daring-rss

Eliot Brown, writing for The Wall Street Journal:

Evan Gershkovich was supposed to be with his friends in Berlin the
first week of April 2023.

The Wall Street Journal Russia correspondent was set to stay in an
Airbnb in the edgy Neukölln neighborhood, a base to explore the
city’s cobble-lined streets with his tightknit crew of journalist
pals exiled there from Moscow. He was going to drink coffee in
hipster cafes and chat into the night over glasses of beer.

It was the start of his stolen year.

Russian authorities detained Evan in Yekaterinburg on March 29,
2023, and threw him into a jail cell in Moscow. He was a fully
accredited journalist on a reporting trip and was detained on an
allegation of espionage, which he, his employer and the U.S.
government vociferously deny.

Kudos to the Journal for putting together a huge package to raise awareness of Gershkovich’s unjust incarceration. Tons of coverage online, but man, sometimes print design can do things that otherwise can’t be expressed. What a statement today’s front page makes.

 ★ 

Eliot Brown, writing for The Wall Street Journal:

Evan Gershkovich was supposed to be with his friends in Berlin the
first week of April 2023.

The Wall Street Journal Russia correspondent was set to stay in an
Airbnb in the edgy Neukölln neighborhood, a base to explore the
city’s cobble-lined streets with his tightknit crew of journalist
pals exiled there from Moscow. He was going to drink coffee in
hipster cafes and chat into the night over glasses of beer.

It was the start of his stolen year.

Russian authorities detained Evan in Yekaterinburg on March 29,
2023, and threw him into a jail cell in Moscow. He was a fully
accredited journalist on a reporting trip and was detained on an
allegation of espionage, which he, his employer and the U.S.
government vociferously deny.

Kudos to the Journal for putting together a huge package to raise awareness of Gershkovich’s unjust incarceration. Tons of coverage online, but man, sometimes print design can do things that otherwise can’t be expressed. What a statement today’s front page makes.

Read More 

More sports-on-Vision-Pro news from Jason Snell:

That might still happen, but just before Opening Day the app was
updated to support real, live baseball games, and all the exciting
stuff is gone. Today I took it for a spin and was deeply
disappointed — it’s essentially just a front end for watching
games via MLB TV, and a buggy one at that.

I couldn’t find support for Gameday when I first used the app,
though later when playing back an archived stream, I did find
Gameday available — from within the video playback, so you can’t
use it for a game you’re not watching on the app. And it’s
immersive, so you can’t put it up and then do something else,
which is also probably a mistake.

The app also only plays back a single video at a time, even if
multiple games are going on at once — despite the fact that
watching multiple video streams at once is basically what VR was
made for.

I watched the end of the Yankees opener against the Houston Asterisks wearing Vision Pro, and share all of Snell’s gripe’s about the app. It’s downright bizarre that the app has a “main” window that, if closed, quits the entire app — but that’s not the window where you watch video!

And so many little paper cuts, like the fact that the app doesn’t integrate with the system Keychain APIs, so you don’t get autofill for passwords. I’m so used to password autofill across all my devices that it felt like I was using some sort of retro device, entering my MLB.com password manually.

Glad to see MLB have a native app on Opening Day, but man, they have a long way to go before it’s actually good.

 ★ 

More sports-on-Vision-Pro news from Jason Snell:

That might still happen, but just before Opening Day the app was
updated to support real, live baseball games, and all the exciting
stuff is gone. Today I took it for a spin and was deeply
disappointed — it’s essentially just a front end for watching
games via MLB TV, and a buggy one at that.

I couldn’t find support for Gameday when I first used the app,
though later when playing back an archived stream, I did find
Gameday available — from within the video playback, so you can’t
use it for a game you’re not watching on the app. And it’s
immersive, so you can’t put it up and then do something else,
which is also probably a mistake.

The app also only plays back a single video at a time, even if
multiple games are going on at once — despite the fact that
watching multiple video streams at once is basically what VR was
made for.

I watched the end of the Yankees opener against the Houston Asterisks wearing Vision Pro, and share all of Snell’s gripe’s about the app. It’s downright bizarre that the app has a “main” window that, if closed, quits the entire app — but that’s not the window where you watch video!

And so many little paper cuts, like the fact that the app doesn’t integrate with the system Keychain APIs, so you don’t get autofill for passwords. I’m so used to password autofill across all my devices that it felt like I was using some sort of retro device, entering my MLB.com password manually.

Glad to see MLB have a native app on Opening Day, but man, they have a long way to go before it’s actually good.

