daring-rss

Sapna Maheshwari and David McCabe, reporting for The New York Times:

TikTok sued the federal government on Tuesday over a new law that would force its Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the popular social media app or face a ban in the United States, stoking a battle over national security and free speech that is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.

TikTok said the law violated the First Amendment by effectively removing an app that millions of Americans use to share their views and communicate freely. It also argued that a divestiture was “simply not possible,” especially within the law’s 270-day timeline, pointing to difficulties such as Beijing’s refusal to sell a key feature that powers TikTok in the United States.

Must be nice for a Chinese company to be able to sue the government and make arguments on freedom of speech grounds.

 ★ 

Sapna Maheshwari and David McCabe, reporting for The New York Times:

TikTok sued the federal government on Tuesday over a new law that would force its Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the popular social media app or face a ban in the United States, stoking a battle over national security and free speech that is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.

TikTok said the law violated the First Amendment by effectively removing an app that millions of Americans use to share their views and communicate freely. It also argued that a divestiture was “simply not possible,” especially within the law’s 270-day timeline, pointing to difficulties such as Beijing’s refusal to sell a key feature that powers TikTok in the United States.

Must be nice for a Chinese company to be able to sue the government and make arguments on freedom of speech grounds.

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Nintendo, on Twitter/X:

This is Furukawa, President of Nintendo. We will make an
announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this
fiscal year. It will have been over nine years since we announced
the existence of Nintendo Switch back in March 2015. We will be
holding a Nintendo Direct this June regarding the Nintendo Switch
software lineup for the latter half of 2024, but please be aware
that there will be no mention of the Nintendo Switch successor
during that presentation.

Must be Big News for Beloved Tablets Day.

 ★ 

Nintendo, on Twitter/X:

This is Furukawa, President of Nintendo. We will make an
announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this
fiscal year. It will have been over nine years since we announced
the existence of Nintendo Switch back in March 2015. We will be
holding a Nintendo Direct this June regarding the Nintendo Switch
software lineup for the latter half of 2024, but please be aware
that there will be no mention of the Nintendo Switch successor
during that presentation.

Must be Big News for Beloved Tablets Day.

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Gurman’s last-minute “Maybe they’ll have the M4” might be the greatest rumor scoop in recent memory. A fella could lose his shirt betting against him lately.

 ★ 

Gurman’s last-minute “Maybe they’ll have the M4” might be the greatest rumor scoop in recent memory. A fella could lose his shirt betting against him lately.

Read More 

Nylas recently launched v3 of their API. They rebuilt an already-great API platform with the developer experience and productivity in mind — redefining what a modern API should look like. One API for email, calendar, and contacts has never looked so good. Start building with Nylas today to discover why Nylas is trusted by 250,000+ developers at companies like Upwork, Wix, Salesloft, and Remax.

 ★ 

Nylas recently launched v3 of their API. They rebuilt an already-great API platform with the developer experience and productivity in mind — redefining what a modern API should look like. One API for email, calendar, and contacts has never looked so good. Start building with Nylas today to discover why Nylas is trusted by 250,000+ developers at companies like Upwork, Wix, Salesloft, and Remax.

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Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Hovering over the Apple logo and moving the mouse allows the
current artwork to be erased and replaced with a new logo design.
Apple created a total of six logos for the May 7 “Let Loose”
event, and the interactive eraser cycles through those options.

Would be cool if Apple’s managed to pull off being able to use the end of the new Pencil as an eraser, just like a real pencil.

 ★ 

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Hovering over the Apple logo and moving the mouse allows the
current artwork to be erased and replaced with a new logo design.
Apple created a total of six logos for the May 7 “Let Loose”
event, and the interactive eraser cycles through those options.

Would be cool if Apple’s managed to pull off being able to use the end of the new Pencil as an eraser, just like a real pencil.

