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This is not spite. Spite would be saying these features will never come to the EU while the DMA remains in place. But a delayed rollout is the only rational response to the DMA: extreme caution in the face of the law’s by-design uncertainty and severe penalties.

Ian Betteridge:

So, Apple, which bits of the DMA does Apple Intelligence violate?
Because unless you can actually tell us – which case we clearly
have a bit of a problem with some of the claims you’ve made about
how it works — or you’re talking bullshit, and just trying to get
some leverage with the EU. Which is it Tim?

I absolutely guarantee that people are going to swallow this “well
you can’t make Apple Intelligence work thanks to the DMA!!” line
without actually asking any questions about what it violates,
because “well Apple said it and they don’t lie evah”

That’s Apple’s entire point. They don’t know. It’s uncertain by design. EC proponents keep telling me it’s a feature, not a bug, that unlike the US, it’s the spirit, not letter, of the law that matters in the EU. So it doesn’t matter if there’s not a word in the DMA that disallows the Core Technology Fee; European Commissioners have decided it goes against the spirit of the DMA, so they’re going to charge and fine Apple.

Outgoing competition chief Margrethe Vestager (her 10-year term expires in November) gave a 20-minute interview to CNBC’s Silvia Amaro this week, in which she threatened Apple repeatedly, starting around the 13:00 mark.

Vestager: We have a number of Apple issues; I find them very serious. I was very surprised that we would have such suspicions of Apple being non-compliant. They are very important because a lot of good business happens through the App Store, happens through payment mechanisms, so of course, even though you know I can say this is not what was expected of such a company, of course we will enforce exactly with the same top priority as with any other business. […]

Vestager: What I see with the Digital Markets Act is that we get closer and closer to the business model. The changes that the DMA is demanding, they are changes that will touch the business model.

Amaro: Breakups even?

Vestager: Well, it remains to be seen. But if you have to carry a second app store, that will make a dent in your own app store. If you cannot promote your own services, but need to give room for competitors, rightfully, legitimately so, of course that will potentially, sort of, take away some of your own profits. So of course this will be a very difficult enforcement task, but even so much more rewarding, because the potential for the competitors of Big Tech — they are really, really big — and this is why enforcement of the DMA is a top priority.

Amaro: The reason why I am also bringing up Apple is because companies such as Spotify have also raised issues with the new changes that Apple has put forward, that ultimately the bill they will face now is the same or even bigger than what was in place before. And this is why I want to bring up the issue again of whether the DMA is actually leading to ultimate changes for the Big Tech? Or are they still hiding here, in between some of the … well, within the law?

Vestager: Well, I think that you cannot judge the DMA before we’ve had the cases, and before we finalize them, because we have a toolbox of fines, of doubling fines, of potential breakup of companies — so we have a very strong toolbox to punish.

So how is Apple (or Meta, or Google) supposed to launch new features, integrating its own new services deeply within and between its own platforms, while under repeated threats of massive fines, fines that are far out of proportion to the revenue Apple generates in the EU itself, and even — laughably, admittedly — being “broken up”? When Vestager is very clear that Apple will only be deemed compliant with the DMA if it adversely affects Apple’s profit? And when it’s the unwritten “spirit” of the DMA, not the letter of its ambiguous rules, that matters?

This isn’t about privacy or the fact that Apple Intelligence models were trained on data scraped from the public web. Such factors might play a role in Apple Intelligence’s compliance, but not iPhone Mirroring or the new SharePlay screen sharing. This is about the DMA’s restrictions on designated gatekeepers launching their own integrated services and features.

Under repeated threats of fines up to $40–80 billion dollars (10–20 percent of worldwide revenue), it would be recklessly irresponsible for Apple, or any other designated “gatekeeper”, to launch any new services or integrated features in the EU without absolutely certainty that those features are compliant with the DMA. And the nature of the European Commission is that they do not issue such assurances in advance. This is not spite. Spite would be saying these features will never come to the EU while the DMA remains in place. But a delayed rollout is the only rational response to the DMA: extreme caution in the face of the law’s by-design uncertainty and severe penalties.