Read More 

A DF reader with a better memory than mine thought Andrew Aude’s name rang a bell, and lo, I mentioned him once before, while he was still a student at Stanford in 2014. Aude cleverly figured out how the ultimately-doomed, but then-nascent CurrentC payments app worked while it was still in invitation-only testing.

 ★ 

A DF reader with a better memory than mine thought Andrew Aude’s name rang a bell, and lo, I mentioned him once before, while he was still a student at Stanford in 2014. Aude cleverly figured out how the ultimately-doomed, but then-nascent CurrentC payments app worked while it was still in invitation-only testing.

Read More 

Speaking of The Wall Street Journal and Apple’s new Journal app, Joanna Stern has a great column about a creepy-sounding Journal setting:

You can turn on Journaling Suggestions. This recommends topics to
write about based on things your phone (but not Apple) knows about
you — music you’ve listened to, people you’ve called or messaged,
photos you’ve recently taken, places you’ve visited, etc. You
decide if you want to turn this on. When you first launch the
Journal app, it will prompt you to do that. Those suggestions
aren’t ever shared with Apple.

Here’s where it gets weird. When you go into Settings → Privacy &
Security → Journaling Suggestions, you’ll see that Discoverable by
Others is enabled by default — even if you never turned on
suggestions. Under the setting it says, “Allow others to detect
you are nearby to help prioritize their suggestions.” […]

A company spokeswoman said claims on social media that
Apple is sharing your name and location with others are
inaccurate. The phone can use Bluetooth to detect the number of
devices nearby that are in your contacts. It doesn’t store which
of these specific contacts were around but instead may use this as
context to improve and prioritize journaling suggestions, the
spokeswoman said.

Here’s an example provided by Apple: Say, you hosted a dinner
party at your house, with friends who are in your contacts. The
system might prioritize that in the suggestions, as it knows from
the head count that there was something different about that
event. It wasn’t just your average night at home with your family.

This is a fine feature, and I think it’s fine that it’s on by default. But the description of the feature in Settings is just atrocious. It sounds creepy as hell. I suspect this is one of those cases where everyone at Apple involved with the feature knew that everything related to the new Journal app and associated new journaling-prompt APIs is, in fact, extraordinarily private. Just like with Health data, everything is stored on-device, including the keys, and iCloud sync is E2EE. Even if faced with a law enforcement warrant, Apple has nothing to turn over related to Journal.

But most people don’t know this. And many people — quite reasonably! — are deeply suspicious that all big tech companies are spying on them and play loosey-goosey with anything related to privacy. To someone at Apple — especially those who work on Health and Journal stuff — it’s absurd to think that Apple would have add a setting to iOS that makes you personally “discoverable” by anyone, friends and strangers alike, if you’re simply within Bluetooth range of them. Let alone make that setting on by default!

But that’s exactly what the description of this feature in Settings → Privacy &
Security → Journaling Suggestions sounds like. When describing features like this, Apple ought to presume that the user is assuming the worst.

 ★ 

Speaking of The Wall Street Journal and Apple’s new Journal app, Joanna Stern has a great column about a creepy-sounding Journal setting:

You can turn on Journaling Suggestions. This recommends topics to
write about based on things your phone (but not Apple) knows about
you — music you’ve listened to, people you’ve called or messaged,
photos you’ve recently taken, places you’ve visited, etc. You
decide if you want to turn this on. When you first launch the
Journal app, it will prompt you to do that. Those suggestions
aren’t ever shared with Apple.

Here’s where it gets weird. When you go into Settings → Privacy &
Security → Journaling Suggestions, you’ll see that Discoverable by
Others is enabled by default — even if you never turned on
suggestions. Under the setting it says, “Allow others to detect
you are nearby to help prioritize their suggestions.” […]

A company spokeswoman said claims on social media that
Apple is sharing your name and location with others are
inaccurate. The phone can use Bluetooth to detect the number of
devices nearby that are in your contacts. It doesn’t store which
of these specific contacts were around but instead may use this as
context to improve and prioritize journaling suggestions, the
spokeswoman said.

Here’s an example provided by Apple: Say, you hosted a dinner
party at your house, with friends who are in your contacts. The
system might prioritize that in the suggestions, as it knows from
the head count that there was something different about that
event. It wasn’t just your average night at home with your family.

This is a fine feature, and I think it’s fine that it’s on by default. But the description of the feature in Settings is just atrocious. It sounds creepy as hell. I suspect this is one of those cases where everyone at Apple involved with the feature knew that everything related to the new Journal app and associated new journaling-prompt APIs is, in fact, extraordinarily private. Just like with Health data, everything is stored on-device, including the keys, and iCloud sync is E2EE. Even if faced with a law enforcement warrant, Apple has nothing to turn over related to Journal.

