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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.

★

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.

★

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.

Upgraded

My thanks to Upgraded for sponsoring last week at DF. Upgraded’s basic premise is simple: it’s like Apple’s iPhone upgrade program, but for MacBooks. Through Upgraded, you can get a new MacBook every two years with low monthly payments, AppleCare+ coverage, and effortless upgrades.

You don’t have to pay for your device all at once. With Upgraded’s program, you spread the cost over 36 low monthly payments. You can upgrade to a new device once you’ve made 24 payments, or pay it off over 36 months if you want to keep it instead. You also have the option to leave the upgrade program by returning your device after 24 payments.

It only takes a minute to apply. Your upgrade program is financed by Citizens Pay with APRs starting at 0%, based on creditworthiness. You can check if you’re eligible without impact to your credit score. Once you’ve joined, you can keep track of your upgrade schedule and new releases, chat with support, and more on Upgraded’s website.

★

My thanks to Upgraded for sponsoring last week at DF. Upgraded’s basic premise is simple: it’s like Apple’s iPhone upgrade program, but for MacBooks. Through Upgraded, you can get a new MacBook every two years with low monthly payments, AppleCare+ coverage, and effortless upgrades.

You don’t have to pay for your device all at once. With Upgraded’s program, you spread the cost over 36 low monthly payments. You can upgrade to a new device once you’ve made 24 payments, or pay it off over 36 months if you want to keep it instead. You also have the option to leave the upgrade program by returning your device after 24 payments.

It only takes a minute to apply. Your upgrade program is financed by Citizens Pay with APRs starting at 0%, based on creditworthiness. You can check if you’re eligible without impact to your credit score. Once you’ve joined, you can keep track of your upgrade schedule and new releases, chat with support, and more on Upgraded’s website.

★

DOJ Will Ask Judge to Force Google to Sell Chrome and De-Google Android

Leah Nylen and Josh Sisco, reporting for Bloomberg:

Top Justice Department antitrust officials have decided to ask a
judge to force Alphabet Inc.’s Google to sell off its Chrome
browser in what would be a historic crackdown on one of the
biggest tech companies in the world. […]

The antitrust officials pulled back from a more severe option
that would have forced Google to sell off Android, the people
said. […] The antitrust enforcers are set to propose that
Google uncouple its Android smartphone operating system from its
other products, including search and its Google Play mobile app
store, which are now sold as a bundle, the people said. They are
also prepared to seek a requirement that Google share more
information with advertisers and give them more control over
where their ads appear.

It’s hard to say from Bloomberg’s second-hand reporting — from people familiar with the matter — what exactly the DOJ is specifically going to ask for. But based on this report, I have to say, neither of these proposals makes much sense.

With Chrome, effectively what the DOJ is saying is that Google, as the monopoly search engine, should be disallowed from making its own web browser (which itself holds a monopoly share on web browsing — which share would be overwhelming if not for Safari). But Chrome, in and of itself, isn’t very valuable to anyone other than Google itself. The value Chrome holds to Google is inextricably tied to Chrome’s default integration with Google search and other Google web apps.

If Google were forced to sell Chrome, who’d make the default web browser for Android? Android can’t ship without a default browser. And the DOJ wants Google to “uncouple” Android from the Google Play store? Allowing Google to keep Android but not make its own web browser or app store is just nonsense. It might make some measure of sense to declare that Google has to sell the desktop version of Chrome — the apps for Windows and Mac — but then what happens to ChromeOS, which is not a monopoly, but is a significant competitor to Windows, MacOS, and iPadOS?

Chrome is not a standalone business. Android is not a standalone business. They’re both just appendages of Google that serve only as distribution channels for the advertising Google shows in search results, and the money it makes from advertising and game commissions in the Play Store. It’s like saying I have to sell my left foot. It’s very valuable to me, but of no value to anyone on its own. (Well, other than spite.)

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.

★

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.

★

★ Disambiguating iPhone Model Names That Have the ‘S’ Suffix

Apple’s S suffix for certain iPhone models — 3GS, 4S, 5S, 6S, XS — has always been problematic in this regard.

Here’s the Apple support page listing the devices compatible with iOS 18. They’re listed in chronological order, oldest to newest, and the list begins with the iPhone XR and iPhone XS from 2018. But on this support page, Apple styles the “R” and “S” suffixes as small caps. Screenshot:

Earlier today I linked to this Apple Newsroom post, regarding the new “Share Location” feature in Find My in iOS 18.2 beta 3. The Apple Newsroom post contains this sentence on iOS 18 compatibility:

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.