Read More 

From a Washington Post story headlined “Apple Is Behind in AI and Killed Its Self-Driving Car Project. What’s Next?”:

The company’s Greater China region, which encompasses mainland
China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, has long been one of Apple’s
most crucial growth zones. But growing pressure from a handful
local rivals — including Shenzhen-based Huawei, which surmounted
U.S. sanctions aimed at slowing its advance in late 2023 by
producing a smartphone with a domestically made
processor — cut sharply into Apple’s market share in the
region earlier this year.

Data from market research firm Counterpoint Research indicated
that Apple’s sales in China dipped by nearly 20 percent in the
first quarter of 2024, a shift that senior research analyst Ivan
Lam attributed partially to “Huawei’s comeback.”

The full scope of the company’s decline in China became clear
Thursday, when Apple reported an 8 percent revenue dip compared to
a year earlier.

It’s inexplicable that the Post included a paragraph with projections from Counterpoint claiming iPhone sales in China were down 20 percent even after Apple reported its actual results for the quarter. Jason Snell, over at Six Colors:

Finally, I particularly enjoyed the exchange between Wells Fargo’s
Aaron Rakers and Cook in which Rakers asked Cook to explain
Apple’s results compared to the data reported by independent
research groups that suggested iPhone sales were falling apart in
China. Apple’s actual numbers weren’t that bad, and in fact, Apple
trumpeted how well the iPhone was going in urban China.

“I can’t address the data points,” Cook said. “I can only address
what our results are, and you know, we did accelerate last
quarter. And iPhone grew in mainland China, so that’s what the
results were. I can’t bridge to numbers we didn’t come up with.”

That’s about as savage a shade-throwing as you’ll get on an Apple
analyst call.

iPhone grew in mainland China last quarter but even after Apple announced that — in a legally-binding context — they went with made-up projections from Counterpoint to fit their narrative that Apple is in trouble.

While I’m being grumpy, I’ll even take issue with the notion — which the Post leads with in its headline — that Apple is “behind in AI”? It is true that Apple doesn’t offer an AI chat product like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, or Google’s Gemini. But do we expect Apple ever to offer such a project? Apple doesn’t have a web search engine but no one is arguing that Apple is “behind” on search. (App Store search results quality is another issue.) Apple doesn’t offer turnkey cloud computing services like AWS or Google Cloud either. Are they “behind” on that? When it comes to the products Apple already sells, how are they “behind on AI”? Are iPhone users missing out on AI features available only to Android users? No. Are MacBook users missing out because Apple hasn’t added a dedicated AI key to their keyboards?

I get it that people see AI as a frontier that is transforming the industry, and Apple hasn’t revealed any new plans or features yet. But I’d say Apple is silent on AI, not behind. When iOS and Mac users are missing out on features that are only available on other platforms, that’s when I’d say Apple is behind.

 ★ 

From a Washington Post story headlined “Apple Is Behind in AI and Killed Its Self-Driving Car Project. What’s Next?”:

The company’s Greater China region, which encompasses mainland
China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, has long been one of Apple’s
most crucial growth zones. But growing pressure from a handful
local rivals — including Shenzhen-based Huawei, which surmounted
U.S. sanctions aimed at slowing its advance in late 2023 by
producing a smartphone with a domestically made
processor — cut sharply into Apple’s market share in the
region earlier this year.

Data from market research firm Counterpoint Research indicated
that Apple’s sales in China dipped by nearly 20 percent in the
first quarter of 2024, a shift that senior research analyst Ivan
Lam attributed partially to “Huawei’s comeback.”

The full scope of the company’s decline in China became clear
Thursday, when Apple reported an 8 percent revenue dip compared to
a year earlier.

It’s inexplicable that the Post included a paragraph with projections from Counterpoint claiming iPhone sales in China were down 20 percent even after Apple reported its actual results for the quarter. Jason Snell, over at Six Colors:

Finally, I particularly enjoyed the exchange between Wells Fargo’s
Aaron Rakers and Cook in which Rakers asked Cook to explain
Apple’s results compared to the data reported by independent
research groups that suggested iPhone sales were falling apart in
China. Apple’s actual numbers weren’t that bad, and in fact, Apple
trumpeted how well the iPhone was going in urban China.

