daring-rss

Carl Willis, reporting for ABC 7News in Washington D.C.:

“As soon as he parked the car two masked gentlemen came up to him,
armed,” she said. “They robbed him, took everything he had in his
pockets, took the keys to my truck and got in and pulled off.”

She said one of them approached on foot in the 2400 block of 14th
Street, NW. The other was in a black BMW, both of them armed with
guns. She said the robbers were bold taking her husband’s phone,
but then giving it back because it wasn’t to their liking.

“They basically looked at that phone and was like ‘Oh, that’s
an Android? We don’t want this. I thought it was an iPhone,’”
she said.

Leave the Android, take the cannoli.

 ★ 

Carl Willis, reporting for ABC 7News in Washington D.C.:

“As soon as he parked the car two masked gentlemen came up to him,
armed,” she said. “They robbed him, took everything he had in his
pockets, took the keys to my truck and got in and pulled off.”

She said one of them approached on foot in the 2400 block of 14th
Street, NW. The other was in a black BMW, both of them armed with
guns. She said the robbers were bold taking her husband’s phone,
but then giving it back because it wasn’t to their liking.

“They basically looked at that phone and was like ‘Oh, that’s
an Android? We don’t want this. I thought it was an iPhone,’”
she said.

Leave the Android, take the cannoli.

Read More 

The Impassioned Moderate, a year ago:

News came out a few weeks ago that Bending Spoons, a
consumer app studio, raised a massive $340 million round of
financing. The press gushed about it: “Hollywood star, tech execs
invest in Italian start-up Bending Spoons”, “Ryan Reynolds
invests in ‘terrifying’ Italian start-up Bending”. And Ryan
himself said things that are just so easy to imagine him saying (a
testament to the spectacular job he’s done branding himself):
“Their apps enable anyone to become a creative genius with minimum
effort. In fact, their products terrify me so much, I had to
invest.” (Ironically – or not? – his ad agency is called Maximum
Effort…)

The problem? Bending Spoons is the one the most predatory actors
on the entire App Store – they’re terrifying in a completely
different way.

Bending Spoons’s business model is to buy successful apps, change them to a weekly auto-renewing subscription model that perhaps tricks users into signing up, and using the revenue to buy more apps and repeat the cycle. Filmic, for example, now defaults to a $3/week subscription — over $150/year. To be fair, there’s also a $40/year subscription.

It doesn’t seem like a scam, per se, but it doesn’t seem like a product-driven company. Apps seemingly don’t thrive after acquisition by Bending Spoons — instead, they get bled dry.

It’s a big company with a lot of revenue and that spends a lot of money on App Store and Play Store search ads. (Here’s Tim Cook visiting their office last year.)

 ★ 

The Impassioned Moderate, a year ago:

News came out a few weeks ago that Bending Spoons, a
consumer app studio, raised a massive $340 million round of
financing. The press gushed about it: “Hollywood star, tech execs
invest in Italian start-up Bending Spoons”, “Ryan Reynolds
invests in ‘terrifying’ Italian start-up Bending”. And Ryan
himself said things that are just so easy to imagine him saying (a
testament to the spectacular job he’s done branding himself):
“Their apps enable anyone to become a creative genius with minimum
effort. In fact, their products terrify me so much, I had to
invest.” (Ironically – or not? – his ad agency is called Maximum
Effort…)

The problem? Bending Spoons is the one the most predatory actors
on the entire App Store – they’re terrifying in a completely
different way.

Bending Spoons’s business model is to buy successful apps, change them to a weekly auto-renewing subscription model that perhaps tricks users into signing up, and using the revenue to buy more apps and repeat the cycle. Filmic, for example, now defaults to a $3/week subscription — over $150/year. To be fair, there’s also a $40/year subscription.

It doesn’t seem like a scam, per se, but it doesn’t seem like a product-driven company. Apps seemingly don’t thrive after acquisition by Bending Spoons — instead, they get bled dry.

It’s a big company with a lot of revenue and that spends a lot of money on App Store and Play Store search ads. (Here’s Tim Cook visiting their office last year.)

Read More 

The timing is surely coincidental with regard to the news about Filmic, but, as they say, fortune favors the prepared.

 ★ 

The timing is surely coincidental with regard to the news about Filmic, but, as they say, fortune favors the prepared.