Is that the iPhone XS, styled with a lowercase s? Or are they referring to 2017’s iPhone X, and pluralizing it with the lowercase s? By nature of my work, I know that Apple’s internal style is never to pluralize a product name like “iPhone X” by adding an s; they would write something like “iPhone X models” or “iPhone X devices”. But to the casual reader, it’s ambiguous. I wound up double-checking on Apple’s aforelinked support page for iOS 18 device compatibility, just to be sure. And even there it’s only clear because a small caps R has a distinctive uppercase letterform.

Apple’s S suffix for certain iPhone models — 3GS, 4S, 5S, 6S, XS — has always been problematic in this regard. It’s a particular problem for publications with an all-caps headline style, such as posts here on Daring Fireball. This post from July 2008, shortly after the iPhone 3G came out, is headlined “iPhone 3Gs in Short Supply”, but when you see it styled on DF itself, it looks like “IPHONE 3GS IN SHORT SUPPLY”. At the time I wrote that, it wasn’t confusing at all — the iPhone 3G had only started shipping a few weeks prior, so the iPhone 3GS didn’t even exist yet (and with the 3G being the second-ever iPhone model, there wasn’t yet any history of Apple applying an S suffix to a model name). If I had it to do all over again, I’d have used an apostrophe (“iPhone 3G’s in Short Supply”) or just omitted pluralizing it in the first place (“iPhone 3G in Short Supply”).1

But the letter S has a second ambiguity problem, in addition to pluralization: its upper and lowercase letterforms are distinguished only by size, not shape, in most roman fonts. That means if you try to distinguish it via the use of small caps, it’s to no avail, because a small caps uppercase S looks nearly (if not completely) identical to a lowercase s. And in fact, that’s exactly how Apple tends to style the S and R in “iPhone XS” and “iPhone XR”, as evidenced by the screenshot above showing the device compatibility list for iOS 18.

Viewing the HTML source on Apple Newsroom shows that that’s how they’ve styled “XS” in today’s post:

iPhone Xs and later

The all-small-caps class is a simple one-rule style defined in the Apple Newsroom CSS:2

.all-small-caps {
font-variant-caps:all-small-caps
}

Here’s where I think Apple could do better. In their HTML markup, they should use an uppercase S inside the span tag delineating the small caps. They should do this:

S

instead of this:

s

Both of those will render the s in small caps in the browser. But when a user copies and pastes the text from the rendered output in their browser, they’ll get the S or s in the same case it is in the HTML, because small-caps styling doesn’t carry across copy-and-pasting. Whether the original HTML markup uses an uppercase S or lowercase s inside the all-small-caps span, the rendered output users see in their web browser will be a small caps S. But what the user gets when copying and pasting will fall back to the actual case of the S in the HTML code.

Ideally, Apple wants us to see that S in small caps. But it’s inevitably going to fall back to simple upper or lowercase after copying and pasting, and in that situation (yes, I was tempted mightily to write case there), it’s clearly better to fall back on uppercase, giving copy-and-pasters the unambiguous “iPhone XS”.

Anyway, I’m glad Apple has seemingly abandoned these S-suffixed iPhone names. Next year when the XS and XR age out of support for iOS 19, we might be done writing about them in the present tense.

It’s a mistake, and a suggestion of low literacy, to erroneously use the apostrophe-s sequence to pluralize words or names where the proper way to spell the plural is to just add s. E.g., Apple employees are said to bleed six colors, not bleed six color’s. You surely know this. For chrissake you’re reading a footnote in a persnickety post regarding best practices in HTML markup for disambiguating product names in uncommon edge cases. But it’s not true that one should never form plurals using apostrophes. Per The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage: “Use apostrophes for plurals formed from single letters: He received A’s and B’s on his report card. Mind your p’s and q’s.” My own style guide goes further, and endorses apostrophes for plurals of initialisms in headlines (because of DF’s all-caps headline style for short posts), to make clear that in a headline such as, say, “Truckers Are Still Buying CB’s”, that they’re buying two-way radios, not the television network. ↩︎

I, for one, do not care for Apple’s CSS coding style that omits the optional trailing semicolon from the last rule in a block. Makes me just a tad itchy when I see that.3 ↩︎︎

While I’m straying way out in the coding-style weeds here, let me also observe that I feel old and grumpy about the fact that Apple’s HTML markup on Newsroom posts wraps body text paragraphs in <div class=”pagebody-copy”> tags, rather than simple semantic tags. ↩︎︎

★ How It Went

Election day, 2024.

My mom died at the end of June this year.

