Search Results for “"color"”

The Humanity Of It

April 17, 2024 ⌥

The new A.I. Pin from Humane is, according to those who have used one, bad. Even if you accept the premise of wearing a smart speaker and use it to do a bunch of the stuff for which you used to rely on your phone, it is not good at those things — again, according to those who have used one, and I have not. Why is it apparently controversial to say that with intention?

Cherlynn Low, of Engadget, “cannot recommend anyone spend this much money for the one or two things it does adequately”. David Pierce, of the Verge, says it is “so thoroughly unfinished and so totally broken in so many unacceptable ways”. Arun Maini said the “total amount of effort required to perform any given action is just higher with the Pin”. Raymond Wong, of Inverse, wrote the most optimistic review of all those I saw but, after needing a factory reset of his review unit and then a wind gust blowing it off his shirt, it sounds like he is only convinced by the prospect of future versions, not the “textbook […] first-generation product” he is actually using.

It was Marques Brownlee’s blunt review title — “The Worst Product I’ve Ever Reviewed… For Now” — which caught the attention of a moderately popular Twitter user. The review itself was more like Wong’s, seeing some promise in the concept while dismissing this implementation, but the tweet itself courted controversy. Is the role of a reviewer to be kind to businesses even if their products suck, or is it to be honest?

I do not think it makes sense to dwell on an individual tweet. What is more interesting to me is how generous all of the reviewers have been so far, even while reaching such bleak conclusions. Despite having a list of cons including “unreliable”, and “slow”, and Low saying she burned herself “several times” because it was so hot, Engadget still gave it a score of 50 out of 100. The Verge gave it a 4 out of 10, and compared the product’s reception to that of the “dumpster fire” Nexus Q of 2012, which it gave a score of 5 out of 10.

That last review is a relevant historic artifact. The Nexus Q was a $300 audio and video receiver which users would, in theory, connect to a television or a Hi-Fi speaker system. It was controlled through software on an Android phone, and its standout feature was collaborative playlists. But the Verge found it had “connectivity problems” with different phones and different Nexus Q review units, videos looked “noticeably poor”, it was under-featured, and different friends adding music to the playback queue worked badly. Aside from the pretty hardware, there simply was no there there, and it was canned before a wide release.

But that was from Google, an established global corporation. Humane may have plenty of ex-Apple staff and lots of venture capital money, but it is still a new company. I have no problem grading on a reasonable curve. But how in the world is the Humane getting 40% or 50% of a perfect grade when every reviewer seems to think this product is bad and advises people not to buy one?

Even so, all of them seem compelled to give it the kind of tepid score you would expect for something that is flawed, but not a disaster. Some of the problems do not seem to be a direct fault of Humane; they are a consequence of the technological order. But that does not justify spending $700 plus a $24 per month subscription which you will need to keep paying in perpetuity to prevent your A.I. Pin from becoming a fridge magnet.

Maybe this is just a problem with trying to assign numerical scores. I have repeatedly complained about this because I think it gives mixed messages. What people need to know is whether something is worth buying, which consists of two factors: whether it addresses an actual problem, and whether it is effective at solving that problem. It appears the answer to the first is “maybe”, and the answer to the second is “hell no”. It does not matter how nice the hardware may be, or how interesting the laser projecting screen is. It apparently burns you while you barely use it.

In that light, giving this product an even tepid score is misleading. It is not respectful of potential buyers nor of the team which helped make it. It seems there are many smart people at Humane who thought they had a very good idea, and many people were intrigued. If a reviewer’s experience was poor, it is not cruel for them to be honest and say that it is, in a word, bad.

‘Means of Control’

April 15, 2024 ⌥

In the 1970s and 1980s, in-house researchers at Exxon began to understand how crude oil and its derivatives were leading to environmental devestation. They were among the first to comprehensively connect the use of their company’s core products to the warming of the Earth, and they predicted some of the harms which would result. But their research was treated as mere suggestion by Exxon because the effects of obvious legislation would “alter profoundly the strategic direction of the energy industry”. It would be a business nightmare.

Forty years later, the world has concluded its warmest year in recorded history by starting another. Perhaps we would have been more able to act if businesses like Exxon equivocated less all these years. Instead, they publicly created confusion and minimized lawmakers’ knowledge. The continued success of their industry lay in keeping these secrets.

“The success lies in the secrecy” is a shibboleth of the private surveillance industry, as described in Byron Tau’s new book, “Means of Control”. It is easy to find parallels to my opening anecdote throughout though, to be clear, a direct comparison to human-led ecological destruction is a knowingly exaggerated metaphor. The erosion of privacy and civil liberties is horrifying in its own right, and shares key attributes: those in the industry knew what they were doing and allowed it to persist because it was lucrative and, in a post-9/11 landscape, ostensibly justified.

Tau’s byline is likely familiar to anyone interested in online privacy. For several years at the Wall Street Journal, he produced dozens of deeply reported articles about the intertwined businesses of online advertising, smartphone software, data brokers, and intelligence agencies. Tau no longer writes for the Journal, but “Means of Control” is an expansion of that earlier work and carefully arranged into a coherent set of stories.

Tau’s book, like so many others describing the current state of surveillance, begins with the terrorists attacks of September 11 2001. This was the early days, when Acxiom realized it could connect its consumer data set to flight and passport records. The U.S. government ate it up and its appetite proved insatiable. Tau documents the growth of an industry that did not exist — could not exist — before the invention of electronic transactions, targeted advertising, virtually limitless digital storage, and near-universal smartphone use. This rapid transformation occurred not only with little regulatory oversight, but with government encouragement, including through investments in startups like Dataminr, GeoIQ, PlaceIQ, and PlanetRisk.

In near-chronological order, Tau tells the stories which have defined this era. Remember when documentation released by Edward Snowden showed how data created by mobile ad networks was being used by intelligence services? Or how a group of Colorado Catholics bought up location data for outing priests who used gay-targeted dating apps? Or how a defence contractor quietly operates nContext, an adtech firm, which permits the U.S. intelligence apparatus to effectively wiretap the global digital ad market? Regarding the latter, Tau writes of a meeting he had with a source who showed him a “list of all of the advertising exchanges that America’s intelligence agencies had access to”, and who told him American adversaries were doing the exact same thing.

What impresses most about this book is not the volume of specific incidents — though it certainly delivers on that front — but the way they are all woven together into a broader narrative perhaps best summarized by Tau himself: “classified does not mean better”. That can be true for volume and variety, and it is also true for the relative ease with which it is available. Tracking someone halfway around the world no longer requires flying people in or even paying off people on the ground. Someone in a Virginia office park can just make that happen and likely so, too, can other someones in Moscow and Sydney and Pyongyang and Ottawa, all powered by data from companies based in friendly and hostile nations alike.

The tension running through Tau’s book is in the compromise I feel he attempts to strike between acknowledging the national security utility of a surveillance state while describing how the U.S. has abdicated the standards of privacy and freedom it has long claimed are foundational rights. His reporting often reads as an understandable combination of awe and disgust. The U.S. has, it seems, slid in the direction of the kinds of authoritarian states its administration routinely criticizes. But Tau is right to clarify in the book’s epilogue that the U.S. is not, for example, China, separated from the standards of the latter by “a thin membrane of laws, norms, social capital, and — perhaps most of all — a lingering culture of discomfort” with concentrated state power. However, the preceding chapters of the book show questions about power do not fully extend into the private sector, where there has long been pride in the scale and global reach of U.S. businesses but concern about their influence. Tau’s reporting shows how U.S. privacy standards have been exported worldwide. For a more pedestrian example, consider the frequent praise–complaint sandwiches of Amazon, Meta, Starbucks, and Walmart, to throw a few names out there.

Corporate self-governance is an entirely inadequate response. Just about every data broker and intermediary from Tau’s writing which I looked up promised it was “privacy-first” or used similar language. Every business insists in marketing literature it is concerned about privacy and says they ensure they are careful about how they collect and use information, and they have been doing so for decades — yet here we are. Entire industries have been built on the backs of tissue-thin user consent and a flexible definition of “privacy”.

When polled, people say they are concerned about how corporations and the government collect and use data. Still, when lawmakers mandate choices for users about their data collection preferences, the results do not appear to show a society that cares about personal privacy.

