event, was opened to attending media and celebrities to showcase Apple Watch’s various capabilities. But post-event press briefings were held inside the Flint Center, in a byzantine complex of subterranean rooms beneath the massive ground floor auditorium.

I had a one-on-one off-the-record briefing with Jony Ive. (Fascinating and fun — we spent most of the all-too-brief 30 minutes talking about watch bands and the exquisite packaging and charging case of the Edition models.) The waiting area for these press briefings was set up to look a bit like a mostly empty Apple Store. The central focus of this waiting area was a large table with a glass top; under the glass were a variety of Apple Watch models. The table was a prototype of the ones that Apple would put in its retail stores, for which they obtained multiple patents. While I was waiting for my briefing with Ive, the only other person from the media waiting with me was Oz.

It’s a weird thing to be alone, effectively, with someone of Oz’s celebrity. It’s like being in a room with a million dollars in $100 bills stacked in a perfectly-arranged pyramid. No matter how you to try to direct your attention, your mind keeps popping back to Holy shit, there’s a million dollars in cash right there. His hair was perfect, his shirt crisply pressed. It was a very nice shirt. He smiled at all times, and seemed genuinely happy to be there, and genuinely interested in Apple Watch, but not for what Apple Watch actually was or could be, but simply because it was a major new thing, and he was a VIP invitee at the introduction of this major new thing. And my mind would pop, for the umpteenth time, Holy shit, that’s Dr. Oz right there.

We spent an unceasingly awkward 10 minutes circling around that table together. He never shut up. He chattered, nonstop, with inane observations, like “Hey, look at that one, it’s orange! What’s that one, leather?” He was not talking to me, nor was he, really, talking to himself. It was like he was talking to a TV camera, as though we were being filmed for B-roll footage for his show — but there was no camera. It was just me and him, standing around that table exhibiting dozens of Apple Watch prototypes that we were unable to touch, with a handful of Apple PR reps hanging around the sides of the room in silence, pecking away on their iPhones, waiting for a notice from one of their colleagues that it was time to escort one of us to our briefing. Oz was called first, thankfully. It gave me a few minutes of silence to gather my thoughts, and study the watches (albeit under glass), without distraction. I sometimes wonder who his briefing was with. (Phil Schiller, perhaps?)

I came away with the impression that Mehmet Oz was, despite his well-deserved medical renown, preternaturally vapid and preening, and, thus, to me, an incongruous figure. Simultaneously a brilliant mind in the field of thoracic surgery, and yet dumb as a rock in everyday human interaction. I spent the first few minutes with him wondering if I should introduce myself. I spent the last few glad I hadn’t, because he was so obviously a staggeringly uninteresting and uninterested man.

I would have much preferred spending those 10 minutes chatting with Dr. Nick. ★

Tuesday, 19 November 2024

Texas Education Board to Vote on Bible-Infused Lessons in Public Schools ★

Troy Closson, reporting for The New York Times (gift link):

The optional curriculum, one of most sweeping efforts in recent years to bring a Christian perspective to more students, would test the limits of religious instruction in public education.

It could also become a model for other states and for the administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has promised to champion the conservative Christian movement in his second presidential term. [...]

Religion makes up a relatively small portion of the overall content. But the lessons delve into Christianity far more often and in depth than they do into other faiths, religious scholars say and a review of the materials by The New York Times found. In kindergarten, for example, children would be taught that many religions value the Golden Rule, but the lessons would be focused on the Christian version, and introduce students to Jesus and his Sermon on the Mount.

The Times runs an excerpt from the curriculum, which reads:

The Sermon on the Mount included many different lessons. Some of these included do not judge others; do not seek revenge, or try to get even with someone; and give to the needy. Beyond the Sermon on the Mount, there are many rules included throughout the Bible. Jesus said that the Golden Rule sums up all of the important teachings from scripture. “So in everything, do unto others as you would have done unto you.”

“Do not judge others; do not seek revenge, or try to get even with someone; and give to the needy” — the very words that Donald Trump himself lives by.

See Also: Related coverage from The Onion: “Christian Right Lobbies to Overturn Second Law of Thermodynamics”.

