Apple Explains How It Thinks About Photography in an A.I. Era ⇥ theverge.com

For a review of this year’s new iPhone Pro models, Nilay Patel, of the Verge, asked Apple about the company’s view of photography. There is a really good, on-the-record response which seems to draw a clear line on the processing of an image. Put simply, it seems Apple’s perspective is to try to accurately capture a scene as it occurred. While images may have taken on a too-processed look for my liking, the intention seems to be to capture light as it was, not simulate a memory which never occurred.

Patel:

That’s a sharp and clear answer, but I’m curious how Apple contends with the relentless addition of AI editing to the iPhone’s competitors. The company is already taking small steps in that direction: a feature called “Clean Up” will arrive with Apple Intelligence, which will allow you to remove objects from photos like Google’s Magic Eraser. McCormack told me that feature will somehow mark the resulting images as having been generatively edited, although he didn’t say how.

In my testing of Clean Up on an image on the latest iOS 18.1 beta build, Apple adds EXIF tags to the image to mark it as being edited with generative A.I. tools. EXIF tags can be erased, though, and I do not see any other indicators. It is possible they exist and I missed them.

Apple’s tools are more cautious, so far, compared to those from its competitors. Even if you include the unreleased Image Playground product — something which I do not see much value in Apple releasing at all — nothing the company is doing on the generative A.I. front is so far allowing people to create entirely fraudulent photos. It is possible Apple does not have the technology of Google’s Magic Editor and, so, perhaps this is an unfair comparison. If it does, though, it should elect not to release it — a choice Google ought to have made as well.

iOS 18 Brings RCS to iPhones, Without End-to-End Encryption, Yet ⇥ gsma.com

Apple:

[…] When messaging contacts who do not have an Apple device, the Messages app now supports RCS for richer media and more reliable group messaging compared to SMS and MMS.

RCS rolled out in a relatively early beta release for my iPhone — perhaps in July — and I have appreciated both typing indicators and read receipts when chatting with friends who do not have iPhones. But none of those conversations have been end-to-end encrypted. That is not a change from when I messaged them over SMS, but it is not an improvement, either. RCS does not specify end-to-end encryption, and Apple, understandably, does not want to support Google’s proprietary implementation.

But it seems at least one — and perhaps both — of those things may be changing.

Tom Van Pelt, GSMA technical director:

While this is a major milestone, it is just the beginning. The next major milestone is for the RCS Universal Profile to add important user protections such as interoperable end-to-end encryption. This will be the first deployment of standardized, interoperable messaging encryption between different computing platforms, addressing significant technical challenges such as key federation and cryptographically-enforced group membership. Additionally, users will benefit from stronger protections from scam, fraud, and other security threats.

This seems like good news. I have friends who do not use iPhones and, while there are lots of messaging app options for our group chats, it also feels odd to keep an app on your phone for the more-or-less dedicated purpose of maintaining a single conversation.

However, I have at least two questions. The first: how will users be able to tell the difference between a private RCS discussion and one which is not end-to-end encrypted? Apple has several visual indicator options. For example, a message thread could have a persistent padlock or bubbles could use a different colour. Both add a layer of visual complexity which could raise questions or add confusion.

Perhaps a simpler choice would be better. The placeholder text in the compose box, for example, now says “Text Message • SMS” or “Text Message • RCS” depending on which protocol is being used. Surely it could also say something like “Encrypted • RCS” and, if Apple wanted to, it could make iMessage threads match with an “Encrypted • iMessage” placeholder.

This is a solvable problem, but it adds a new dimension to Messages. In all versions since iOS 5, conversations with green bubbles are not end-to-end encrypted, and conversations with blue bubbles are. At some point in the future, those categories will become further bifurcated, with some non-iMessage conversations becoming end-to-end encrypted, and some iMessage conversations becoming more securely protected.

My second question: what protocol is becoming standardized? The answer, it seems, might be a version of Google’s own.

Elmar Weber is a general manager at Google:

We’re proud to have offered end-to-end encryption (E2EE) in Google Messages with #RCS since 2020. We believe that #E2EE is a critical component of secure messaging, and we have been working with the broader ecosystem to bring cross-platform E2EE to RCS chats as soon as possible. Google is committed to providing a secure and private messaging experience for users, and we remain dedicated to making E2EE standard for all RCS users regardless of the platform.