In response to the E.U.’s General Data Privacy Regulation, websites decided they wanted to continue collecting and sharing loads of data with advertisers, so they created the now-ubiquitous cookie consent sheet. The GPDR does not explicitly mandate this mechanism and many remain non-compliant with the rules and intention of the law, but they are a particularly common form of user consent. However, if you arrive at a website and it asks you whether you are okay with it sharing your personal data with hundreds of ad tech firms, are you providing meaningful consent with a single button click? Hardly.

Similarly, something like 10–40% of iOS users agree to allow apps to track them. In the E.U., the cost of opting out of Meta’s tracking will be €6–10 per month which, I assume, few people will pay.

All of these examples illustrate how inadequately we assess cost, utility, and risk. It is tempting to think of this as a personal responsibility issue akin to cigarette smoking but, as we are so often reminded, none of this data is particularly valuable in isolation — it must be aggregated in vast amounts. It is therefore much more like an environmental problem.

As with global warming, exposé after exposé after exposé is written about how our failure to act has produced extraordinary consequences. All of the technologies powering targeted advertising have enabled grotesque and pervasive surveillance as Tau documents so thoroughly. Yet these are abstract concerns compared to a fee to use Instagram, or the prospect of reading hundreds of privacy policies with a lawyer and negotiating each of them so that one may have a smidge of control over their private information.

There are technical answers to many of these concerns, and there are also policy answers. There is no reason both should not be used.

I have become increasingly convinced the best legal solution is one which creates a framework limiting the scope of data collection, restricting it to only that which is necessary to perform user-selected tasks, and preventing mass retention of bulk data. Above all, users should not be able to choose a model that puts them in obvious future peril. Many of you probably live in a society where so much is subject to consumer choice. What I wrote sounds pretty drastic, but it is not. If anything, it is substantially less radical than the status quo that permits such expansive surveillance on the basis that we “agreed” to it.

Any such policy should also be paired with something like the Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale Act in the U.S. — similar legislation is desperately needed in Canada as well — to prevent sneaky exclusions from longstanding legal principles.

Last month, Wired reported that Near Intelligence — a data broker you can read more about in Tau’s book — was able to trace dozens of individual trips to Jeffrey Epstein’s island. That could be a powerful investigative tool. It is also very strange and pretty creepy all that information was held by some random company you probably have not heard of or thought about outside stories like these. I am obviously not defending the horrendous shit Epstein and his friends did. But it is really, really weird that Near is capable of producing this data set. When interviewed by Wired, Eva Galperin, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said “I just don’t know how many more of these stories we need to have in order to get strong privacy regulations.”

Exactly. Yet I have long been convinced an effective privacy bill could not be implemented in either the United States nor European Union, and certainly not with any degree of urgency. And, no, Matt Stoller: de facto rules on the backs of specific FTC decisions do not count. Real laws are needed. But the products and services which would be affected are too popular and too powerful. The E.U. is home to dozens of ad tech firms that promise full identity resolution. The U.S. would not want to destroy such an important economic sector, either.

Imagine my surprise when, while I was in middle of writing this review, U.S. lawmakers announced the American Privacy Rights Act (PDF). If passed, it would give individuals more control over how their information — including biological identifiers — may be collected, used, and retained. Importantly, it requires data minimization by default. It would be the most comprehensive federal privacy legislation in the U.S., and it also promises various security protections and remedies, though I think lawmakers’ promise to “prevent data from being hacked or stolen” might be a smidge unrealistic.

Such rules would more-or-less match the GDPR in setting a global privacy regime that other countries would be expected to meet, since so much of the world’s data is processed in the U.S. or otherwise under U.S. legal jurisdiction. The proposed law borrows heavily from the state-level California Consumer Privacy Act, too. My worry is that it will be treated by corporations similarly to the GDPR and CCPA by continuing to offload decision-making to users while taking advantage of a deliberate imbalance of power. Still, any progress on this front is necessary.

So, too, is it useful for anyone to help us understand how corporations and governments have jointly benefitted from privacy-hostile technologies. Tau’s “Means of Control” is one such example. You should read it. It is a deep exploration of one specific angle of how data flows from consumer software to surprising recipients. You may think you know this story, but I bet you will learn something. Even if you are not a government target — I cannot imagine I am — it is a reminder that the global private surveillance industry only functions because we all participate, however unwillingly. People get tracked based on their own devices, but also those around them. That is perhaps among the most offensive conclusions of Tau’s reporting. We have all been conscripted for any government buying this data. It only works because it is everywhere and used by everybody.

For all they have erred, democracies are not authoritarian societies. Without reporting like Tau’s, we would be unable to see what our own governments are doing and — just as important — how that differs from actual police states. As Tau writes, “in China, the state wants you to know you’re being watched. In America, the success lies in the secrecy“. Well, the secret is out. We now know what is happening despite the best efforts of an industry to keep it quiet, just like we know the Earth is heating up. Both problems massively affect our lived environment. Nobody — least of all me — would seriously compare the two. But we can say the same about each of them: now we know. We have the information. Now comes the hard part: regaining control.

March 18, 2024 ⌥

The European Commission Is Holding DMA Compliance Workshops, Beginning With Apple Today ⇥ sixcolors.com

Foo Yun Chee, Reuters:

Apple on Monday fended off criticism that it has not done enough to open up its closed eco-system as required under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act, saying it has complied with the landmark legislation.

[…]

The company told apps developers, business users and rivals at a day-long hearing organised by the European Commission that it has redesigned its systems to comply with the DMA.

Dan Moren, Six Colors:

During the workshop, [Riley] Testut used his time to ask about the Core Technology Fee. Under Apple’s new business terms in Europe (required for apps looking to be distributed via non-Apple app marketplaces or the web), there’s a €0.50 fee per app install over the first million. Testut rightly points out that a free app, such as the one he made in high school, that becomes popular could easily accrue enough costs to ruin a young developer’s life.

Apple VP of Legal Kyle Andeer responded sympathetically, saying that the company is continuing to try and find a good solution, and to “stay tuned.”

Even with this softened tone, I am certain the Core Technology Fee is just about the last thing Apple will meaningfully relax due to either regulatory pressure or developer outcry. Still, a flash of hope, and something to check in on later.

Other, similar compliance workshops are coming up all week long. Meta’s begins just a few hours from the time I am writing this.

Update: Steve Troughton-Smith ran the hearing through MacWhisper to create an unofficial transcript. It may not be wholly accurate but it is on my reading list anyhow.

White House Dodges, Burns, Heals, Clones

March 14, 2024 ⌥

During a White House press briefing on March 12, CBS News’ Ed O’Keefe asked press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre if photos of the president or other members of the White House are ever digitally altered. Jean-Pierre laughed and asked, in response, “why would we digitally alter photos? Are you comparing us to what’s going on in the U.K.?” O’Keefe said he was just doing due diligence. Jean-Pierre said, regarding digital photo manipulation, “that is not something that we do here”.

It is unclear to me whether Jean-Pierre was specifically declining the kind of multi-frame stacking apparent in the photo of the Princess of Wales and her children, or digital alterations more broadly. But it got me thinking — there is a strain of good-faith question to be asked here: are public bodies meeting the standards of editorial photography?

Well, first, it depends on which standards one refers to. There are many — the BBC has its own, as does NPR, the New York Times, and the National Press Photographers Association. Oddly, I could not find comparable documentation for the expectations of the official White House photographer. But it is the standards of the Associated Press which are the subject of the Princess of Wales photo debacle, and they are both representative and comprehensive:

Minor adjustments to photos are acceptable. These include cropping, dodging and burning, conversion into grayscale, elimination of dust on camera sensors and scratches on scanned negatives or scanned prints and normal toning and color adjustments. These should be limited to those minimally necessary for clear and accurate reproduction and that restore the authentic nature of the photograph. Changes in density, contrast, color and saturation levels that substantially alter the original scene are not acceptable. Backgrounds should not be digitally blurred or eliminated by burning down or by aggressive toning. The removal of “red eye” from photographs is not permissible.

If I can summarize these rules: changes should minimize the influence of the camera on how the scene was captured, and represent the scene as true to how it would be seen in real life. Oh, and photographers cannot remove red eye. Those are the standards I am expecting from the White House photographer to claim they do not digitally “alter” photos.

