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No changes to the format: online conference with in-person attendance for the Monday keynote:

WWDC24 will include an in-person experience on June 10 that will
provide developers the opportunity to watch the keynote at Apple
Park, meet with Apple team members, and take part in special
activities. Space will be limited, and details on how to apply to
attend can be found on the Apple Developer site and
app.

Announced pretty much right on schedule too. 2020 was an unusual year, to say the least, but starting in 2021 the WWDC dates were announced March 30, April 5, March 29, and now March 26.

 ★ 

No changes to the format: online conference with in-person attendance for the Monday keynote:

WWDC24 will include an in-person experience on June 10 that will
provide developers the opportunity to watch the keynote at Apple
Park, meet with Apple team members, and take part in special
activities. Space will be limited, and details on how to apply to
attend can be found on the Apple Developer site and
app.

Announced pretty much right on schedule too. 2020 was an unusual year, to say the least, but starting in 2021 the WWDC dates were announced March 30, April 5, March 29, and now March 26.

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You could have set your watch by this announcement dropping the week after the EC held compliance “workshops”.

European Commission press release today:

Today, the Commission has opened non-compliance investigations
under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) into Alphabet’s rules on
steering in Google Play and self-preferencing on Google Search,
Apple’s rules on steering in the App Store and the choice screen
for Safari and Meta’s “pay or consent model”.

The Commission suspects that the measures put in place by these
gatekeepers fall short of effective compliance of their
obligations under the DMA.

You could have set your watch by this announcement dropping the week after the EC held compliance “workshops”. There was no way any of these companies weren’t going to be “investigated” and I doubt there’s any way they won’t eventually get fined. Whether any of them will ever need to pay those fines, that I wouldn’t bet on.

Alphabet’s and Apple’s steering rules

The Commission has opened proceedings to assess whether the
measures implemented by Alphabet and Apple in relation to their
obligations pertaining to app stores are in breach of the DMA.
Article 5(4) of the DMA requires gatekeepers to allow app
developers to “steer” consumers to offers outside the gatekeepers’
app stores, free of charge.

The Commission is concerned that Alphabet’s and Apple’s measures
may not be fully compliant as they impose various restrictions and
limitations. These constrain, among other things, developers’
ability to freely communicate and promote offers and directly
conclude contracts, including by imposing various charges.

The EC is edging closer and closer to saying that successful platforms have no right to monetize their IP on those platforms. That’s exactly what a lot of anti-capitalist critics of these companies have been rooting for, but it would be a radical step.

The Commission has opened proceedings against Alphabet, to
determine whether Alphabet’s display of Google search results may
lead to self-preferencing in relation to Google’s vertical search
services (e.g., Google Shopping; Google Flights; Google Hotels)
over similar rival services.

The Commission is concerned that Alphabet’s measures implemented
to comply with the DMA may not ensure that third-party services
featuring on Google’s search results page are treated in a fair
and non-discriminatory manner in comparison with Alphabet’s own
services, as required by Article 6(5) of the DMA.

Google is already sacrificing results quality, and promoting results from some low-quality comparison sites in the name of compliance. And I don’t even know why this announcement from the EC mentions Google Flights, given that Google has removed Google Flights results from web search results in the EU.

Apple’s compliance with user choice obligations

The Commission has opened proceedings against Apple regarding
their measures to comply with obligations to (i) enable end users
to easily uninstall any software applications on iOS, (ii) easily
change default settings on iOS and (iii) prompt users with choice
screens which must effectively and easily allow them to select an
alternative default service, such as a browser or search engine on
their iPhones.

Apple’s idea is that out of the box, an iPhone presents a complete experience. This keeps coming up, but it’s worth reiterating that there were no third-party apps at all for iPhone for the first year. “A widescreen iPod with touch controls; a revolutionary mobile phone; and a breakthrough Internet communications device.” Music, video, web browsing, email, maps, text messaging, contacts, calendar, and more. These apps aren’t just developed in vacuums and bundled together on a device. On iOS these apps are designed to work together, integrated into a holistic experience. You can — and zillions of iPhone owners do — choose to use alternative apps, but the core apps in iOS are not, as the EU would suggest, a collection of shovelware.

