apple
CNN cnbc
cnbc"The staff found, after a 16-month investigation into competitive practices at Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google, that the four businesses enjoy monopoly power that needs to be reined in by Congress and enforcers."Findings! This all sounds promising but I’m skeptical that we’ll see meaningful change. That monopoly power has been very useful to the government.
Daring Fireball
Daring Fireball"Apple’s tracking permission dialog is something no sane person would agree to because this sort of tracking is something no sane person would agree to."We agree to it every time we use the Internet with default settings. Changing defaults will cause some pain but it’s necessary.
youdownloadtheappanditdoesntwork.com
youdownloadtheappanditdoesntwork.com"On June 15, Apple rejected an update to a previously-approved iOS app called Hey. The app is for a new email service created by a company called Basecamp.This site has dozens of examples of apps that you can download from the iOS app store that don't work without a subscription you purchase elsewhere. This makes the rejection of the new email app Hey seem like Apple is singling out a potential direct competitor rather than evenly enforcing an existing policy.
The rationale for said rejection was that Hey offered a subscription via-website without also offering a parallel subscription via Apple's in-app purchase (IAP). Apple takes a 30% cut of IAP revenues during an app's first year, and 15% thereafter."
More background: Apple doubles down on controversial decision to reject email app Hey.
Update (6/23): We're all good here? Apple, HEY, and the Path Forward.
Apple
AppleA number of leading public health authorities, universities, and NGOs around the world have been doing important work to develop opt-in contact tracing technology. To further this cause, Apple and Google will be launching a comprehensive solution that includes application programming interfaces (APIs) and operating system-level technology to assist in enabling contact tracing.I'm extremely concerned about privacy related to these companies and I also think this is a great development. We're going to need to trade some privacy for safety to get society going again. Kottke had a neat comic explainer about how contact tracing works: How Privacy-Friendly Contact Tracing Can Help Stop the Spread of Covid-19.
The Verge
In a video posted to Twitter, Cook says Apple has sourced more than 20 million masks through its global supply chain and is working with governments to donate them where they’re needed.Nice work! Take a look at the assembly instructions for a sense of what the face shields are like.
The Verge
Not following the daily long scream of social media news? This article is a good way to catch up on the fresh horrors. Facebook is really leading the way in ethical absence:
- TechCrunch: Facebook pays teens to install VPN that spies on them
- Mashable: Facebook employees react to scandal on gossip app
- ProPublica: Facebook Moves to Block Ad Transparency Tools — Including Ours
Emojipedia
I've things you wouldn't . This article about emoji history on iOS is great. I remember downloading some sketchy app in 2008 just to unlock the hidden emoji keyboard. It's hard to remember how unusual it seemed to see pictures in the keyboard area. Many were hard to decipher and there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to them. The mystery made them compelling. Previous phones had built-in smileys but they weren't in wide use. I think the variety of emoji available made them something special that we're still enjoying incorporating into our language. Apple is missing something about their ambiguity by making emoji hyper-realistic, but they are pretty to look at on their high-resolution screens. I'm glad Emojipedia is keeping this history so past emoji won't be lost like in the .
See also: Who Created The Original Apple Emoji Set?
See also: Who Created The Original Apple Emoji Set?
ifixit.org
This is such a great mystery and investigation that I don't want to spoil it with too many details. We try to keep our phones out of water but we should also try to keep them away from "large concentrations of small-molecule gas".
What dark magic is this? Manual for iOS 10 just added the ability to shoot RAW photos.
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Leonard has a great summary of the Apple security problem: "Either Apple’s security was so incompetent or negligent that they have not been aware of what was going on, or they knew, but actively ignored the issue and decided that it was not worth fixing."
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"I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant." heh, Umberto Eco weighed in on the Mac vs. PC war in 1994 by comparing the organization of operating systems with the organization of religions.