Airport — A Typeface Revival ★

Lukas Schneider:

On 13 November 1961, the Oceanic building at London Airport opened to handle long-haul flight departure. In 1979, German publisher Ravensburger brought out a game designed to help children learn to count. Around Christmas 2023, I stumbled across a copy of that vintage game. The type on the box caught my eye, and that’s where this story began.

The letterforms resembled those of Helvetica. As the corners were soft, I initially thought it might be its Rounded version. However, the typeface featured a much larger x-height, the capitals were less wide, and the glyphs also had white bits in some places, yielding a highlight effect. I had never seen this design before. My first suspicion was that it might be a Letraset face, as this would have fitted in well with the release date of the game. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a match in a catalog by this manufacturer of rub-down type, so I contacted Florian Hardwig, who had often helped me with type research in the past. Florian was able to identify the mystery typeface. He found it in a catalog published in 1985 by Layout-Setzerei Stulle, a typesetting service in Stuttgart, Germany. Named Airport Spotlight, it’s a derivative of Airport, a typeface that Matthew Carter had designed in the early 1960s for signs at London Airport.

What a gift that Matthew Carter is still with us today. How’s this tidbit strike you, regarding the speed at which the world worked just decades ago:

In many regards, the adaptations made to Akzidenz echo the considerations made in the design of Helvetica. In an interview for Computer Arts, Carter comments: “[I]f you look at it today, you’d think was a rip-off of Helvetica. But we’d never seen Helvetica in 1961 in London, although it had been produced in Switzerland near Basle at the Haas foundry in 1957. Even if we had seen it, and wanted to have it typeset in London, we’d have had to get on a plane and fly to Basle and have it typeset there, because the British typesetting trade was so conservative that typefaces like that were simply unobtainable.”

Via Typographica.

Android Authority: ‘Google Is Transforming ChromeOS Into Android’ ★

Mishaal Rahman, reporting for Android Authority:

While both Android and ChromeOS have seen huge success in different markets, they’ve struggled to compete in one product category where they overlap: tablets. The high-end tablet market is dominated by the Apple iPad, and no matter what Google has tried, it has failed to change that. However, a source tells Android Authority that Google is working on a multi-year project to fully turn ChromeOS into Android, and the end result could be a platform that finally bests the iPad.

Probably not. Frankly it’s kind of weird that Android is a peer to iOS when it comes to phones, but not at all when it comes to tablets, even though iPadOS remains just a big-screen version of iOS. There are zillions of tablets out there that run Android, but they’re all crap and everyone knows it. “Flagship Android phones” are a thing; “Flagship Android tablets” are not. And iPads are a huge business for Apple, and the iPad is now solidly established as a piece of our cultural firmament. Everyone knows what an iPad is.

To better compete with the iPad as well as manage engineering resources more effectively, Google wants to unify its operating system efforts. Instead of merging Android and Chrome OS into a new operating system like rumors suggested in the past, however, a source told me that Google is instead working on fully migrating ChromeOS over to Android. While we don’t know what this means for the ChromeOS or Chromebook brands, we did hear that Google wants future “Chromebooks” to ship with the Android OS in the future. That’s why I believe that Google’s rumored new Pixel Laptop will run a new version of desktop Android as opposed to the ChromeOS that you’re likely familiar with.

So they’re not “merging” the two OSes as rumored, many times, in the past, but they’re “fully migrating ChromeOS over to Android”. The only way that really makes a lick of sense is that they’re shitcanning ChromeOS and working to make Android not suck on devices other than phones, like laptops and tablets. Good luck with that, given that even Apple has struggled to make iOS/iPadOS a good laptop OS. OS platforms are just hard — hard to design, hard to engineer, hard to evolve. And Apple, for one, seems more committed than ever to the idea that MacOS and iPadOS remain very different platforms.

And, somehow, there’s no mention of Fuchsia in Rahman’s piece. Fuchsia is supposedly Google’s OS of the future, but which more and more is smelling like Google’s Copland or Pink — a sprawling “next-gen” OS project that collapses under the weight of its own ambition and lack of practical focus, spinning its wheels for years “in development” whilst the world moves on.

Inside ISIS’s Graphic Design Team ★

Jason Koebler, writing for 404 Media:

According to the filing, which was first reported by our friends at Court Watch, Said was an aspiring ISIS graphic designer who was working with ISIS’s second-in-command graphic designer. That person told Said that ISIS’s chief designer gave him the nickname The Nightmare because of the extensive notes and revisions that were required before any piece of propaganda he worked on was pushed out. The DOJ document suggested that The Nightmare himself had many revisions for Said’s graphic design work.