Fortunately, because Apple is delaying Apple Intelligence and these other new features in the EU, all of the thriving EU-based smartphone and OS makers can jump in and compete on merit now, without Apple the gatekeeping bully in their way. As Vestager reiterates throughout the interview, competition is the European Commission’s north star.

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The whole 8-minute clip is excellent and worth your time, but do not miss the second half, starting with a sharp question from Alex Rodriguez at the 4:30 mark. Reggie describes, in heartfelt detail, the abject racism he faced as a minor league player as recently as the 1960s. Restaurants he couldn’t eat at. Hotels he couldn’t stay at. Threats to burn to the ground the apartment building where he was sleeping. The pain, over five decades later, remains searing.

Kudos to Fox Sports for airing this. We can’t celebrate progress without honestly facing the dark past. (Kudos too, for putting a box of Reggie Bars at the desk. Respect.)

 ★ 

The whole 8-minute clip is excellent and worth your time, but do not miss the second half, starting with a sharp question from Alex Rodriguez at the 4:30 mark. Reggie describes, in heartfelt detail, the abject racism he faced as a minor league player as recently as the 1960s. Restaurants he couldn’t eat at. Hotels he couldn’t stay at. Threats to burn to the ground the apartment building where he was sleeping. The pain, over five decades later, remains searing.

Kudos to Fox Sports for airing this. We can’t celebrate progress without honestly facing the dark past. (Kudos too, for putting a box of Reggie Bars at the desk. Respect.)

Read More 

The Financial Times:

Apple blamed complexities in making the system compatible with EU
rules that have forced it to make key parts of its iOS software
and App Store services interoperable with third parties.

“Due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the Digital
Markets Act,” Apple said on Friday, “we do not believe that we
will be able to roll out three of these features — iPhone
Mirroring, SharePlay Screen Sharing enhancements, and Apple
Intelligence — to our EU users this year.”

Kudos to Apple for breaking this news to the Financial Times, of all outlets. Poetry in media relations. Here’s the full on-the-record statement, provided to me by an Apple spokesperson:

Two weeks ago, Apple unveiled hundreds of new features that we are
excited to bring to our users around the world. We are highly
motivated to make these technologies accessible to all users.
However, due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the
Digital Markets Act (DMA), we do not believe that we will be able
to roll out three of these features — iPhone Mirroring, SharePlay
Screen Sharing enhancements, and Apple Intelligence — to our EU
users this year.

Specifically, we are concerned that the interoperability
requirements of the DMA could force us to compromise the
integrity of our products in ways that risk user privacy and data
security. We are committed to collaborating with the European
Commission in an attempt to find a solution that would enable us
to deliver these features to our EU customers without
compromising their safety.

None of these features are available yet in the developer beta OS releases, but it is my understanding that the first two — iPhone Mirroring and the new SharePlay Screen Sharing enhancements (where you’ll be able to see and doodle on the screens of others, like, say, if you’re providing remote how-to help to a friend or family member) — will be the next developer betas, coming early next week. Apple Intelligence won’t even enter beta until later this summer. But in the meantime, even in beta, none of these features will be available within the EU.

The Mac is not considered a “gatekeeping” platform in the EU, but the iPhone and iPad are, and the iPhone Mirroring and screen sharing features obviously involve those platforms. I think Apple could try to thread a needle here and release Apple Intelligence only on the Mac in the EU, but given how inscrutable the European Commission’s interpretation of the DMA is — where gatekeepers are expected to somehow suss out the “spirit of the law” regardless of what the letter of the law says — I don’t see how Apple can be blamed for pausing the rollout in the EU, no matter the platform.

The EU’s self-induced slide into a technological backwater continues.

