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My thanks to BriefLook for sponsoring last week at DF. BriefLook is a clever iPhone app that does one thing and does it well: it summarizes your postal (paper) mail. Just point your iPhone camera at a letter, and boom, a few moments later you get an AI-generated summary. Who it’s from, what it’s about, and what you’re expected to do about it. That’s useful for summarizing long letters in your own native language, but BriefLook can read and translate between dozens of languages. Truly an amazing use case for AI. Not too long ago a “universal mail translator / summarizer” was the stuff of science fiction. Now you can carry one in your pocket.

Download BriefLook and try it free of charge. Super useful, yet so utterly simple.

 ★ 

My thanks to BriefLook for sponsoring last week at DF. BriefLook is a clever iPhone app that does one thing and does it well: it summarizes your postal (paper) mail. Just point your iPhone camera at a letter, and boom, a few moments later you get an AI-generated summary. Who it’s from, what it’s about, and what you’re expected to do about it. That’s useful for summarizing long letters in your own native language, but BriefLook can read and translate between dozens of languages. Truly an amazing use case for AI. Not too long ago a “universal mail translator / summarizer” was the stuff of science fiction. Now you can carry one in your pocket.

Download BriefLook and try it free of charge. Super useful, yet so utterly simple.

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Epic Games, on X two days ago:

Apple has rejected our Epic Games Store notarization submission
twice now, claiming the design and position of Epic’s “Install”
button is too similar to Apple’s “Get” button and that our “In-app
purchases” label is too similar to the App Store’s “In-App
Purchases” label.

We are using the same “Install” and “In-app purchases” naming
conventions that are used across popular app stores on multiple
platforms, and are following standard conventions for buttons in
iOS apps. We’re just trying to build a store that mobile users can
easily understand, and the disclosure of in-app purchases is a
regulatory best practice followed by all stores nowadays.

Apple’s rejection is arbitrary, obstructive, and in violation of
the DMA, and we’ve shared our concerns with the European
Commission. Barring further roadblocks from Apple, we remain ready
to launch in the Epic Games Store and Fortnite on iOS in the EU in
the next couple of months.

Later that same day:

Update: Apple has informed us that our previously rejected Epic
Games Store notarization submission has now been accepted.

Tim Sweeney:

Epic had supported notarization during Epic v Apple on the basis
that Mac’s mandatory malware scanning could add value to iOS. Now
it’s disheartening to see Apple twist its once-honest notarization
process into another vector to manipulate and thwart competition.

Asked if he would provide screenshots of the rejected screens, Sweeney responded:

We shared screenshots with EC regulators. We want to compete with
other stores by having a big exciting product rollout, which means
not trickling out media publicly before launch with the Apple fan
press doing a teardown using Phil Schiller crafted talking points.

Epic is certainly under no obligation to reveal screenshots of its in-progress iOS games marketplace, but without screenshots, there’s also no reason for anyone to take their own description of the notarization dispute with Apple at face value. Epic Games is an unreliable narrator. Last year the FTC fined Epic $245 million “to settle charges that the company used dark patterns to trick players into making unwanted purchases and let children rack up unauthorized charges without any parental involvement.”

Was Apple’s rejection of Epic’s notarization submission as petty and silly as Epic makes it sound? Maybe! Or perhaps Epic’s Game Store is designed to trick users into thinking it’s Apple’s own official App Store, and there’s nothing silly about the rejection at all. But in that case, it still might be illegal under the DMA for Apple to reject the submission for notarization — the DMA may well require Apple to notarize a third-party marketplace app that is a pixel-for-pixel rip-off of the App Store app, so long as it’s not outright malware.

My point is, we don’t know. And one party, Apple, is barely commenting on the fracas, and the other, Epic, was just fined a quarter of a billion dollars for tricking users, including children, into making unwanted purchases.

 ★ 

Epic Games, on X two days ago:

Apple has rejected our Epic Games Store notarization submission
twice now, claiming the design and position of Epic’s “Install”
button is too similar to Apple’s “Get” button and that our “In-app
purchases” label is too similar to the App Store’s “In-App
Purchases” label.