Happily, we can find out if those expectations are met even from some JPEG exports. Images edited using Adobe Lightroom carry metadata describing the edits made in surprising detail, and you can view that data using Photoshop or ExifTool. I opened a heavily manipulated photo of my own — the JPEG, not the original RAW file — and found in its metadata a record of colour and light correction, adjustment masks, perspective changes, and data about how much I healed and cloned. It was a lot and for clarification, that photo would not be acceptable by editorial standards.

To find out what was done by the White House, I downloaded the original-sized JPEG copies of many images from the Flickr accounts of the last three U.S. presidents. Then I examined the metadata. Even though O’Keefe’s question pertained specifically to the president, vice president, and other people in the White House, I broadened my search to include any photo. Surely all photos should meet editorial standards. I narrowed my attention to the current administration and the previous one because the Obama administration covered two terms, and that is a lot of pictures to go through.

We will start with an easy one. Remember that picture from the Osama Bin Laden raid? It is obviously manipulated and it says so right there in the description: “a classified document seen in this photograph has been obscured”. I think most people would believe that is a fair alteration.

But the image’s metadata reveals several additional spot exposure adjustments throughout the image. I am guessing some people in the back were probably under-exposed in the original.

This kind of exposure adjustment is acceptable by editorial standards — it is the digital version of dodging and burning. It is also pretty standard across administrations. A more stylized version was used during the Trump administration on pictures like this one to make some areas more indigo, and the Biden administration edited parts of this picture to make the lights bluer.

All administrations have turned some colour pictures greyscale, and have occasionally overdone it. The Trump administration increased the contrast and crushed the black levels in parts of this photo, and I wonder if that would be up to press standards.

There are lots more images across all three accounts which have gradient adjustments, vignettes, and other stylistic changes. These are all digital alterations to photos which are, at most, aesthetic choices that do not meaningfully change the scene or the way the image is interpreted.

But I also found images which had more than those simple adjustments. The Biden administration published a photo of a lone officer in the smoke of a nineteen-gun salute. Its metadata indicates the healing brush tool was used in a few places (line breaks added to fit better inline):

<crs:RetouchInfo>
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I am not sure exactly what was removed from the image, but there appears to be enough information here to indicate where the healing brush was used. Unfortunately, I cannot find any documentation about how to read these tags. (My guess is that these are percent coordinates and that 0,0 is the upper-left corner.) If all that was removed is lens or sensor crud, it would probably be acceptable. But if objects were removed, it would not meet editorial standards.

The Trump administration also has photos that have been retouched (line breaks added to fit better inline):

<crs:RetouchInfo>
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Even though there are lots more edits to this photo, it seems plausible they were made to remove lens or sensor dust made more obvious by the heavy use of the dehaze (+14), contrast (+50), and clarity (+2) adjustments.

For what it is worth, this does not seem like a scandal to me — at least, not unless it can be shown edits to White House photos were made to alter what was actually in the frame. But, to review: does the White House digitally alter images? Yes, at least a little. Does the White House conform to accepted editorial standards? I am not sure. Should it? In my view, yes, always — and so should the products of any government photographer. Has the White House done anything remotely close to that Princess of Wales image? Not that I have seen. Should I stop writing this as a series of rhetorical questions? Oh, hell, yes.

March 10, 2024 ⌥

Europe Gives Apple a Chance to Change ⇥ sixcolors.com

Dan Moren, Six Colors:

That’s where optics comes into play. Apple’s not publishing a 1500-word piece about why it disagrees with the EC’s ruling in order to convince the EC to change its mind. Presumably it made all of these arguments in its discussions with the regulator, and if it did not, then its army of lawyers is not doing its job.

No, this piece is for the public and the press (who will relay said arguments to the broad swath of the public that hasn’t consumed them firsthand). It’s there to point out all the great things that Apple does and cast it as the one being targeted unfairly by Europe. Apple’s just here making the world a better place! Fundamentally, Apple wants you to be party to its point of view here: that it’s the one being taken advantage of.

But that argument falls a bit flat when you boil the argument down to its essence.

It is still bizarre to read that press release even keeping in mind a presumed audience of journalists who might neutrally relay a few quotes and link to it. Surely someone at Apple knew what they were doing when they approved this thing; I do not run communications at a multitrillion-dollar company so this strategy is clearly lost on me.

Apps and Vinegar

March 6, 2024 ⌥

Big news out of Brussels:

The European Commission has fined Apple over €1.8 billion for abusing its dominant position on the market for the distribution of music streaming apps to iPhone and iPad users (‘iOS users’) through its App Store. In particular, the Commission found that Apple applied restrictions on app developers preventing them from informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services available outside of the app (‘anti-steering provisions’). This is illegal under EU antitrust rules.

Margrethe Vestager, executive vice president of the European Commission, in the transcript of a speech announcing the Commission’s findings and penalty:

Let me give you three examples of Apple’s anti-steering obligations:

First, music streaming developers were not allowed to inform their users, inside their own apps, of cheaper prices for the same subscription on the internet.

Second, they were also not allowed to include links in their apps to lead consumers to their websites and pay lower prices there.

And third, they were also not allowed to contact their own newly acquired users, for instance by email, to inform them about pricing options after they set up an account.

These anti-steering rules have been among the most aggressively policed of all the App Store policies. They have snared apps for violations like having a link buried in some documentation, requiring even large developers to create special pages — perhaps because Apple saw even small transgressions as opening the door to loopholes. Better be as tedious and cautious as possible.

Nevertheless, a few years ago, the Commission started looking into complaints that streaming music services — specifically — were disadvantaged by these policies. One could argue its interest in this specific category is because it is one area where European developers have some clout: in addition to Spotify, Deezer and SoundCloud are also European products. That is not a criticism: it should be unsurprising for European regulators to investigate an area where they have the grounds to do so. Alas, this is a relatively narrow investigation ahead of the more comprehensive enforcement of the Digital Markets Act, so treat this as a preview of what is to come for non-compliant companies.

The Commission has illustrated this in its press release with an image that features the icons of — among other apps — Beats Music, which Apple acquired in 2014 and turned into Apple Music, and Rdio, which was shut down in 2015.

Aside from the curious infographic, the Commission released this decision without much supporting documentation, as usual. It promises more information is to come after it removes confidential details. It is kind of an awkward statement if you are used to reading legal opinions made by regulatory bodies elsewhere, many of which post the opinion is alongside the decision so it is possible to work through the reasoning. Here, you get a press release and a speech — that is all.

Apple’s response to this decision is barely restrained and looks, frankly, terrible for one of the world’s largest and most visible corporations. There is no friendly soft-touch language here, nor is it a zesty spare statement. This is a press release seasoned with piss and vinegar:

The primary advocate for this decision — and the biggest beneficiary — is Spotify, a company based in Stockholm, Sweden. Spotify has the largest music streaming app in the world, and has met with the European Commission more than 65 times during this investigation.

[…]

Despite that success, and the App Store’s role in making it possible, Spotify pays Apple nothing. That’s because Spotify — like many developers on the App Store — made a choice. Instead of selling subscriptions in their app, they sell them on their website. And Apple doesn’t collect a commission on those purchases.

[…]

When it comes to doing business, not everyone’s going to agree on the best deal. But it sure is hard to beat free.

Strictly speaking — and we all know how much Apple likes that — Spotify pays more than “nothing” to distribute its app on iOS because a developer membership is not free.

But — point taken. Apple is making its familiar claim that iOS software avoids its in-app purchase model is basically freeloading, but it is very happy for any developer’s success. Happy, happy, happy. Real fuckin’ happy. Left unsaid is how much of this infrastructure — hosting, updates, developer tooling, and so on — is required by Apple’s policies to be used by third-party developers. It has the same condescending vibe as the letter sent to Basecamp in 2020 amidst the Hey app fiasco. At the time, the App Review Board wrote “[t]hese apps do not offer in-app purchase — and, consequently, have not contributed any revenue to the App Store over the last eight years”, as though it is some kind of graceful obligation for Apple to support applications that do not inflate its own services income.

