daring-rss

David McCabe, reporting for The New York Times:

Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in online search, a
federal judge ruled on Monday, a landmark decision that
strikes at the power of tech giants in the modern internet era and
that may fundamentally alter the way they do business.

Judge Amit P. Mehta of U.S. District Court for the District of
Columbia said in a 277-page ruling that Google had abused a
monopoly over the search business. The Justice Department and
states had sued Google, accusing it of illegally cementing its
dominance, in part, by paying other companies, like Apple and
Samsung, billions of dollars a year to have Google automatically
handle search queries on their smartphones and web browsers.

“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its
monopoly,” Judge Mehta said in his ruling. […]

Monday’s ruling did not include remedies for Google’s behavior.
Judge Mehta will now decide that, potentially forcing the company
to change the way it runs or to sell off part of its business.

It’s worth a reminder that under U.S. antitrust law, having a monopoly is not in and of itself illegal. It’s just that monopolies must operate under different rules, and Mehta has rules that Google broke (and continues now to break) those rules.

And you don’t have to be an expert to know that Google Search is a monopoly. By market share it’s possibly the biggest monopoly in all of computing today. Maybe it’s still Windows, but most estimates peg the Mac’s share of the U.S. PC market at about 15 percent. I wouldn’t be surprised if fewer than 10 percent of Americans even know there exist search engines other than Google, let alone use one as their default.

What the remedies should — or even could — be for Google here, I don’t know. Microsoft lost a similarly huge antitrust case in the U.S. in the 1990s and effectively escaped unscathed.

See also: Techmeme’s roundup of coverage and commentary.

 ★ 

David McCabe, reporting for The New York Times:

Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in online search, a
federal judge ruled on Monday, a landmark decision that
strikes at the power of tech giants in the modern internet era and
that may fundamentally alter the way they do business.

Judge Amit P. Mehta of U.S. District Court for the District of
Columbia said in a 277-page ruling that Google had abused a
monopoly over the search business. The Justice Department and
states had sued Google, accusing it of illegally cementing its
dominance, in part, by paying other companies, like Apple and
Samsung, billions of dollars a year to have Google automatically
handle search queries on their smartphones and web browsers.

“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its
monopoly,” Judge Mehta said in his ruling. […]

Monday’s ruling did not include remedies for Google’s behavior.
Judge Mehta will now decide that, potentially forcing the company
to change the way it runs or to sell off part of its business.

It’s worth a reminder that under U.S. antitrust law, having a monopoly is not in and of itself illegal. It’s just that monopolies must operate under different rules, and Mehta has rules that Google broke (and continues now to break) those rules.

And you don’t have to be an expert to know that Google Search is a monopoly. By market share it’s possibly the biggest monopoly in all of computing today. Maybe it’s still Windows, but most estimates peg the Mac’s share of the U.S. PC market at about 15 percent. I wouldn’t be surprised if fewer than 10 percent of Americans even know there exist search engines other than Google, let alone use one as their default.

What the remedies should — or even could — be for Google here, I don’t know. Microsoft lost a similarly huge antitrust case in the U.S. in the 1990s and effectively escaped unscathed.

See also: Techmeme’s roundup of coverage and commentary.

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Apple’s success with services is no more a distraction from their core business than their success with their own chain of retail stores has been.

Jason Snell, “Existential Thoughts About Apple’s Reliance on Services Revenue”:

The intersection of hardware and software has been Apple’s home
address since the 1970s. And yet, a few years ago, Apple updated
its marketing language and began to refer to Apple’s secret sauce
as the combination of “hardware, software, and services.” […]

Last quarter, Apple made about $22 billion in profit from products
and $18 billion from Services. It’s the closest those two lines
have ever come to each other.

This is what was buzzing in the back of my head as I was going
over all the numbers on Thursday. We’re not quite there yet, but
it’s hard to imagine that there won’t be a quarter in the next
year or so in which Apple reports more total profit on Services
than on products.

When that happens, is Apple still a products company? Or has it
crossed some invisible line?

What a great column from Snell. One way to look at it — as Snell points out in the first paragraph quoted above — is that Apple has always been a two-sided coin. They are the company that best exemplifies Alan Kay’s adage: “People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.” Apple has always been like one of those optical illusions that looks like one thing at first, but looks like another if you stare at it for a few seconds. A hardware company that makes great software. A software company that makes great hardware.

Coins only have two sides though. If services constitute a new third dimension for the company, and we carry this analogy through, it’s like a coin whose edge just keeps getting thicker. If the edge gets thick enough, it’s no longer a coin — it’s something else. A stick or a baton.