“You can call me the Dawlawi [ISIS] designer or you can call me as the brother used to before. He used to send his designs for me to modify and because of the many changes, he used to be scared of me so he would call me ‘the nightmare,’” a message from The Nightmare to Said published by the DOJ said. [...]

The FBI obtained what it says are notes on one propaganda image allegedly created by Said and which The Nightmare tore apart because it had so many design elements that it was not very legible or effective as a piece of propaganda, and suggested that Said should both simplify it and add blood effects to parts of it to better get the point across.

If the Trump 2.0 administration goes full fascist, I think I’ve found my role in the resistance.

Apple Devices May Learn to Ignore ‘Hey Siri’ Command From TV Ads ★

Filipe Espósito, writing at 9to5Mac:

Apple introduced the “Hey Siri” command with iOS 8 to let users easily interact with the virtual assistant without having to press any buttons. However, over the years, this has resulted in Siri being mistakenly triggered when the command is spoken on a TV ad. But Apple is finally working on a fix for this. [...]

The new AdBlocker framework is linked to ShazamKit, which is the API for apps to use Shazam — the song identification platform acquired by Apple in 2018. At the same time, the framework also links to the process responsible for managing the “Siri” and “Hey Siri” voice commands on Apple devices.

Code suggests that “AdBlocker” will download audio fingerprints from Apple’s servers and then use the Shazam API to match them against audio captured by the device’s microphones using the Hey Siri API. When certain audios match, the new framework will temporarily disable Siri’s trigger commands.

Clever clever.

Monday, 18 November 2024

The Talk Show: ‘Annoying Friendliness’ ★

Joanna Stern returns to the show to talk about our new best friends, AI chatbots, and I chime in with how the Voight-Kampff test got it all wrong.

Sunday, 17 November 2024

Netflix Claims 60 Million Households Streamed Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul Fight Friday Night, Straining Quality to Breaking Point for Many ★

Dominic Patten, reporting for Deadline Friday night:

Netflix’s much hyped and much delayed live fight tonight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul is taking some hits even before the former heavyweight champion and the YouTuber turned boxer have climbed in the ring.

From nearly the start of the undercard bouts from AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, the streamer has been freezing, losing sound and proving slow to reload. While not totally crashing as Netflix did when Luke Cage launched on the streamer in October 2016, the audio on the feed cut out over and over and the quality of the image was reduced to smeared pixels repeatedly.

We watched the whole fight card, and the stream started flaking out early. We had a couple minutes-long segments with what looked like 320p quality, and at other points, the audio completely dropped out for minutes-long stretches, as though the TV were muted. Some people in some places didn’t see any glitches, but it seems like most viewers experienced some.

I thought this boded poorly for Netflix’s upcoming Christmas Day NFL games (and gave them some shit about it on social media) but I vastly underestimated just how many people would watch the Tyson-Paul fight. I was thinking the Christmas NFL games would have more viewers than the fight, but it’s the other way around. Thanksgiving and Christmas NFL games get about 30 million viewers, but Netflix announced they had 60 million “households” for the fight, peaking at 65 million (and with 50 million watching the great women’s title fight that preceded the main event).

That said, the streaming glitches I saw Friday night began early in the evening, during the first fight on the card, a few hours before the main event. It didn’t feel to me to like Netflix’s live event streaming architecture could handle 30 million viewers, either.

It’s easy to forget just how amazing it is that traditional cable TV can deliver a live event to as many people as possible simultaneously. For context, the Super Bowl gets about 100–120 million viewers. Streaming is altogether different. Netflix didn’t fall down on this big fight night, but they stumbled.

Friday, 15 November 2024

‘Here’s Why I Decided to Buy “InfoWars”’ ★

Bryce P. Tetraeder, Global Tetrahedron CEO, in an op-ed for The Onion:

Through it all, InfoWars has shown an unswerving commitment to manufacturing anger and radicalizing the most vulnerable members of society — values that resonate deeply with all of us at Global Tetrahedron.

No price would be too high for such a cornucopia of malleable assets and minds. And yet, in a stroke of good fortune, a formidable special interest group has outwitted the hapless owner of InfoWars (a forgettable man with an already-forgotten name) and forced him to sell it at a steep bargain: less than one trillion dollars.

