daring-rss

Russell Brandom, reporting for Rest of World:

IT rules passed by India in 2021 require services like WhatsApp to
maintain “traceability” for all messages, allowing authorities to
follow forwarded messages to the “first originator” of the text.

In a Delhi High Court proceeding last Thursday, WhatsApp
said it would be forced to leave the country if the court required
traceability, as doing so would mean breaking end-to-end
encryption. It’s a common stance for encrypted chat services
generally, and WhatsApp has made this threat before — most
notably in a protracted legal fight in Brazil that
resulted in intermittent bans. But as the Indian government
expands its powers over online speech, the threat of a
full-scale ban is closer than it’s been in years. […]

It’s not clear how the courts will respond to WhatsApp’s
ultimatum, but they’ll have to take it seriously. WhatsApp is used
by more than half a billion people in India — not just as a chat
app, but as a doctor’s office, a campaigning tool,
and the backbone of countless small businesses and service
jobs. There’s no clear competitor to fill its shoes, so if
the app is shut down in India, much of the digital infrastructure
of the nation would simply disappear. Being forced out of the
country would be bad for WhatsApp, but it would be disastrous for
everyday Indians.

One thing to remember is that this isn’t so much a conflict between what the law demands and what Meta chooses to do, but rather a conflict between what the law demands and the secure-by-design nature of WhatsApp. There is no “traceability” switch that Meta could flip but is choosing not to. They’d have to build a completely new, insecure-by-design, protocol to comply with this law.

See also: A 2022 feature in The Verge on the centrality of WhatsApp to digital life in India.

 ★ 

Russell Brandom, reporting for Rest of World:

IT rules passed by India in 2021 require services like WhatsApp to
maintain “traceability” for all messages, allowing authorities to
follow forwarded messages to the “first originator” of the text.

In a Delhi High Court proceeding last Thursday, WhatsApp
said it would be forced to leave the country if the court required
traceability, as doing so would mean breaking end-to-end
encryption. It’s a common stance for encrypted chat services
generally, and WhatsApp has made this threat before — most
notably in a protracted legal fight in Brazil that
resulted in intermittent bans. But as the Indian government
expands its powers over online speech, the threat of a
full-scale ban is closer than it’s been in years. […]

It’s not clear how the courts will respond to WhatsApp’s
ultimatum, but they’ll have to take it seriously. WhatsApp is used
by more than half a billion people in India — not just as a chat
app, but as a doctor’s office, a campaigning tool,
and the backbone of countless small businesses and service
jobs. There’s no clear competitor to fill its shoes, so if
the app is shut down in India, much of the digital infrastructure
of the nation would simply disappear. Being forced out of the
country would be bad for WhatsApp, but it would be disastrous for
everyday Indians.

One thing to remember is that this isn’t so much a conflict between what the law demands and what Meta chooses to do, but rather a conflict between what the law demands and the secure-by-design nature of WhatsApp. There is no “traceability” switch that Meta could flip but is choosing not to. They’d have to build a completely new, insecure-by-design, protocol to comply with this law.

See also: A 2022 feature in The Verge on the centrality of WhatsApp to digital life in India.

Read More 

I think this “May the Fourth” nonsense has gotten out of hand but this commercial from Apple is chef’s kiss. So fun. (Via Dan Moren, who points out a bunch of Easter eggs.)

 ★ 

I think this “May the Fourth” nonsense has gotten out of hand but this commercial from Apple is chef’s kiss. So fun. (Via Dan Moren, who points out a bunch of Easter eggs.)

Read More 

Mark Gurman:

The good news for Meta is it could have plenty of time to pursue
that goal. Apple’s latest Vision Pro road map doesn’t currently
call for a second-generation model until the end of 2026, though
the company is trying to figure out a way to bring a cheaper
version to market before then. Apple is still flummoxed by how
exactly to bring down the cost, I’m told.

If true this seems utterly bizarre. That would be close to a three-year gap between today’s first-generation Vision Pro and a second-gen model. Think about the iPad Pro. The ones on sale today, which we all presume will be replaced four days from now, were released in October 2022. That’s 18 months. And the general consensus is that the iPad Pro has gone a long time between updates.

“Late 2024” would presumably mean October or November 2024. That’d be 33 or 34 months after the release of the first-gen Vision Pro. So imagine the Vision Pro being as long-in-the-tooth as the iPad Pros are today and still being almost a year away from an update. That makes no sense. To everyone outside Apple it would, quite reasonably, look like an abandoned platform. They kind of did exactly that with the HomePod, but Vision was introduced as a major new platform, not a peripheral. Why wouldn’t there be at least a speed bump from the M2 to M3 or something between now and late 2026? Waiting until the end of 2025 would be a long (nearly two-year) gap; the end of 2026 might as well be forever from now.