But another way to look at it is that services are just another form of software. Software that runs not on the personal computing devices Apple sells to customers, but which run on servers in the cloud. And, importantly, is sold to users via lucrative recurring subscriptions. Content often isn’t what we think of as software (like say music, movies, and TV shows) but content from the App Store is. But the key is that it’s all stuff that the users of Apple’s devices consume on those devices. Apple’s core business is designing, engineering, producing, and selling those devices. Services are just a huge, and growing, part of what users do and consume on those devices.

To extend Kay’s axiom for today’s world, I suspect Apple’s leadership sees things this way: People who are really serious about device platforms should make their own services. Viewed that way, Apple’s success with services is no more a distraction from their core business than their success with their own chain of retail stores has been. It’s just a necessary evolution.

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Charlotte Klein, who wrote the New York Magazine piece over the weekend reporting on how Bloomberg shit the bed by publishing news of Evan Gershkovich’s release in a prisoner swap before he was actually released from Russian custody:

Jennifer Jacobs — one of the two Bloomberg reporters who bylined the embargo-breaking Gershkovich piece — has been fired, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Accountability comes for every organization, eventually.

 ★ 

Charlotte Klein, who wrote the New York Magazine piece over the weekend reporting on how Bloomberg shit the bed by publishing news of Evan Gershkovich’s release in a prisoner swap before he was actually released from Russian custody:

Jennifer Jacobs — one of the two Bloomberg reporters who bylined the embargo-breaking Gershkovich piece — has been fired, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Accountability comes for every organization, eventually.

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I knew RFK Jr. was nuts but I had no idea this nuts. This is his side of the story, for chrissake. Jiminy. You really ought to watch Kennedy’s own video, which, I swear, costars Roseanne Barr.

But. This whole thing — to wit, that it was this shithead RFK Jr. who did this, and that it’s coming out 93 days before an election in which he’s a possible Nader-esque siphon-off-the-vote-of-the-fellow-nutjobs spoiler — might be the funniest story ever.

 ★ 

I knew RFK Jr. was nuts but I had no idea this nuts. This is his side of the story, for chrissake. Jiminy. You really ought to watch Kennedy’s own video, which, I swear, costars Roseanne Barr.

But. This whole thing — to wit, that it was this shithead RFK Jr. who did this, and that it’s coming out 93 days before an election in which he’s a possible Nader-esque siphon-off-the-vote-of-the-fellow-nutjobs spoiler — might be the funniest story ever.

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Jason Snell, at Six Colors on Thursday:

On Thursday, Apple announced results for its financial third
quarter. Total company revenue was $85.8 billion, a record
for its fiscal third quarter, which is traditionally the company’s
quietest quarter. Services revenue reached an all-time revenue
high of $24.2 billion.

iPhone revenue was down 1%, iPad revenue spiked 24% after major
new product releases, and Mac revenue ticked up 2%.

Check out our transcript of Apple’s quarterly conference call
with analysts and our video recap of the results.

 ★ 

Jason Snell, at Six Colors on Thursday:

On Thursday, Apple announced results for its financial third
quarter. Total company revenue was $85.8 billion, a record
for its fiscal third quarter, which is traditionally the company’s
quietest quarter. Services revenue reached an all-time revenue
high of $24.2 billion.

iPhone revenue was down 1%, iPad revenue spiked 24% after major
new product releases, and Mac revenue ticked up 2%.

Check out our transcript of Apple’s quarterly conference call
with analysts and our video recap of the results.

Read More 

Charlotte Klein, reporting for New York Magazine:

According to multiple sources at the Journal and other major
outlets, the Bloomberg scoop left journalists and government
officials fuming. With a prisoner swap, you don’t know if it’s
going to happen until it happens. (As one Journal reporter put it:
“We literally had Yaroslav Trofimov on the ground with binoculars
waiting to see Evan come off the plane, and we pubbed as soon as
that happened.”) Which means that Bloomberg’s story proclaiming
Gershkovich was free was inaccurate, given that the Russian plane
was still in the air at the time of publication. That plane could
have just turned around and gone back to Moscow, which is why the
Journal and other publications had agreed to hold off.

“Incensed” is how one reporter, whose outlet had agreed to an
embargo — delaying publishing what they knew — reacted to
Bloomberg’s decision. “People are very, very disappointed in
Bloomberg. And not just the embargo breaking, but the football
spiking.” (The Bloomberg editor’s X post was later deleted.)
Another reporter added, “We all want to break stories. We also
need to consider the risks of breaking those stories. I hope
editors and reporters thought long and hard about the risks of
revealing the details of a hostage transfer before the hostages
were back in U.S. custody.”

There is no accountability at Bloomberg. I’ve fumed for years regarding their refusal to retract “The Big Hack”. But this is so much worse. As bad as “The Big Hack” was, journalistically, it wasn’t life-and-death. The exchange of these prisoners was.

What a disgrace, driven by their institutional obsession with being the first to report scoops.