Make no mistake: This is a coup for our company and a well-deserved victory for multinational elites the world over.

What’s next for InfoWars remains a live issue. The excess funds initially allocated for the purchase will be reinvested into our philanthropic efforts that include business school scholarships for promising cult leaders, a charity that donates elections to at-risk third world dictators, and a new pro bono program pairing orphans with stable factory jobs at no cost to the factories.

Have I mentioned that under its new ownership, The Onion is once again in good old print, delivered by mail to annual subscribers? I signed up at the end of September, still looking forward to my first issue.

Thursday, 14 November 2024

Mike Tyson Slaps Jake Paul in Face During Weigh-In ★

The winner of tomorrow night’s fight gets to be Secretary of the Treasury in the second Trump administration.

The Onion Buys Alex Jones’s Infowars in Bankruptcy Auction ★

Brandy Zadrozny and Erik Ortiz, NBC News:

The Onion, the satirical news company that repeatedly spoofed conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, has won the bankruptcy auction for control over his media empire — most notably Infowars, the far-right, conspiracy-minded website that served as Jones’ primary online platform.

Jones announced the sale on X on Thursday morning.

“I just got word 15 minutes ago that my lawyers and folks met with the U.S. trustee over our bankruptcy this morning and they said they are shutting us down even without a court order this morning,” Jones said. [...]

The Onion plans to shutter Jones’ Infowars and rebuild the website featuring well-known internet humor writers and content creators, according to a person with knowledge of the sale. About an hour and a half after the announcement of the sale, Infowars’ website was shut down.

If you’d told me, say, eight years ago, that in 2024 one of two things would happen: Infowars would buy The Onion or The Onion would buy Infowars, I don’t know which I’d have considered more likely. But I know which outcome I’d have rooted for. This is just delightful. I think what makes it so amazing is “The Onion Buys Infowars” feels like a perfect Onion headline.

Wednesday, 13 November 2024

Bill Atkinson Has Pancreatic Cancer ★

Bill Atkinson, on Facebook, “Request for Prayers”:

On October first, I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Because of vascular involvement, surgery is not possible. I am taking weekly chemo treatments to shrink the tumor before surgical resection. I am tolerating the chemo pretty well, and I am in good spirits. Every day I make a point of getting out in the sun and walking with Cai and Poppy. [...]

At 73 years, I have already lived an amazing and wonderful life. I have loved and been loved, beginning with my remarkable mother who believed in me. With my work at Apple and General Magic I am grateful that I could make positive contributions to the lives of many millions of people, and even affect the course of human evolution.

But I want more quality time to share life and experiences with Cai and with my friends and family. My bucket list is not filled with places to travel, but instead with quality time with those I love and those who love me.

I am living my life filled with gratitude. Each day is a special gift to be unwrapped, enjoyed, and cherished.

A seminal figure in the history of Apple, and the Macintosh in particular. I’ve not yet had the pleasure of meeting him, but I’ve heard stories about Atkinson from several of his former colleagues. In addition to being a genius programmer, he’s by all accounts a kind and generous person. Everyone was (and remains to this day) in awe of his skills, but they remember him best for being a friend.

Tuesday, 12 November 2024

The Verge’s Compilation of Tech Leaders Congratulating Donald Trump ★

More comprehensive, if less punchy, than my list last week:

Some Big Tech CEOs, including Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Disney’s Bob Iger, and TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew didn’t post a message for Trump. Netflix co-CEOs Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos also didn’t comment.

Also Now In Public Beta: Find My Enables Sharing Location of Lost Items With Third Parties, Including Airlines ★

Apple Newsroom:

Apple has introduced Share Item Location, a new iOS feature that helps users locate and recover misplaced items by easily and securely sharing the location of an AirTag or Find My network accessory with third parties such as airlines. Share Item Location is available now in most regions worldwide as part of the public beta of iOS 18.2, which will soon be available to all users as a free software update for iPhone Xs and later. Find My is built with privacy and safety at its core. The shared location will be disabled as soon as a user is reunited with their item, can be stopped by the owner at any time, and will automatically expire after seven days. [...]

Users can generate a Share Item Location link in the Find My app on their iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Recipients of a link will be able to view a website that shows a location of the item on an interactive map. The website will automatically update when a new location is available and will show a timestamp of the most recent update.