 ★ 

Mark Gurman:

The good news for Meta is it could have plenty of time to pursue
that goal. Apple’s latest Vision Pro road map doesn’t currently
call for a second-generation model until the end of 2026, though
the company is trying to figure out a way to bring a cheaper
version to market before then. Apple is still flummoxed by how
exactly to bring down the cost, I’m told.

If true this seems utterly bizarre. That would be close to a three-year gap between today’s first-generation Vision Pro and a second-gen model. Think about the iPad Pro. The ones on sale today, which we all presume will be replaced four days from now, were released in October 2022. That’s 18 months. And the general consensus is that the iPad Pro has gone a long time between updates.

“Late 2024” would presumably mean October or November 2024. That’d be 33 or 34 months after the release of the first-gen Vision Pro. So imagine the Vision Pro being as long-in-the-tooth as the iPad Pros are today and still being almost a year away from an update. That makes no sense. To everyone outside Apple it would, quite reasonably, look like an abandoned platform. They kind of did exactly that with the HomePod, but Vision was introduced as a major new platform, not a peripheral. Why wouldn’t there be at least a speed bump from the M2 to M3 or something between now and late 2026? Waiting until the end of 2025 would be a long (nearly two-year) gap; the end of 2026 might as well be forever from now.

Read More 

From Six Colors’s transcript of Apple’s financial results conference call:

Keep in mind, as we described on the last call, in the March
quarter a year ago, we were able to replenish iPhone channel
inventory and fulfill significant pent-up demand from the December
quarter COVID-related supply disruptions on the iPhone 14 Pro and
14 Pro Max. We estimate this one-time impact added close to $5
billion to the March quarter revenue last year. If we removed this
from last year’s results, our March quarter total company revenue
this year would have grown. Despite this impact, we were still
able to deliver the records I described.

Excuses are cheap, but this really is a credible explanation.

We continue to feel very bullish about our opportunity in
generative AI. We are making significant investments, and we’re
looking forward to sharing some very exciting things with our
customers soon. We believe in the transformative power and promise
of AI, and we believe we have advantages that will differentiate
us in this new era, including Apple’s unique combination of
seamless hardware, software, and services integration,
groundbreaking Apple Silicon with our industry-leading neural
engines, and our unwavering focus on privacy, which underpins
everything we create. […]

Turning to Mac, March quarter revenue was $7.5 billion, up 4% from
a year ago. We had an amazing launch in early March with the new
13- and 15-inch MacBook Air. The world’s most popular laptop is
the best consumer laptop for AI, with breakthrough performance of
the M3 chip and its even more powerful neural engine.

This doesn’t sound to me like a man about to announce iPad Pros with M4 chips. The present-tense “industry-leading neural engines” to me says Apple feels good about the AI capabilities of the devices already in our hands. What makes for a good “AI computer” are the very same things that make for a good computer, period.

However, we still saw growth on iPhone in some markets, including
mainland China, and according to Kantar, during the quarter, the
two best-selling smartphones in urban China were the iPhone 15 and
iPhone 15 Pro Max.

It’s somewhat interesting to me that those are the two iPhone models: on the consumer side, the smaller-display iPhone 15; on the pro side, the big-display iPhone 15 Pro Max. The cheapest iPhone 15 model and the most expensive one.

 ★ 

From Six Colors’s transcript of Apple’s financial results conference call:

Keep in mind, as we described on the last call, in the March
quarter a year ago, we were able to replenish iPhone channel
inventory and fulfill significant pent-up demand from the December
quarter COVID-related supply disruptions on the iPhone 14 Pro and
14 Pro Max. We estimate this one-time impact added close to $5
billion to the March quarter revenue last year. If we removed this
from last year’s results, our March quarter total company revenue
this year would have grown. Despite this impact, we were still
able to deliver the records I described.

Excuses are cheap, but this really is a credible explanation.

We continue to feel very bullish about our opportunity in
generative AI. We are making significant investments, and we’re
looking forward to sharing some very exciting things with our
customers soon. We believe in the transformative power and promise
of AI, and we believe we have advantages that will differentiate
us in this new era, including Apple’s unique combination of
seamless hardware, software, and services integration,
groundbreaking Apple Silicon with our industry-leading neural
engines, and our unwavering focus on privacy, which underpins
everything we create. […]

Turning to Mac, March quarter revenue was $7.5 billion, up 4% from
a year ago. We had an amazing launch in early March with the new
13- and 15-inch MacBook Air. The world’s most popular laptop is
the best consumer laptop for AI, with breakthrough performance of
the M3 chip and its even more powerful neural engine.

