daring-rss

Howell Davies and Ellie Henman, reporting for The Sun:

Brit actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson is taking his martinis shaken, not
stirred, after being formally offered the job as the new James
Bond. Insiders said the Kick-Ass movie star is expected to
accept the role as 007, taking over from Daniel Craig, who has
played MI6’s most famous spy for 15 years.

Eon Productions, which makes the spy thriller films, is on course
to start shooting this year.

A source said: “Bond is Aaron’s job, should he wish to accept it.
The formal offer is on the table and they are waiting to hear
back. As far as Eon is concerned, Aaron is going to sign his
contract in the coming days and they can start preparing for the
big announcement.”

Take it with a grain of salt, as The Sun is a News Corp tabloid and there are conflicting reports from more reputable publications, but I loved Taylor-Johnson in Bullet Train (and loved Bullet Train itself).

 ★ 

Howell Davies and Ellie Henman, reporting for The Sun:

Brit actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson is taking his martinis shaken, not
stirred, after being formally offered the job as the new James
Bond. Insiders said the Kick-Ass movie star is expected to
accept the role as 007, taking over from Daniel Craig, who has
played MI6’s most famous spy for 15 years.

Eon Productions, which makes the spy thriller films, is on course
to start shooting this year.

A source said: “Bond is Aaron’s job, should he wish to accept it.
The formal offer is on the table and they are waiting to hear
back. As far as Eon is concerned, Aaron is going to sign his
contract in the coming days and they can start preparing for the
big announcement.”

Take it with a grain of salt, as The Sun is a News Corp tabloid and there are conflicting reports from more reputable publications, but I loved Taylor-Johnson in Bullet Train (and loved Bullet Train itself).

Read More 

VisionDevCamp:

VisionDevCamp is a not-for-profit developer event focused on
creating applications for Apple Vision Pro and
visionOS. Attendees are encouraged to develop native
visionOS, Unity PolySpatial, and web
applications during the event.

Registration is open, and costs just $100 — and that includes six meals over the weekend. From the team behind the long-running iOSDevCamp (which is so long-running it began as iPhoneDevCamp — before iOS had its name).

 ★ 

VisionDevCamp:

VisionDevCamp is a not-for-profit developer event focused on
creating applications for Apple Vision Pro and
visionOS. Attendees are encouraged to develop native
visionOS, Unity PolySpatial, and web
applications during the event.

Registration is open, and costs just $100 — and that includes six meals over the weekend. From the team behind the long-running iOSDevCamp (which is so long-running it began as iPhoneDevCamp — before iOS had its name).

Read More 

Maury Maverick, chairman and general manager of the Smaller War Plants Corporation, in a company-wide memo back in 1944:

Be short and use Plain English.

Memoranda should he as short as clearness will allow. The Naval
officer who wired “Sighted Sub – Sank Same” told the whole story.

Put the real subject matter — the point — and even the
conclusion, in the opening paragraph and the whole story on one
page. Period! If a lengthy explanation, statistical matter, or
such is necessary, use attachments.

Stay off gobbledygook language. It only fouls people up. For the
Lord’s sake, be short and say what you’re talking about. Let’s
stop “pointing-up” programs, “finalizing” contracts that “stem
from” district, regional or Washington “levels”. There are no
“levels” — local government is as high as Washington Government.
No more patterns, effectuating, dynamics. Anyone using the words
“activation” or “implementation” will be shot.

80-year-old advice that holds up today. Also: this is the first known use of gobbledygook, a fabulous word with no true synonym. (Thanks to DF reader David Wooten for the link.)

(Also: Who had a cooler name? Maury Maverick or the Smaller War Plants Corporation?)

 ★ 

Maury Maverick, chairman and general manager of the Smaller War Plants Corporation, in a company-wide memo back in 1944:

Be short and use Plain English.

Memoranda should he as short as clearness will allow. The Naval
officer who wired “Sighted Sub – Sank Same” told the whole story.

Put the real subject matter — the point — and even the
conclusion, in the opening paragraph and the whole story on one
page. Period! If a lengthy explanation, statistical matter, or
such is necessary, use attachments.