In the coming months, more than 15 airlines serving millions of people globally — including Aer Lingus, Air Canada, Air New Zealand, Austrian Airlines, British Airways, Brussels Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Eurowings, Iberia, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Lufthansa, Qantas, Singapore Airlines, Swiss International Air Lines, Turkish Airlines, United, Virgin Atlantic, and Vueling — will begin accepting Find My item locations as part of their customer service process for locating mishandled or delayed bags. More airlines will be added over time.

What a cool feature. Feels closer and closer to a no-brainer to keep an AirTag in each of your checked bags now.

iOS 18.2 Beta 3 Adds New ‘Require Screen On’ Toggle for Camera Control ★

Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:

iOS 18.2 beta 3 adds another new toggle for personalizing the iPhone 16’s Camera Control. Now, you can open the Camera app with a single press of the Camera Control even if your display is off.

If your iPhone 16’s display is off, the default behavior is that you press the Camera Control once to wake the screen and again to open the Camera app. This new toggle in iOS 18 gives you the ability to remove that first press.

If you go to the Settings app and choose “Display and Brightness,” you’ll see a new “Require Screen On” toggle at the bottom. This toggle is enabled by default. If you disable this toggle, however, a single press of the Camera Control will automatically open the Camera app regardless of whether or not your iPhone 16’s screen is on.

This was a significant gripe of mine in my iPhones 16 review, and this new setting is exactly what I was hoping for from Apple. I even agree that it’s probably a good idea for the “Require Screen On” setting to be on by default. I’m already running the iOS 18.2 betas on my personal phone for Apple Intelligence features, so I’ve disabled this new option already. I’m curious if it will result in any inadvertent Camera app launches, but I don’t think it will, for me. If anything, after two months of daily use of an iPhone 16 Pro, I feel like the recessed inset of the Camera Control button makes it a little too hard to click. I sort of wish it were raised, more like the Action and Side buttons. That Camera Control is effectively flush with the sides of the iPhone is protection enough — again, for me at least — against accidental presses.

Monday, 11 November 2024

John Geleynse Retires From Apple ★

John Geleynse, Apple’s longtime head of developer evangelism, on LinkedIn:

Doing anything for 25 years is a pretty big deal. Being a part of Apple for 25 years has been the privilege and experience of a lifetime.

My last day at Apple was exactly a week ago today. I’d always dreamed of being a part of Apple but never imagined it would be a reality. The most productive and exciting years of my career have been with Apple, and I’ll be forever grateful for the opportunity to meet and work with thousands of creative and passionate developers, designers, and students worldwide. [...]

There are no words to describe how grateful I am for the opportunity to work side-by-side with so many great people at Apple. Apple is an immensely special place — far greater than the sum of its parts. Together, we did a lot.

I heard about Geleynse’s retirement through the grapevine a month or two ago. I was hoping he’d post something like this publicly, so I could link to it. It’s a lovely departing message.

Turns out, in all the years I’ve been writing here, I’ve only mentioned Geleynse by name twice, and both times I was quoting what someone else had written. And those two posts were from 2007 and 2008 — a while ago, to say the least. That’s a shame, dare I say negligent on my part. In third-party developer circles, everyone knows John Geleynse. Most prominently, his role as co-host (with Shaan Pruden) and I think effectively co-chief of the Apple Design Awards. But the ADAs are a once-per-year award show. Year-round, year after year, platform after platform, Geleynse has been shaping, guiding, and defining what it means to be a third-party developer for Apple platforms. The point of winning an ADA isn’t to win an ADA; it’s to reward making a great app that moves the state of the art forward. That’s what Geleynse spent his career trying to do. He’s just incredibly well-liked and well-respected.

But, like a typical “bleed six colors” Apple employee, I think Geleynse going all these years operating mostly behind the scenes, with his own name out of the story, taking no personal credit, is just the way he wanted it. He’s going to be missed — things just won’t be the same — both inside Apple, and out.

Testing the New Ultrawide Mac Virtual Display Option in VisionOS 2.2 ★

MacRumors:

With the wide display option, there’s enough screen real estate to use four apps at once without compromising on window size. Ultrawide bumps up the available space even more, and it’s almost too much display space.