Perhaps there is a different standard which will be met by all RCS providers, but it would be reasonable to guess Google’s existing protocol will form the backbone of this effort. Not only has Apple been apparently pressured into adopting RCS — something I wish it had done without dragging its feet so much — it may be implementing some version of Google’s end-to-encryption after all.

Ultimately, the politics of protocols and promulgated specifications are not much concern to users — or me, frankly. What I hope to see is a future in which end-to-end messaging is the standard for one-on-one and small group conversations, without needing to download anything extra. At some point, a conversation in Messages without the protection of end-to-end encryption will be so rare Apple will feel comfortable animating a warning beacon in the app if you so much as think about sending an SMS. Worldwide attempts to subvert or kneecap end-to-end encryption are also an ongoing threat to these improved expectations of privacy.

Update: In July of last year, the Messaging Layer Security protocol was published as a new standard. It will probably be the cross-platform solution to end-to-end encryption.

Also, for clarity, RCS in iOS also depends on carrier support. If you do not see it, perhaps your carrier has not yet rolled it out.

‘Chat Control’ Back on E.U. Agenda ⇥ techradar.com

Chiara Castro, TechRadar:

Hungary, the country that now heads the Council of Europe after Belgium, has resurrected what’s been deemed by critics as Chat Control, and MEPs are expected to vote on it at the end of the month. After proposing a new version in June, the Belgian presidency had to take the proposal off the agenda last minute amid harsh backlash.

Popular encrypted messaging apps, including Signal and Threema, have already announced their intention to rather shut down their operations in the EU instead of undermining users’ privacy. Keep reading as I walk you through what we know so far, and how one of the best VPN apps could help in case the proposal becomes law.

This news was broken by Politico, but their story is in the “Pro” section, which is not just a paywall. One cannot just sign up for it; you need to “Request a Demo” and then you can be granted access for no less than €7,000 per year. I had to settle for this re-reported version. And because online media is so broken — in part because of my selfish refusal to register for this advanced version of Politico — news outlets like TechRadar find any way of funding themselves. In this case, the words “best VPN” are linked to a list of affiliate-linked VPN apps. Smooth.

Patrick Breyer:

[…] According to the latest proposal providers would be free whether or not to use ‘artificial intelligence’ to classify unknown images and text chats as ‘suspicious’. However they would be obliged to search all chats for known illegal content and report them, even at the cost of breaking secure end-to-end messenger encryption. The EU governments are to position themselves on the proposal by 23 September, and the EU interior ministers are to endorse it on 10 October. […]

This is a similar effort to that postponed earlier this year. The proposal (PDF) has several changes, but it still appears to poke holes in end-to-end encryption, and require providers to detect possible known CSAM before it is sent. A noble effort, absolutely, but also one which fundamentally upsets the privacy of one-on-one communications to restrict its abuse by a few.

Glowtime Ennui ⇥ mjtsai.com

Michael Tsai has a good roundup of the generally muted responses to Apple’s annual September product presentation. This year’s bit of consumerist fun did feel overlong and tedious to me, too — like homework for understanding the lineup rather than an exciting demonstration of tomorrow’s technology available today. Apple’s employees were doing their best onscreen to show excitement. Yet it did not translate so well for me and, it would seem, many others.

Riccardo Mori:

[…] Ever since Apple switched to this pre-packaged delivery format, the novelty has worn down quickly and these events all look like sophisticated PowerPoint presentations and, worse, they all look alike. When I try to isolate one from the last dozen I’ve watched, I can’t. They’re all a blur. If you ask me, “Remember the launch of the Apple Watch?”, I’ll tell you, “Oh yeah, I do!”. If you ask me, “Remember when Jobs announced the switch to Intel processors?”, I can still picture in my head some of the slides that were used. If you ask me to remember something about an iPhone event since the launch of the iPhone 11, my mind draws a blank. iPhone 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16… Yeah, nothing.

I think Mori’s perspective about the presentation’s format is correct, but I disagree with the choice of examples. My memories of the iPhone 6S, iPhone 7, and iPhone 8 launches, for example, entirely blur together in the same way as for the recent years of iPhone launches. Routine updates tend to do that.

What is more notable is that I, like Mori, remember the Intel switch like it happened yesterday. It is not as though I obsessively rewatch it, and perhaps my sharp memory is because I first saw it when I was young and impressionable. But it meant something. Yet I could not tell you anything about the announcement of Apple silicon Macs.