Stay off gobbledygook language. It only fouls people up. For the
Lord’s sake, be short and say what you’re talking about. Let’s
stop “pointing-up” programs, “finalizing” contracts that “stem
from” district, regional or Washington “levels”. There are no
“levels” — local government is as high as Washington Government.
No more patterns, effectuating, dynamics. Anyone using the words
“activation” or “implementation” will be shot.

80-year-old advice that holds up today. Also: this is the first known use of gobbledygook, a fabulous word with no true synonym. (Thanks to DF reader David Wooten for the link.)

(Also: Who had a cooler name? Maury Maverick or the Smaller War Plants Corporation?)

Read More 

Steven Troughton-Smith posted this great clip from today’s Apple DMA compliance workshop held by the European Commission. AltStore founder Riley Testut — who is apparently ready to go with a launch of the AltStore as an app marketplace in the EU — asked about the “viral hit” problem with the Core Technology Fee. E.g. what happens if a small developer — or even a kid in the proverbial garage — gets a 10-million-download hit and suddenly owes Apple 4.5 million euros? Apple’s Kyle Andeer (VP of legal) gives a too-long answer but ends with, “This is something we need to figure out. And it is something we’re working on. So I would say on that one, stay tuned.”

 ★ 

Steven Troughton-Smith posted this great clip from today’s Apple DMA compliance workshop held by the European Commission. AltStore founder Riley Testut — who is apparently ready to go with a launch of the AltStore as an app marketplace in the EU — asked about the “viral hit” problem with the Core Technology Fee. E.g. what happens if a small developer — or even a kid in the proverbial garage — gets a 10-million-download hit and suddenly owes Apple 4.5 million euros? Apple’s Kyle Andeer (VP of legal) gives a too-long answer but ends with, “This is something we need to figure out. And it is something we’re working on. So I would say on that one, stay tuned.”

Read More 

This was an opportunity for critics of Apple’s DMA compliance plans to address questions to representatives from Apple. There’s video of the 9-hour workshop, but it’s locked behind a password (insert joke about the EC’s support for openness here). I can’t imagine sitting through that, even at 2× speed. Lucky for us, Kay Jebelli followed along live and took copious notes in a thread on Twitter/X:

Interesting detail: the EC told Apple that they aren’t allowed to
notarize apps to protect users. So “government authorities are the
ones that are going to have to step up to protect” app developers
and users from the risks of these 3rd-party apps.

In other words, the EC has a problem Apple doing any vetting whatsoever on apps distributed outside the App Store. The EC will take care of making sure malware, phishing, scams, clones, IP rip-offs, and pirated apps aren’t getting through. This also means that apps distributed outside the app store will be able to use private APIs. One can argue that what Apple is calling “notarization” in its DMA compliance plan is actually just a less extensive form of app review, but without this step, Apple has no oversight over software distributed outside the store at all. That seems to be exactly what the EC is saying the DMA demands. I don’t think this is going to go well.

Pushed again on the CTF, Apple re-asserts that it is fully
compliant with the DMA. It isn’t charging an additional fee for
interoperability, but compensation for technologies that it was
previously monetising through its original model (effectively
tolling digital app sales).

We know from today’s workshop that (a) Apple has already gotten specific pushback from the EC on aspects of its DMA compliance plan; and (b) Apple continues to think the CTF is perfectly cromulent under the terms of the DMA. That to me says the CTF is going to fly. The idea that the entire CTF is disallowed under the DMA is an argument that the DMA disallows a company from monetizing access to its own platform and IP. EC fans may be surprised to hear this but the EC is a capitalist body. I really don’t think they want to send a message to the world that the EU will strip companies of their own platforms. As Jebelli writes in an aside in his thread:

It’s pretty incredible if you take a step back, in what other
industry do entire regulatory frameworks pop up to address a
dispute between different businesses over the question of “Why
can’t I have gratuitous access to this infrastructure, at zero
cost to myself?”

The crybaby Spotifys in the EU have already gotten a lot from the EC protection racket, including a large number of huge concessions in Apple’s DMA compliance plan. Not paying anything to Apple under any condition is all they’ll settle for though.