 ★ 

Charlotte Klein, reporting for New York Magazine:

According to multiple sources at the Journal and other major
outlets, the Bloomberg scoop left journalists and government
officials fuming. With a prisoner swap, you don’t know if it’s
going to happen until it happens. (As one Journal reporter put it:
“We literally had Yaroslav Trofimov on the ground with binoculars
waiting to see Evan come off the plane, and we pubbed as soon as
that happened.”) Which means that Bloomberg’s story proclaiming
Gershkovich was free was inaccurate, given that the Russian plane
was still in the air at the time of publication. That plane could
have just turned around and gone back to Moscow, which is why the
Journal and other publications had agreed to hold off.

“Incensed” is how one reporter, whose outlet had agreed to an
embargo — delaying publishing what they knew — reacted to
Bloomberg’s decision. “People are very, very disappointed in
Bloomberg. And not just the embargo breaking, but the football
spiking.” (The Bloomberg editor’s X post was later deleted.)
Another reporter added, “We all want to break stories. We also
need to consider the risks of breaking those stories. I hope
editors and reporters thought long and hard about the risks of
revealing the details of a hostage transfer before the hostages
were back in U.S. custody.”

There is no accountability at Bloomberg. I’ve fumed for years regarding their refusal to retract “The Big Hack”. But this is so much worse. As bad as “The Big Hack” was, journalistically, it wasn’t life-and-death. The exchange of these prisoners was.

What a disgrace, driven by their institutional obsession with being the first to report scoops.

Read More 

Christina Warren (a.k.a. “Mary Brown”) returns to the show. Topics include Apple’s new iOS 18.1 and MacOS 15.1 betas (featuring Apple Intelligence), a little reminiscing about Gil Amelio and Steve Jobs, and the bizarre saga of TUAW, resurrected as a zombie AI slopsite.

Sponsored by:

Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code talkshow for 10% off your first order.

 ★ 

Christina Warren (a.k.a. “Mary Brown”) returns to the show. Topics include Apple’s new iOS 18.1 and MacOS 15.1 betas (featuring Apple Intelligence), a little reminiscing about Gil Amelio and Steve Jobs, and the bizarre saga of TUAW, resurrected as a zombie AI slopsite.

Sponsored by:

Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code talkshow for 10% off your first order.

Read More 

Look closely.

 ★ 

Look closely.

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Tim Sweeney on X, with what can only be described as a weird take on Find My:

This feature is super creepy surveillance tech and shouldn’t
exist. Years ago, a kid stole a Mac laptop out of my car. Years
later, I was checking out Find My and it showed a map with the
house where the kid who stole my Mac lived. WTF Apple? How is
that okay?!

Responding to arguments that Find My only allows people to track devices that they own, Sweeney dug deeper:

A lot of people are saying this here. While technically true, it
misses the point: you can’t track the location of a device that’s
in someone’s possession without tracking that person, and people
have a right to privacy. This right applies to second hand device
buyers and even to thieves.

When you reset a Mac, iPhone, or iPad before selling it, the original owner can no longer track it. Find My poses no problem at all for legitimately transferred pre-owned devices. It only poses a problem for thieves — a group Sweeney perhaps has an affinity for.

 ★ 

Tim Sweeney on X, with what can only be described as a weird take on Find My:

This feature is super creepy surveillance tech and shouldn’t
exist. Years ago, a kid stole a Mac laptop out of my car. Years
later, I was checking out Find My and it showed a map with the
house where the kid who stole my Mac lived. WTF Apple? How is
that okay?!

Responding to arguments that Find My only allows people to track devices that they own, Sweeney dug deeper:

A lot of people are saying this here. While technically true, it
misses the point: you can’t track the location of a device that’s
in someone’s possession without tracking that person, and people
have a right to privacy. This right applies to second hand device
buyers and even to thieves.

When you reset a Mac, iPhone, or iPad before selling it, the original owner can no longer track it. Find My poses no problem at all for legitimately transferred pre-owned devices. It only poses a problem for thieves — a group Sweeney perhaps has an affinity for.

Read More 

Interesting new site, offering AI-powered answered to WWDC-related developer questions. Ask a question, it tries to answer (some answers seem great, some not), and offers links to relevant WWDC sessions.

The small print at the bottom of the page disclaims “Ask WWDC is not affiliated with Apple Inc.” Instead it’s the work of developer Matt Spear, using a tool he’s building called Tally, which aims to allow anyone to build a similar “ask site”.

 ★ 

Interesting new site, offering AI-powered answered to WWDC-related developer questions. Ask a question, it tries to answer (some answers seem great, some not), and offers links to relevant WWDC sessions.

The small print at the bottom of the page disclaims “Ask WWDC is not affiliated with Apple Inc.” Instead it’s the work of developer Matt Spear, using a tool he’s building called Tally, which aims to allow anyone to build a similar “ask site”.

Read More