But most of the built-in apps in iOS can be removed from your iPhone the exact same way you delete apps from the App Store. There’s a handful that can’t, among them: Settings, Camera, Photos, App Store, Phone, Messages, and Safari. You can remove those apps from your Home Screen, but they remain in your App Library. If the EC is really going to investigate Apple over removing default apps, I presume they’re thinking that Safari, in particular, needs to be deletable, because making it un-deletable is a form of preferencing? It’s all guess work. I further suppose they might want the App Store app to be deletable, but that’s a problem because it’s through the App Store that a user can re-install built-in apps they’ve previously deleted.

The Commission is concerned that Apple’s measures, including the
design of the web browser choice screen, may be preventing users
from truly exercising their choice of services within the Apple
ecosystem, in contravention of Article 6(3) of the DMA.

Here’s article 6(3) of the DMA, in its entirety:

The gatekeeper shall allow and technically enable end users to
easily un-install any software applications on the operating
system of the gatekeeper, without prejudice to the possibility for
that gatekeeper to restrict such un-installation in relation to
software applications that are essential for the functioning of
the operating system or of the device and which cannot technically
be offered on a standalone basis by third parties.

The gatekeeper shall allow and technically enable end users to
easily change default settings on the operating system, virtual
assistant and web browser of the gatekeeper that direct or steer
end users to products or services provided by the gatekeeper. That
includes prompting end users, at the moment of the end users’
first use of an online search engine, virtual assistant or web
browser of the gatekeeper listed in the designation decision
pursuant to Article 3(9), to choose, from a list of the main
available service providers, the online search engine, virtual
assistant or web browser to which the operating system of the
gatekeeper directs or steers users by default, and the online
search engine to which the virtual assistant and the web browser
of the gatekeeper directs or steers users by default.

How this browser choice screen is non-compliant with the above article, I don’t know. And even in the announcement of their investigation, the EC doesn’t say. My best guess, having read Steven Troughton-Smith’s Whisper-generated transcript of last week’s Apple compliance “workshop”, is that the EC’s problem with Apple’s current browser choice screen is that the list of included web browsers in each EU member state is determined by which web browsers are most popular in each country — which in turn means the only browsers included are those which are already in Apple’s App Store. There’s no mechanism for a new browser that was never in the App Store to be included in the choice screen until a year after it becomes popular enough — via sideloading or distribution through alternative app marketplaces — to make the list. But DMA article 6(3) doesn’t actually say that. It just says the choice screens must include “a list of the main available service providers” — which is exactly what the iOS 17.4 browser choice screen does.

I’ll bet you, like me, took note of article 6(3)’s clauses regarding search engines and virtual assistants. Google Search is a designated “core platform service” and so Google, the gatekeeper that owns it, is obligated to include a choice screen for web search in Android. Apple is obligated to offer a choice screen for browsers, because Safari is a designated core platform service, but not for search, because Google Search is Google’s service, not Apple’s. But as far as I can see, there are no virtual assistants, on any gatekeeper’s platform, that have been designated core platform services, and so I don’t think either Google or Apple is obligated to provide a choice screen for them.

Back to today’s press release from the EC:

Meta’s “pay or consent” model

Finally, the Commission has opened proceedings against Meta to
investigate whether the recently introduced “pay or consent” model
for users in the EU complies with Article 5(2) of the DMA which
requires gatekeepers to obtain consent from users when they intend
to combine or cross-use their personal data across different core
platform services.

The Commission is concerned that the binary choice imposed by
Meta’s “pay or consent” model may not provide a real alternative
in case users do not consent, thereby not achieving the objective
of preventing the accumulation of personal data by gatekeepers.