This doesn’t sound to me like a man about to announce iPad Pros with M4 chips. The present-tense “industry-leading neural engines” to me says Apple feels good about the AI capabilities of the devices already in our hands. What makes for a good “AI computer” are the very same things that make for a good computer, period.

However, we still saw growth on iPhone in some markets, including
mainland China, and according to Kantar, during the quarter, the
two best-selling smartphones in urban China were the iPhone 15 and
iPhone 15 Pro Max.

It’s somewhat interesting to me that those are the two iPhone models: on the consumer side, the smaller-display iPhone 15; on the pro side, the big-display iPhone 15 Pro Max. The cheapest iPhone 15 model and the most expensive one.

Read More 

My recent focus on the European Union’s DMA and the notion that, if the EU pushes too hard, Apple might pull back from sales in the EU, had me looking at how the company defines the “Europe” segment in its financial reporting. On the surface one might think that Apple’s “Europe” is just the EU plus the United Kingdom and Norway. But it’s actually much bigger than that: it’s all of Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and India. (Last I checked Africa is a pretty big continent, and India a pretty populous country.)

Today’s financial report for Q2 FY2024 got me wondering how exactly defines its other regions. From their 2023 10-K (PDF):

The Company manages its business primarily on a geographic basis.
The Company’s reportable segments consist of the Americas, Europe,
Greater China, Japan and Rest of Asia Pacific. Americas includes
both North and South America. Europe includes European countries,
as well as India, the Middle East and Africa. Greater China
includes China mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Rest of Asia
Pacific includes Australia and those Asian countries not included
in the Company’s other reportable segments. Although the
reportable segments provide similar hardware and software products
and similar services, each one is managed separately to better
align with the location of the Company’s customers and
distribution partners and the unique market dynamics of each
geographic region.

“Japan and Rest of Asia Pacific” are two segments, but that clause is one of those examples that exemplifies why the Oxford Comma ought to be house style everywhere — as written, sans comma, that could easily be misread as a single segment.

 ★ 

My recent focus on the European Union’s DMA and the notion that, if the EU pushes too hard, Apple might pull back from sales in the EU, had me looking at how the company defines the “Europe” segment in its financial reporting. On the surface one might think that Apple’s “Europe” is just the EU plus the United Kingdom and Norway. But it’s actually much bigger than that: it’s all of Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and India. (Last I checked Africa is a pretty big continent, and India a pretty populous country.)

Today’s financial report for Q2 FY2024 got me wondering how exactly defines its other regions. From their 2023 10-K (PDF):

The Company manages its business primarily on a geographic basis.
The Company’s reportable segments consist of the Americas, Europe,
Greater China, Japan and Rest of Asia Pacific. Americas includes
both North and South America. Europe includes European countries,
as well as India, the Middle East and Africa. Greater China
includes China mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Rest of Asia
Pacific includes Australia and those Asian countries not included
in the Company’s other reportable segments. Although the
reportable segments provide similar hardware and software products
and similar services, each one is managed separately to better
align with the location of the Company’s customers and
distribution partners and the unique market dynamics of each
geographic region.

“Japan and Rest of Asia Pacific” are two segments, but that clause is one of those examples that exemplifies why the Oxford Comma ought to be house style everywhere — as written, sans comma, that could easily be misread as a single segment.

Read More 

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2024 second
quarter ended March 30, 2024. The Company posted quarterly revenue
of $90.8 billion, down 4 percent year over year, and quarterly
earnings per diluted share of $1.53.

Net sales year-over-year by product (from Apple’s consolidated statement):

PercentageDollars

iPhone-10%-$5.4B

Mac+4%+$0.3B

iPad-17%-$1.1B

Wearables, etc.-10%-$0.8B

Services+14%+3.0B

And by region:

PercentageDollars

Americas-1%-$0.5B

Europe+1%+$0.2B

Greater China-8%-$1.4B

Japan-13%-$0.9B

Rest of Asia Pacific-17%-$1.4B

Credit where credit is due: IDC’s projection that iPhone sales were down 10 percent year-over-year was spot-on.

 ★ 

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2024 second
quarter ended March 30, 2024. The Company posted quarterly revenue
of $90.8 billion, down 4 percent year over year, and quarterly
earnings per diluted share of $1.53.