Perhaps that is because that specific media event happened during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it was the first in Apple’s pre-recorded style. This format also allows Apple to jam more stuff into its presentations, which is useful with a more extensive product line. But surely these prerecorded infomercials are not made more memorable by being relatively undifferentiated pieces of high-gloss marketing.

MacOS Sequoia Shipped With the Annoying Screen Recording Permissions Dialog ⇥ developer.apple.com

I was proved wrong after I speculated last month the new monthly permissions prompt for legacy screen recording might not be in the released build of MacOS Sequoia:

I think it is possible MacOS 15.0 ships without this dialog. In part, that is because its text — “requesting to bypass the system window picker” — is technical and abstruse, written with seemingly little care for average user comprehension. I also think that could be true because it is what happened last year with MacOS 14.0. […]

It turns out this prompt, awkward language and all, made it into the public release.

Andrew Cunningham, in his review for Ars Technica, thinks this is a good idea in isolation:

The recurring screen recording permissions request is especially justifiable — it’s good for macOS to check in periodically about this kind of potentially data-scraping app, so attackers or domestic abusers can’t just install one once, click through the initial permissions requests, and have access for as long as you have the computer.

However, he dislikes the cumulative “constant barrage of requests and notifications [which] is an element of confusion and fatigue and of users clicking through boxes just to make them go away”.

Jason Snell, of Six Colors, is also frustrated:

In the name of making the Mac a safer place to be, right now Apple’s also making it a worse place to be. This is not an acceptable trade-off. It’s incumbent on Apple to make the Mac safer without compromising usability.

Put bluntly, macOS Sequoia fails this test.

In the latest beta release of MacOS 15.1, Apple added a new device management key, forceBypassScreenCaptureAlert, to override the monthly permissions request. (Thanks to Josh Calvetti.) However, my understanding is this cannot be used by more general users; it is only for managed devices.

Update: Added more context to my summary of Cunningham’s position.

Six Colors Turns Ten ⇥ sixcolors.com

Congratulations to Jason Snell and Dan Moren for ten years of Six Colors. From its beginning as a result of a painful media layoff, it is wonderful to see its continued independent success. I have read it just about daily since its launch, and have quoted Snell, Moren, and other contributors more times than I can count. I must still actively remind myself not to put a “u” in the site’s name, though.

Meta’s Red Card

It was only a couple of weeks ago when Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a letter to U.S. lawmakers about his regret in — among other things — taking officials at their word about Russian election meddling in 2020. Specifically, he expressed remorse for briefly demoting a single link to a then-breaking New York Post story involving data it had obtained from a copy of the hard drive of a laptop formerly belonging to Hunter Biden, the son of the now-U.S. president.

At the time, some U.S. officials were concerned about the possibility it was partly or wholly Russian disinformation. This was later found to be untrue. In his letter, Zuckerberg wrote “in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story” and said the company has “changed [its] policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again”.

To be clear, the laptop story was not a hoax and social media platforms ultimately erred in the decisions they made, but their policies were not inherently unfair and were reasonably cautious in their handling of the story. Nevertheless, the phrase “Hunter Biden’s laptop” is now a kind of shibboleth among those who believe there is a mass censorship campaign by disinformation researchers, intelligence agencies, and social media companies. That group includes people like Jim Jordan, to whom Zuckerberg addressed his obsequious letter. Surely, he was no longer taking U.S. officials at their word, and would be shrugging off their suggestions for platform moderation.

Right?

Kevin Collier and Phil Helsel, NBC News:

Social media giant Meta announced Monday that it is banning Russian media outlet RT, days after the Biden administration accused RT of acting as an arm of Moscow’s spy agencies.

[…]

U.S. officials allege that in Africa, RT is behind an online platform called “African Stream” but hides its role; that in Germany, it secretly runs a Berlin-based English-language site known as “Red”; and that in France, it hired a journalist in Paris to carry out “influence projects” aimed at a French-speaking audience.

As of writing, the Instagram and Threads accounts for Red are still online, but its Facebook page is not. A June report in Tagesspiegel previously connected Red to RT.

But I could not find any previous reporting connecting African Stream to Russia before U.S. officials made that claim. Even so, without corroborating evidence, Meta dutifully suspended African Stream’s presence on its platforms, which appeared to be active as of Friday.