Nevertheless, Apple is standing firm. One might think it would reconsider its pugilism after facing this €1.8 billion penalty, investigations on five continents specifically regarding its payment policies, new laws written to address them, and flagging developer relations — but no. It wants to fight and it does not seem to care how that looks.

Today, Spotify has a 56 percent share of Europe’s music streaming market — more than double their closest competitor’s — […]

Apple does not state Spotify’s closest European competitor but, according to an earlier media statement, it is Amazon Music, followed Apple Music. This is a complicated comparison: Spotify has a free tier, and Amazon bundles a version of its service with a Prime membership. Apple Music’s free tier is a radio-only service.

On that basis, it does seem odd from this side of the Atlantic if the Commission concluded Apple’s in-app payment policies were responsible for increased prices if the leading service is available free. But that is not what the Commission actually found. It specifically says the longtime policies “preventing [apps] from informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services available outside of the app” are illegal, especially when combined with Apple’s first-party advantages. One effect among many could be higher prices paid by consumers. In the cases of Deezer and SoundCloud, for example, that is true: both apps charge more for in-app purchased subscriptions, compared to those purchased from the web, to cover Apple’s commission. But that is only one factor.

Carrying on:

[…] and pays Apple nothing for the services that have helped make them one of the most recognizable brands in the world. A large part of their success is due to the App Store, along with all the tools and technology that Spotify uses to build, update, and share their app with Apple users around the world.

This model has certainly played a role in Apple’s own success, according to an Apple-funded study (PDF): “Apple benefits as well, when the ecosystem it established expands and grows, either directly through App Store commissions or indirectly as the value users get from their iPhones increases”. Apple seems fixated on the idea that many apps of this type have their own infrastructure and, therefore, have little reason to get on board with Apple’s policies other than to the extent required. Having a universal software marketplace is probably very nice, but having each Spotify bug fix vetted by App Review probably provides less value than Apple wants to believe.

Like many companies, Spotify uses emails, social media, text messages, web ads, and many other ways to reach potential customers. Under the App Store’s reader rule, Spotify can also include a link in their app to a webpage where users can create or manage an account.

We introduced the reader rule years ago in response to feedback from developers like Spotify. And a lot of reader apps use that option to link users to a webpage — from e-readers to video streaming services. Spotify could too — but they’ve chosen not to.

About that second paragraph:

This change was not made because of developer requests. It was agreed to as part of a settlement with authorities in Japan in September 2021.

Meanwhile, the European Commission says it began investigating Apple in June 2020, and informed the company of its concerns in April 2021, then narrowing them last year. I mention this in case there was any doubt this policy change was due to regulatory pressure.
This rule change may have been “introduced” in September 2021, but it was not implemented until the end of March 2022. It has been in effect for less than two years — hardly the “years ago” timeframe Apple says.
For clarification, external account management links are subject to strict rules and Apple approval. Remember how Deezer and SoundCloud offer in-app purchases? Apple’s policies say that means they cannot offer an account management link in their apps.

This worldwide policy is specific to “reader” apps and is different from region-specific external purchase capabilities for non-“reader” apps. It only permits a single external link — one specific URL — which is only capable of creating and managing accounts, not individually purchased items. Still it is weird how Spotify does not take advantage of this permission.
Spotify, a “reader” app, nevertheless attempted to ship app updates which included a way to get an email with information about buying audiobooks. These updates were rejected because Spotify is only able to email customers in ways that do not circumvent in-app purchases for specific items.

You can quibble with Spotify’s attempts to work around in-app purchase rules — it is obviously trying to challenge them in a very public way — but it is Apple which has such restrictive policies around external links, down to how they may be described. It is a by-the-letter reading to be as strict as possible, lest any loopholes be exploited. This inflexibility would surely be explained by Apple as its “level playing field”, but we all know that is not entirely true

Instead, Spotify wants to bend the rules in their favor by embedding subscription prices in their app without using the App Store’s In-App Purchase system. They want to use Apple’s tools and technologies, distribute on the App Store, and benefit from the trust we’ve built with users — and to pay Apple nothing for it.

It is not entirely clear Spotify actually wants to do any of these things; it is more honest to say it has to do them if it wants to have an iPhone app. Spotify has routinely disputed various iOS policies only to turn around and reject Apple’s solutions. Spotify complained that users could not play music natively through the HomePod, but has not taken advantage of third-party music app support on the device added in 2020. Instead, it was Apple’s Siri improvements last year that brought Spotify to the HomePod, albeit in an opaque way.

If we accept Apple’s premise, however, it remains a mystery why Apple applies its platform monetization policy to iOS and the related operating systems it has spawned, but not to MacOS. By what criteria, other than Apple’s policy choices, are Mac developers able to sell digital goods however they want — unless they use the Mac App Store — but iOS developers must ask Apple’s permission to include a link to an external payment flow? And that is the conceded, enhanced freedom version of this policy.

There is little logic to the iOS in-app purchase rules, which do not apply equally to physical goods, reader apps, or even some à la carte digital goods. Nobody has reason to believe this façade any longer.

Apple obviously believes the Mac is a different product altogether with different policies, and that is great. The relatively minor restrictions it has imposed still permit a level of user control unimaginable on iOS, and Apple does not seem to have an appetite to further lock it down to iOS levels. But the differences are a matter of policy, not technology.

Apple justifies its commission saying it “reflects the value Apple provides developers through ongoing investments in the tools, technologies, and services”. That is a new standard which apparently applies only to its iOS-derived platforms, compared to the way it invested in tools for Mac development. Indeed, Apple used to charge more for developer memberships when third-party software was only for the Mac, but even the top-of-the-line $3,500 Premier membership was probably not 30% of most developers’ revenue. Apple also charged for new versions of Mac OS X at this time. Now, it distributes all that for free; developers pay a small annual fee, and a more substantial rate to use the only purchasing mechanism they can use for most app types in most parts of the world.

For whatever reason — philosophical or financial — Apple’s non-Mac platforms are restricted and it will defend that stance until it is unable to do so. And, no matter how bad that looks, I kind of get it. I believe there could be a place for a selective and monitored software distribution system, where some authority figure has attested to the safety and authenticity of an app. That is not so different conceptually from how Apple’s notarization policies will be working in Europe.

I oscillate between appreciating and detesting an app store model, even if the App Store is a mess. But even when I am in a better mood, however, it seems crystal clear that such a system would be far better if it were not controlled by the platform owner. The conflict of interest is simply too great. It would be better if some arm’s-length party, perhaps spiritually similar to Meta’s Oversight Board, would control software and developer policies. I doubt that would fix every complaint with the App Store and App Review process but I bet it would have been a good start.

The consequences of being so pugnacious for over fifteen years of the App Store model has, I think, robbed Apple of the chance to set things right. Regulators around the world are setting new inconsistent standards based on fights between large corporations and gigantic ones, with developers of different sizes lobbying for their own wish lists. Individual people have no such influence, but all of these corporations likely believe they are doing what is right and best for their users.

As the saying goes, pressure makes diamonds, and Apple’s policies are being tested. I hope it can get this right, yet press releases like this one gives me little reason to believe in positive results from Apple’s forcibly loosened grip on its most popular platform. And with the Digital Markets Act now in effect, those stakes are high. I never imagined Apple would be thrilled for the rules of its platform to be upended by courts and lawmakers nor excited by a penalty in the billions, but it sure seems like it would be better for everybody if Apple embraced reality.

February 19, 2024 ⌥

Apple’s 2023 Report Card ⇥ sixcolors.com

It is that time of year again. A panel of smart people, and also me, have completed Jason Snell’s annual survey of how we think Apple is doing when it comes to products, services, and social obligations.

The grades I gave were generally aligned with the rest of the panel — just look at that steep drop in the iPad’s grade, for good reasons. Where I seem to differ from many other people, based on the average grade, is in software quality.

I remain disappointed by how poorly Apple’s software often works for me. A MacOS Ventura update last year introduced a strange problem where my MacBook Pro would seize up any time HDR media was displayed, similar to problems early in the product’s release. No amount of troubleshooting fixed it until I upgraded to MacOS Sonoma which, alas, introduced new issues of its own, like notifications that sometimes fade onscreen instead of animating from the right, and text drawing problems. Smaller details, to be sure, but it all adds up to fragile experience. I routinely see graphical inconsistencies, hanging first-party applications, Siri problems, and insufficient contrast across all Apple devices I use.