We are using the same “Install” and “In-app purchases” naming
conventions that are used across popular app stores on multiple
platforms, and are following standard conventions for buttons in
iOS apps. We’re just trying to build a store that mobile users can
easily understand, and the disclosure of in-app purchases is a
regulatory best practice followed by all stores nowadays.

Apple’s rejection is arbitrary, obstructive, and in violation of
the DMA, and we’ve shared our concerns with the European
Commission. Barring further roadblocks from Apple, we remain ready
to launch in the Epic Games Store and Fortnite on iOS in the EU in
the next couple of months.

Later that same day:

Update: Apple has informed us that our previously rejected Epic
Games Store notarization submission has now been accepted.

Tim Sweeney:

Epic had supported notarization during Epic v Apple on the basis
that Mac’s mandatory malware scanning could add value to iOS. Now
it’s disheartening to see Apple twist its once-honest notarization
process into another vector to manipulate and thwart competition.

Asked if he would provide screenshots of the rejected screens, Sweeney responded:

We shared screenshots with EC regulators. We want to compete with
other stores by having a big exciting product rollout, which means
not trickling out media publicly before launch with the Apple fan
press doing a teardown using Phil Schiller crafted talking points.

Epic is certainly under no obligation to reveal screenshots of its in-progress iOS games marketplace, but without screenshots, there’s also no reason for anyone to take their own description of the notarization dispute with Apple at face value. Epic Games is an unreliable narrator. Last year the FTC fined Epic $245 million “to settle charges that the company used dark patterns to trick players into making unwanted purchases and let children rack up unauthorized charges without any parental involvement.”

Was Apple’s rejection of Epic’s notarization submission as petty and silly as Epic makes it sound? Maybe! Or perhaps Epic’s Game Store is designed to trick users into thinking it’s Apple’s own official App Store, and there’s nothing silly about the rejection at all. But in that case, it still might be illegal under the DMA for Apple to reject the submission for notarization — the DMA may well require Apple to notarize a third-party marketplace app that is a pixel-for-pixel rip-off of the App Store app, so long as it’s not outright malware.

My point is, we don’t know. And one party, Apple, is barely commenting on the fracas, and the other, Epic, was just fined a quarter of a billion dollars for tricking users, including children, into making unwanted purchases.

Read More 

Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg last week:

Apple Inc. will get an observer role on OpenAI’s board as part of
a landmark agreement announced last month, further tightening ties
between the once-unlikely partners. Phil Schiller, the head of
Apple’s App Store and its former marketing chief, was chosen for
the position, according to people familiar with the situation. As
a board observer, he won’t be serving as a full-fledged director,
said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter
isn’t public. […]

The board observer role will put Apple on par with Microsoft
Corp., OpenAI’s biggest backer and its main AI technology
provider. The job allows someone to attend board meetings without
being able to vote or exercise other director powers. Observers,
however, do gain insights into how decisions are made at the
company.

“Trust, but verify” the adage goes. This board observer role gives Apple a position to verify that OpenAI remains the trustworthy partner Apple thinks they are. I can think of no one better than Schiller for this position. Perhaps you’re no fan of Schiller’s stewardship of the App Store, but he’s long been a staunch proponent of user privacy at Apple. He’s significantly responsible for Apple’s shift toward making “privacy” a major selling point of their products and services.

 ★ 

Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg last week:

Apple Inc. will get an observer role on OpenAI’s board as part of
a landmark agreement announced last month, further tightening ties
between the once-unlikely partners. Phil Schiller, the head of
Apple’s App Store and its former marketing chief, was chosen for
the position, according to people familiar with the situation. As
a board observer, he won’t be serving as a full-fledged director,
said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter
isn’t public. […]

The board observer role will put Apple on par with Microsoft
Corp., OpenAI’s biggest backer and its main AI technology
provider. The job allows someone to attend board meetings without
being able to vote or exercise other director powers. Observers,
however, do gain insights into how decisions are made at the
company.