 ★ 

This was an opportunity for critics of Apple’s DMA compliance plans to address questions to representatives from Apple. There’s video of the 9-hour workshop, but it’s locked behind a password (insert joke about the EC’s support for openness here). I can’t imagine sitting through that, even at 2× speed. Lucky for us, Kay Jebelli followed along live and took copious notes in a thread on Twitter/X:

Interesting detail: the EC told Apple that they aren’t allowed to
notarize apps to protect users. So “government authorities are the
ones that are going to have to step up to protect” app developers
and users from the risks of these 3rd-party apps.

In other words, the EC has a problem Apple doing any vetting whatsoever on apps distributed outside the App Store. The EC will take care of making sure malware, phishing, scams, clones, IP rip-offs, and pirated apps aren’t getting through. This also means that apps distributed outside the app store will be able to use private APIs. One can argue that what Apple is calling “notarization” in its DMA compliance plan is actually just a less extensive form of app review, but without this step, Apple has no oversight over software distributed outside the store at all. That seems to be exactly what the EC is saying the DMA demands. I don’t think this is going to go well.

Pushed again on the CTF, Apple re-asserts that it is fully
compliant with the DMA. It isn’t charging an additional fee for
interoperability, but compensation for technologies that it was
previously monetising through its original model (effectively
tolling digital app sales).

We know from today’s workshop that (a) Apple has already gotten specific pushback from the EC on aspects of its DMA compliance plan; and (b) Apple continues to think the CTF is perfectly cromulent under the terms of the DMA. That to me says the CTF is going to fly. The idea that the entire CTF is disallowed under the DMA is an argument that the DMA disallows a company from monetizing access to its own platform and IP. EC fans may be surprised to hear this but the EC is a capitalist body. I really don’t think they want to send a message to the world that the EU will strip companies of their own platforms. As Jebelli writes in an aside in his thread:

It’s pretty incredible if you take a step back, in what other
industry do entire regulatory frameworks pop up to address a
dispute between different businesses over the question of “Why
can’t I have gratuitous access to this infrastructure, at zero
cost to myself?”

The crybaby Spotifys in the EU have already gotten a lot from the EC protection racket, including a large number of huge concessions in Apple’s DMA compliance plan. Not paying anything to Apple under any condition is all they’ll settle for though.

Read More 

Denise Hill, writing on NASA’s The Sun Spot blog:

Since November 2023, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has been sending
a steady radio signal to Earth, but the signal does not contain
usable data. The source of the issue appears to be with one of
three onboard computers, the flight data subsystem (FDS), which is
responsible for packaging the science and engineering data before
it’s sent to Earth by the telemetry modulation unit.

On March 3, the Voyager mission team saw activity from one section
of the FDS that differed from the rest of the computer’s
unreadable data stream. The new signal was still not in the format
used by Voyager 1 when the FDS is working properly, so the team
wasn’t initially sure what to make of it. But an engineer with the
agency’s Deep Space Network, which operates the radio antennas
that communicate with both Voyagers and other spacecraft traveling
to the Moon and beyond, was able to decode the new signal and
found that it contains a readout of the entire FDS memory. […]

Because Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles (24 billion
kilometers) from Earth, it takes 22.5 hours for a radio signal to
reach the spacecraft and another 22.5 hours for the probe’s
response to reach antennas on the ground. So the team received the
results of the command on March 3. On March 7, engineers began
working to decode the data, and on March 10, they determined that
it contains a memory readout.

Remind me never to complain about anything I’ve had to debug again.

 ★ 

Denise Hill, writing on NASA’s The Sun Spot blog:

Since November 2023, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has been sending
a steady radio signal to Earth, but the signal does not contain
usable data. The source of the issue appears to be with one of
three onboard computers, the flight data subsystem (FDS), which is
responsible for packaging the science and engineering data before
it’s sent to Earth by the telemetry modulation unit.

On March 3, the Voyager mission team saw activity from one section
of the FDS that differed from the rest of the computer’s
unreadable data stream. The new signal was still not in the format
used by Voyager 1 when the FDS is working properly, so the team
wasn’t initially sure what to make of it. But an engineer with the
agency’s Deep Space Network, which operates the radio antennas
that communicate with both Voyagers and other spacecraft traveling
to the Moon and beyond, was able to decode the new signal and
found that it contains a readout of the entire FDS memory. […]

Because Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles (24 billion
kilometers) from Earth, it takes 22.5 hours for a radio signal to
reach the spacecraft and another 22.5 hours for the probe’s
response to reach antennas on the ground. So the team received the
results of the command on March 3. On March 7, engineers began
working to decode the data, and on March 10, they determined that
it contains a memory readout.