But most people don’t know this. And many people — quite reasonably! — are deeply suspicious that all big tech companies are spying on them and play loosey-goosey with anything related to privacy. To someone at Apple — especially those who work on Health and Journal stuff — it’s absurd to think that Apple would have add a setting to iOS that makes you personally “discoverable” by anyone, friends and strangers alike, if you’re simply within Bluetooth range of them. Let alone make that setting on by default!

But that’s exactly what the description of this feature in Settings → Privacy &
Security → Journaling Suggestions sounds like. When describing features like this, Apple ought to presume that the user is assuming the worst.

Read More 

Joe Rossignol, reporting for MacRumors:

Apple this month sued its former employee Andrew Aude in
California state court, alleging that he breached the company’s
confidentiality agreement and violated labor laws by leaking
sensitive information to the media and employees at other tech
companies. Apple has demanded a jury trial, and it is seeking
damages in excess of $25,000. […]

In April 2023, for example, Apple alleges that Aude leaked a list
of finalized features for the iPhone’s Journal app to a journalist
at The Wall Street Journal on a phone call. That same month, The
Wall Street Journal’s Aaron Tilley published a report titled
“Apple Plans iPhone Journaling App in Expansion of Health
Initiatives.”

Using the encrypted messaging app Signal, Aude is said to have
sent “over 1,400” messages to the same journalist, who Aude
referred to as “Homeboy.” He is also accused of sending “over
10,000 text messages” to another journalist at the website The
Information, and he allegedly traveled “across the continent” to
meet with her.

10,000 text messages seems like … a lot? Makes me wonder if there was a personal aspect to that relationship, beyond leaking. MacRumors has posted a copy of Apple’s lawsuit, which includes this gem:

Apple learned of Mr. Aude’s misconduct in the fall of 2023. When
Apple met with him to discuss his improper disclosures, Mr. Aude
promptly confirmed his guilt through his actions, if not his
words. At the start of his November 7, 2023 interview, Mr. Aude
repeatedly denied that he had leaked any information to anyone. He
also claimed that he did not have his Apple-issued work iPhone
with him. Feigning the need to visit the bathroom mid-interview,
Mr. Aude then extracted his iPhone from his pocket during the
break and permanently deleted significant amounts of evidence from
his device. This included the Signal app, which memorialized his
history of leaking information to “Homeboy” (and likely others)
via encrypted communications.

Part of the evidence Aude left behind were screenshots he kept of otherwise secure messages:

In connection with one leak, Mr. Aude admitted that he violated
his obligations to Apple so he could “kill” products and features
with which he took issue. As his frequent Google searches, article
shares, and screenshots saved to his Apple-issued work iPhone
reveal, vanity and personal enjoyment of the media’s attention
also played a significant role in his malfeasance. In Mr. Aude’s
screenshot below memorializing his exchange with the WSJ
journalist, Mr. Aude exclaimed that he could not “wait for chaos
to break out” in reaction to a forthcoming article reflecting his
leaked information.

Worth noting that Aaron “Homeboy” Tilley was a reporter for The Information until September 2019, when he left to join the WSJ. Anyway, I’m sure the WSJ will help Aude out with his legal bills.

 ★ 

Joe Rossignol, reporting for MacRumors:

Apple this month sued its former employee Andrew Aude in
California state court, alleging that he breached the company’s
confidentiality agreement and violated labor laws by leaking
sensitive information to the media and employees at other tech
companies. Apple has demanded a jury trial, and it is seeking
damages in excess of $25,000. […]

In April 2023, for example, Apple alleges that Aude leaked a list
of finalized features for the iPhone’s Journal app to a journalist
at The Wall Street Journal on a phone call. That same month, The
Wall Street Journal’s Aaron Tilley published a report titled
“Apple Plans iPhone Journaling App in Expansion of Health
Initiatives.”

Using the encrypted messaging app Signal, Aude is said to have
sent “over 1,400” messages to the same journalist, who Aude
referred to as “Homeboy.” He is also accused of sending “over
10,000 text messages” to another journalist at the website The
Information, and he allegedly traveled “across the continent” to
meet with her.