 ★ 

The Financial Times:

Apple blamed complexities in making the system compatible with EU
rules that have forced it to make key parts of its iOS software
and App Store services interoperable with third parties.

“Due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the Digital
Markets Act,” Apple said on Friday, “we do not believe that we
will be able to roll out three of these features — iPhone
Mirroring, SharePlay Screen Sharing enhancements, and Apple
Intelligence — to our EU users this year.”

Kudos to Apple for breaking this news to the Financial Times, of all outlets. Poetry in media relations. Here’s the full on-the-record statement, provided to me by an Apple spokesperson:

Two weeks ago, Apple unveiled hundreds of new features that we are
excited to bring to our users around the world. We are highly
motivated to make these technologies accessible to all users.
However, due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the
Digital Markets Act (DMA), we do not believe that we will be able
to roll out three of these features — iPhone Mirroring, SharePlay
Screen Sharing enhancements, and Apple Intelligence — to our EU
users this year.

Specifically, we are concerned that the interoperability
requirements of the DMA could force us to compromise the
integrity of our products in ways that risk user privacy and data
security. We are committed to collaborating with the European
Commission in an attempt to find a solution that would enable us
to deliver these features to our EU customers without
compromising their safety.

None of these features are available yet in the developer beta OS releases, but it is my understanding that the first two — iPhone Mirroring and the new SharePlay Screen Sharing enhancements (where you’ll be able to see and doodle on the screens of others, like, say, if you’re providing remote how-to help to a friend or family member) — will be the next developer betas, coming early next week. Apple Intelligence won’t even enter beta until later this summer. But in the meantime, even in beta, none of these features will be available within the EU.

The Mac is not considered a “gatekeeping” platform in the EU, but the iPhone and iPad are, and the iPhone Mirroring and screen sharing features obviously involve those platforms. I think Apple could try to thread a needle here and release Apple Intelligence only on the Mac in the EU, but given how inscrutable the European Commission’s interpretation of the DMA is — where gatekeepers are expected to somehow suss out the “spirit of the law” regardless of what the letter of the law says — I don’t see how Apple can be blamed for pausing the rollout in the EU, no matter the platform.

The EU’s self-induced slide into a technological backwater continues.

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Matt Levine, in his Money Stuff column:

OpenAI was founded to build artificial general
intelligence safely, free of outside commercial pressures. And now
every once in a while it shoots out a new AI firm whose
mission is to build artificial general intelligence safely, free
of the commercial pressures at OpenAI.

 ★ 

Matt Levine, in his Money Stuff column:

OpenAI was founded to build artificial general
intelligence safely, free of outside commercial pressures. And now
every once in a while it shoots out a new AI firm whose
mission is to build artificial general intelligence safely, free
of the commercial pressures at OpenAI.

Read More 

Anthropic:

Claude 3.5 Sonnet sets new industry benchmarks for graduate-level
reasoning (GPQA), undergraduate-level knowledge (MMLU), and coding
proficiency (HumanEval). It shows marked improvement in grasping
nuance, humor, and complex instructions, and is exceptional at
writing high-quality content with a natural, relatable tone.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet operates at twice the speed of Claude 3 Opus.
This performance boost, combined with cost-effective pricing,
makes Claude 3.5 Sonnet ideal for complex tasks such as
context-sensitive customer support and orchestrating multi-step
workflows.

In an internal agentic coding evaluation, Claude 3.5 Sonnet
solved 64% of problems, outperforming Claude 3 Opus which solved
38%. Our evaluation tests the model’s ability to fix a bug or add
functionality to an open source codebase, given a natural language
description of the desired improvement. When instructed and
provided with the relevant tools, Claude 3.5 Sonnet can
independently write, edit, and execute code with sophisticated
reasoning and troubleshooting capabilities. It handles code
translations with ease, making it particularly effective for
updating legacy applications and migrating codebases.