“I can’t address the data points,” Cook said. “I can only address
what our results are, and you know, we did accelerate last
quarter. And iPhone grew in mainland China, so that’s what the
results were. I can’t bridge to numbers we didn’t come up with.”

That’s about as savage a shade-throwing as you’ll get on an Apple
analyst call.

iPhone grew in mainland China last quarter but even after Apple announced that — in a legally-binding context — they went with made-up projections from Counterpoint to fit their narrative that Apple is in trouble.

While I’m being grumpy, I’ll even take issue with the notion — which the Post leads with in its headline — that Apple is “behind in AI”? It is true that Apple doesn’t offer an AI chat product like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, or Google’s Gemini. But do we expect Apple ever to offer such a project? Apple doesn’t have a web search engine but no one is arguing that Apple is “behind” on search. (App Store search results quality is another issue.) Apple doesn’t offer turnkey cloud computing services like AWS or Google Cloud either. Are they “behind” on that? When it comes to the products Apple already sells, how are they “behind on AI”? Are iPhone users missing out on AI features available only to Android users? No. Are MacBook users missing out because Apple hasn’t added a dedicated AI key to their keyboards?

I get it that people see AI as a frontier that is transforming the industry, and Apple hasn’t revealed any new plans or features yet. But I’d say Apple is silent on AI, not behind. When iOS and Mac users are missing out on features that are only available on other platforms, that’s when I’d say Apple is behind.

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Stephen Hackett, writing at 512 Pixels:

I know AI is all the rage right now and having a deal to bring
ChatGPT into your software is trendy, but including a tool like
this in what is basically a mouse driver is ridiculous. I’m not
opposed to using AI in software. I’m just opposed to when it shows
up as an unexpected, poorly-implemented feature in software that
doesn’t need it.

At least Logitech’s Mac developers did such a bad job with it,
that it was easy to spot.

Logitech committed a bunch of sins with this mouse driver. First, it just seems ridiculous to add an AI prompt feature to a mouse driver. Second, no matter what the feature, it’s wrong to add a top-level folder to a user’s home directory — and it’s especially wrong to give such a folder a dumb name like “aioverlaytmp”.

It’s more common for poorly-programmed Mac software to create such folders with a leading dot in their name, a convention that tells the Finder to treat them as “invisible”. But that’s poor form on MacOS too. Support folders should be organized in standard sub-folders inside the user’s Library folder. Open Terminal and type ls -a at the root of your home folder and you’ll probably see a lot of detritus that ought to be inside your Library folder.

Hackett has switched from Logitech’s mouse software to the excellent SteerMouse, an excellent $20 mouse driver that supports just about every mouse in the world. I’ve been using and wholeheartedly recommending SteerMouse for nearly 20 years.

 ★ 

Stephen Hackett, writing at 512 Pixels:

I know AI is all the rage right now and having a deal to bring
ChatGPT into your software is trendy, but including a tool like
this in what is basically a mouse driver is ridiculous. I’m not
opposed to using AI in software. I’m just opposed to when it shows
up as an unexpected, poorly-implemented feature in software that
doesn’t need it.

At least Logitech’s Mac developers did such a bad job with it,
that it was easy to spot.

Logitech committed a bunch of sins with this mouse driver. First, it just seems ridiculous to add an AI prompt feature to a mouse driver. Second, no matter what the feature, it’s wrong to add a top-level folder to a user’s home directory — and it’s especially wrong to give such a folder a dumb name like “aioverlaytmp”.

It’s more common for poorly-programmed Mac software to create such folders with a leading dot in their name, a convention that tells the Finder to treat them as “invisible”. But that’s poor form on MacOS too. Support folders should be organized in standard sub-folders inside the user’s Library folder. Open Terminal and type ls -a at the root of your home folder and you’ll probably see a lot of detritus that ought to be inside your Library folder.