Meta should — absolutely — do its best to curtail governments’ use of its platforms to spread propaganda and disinformation. All platforms should do so. I also hope it was provided more substantial evidence of RT’s involvement in African Stream. By that standard, it was also reasonable — if ultimately wrong — for it to minimize the spread of the Post story in 2020 based on the information it had at the time.

For all Zuckerberg’s grovelling to U.S. lawmakers, Meta ultimately gets to choose what is allowed on its platforms and what is not. It is right for it to be concerned about political manipulation. But this stuff is really hard to moderate. That is almost certainly why it is deprioritizing “political” posts — not because they do not get engagement or that the engagement they do get is heated and negative, but because it risks allegations of targeted censorship and spreading disinformation. Better, in Meta’s view, to simply restrict it all. Zuckerberg has figured out Meta is just as valuable when it does not react to criticism.

What I am worried about is the rising tension between the near-global scope of social media platforms and the parallel attempts by governments to get them to meet local expectations. Many of these platforms are based in the U.S. and have uncomfortably exported those values worldwide. Meta’s platforms are among the world’s most-used, so it is often among the most criticized. But earlier this month, X was banned in Brazil. The U.S. is seeking to ban TikTok and, based on a hearing today, it may well succeed.

It is concerning these corporations have such concentrated power, but I also do not think it makes sense to either treat them as common carriers, nor for them to be moderated in other countries as they would in the United States. I am more supportive of decentralized social software based on protocols like ActivityPub. Those can be, if anything, even more permissive and even harder to moderate. That also makes them more difficult for governments to restrict them — something which I support, but I know is not seen universally as the correct choice. They minimize the control of a single party’s decisions and, with it, help reduce the kinds of catastrophes we have seen from the most popular days of Facebook and Twitter.

Surely there will be new problems with which to contend, and perhaps it will have been better for there to be monolithic decision-makers after all. But it is right to try something different, and I am glad to see support building in different expressions. It is an exciting time for the open web.

Even so, I still wish for a good MacOS Bluesky client.

Apple’s Lawsuit Against NSO Group Has Been Dropped at the Company’s Request, but Meta’s Continues ⇥ forbiddenstories.org

Stephanie Kirchgaessner, the Guardian, in February:

NSO Group, the maker of one the world’s most sophisticated cyber weapons, has been ordered by a US court to hand its code for Pegasus and other spyware products to WhatsApp as part of the company’s ongoing litigation.

Phineas Rueckert and Karine Pfenniger, Forbidden Stories, in July:

In July 2020, about nine months after WhatsApp sued NSO in a California court, the Israeli government requested for files in NSO’s office in Israel to be seized as NSO faced a potential discovery process, the consortium found. This pre-trial procedure, typical to common law jurisdictions such as the U.S., can lead to sensitive, internal documents being produced in court through a subpoena. Israel feared that these documents, if included in the lawsuit through discovery, could reveal information about Israeli state secrets.

The state of Israel also maneuvered to keep the seizure under wraps. Israel filed a gag order on information pertaining to the seizure of files at NSO’s offices, effectively preventing Israeli media from publishing information about the seizure. This publication ban, which has been in place for more than a year, aimed to protect Israel’s national security and foreign relations. The gag order referred to the WhatsApp litigation, suggesting that it could have been issued in response to the lawsuit.

Joseph Menn, Washington Post:

Apple asked a court Friday to dismiss its three-year-old hacking lawsuit against spyware pioneer NSO Group, arguing that it might never be able to get the most critical files about NSO’s Pegasus surveillance tool and that its own disclosures could aid NSO and its increasing number of rivals.

Apple’s request (PDF) cites the co-published Guardian version of the above Forbidden Stories reporting in saying it does not believe information it would produce in this suit would be held securely, and it worries about how forthcoming NSO Group has been. It also downplays the effects of a successful suit — a win would, according to Apple, “no longer have the same impact as it would have had in 2021” because there are plenty of NSO Group competitors.

WhatsApp appears to be continuing its suit against NSO Group. On the same day Apple filed its request to dismiss its case, WhatsApp attorneys were scheduling depositions (PDF). I hope Meta does not shy away from fully litigating this. It is important to hold vendors like these accountable for the abuse of their software.

A Cartoon Butt Clenching a Bar of Soap ⇥ arstechnica.com

Nate Anderson, Ars Technica:

The great irony of online advertising these days is that it’s often claimed to be “targeted,” mining our personal and demographic information to serve us the ads that we allegedly want to see. Wouldn’t I prefer to view ads “relevant to my interests”? Maybe. But I can say with confidence that after two decades of being “extremely online” for work, the number of ads I have voluntarily and enthusiastically clicked upon must number in the low double digits.