I know, and I’m sorry — that’s a hell of a way to open a piece ostensibly about a depressing, worrisome, frightening election result. But here’s the thing I want to emphasize right up front: my mom’s death was OK. It really was. She was 78, which isn’t that old, but her health had not been great. She was hospitalized for several days in May, just a month prior, after she had collapsed at home, too weak to stand, and for days it wasn’t clear what was wrong. Then some more test results came back and we had the answer. She had ovarian cancer, bad. It had already metastasized. The prognosis was grim: months to live, at best. And those months, toward the end, would inexorably grow ever more painful and profoundly sad.

Her mental acuity had begun to slip in recent years, too. Not a lot, but if you knew her you’d notice. But she faced this prognosis with remarkable dignity, courage, and clarity. She knew the score. It was what it was, and she’d make the best of the time she had left. She was tired but still felt pretty good most days. There were flashes of her younger self, the Mom I remember growing up with. It was wonderful to see those flashes. The bad times were coming, but they laid ahead. On the last Monday night in June she and my dad went out to eat at their favorite restaurant. They had a good meal and a good time. It was a great day. Tuesday morning she played Wordle and reported her score to our family group chat. Then around noon, she just fell over, dead. My dad found her unresponsive, called 911, and they arrived in minutes, but she was gone. No suffering. The whole dreadful grind of battling cancer never came. It’s such a cliché but clichés are often true: given what she faced, it was a blessing she died how and when she did. She never wanted to suffer and she didn’t. I loved her and I miss her.

Like I said, it was all OK, in the end — the way and how and when my mom died.

But my dad. My dad is 86, in exceptional good health, and he remains sharp. Until recently he not only played golf but walked the course, carrying his own clubs. He stopped playing golf last year, because — and I realized this only after my mom was hospitalized in May — he’d more and more been shouldering all of the responsibilities of daily life for the both of them. Even just nine holes of golf takes a few hours, and he didn’t want to leave her alone for that long a stretch of time, so he stopped playing. He still walks a mile or more a day, weather permitting. They were married 52 years and spent only a handful of nights apart in that entire span. They were in some ways an opposites-attract couple, but they were inseparable. They were good together. After accepting her cancer diagnosis, my mom was ready, I think, even for something as sudden as what happened to her at the end. My dad was not.

But he’s an optimist at heart. You’d like him. I, of course, don’t know who you are, dear reader, but I know you’d like my dad, Bob Gruber, because everyone likes Bob Gruber. He can tell a good joke and he loves to tell them. There’s a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln, that I was reminded of, just the other day, from of all things a garbage can: “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.” I don’t share Lincoln’s there’s-something-to-like-about-everyone optimism about our fellow men, but my dad does.

He’s been doing good, I think, these months since her passing. I talk to him almost every day. He’s naturally outgoing and still goes out. He’s got friends — which fact alone can be rare for an 86-year-old — and he sees them regularly. He attends mass frequently and takes tremendous solace in his faith. He misses my mom, his wife, desperately, but he puts on a good face. He gets sad and he admits he gets sad. But the very last thing he wants is for anyone, especially me or my sister, to worry about or even feel sorry for him. I’m like that. I get it. You often hear about old men who just shut down and fade away, rather quickly, after their wives die. My dad’s not shutting down.

I thought of my dad this week when I watched Harrison Ford’s gravelly endorsement of Kamala Harris, which he began thus: “Look, I’ve been voting for 64 years. Never really wanted to talk about it very much.” My dad’s politics are like that. His religion is too. Strong beliefs that he doesn’t feel the need to broadcast or proselytize — and deep suspicion, bordering on contempt, regarding those who do. My dad is old and white and lives in a suburb in a red Pennsylvania county, but he is a lifelong Democrat. He can’t abide Fox News and never understood his age-group peers who succumbed to Rush Limbaugh’s daily siren call. His entire life he’s seen the Democrats as the party of and for the people. The party for working men and women. The party of equality and justice and minding your own goddamn business what people do in their private lives. He votes every election, even the odd years, when the only office on the ballot might be the borough tax collector or members of the school board. He rightly sees voting as a citizen’s civic duty. My dad is the most honest and trustworthy person I’ve ever known, or even imagined. If they ever somehow met, my dad and Joe Biden would become fast friends. They share a worldview, and grew up at the same time, in similar places, from similar means. They even both love trains. (My dad, though, thought Biden was too old to run again. “I know that walk,” he told me early this year, regarding Biden’s stiffening gait. He thought it was good, and noble, when Biden dropped out.) He despises Donald Trump and sees right through him.

So, when my dad called me Tuesday morning, I thought it would be the election on his mind. It was all that was on my mind, that’s for sure. He had, in fact, just come back from voting, but it was something else. His voice was chipper, upbeat, but I could tell it wasn’t a good story. I know him too well.