“Trust, but verify” the adage goes. This board observer role gives Apple a position to verify that OpenAI remains the trustworthy partner Apple thinks they are. I can think of no one better than Schiller for this position. Perhaps you’re no fan of Schiller’s stewardship of the App Store, but he’s long been a staunch proponent of user privacy at Apple. He’s significantly responsible for Apple’s shift toward making “privacy” a major selling point of their products and services.

Read More 

Sarah Perez, TechCrunch:

Figma CEO Dylan Field says the company will temporarily disable
its “Make Design” AI feature that was said to be ripping
off the designs of Apple’s own Weather app. The problem was first
spotted by Andy Allen, the founder of NotBoring
Software, which makes a suite of apps that includes
a popular, skinnable Weather app and other utilities. He
found by testing Figma’s tool that it would repeatedly reproduce
Apple’s Weather app when used as a design aid.

Field is right to pull the feature but this explanation is sophistry. The feature is clearly fundamentally flawed. It’s not in need of a tweak. It’s in need of being completely scrapped.

Generative is really good and truly useful when you say “Here’s a thing, help me tweak it or change it”. But when you say “Make a new thing for me” you’re effectively just getting a rip-off a lot — or perhaps most — of the time.

 ★ 

Sarah Perez, TechCrunch:

Figma CEO Dylan Field says the company will temporarily disable
its “Make Design” AI feature that was said to be ripping
off the designs of Apple’s own Weather app. The problem was first
spotted by Andy Allen, the founder of NotBoring
Software, which makes a suite of apps that includes
a popular, skinnable Weather app and other utilities. He
found by testing Figma’s tool that it would repeatedly reproduce
Apple’s Weather app when used as a design aid.

Field is right to pull the feature but this explanation is sophistry. The feature is clearly fundamentally flawed. It’s not in need of a tweak. It’s in need of being completely scrapped.

Generative is really good and truly useful when you say “Here’s a thing, help me tweak it or change it”. But when you say “Make a new thing for me” you’re effectively just getting a rip-off a lot — or perhaps most — of the time.

Read More 

Andy Allen:

Figma AI looks rather heavily trained on existing apps.

This is a “weather app” using the new Make Designs feature and the
results are basically Apple’s Weather app (left). Tried three
times, same results.

This is even more disgraceful than a human rip-off. Figma knows what they trained this thing on, and they know what it outputs. In the case of this utter, shameless, abject rip-off of Apple Weather, they’re even copying Weather’s semi-inscrutable (semi-scrutable?) daily temperature range bars.

“AI” didn’t do this. Figma did this. And they’re handing this feature to designers who trust Figma and are the ones who are going to be on the hook when they present a design that, unbeknownst to them, is a blatant rip-off of some exist app.

Maybe now that the Adobe deal fell through, Figma is looking to sell itself to Samsung?

 ★ 

Andy Allen:

Figma AI looks rather heavily trained on existing apps.

This is a “weather app” using the new Make Designs feature and the
results are basically Apple’s Weather app (left). Tried three
times, same results.

This is even more disgraceful than a human rip-off. Figma knows what they trained this thing on, and they know what it outputs. In the case of this utter, shameless, abject rip-off of Apple Weather, they’re even copying Weather’s semi-inscrutable (semi-scrutable?) daily temperature range bars.

“AI” didn’t do this. Figma did this. And they’re handing this feature to designers who trust Figma and are the ones who are going to be on the hook when they present a design that, unbeknownst to them, is a blatant rip-off of some exist app.

Maybe now that the Adobe deal fell through, Figma is looking to sell itself to Samsung?

Read More 

John Moltz returns to the show for a holiday-week look at the best of recent prestige streaming content, particularly Apple TV+. And, yes, a bit on the latest Apple/EU/DMA drama.

Sponsored by:

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

 ★ 

John Moltz returns to the show for a holiday-week look at the best of recent prestige streaming content, particularly Apple TV+. And, yes, a bit on the latest Apple/EU/DMA drama.