Instead, the engines powering these ad networks continue to bombard me with two kinds of ads: 1) those that are wholly irrelevant to my interests and 2) those that are relevant to my interests because they display the exact product I once looked at in some online store. Ad targeting companies may “know a lot about me,” but they don’t know me in any truly useful way.

Ad tech companies will never have enough information about us to ensure truly reliable targeting, but they have more than enough to be a privacy nightmare unlike anything the world has seen before.

Update: This felt familiar to me. Four years ago, a similar butt-themed ad — this time for pyjamas with a flap — followed Vice writer Kate Dries around the web.

To Forget is an Ethical Act ⇥ emilygorcenski.com

Emily Gorcenski decided to prune her dormant Twitter/X account, one post at a time:

Revisiting every post came with emotional baggage. Many of the posts were cringe; several were from stupid internet arguments. Others were painful to watch, dredging up traumatic experiences or memories of loved ones who’ve passed. But reading them was also a unique and worthwhile experience. It gave me the opportunity to reflect on what I’ve learned from 10+ years of microblogging and, hopefully, has made me a better person. So that’s what this post is about: a little self-retrospective on what brought me to where I am and, by extension, a little clue of where I might be going. Here’s what I’ve learned.

I am sure there would be a lot to learn if I decided it would be worth going through my own fifteen-and-a-bit years of tweets, but I would not wish that upon my worst enemy. Kudos to Gorcenski for this thoughtful reflection.

Sponsor: ‘I Needed Days to Get Through John’s Book. The Depth Is Staggering!’ ⇥ books.by

Eric Hoffert was one former member of Apple’s Advanced Technology Group who shared insights of the inner workings of the secretive team. He joins a who’s who across 470 compelling pages in “Inventing the Future, Bit by Bit”.

The book is filled with extraordinary detail and first-hand recollections, many shared for the very first time. It covers in detail the development of A/UX, HyperCard, LisaDraw, QuickScan, QuickTime, TrueType, as well as Projects Oreo, Warhol, Bass, Carnac, Spider, YACCintosh, Touchstone, Pokey, Milwaukee, 8*24GC, and Möbius. There’s also insight into the early development of Jonathan, Lisa, and Macintosh computers.

Inventing the Future book cover

The book has received widespread acclaim from those who were there:

  • “If you’re interested in Apple’s history, this is an amazing collection of interviews and stories from those involved.”

    – Tom Gilley, former senior engineer, Apple ATG

  • “I was at Apple for the beginning of the QuickTime revolution and it is almost as if John was there with a front row seat, documenting it as it happened.”

    — Andrew Soderberg, original QuickTime team

  • “You have a great skill in ‘telling the story’ with multiple players and simultaneous events.”

    — George Cossey, former Senior Programmer, Apple.

  • “So many stories I’ll never forget and stories I never knew!”

    — Mike Potel former Head of Software Engineering, Apple.

  • “This is a ton of work. It’s great to have all the stories told!”

    — Steve Perlman former Principal Scientist, Apple.

For Pixel Envy readers use coupon code ENVY for 10% off. The price includes shipping.

An ePub version is due in 2025.

The U.S. Government Begins Making Its Case Against Google’s Ad Business ⇥ reuters.com

Google, fresh from being found to have an illegal monopoly in search, is now facing another trial over its dominance in internet advertising.

Jody Godoy, Reuters:

Prosecutors say Google has largely dominated the technological infrastructure that funds the flow of news and information on websites through more than 150,000 online ad sales every second.

Google used classic monopoly-building tactics of eliminating competitors through acquisitions, locking customers into using its products, and controlling how transactions occurred in the online ad market, Julia Tarver Wood, an attorney with the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said in an opening statement.

“Google is not here because they are big, they are here because they used that size to crush competition,” she said.

Allison Schiff, AdExchanger:

As one ad tech executive close to the trial told AdExchanger on background, learning more about Project Poirot and Project Bernanke was like discovering “all that stuff we hear about late at night at the bar was really real.”