My expectations are not that high. I only wish MacOS, in particular, would not feel as though it was rusting beneath the surface.

Meet the New Boss

January 25, 2024 ⌥

Apple’s response to the E.U.’s Digital Markets Act has arrived. In theory, this is the biggest ever change to the way native apps are distributed and sold on iOS. Between the complexity and caveats, however, this is not a Mac-like software experience on the iPhone — though I am not sure I fully understand what it is.

Let me back up to December 2022. I hate quoting myself but, well, here is something I wrote in response to a Bloomberg report from Mark Gurman about Apple’s Digital Markets Act preparations:

It will be interesting to see how Apple frames this shift for its European customers. It has spent years claiming its first-party App Store policies are a reason why people buy iPhones. While it can continue to promote its own App Store as the best option, it would look silly if it created the impression of reducing security for European users while rolling this out. The same is true of its privacy stance if, as also reported by Gurman, it makes its Find My network more permissive to third-party trackers. Apple may also want to preserve its existing strategy wherever regulators do not require its software and services to be more interoperable, but that could make it look like European customers have more choices than users in, say, the United States — which they probably will.

The answer to this public relations conundrum is found in a bitter press release. The tone is not really a surprise; I guess I would also be frustrated if I were required to change the way my platform has worked for sixteen years. But, still, it is quite something to read paragraphs like this one:

The new options for processing payments and downloading apps on iOS open new avenues for malware, fraud and scams, illicit and harmful content, and other privacy and security threats. That’s why Apple is introducing protections — including Notarization for iOS apps, an authorization for marketplace developers, and disclosures on alternative payments — to reduce risks and deliver the best, most secure experience possible for users in the EU. Even with these safeguards in place, many risks remain.

Or these two sentences describing how Safari will present a list of third-party browsers on first launch:

This change is a result of the DMA’s requirements, and means that EU users will be confronted with a list of default browsers before they have the opportunity to understand the options available to them. The screen also interrupts EU users’ experience the first time they open Safari intending to navigate to a webpage.

To be fair, confirmation screens are probably not the best way to drive browser diversity. The status quo also sucks: arguably the only reason why Google Chrome is not wholly dominant is because of decisions made by platform vendors like Apple and Microsoft. Then again, the state of the browser market is evidence of how little competition matters when people have familiar choices.

Back to the App Store; Apple is making several changes in the E.U., including:

Third-party payment processors can be used within apps, and developers can also link to external payment destinations from within an app.
Lowered commission of 10–17%, down from 15–30%, with an optional use of Apple’s payment processor at an extra 3%.
Third-party browsers can now use different browser engines.

In addition to these and other E.U.-specific changes, Apple is permitting streaming game apps worldwide.

The headline announcement is the addition of third-party app stores in iOS — and, it seems, only iOS. Apple has built MarketplaceKit to facilitate this, will require Notarization of all applications regardless of distribution channel — which sounds different than the MacOS Notarization process because it involves real people — and has an extensive explanation of its rationale for this system. This is not really “sideloading” or the Mac-esque experience some have been envisioning because these “marketplace apps” — as Apple is calling them — will be the only other way of installing native iOS apps. The way you will get the marketplace apps themselves, Apple says, is via the web, but other kinds of third-party software are not able to be installed on an iPhone this way. In other words, you can download apps from an app store or the App Store.

In the questions-and-answers section near the end, it says its “traditional business model has reflected the value” of the platform, and these new E.U. rules have “separate[d] out the many ways Apple creates value for developers”. To bridge the gap, it will charge a Core Technology Fee of €0.50 under certain conditions, which is in line with what I expected would happen. In its press release today, Apple says almost all developers will pay the same or less, and less than one percent will need to pay the Core Technology Fee. Many of those are probably the massive developers you can immediately think of. Notably, this is the first time entirely free applications will pay any kind of per-user fee to Apple, and it is not cheap.

Developers are not automatically opted into this new arrangement. They will be able to choose whether they stick with the current terms, or agree to the new terms — but the new contract is required to distribute an app through a different marketplace, or to use a different payment processor. In return, developers get lower commission, but must pay the Core Technology Fee if they exceed one million annual E.U. installs of their app.

That is my rundown of these changes and I think I got everything right, but there is a lot I missed out on. I think David Barnard has a very good Twitter thread with more details, and Jason Snell at Six Colors has a good overview. I thought this was a particularly keen observation by Snell:

I have to think that Apple will have a team of security people watching carefully as these features roll out across the EU. But there will also be a team of PR people ready to publicize any incident that feeds into Apple’s narrative about the DMA endangering EU citizens.

I fully expect unscrupulous people will take advantage of this new arrangement and Apple will spread the word. But it is not as though the App Store itself is free of scams; Michael Tsai has an entire category of posts dating back more than a decade. Even if scams make their way into third-party marketplace apps, a real person at Apple has seen and approved them, as explained in the question-and-answer segment:

The Notarization process involves a combination of automated checks and human review to help ensure apps are from credible parties, free of malicious content like malware, function as promised, and don’t expose users to egregious privacy and security risks or fraud.

This is still Apple’s platform and it still wants it to be safe. It remains to be seen whether the E.U. will view today’s announcements as sufficiently compliant with the letter and spirit of the DMA, and I suspect there will be questions about the amount of control Apple will retain, and the Core Technology Fee it will charge.

I have two questions:

Will any of this be worthwhile for developers? If Apple’s numbers are accurate, it makes the E.U. look like a more desirable region for iOS app distribution. At least there are options and choices.

On a related note, one wonders if it will be beneficial for users. As I wrote in my self-quote above, Apple says the App Store is part of users’ buying decisions. That is, it seems to believe people use iPhones in part because of the way it controls its available software. The problem is that it will be difficult to get a sense of whether users actually value the App Store on its merits if these new features are not popular amongst developers.
Is this foreshadowing similar changes to Apple’s other restricted platforms, or perhaps expanding them worldwide? Earlier today, I would have thought this is a plausible take. But the more I think about it, the more I believe Apple will continue its established path until other governments force a change. I would be happy to be proven wrong, especially if this policy change is ultimately beneficial to developers.

So, knowing all of that, how would one go about getting their hands on these updates? Apple says all of these things will be rolling out in March, and the new APIs and frameworks are included in the iOS 17.4 beta seed released to developers earlier today.

These features are only available to E.U. users, and Apple is being as restrictive with these changes as it is for censorship in China. One cannot simply change their iPhone’s region in Settings to an E.U. member state. As previewed last year, there is a new process that validates feature availability based on, according to Filipe Espósito of 9to5Mac, the billing address on file and the device location, among other qualities.

Still, if Apple can be an Irish company for tax reasons, my iPhone should be able to become Irish for device control reasons.

It does leave me with one final question: how are developers outside the E.U. able to test compliance with these new capabilities? Perhaps I missed this in the documentation, but it seems like this may be one additional restriction to keep these alluring features geographically gated. Pity.

Even if this is not everything developers and advanced users may have hoped for, it is a radical shift for Apple’s non-Mac platforms. There is much to look forward to, and some things to be worried about. Mostly, though, this leaves many questions because of the cautious and confusing approach Apple is taking. There are perhaps good, well-founded reasons for doing so, and I do not think it is always intending to be as brutal as its decisions appear. But Apple’s relationship with developers has been on rocky ground for years and its latest policies are a reminder of the company’s control. Meet the new boss? Well, you know how that goes.

January 11, 2024 ⌥

Sleeve, a Now Playing and Last.fm Scrobbler for MacOS ⇥ replay.software

Unnecessary backstory: in this year’s instalment of “Classics Week”, Anthony Fantano highlighted the excellent Gorillaz album “Demon Days”. It has been a while since I last played it, so I gave it a spin and it was an instant nostalgia tunnel to 2005. I joked about needing a glassy album cover on my desktop and Christopher Downer pointed me to Sleeve.

Sleeve is a simple but useful widget for your desktop, similar to Bowtie. It shows your currently-playing song and it is a Last.fm scrobbler. As it happens, Sleeve was updated a few months ago. Just six U.S. dollars for a lovely piece of indie software that does a handful of things very well. My only complaint is a lack of wet floor effect.