Sponsored by:

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

Read More 

The European Commission:

In particular, the Commission is concerned that Microsoft may
have granted Teams a distribution advantage by not giving
customers the choice whether or not to acquire access to Teams
when they subscribe to their SaaS productivity applications. This
advantage may have been further exacerbated by interoperability
limitations between Teams’ competitors and Microsoft’s offerings.
The conduct may have prevented Teams’ rivals from competing, and
in turn innovating, to the detriment of customers in the European
Economic Area.

If confirmed, these practices would infringe Article 102 of the
Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (‘TFEU’), which
prohibits the abuse of a dominant market position.

After the Commission opened proceedings in July 2023, Microsoft
introduced changes in the way it distributes Teams. In particular,
Microsoft started offering some suites without Teams. The
Commission preliminarily finds that these changes are insufficient
to address its concerns and that more changes to Microsoft’s
conduct are necessary to restore competition.

I can see the argument from regulatory proponents, that unbundling Teams from Office in some packages, after the fact, is too little too late. That the damage from abusing their dominant position was already done. But still, what more does the EC want?

The sending of a Statement of Objections does not prejudge the
outcome of an investigation.

Translation: They’re guilty and we’re just going through the motions of giving them a chance to state their case.

If the Commission concludes, after the company has exercised its
rights of defence, that there is sufficient evidence of an
infringement, it can adopt a decision prohibiting the conduct and
imposing a fine of up to 10% of the company’s annual worldwide
turnover. The Commission may also impose on the company any
remedies which are proportionate to bring the infringement
effectively to an end.

My read on this is that the EC’s stance is that its designated gatekeeping companies — all of which happen, by sheer coincidence I’m repeatedly told, to be from the US or Asia — should be forbidden from evolving their platforms to stay on top. That churn should be mandated by law.

I mean of course Microsoft had an advantage by being able to bundle Teams with Office. But Office needs something like Teams to remain relevant today. If Office had never evolved after achieving a dominant position in the market, it would still be sold in boxes full of floppy disks. Moving from licensed installations to SaaS was inevitable if Office were to remain relevant, and adding a collaborative communication layer like Teams was essential in today’s world.

The EC, to my eyes, is saying that it’s illegal for a successful platform to adapt and evolve. Or at the very least they’re saying they might deem it illegal. And once again it’s the EC itself that is proclaiming its threat to fine Microsoft up to 10 percent of its annual global revenue, and I’ll wager, once again, that the EU itself comprises less than 10 percent of Microsoft’s revenue. They’re threatening fines incommensurate with their market size.

I think the EC expects these companies to capitulate. To bend their entire global strategy to the whims of EC bureaucrats, and just accept being handcuffed. But what’s clearly happening is that the these gatekeepers are reading the writing on the wall, and are going to postpone all new features and products in the EU until after they have assurances that they’re compliant under EU law. The EC thinks they’re going to handcuff these companies, but instead all they’re doing is setting the entire EU market months, or even years, behind the rest of the world for new products and services. In some cases those products and services will just never come to the EU at all.

Surely the lesson Microsoft is taking from this is not that they were wrong to bundle Teams with Office, but that they were wrong to offer their integrated service in the EU.

 ★ 

The European Commission:

In particular, the Commission is concerned that Microsoft may
have granted Teams a distribution advantage by not giving
customers the choice whether or not to acquire access to Teams
when they subscribe to their SaaS productivity applications. This
advantage may have been further exacerbated by interoperability
limitations between Teams’ competitors and Microsoft’s offerings.
The conduct may have prevented Teams’ rivals from competing, and
in turn innovating, to the detriment of customers in the European
Economic Area.

If confirmed, these practices would infringe Article 102 of the
Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (‘TFEU’), which
prohibits the abuse of a dominant market position.

After the Commission opened proceedings in July 2023, Microsoft
introduced changes in the way it distributes Teams. In particular,
Microsoft started offering some suites without Teams. The
Commission preliminarily finds that these changes are insufficient
to address its concerns and that more changes to Microsoft’s
conduct are necessary to restore competition.

I can see the argument from regulatory proponents, that unbundling Teams from Office in some packages, after the fact, is too little too late. That the damage from abusing their dominant position was already done. But still, what more does the EC want?