I wrote about this last week — this is the argument that it’s insufficient for Meta to offer a fair price for a no-targeted-ads experience because the overwhelming majority of people will choose to use Meta’s platforms free-of-charge with targeted ads rather than pay. Nothing, seemingly, will do short of Meta offering its platforms both without charge and without targeted ads, even though non-targeted ads would, at best, generate only pennies on the dollar euro. Not only is the EC signaling that Meta isn’t allowed to set its own price for its own services — they’re seemingly arguing that Meta is obligated to provide its platforms effectively free-of-charge. That’s a radically anti-business stance for an ostensibly capitalist government body to take.

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I thought going back to the 1990s was old, but here’s an Integer BASIC graphics and sound demo from 1978 named “Apple-Vision”. (Thanks to DF reader James Mitchell.)

 ★ 

I thought going back to the 1990s was old, but here’s an Integer BASIC graphics and sound demo from 1978 named “Apple-Vision”. (Thanks to DF reader James Mitchell.)

Read More 

David Ingram, reporting for NBC News:

Data from two research firms and figures published by Musk and X
suggest a deteriorating situation for X by some metrics. Musk has
marketed it as the world’s “town square,” but in number of users
it continues to lag far behind social media rivals that focus on
video, such as Instagram and TikTok.

In February, X had 27 million daily active users of its mobile app
in the U.S., down 18% from a year earlier, according to Sensor
Tower, a market intelligence firm based in San Francisco. The U.S.
user base has been flat or down every month since November 2022,
the first full month of Musk’s owning the app, and in total it’s
down 23% since then, Sensor Tower said.

You know I’m skeptical regarding Sensor Tower’s data, but if they’re measuring all social network mobile app use the same way, it seems like a fair comparison against other social networks. And it jibes with my personal anecdata.

 ★ 

David Ingram, reporting for NBC News:

Data from two research firms and figures published by Musk and X
suggest a deteriorating situation for X by some metrics. Musk has
marketed it as the world’s “town square,” but in number of users
it continues to lag far behind social media rivals that focus on
video, such as Instagram and TikTok.

In February, X had 27 million daily active users of its mobile app
in the U.S., down 18% from a year earlier, according to Sensor
Tower, a market intelligence firm based in San Francisco. The U.S.
user base has been flat or down every month since November 2022,
the first full month of Musk’s owning the app, and in total it’s
down 23% since then, Sensor Tower said.

You know I’m skeptical regarding Sensor Tower’s data, but if they’re measuring all social network mobile app use the same way, it seems like a fair comparison against other social networks. And it jibes with my personal anecdata.

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Glenn Fleishman:

If you love newspaper comic strips, you will love my new book
How Comics Were Made: A Visual History from the Drawing Board
to the Printed Page. I’ve combined years of research and the
diligent collection of unique comics printing artifacts with
dozens of interviews with cartoonists, historians, and
production people to tell the story of how a comic starts with
an artist’s hand, and makes it way through transformations into
print and, more recently, onto a digital screen. I need your
help to make it happen!

The book will be a glorious full-color celebration of the art
form, heavily illustrated from the 1890s to the present day with
materials that you’ve never seen before, drawn from my personal
collection and museums, cartoonists and their estates, and
institutions around the United States. It will also feature
never-before-published strips and versions of some popular comics.

I’m a sucker for labor-of-love books, and remain fascinated by the history of printing technology. So of course I’m backing Fleishman’s Kickstarter campaign. But I’ll bet a lot of you might share the same interest. Here’s a brief taste: “The Week in Doonesbury That Wasn’t” on YouTube.

The campaign is just short of 75 percent funded with three days to go.

 ★ 

Glenn Fleishman:

If you love newspaper comic strips, you will love my new book
How Comics Were Made: A Visual History from the Drawing Board
to the Printed Page. I’ve combined years of research and the
diligent collection of unique comics printing artifacts with
dozens of interviews with cartoonists, historians, and
production people to tell the story of how a comic starts with
an artist’s hand, and makes it way through transformations into
print and, more recently, onto a digital screen. I need your
help to make it happen!

The book will be a glorious full-color celebration of the art
form, heavily illustrated from the 1890s to the present day with
materials that you’ve never seen before, drawn from my personal
collection and museums, cartoonists and their estates, and
institutions around the United States. It will also feature
never-before-published strips and versions of some popular comics.