Read More 

Jaron Schneider, reporting for PetaPixel:

Filmic, or FiLMiC as written by the brand, no longer has
any dedicated staff as parent company Bending Spoons has laid off
the entire team including the company’s founder and CEO,
PetaPixel has learned. Considered for years as the best video
capture application for mobile devices, the team behind Filmic Pro
and presumably Filmic Firstlight — the company’s photo-focused
app — has been let go. […]

It is unclear what Bending Spoons intends to do with Filmic Pro or
Filmic Firstlight, but there were early signs of trouble when the
company’s most recent major update was last year. The most
recent notable update to Filmic Pro came in October which brought
support for Apple Log into the app, but there was no mention of
the addition of external SSD support, odd considering that Filmic
Pro had a strong track record for updating its platform to work
with all of the new iPhone updates — especially those that are
particularly important for video.

In Filmic’s absence, Blackmagic Design’s iOS app has become the
most popular way to capture footage with the new iPhones and was
used by Apple’s in-house team for the production of its
Mac event on October 31.

Christina Warren, on Threads:

Hate this but I’m sadly not at all surprised. Filmic has an
incredible product they were afraid to charge for and when they
finally changed pricing models, it was too little too late and
users rebelled. If they had been charging $100 a year or even
upfront in 2015, I think they could have survived without selling
to the Bending Spoons vultures. But now they’ve got a subscription
app that isn’t actively improving and free competition from Black
Magic who uses their apps as loss leaders. Hate it.

Filmic was featured in numerous iPhone keynotes over the years — for a long stretch it was undeniably the premiere “pro” video camera app for iPhones.

 ★ 

Jaron Schneider, reporting for PetaPixel:

Filmic, or FiLMiC as written by the brand, no longer has
any dedicated staff as parent company Bending Spoons has laid off
the entire team including the company’s founder and CEO,
PetaPixel has learned. Considered for years as the best video
capture application for mobile devices, the team behind Filmic Pro
and presumably Filmic Firstlight — the company’s photo-focused
app — has been let go. […]

It is unclear what Bending Spoons intends to do with Filmic Pro or
Filmic Firstlight, but there were early signs of trouble when the
company’s most recent major update was last year. The most
recent notable update to Filmic Pro came in October which brought
support for Apple Log into the app, but there was no mention of
the addition of external SSD support, odd considering that Filmic
Pro had a strong track record for updating its platform to work
with all of the new iPhone updates — especially those that are
particularly important for video.

In Filmic’s absence, Blackmagic Design’s iOS app has become the
most popular way to capture footage with the new iPhones and was
used by Apple’s in-house team for the production of its
Mac event on October 31.

Christina Warren, on Threads:

Hate this but I’m sadly not at all surprised. Filmic has an
incredible product they were afraid to charge for and when they
finally changed pricing models, it was too little too late and
users rebelled. If they had been charging $100 a year or even
upfront in 2015, I think they could have survived without selling
to the Bending Spoons vultures. But now they’ve got a subscription
app that isn’t actively improving and free competition from Black
Magic who uses their apps as loss leaders. Hate it.

Filmic was featured in numerous iPhone keynotes over the years — for a long stretch it was undeniably the premiere “pro” video camera app for iPhones.

Read More 

Aditya Kalra and Munsif Vengattil, reporting for Reuters from New Delhi:

India wants to implement a European Union rule that will
require smartphones to have a universal USB-C charging port, and
has been in talks with manufacturers about introducing the
requirement in India by June 2025, six months after the deadline
in the EU. While all manufacturers including Samsung have agreed
to India’s plan, Apple is pushing back. […]

In a closed-door Nov. 28 meeting chaired by India’s IT ministry,
Apple asked officials to exempt existing iPhone models from the
rules, warning it will otherwise struggle to meet production
targets set under India’s production-linked incentive (PLI)
scheme, according to the meeting minutes seen by Reuters. […]

In terms of market share, Apple accounts for 6% of India’s booming
smartphone market, compared with just about 2% four years ago.
Apple suppliers have expanded their facilities and make most
iPhone 12, 13, 14 and 15 models in India for local sales and
exports, Counterpoint Research estimates. Only iPhone 15 has the
new universal charging port. Apple told Indian officials in the
meeting that the “design of the earlier products cannot be
changed,” the document showed.