The sending of a Statement of Objections does not prejudge the
outcome of an investigation.

Translation: They’re guilty and we’re just going through the motions of giving them a chance to state their case.

If the Commission concludes, after the company has exercised its
rights of defence, that there is sufficient evidence of an
infringement, it can adopt a decision prohibiting the conduct and
imposing a fine of up to 10% of the company’s annual worldwide
turnover. The Commission may also impose on the company any
remedies which are proportionate to bring the infringement
effectively to an end.

My read on this is that the EC’s stance is that its designated gatekeeping companies — all of which happen, by sheer coincidence I’m repeatedly told, to be from the US or Asia — should be forbidden from evolving their platforms to stay on top. That churn should be mandated by law.

I mean of course Microsoft had an advantage by being able to bundle Teams with Office. But Office needs something like Teams to remain relevant today. If Office had never evolved after achieving a dominant position in the market, it would still be sold in boxes full of floppy disks. Moving from licensed installations to SaaS was inevitable if Office were to remain relevant, and adding a collaborative communication layer like Teams was essential in today’s world.

The EC, to my eyes, is saying that it’s illegal for a successful platform to adapt and evolve. Or at the very least they’re saying they might deem it illegal. And once again it’s the EC itself that is proclaiming its threat to fine Microsoft up to 10 percent of its annual global revenue, and I’ll wager, once again, that the EU itself comprises less than 10 percent of Microsoft’s revenue. They’re threatening fines incommensurate with their market size.

I think the EC expects these companies to capitulate. To bend their entire global strategy to the whims of EC bureaucrats, and just accept being handcuffed. But what’s clearly happening is that the these gatekeepers are reading the writing on the wall, and are going to postpone all new features and products in the EU until after they have assurances that they’re compliant under EU law. The EC thinks they’re going to handcuff these companies, but instead all they’re doing is setting the entire EU market months, or even years, behind the rest of the world for new products and services. In some cases those products and services will just never come to the EU at all.

Surely the lesson Microsoft is taking from this is not that they were wrong to bundle Teams with Office, but that they were wrong to offer their integrated service in the EU.

Read More 

Yours truly back in March:

After being sold out for months, the upcoming sponsorship
schedule at DF is unusually open at the moment — including
this upcoming week.

Weekly sponsorships have been the top source of revenue for Daring
Fireball ever since I started selling them back in 2007.
They’ve succeeded, I think, because they make everyone happy. They
generate good money. There’s only one sponsor per week and the
sponsors are always relevant to at least some sizable portion of
the DF audience, so you, the reader, are never annoyed and
hopefully often intrigued by them. And, from the sponsors’
perspective, they work. My favorite thing about them is how many
sponsors return for subsequent weeks after seeing the
results.

If you’ve got a product or service you think would be of
interest to DF’s audience of people obsessed with high quality
and good design, get in touch.

This is now true, once again for next week. And just like in March, sponsorship spots for The Talk Show are open for the summer months as well.

 ★ 

Yours truly back in March:

After being sold out for months, the upcoming sponsorship
schedule at DF is unusually open at the moment — including
this upcoming week.

Weekly sponsorships have been the top source of revenue for Daring
Fireball ever since I started selling them back in 2007.
They’ve succeeded, I think, because they make everyone happy. They
generate good money. There’s only one sponsor per week and the
sponsors are always relevant to at least some sizable portion of
the DF audience, so you, the reader, are never annoyed and
hopefully often intrigued by them. And, from the sponsors’
perspective, they work. My favorite thing about them is how many
sponsors return for subsequent weeks after seeing the
results.

If you’ve got a product or service you think would be of
interest to DF’s audience of people obsessed with high quality
and good design, get in touch.

This is now true, once again for next week. And just like in March, sponsorship spots for The Talk Show are open for the summer months as well.

Read More 

Quinn Nelson, esteemed host of Snazzy Labs, returns to the show to recap the highlights of WWDC: Apple Intelligence, platform updates, and the latest salvos from the EC regarding Apple’s compliance with the DMA.