I’m a sucker for labor-of-love books, and remain fascinated by the history of printing technology. So of course I’m backing Fleishman’s Kickstarter campaign. But I’ll bet a lot of you might share the same interest. Here’s a brief taste: “The Week in Doonesbury That Wasn’t” on YouTube.

The campaign is just short of 75 percent funded with three days to go.

Read More 

I quipped in my post linking to Apple’s updated style guide that if Vision Pro had been a product from the 1990s, Apple might have named it “AppleVision”. Turns out Apple did make products under that name — a short-lived line of CRT displays. From a little birdie who worked on them:

It was an ill-fated (and largely disgraced) line of CRTs with
automatic color calibration built-in. […] The on-screen
brightness and volume controls that still grace macOS today are
there largely because of the AppleVision product, though an
earlier form of them showed up on a 14” CRT just prior. Also,
DigitalColor Meter (now styled as “Digital Color Meter”) came out
of that software effort as well.

But the AppleVision displays were, despite a huge amount of
innovation, extremely unreliable. It was the first time Apple had
attempted to build a multiscan CRT on their own, and it turns out
that multiscan CRTs are really, really hard to get right. Apple
took a large (for the time, in the mid 90s) financial hit on the
AppleVision 1710 and 1710av, in particular. The name was
eventually abandoned as it had been tarnished beyond usefulness.

 ★ 

I quipped in my post linking to Apple’s updated style guide that if Vision Pro had been a product from the 1990s, Apple might have named it “AppleVision”. Turns out Apple did make products under that name — a short-lived line of CRT displays. From a little birdie who worked on them:

It was an ill-fated (and largely disgraced) line of CRTs with
automatic color calibration built-in. […] The on-screen
brightness and volume controls that still grace macOS today are
there largely because of the AppleVision product, though an
earlier form of them showed up on a 14” CRT just prior. Also,
DigitalColor Meter (now styled as “Digital Color Meter”) came out
of that software effort as well.

But the AppleVision displays were, despite a huge amount of
innovation, extremely unreliable. It was the first time Apple had
attempted to build a multiscan CRT on their own, and it turns out
that multiscan CRTs are really, really hard to get right. Apple
took a large (for the time, in the mid 90s) financial hit on the
AppleVision 1710 and 1710av, in particular. The name was
eventually abandoned as it had been tarnished beyond usefulness.

Read More 

The overriding gist of the DOJ’s lawsuit against Apple brought to mind, for DF reader E.G., Kurt Vonnegut’s dystopian short story Harrison Bergeron. Despite being an enormous Vonnegut fan, I couldn’t recall reading it before. It’s so apt. As E.G. quipped in his email to me, “Only in making all products, services, and experiences equally bad, will we have equality and fairness.”

There are a couple of plain text versions of the story on the web, but none that do justice to the story typographically. So, channeling my inner Dean Allen, I typeset one. Curl up with it on your iPad — or, dare I suggest, go old-school and print it out.

 ★ 

The overriding gist of the DOJ’s lawsuit against Apple brought to mind, for DF reader E.G., Kurt Vonnegut’s dystopian short story Harrison Bergeron. Despite being an enormous Vonnegut fan, I couldn’t recall reading it before. It’s so apt. As E.G. quipped in his email to me, “Only in making all products, services, and experiences equally bad, will we have equality and fairness.”

There are a couple of plain text versions of the story on the web, but none that do justice to the story typographically. So, channeling my inner Dean Allen, I typeset one. Curl up with it on your iPad — or, dare I suggest, go old-school and print it out.

Read More 

Apple press release from January 2004:

Working to provide consumers with the most compelling digital
content whenever and wherever they desire, HP and Apple today
announced a strategic alliance to deliver an HP-branded digital
music player based on Apple’s iPod, the number one digital music
player in the world, and Apple’s award-winning iTunes digital
music jukebox and pioneering online music store to HP’s customers.

As part of the alliance, HP consumer PCs and notebooks will come
preinstalled with Apple’s iTunes jukebox software and an
easy-reference desktop icon to point consumers directly to the
iTunes Music Store, ensuring a simple, seamless music experience.
This offering is yet another way that HP is helping consumers
enjoy more from their personal digital entertainment content.