Using the ultrawide setting is like having multiple curved Mac displays in front of you to handle your Mac apps, and then you can also add in visionOS apps to better utilize the virtual space around you. The larger screen sizes for the Mac do improve productivity because there’s so much more space to work with.

Note that you still can’t use multiple Mac windows when mirroring your Mac display to your Vision Pro, but the wide and ultrawide provide so much space that it’s essentially the same function. Apple says that the ultrawide mode is equivalent to using two 4K monitors side by side.

If this suits your physical workspace (like, say, if you live and work in a studio apartment) or travel needs, it comes close to justifying the cost of a Vision Pro by itself. A single Studio Display costs $1,600 (without a nicer stand, without the nicer nano-texture coating).

Sunday, 10 November 2024

1Password: The Infinite Loop of Security ★

My thanks to 1Password — which, earlier this year, acquired frequent DF sponsor Kolide — for sponsoring last week at DF. The 2024 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) found that “the human element” (accidental breaches caused by human error, or victimization in phishing attacks and the like) was the number one cause of breaches. The same was true last year, and the year before that, and the year before that.

The single biggest culprit in breaches continues to be weak and stolen credentials. The 2024 DBIR found that “use of stolen credentials” is the number one initial action during a breach, and that credentials are the number one way attackers gain access in non-error, non-misuse breaches, followed by phishing and vulnerability exploits. This needs to change, and the 2024 DBIR offers a clear look at where we’re falling short and where we go from here. To get more insights about the report and its implications for security, read the full post on 1Password’s blog.

The Talk Show: ‘Holiday Party 2024’ With Special Guest Merlin Mann ★

This again. Jiminy. Well, once more, let’s talk around another election, and try, by doing so, to maybe express something about it.

Wednesday, 6 November 2024

The Brutal Clarity of This Result ★

Taegan Goddard, Political Wire:

After last night, it became clear it was a mistake to dismiss Trump’s true political strength. He will win the 2024 election with at least 51% of the popular vote.

His win will not be the result of a constitutional quirk. It was not even the result of a bad campaign by Kamala Harris. His victory was so broad based I’m not sure any Democrat could have beaten him last night.

There’s a brutal clarity in this result.

The majority of Americans are not concerned with Trump’s blatant racism or sexism. They are not concerned with his vows of retribution on his political enemies. They are not concerned with warnings of “fascism” by his former top aides. They are not concerned with his extensive criminal and fraudulent behavior.

If there’s a takeaway from this election, it’s that this is who we are.

Not all of us, to be sure. But it makes clear what the rest of us are up against.

I take some small solace at the moment in Trump’s victory being the clear democratic result. Republicans just fucking won. No mistakes on Harris’s side. There’s no Comey letter. No hanging chads. No margin within the range of woulda-coulda-shoulda recriminations. Just a clear electoral result.

I realized this year — or perhaps over the last four years — that for me, belief in the merits of democracy is quasi-religious. It’s more than a philosophy. It’s a fundamental belief. I have faith in democracy, and part of that is accepting the results of any fair and free election as the will of the electorate — similar, I think, to how actually religious people have faith that unspeakable tragedies can somehow be the will of a just and righteous deity. Through that prism, and with the genuine shock of 2016 giving me a brace, I can accept this. But because of that prism, I will never forgive or forget Trump’s shameful desecration of our democratic ideals in 2020. His winning in 2016 and again now are awful events. But his attempt to overturn the 2020 election — ham-fisted, idiotic, and failed though it thankfully was — was and will always be worse.

‘In Defeat: Defiance’ ★

Bill Kristol, at The Bulwark:

The American people have made a disastrous choice. And they have done so decisively, and with their eyes wide open.

Donald J. Trump will be our next president, elected with a majority of the popular vote, likely winning both more votes and more states than he did in his two previous elections. After everything — after his chaotic presidency, after January 6th, after the last year in which the mask was increasingly off, and no attempt was made to hide the extremism of the agenda or the ugliness of the appeal — the American people liked what they saw. At a minimum, they were willing to accept what they saw.

And Trump was running against a competent candidate who ran a good campaign to the center and bested him in a debate, with a strong economy. Yet Trump prevailed, pulling off one of the most remarkable comebacks in American political history. Trump boasted last night, “We’ve achieved the most incredible political thing,” and he’s not altogether wrong. [...]