10,000 text messages seems like … a lot? Makes me wonder if there was a personal aspect to that relationship, beyond leaking. MacRumors has posted a copy of Apple’s lawsuit, which includes this gem:

Apple learned of Mr. Aude’s misconduct in the fall of 2023. When
Apple met with him to discuss his improper disclosures, Mr. Aude
promptly confirmed his guilt through his actions, if not his
words. At the start of his November 7, 2023 interview, Mr. Aude
repeatedly denied that he had leaked any information to anyone. He
also claimed that he did not have his Apple-issued work iPhone
with him. Feigning the need to visit the bathroom mid-interview,
Mr. Aude then extracted his iPhone from his pocket during the
break and permanently deleted significant amounts of evidence from
his device. This included the Signal app, which memorialized his
history of leaking information to “Homeboy” (and likely others)
via encrypted communications.

Part of the evidence Aude left behind were screenshots he kept of otherwise secure messages:

In connection with one leak, Mr. Aude admitted that he violated
his obligations to Apple so he could “kill” products and features
with which he took issue. As his frequent Google searches, article
shares, and screenshots saved to his Apple-issued work iPhone
reveal, vanity and personal enjoyment of the media’s attention
also played a significant role in his malfeasance. In Mr. Aude’s
screenshot below memorializing his exchange with the WSJ
journalist, Mr. Aude exclaimed that he could not “wait for chaos
to break out” in reaction to a forthcoming article reflecting his
leaked information.

Worth noting that Aaron “Homeboy” Tilley was a reporter for The Information until September 2019, when he left to join the WSJ. Anyway, I’m sure the WSJ will help Aude out with his legal bills.

Read More 

Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors:

Apple announced today that the first Apple Immersive Video
documentary for Vision Pro, featuring highlights from last
year’s MLS playoffs, will debut tonight (March 28) at 6 p.m.
Pacific. […]

I’m excited to see the finished product — all of Apple’s
immersive videos have been pretty amazing — but I have to point
out that this five-minute highlight packages is being released 110
days after last year’s MLS Cup Final. That’s not great
turnaround time. If immersive video for sports is going to be a
thing, turnaround is going to need to be a lot faster.

In addition to the four-month turnaround time, there’s also the fact that five minutes is pretty short. Perhaps the single most surprising aspect of Apple’s launch plan for Vision Pro is the relative dearth of original immersive content. It’s the most compelling experience with the product but there’s hardly any of it. I would have thought Apple would drop new immersive content at least a few times per month, if not weekly, but this MLS Cup highlight film is the first new one since launch.

 ★ 

Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors:

Apple announced today that the first Apple Immersive Video
documentary for Vision Pro, featuring highlights from last
year’s MLS playoffs, will debut tonight (March 28) at 6 p.m.
Pacific. […]

I’m excited to see the finished product — all of Apple’s
immersive videos have been pretty amazing — but I have to point
out that this five-minute highlight packages is being released 110
days after last year’s MLS Cup Final. That’s not great
turnaround time. If immersive video for sports is going to be a
thing, turnaround is going to need to be a lot faster.

In addition to the four-month turnaround time, there’s also the fact that five minutes is pretty short. Perhaps the single most surprising aspect of Apple’s launch plan for Vision Pro is the relative dearth of original immersive content. It’s the most compelling experience with the product but there’s hardly any of it. I would have thought Apple would drop new immersive content at least a few times per month, if not weekly, but this MLS Cup highlight film is the first new one since launch.

Read More 

Terrific interview; Kara Swisher is so damn good at this. I learned a lot.

(Vox Media’s CMS (seemingly?) makes it maddeningly impossible to link to a single podcast episode, so here are direct links for Apple Podcasts and Overcast.)

 ★ 

Terrific interview; Kara Swisher is so damn good at this. I learned a lot.

(Vox Media’s CMS (seemingly?) makes it maddeningly impossible to link to a single podcast episode, so here are direct links for Apple Podcasts and Overcast.)

Read More 

Jason Snell returns to the show to talk about the DOJ’s antitrust lawsuit against Apple. And sports gambling.

Sponsored by:

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

 ★ 

Jason Snell returns to the show to talk about the DOJ’s antitrust lawsuit against Apple. And sports gambling.

Sponsored by:

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

Read More 

Affinity — makers of a terrific suite of design apps — back in September 2022, when the now-aborted acquisition of Figma by Adobe was announced:

Ain’t nobody acquiring us 😎

Affinity CEO Ashley Hewson today:

I am thrilled to announce that Affinity is joining the Canva family.

 ★ 

Affinity — makers of a terrific suite of design apps — back in September 2022, when the now-aborted acquisition of Figma by Adobe was announced:

Ain’t nobody acquiring us 😎

Affinity CEO Ashley Hewson today:

I am thrilled to announce that Affinity is joining the Canva family.

Read More 

The DMA allows the EC to penalize “gatekeepers” with fines that are vastly disproportionate to the amount of revenue they generate in EU member states.