I’ll take them with a grain of self-promoting salt, but the evaluation tests presented by Anthropic position Claude 3.5 Sonnet as equal to or better than ChatGPT-4o. Again: I don’t think there’s a moat in this game.

 ★ 

Anthropic:

Claude 3.5 Sonnet sets new industry benchmarks for graduate-level
reasoning (GPQA), undergraduate-level knowledge (MMLU), and coding
proficiency (HumanEval). It shows marked improvement in grasping
nuance, humor, and complex instructions, and is exceptional at
writing high-quality content with a natural, relatable tone.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet operates at twice the speed of Claude 3 Opus.
This performance boost, combined with cost-effective pricing,
makes Claude 3.5 Sonnet ideal for complex tasks such as
context-sensitive customer support and orchestrating multi-step
workflows.

In an internal agentic coding evaluation, Claude 3.5 Sonnet
solved 64% of problems, outperforming Claude 3 Opus which solved
38%. Our evaluation tests the model’s ability to fix a bug or add
functionality to an open source codebase, given a natural language
description of the desired improvement. When instructed and
provided with the relevant tools, Claude 3.5 Sonnet can
independently write, edit, and execute code with sophisticated
reasoning and troubleshooting capabilities. It handles code
translations with ease, making it particularly effective for
updating legacy applications and migrating codebases.

I’ll take them with a grain of self-promoting salt, but the evaluation tests presented by Anthropic position Claude 3.5 Sonnet as equal to or better than ChatGPT-4o. Again: I don’t think there’s a moat in this game.

Read More 

Michelle Lim, writing for the Warp blog (Warp, I’ll note, has previously sponsored DF):

Agent Mode raises the level of abstraction in the terminal. Using
natural language, you can ask the terminal to accomplish any high
level task without worrying about the specific commands you need.

Agent Mode knows when it needs more information to help you
complete a task. It will ask permission to run commands on your
machine and use the outputs to guide you, step-by-step. It’s also
self-correcting when it runs into errors.

Because Agent Mode executes tasks through the CLI, it integrates
with practically any service with zero configuration. If the
service has a CLI, an API, or publicly available docs, you can use
Agent Mode for the task. Agent Mode has inherent knowledge of most
public CLIs, and you can easily teach it how to use internal CLIs
by asking it to read their help content.

Man (no pun intended?) is this cool. I just tried “How do I generate a random number between 0000 and 9999?” and got:

You can generate a random number between 0000 and 9999 using the
following shell command in the Fish shell:

printf “%04dn” (random 0 9999)

And when I followed up with “How can I use jot to generate a random number between 0000 and 9999?” I got:

You can use the jot command to generate a random number between
0000 and 9999 using the following command:

jot -w “%04d” -r 1 0 9999

Both of which answers are correct. For jot — a tool I first learned about, of course, from the inimitable Dr. Drang — I think a simpler, and thus better, answer is:

jot -r 1 0000 9999

but Warp’s Agent Mode suggestion is certainly good enough.

 ★ 

Michelle Lim, writing for the Warp blog (Warp, I’ll note, has previously sponsored DF):

Agent Mode raises the level of abstraction in the terminal. Using
natural language, you can ask the terminal to accomplish any high
level task without worrying about the specific commands you need.

Agent Mode knows when it needs more information to help you
complete a task. It will ask permission to run commands on your
machine and use the outputs to guide you, step-by-step. It’s also
self-correcting when it runs into errors.

Because Agent Mode executes tasks through the CLI, it integrates
with practically any service with zero configuration. If the
service has a CLI, an API, or publicly available docs, you can use
Agent Mode for the task. Agent Mode has inherent knowledge of most
public CLIs, and you can easily teach it how to use internal CLIs
by asking it to read their help content.