So: We can lament our situation. We can analyze how we got here. We can try to learn lessons from what has happened. We have to do all these things.

But we can’t only do those things. As Churchill put it: “In Defeat: Defiance.” We’ll have to keep our nerve and our principles against all the pressure to abandon them. We’ll have to fight politically and to resist lawfully. We’ll have to do our best to limit the damage from Trump. And we’ll have to lay the groundwork for future recovery.

To do all this, we’ll have to constitute a strong opposition and a loyal opposition, loyal to the Declaration and the Constitution, loyal to the past achievements and future promise of this nation, loyal to what America has been and should be.

‘Trump Has Won, but Democracy Is Not Over’ ★

Tom Nichols, for The Atlantic:

Paradoxically, however, Trump’s reckless venality is a reason for hope. Trump has the soul of a fascist but the mind of a disordered child. He will likely be surrounded by terrible but incompetent people. All of them can be beaten: in court, in Congress, in statehouses around the nation, and in the public arena. America is a federal republic, and the states — at least those in the union that will still care about democracy — have ways to protect their citizens from a rogue president. Nothing is inevitable, and democracy will not fall overnight.

Do not misunderstand me. I am not counseling complacency: Trump’s reelection is a national emergency. If we have learned anything from the past several years, it’s that feel-good, performative politics can’t win elections, but if there was ever a time to exercise the American right of free assembly, it is now — not least because Trump is determined to end such rights and silence his opponents. [...]

Trump’s victory is a grim day for the United States and for democracies around the world. You have every right to be appalled, saddened, shocked, and frightened. Soon, however, you should dust yourself off, square your shoulders, and take a deep breath. Americans who care about democracy have work to do.

I wrote last night, “Strong déjà vu as acceptance sets in.” Referring, of course, to watching the results come in on election night in 2016. Now the day after, I still sense some of the same similarities to 2016, but I more feel the differences. I was braced for this result, this time. I wasn’t in 2016. Trump winning in 2016 was like a trapdoor we didn’t even know existed opening suddenly under our feet. But once the unimaginable happens, it’s no longer unimaginable that it might happen again. I was optimistic about this election. But polls are polls, and I knew my optimism was based on some degree of faith that the polls were wrong. I still think, now, that there were good reasons to suspect the polls might be underestimating Harris’s and down-ticket Democrats’ chances. But after 2016, I knew the polls showing Trump’s resiliency could be right.

Trump’s first term in office was disastrous on numerous fronts, and of the few things I feel certain about right now, one of them is that his second will be worse. This is going to be bad. But we shouldn’t be concussed like we were in 2016. This was not unimaginable. We knew this might be the result. And we know how we got through it last time: by going through it, with eyes open, resistance strong, and, as Nichols exhorts, shoulders squared. Truth and justice are the American way. The fight goes on.

Overnight Status Check ★

Josh Marshall, signing off for the night:

If Harris loses, that is obviously a crushing result. There’s no way around that. It’s different from 2016 in that it’s not a shock. We all knew or should have known this was a very possible result. The polls and models were about as close to 50-50 as you can get. A number were literally 50-50. But there’s another dimension of the story, assuming Trump does win. And that’s this: everyone knows who Donald Trump is. He was already President once. We know what that was like. Paradoxically Kamala Harris and he both did a pretty good job reminding us who he was over the last month. So it’s not like 2016 when you could say people didn’t know what they were getting. We know who he is. If he wins, which now looks probable though not certain, that’s a very sobering reality.

Strong déjà vu as acceptance sets in.

Tuesday, 5 November 2024

Apple News Offers an Election Day Live Activity ★

Sarah Perez, TechCrunch:

It’s Election Day in the U.S., which means you’re likely glued to the latest news about which presidential candidate is currently in the lead. To help with this, Apple has released a Live Activities widget within its Apple News app that will offer real-time election updates directly on your iPhone or iPad’s Home Screen and Lock Screen. [...]

To use the Apple News Live Activity in the U.S., you’ll need to first launch the News app and then tap on the banner at the top of the page offering live updates. After doing so, you’ll get a message saying “Live Activity Scheduled,” which notes that when the event starts, you’ll begin to receive real-time updates on both your Home Screen and Lock Screen.

