Day: 3 July 2020

Climbing Up the Walls

Apple’s introduction at WWDC of Macs running on own-brand processors was as complete as many people were expecting. There was a rationale for the transition, an explanation of how developers can make their software run on these new systems, a way for older software to run without developer intervention, and a timeline for its rollout.

But what was not changed with this transition has proved to be just as interesting as all of the new things that were shown off. Apple is going to great lengths to make this transition as seamless as possible. It is contributing patches to popular open source projects, even Electron, and it is even bringing deprecated technologies like OpenGL to ARM. Most importantly, the company has repeatedly promised that it will not be taking the Mac to a more locked-down model like iOS.

For some reason, these assurances have not stopped Alex Cranz of Gizmodo from speculating that this is Apple’s walled garden “grow[ing] higher”:

Apple has finally announced its long-rumored transition away from Intel chips and will now make its own homegrown CPUs based on the ARM architecture for future Macs. The company’s goal is to shed its dependence on Intel so that it can control even more of its production and development pipeline. It’s an interesting move at an even more interesting time, given that Apple CEO Tim Cook has also finally agreed to testify on Capitol Hill in a Big Tech antitrust hearing. Just last month, the European Union opened its own antitrust probe into Apple and its App Store. The company is being investigated and criticized for its near-perfect execution of vertical integration more than ever before, just as it’s taking its biggest step toward its grand vision of vertical integration in nearly 15 years.

So that’s the argument: Apple’s vertical integration of own-brand processors for the Mac is of similar concern to the App Stores and in-app purchase rules that it enforces on iOS. I don’t think that makes any sense at all but, first, let’s hear from an analyst about why Apple would want to switch from Intel:

“Apple hasn’t been very successful over the past five years with the Mac and most of the innovation has come from Windows vendors,” analyst Patrick Moorhead told Gizmodo. “I think Apple sees vertical integration as a way to lower costs and differentiate. We’ll see. It’s a risky and expensive move for Apple, and right now I’m scratching my head on why Apple would do this. There’s no clear benefit for developers or for users, and it appears Apple is trying to boost profits.”

The Mac’s reputation has suffered in the last five years due, in part, to the crappy keyboards it shipped on its laptops and less-frequent product updates — and one reason it did not release new Macs as often is because Intel struggled with new processor development. But it should not be surprising that Moorhead ignores the benefits that Apple stated for users and developers and the problems Intel has had because Intel is one of his clients, something this article does not mention.

Also, despite its keyboard problems and more stagnant product line, Apple’s Mac sales over the last five years have been its best ever. It’s hard to see how it “hasn’t been very successful” on those grounds.

Cranz spends the next several paragraphs explaining why a purely financial argument does not adequately justify the processor switch. True. There are also many paragraphs about the benefits of and problems with Apple’s control over the App Store on iOS. That takes us to the core of Cranz’s argument:

Unlike iOS, macOS developers have always been able to skirt around using the Mac App Store. I can go to directly to a developer’s site for most apps and just buy what I want outside of the App Store. But how long will that continue in the future macOS landscape, particularly if the main people developing for the operating system are doing so alongside their iOS and iPadOS builds? Apple has repeatedly said it has no plans to turn macOS into a walled garden, as has always been the case with iOS and iPadOS, but it might effectively have done just that with the ARM switch.

That’s it. There is no greater explanation offered for why switching to a different processor architecture is an equivalent to the App Store model on iOS. Cranz points out all the ways the ARM transition is supposed to be easy for developers and invisible to users and some of its unique benefits, but writes absolutely nothing to justify this particular statement, other than the FUD-grade question about how long developers will keep shipping their apps independently. Given the state of the Mac App Store and how many developers would prefer to keep as much of their revenue as they can — this very article began with a nod at antitrust investigations over Apple’s in-app purchase requirements — I see no reason why great Mac apps won’t continue to be offered directly by developers.

Brent Simmons:

[…] I had been very worried that Apple would, as part of the ARM transition, lock down macOS so that only Mac App Store apps would be permitted.

That didn’t happen. And Apple employees explained that it’s not going to happen — and, given that it didn’t happen this time, given that they had this chance, I believe them.

I understand adding security features to the Mac. But to take away our freedom to create whatever Mac apps we want, and distribute them without Apple’s, or anyone’s, seal of approval, would be to take the heart out of my career.

But that’s not what happened! I feel great about this. I’m going to stop worrying about the Mac.

I was also fretting about what a Mac running on Apple’s own processors might entail. I was nervous about how difficult it might be to upgrade to one when it comes time to do so. I still have my concerns, but I truly believe Apple when it says that it does not want to merge the Mac and iPad, or implement an iOS-like App Store-only model on MacOS.