Turns out, he had gone out to eat, by himself, Monday evening. In fact, at the very same restaurant where he and my mom ate their last meal together. He ate, drove home, and once home went to wash his hands before going to bed. That’s when he noticed his wedding band was missing from his finger.

It was lost.

He looked around to no avail, and went to bed without it. In the morning light, he retraced his steps. He felt certain he had it on while at the restaurant — not because he took any note of it while dining, but because he knows he’d have noticed its absence. If you wear a ring every day on the same finger, you know how true that is. He almost never took that ring off.

At some point when I was a little kid, my dad told me he had never once removed his ring since my mom put it on his finger at their wedding, the year before I was born. My mom, I knew, took hers on and off all the time. In fact she often wore other rings in place of her actual wedding band, because she found them more comfortable, and she placed little sentimental value on the ring from her actual ceremony. I asked my dad that day about his, and he told me he simply had never taken it off. I found that to be amazing. From my childhood perspective, he’d worn that ring nonstop for a lifetime. He broke that streak eventually, for some small reason, and it wasn’t a big deal to him, the never-having-taken-it-off thing. But I knew from that time I asked him about it as a child, that the ring itself was deeply important to him, in a way that my mom didn’t feel about hers. Some people imbue meaning and sentimental importance to certain objects. My dad saw his wedding ring like that. It was a sacred token. And now he’d lost it.

Through my youth — his 30s and 40s and early 50s — my dad always looked how I’d describe as “of average build”. Neither thin nor heavy. Strong but not muscled. He looked like the sort of man who in his youth played third base, and batted near the top of the order, which he did. A former athlete who could still hit the living shit out of a golf ball. In his middle age, he gained a bit of a paunch. (It happens, I now know.) But in the last few years he’s lost quite a bit of weight. He’s downright bony now, in an old man way. His old pants (and nearly all his pants are old — he’s 86) need to be cinched with a belt or they’d fall right off him. His fingers too, have gotten bony. So his ring had gotten loose. He’d offhandedly mentioned that fact to me a few months ago even, telling me he needed to be careful whenever his hands might get wet.

After waking Tuesday morning, he searched everywhere he could think it might be. The kitchen. The bathroom. The shower. The sink. The other sink. He took the couch cushions off. He looked in his car. He went back in the house and searched everywhere all over again. He took a break to vote, came home, and went back out and searched the car again, this time with a flashlight. To no avail. It’s a sick feeling after you’ve lost something of value, when you start losing count of how many times you’ve looked for it in the exact same places you’ve already checked. You can’t stop looking, but can’t think of new places to search.

He called the restaurant, but they weren’t yet open, so he left a message, leaving his name and number in case anyone had found a simple well-worn gold wedding band — and if no one had, well, maybe could they keep an eye out for it. He called me after he left that message. He wasn’t forlorn. He laughed even. That’s how he is. That’s how I am. That’s how we are. I’m his boy, as he still sometimes reminds me. But I know what that ring meant to him.

And my mom had just died so recently. It has only been a few months. The seasons have only changed once since we buried her.

Fuck.

It was a bad start to a day that I began, like any keen political junkie, with a nervous feeling. I’m not superstitious but a bad omen is a bad omen. You want every little thing to break right on a high-stress big day, and Election Day, for us, had begun with a small heartbreak. I told my wife about my dad’s ring and she almost burst into tears. She loves him so much. “He just lost your mom”, she said.

You know how the rest of Election Day went. My wife and I voted. We both like the ceremony of voting in-person on Election Day. It helps that we live in a neighborhood with a vibrant civil infrastructure, with no-wait polling places no more than a block or two away from any residence. We were both feeling good.

But then what? I was reminded, once again, that I never know what to do with myself on Election Day in a presidential election. No information or results can be gleaned until polling places start closing in early states at 7pm ET. What do you do until then? It seemed pointless for me to write anything further about the election, but equally futile to think I could concentrate on anything else. Expounding upon Kottke’s treatise on the art of hypertext writing was a good distraction. I got to write about something I care about, and because the inspiration was the NYT editorial board’s receipts-packed 110-word admonition to end the Trump era, my effort felt at least tangentially related to the election that was then (and alas, remains now) front of mind for me. I could focus on that, and I didn’t finish it until just before 7:00pm. Perfect.