Remind me never to complain about anything I’ve had to debug again.

Read More 

My (admittedly belated) remarks on Apple’s year.

Last month Jason Snell published his annual Six Colors Apple Report Card for 2023. As I’ve done in the past — 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018 — I’m publishing my full remarks and grades here. I’m late publishing this year because I forgot to last month. On Snell’s report card, voters give per-category scores ranging from 5 to 1; I’ve translated these to letter grades, A to E.

Mac: A

By the end of the year, every single Mac in the lineup, save one, is arguably in the best shape that model has ever been. (Spoiler: the exception is the Mac Pro.)

When Apple Silicon debuted at the end of 2020, Apple started consumer-grade models first, with the regular M1 chips, and the M1 Pro/Max/Ultra chips followed the next year. That pattern repeated with the M2 generation. But at the end of 2023, Apple debuted the M3 generation of Apple silicon starting with the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros (with M3 Pro/Max chips), along with a lesser 14-inch MacBook Pro with the regular M3. It makes more sense for the MacBook Pros to get a new generation of chips first than for the MacBook Air. And these are the best MacBook Pros ever.

The 24-inch iMac skipped the M2 generation but got an update to the M3, along with Apple making it as clear as possible that they have no plans to make a 27-inch iMac with Apple silicon. I’m OK with that — I think a Studio Display with a Mac Mini is better solution. And those who miss the iMac Pro of the Intel era are better off with a Studio Display and Mac Studio.

The Mac Pro is the only sour note in the lineup. It finally came to Apple silicon (hooray), but spec-wise it’s pretty much a Mac Studio with advanced I/O options (boo). If your work requires high-end I/O, that’s great. But if not, it’s hard to see anything the Mac Pro offers that the Mac Studio doesn’t, other than a higher price and consuming a lot more space on or under your desk. Even if this first Apple silicon Mac Pro is a disappointment though, I say it’s great news overall, because it’s a sign that Apple still wants the Mac Pro in its lineup. At some point in the next year or two, I expect Apple to unveil a Mac Pro with specs that race ahead of the Mac Studio. It’s just obviously the case that Apple silicon isn’t there yet.

MacOS 13 Ventura and 14 Sonoma have both been fine releases. Reliable and (mostly) familiar.

iPhone: A

The new iPhone 15 lineup is great, especially the 15 Pro models, which Apple changed from heavy polished stainless steel to lightweight brushed titanium. The weight reduction is dramatic, and the titanium feels so much nicer in hand.

iOS 17 (can you believe it’s up to 17 now?) feels like what it is: a stable mature operating system. Apple has gone through two major transitions with iOS: the ground-up UI redesign with iOS 7 (can you believe that was 10 years ago?) and the all-screen, no-more-home-button system redesign with the iPhone X. Nothing major has changed since, and nothing seems to need to. The switch from Lighting to USB-C was, overall, no big deal controversy-wise, and enabled new features like recording ProRes video directly to an attached SSD.

iPad: C

That there was no new iPad hardware this year makes it hard to give it a high grade, so a gentleman’s C it is. Worse, the existing lineup is rather confusing. iPadOS remains fine, but to me still seems like the no-man’s land platform: nowhere near as capable productivity-wise as a Mac; nowhere near as portable as an iPhone. Next year better bring clarity and some “wow” to the iPad lineup. I’d love to see a completely rethought Magic Keyboard — perhaps a combination keyboard/trackpad that works just as well with a Vision Pro as with an iPad?

Watch: B / Wearables (including Watch): B

The Series 9 models don’t look any different from Series 8, and the Ultra 2 doesn’t look any different from the Ultra 1, but inside, the new S9 SiP chip provides noticeably better battery life — which at this point is really one of the platform’s only weaknesses.

WatchOS 10 is the biggest re-think of the software platform ever. Far more colorful, a bit more “computer on your wrist”, and I think widgets are generally more useful on Apple Watch than apps are.