Sponsored by:

Trade Coffee: Enjoy 30% off your first month of coffee.
Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code talkshow for 10% off your first order.

 ★ 

Quinn Nelson, esteemed host of Snazzy Labs, returns to the show to recap the highlights of WWDC: Apple Intelligence, platform updates, and the latest salvos from the EC regarding Apple’s compliance with the DMA.

Sponsored by:

Trade Coffee: Enjoy 30% off your first month of coffee.
Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code talkshow for 10% off your first order.

Read More 

Wavelength:

We’re sad to announce that we’re shutting down Wavelength. We’re
so grateful to our users and community — you’ve been amazing.

On July 31st we’ll turn off our servers, which means that you’ll
no longer be able to sign in, create a group, or send messages.
You will continue to have access to your message history as long
as you keep the app installed on your device, but we recommend
saving or copying anything important out of the app as soon as
you can.

Your Wavelength account data will be deleted from our servers at
the time of the shutdown. Rest assured that we will not retain,
sell, or transfer any user information, and that your messages
remain end-to-end encrypted and secure.

You may recall I’ve been an advisor to the team at Wavelength for a little over a year, so I knew this announcement was coming. It’s a bummer, personally, at two levels. First, just knowing the team, particularly cofounders Richard Henry and Marc Bodnick, both of whom I now consider friends. They tried to crack the “privacy-minded social network” nut before with Telepath, and with Wavelength got even closer to pulling it off. So much work went into it, and so much of it was so good.

Second, though, is a more selfish reason: I’m an active participant in a bunch of active, vibrant groups on Wavelength. I’m going to miss them. The groups I’m most active in on Wavelength have a higher signal-to-noise ratio than any social networking platform I’ve seen in ages. I’d have to go back to the heyday of Usenet and email group mailing lists, literally decades ago, or the very early years of Twitter, to find anything with such a high level of discourse.

But the simple truth is that while Wavelength has been far from a failure, it’s also far from a breakout hit. It’d be an easy decision to shut it down if it were a flop. It was a hard decision to shut it down because it wasn’t. But a social platform really needs to be a breakout hit to succeed, and Wavelength just wasn’t on a path to become one.

So: time to move on. Until the plug gets pulled at the end of next month though, I’ll still be there.

 ★ 

Wavelength:

We’re sad to announce that we’re shutting down Wavelength. We’re
so grateful to our users and community — you’ve been amazing.

On July 31st we’ll turn off our servers, which means that you’ll
no longer be able to sign in, create a group, or send messages.
You will continue to have access to your message history as long
as you keep the app installed on your device, but we recommend
saving or copying anything important out of the app as soon as
you can.

Your Wavelength account data will be deleted from our servers at
the time of the shutdown. Rest assured that we will not retain,
sell, or transfer any user information, and that your messages
remain end-to-end encrypted and secure.

You may recall I’ve been an advisor to the team at Wavelength for a little over a year, so I knew this announcement was coming. It’s a bummer, personally, at two levels. First, just knowing the team, particularly cofounders Richard Henry and Marc Bodnick, both of whom I now consider friends. They tried to crack the “privacy-minded social network” nut before with Telepath, and with Wavelength got even closer to pulling it off. So much work went into it, and so much of it was so good.

Second, though, is a more selfish reason: I’m an active participant in a bunch of active, vibrant groups on Wavelength. I’m going to miss them. The groups I’m most active in on Wavelength have a higher signal-to-noise ratio than any social networking platform I’ve seen in ages. I’d have to go back to the heyday of Usenet and email group mailing lists, literally decades ago, or the very early years of Twitter, to find anything with such a high level of discourse.

But the simple truth is that while Wavelength has been far from a failure, it’s also far from a breakout hit. It’d be an easy decision to shut it down if it were a flop. It was a hard decision to shut it down because it wasn’t. But a social platform really needs to be a breakout hit to succeed, and Wavelength just wasn’t on a path to become one.

So: time to move on. Until the plug gets pulled at the end of next month though, I’ll still be there.

Read More