That’s Kornacki time. Steve Kornacki’s data-driven, map-based analysis has been the heart and soul of MSNBC’s presidential election night coverage for all three Trump elections: 2016, 2020, and now 2024. I honestly don’t remember how I watched election results before Kornacki. I know I’ve been watching election night results on TV since at least 1992. As best I can recall, before 2016, I’d flip around between CNN, MSNBC, and the broadcast networks. I basically just “watched the news on TV”, not on any particular channel. But starting in 2016, we just watch Kornacki. We put on MSNBC and we don’t flip. The desk chatter amongst commentators and panelists that consumes the time between Kornacki updates is background noise. But what Kornacki does is genius. Maybe the other networks have caught up and do something similar now. I don’t know, because I no longer flip.

The way it works is that every news operation has a “decision desk”. The decision desk staffers are off-screen analysts, not on-air talent. They call state-by-state results only with absolute certainty. That absolute certainty can and usually does come before every single vote in a state has been counted, but comes after the likely winner is ascertainable beyond a reasonable doubt. The decision desks make their calls not when the writing appears on the wall, but when the paint has started to dry.

They weren’t always so fastidious, because nerve-rackingly close results in American presidential elections used to be the exception, not the norm. But after the contentious and almost impossibly close election of 2000, when, on election night, multiple networks — including Fox News — had projected Al Gore the winner early in the evening, based on exit polls rather than tabulated votes, every such major decision desk has become quite rigorous about this, regardless of the political bent of the network or publication. Rigorous to the point of almost entirely avoiding controversy. We can see that even now, on Friday 8 November, as I write this. At the moment, none of the major decision desks have yet called Arizona or Nevada, despite it being a near-certainty Trump won both. The only exception I can recall was four years ago, when Fox News called Arizona for Biden at midnight and the AP followed a few hours later. Biden did in fact win Arizona, but when Fox and the AP called it for him, with 80 percent of the state’s ballots counted, Biden was ahead by a seemingly comfortable 9 percent. By the time all ballots had been counted, days later, the margin had closed to a whisker-thin 0.3 percent. They were correct, but by their own standards of rigor were mistaken to call it when they did. It’s an interesting sign of how independent the Fox News decision desk is, though, that when they got reckless, it was in Biden’s direction.

What Steve Kornacki does at MSNBC is make de facto calls without making actual calls. Or better put, he presents real-time data and context that allows you, the attentive viewer, to start making calls long before the decision desks reach their standards of absolute certainty. “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” goes the Bob Dylan line. Steve Kornacki isn’t the weatherman. He’s our finger in the air.

What he does is find telltale counties in important states. A suburb of Atlanta. A suburb of Charlotte. A suburb of Philadelphia. With, say, half the vote counted, he might show that Harris is winning 75-25 in that county. That’s a solidly blue county. A 50-point margin is, you know, good. But then comes the context. That same county, let’s say, went 80-20 for Biden in 2020, and went 75-25 for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Now that 75-25 margin for Harris doesn’t look good. It looks like 2016, not like 2020. Or go the other way. Kornacki finds small rural counties of note. Some red county Trump was certain to win, but which he was winning this year by margins that looked like those in 2016, not 2020.

It’s quite remarkable, Kornacki’s gift. He presents the story, the explanation of how the election results are going, without ever saying what exactly it is he is explaining. He shows you just the right trees to give you a sense of the entire forest. He never says “It looks like Trump is going to win North Carolina.” He simply presents facts, cold hard facts, that, if you consider them, explain why it looks like Trump is going to win North Carolina. They are conclusions left for you, the viewer, to draw. It’s incredibly disciplined. But he never ever gets ahead of the actual NBC News decision desk. He doesn’t have to. The way he does what he does, he can’t be wrong. If Kornacki paints a picture of live data and historical results that indicate that Trump is heading toward a win in, say, Georgia, hours before any official decision desk call is made, that’s because the data available up to that point just factually shows that Trump is on a path to win Georgia. And if something were to happen with the remaining votes that change that path, he’ll simply present that new data as it comes in, later in the evening.

Closely watching Kornacki didn’t mean I knew Trump was going to win early in the evening. But it meant I knew it sure looked like he was going to. I was concerned when Florida’s results came in, shortly after their polls closed at 8pm. (Say what you will about their debacle in 2000, but in the aftermath, Florida got its shit together and now tabulates the entirety of their statewide vote with remarkable alacrity and promptness.) I of course had no expectation that Harris might win Florida, but she lost by 13 points. Trump only won Florida four years ago by 3 points. That swing alone was an ominous early sign of the nationwide trend. That’s when the pit formed in my stomach. Uh-oh.