Hackett has switched from Logitech’s mouse software to the excellent SteerMouse, an excellent $20 mouse driver that supports just about every mouse in the world. I’ve been using and wholeheartedly recommending SteerMouse for nearly 20 years.

Read More 

Brian McCullough at the Techmeme Ride Home podcast has a new YouTube series, “First Ones”, where he asks his guests for their firsts — first computer, first movie in a theater, etc. Guests so far, in addition to me, include Guy Kawasaki, Bluesky CEO Jay Graber, Ed Zitron, and more. Very fun.

 ★ 

Brian McCullough at the Techmeme Ride Home podcast has a new YouTube series, “First Ones”, where he asks his guests for their firsts — first computer, first movie in a theater, etc. Guests so far, in addition to me, include Guy Kawasaki, Bluesky CEO Jay Graber, Ed Zitron, and more. Very fun.

Read More 

Jason Aten, writing for Inc.:

I don’t run marathons or climb mountains or dive. I don’t often
find myself in remote locations in precarious situations. I joked
that, for me, the Apple Watch Ultra will be the perfect thing to
wear while other people are working out. Like, for example, when
I’m keeping track of my daughter’s cross-country race splits.

When I first started wearing the Ultra, I was sure the most useful
feature was what Apple calls the Action Button. I still think the
ability to assign a dedicated button to things like starting a
workout or a stopwatch is great, but there’s a far better feature,
and the most surprising thing is that Apple isn’t making a big
deal of it at all.

That’s the fact that the Apple Watch Ultra has ridiculous battery
life, at least by Apple Watch standards. Yes, Apple has said that
the Ultra has the best battery life of any Apple Watch. But Apple
is dramatically underselling the battery life on its new flagship
wearable, claiming it gets 36 hours. In my experience, it got more
than 60 hours.

Two thoughts about this:

Perhaps Apple underplays the Ultra’s battery life so as not to make the battery life on the regular Series 9 models look bad? From my experience while reviewing the original Ultra, I could get two days of battery life on a single charge even while wearing it to sleep.
The battery life on all Apple Watch models from the last few years offers a stark contrast to the dedicated AI gadgets we’re starting to see, like Humane’s AI Pin and Rabbit’s R1 handheld dingus. It goes under-remarked-upon that Apple is really really good at making computer hardware, and particularly at making small computer hardware.

 ★ 

Jason Aten, writing for Inc.:

I don’t run marathons or climb mountains or dive. I don’t often
find myself in remote locations in precarious situations. I joked
that, for me, the Apple Watch Ultra will be the perfect thing to
wear while other people are working out. Like, for example, when
I’m keeping track of my daughter’s cross-country race splits.

When I first started wearing the Ultra, I was sure the most useful
feature was what Apple calls the Action Button. I still think the
ability to assign a dedicated button to things like starting a
workout or a stopwatch is great, but there’s a far better feature,
and the most surprising thing is that Apple isn’t making a big
deal of it at all.

That’s the fact that the Apple Watch Ultra has ridiculous battery
life, at least by Apple Watch standards. Yes, Apple has said that
the Ultra has the best battery life of any Apple Watch. But Apple
is dramatically underselling the battery life on its new flagship
wearable, claiming it gets 36 hours. In my experience, it got more
than 60 hours.

Two thoughts about this:

Perhaps Apple underplays the Ultra’s battery life so as not to make the battery life on the regular Series 9 models look bad? From my experience while reviewing the original Ultra, I could get two days of battery life on a single charge even while wearing it to sleep.

The battery life on all Apple Watch models from the last few years offers a stark contrast to the dedicated AI gadgets we’re starting to see, like Humane’s AI Pin and Rabbit’s R1 handheld dingus. It goes under-remarked-upon that Apple is really really good at making computer hardware, and particularly at making small computer hardware.

Read More 

Ming-Chi Kuo, two weeks ago:

Apple has cut its 2024 Vision Pro shipments to 400–450k units (vs.
market consensus of 700–800k units or more). Apple cut orders
before launching Vision Pro in non-US markets, which means that
demand in the US market has fallen sharply beyond expectations,
making Apple take a conservative view of demand in non-US markets.