Net sales year-over-year by product (from Apple’s consolidated statement):

PercentageDollars

iPhone-10%-$5.4B

Mac+4%+$0.3B

iPad-17%-$1.1B

Wearables, etc.-10%-$0.8B

Services+14%+3.0B

And by region:

PercentageDollars

Americas-1%-$0.5B

Europe+1%+$0.2B

Greater China-8%-$1.4B

Japan-13%-$0.9B

Rest of Asia Pacific-17%-$1.4B

Credit where credit is due: IDC’s projection that iPhone sales were down 10 percent year-over-year was spot-on.

Read More 

Federico Viticci returns to the show to discuss MacStories’s 15th anniversary, Apple’s upcoming “Let Loose” keynote for new iPad hardware, and more.

Sponsored by:

Nuts.com: The world’s best snacks, delivered fast and fresh.
Trade Coffee: The best coffee is made at home. Enjoy a free bag of roasted-to-order coffee and $15 off select plans when you join Trade.
Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code talkshow for 10% off your first order.

 ★ 

Federico Viticci returns to the show to discuss MacStories’s 15th anniversary, Apple’s upcoming “Let Loose” keynote for new iPad hardware, and more.

Sponsored by:

Nuts.com: The world’s best snacks, delivered fast and fresh.
Trade Coffee: The best coffee is made at home. Enjoy a free bag of roasted-to-order coffee and $15 off select plans when you join Trade.
Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code talkshow for 10% off your first order.

Read More 

Google Security Blog:

In 2023, we prevented 2.28 million policy-violating apps from
being published on Google Play in part thanks to our investment in
new and improved security features, policy updates, and advanced
machine learning and app review processes. We have also
strengthened our developer onboarding and review processes,
requiring more identity information when developers first
establish their Play accounts. Together with investments in our
review tooling and processes, we identified bad actors and fraud
rings more effectively and banned 333K bad accounts from Play for
violations like confirmed malware and repeated severe policy
violations.

Additionally, almost 200K app submissions were rejected or
remediated to ensure proper use of sensitive permissions such as
background location or SMS access.

App stores are just greedy monopolies, am I right?

 ★ 

Google Security Blog:

In 2023, we prevented 2.28 million policy-violating apps from
being published on Google Play in part thanks to our investment in
new and improved security features, policy updates, and advanced
machine learning and app review processes. We have also
strengthened our developer onboarding and review processes,
requiring more identity information when developers first
establish their Play accounts. Together with investments in our
review tooling and processes, we identified bad actors and fraud
rings more effectively and banned 333K bad accounts from Play for
violations like confirmed malware and repeated severe policy
violations.

Additionally, almost 200K app submissions were rejected or
remediated to ensure proper use of sensitive permissions such as
background location or SMS access.

App stores are just greedy monopolies, am I right?

Read More 

European Commission press release (italics added):

On 5 September 2023, the Commission designated Apple as a
gatekeeper for its operating system iOS, its browser Safari and
its App Store. On the same day, the Commission opened a market
investigation to assess whether Apple’s iPadOS, despite not
meeting the quantitative thresholds laid down in the DMA,
constitutes an important gateway for business users to reach end
users and therefore should be designated as a gatekeeper.

The rules are what the EC commissioners decide they are, not what the DMA says. Among their reasons cited:

End users are locked-in to iPadOS. Apple leverages its large
ecosystem to disincentivise end users from switching to other
operating systems for tablets.
Business users are locked-in to iPadOS because of its large and
commercially attractive user base, and its importance for certain
use cases, such as gaming apps.

The “lock-in” is basically just features exclusive to Apple’s own platforms. I’m not even sure how Apple could possibly create a platform without “lock-in”.

On the other hand, iPadOS is clearly more of a marketing distinction than a technical one. It’s iOS under the hood, so I doubt it’ll be much trouble for Apple to apply its DMA compliance features from iOS to iPadOS. I would have been surprised if the EC had not decided to designate iPadOS a “gatekeeping” platform, and I’m guessing Apple itself is unsurprised as well.

 ★ 

European Commission press release (italics added):

On 5 September 2023, the Commission designated Apple as a
gatekeeper for its operating system iOS, its browser Safari and
its App Store. On the same day, the Commission opened a market
investigation to assess whether Apple’s iPadOS, despite not
meeting the quantitative thresholds laid down in the DMA,
constitutes an important gateway for business users to reach end
users and therefore should be designated as a gatekeeper.

The rules are what the EC commissioners decide they are, not what the DMA says. Among their reasons cited:

End users are locked-in to iPadOS. Apple leverages its large
ecosystem to disincentivise end users from switching to other
operating systems for tablets.