Consumers in India’s price-conscious market prefer buying older
models of iPhones which typically become cheaper with new
launches, and India’s push for the common charger on older
models could hit Apple’s targets, said Prabhu Ram, head of the
Industry Intelligence Group at CyberMedia Research. “Apple’s
fortunes in India have primarily been tied to older generation
iPhones,” he said.

I was under the impression that the EU’s USB-C requirement will only apply to new devices, but maybe not? A plain reading of this EU press release suggests that all phones sold, starting in 2025, must have USB-C charging ports:

By the end of 2024, all mobile phones, tablets and cameras sold in
the EU will have to be equipped with a USB Type-C charging port.
From spring 2026, the obligation will extend to laptops.

That would mean, starting in January 2025, that the only iPhones available in the EU will be this year’s iPhones 15 and next year’s iPhones 16. A new fourth-generation iPhone SE with USB-C would give Apple a much-needed lower-priced model. The second-gen SE came in 2020; the current third-gen SE in 2022.

 ★ 

Aditya Kalra and Munsif Vengattil, reporting for Reuters from New Delhi:

India wants to implement a European Union rule that will
require smartphones to have a universal USB-C charging port, and
has been in talks with manufacturers about introducing the
requirement in India by June 2025, six months after the deadline
in the EU. While all manufacturers including Samsung have agreed
to India’s plan, Apple is pushing back. […]

In a closed-door Nov. 28 meeting chaired by India’s IT ministry,
Apple asked officials to exempt existing iPhone models from the
rules, warning it will otherwise struggle to meet production
targets set under India’s production-linked incentive (PLI)
scheme, according to the meeting minutes seen by Reuters. […]

In terms of market share, Apple accounts for 6% of India’s booming
smartphone market, compared with just about 2% four years ago.
Apple suppliers have expanded their facilities and make most
iPhone 12, 13, 14 and 15 models in India for local sales and
exports, Counterpoint Research estimates. Only iPhone 15 has the
new universal charging port. Apple told Indian officials in the
meeting that the “design of the earlier products cannot be
changed,” the document showed.

Consumers in India’s price-conscious market prefer buying older
models of iPhones which typically become cheaper with new
launches, and India’s push for the common charger on older
models could hit Apple’s targets, said Prabhu Ram, head of the
Industry Intelligence Group at CyberMedia Research. “Apple’s
fortunes in India have primarily been tied to older generation
iPhones,” he said.

I was under the impression that the EU’s USB-C requirement will only apply to new devices, but maybe not? A plain reading of this EU press release suggests that all phones sold, starting in 2025, must have USB-C charging ports:

By the end of 2024, all mobile phones, tablets and cameras sold in
the EU will have to be equipped with a USB Type-C charging port.
From spring 2026, the obligation will extend to laptops.

That would mean, starting in January 2025, that the only iPhones available in the EU will be this year’s iPhones 15 and next year’s iPhones 16. A new fourth-generation iPhone SE with USB-C would give Apple a much-needed lower-priced model. The second-gen SE came in 2020; the current third-gen SE in 2022.

Read More 

I finally got around to scratching a longstanding itch. I’m an inveterate web browser tab hoarder, and a scenario I frequently encounter is wanting move the most recent (typically, rightmost) tabs into a new window all by themselves. Let’s say, for example, I have 26 tabs open in the frontmost Safari window, A through Z. The current selected tab is X. This script will move tabs X, Y, and Z to a new window, leaving tabs A through W open in the old window. It starts with the current tab, and moves that tab and those to the right.

I have the script saved saved in my FastScripts scripts folder for Safari, but I tend to invoke it from LaunchBar (which I have configured to index my entire scripts folder hierarchy). Command-Space to bring up LaunchBar, type “spl” to select this script, hit Return, done.

I have no idea how many others might want this, but in recent years here at DF I’ve gotten away from sharing my occasional scripting hacks, and feel like I ought to get back to sharing them.

 ★ 

I finally got around to scratching a longstanding itch. I’m an inveterate web browser tab hoarder, and a scenario I frequently encounter is wanting move the most recent (typically, rightmost) tabs into a new window all by themselves. Let’s say, for example, I have 26 tabs open in the frontmost Safari window, A through Z. The current selected tab is X. This script will move tabs X, Y, and Z to a new window, leaving tabs A through W open in the old window. It starts with the current tab, and moves that tab and those to the right.