November 30, 2023 ⌥

There Have Been Twenty Zero-Days Patched in Apple’s Operating Systems This Year ⇥ bleepingcomputer.com

Sergiu Gatlan, Bleeping Computer:

Apple released emergency security updates to fix two zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in attacks and impacting iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices, reaching 20 zero-days patched since the start of the year.

Both of these are WebKit bugs.

According to Project Zero’s spreadsheet, Apple patched ten zero-days in 2022, thirteen in 2021, three in 2020, two in 2019, three in 2016, and none in 2018, 2017, 2015, and 2014. It seems like a similar story across the board: the 2014 spreadsheet contains just eleven entries total, while the 2023 sheet contains fifty-six so far.

It is surely impossible to know, but one wonders how much of this is caused by vendors and exploiters alike getting better at finding zero-days, and how much can be blamed on worsening security in software. That seems hard to believe with increased restrictions on how much data is simply laying around to be leaked, but perhaps that is a driver of the increasing number of reports: when you build more walls, there are more opportunities to find cracks.

Patrick Howell O’Neill reported for MIT Technology Review in 2021 that the escalating number of exploits is primarily driven by state warfare, then criminals, and that it seems like a combination of increased vigilance and bug bounty programs have improved discovery. Kevin Poireault, in Infosecurity Magazine earlier this year, reports that it is a sign of better security for more straightforward exploits, necessitating the use of more advanced techniques by adversaries.

November 29, 2023 ⌥

For a Deeper Look at Your Music Listening Habits, Try Last.fm ⇥ macstories.net

Harley Charlton, MacRumors:

Apple today rolled out the Apple Music Replay experience for 2023, allowing subscribers to see their top artists, songs, albums, genres, playlists, and stations of the year.

[…]

‌Apple Music‌ Replay is Apple’s answer Spotify Wrapped, but ‌Apple Music‌ Replay remains a web browser only experience. The Music app itself can only show and play a basic playlist of your top songs for the year, ranked by most played, once it has been added via the Replay webpage.

Every year, millions of people give Spotify free marketing by sharing their music listening habits, and that must drive someone at Apple absolutely bananas. It is still a website, unlike Apple Books, and based on my searches of Twitter and Instagram, it seems many people miss the sharing button below each Replay section and just screenshot the page. Spotify Wrapped is an obviously better and more sharing-friendly product.

But you know what is cooler than either of these things? It is when you separate analyzing your music habits from how you listen to music.

John Voorhees, MacStories:

Spotify does a better job at surfacing interesting data with Wrapped, but if you’re like me and prefer other aspects of Apple Music, sign up for Last.fm, use one of the many excellent indie apps, like Marvis Pro, Soor, Albums, Longplay, Doppler, and Air Scrobble that support the service, and then enjoy your weekly, monthly, and annual reports in Last.fm’s app or on its website.

When I like a record, I buy it — often from Bandcamp, but sometimes from iTunes or elsewhere — and, in the process, cut off the Apple Music connection, which makes my Replay stats non-reflective of my actual listening habits. I am not someone who feels the need to quantitively analyze my entire life, but I do appreciate the way Last.fm collects information from many of the places I listen to music: in Music on my Mac, and in a variety of apps on my iPhone. And Voorhees points to AirScrobble as a way to fill in the gaps for when I am listening to a record or one of the mixes in each edition of Web Curios on my stereo.

If Apple Music Replay or Spotify Wrapped work for you, that is great; I have no reason to try to change your mind. But if you want to move between different listening sources and retain some control of what you entrust to any one service, I think Last.fm remains a great option.

Update: Joe Rosensteel:

This whole thing feels like someone was very excited to animate things, move album artwork around, and transform data, but no one really gave much thought to what this whole thing is supposed to mean to someone. How it makes someone feel.

Could not have written this any better myself. For anyone who loves music, seeing an album cover probably conjures up memories of a time when it was playing. It should transport me through a year of what I put into my ear. Does Apple love music? It used to.

October 5, 2023 ⌥

Dan Moren Was Locked Out of iCloud for Exactly Twelve Hours ⇥ sixcolors.com

Dan Moren’s iCloud account was offline for exactly twelve hours for reasons apparently known to somebody at Apple but which cannot be disclosed to Moren:

Moreover, if this was some kind of scheduled procedure, why not warn affected users ahead of time? The idea that my email — which I rely upon for work — and a slew of other services might be interrupted for essentially an entire workday with no notice whatsoever is technological malpractice. My cable company tells me when it’s doing work in my area and there might be service hiccups, and you can bet that the hosting provider I use for my website communicates whenever there might be something that affects my service.

I wrote earlier about expectations of reliability in a different sense, and this is a whole different level of strange. iCloud has become so much better since its launch and it has fewer unexpected failures, so why are the reasons for one localized to Moren’s account so secretive? Only Apple knows, and it is not saying.

October 2, 2023 ⌥

CSAM Detection Organizations Are Like Any Other Business ⇥ balkaninsight.com

Today is fitting a theme so far that is, unfortunately, just about the heaviest thing I publish here, but I have a couple things I think I need to add.

Giacomo Zandonini, Apostolis Fotiadis, and Luděk Stavinoha, for Balkan Insight, investigated how CSAM scanning companies have lobbied in favour of a new law to screen everything — including private messages — for illegal media:

Though registered in the EU lobby database as a charity, Thorn sells its AI tools on the market for a profit; since 2018, the US Department of Homeland Security, for example, has purchased software licences from Thorn for a total of $4.3 million.

[…]

ECLAG [the European Child Sexual Abuse Legislation Advocacy Group], which launched its website a few weeks after Johansson’s proposal was announced in May 2022, acts as a coordination platform for some of the most active organisations lobbying in favour of the CSAM legislation. Its steering committee includes Thorn and a host of well-known children’s rights organisations such as ECPAT, Eurochild, Missing Children Europe, Internet Watch Foundation, and Terre des Hommes.

Another member is Brave Movement, which came into being in April 2022, a month before’s Johansson’s regulation was rolled out, thanks to a $10.3 million contribution by the Oak Foundation to Together for Girls, a US-based non-profit that fights sexual violence against children.

These multimillion-dollar numbers pale in comparison to, for example, the $20 billion Apple makes every quarter in digital services revenue alone. Still, though these are non-governmental mission-orientated organizations, they do have products and services to sell, hence the lobbying efforts.

If the name “Oak Foundation” sounds familiar, that is likely because it also funds the Heat Initiative. That is not a surprise: CSAM prevention causes are among the largest beneficiaries of the Oak Foundation’s grants, representing over 10% of its grant-making in 2022. That is an understandable place to spend a lot of money; who can disagree with efforts to fight among the world’s bleakest genres of crime?

But for anyone who remembers the arguments made in the 2000s justifying wholesale invasions of personal privacy in an effort to combat terrorism, this all feels a bit too familiar, and we know the consequences. I do not buy speculative slippery slope arguments but, in this case, there is no need to: we know this kind of surveillance has poor oversight, expands beyond its initial scope, produces post hoc rationalization for crimes, and leads to escalating competition between nations. That the E.U. is proposing on-device scanning is little comfort when, by design, there is little understanding of how any of these systems work and what their limits are.

September 6, 2023 ⌥

Dark Mode Usability and Expectations ⇥ nngroup.com

Tanner Kohler and Amy Zhang, of the Nielsen Norman Group:

Dark mode is more popular than ever. You might even think it’s essential — at least if you were to read many of the web-design articles devoted to the topic. However, it takes valuable time and resources to fully support dark mode and “wear it well” because most designs are built in light mode first. To understand how much dark mode impacts users, we recently conducted a survey and some mobile usability-testing sessions in dark mode on mobile.

In all cases, the best thing you can do is mirror a user’s preferences and the system default. On the web, this can be achieved very simply by using CSS variables to define page colours for light mode, and then use a prefers-color-scheme: dark media query to redefine those same variables for dark mode. (Or, if you prefer, the other way around.)

One finding I was surprised by is how many people surveyed by the NNG did not notice when an app violated their preference by showing a light-mode screen when it should have been in dark mode or vice-versa. For many, it seems dark mode is mostly an aesthetic preference, though the NNG notes some possible benefits for those with visual disabilities.