I don’t flip channels but I do of course watch with my phone in hand. The New York Times’s infamous “needle” lurched sickeningly rightward early. I stopped looking at it, but not because I thought it was mistaken. Because I knew it was probably correct. By 10pm or so, it seemed obvious that Harris’s only plausible path to victory was for three states — Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin — to buck the nationwide trend of red counties getting redder, and blue counties getting slightly less blue. There was reason for hope, but not much. It was like “Tom Brady could lead the Patriots to a comeback in the Super Bowl even though they’re down 28-3 in the third quarter” hope. That happened, but that’s not how 28-3 football games tend to go. That’s not how elections tend to go. And it’s not how this one went. At 11:20pm, my friend Taegan Goddard wrote this lede in a post at Political Wire: “Donald Trump is now very likely to win re-election. He has the edge in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — all states Kamala Harris needs to win.” I wasn’t yet at the point where I’d have put that into such stark words, but I knew they were true. So it goes.

I watched MSNBC for another hour, but only with resignation, not hope. I watched a Harris spokesman take the podium at her stage at Howard University and tell the nation she wouldn’t be speaking until Wednesday — just like 2016. I posted one brief item here, commenting only, “Strong déjà vu as acceptance sets in.”

I woke early on Wednesday, at least by my night owl standards. A gut punch is not a sleep aid. My dad called, just after 9:30am. He seldom calls that early, knowing my sleep habits. I hadn’t stopped feeling heartsick about his ring. His voice though, was excited. He’d gone to mass that morning, driven home, and parked in front of his house. (Still hard for me not to call it their house.) Same exact spot where he’d parked the night he lost the ring. It’s a one-way street, and in front of his house, cars park on the left. He opened the car door and thought to look down, just in case. There it was. His ring. In the street, between his car and the curb, nestled amidst some dry leaves. It must have fallen off his finger as he was opening the car door that night, and the leaves perhaps deadened any clink it might have made hitting the ground. If that parking spot hadn’t been open again, he wouldn’t have found it then and there. If it had rained, it would have washed away.

He said, “John, when I picked that ring up, I kissed it. 52 years I’ve had this ring on my finger. I thanked St. Anthony, and I thanked your mother. I think she found it for me.”

Given the circumstances when I went to bed Tuesday night, it was no surprise I was welling up with tears come the morning. But I’d never have expected they’d be tears of joy, with a sense of hope — however diminished — and abiding love in my heart.

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★

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.

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European Commission Dings Apple Over Anti-Steering Provisions in App Store, and Opens New Investigations Into Core Technology Fee, Sideloading Protections, and the Eligibility Requirements to Offer an Alternative Marketplace

The European Commission:

Today, the European Commission has informed Apple of its
preliminary view that its App Store rules are in breach of the
Digital Markets Act (DMA), as they prevent app developers from
freely steering consumers to alternative channels for offers and
content.

I think what they’re saying here is that Apple’s current compliance offering, where developers can remain exclusively in the App Store in the EU under the existing terms, or choose the new terms that allow for linking out to the web, aren’t going to pass muster. The EC wants all apps to be able to freely — as in free of charge freely — link out to the web for purchases, regardless if they’re from the App Store, an alternative marketplace, or directly sideloaded.

The Commission will investigate whether these new contractual
requirements for third-party app developers and app stores breach
Article 6(4) of the DMA and notably the necessity and
proportionality requirements provided therein. This includes:

1. Apple’s Core Technology Fee, under which developers of
third-party app stores and third-party apps must pay a €0.50
fee per installed app. The Commission will investigate whether
Apple has demonstrated that the fee structure that it has
imposed, as part of the new business terms, and in particular
the Core Technology Fee, effectively complies with the DMA.

No word on how it doesn’t comply, just that they don’t like it.

2. Apple’s multi-step user journey to download and install
alternative app stores or apps on iPhones. The Commission will
investigate whether the steps that a user has to undertake to
successfully complete the download and installation of
alternative app stores or apps, as well as the various
information screens displayed by Apple to the user, comply with
the DMA.

This sounds like they’re going to insist that Apple make installing sideloaded apps and alternative stores a no-hassle experience. What critics see is Apple putting up obstacles to installing marketplaces or sideloaded apps just to be a dick about it and discouraging their use to keep users in the App Store. What I see are reasonable warnings for potentially dangerous software. We’ll see how that goes.

Perhaps where the EC will wind up is making app store choice like web browser choice. Force Apple to present each user with a screen listing all available app marketplaces in their country in random order, of which Apple’s own App Store is but one, just like Safari in the default browser choice screen.

3. The eligibility requirements for developers related to the
ability to offer alternative app stores or directly distribute
apps from the web on iPhones. The Commission will investigate
whether these requirements, such as the ‘membership of good
standing’ in the Apple Developer Program, that app developers
have to meet in order to be able to benefit from alternative
distribution provided for in the DMA comply with the DMA.