My point stands that iTunes on Windows was successful largely from users who installed it themselves, but it’s a worth a correction to point out that it was pre-installed on HP PCs for a while, and at the time HP was the second-biggest PC maker. Hard to believe I forgot this, because the most remarkable part of the deal wasn’t that HP pre-installed iTunes, but that Apple granted HP a license to sell HP-branded iPods.

 ★ 

Apple press release from January 2004:

Working to provide consumers with the most compelling digital
content whenever and wherever they desire, HP and Apple today
announced a strategic alliance to deliver an HP-branded digital
music player based on Apple’s iPod, the number one digital music
player in the world, and Apple’s award-winning iTunes digital
music jukebox and pioneering online music store to HP’s customers.

As part of the alliance, HP consumer PCs and notebooks will come
preinstalled with Apple’s iTunes jukebox software and an
easy-reference desktop icon to point consumers directly to the
iTunes Music Store, ensuring a simple, seamless music experience.
This offering is yet another way that HP is helping consumers
enjoy more from their personal digital entertainment content.

My point stands that iTunes on Windows was successful largely from users who installed it themselves, but it’s a worth a correction to point out that it was pre-installed on HP PCs for a while, and at the time HP was the second-biggest PC maker. Hard to believe I forgot this, because the most remarkable part of the deal wasn’t that HP pre-installed iTunes, but that Apple granted HP a license to sell HP-branded iPods.

Read More 

Brian X. Chen — the “Tech Fix” columnist for The New York Times who is so unenthused about tech products that he advised readers to “just use flash” rather than upgrade their phone if their low-light photos look bad — in a column on Roku’s recent licensing shenanigans:

Roku’s no-good month stirred discussions in online forums about
what it means when a company can essentially deactivate the device
you paid for. That’s similar to how companies like Apple, Google
and Microsoft can decide to stop issuing software updates for
older devices, which gradually degrades their performance.

That’s just stated as fact. But here’s Chen back in 2017, in a column headlined “A New Phone Comes Out. Yours Slows Down. A Conspiracy? No.”:

The phenomenon of perceived slowdowns is so widespread that many
believe tech companies intentionally cripple smartphones and
computers to ensure that people buy new ones every few years.
Conspiracy theorists call it planned obsolescence.

That’s a myth. While slowdowns happen, they take place for a far
less nefarious reason. That reason is a software upgrade.

So getting software updates was the cause for slowdowns in 2017, but not getting software updates is now the cause in 2024. Got it.

 ★ 

Brian X. Chen — the “Tech Fix” columnist for The New York Times who is so unenthused about tech products that he advised readers to “just use flash” rather than upgrade their phone if their low-light photos look bad — in a column on Roku’s recent licensing shenanigans:

Roku’s no-good month stirred discussions in online forums about
what it means when a company can essentially deactivate the device
you paid for. That’s similar to how companies like Apple, Google
and Microsoft can decide to stop issuing software updates for
older devices, which gradually degrades their performance.

That’s just stated as fact. But here’s Chen back in 2017, in a column headlined “A New Phone Comes Out. Yours Slows Down. A Conspiracy? No.”:

The phenomenon of perceived slowdowns is so widespread that many
believe tech companies intentionally cripple smartphones and
computers to ensure that people buy new ones every few years.
Conspiracy theorists call it planned obsolescence.

That’s a myth. While slowdowns happen, they take place for a far
less nefarious reason. That reason is a software upgrade.

So getting software updates was the cause for slowdowns in 2017, but not getting software updates is now the cause in 2024. Got it.

Read More 

Humane is getting closer to shipping, and better at making videos. One clever trick each presenter in this new video does is continue talking to the audience while waiting for responses from the Ai Pin (which, it seems, can take a while).

 ★ 

Humane is getting closer to shipping, and better at making videos. One clever trick each presenter in this new video does is continue talking to the audience while waiting for responses from the Ai Pin (which, it seems, can take a while).

Read More