Man (no pun intended?) is this cool. I just tried “How do I generate a random number between 0000 and 9999?” and got:

You can generate a random number between 0000 and 9999 using the
following shell command in the Fish shell:

printf “%04dn” (random 0 9999)

And when I followed up with “How can I use jot to generate a random number between 0000 and 9999?” I got:

You can use the jot command to generate a random number between
0000 and 9999 using the following command:

jot -w “%04d” -r 1 0 9999

Both of which answers are correct. For jot — a tool I first learned about, of course, from the inimitable Dr. Drang — I think a simpler, and thus better, answer is:

jot -r 1 0000 9999

but Warp’s Agent Mode suggestion is certainly good enough.

Read More 

Clothilde Goujard, reporting for Politico:

A vote scheduled today to amend a draft law that may require WhatsApp and Signal to scan people’s pictures and links for potential child sexual abuse material was removed from European Union countries’ agenda, according to three EU diplomats.

Ambassadors in the EU Council were scheduled to decide whether to back a joint position on an EU regulation to fight child sexual abuse material (CSAM). But many EU countries including Germany, Austria, Poland, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic were expected to abstain or oppose the law over cybersecurity and privacy concerns.

“In the last hours, it appeared that the required qualified majority would just not be met,” said an EU diplomat from the Belgian presidency, which is spearheading negotiations until end June as chair of the EU Council.

Sanity prevails, for now.

 ★ 

Clothilde Goujard, reporting for Politico:

A vote scheduled today to amend a draft law that may require WhatsApp and Signal to scan people’s pictures and links for potential child sexual abuse material was removed from European Union countries’ agenda, according to three EU diplomats.

Ambassadors in the EU Council were scheduled to decide whether to back a joint position on an EU regulation to fight child sexual abuse material (CSAM). But many EU countries including Germany, Austria, Poland, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic were expected to abstain or oppose the law over cybersecurity and privacy concerns.

“In the last hours, it appeared that the required qualified majority would just not be met,” said an EU diplomat from the Belgian presidency, which is spearheading negotiations until end June as chair of the EU Council.

Sanity prevails, for now.

Read More 

Matthew Panzarino, writing at The Obsessor:

The cardboard is inescapable if you use Amazon or other online
stores, they pile up in the hallways and next to the garbage cans
and you triage as you can.

We get so many that I have to break down our boxes in order to
fit them in our recycle bin. I’ve used all of the typical tools — scissors, pocket knife, box cutter — and many unconventional
ones like drywall saws just trying to make this painful job a
bit easier.

The CANARY is uniquely serrated all the way around its edge, like
a chainsaw. This makes it incredibly good at cutting cardboard
either with or across corrugation with ease. I cannot express how
easily this knife cuts cardboard, it’s like slicing through
regular old paper, it’s amazing.

Last year when I linked to (and recommended) Studio Neat’s Keen — the world’s best box cutter, but which costs about $100 — at least one reader recommended the Canary. For $8 I figured why not. It truly is an amazing product. I do still love my prototype Keen but for opening and breaking down cardboard boxes, the Canary can’t be beat. It’s both highly effective and very safe.

 ★ 

Matthew Panzarino, writing at The Obsessor:

The cardboard is inescapable if you use Amazon or other online
stores, they pile up in the hallways and next to the garbage cans
and you triage as you can.

We get so many that I have to break down our boxes in order to
fit them in our recycle bin. I’ve used all of the typical tools — scissors, pocket knife, box cutter — and many unconventional
ones like drywall saws just trying to make this painful job a
bit easier.

The CANARY is uniquely serrated all the way around its edge, like
a chainsaw. This makes it incredibly good at cutting cardboard
either with or across corrugation with ease. I cannot express how
easily this knife cuts cardboard, it’s like slicing through
regular old paper, it’s amazing.

Last year when I linked to (and recommended) Studio Neat’s Keen — the world’s best box cutter, but which costs about $100 — at least one reader recommended the Canary. For $8 I figured why not. It truly is an amazing product. I do still love my prototype Keen but for opening and breaking down cardboard boxes, the Canary can’t be beat. It’s both highly effective and very safe.