Business users are locked-in to iPadOS because of its large and
commercially attractive user base, and its importance for certain
use cases, such as gaming apps.

The “lock-in” is basically just features exclusive to Apple’s own platforms. I’m not even sure how Apple could possibly create a platform without “lock-in”.

On the other hand, iPadOS is clearly more of a marketing distinction than a technical one. It’s iOS under the hood, so I doubt it’ll be much trouble for Apple to apply its DMA compliance features from iOS to iPadOS. I would have been surprised if the EC had not decided to designate iPadOS a “gatekeeping” platform, and I’m guessing Apple itself is unsurprised as well.

Read More 

Speaking of fascinating perspectives, here’s David Heinemeier Hansson, who recently switch from Mac, on the Framework 13 laptop:

Those are all the good parts, but there are plenty of drawbacks
too. Compared to a modern MacBook, the battery is inferior. I got
6 hours in mixed use yesterday. The screen is only barely
adequate to run at retina-like 2× for smooth looking fonts. Linux
is far less polished than macOS. But somehow it just doesn’t
really matter.

First of all, 6 hours is enough for regular use. If I’m doing more
than that in a single stint without getting up, I’ll be paying for
it physically anyway. And the somewhat cramped resolution has made
me fall in love with full-screen apps again, like I used to do
with that 11” MacBook Air.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the Mac-vs.-Wintel rivalry was the tech rivalry. Other rivalries came and went, like Netscape-vs.IE, Word-vs.-WordPerfect, Quark-vs.-Pagemaker, C-vs.-Pascal, but the main event was always Mac-vs.-Wintel. When the smartphone revolution occurred that rivalry was eclipsed by iPhone-vs.-Android. But it’s still there.

I’m fascinated following DHH’s switching saga. And my personal devotion to and reliance upon MacOS is such that, if the best-available MacOS-running laptop I could find got me only 6 hours of battery life, I’d accept it. I certainly remember getting less than 6 hours of battery life with a PowerBook. I specifically remember when it was dicey whether you could get through a coast-to-coast flight using a fully-charged Mac laptop. I lived. But nowadays, I wouldn’t fret boarding a coast-to-coast flight with my MacBook Pro only half-charged.

Apple silicon has spoiled me. I don’t even turn the display brightness down when running my MacBook Pro on battery power. I literally just don’t worry about it. It’s like two competing alternative universes when it comes to performance-per-watt. Presumably that’s what Microsoft seeks to change with Windows-on-ARM and these imminent new Surface laptops based on new chips from Qualcomm.

 ★ 

Speaking of fascinating perspectives, here’s David Heinemeier Hansson, who recently switch from Mac, on the Framework 13 laptop:

Those are all the good parts, but there are plenty of drawbacks
too. Compared to a modern MacBook, the battery is inferior. I got
6 hours in mixed use yesterday. The screen is only barely
adequate to run at retina-like 2× for smooth looking fonts. Linux
is far less polished than macOS. But somehow it just doesn’t
really matter.

First of all, 6 hours is enough for regular use. If I’m doing more
than that in a single stint without getting up, I’ll be paying for
it physically anyway. And the somewhat cramped resolution has made
me fall in love with full-screen apps again, like I used to do
with that 11” MacBook Air.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the Mac-vs.-Wintel rivalry was the tech rivalry. Other rivalries came and went, like Netscape-vs.IE, Word-vs.-WordPerfect, Quark-vs.-Pagemaker, C-vs.-Pascal, but the main event was always Mac-vs.-Wintel. When the smartphone revolution occurred that rivalry was eclipsed by iPhone-vs.-Android. But it’s still there.

I’m fascinated following DHH’s switching saga. And my personal devotion to and reliance upon MacOS is such that, if the best-available MacOS-running laptop I could find got me only 6 hours of battery life, I’d accept it. I certainly remember getting less than 6 hours of battery life with a PowerBook. I specifically remember when it was dicey whether you could get through a coast-to-coast flight using a fully-charged Mac laptop. I lived. But nowadays, I wouldn’t fret boarding a coast-to-coast flight with my MacBook Pro only half-charged.

Apple silicon has spoiled me. I don’t even turn the display brightness down when running my MacBook Pro on battery power. I literally just don’t worry about it. It’s like two competing alternative universes when it comes to performance-per-watt. Presumably that’s what Microsoft seeks to change with Windows-on-ARM and these imminent new Surface laptops based on new chips from Qualcomm.

Read More