A few readers have asked about my speculation that Apple, along with the other DMA-designated gatekeepers (none of which are European companies of course), might reasonably pull out of the relatively small EU market rather than risk facing disproportionately large fines from the European Commission. The DMA allows the EC to fine gatekeepers up to 10 percent of global revenue (which would hit a hardware-based company like Apple particularly hard) for a first offense, and up to 20 percent for subsequent fines. But the EU represents only 7 percent of Apple’s revenue. That figure comes from CFO Luca Maestri on Apple’s Q1 2024 analyst call:

Amit Daryanani, Evercore: Fair enough, and then as a follow up,
you folks have implemented a fair bit of changes around the apps
for in Europe post the DMA implementation there. Can you just
touch on what are some of the key updates and then Luca, does
NetApp at all, do you see it having any significant impact
financially to your services or the broader Apple P&L statement.

[Remarks from Tim Cook omitted.]

Luca Maestri: Yes, and Amit, as Tim said, these are changes that
we’re going to be implementing in March. A lot will depend on the
choices that will be made. Just to keep it in context, the changes
apply to the EU market, which represents roughly 7% of our global
absolute revenue.

It’s unclear whether Maestri was saying that the EU accounts for 7 percent of Apple’s worldwide App Store revenue, or 7 percent of all revenue, but I suspect it doesn’t matter, and that both are around 7 percent. App Store revenue ought to be a good proxy for overall revenue — there’s no reason to think EU Apple users spend any less or any more in the App Store than users around the world.

There’s some “7 percent sounds way too low” confusion that stems from the fact that Apple, in its quarterly consolidated financial statements, breaks results into five geographic regions: Americas, Europe, Greater China, Japan, and “Rest of Asia Pacific”. “Europe” accounts for somewhere around 25 percent of Apple’s global revenue. That’s the number most people think about. But there are a significant number of high-GDP countries in Europe that aren’t in the EU — the UK (most famously), Russia, Turkey, Switzerland, Norway, and Ukraine. More importantly, Apple’s “Europe” includes the entire Middle East.

So EU member states account for only 25–30 percent of Apple’s revenue from “Europe”, and just 7 percent globally. 7 percent is significant, to be sure, and in addition to users, there are of course many iOS and Mac developers in EU countries. I really don’t know what Apple pulling out of the EU would even look like, but it would be ugly. Could they merely stop selling the iPhone there but continue selling other products? Would that create a massive gray market for iPhones imported from outside the EU? How would Apple deal with the hundreds of millions of existing iPhone owners in the EU? I have no idea. It would be a mess, to be sure, but the DMA has already made doing business in the EU a mess for Apple and the other designated gatekeepers. But one can make the case — as Eric Seufert has — that American companies have to at least consider the fact that doing business in the EU isn’t worth the risk of fines so vastly disproportionate to the revenue they generate in the EU.

And it’s not like the risk is merely a first-offense fine of up to 10 percent of annual global revenue and a single second fine of up to 20 percent — there’s no limit to how many times the EC can fine a gatekeeper for non-compliance with the DMA’s arbitrary and vague rules.

The EC just fined Apple $2 billion for violating article 102(a) of their rules on competition, for hindering Spotify (a European company — surely a coincidence) in the music streaming market. The entirety of article 102(a):

Any abuse by one or more undertakings of a dominant position
within the internal market or in a substantial part of it shall be
prohibited as incompatible with the internal market in so far as
it may affect trade between Member States.

Such abuse may, in particular, consist in:

(a) directly or indirectly imposing unfair purchase or selling
prices or other unfair trading conditions;

Where “unfair” is never defined. That’s as specific as the law gets. Note too that the base penalty for this infraction, per the EC’s 2006 guidelines, was €40 million, but the EC raised the fine by a factor of 45× to €1.8 billion because the guidelines aren’t binding:

In addition, the Commission decided to add to the basic amount of
the fine an additional lump sum of €1.8 billion to ensure that the
overall fine imposed on Apple is sufficiently deterrent. Such lump
sum fine was necessary in this case because a significant part of
the harm caused by the infringement consists of non-monetary harm,
which cannot be properly accounted for under the revenue-based
methodology as set out in the Commission’s 2006 Guidelines on
Fines. In addition, the fine must be sufficient to deter Apple
from repeating the present or a similar infringement; and to deter
other companies of a similar size and with similar resources from
committing the same or a similar infringement.

Judging from the EC’s actions and statements, there’s no reason not to believe that the EC will pursue maximum fines under the DMA.1

Read More