Read More 

Ben Sandofksy went deep on the history of Lambda School, a learn-to-code startup that aimed to disrupt computer science education, and its founder, Austen Allred:

What set his boot camp apart from the others were “Income Share
Agreements.” Instead of paying up-front for tuition, students
agreed to pay a portion of future income. If you don’t get a job,
you pay nothing. It was an idea so clever it became a breakout hit
of Y Combinator, the same tech incubator that birthed
Stripe, AirBnb, and countless other unicorns.

When Lambda School launched in 2017, critics likened ISAs to
indentured servitude, but by 2019 it was Silicon Valley’s golden
child. Every day, Austen tweeted jaw-dropping results. […]

Things got worse from there, and we’ll get to it. First I need to
address a common question: what do I have to do with any of this?
I have no professional or personal connections to the company or
the team. What compelled me to follow this story for the last
five years?

On the surface, this is another window into the 2010’s tech
bubble, a period where mediocre people could raise ludicrous money
amid a venture capitalist echo chamber fueled by low-interest
rates. But what makes this any worse than Juicero, Clinkle, or
Humane? Why does this rise to the level of Theranos?

These stories hinge on their villains, whose hubris and stupidity
end in comeuppance. Theranos had Elizabeth Holmes, Fyre Festival
had Bobby McFarlane, and Lambda School has Austen Allred.

Independent journalism at its best.

 ★ 

Ben Sandofksy went deep on the history of Lambda School, a learn-to-code startup that aimed to disrupt computer science education, and its founder, Austen Allred:

What set his boot camp apart from the others were “Income Share
Agreements.” Instead of paying up-front for tuition, students
agreed to pay a portion of future income. If you don’t get a job,
you pay nothing. It was an idea so clever it became a breakout hit
of Y Combinator, the same tech incubator that birthed
Stripe, AirBnb, and countless other unicorns.

When Lambda School launched in 2017, critics likened ISAs to
indentured servitude, but by 2019 it was Silicon Valley’s golden
child. Every day, Austen tweeted jaw-dropping results. […]

Things got worse from there, and we’ll get to it. First I need to
address a common question: what do I have to do with any of this?
I have no professional or personal connections to the company or
the team. What compelled me to follow this story for the last
five years?

On the surface, this is another window into the 2010’s tech
bubble, a period where mediocre people could raise ludicrous money
amid a venture capitalist echo chamber fueled by low-interest
rates. But what makes this any worse than Juicero, Clinkle, or
Humane? Why does this rise to the level of Theranos?

These stories hinge on their villains, whose hubris and stupidity
end in comeuppance. Theranos had Elizabeth Holmes, Fyre Festival
had Bobby McFarlane, and Lambda School has Austen Allred.

Independent journalism at its best.

Read More 

Adam Engst, TidBITS:

The real problem comes when tech writers document features across
multiple versions of Apple’s operating systems. We’ll probably use
both terms for a while before slowly standardizing on the new
term. Blame Apple if you see awkward sentences like “Continuity
features require that you be logged into the same Apple Account
(Apple ID in pre-2024 operating systems).” Or maybe writers will
compress further to “Continuity features require that you be
logged into the same Apple Account/ID.”

I do think “Apple Account” is a better name, so I think the transitional pain is worthwhile.

 ★ 

Adam Engst, TidBITS:

The real problem comes when tech writers document features across
multiple versions of Apple’s operating systems. We’ll probably use
both terms for a while before slowly standardizing on the new
term. Blame Apple if you see awkward sentences like “Continuity
features require that you be logged into the same Apple Account
(Apple ID in pre-2024 operating systems).” Or maybe writers will
compress further to “Continuity features require that you be
logged into the same Apple Account/ID.”

I do think “Apple Account” is a better name, so I think the transitional pain is worthwhile.

Read More