On Apple Watch and in the iPhone’s Dynamic Island, it shows the Electoral College results for the presidential election; on the Home and Lock screens, it adds the results for the Senate and House of Representatives.

Monday, 4 November 2024

‘Vote to End the Trump Era’ ★

The New York Times editorial board, making deft use of good old-fashioned hypertext, has published a powerful endorsement on the eve of the election that covers so much ground, yet fits entirely in a single concise paragraph. In its entirety:

You already know Donald Trump. He is unfit to lead. Watch him. Listen to those who know him best. He tried to subvert an election and remains a threat to democracy. He helped overturn Roe, with terrible consequences. Mr. Trump’s corruption and lawlessness go beyond elections: It’s his whole ethos. He lies without limit. If he’s re-elected, the G.O.P. won’t restrain him. Mr. Trump will use the government to go after opponents. He will pursue a cruel policy of mass deportations. He will wreak havoc on the poor, the middle class and employers. Another Trump term will damage the climate, shatter alliances and strengthen autocrats. Americans should demand better. Vote.

Harrison Ford Endorses Kamala Harris ★

Harrison Ford:

The truth is this. Kamala Harris will protect your right to disagree with her. About policies, or ideas. And then, as we have done for centuries, we’ll debate them. We’ll work on them together. And we’ll move forward. The other guy? He demands unquestioning loyalty. Says he wants revenge.

I’m Harrison Ford, I’ve got one vote, same as everyone else — and I’m going to use it to move forward. I’m going to vote for Kamala Harris.

Ford’s message is a powerful framing of the authoritarian, anti-democracy dynamic in this election. Short, gruff, and to the point. Worth sharing to anyone you think might still be on the fence.

See Also: Same video, on X, if that’s easier for you to share.

Nilay Patel: ‘A Vote for Donald Trump Is a Vote for School Shootings and Measles’ ★

Nilay Patel, endorsing Kamala Harris at The Verge:

But look beyond the locked-in message discipline to her approach to campaigning, and it is clear Harris is deeply, meaningfully committed to solving collective action problems. She has assembled a politically diverse group of people to support her that range from AOC to Liz Cheney to Mark Cuban, and most of her claims about how she’ll run the country differently than Biden come down to putting Republicans in her Cabinet and reaching across the aisle more. She has, for better or worse, made approaches to the crypto community while championing restrictions on price gouging and regulations on banks. She had antimonopoly Senator Elizabeth Warren onstage at the Democratic National Convention while having Google antitrust defense lawyer Karen Dunn serve as her debate advisor.

You might not agree with some of the depressingly averaged-out policy positions produced by this unnervingly big tent. You might have some serious problems with, say, her proximity to the current administration and its approach to the war in Gaza. But this is what happens when the other party in our two-party system can only generate policy ideas that amount to AI-generated blood libel and RETVRN memes on X. Trump and the MAGA movement have stripped the Republican Party of the ability to govern democratically, so that process has moved inside the Harris coalition.

In many ways, the ecstatic reaction to Harris is simply a reflection of the fact that she is so clearly trying. She is trying to govern America the way it’s designed to be governed, with consensus and conversation and effort. With data and accountability, ideas and persuasion. Legislatures and courts are not deterministic systems with predictable outputs based on a set of inputs — you have to guide the process of lawmaking all the way to the outcomes, over and over again, each time, and Harris seems not only aware of that reality but energized by it. More than anything, that is the change a Harris administration will bring to a country exhausted by decades of fights about whether government can or should do anything at all.

I still see some friends on the left who are uneasy with Liz Cheney’s full-throated endorsement of Harris. And even more so by her father’s. Back in September, when Liz Cheney declared her endorsement of Harris, I wrote:

But (lowercase ‘d’) democratic politics ought to be viewed very much like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs are in psychology. Some things matter more than others. And nothing — not climate change or the environment, not reproductive rights, and certainly not fucking tax rates — nothing matters more than support for democracy itself and the rule of law. The only way we’re going to get those other things right — which are really, really important — is through democratic governance and the rule of law.

Everyone who supports democracy, who understands the stakes, who sees who Trump is with clear eyes, is on one side in this election. That side is with Kamala Harris. It certainly makes for some strange bedfellows on the sort of policy disagreements most U.S. elections are waged over. It is terrifying and depressing that so many Americans are seemingly on the other side. But make no mistake, those are the stakes.