Neil Cybart, on Twitter/X:

Ming-Chi Kuo’s numbers and statements regarding Apple Vision Pro
sales don’t make sense. […]

Interestingly, when framing a 400K to 450K unit sales figure for
Vision Pro in 2024 (which would actually be a good result), Kuo
compares the range to a made up consensus figure of 700K to 800K
unit sales. I don’t recall anyone running with such a high sales
range for Vision Pro in 2024. Instead, Kuo himself actually
claimed back on Feb 28th that a few suppliers were planning for
700K to 800K production. That’s not the same as a sales forecast.
Far from it. Kuo would know that too, so one is left to assume
he’s purposely being misleading.

Ming-Chi Kuo occasionally uncovers legitimate scoops from Apple’s Asian supply chain. Ming-Chi Kuo also regularly inserts his own name into the news when he has no legitimate scoops. This is one of the latter. There was no “market consensus” that Apple would sell 700–800K Vision Pro units in 2024. In fact, the reporting has been around the 400–450K range since last summer.

The Financial Times, back on 3 July 2023:

Two people close to Apple and Luxshare, the Chinese contract
manufacturer that will initially assemble the device, said it was
preparing to make fewer than 400,000 units in 2024. Multiple
industry sources said Luxshare was currently Apple’s only
assembler of the device. Separately, two China-based sole
suppliers of certain components for the Vision Pro said Apple was
only asking them for enough for 130,000 to 150,000 units in the
first year.

TheElec reported last June that Sony only had the capacity to manufacture 900,000 OLED panels per year for Vision Pro, which, if true, would cap Vision Pro headset production at 450,000 units. The Information reported in August that this display bottleneck “is one reason why Apple plans to make fewer than half a million Vision Pros in the first year of production”.

 ★ 

Ming-Chi Kuo, two weeks ago:

Apple has cut its 2024 Vision Pro shipments to 400–450k units (vs.
market consensus of 700–800k units or more). Apple cut orders
before launching Vision Pro in non-US markets, which means that
demand in the US market has fallen sharply beyond expectations,
making Apple take a conservative view of demand in non-US markets.

Neil Cybart, on Twitter/X:

Ming-Chi Kuo’s numbers and statements regarding Apple Vision Pro
sales don’t make sense. […]

Interestingly, when framing a 400K to 450K unit sales figure for
Vision Pro in 2024 (which would actually be a good result), Kuo
compares the range to a made up consensus figure of 700K to 800K
unit sales. I don’t recall anyone running with such a high sales
range for Vision Pro in 2024. Instead, Kuo himself actually
claimed back on Feb 28th that a few suppliers were planning for
700K to 800K production. That’s not the same as a sales forecast.
Far from it. Kuo would know that too, so one is left to assume
he’s purposely being misleading.

Ming-Chi Kuo occasionally uncovers legitimate scoops from Apple’s Asian supply chain. Ming-Chi Kuo also regularly inserts his own name into the news when he has no legitimate scoops. This is one of the latter. There was no “market consensus” that Apple would sell 700–800K Vision Pro units in 2024. In fact, the reporting has been around the 400–450K range since last summer.

The Financial Times, back on 3 July 2023:

Two people close to Apple and Luxshare, the Chinese contract
manufacturer that will initially assemble the device, said it was
preparing to make fewer than 400,000 units in 2024. Multiple
industry sources said Luxshare was currently Apple’s only
assembler of the device. Separately, two China-based sole
suppliers of certain components for the Vision Pro said Apple was
only asking them for enough for 130,000 to 150,000 units in the
first year.

TheElec reported last June that Sony only had the capacity to manufacture 900,000 OLED panels per year for Vision Pro, which, if true, would cap Vision Pro headset production at 450,000 units. The Information reported in August that this display bottleneck “is one reason why Apple plans to make fewer than half a million Vision Pros in the first year of production”.

Read More