I’m not sure what this is about, given that Apple relented on allowing even Epic Games to open a store. Maybe the financial requirements?

In parallel, the Commission will continue undertaking preliminary
investigative steps outside of the scope of the present
investigation, in particular with respect to the checks and
reviews put in place by Apple to validate apps and alternative app
stores to be sideloaded.

This pretty clearly is about Apple using notarization as a review for anything other than egregious bugs or security vulnerabilities. I complain as much as anyone about the aspects of the DMA that are vague (or downright inscrutable), but this aspect seems clear-cut. It’s a bit baffling why Apple seemingly sees notarization as an opportunity for content/purpose review, like with last week’s brouhaha over the UTM SE PC emulator. Refusing to notarize an emulator that uses a JIT is something Apple ought to be able to defend under the DMA’s exceptions pertaining to device security; refusing to notarize an emulator that doesn’t use a JIT seems clearly forbidden by the DMA.

★

The European Commission:

Today, the European Commission has informed Apple of its
preliminary view that its App Store rules are in breach of the
Digital Markets Act (DMA), as they prevent app developers from
freely steering consumers to alternative channels for offers and
content.

I think what they’re saying here is that Apple’s current compliance offering, where developers can remain exclusively in the App Store in the EU under the existing terms, or choose the new terms that allow for linking out to the web, aren’t going to pass muster. The EC wants all apps to be able to freely — as in free of charge freely — link out to the web for purchases, regardless if they’re from the App Store, an alternative marketplace, or directly sideloaded.

The Commission will investigate whether these new contractual
requirements for third-party app developers and app stores breach
Article 6(4) of the DMA and notably the necessity and
proportionality requirements provided therein. This includes:

1. Apple’s Core Technology Fee, under which developers of
third-party app stores and third-party apps must pay a €0.50
fee per installed app. The Commission will investigate whether
Apple has demonstrated that the fee structure that it has
imposed, as part of the new business terms, and in particular
the Core Technology Fee, effectively complies with the DMA.

No word on how it doesn’t comply, just that they don’t like it.

2. Apple’s multi-step user journey to download and install
alternative app stores or apps on iPhones. The Commission will
investigate whether the steps that a user has to undertake to
successfully complete the download and installation of
alternative app stores or apps, as well as the various
information screens displayed by Apple to the user, comply with
the DMA.

This sounds like they’re going to insist that Apple make installing sideloaded apps and alternative stores a no-hassle experience. What critics see is Apple putting up obstacles to installing marketplaces or sideloaded apps just to be a dick about it and discouraging their use to keep users in the App Store. What I see are reasonable warnings for potentially dangerous software. We’ll see how that goes.

Perhaps where the EC will wind up is making app store choice like web browser choice. Force Apple to present each user with a screen listing all available app marketplaces in their country in random order, of which Apple’s own App Store is but one, just like Safari in the default browser choice screen.

3. The eligibility requirements for developers related to the
ability to offer alternative app stores or directly distribute
apps from the web on iPhones. The Commission will investigate
whether these requirements, such as the ‘membership of good
standing’ in the Apple Developer Program, that app developers
have to meet in order to be able to benefit from alternative
distribution provided for in the DMA comply with the DMA.

I’m not sure what this is about, given that Apple relented on allowing even Epic Games to open a store. Maybe the financial requirements?

In parallel, the Commission will continue undertaking preliminary
investigative steps outside of the scope of the present
investigation, in particular with respect to the checks and
reviews put in place by Apple to validate apps and alternative app
stores to be sideloaded.

This pretty clearly is about Apple using notarization as a review for anything other than egregious bugs or security vulnerabilities. I complain as much as anyone about the aspects of the DMA that are vague (or downright inscrutable), but this aspect seems clear-cut. It’s a bit baffling why Apple seemingly sees notarization as an opportunity for content/purpose review, like with last week’s brouhaha over the UTM SE PC emulator. Refusing to notarize an emulator that uses a JIT is something Apple ought to be able to defend under the DMA’s exceptions pertaining to device security; refusing to notarize an emulator that doesn’t use a JIT seems clearly forbidden by the DMA.

★

★ Apple Disables WebKit’s JIT in Lockdown Mode, Offering a Hint Why BrowserEngineKit Is Complex and Restricted

To put it in Steven Sinofsky’s terms, gatekeeping is a fundamental aspect of Apple’s brand promise with iOS.

Last week I mentioned Apple’s prohibition on JITs — just-in-time compilers — in the context of their rejection of UTM SE, an open source PC emulator. Apple’s prohibition on JITs, on security grounds, is a side issue regarding UTM SE, because UTM SE is the version of UTM that doesn’t use a JIT. But because it doesn’t a JIT, it’s so slow that the UTM team doesn’t consider it worth fighting with Apple regarding its rejection.