AirPods Pro 2 are just terrific, and the new Adaptive noise control mode is amazing for my day-to-day usage.

Apple TV: B

No news on the hardware front this year, but it wasn’t needed. The big change in tvOS is moving the iTunes Movie and TV stores into the TV app. Overall that’s a wash for me, but it’s slightly irritating insofar as I really only ever buy or rent movies nowadays — my TV-show-watching goes through streaming apps. But the “Store” tab in the TV app gives prominent placement on the main screen to a row full of popular TV shows. All I want to see are movies.

The best change in tvOS this year, though, is that the circular up/down/left/right wheel on the remote now works like it should have all along: you can run your finger around it in circles to scroll and scrub, just like using the scroll wheel on an iPod of yore. No idea why it didn’t work like this all along, but I’m sure glad it does now.

Services: B

Lots of great shows and movies on TV+. Slow Horses, Silo, Hijack, For All Mankind, and Flowers of the Killer Moon were all standouts.

iCloud remains secure, fast, and reliable. So much seamless continuity (including via Continuity-branded features) across devices.

But I’ll repeat this gripe from previous years: it’s miserly that Apple is still offering only a mere 5 GB of storage at the free tier, and have left the paid-tier storage allotments unchanged since like forever. I wonder how many zillions of iPhone users out there don’t have device backups because they only have a free iCloud account with 5 GB? The Apple One bundle is a good deal, but the free iCloud tier should be genuinely useful for backing up a modern iPhone.

HomeKit/Home: C

I’ll repeat my line from last year: Big picture, this whole thing still feels like it’s always poised to get good “next year”. 2023 wasn’t that year (again).

Hardware Reliability: A

No news is great news in this category.

Software Quality: B

I’ll keep it short: I have concerns and complaints about aspects of the direction Apple’s software design is headed (or in some ways, has been now for years), but their software reliability has been very good for me.

Developer Relations: C

Third year in a row with the same comment: Resentment over App Store policies continues to build. Frustrations with the App Store review process seem unimproved. Apple’s goal should be for developer relations to be so good that developers want to create software exclusively for Apple’s platforms. The opposite is happening.

Social and Societal Impact: A

Another repeat comment, but another good year on this front: Climate/carbon is the societal area where a company like Apple can and should make the most difference, and I’m hard-pressed to think how they could be doing more than they are, practically. 2023 saw the launch of several entirely carbon-neutral Apple Watch configurations.

We’re living in sensitive times on other social issues, and Apple seems to be managing that very astutely and honestly.

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Dare Obasanjo, on Mastodon:

2024 is the year Apple faced its limitations. First giving up the
dream of competing with Tesla in EVs and now conceding it can’t
compete with Google and OpenAI in generative AI.

This means iOS users end up winning as we get actual cutting edge
features and not Siri warmed over.

I agree that Apple users win either way — either Apple builds out its own best-of-breed generative AI system, or they license the best one(s) from whoever makes them. But it could well be like maps. Lean on Google or others until the in-house project is ready to go. (Put aside the fact that Apple was forced to switch to their own maps a year or two before it was ready.) Or compare it to Apple building Macs on Intel’s x86 architecture until three years.

We are only in the very early days of LLMs and generative AI, and the only moat that seems to exist is large-scale data center processing power, not the models themselves.

 ★ 

Dare Obasanjo, on Mastodon:

2024 is the year Apple faced its limitations. First giving up the
dream of competing with Tesla in EVs and now conceding it can’t
compete with Google and OpenAI in generative AI.

This means iOS users end up winning as we get actual cutting edge
features and not Siri warmed over.

I agree that Apple users win either way — either Apple builds out its own best-of-breed generative AI system, or they license the best one(s) from whoever makes them. But it could well be like maps. Lean on Google or others until the in-house project is ready to go. (Put aside the fact that Apple was forced to switch to their own maps a year or two before it was ready.) Or compare it to Apple building Macs on Intel’s x86 architecture until three years.

We are only in the very early days of LLMs and generative AI, and the only moat that seems to exist is large-scale data center processing power, not the models themselves.