I have the script saved saved in my FastScripts scripts folder for Safari, but I tend to invoke it from LaunchBar (which I have configured to index my entire scripts folder hierarchy). Command-Space to bring up LaunchBar, type “spl” to select this script, hit Return, done.

I have no idea how many others might want this, but in recent years here at DF I’ve gotten away from sharing my occasional scripting hacks, and feel like I ought to get back to sharing them.

Read More 

Back in August I ran a poll on Mastodon, asking my followers if they have iCloud Advanced Data Protection enabled. iCloud Advanced Data Collection was announced two years ago this week, alongside support for security keys (e.g. Yubico). The results, from 2,304 responses:

Yes: 29%
No: 59%
No, but would if not for device(s) with old OSes: 12%

Count me in that last group. I’ve got a handful of old devices that I still use which can’t be updated to an OS version that supports the feature. But one of these days I’ll just sign out of iCloud on those devices and enable this.

As ever when I run polls like this, it should go without saying that the Daring Fireball audience is not representative of the general public. The results for this poll — with nearly 30 percent of responders having an esoteric security feature enabled — exemplify that.

 ★ 

Back in August I ran a poll on Mastodon, asking my followers if they have iCloud Advanced Data Protection enabled. iCloud Advanced Data Collection was announced two years ago this week, alongside support for security keys (e.g. Yubico). The results, from 2,304 responses:

Yes: 29%
No: 59%
No, but would if not for device(s) with old OSes: 12%

Count me in that last group. I’ve got a handful of old devices that I still use which can’t be updated to an OS version that supports the feature. But one of these days I’ll just sign out of iCloud on those devices and enable this.

As ever when I run polls like this, it should go without saying that the Daring Fireball audience is not representative of the general public. The results for this poll — with nearly 30 percent of responders having an esoteric security feature enabled — exemplify that.

Read More 

One of Apple’s latest accessibility features is Personal Voice — for people who are “at risk of voice loss or have a condition that can progressively impact your voice”, Personal Voice lets you create a voice that sounds like you.

The Lost Voice is a two-minute short film celebrating this feature. It’s a splendid, heartwarming film, and it’s especially remarkable to see so much effort, such remarkable production values, being applied to marketing a feature for a tiny fraction of Apple’s users. Most people do not need this feature. But for those who do, it seems life-altering.

Apple at its very best.

 ★ 

One of Apple’s latest accessibility features is Personal Voice — for people who are “at risk of voice loss or have a condition that can progressively impact your voice”, Personal Voice lets you create a voice that sounds like you.

The Lost Voice is a two-minute short film celebrating this feature. It’s a splendid, heartwarming film, and it’s especially remarkable to see so much effort, such remarkable production values, being applied to marketing a feature for a tiny fraction of Apple’s users. Most people do not need this feature. But for those who do, it seems life-altering.

Apple at its very best.

Read More 

Three thoughts:

I did not expect to hear a Tom Petty song in a GTA trailer, but I love it. It works. (Hard to escape the feeling though that the Petty estate is willing to sell songs in ways Petty himself wouldn’t have.)
The game looks amazing.
“Coming 2025”! Holy smokes, this game has been in development for a decade. (GTA 5 came out in late 2013 and has sold 190 million copies and generated over $8 billion.)

 ★ 

Three thoughts:

I did not expect to hear a Tom Petty song in a GTA trailer, but I love it. It works. (Hard to escape the feeling though that the Petty estate is willing to sell songs in ways Petty himself wouldn’t have.)

The game looks amazing.

“Coming 2025”! Holy smokes, this game has been in development for a decade. (GTA 5 came out in late 2013 and has sold 190 million copies and generated over $8 billion.)

Read More 

Nilay Patel returns to the show. Topics include the iPhones 15, journalism in the age of AI, and what it’s like to have Barack Obama on your podcast.

Sponsored by:

Trade Coffee: Let’s coffee better. Get a free bag of fresh coffee with any Trade subscription.
Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code talkshow.
Nuts.com: The world’s best snacks, delivered fast and fresh.

 ★ 

Nilay Patel returns to the show. Topics include the iPhones 15, journalism in the age of AI, and what it’s like to have Barack Obama on your podcast.

Sponsored by:

Trade Coffee: Let’s coffee better. Get a free bag of fresh coffee with any Trade subscription.
Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code talkshow.
Nuts.com: The world’s best snacks, delivered fast and fresh.

Read More