Cranz’s pieces feels like one of those articles where a writer started with a premise and found the parts that fit while ignoring those that did not. Just about everything that is possible on a Catalina system running on Intel will be possible on a Big Sur system running on Apple’s own processors, with the exception of using Windows through Boot Camp. It’s not nothing, but it does not indicate an expansion of a walled garden, either. We can speculate all we want about whether this might change down the road, but Apple laid out good reasons why it is not planning an iOS-alike model for the Mac. In short, it would not be good for Apple, it would not be good for developers, and none of that is good for users. Makes sense to me.

Reef, a Parking Company, Ushers in Our Ghost Kitchen Future ⇥ newyorker.com

Anna Wiener, the New Yorker:

For now, though, Reef is focussing on food preparation as a test case — a proof of concept for other sorts of “applications” that might make sense in some later, future time. Food prep is a sensible first experiment for Reef’s modular approach to repurposing parking lots: over the past few years, delivery has been on the upswing, and delivery-only kitchens — referred to as “ghost kitchens” or “dark kitchens” — are having a moment. Reef operates kitchens across eighteen cities in the United States, in seventy-odd parking lots. In the trailer on Mission Street, meals from all six of the advertised restaurants are prepared on site — the culinary equivalent of a multicolor retractable pen. The restaurants are “internal” to Reef: designed and staffed by its employees, with menus developed by a culinary team that includes former executives from Roti Modern Mediterranean, Potbelly, and Jamba Juice. The menus lean toward comfort food, and are a little arbitrary. Wings & Things offers mozzarella sticks, chicken tenders, cronuts (“dusted with cinnamon maple sugar and served with a side of Canadian Maple dipping sauce”), Skittles, Red Bull, and two kinds of Greek-yogurt bowls.

Currently, the food offered by Reef’s internal brands comes from U.S. Foods, an international, private-equity-owned institutional food distributor that works with colleges, hotels, and hospitals, and is a wholesale supplier for independent restaurants and diners. In San Francisco, the menu items are delivered to a central commissary in the Bayview area, and come individually wrapped; precise assembly instructions are provided to line cooks. Every night, Reef’s trailers, which are managed under a subsidiary, Vessel CA, return to the commissary, where the gray-water tanks are drained, the potable-water tanks are refilled, and the refrigerators are restocked. Reef has ambitions to offer fresher, more sophisticated fare, eventually. But, for now, customers may find themselves paying a premium for meals similar to those found at a fast-food restaurant, or in a supermarket freezer.

One of these trailers recently appeared in an Impark lot near where I can live; at night, I watch countless delivery drivers park on the sidewalk to grab orders as cooks shoo away anyone who comes knocking at its door. It has eight brands listed on the side, including three for burgers and two for chicken wings, but there are even more operating from the same trailer once you start poking around different delivery apps.

One wing brand charges a dollar more for delivery and a few bucks more for equivalent wings; until recently, they used the same photography. Two of the burger brands use identical images and offer many of the same items as the wing brands, including mozzarella sticks and chicken wings. By my count, you can get the same cafeteria-grade wings at various price points from at least six different Reef brands operating from two different trailers in my area.

There is a part of me that worries that this sort of arrangement will make it untenable to operate a sit-down restaurant, particularly after the effects of the pandemic. My hope is that it will take the pressure of bowing to delivery services off traditional restaurants, many of which cannot afford the commission charged by Doordash and its ilk. But that leaves takeout operations in an awkward spot; Reef has the backing of a near billion-dollar investment from the SoftBank Vision Fund, and independent restaurants can’t compete with that kind of bottomless money pit.

Update: Perhaps the thing that bothers me most about what Reef is attempting here is that there is no sense of care. Reef’s trailers could be selling anything — shoes, haircuts, beauty products. It only cares that it has a vehicle of transforming venture capital investment into greater piles of money and, right now, it is filling that void through crappy food delivered by undercompensated gig economy workers contracted by other companies. This is not a secret:

[…] Over the past two years, though, the company’s narrative has changed somewhat: Reef’s executives now emphasize their work in “creating the next phase of a neighborhood” by forming local logistics and mobility hubs. This year, Reef launched a partnership with Bond, a logistics startup that operates “nano-warehouses”: fulfillment centers, often in vacant storefronts, that can be used for last-mile delivery. City-dwellers may someday pick up their Amazon packages and clamshell-carton dinners in a parking lot or empty retail space, like college students dipping into the campus center before retreating back to the dorms.

For now, though, Reef is focussing on food preparation as a test case—a proof of concept for other sorts of “applications” that might make sense in some later, future time. […]

I’m nervous because some of my favourite restaurants in Calgary might struggle to survive through this pandemic. There are many places here that would break my heart if they were forced to close. But nobody is going to miss the private label Reef brands if they suddenly disappear. People know when there is a lack of care.