On that no-JITs prohibition, though, it’s worth noting that Apple even disables its own trusted JIT in WebKit when you enable Lockdown Mode, which Apple now describes as “an optional, extreme protection that’s designed for the very few individuals who, because of who they are or what they do, might be personally targeted by some of the most sophisticated digital threats. Most people are never targeted by attacks of this nature.” Apple previously described Lockdown Mode as protection for those targeted by “private companies developing state-sponsored mercenary spyware”, but has recently dropped the “state-sponsored” language.

Here’s how Apple describes Lockdown Mode’s effect on web browsing:

Web browsing – Certain complex web technologies are blocked, which
might cause some websites to load more slowly or not operate
correctly. In addition, web fonts might not be displayed, and
images might be replaced with a missing image icon.

JavaScriptCore’s JIT interpreter is one of those “complex web technologies”. Alexis Lours did some benchmarking two years ago, when iOS 16 was in beta, to gauge the effect of disabling the JIT on JavaScript performance (and he also determined a long list of other WebKit features that get disabled in Lockdown Mode, a list I wish Apple would publish and keep up to date). Lours ran several benchmarks but I suspect Speedometer is most relevant to real-world usage:

Speedometer aims to benchmark real world applications by emulating
page action on multiple frameworks. This should allow us to get a
decent idea of the performance drop in JavaScript heavy
frameworks.

A 65% drop in performance, while this is still a heavy hit on
performance, compared to a 95% drop, this shifts the value from a
no-go to a compromise worth considering for people seeking the
extra privacy.

This brings me to BrowserEngineKit, a new framework Apple created specifically for compliance with the EU’s DMA, which requires gatekeeping platforms to allow for third-party browser engines. Apple has permitted third-party browsers on iOS for over a decade, but requires all browsers to use the system’s WebKit rendering engine. One take on Apple’s longstanding prohibition against third-party rendering engines is that they’re protecting their own interests with Safari. More or less that they’re just being dicks about it. But there really is a security angle to it. JavaScript engines run much faster with JIT compilation, but JITs inherently pose security challenges. There’s a whole section in the BrowserEngineKit docs specifically about JIT compilation.

As I see it Apple had three choices, broadly speaking, for complying with the third-party browser engine mandate in the DMA:

Disallow third-party browser engines from using JITs. This would clearly be deemed malicious by anyone who actually wants to see Chromium or Gecko-based browsers on iOS. JavaScript execution would be somewhere between 65 to 90 percent slower compared to WebKit.

Allow third-party browser engines in the EU to just use JIT compilation freely without restrictions. This would open iOS devices running such browsers to security vulnerabilities. The message to users would be, effectively, “If you use one of these browsers you’re on your own.”

Create something like BrowserEngineKit, which adds complexity in the name of allowing for JIT compilation (and other potentially insecure technologies) in a safer way, and limit the use of BrowserEngineKit only to trusted web browser developers.

Apple went with choice 3, and I doubt they gave serious consideration to anything else. Disallowing third-party rendering engines from using JITs wasn’t going to fly, and allowing them to run willy-nilly would be insecure. The use of BrowserEngineKit also requires a special entitlement:

Apple will provide authorized developers access to technologies
within the system that enable critical functionality and help
developers offer high-performance modern browser engines. These
technologies include just-in-time compilation, multiprocess
support, and more.

However, as browser engines are constantly exposed to untrusted
and potentially malicious content and have visibility of sensitive
user data, they are one of the most common attack vectors for bad
actors. To help keep users safe online, Apple will only authorize
developers to implement alternative browser engines after meeting
specific criteria and who commit to a number of ongoing privacy
and security requirements, including timely security updates to
address emerging threats and vulnerabilities.

BrowserEngineKit isn’t easy, but I genuinely don’t think any good solution would be. Browsers don’t need a special entitlement or complex framework to run on MacOS, true, but iOS is not MacOS. To put it in Steven Sinofsky’s terms, gatekeeping is a fundamental aspect of Apple’s brand promise with iOS.

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★ Disambiguating iPhone Model Names That Have the ‘S’ Suffix

★ How It Went

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European Commission Dings Apple Over Anti-Steering Provisions in App Store, and Opens New Investigations Into Core Technology Fee, Sideloading Protections, and the Eligibility Requirements to Offer an Alternative Marketplace

★ Apple Disables WebKit’s JIT in Lockdown Mode, Offering a Hint Why BrowserEngineKit Is Complex and Restricted