Many people seem to have taken for granted that it is natural for a marketplace as vast and as borderless as the internet provides to be so largely dominated by a small handful of parties in any given domain. Perhaps this is actually how things ought to shake out. But perhaps it is also right for governments to test this theory. It may take a while for legal efforts to bear fruit — Google’s lawyer called it a “time capsule” — and even longer for the power of these giant businesses to wane. That does not mean it is misguided to understand whether the behaviour of giants like Apple, Google, and Meta has been legal.

Engagement Bait on Threads ⇥ businessinsider.com

Katie Notopoulos, Business Insider:

Let me ask you something: Have you noticed that engagement bait questions are taking over your Threads feed?

Ha! Got ya!

Sorry, sorry. But seriously, I’ve noticed it, too — and I have some ideas about what might be happening.

This is surprising because one would not usually associate a Meta platform with incentivizing all the wrong things. At least it is not going the way of X.

When I asked a Meta rep what the company had to say about how Threads spreads viral content, the spokesperson said: “Replies are one of many signals our systems take into account when determining what posts to recommend to people, but it’s not the most important one. What you see in your For You feed is personalized to you principally based on factors such as accounts and posts you have interacted with in the past on Threads, or how recently a post was made.”

There is no way the recency of posts makes them more visible. Threads prioritizes old posts so often it has become a joke there. Of the ten posts at the top of my home feed right now, none are newer than four hours old, and most are over twenty hours old.

Perhaps I should write something actually intelligent about this instead of snarking, so: it sure seems as though the factors which Threads prioritizes combined with its suggestions-based feeds result in this mess. This is something Notopoulos experienced as her most commented-upon posts found their way outside her typical audience and into other users’ feeds, at which point they received even more engagement. Any algorithm — including reverse-chronological sorting — is susceptible to manipulation. But the ones Meta writes somehow inevitably surface junk.

Wired’s Look at Apple’s Private Cloud Compute ⇥ wired.com

Lily Hay Newman, of Wired, interviewed Apple’s Craig Federighi about Private Cloud Compute, the company’s custom system for processing Apple Intelligence requests unable to be handled on-device. Federighi explains how it all works in more simplified language, which is helpful, but I am eager to hear from third-parties about the real privacy differences.

There is an interesting two-part media story to this article, too. First, this little error:

Apple says it is still committed to doing as much Apple Intelligence processing as possible on-device, and a brand new iPhone 16 with its A18 chip, for example, will be able to do more AI processing locally than an iPhone 15 with an A16 chip. […]

I would hope so — an iPhone 15 with an A16 chip is not compatible with Apple Intelligence. An iPhone 15 Pro and its A17 Pro chip would be a better comparison. I do not know whether this error is Apple’s or the reporter’s, but it has survived a full day since the article’s publication.

Next, this paragraph:

Those who do get access to Apple Intelligence will have the ability to do far more than they could with past versions of iOS, from taking advantage of writing tools to photo analysis. Federighi says that his family celebrated their dog’s recent birthday with an Apple Intelligence–generated Image Playground creation shared exclusively with WIRED. […]

This paragraph was edited — Wired appended a cheeky note to the article saying it “was updated with clarification on the Apple Intelligence-generated image Federighi created for his dog’s birthday and additional confirmation that she is a very good dog”. The original version read:

Those who do get access to Apple Intelligence will have the ability to do far more than they could with past versions of iOS, from writing tools to photo analysis. Federighi says that his family celebrated their dog’s recent birthday with an Apple Intelligence-generated GenMoji (viewed and confirmed to be very cute by WIRED). […]

“Cute” is subjective; I am less amused. The referenced article was also updated after it was published “to add the name of Federighi’s dog”. Who requested that change, I wonder?

A.I. Corporate Bullshit ⇥ adactio.com

Nathan J. Robinson, of Current Affairs, reviewing “Corporate Bullshit” by Nick Hanauer, Joan Walsh, and Donald Cohen last year:

Over the last several decades, we have been told that “smoking doesn’t cause cancer, cars don’t cause pollution, greedy pharmaceutical companies aren’t responsible for the crisis of opioid addiction.” Recognizing the pattern is key to spotting “corporate bullshit” in the wild, and learning how to spot it is important, because, as the authors write, the stories told in corporate propaganda are often superficially plausible: “At least on the surface, they offer a civic-minded, reasonable-sounding justification for positions that in fact are motivated entirely by self-interest.” When restaurant owners say that raising the minimum wage will drive their labor costs too high and they’ll be forced to cut back on employees or close entirely, or tobacco companies declare their product harmless, those things could be true. They just happen not to be.