The iPhone 12 Pro: A Three-Year Review

September 5, 2023 ⌥

I want to try something a little bit different: a review of a product at what is likely the end of my using it. Early product reviews are great buyer’s guides, but they tend to dwell on the novel, which is understandable for using a product for only a week or two. I have lived with my iPhone 12 Pro for nearly three full years — I got mine on its release day in October 2020 — so I know it very well. Here is what I am still impressed by, what has not held up as well, and what I will be looking for when I replace it this year.

This was one eye-catching phone out of the box. Compared to the standard iPhone 12’s glossy glass back, the bead-blasted glass of the Pro models is a subtly luxurious and almost soft finish. I chose the silver model, which I still think is the nicest of the four colours it was available in at launch — the others being graphite, gold, and a finish Apple insists on calling “pacific blue”, all lowercase — and the flat polished steel of the phone’s edge trim lost its magic after just a few months. I rarely use a case and, so, I was expecting scratches. But I did not anticipate some kind of corrosion or blooming on its top edge, which has made the stainless steel look more like chrome-mimic plastic. I bought a stainless steel wristwatch with similar polished surfaces the same year and, despite being knocked around a fair bit and sitting immediately on my skin, it has held up far better.

The steel body is also pretty heavy. It is only fifteen grams heavier than the iPhone X it replaced in my pocket, which was also a steel phone, but I wish iPhones were trending in the other direction. Thinner and lighter may be widely mocked, but for devices carried every day, it is better for me if they dissolve into my life.

Thankfully, the iPhone 15 Pro is rumoured to be made of titanium which — all else being equal — is considerably lighter than steel. The standard iPhone 15 will likely continue to be made of aluminum, which means either model would likely be a lighter phone than the ones I have carried for the past six years. I do have some questions about the wear-and-tear I will be able to expect with a titanium body. Titanium has a mixed history at Apple, but retrospective reviews of Apple Watches made of the material indicate it is holding up far better.

The battery life of my iPhone 12 Pro has also seen some wear-and-tear. After three years of daily use and an uncareful charging regiment, the Battery Health screen says it has retained 87% of its from-new capacity. That is not too bad, especially considering some iPhone 14 Pro owners are reporting similar capacities after just one year. But this generation of iPhone was notable for a slight regression in battery life expectations compared to its predecessor when it was shiny and new, and I have felt that in particular when it is not connected to Wi-Fi. This has been used almost exclusively as an LTE phone — more on that later — and its cellular radio seems hungry.

I bought the 12 Pro over either of the standard iPhone 12 models primarily because of the 56mm-equivalent camera and the larger RAM package. And I am glad I did — around 43% of photos I shot with this phone are from that telephoto camera, compared to 51% captured with the main camera, and only about 6% using the ultra-wide.

These two cameras — the main and telephoto — have performed well. iPhone photos have leaned toward neutrality, with only a minor warm bias, and the images I have captured with the 12 Pro have been no exception. Images captured outdoors in bright daylight are an accurate representation of the scene, with clean HDR matching my own perception. Where this camera shines most is in low-light scenes indoors, and outdoors at night. This is the area where phone cameras have struggled — small sensors do not capture as much light as bigger sensors, of course — and software advancements have played a key role in creating images which look less noisy, more colourful, and better lit. Automatic Night Mode remains a difficult adjustment for me: three years into owning this phone, I still have not gotten used to the idea of holding it in near-stillness for longer than it takes me to tap the shutter button.

Photo at night of a dark hilly street and a taillight streak from a passing car. — Neither image has been processed apart from straightening and cropping.

Photo at dusk of an empty outdoor ice rink with overhead industrial-style lights on cables. — Neither image has been processed apart from straightening and cropping.

I have also noticed a dramatic improvement in images shot in Portrait Mode. While it is supposed to approximate the foreground and background separation you might see with a larger sensor and a portrait lens, I rarely used it on my iPhone X because subjects looked like they were crudely cut from the scene. It is a night-and-day difference with this iPhone: there is a more natural falloff from in-focus areas to backgrounds, the faux bokeh looks more realistic, and it does a better — though still imperfect — job of understanding glassware. I do not take many pictures of people; here are some photos of food I shot with Portrait Mode:

Photo of a plate of cut, seasoned beets of various colours. — The food images have been processed; the bottle image has not. I do not know if I am in a position to give advice, but here is what I do for food photos: I use the “Vivid” filter to improve image brightness, colour, and contrast. Then, under Adjustments, I play with the image warmth after increasing the image’s magenta tint; the “Vivid” filter is often too green and cool for food.

Photo, close-up, of an open glass drink bottle. — The food images have been processed; the bottle image has not. I do not know if I am in a position to give advice, but here is what I do for food photos: I use the “Vivid” filter to improve image brightness, colour, and contrast. Then, under Adjustments, I play with the image warmth after increasing the image’s magenta tint; the “Vivid” filter is often too green and cool for food.

I still find Apple’s photo processing pipeline too eager to reduce noise and, consequently, detail, though this is somewhat offset by other parts of the pipeline like Deep Fusion. This is exacerbated in Night Mode, of course, because it is beginning with a grainier image. I understand why Apple uses high levels of noise reduction; shooting RAW on an iPhone will reveal what the sensor captures before it is put through that pipeline. A very grainy image is probably not going to be appreciated by most people. But these sensors are very good for their size and, in most lighting conditions, some grain is more tasteful to me.

The other thing I feel compelled to mention about the iPhone 12 Pro’s cameras is how they are not the same as those in the 12 Pro Max — unfortunately. The Pro Max had a much larger sensor in its main camera and better stabilization, and its telephoto camera was a little different as well. It is unfortunate because I am not interested in buying a larger phone; the smaller Pro size Apple has settled on is already too large for my liking. And, while successive model pairings — the 13 Pro/Pro Max and 14 Pro/Pro Max — shared identical camera systems between the smaller and larger sizes, rumours suggest the line will repeat the 12 Pro’s bifurcation. If that is true, I will be disappointed, even if it is for good and practical reasons. Not upset that physics cannot be bent to accommodate my purchasing preferences, mind you, just painfully aware of the compromise I would make with either choice.

The iPhone 12 lineup was the first iPhone to support the MagSafe accessory connector, and the first to support 5G cellular networking. I have used neither extensively. I do have an Apple case which is identified by MagSafe by its colour, but I never purchased a compatible charger or any other accessories. As for 5G, my cellular provider only recently added support on its network. Working from home for most of the past three years has meant little cellular data usage, so I would not have taken advantage of any possible improvements if I had switched to a carrier which adopted 5G earlier. My provider recently added 5G support and, in the interest of being comprehensive, I recently upgraded to a 5G plan to see what it would be like in my area. From my desk, using the Speedtest app, 5G transfer speeds were 129 Mbps down and 39 Mbps up; LTE from the same spot recorded 113 Mbps down and 28 Mbps up. I have seen LTE speeds as high as 156 Mbps down and 45 Mbps up from the same spot. On my balcony, 5G tested at 178 Mbps down and 15 Mbps up, while LTE was 74 Mbps down and 18 Mbps up. Latency and jitter differences are a similar tossup. I was promised life-and-death stakes and all I got was this slightly more expensive phone plan.

Neither of these features holds any weight for my iPhone 15 purchasing decisions. The iPhone 15 line will almost certainly switch to a USB-C port after eleven years of iPhones with slow, proprietary, and unchanged Lightning ports. Alas, that means the cables on my nightstand and desk — and in my bag and car — will need to be swapped, though one will be included in the box. I may have avoided noticing this change had I purchased MagSafe charging cables. But, at $55 Canadian a pop, it would have been an expensive way to make the transition easier.¹ Since USB-C is an industry standard connector, I can buy all the cheap and fast cables I need.

The iPhone 12 Pro line was also the first phone from Apple to include a LiDAR sensor on the back, which apparently helps with autofocus in low light scenes, and enables better spatial tracking for augmented reality. It is hard for me to say whether I get faster or more accurate autofocus, but I have found the A.R. enhancements surprisingly useful and fun. It is not something I am using every day. But when I stumble across a furniture website with A.R. options, for example, it is immediately rewarding to see the piece in my space and get a pretty accurate impression of its size, with pretty stable real-world object tracking. The biggest knock against anything using the LiDAR sensor is the hit it takes on battery life, which you can feel by how warm the phone gets. Visually, A.R. experiences are smooth and fast, but the warmth you feel is an indication that this phone is being pushed to some kind of limit.