Read More 

Michael Nuñez, reporting for VentureBeat:

Apple researchers have developed new methods for training large
language models on both text and images, enabling more powerful
and flexible AI systems, in what could be a significant advance
for artificial intelligence and for future Apple products.

The work, described in a research paper titled “MM1: Methods,
Analysis & Insights from Multimodal LLM Pre-training” that
was quietly posted to arxiv.org this week, demonstrates how
carefully combining different types of training data and model
architectures can lead to state-of-the-art performance on a range
of AI benchmarks.

“We demonstrate that for large-scale multimodal pre-training using
a careful mix of image-caption, interleaved image-text, and
text-only data is crucial for achieving state-of-the-art few-shot
results across multiple benchmarks,” the researchers explain. By
training models on a diverse dataset spanning visual and
linguistic information, the MM1 models were able to excel at tasks
like image captioning, visual question answering, and natural
language inference.

Summary thread on Twitter/X from team member Brandon McKinzie, Hacker News thread, and roundup of commentary from Techmeme. The consensus is that this paper is remarkably open with technical details.

 ★ 

Michael Nuñez, reporting for VentureBeat:

Apple researchers have developed new methods for training large
language models on both text and images, enabling more powerful
and flexible AI systems, in what could be a significant advance
for artificial intelligence and for future Apple products.

The work, described in a research paper titled “MM1: Methods,
Analysis & Insights from Multimodal LLM Pre-training” that
was quietly posted to arxiv.org this week, demonstrates how
carefully combining different types of training data and model
architectures can lead to state-of-the-art performance on a range
of AI benchmarks.

“We demonstrate that for large-scale multimodal pre-training using
a careful mix of image-caption, interleaved image-text, and
text-only data is crucial for achieving state-of-the-art few-shot
results across multiple benchmarks,” the researchers explain. By
training models on a diverse dataset spanning visual and
linguistic information, the MM1 models were able to excel at tasks
like image captioning, visual question answering, and natural
language inference.

Summary thread on Twitter/X from team member Brandon McKinzie, Hacker News thread, and roundup of commentary from Techmeme. The consensus is that this paper is remarkably open with technical details.

Read More 

Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. is in talks to build Google’s Gemini artificial
intelligence engine into the iPhone, according to people familiar
with the situation, setting the stage for a blockbuster agreement
that would shake up the AI industry.

The two companies are in active negotiations to let Apple license
Gemini, Google’s set of generative AI models, to power some new
features coming to the iPhone software this year, said the people,
who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are
private. Apple also recently held discussions with OpenAI and has
considered using its model, according to the people.

Apple’s own LLM efforts seem directed toward on-device processing, but there are some AI tasks that require cloud computer, and Apple simply doesn’t have (and likely doesn’t want to build) the infrastructure for. As Ben Thompson noted in today’s Stratechery daily update, it’s quite possible that Google alone could handle such features if built into iOS — OpenAI is currently struggling under load at times, without the veritable avalanche of traffic that would come from integration into iOS.

Alphabet shares rose as much as 7.4% on Monday as the markets
opened in New York. It was the biggest intraday gain since Feb. 2,
2023. Apple was up 2.2%.

Bloomberg gonna Bloomberg.

 ★ 

Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. is in talks to build Google’s Gemini artificial
intelligence engine into the iPhone, according to people familiar
with the situation, setting the stage for a blockbuster agreement
that would shake up the AI industry.

The two companies are in active negotiations to let Apple license
Gemini, Google’s set of generative AI models, to power some new
features coming to the iPhone software this year, said the people,
who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are
private. Apple also recently held discussions with OpenAI and has
considered using its model, according to the people.

Apple’s own LLM efforts seem directed toward on-device processing, but there are some AI tasks that require cloud computer, and Apple simply doesn’t have (and likely doesn’t want to build) the infrastructure for. As Ben Thompson noted in today’s Stratechery daily update, it’s quite possible that Google alone could handle such features if built into iOS — OpenAI is currently struggling under load at times, without the veritable avalanche of traffic that would come from integration into iOS.

Alphabet shares rose as much as 7.4% on Monday as the markets
opened in New York. It was the biggest intraday gain since Feb. 2,
2023. Apple was up 2.2%.

Bloomberg gonna Bloomberg.

Read More