So, that is my three-year experience with the iPhone 12 Pro. I am not somebody who feels compelled to upgrade every year, and even before Apple announces this year’s iPhone lineup in less than one week’s time, I can already expect big changes based on the models available today: a brighter, faster display; better cameras paired to a better image processing pipeline; macro photography; and emergency rescue features I hope to never need. But there are also plenty of unknowns, like whether the new models will continue to increase battery life, or if the phone will feel more pocket-friendly — the iPhone 13 Pro was heavier than my phone, and the 14 Pro heavier still.

I have occasionally wondered whether the 12 Pro was worth the extra cost over the standard 12 for me. The standard models had way better colour options and a Mini version, and the 12 Pro is 15% heavier than the regular model of the same size. But the camera breakdown speaks for itself: I use the telephoto camera so often that it really is a no-brainer. That is what I am looking for most of all in an iPhone 15 model: a better telephoto camera and better battery life in a model that is lighter than this one.

I will tell you what was expensive, which was the USB-C to Lightning cable I bought last year for my travel bag. I have gotten one year’s very light use out of that $25 cable. ↥︎

August 28, 2023 ⌥

Some Men, It Seems, Cannot Handle Drinking Cocktails From Appropriate Glassware ⇥ nytimes.com

Becky Hughes, New York Times:

While efforts to challenge the gender binary are evident in how we talk, dress for work and wear makeup, a visit to the cocktail bar might transport you back to the 1950s. Bartenders say that many men appear as committed as ever to drinking out of “manly” glasses and avoiding glassware they deem too feminine.

“It’s an industry joke that we tend to stereotype people based on their glassware preferences,” said Kaslyn Bos, 30, a bartender at Donna in the West Village. At Donna, the drinks are colorful, sometimes heavily garnished with fruit and cocktail umbrellas and often served in “shapely glasses,” she said.

Ms. Bos has fielded requests — only from men — to transfer a cocktail from one glass to another. She noted that a manly glass, to those asking, is always a rocks glass.

Lest you think this is some isolated or recent phenomenon, a six-year-old video on Playboy’s Indulgence YouTube channel has bartenders commenting on exactly the same thing. Hilarious and tragic.

August 15, 2023 ⌥

The iMac Saved Apple ⇥ theverge.com

Jason Snell wrote about the history of the iMac on its twenty-fifth anniversary for the Verge:

While PC makers spent many years trying (and failing, for the most part) to make iMac knockoffs, it was really a transitional device. While Apple still has a nice business selling iMacs to families, schools, and hotel check-in desks, most of the computers it sells are laptops.

Still, I think the iMac pointed the way to the era of ubiquitous laptops. (What is a laptop but an all-in-one computer? Fortunately, laptops don’t weigh 38 pounds like the iMac G3.) From the very beginning, the iMac was criticized as being limited and underpowered. Apple frequently used laptop parts in the iMac, whether it was for cost savings or miniaturization reasons. Today, Mac desktops use more or less the same parts as Mac laptops.

To wit, while Apple’s own Mac chips debuted in two laptops and a Mac Mini which all looked the same as the Intel models they replaced, the M1 iMac was the first of the family to sport a new industrial design language. Unfortunately, it has remained unchanged for 837 days as of writing — the longest delay between iMac updates in years, and one which will have knock-on effects.

New iMacs are expected in October, according to Mark Gurman, as part of the debut of the M3 lineup.

June 30, 2023 ⌥

The Fake Wedding Website Request That Undermined LGBTQ Rights in the U.S. ⇥ newrepublic.com

Melissa Gira Grant, the New Republic:

It didn’t make sense to him, [Stewart] told me later via text message. Why would a web designer — as the website the inquiry referenced as his own made clear that he was — living in San Francisco, seek to hire someone in another state who has never built a wedding website, let alone a website for a same-sex wedding, to build his wedding website?

[…]

Maybe it should not be a surprise, though, that this strange fake “request” popped up in a case in which the plaintiff’s main argument rested on the claim that someday, out there, a same-sex couple would want her to design a wedding website. The closest thing Smith had to an actual inquiry — the nonwedding of Stewart and Mike — arrived within 24 hours of her having filed a suit in which said inquiry would be potentially a helpful piece of supporting evidence. […]

This was published yesterday. Today, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its ruling: workers who create new products which can be classified as speech are allowed to discriminate so long as the provider sincerely holds those beliefs.

Update: A followup story from Gira Grant; a discussion of the case.

May 22, 2023 ⌥

Mimestream, My Favourite Gmail Client for MacOS, Hits 1.0 ⇥ mimestream.com

Jason Snell, Six Colors:

[…] Neil Jhaveri, who previously worked on the engineering team for Apple Mail itself, founded a company to build a new email app: Mimestream. After a few years in open beta development, on Monday Mimestream 1.0 was officially released.

If you don’t use Gmail as your mail service or need to use the same app across Mac and iOS, Mimestream isn’t for you—yet. I asked Jhaveri what he meant when he said the company will be “turning its attention a bit broader” in the future, and he told me that while the company needed to focus in order to launch a compelling new app, “our mission is to just be the best general-purpose prosumer email client on the market.” That will take time, and the next step is probably an iOS version.

Neil Jhaveri:

Today’s launch culminates a public beta of over 2 years, with more than 167,000 users joining the beta. During this time, we released 220+ updates, made 2500+ improvements, added 100+ new features, and grew the company from a solo founder to a team of 5. Mimestream is mature, reliable, ready to take on your most serious email workloads, and will continue improving.

I cannot remember how early into the public beta cycle I started using Mimesteam, but I do remember being completely sold on it very quickly. It has been a key reason I have stuck with Google’s email service, and I was only too happy to pay Jhaveri as soon as it was possible to do so in February.

Unlike a lot of email clients which have been released in recent years, Mimestream does not really have any gimmicks to help you manage your email better or read it faster. I consider that a good thing because it means Mimestream is fully compatible with other clients on other platforms. That is important as it is Mac-only right now.

I cannot overstate how great, how polished, and how nice Mimestream feels to use. It is damn good Mac-assed software, and is my favourite mail client for MacOS.

May 22, 2023 ⌥

Photomator for Mac ⇥ pixelmator.com

Pixelmator recently announced a new version of its photo editing software, now called Photomator and available for MacOS:

Today’s a big day! Our team has just released Photomator for Mac. From state-of-the-art color adjustments to intelligent AI tools, powerful Repair and Clone tools, and batch editing, Photomator for Mac is a photo editing powerhouse. Built from the ground up for macOS, it runs incredibly smoothly and fast, redefining the photo editing experience on Mac.

It has been a while since I took this app for a spin, and I figured it was time to experiment with it.

As is so often the case, some of these tools did not work as well for me as are shown in demos. For example, the Repair tool is shown to fully remove a foreground silhouette covering about a quarter of the image area. On one image, I was able to easily and seamlessly remove a sign and some bollards from the side of the road. But, in another, the edge of a parked car was always patched with grass instead of the sidewalk and kerb edge. I also found the machine learning-powered cropping tool produced lacklustre results, and the automatic straightening feature only worked well about a quarter of the time.

But, as these are merely suggestions, it makes for an effectively no-lose situation: if the automatic repair or cropping works perfectly, it means less work; if neither are effective, you have wasted only a few seconds before proceeding manually.

The Photos integration is fantastic. If you have ever used a mixed Lightroom and iCloud Photos environment, the simplified workflow is a dream come true. Photomator is also a damn good RAW photo editor. While Photos has some editing tools built in, they are cumbersome for experienced users — there are three modes for white balance editing in Photos, but you cannot select Temperature/Tint as the default, for example. Photomator feels like it has been designed by people who edit photos for people who edit photos. The layering and masking tools are excellent, and the built-in presets are a good starting point, if a little extreme.

The free trial is a full-featured version of the app, but you can only save three photos. It is a great way to give the app a try for your needs. It is priced monthly, with a yearly subscription, or for life. For some people, I could see Photomator being a replacement for Lightroom.