Via Cory Doctorow.

Jeremy Keith:

I’ve noticed a really strange justification from people when I ask them about their use of generative tools that use large language models (colloquially and inaccurately labelled as artificial intelligence).

I’ll point out that the training data requires the wholesale harvesting of creative works without compensation. I’ll also point out the ludicrously profligate energy use required not just for the training, but for the subsequent queries.

And here’s the thing: people will acknowledge those harms but they will justify their actions by saying “these things will get better!”

This piece is making me think more about my own, minimal use of generative features. Sure, it is neat that I can get a more accurate summary of an email newsletter than a marketer will typically write, or that I can repair something in a photo without so much manual effort. But this ease is only possible thanks to the questionable ethics of A.I. training.

Jake Evans, ABC News:

Facebook has admitted that it scrapes the public photos, posts and other data of Australian adult users to train its AI models and provides no opt-out option, even though it allows people in the European Union to refuse consent.

[…]

Ms Claybaugh [Meta’s global privacy policy director] added that accounts of people under 18 were not scraped, but when asked by Senator Sheldon whether public photos of his own children on his account would be scraped, Ms Claybaugh acknowledged they would.

This is not ethical. Meta has the ability to more judiciously train its systems, but it will not do that until it is pressured. Shareholders will not take on that role. They have been enthusiastically boosting any corporation with an A.I. announcement. Neither will the corporations themselves, which have been jamming these features everywhere — there are floating toolbars, floating panels, balloons, callouts, and glowing buttons that are hard to ignore even if you want to.

On the iPhone 16 Pro’s Cameras ⇥ aows.co

Adrian Vila:

I said it a year ago, and I still think Apple made a mistake with the 120mm lens. The current lineup of 13mm, 24mm, and 120mm leaves a huge gap between the main and telephoto lenses, missing out on key and very useful focal lengths for everyday situations. I’d rather see a 75mm lens on a 48MP sensor, with the ability to reach 120mm using the fancy cropping the main sensor has.

Last year was my iPhone purchasing year. I went from the 52mm-equivalent “2×” camera available on the 12 Pro to a 77mm-equivalent “3×” camera. Even though I understand the difference between those two focal lengths, I was still surprised by how much of a radical change it was. Relatively tight interior spaces, like those in my house, became even tighter; food photography required me to stand up and back away from the table.

For my purposes, I agree with Vila — the 77mm-equivalent is most often about as tight as I want to go with my iPhone. Perhaps it makes sense to give people two extreme lenses in the ultra-wide and 120mm-equivalent “5×” telephoto; maybe the in-between focal lengths are just too subtle for some people. There are use cases for this more extreme telephoto, like at concerts or getting some nice compression in cities. But the iPhone is now missing a perfect focal length for portraits, and that seems like a glaring omission.

Welcome Back, 42 Millimetre Apple Watch ⇥ mastodon.social

David Smith:

An interesting point of comparison. The Series 10 “Small” (42mm) Apple Watch is very nearly the same physical footprint of the “Large” (42mm) Series 1 Apple Watch. Though obviously with a much larger screen given the rounded shape and drastic reduction in bezel thickness over the last decade.

These dimensions are remarkably close: the smallest Series 10 is 0.4mm narrower and 0.8mm thinner than the largest Series 1. Even commentators of the original Apple watch — like Benjamin Clymer and Serenity Caldwell — said they would feel comfortable with either, and the larger model did not feel too big.

Amazon Says It Will Keep Selling Taxi Signs Because It Is Not a Crime ⇥ cbc.ca

Sophia Harris, CBC News:

The taxi scam has several variations but typically ends the same way: the victim pays with a debit card, then the scammer secretly steals it and hands the victim a similar but fake card. Shortly thereafter, money disappears from the victim’s account.

[…]

CBC News bought a taxi sign from Amazon for $35. It has a magnetic strip on the bottom, so it easily sticks to the top of a car.

[…]

But Amazon told Way — and CBC News — the signs will remain on its site, because the company isn’t breaking any rules.

I cannot think of a legitimate reason someone would purchase a taxi sign off Amazon.

Just because something is not a crime, it does not mean it is okay. Amazon, like most other massive corporations, tends to argue it can regulate itself and does not need government intervention. Fine — prove it.

Camera Control on the iPhone 16 Line ⇥ apple.com

Apple:

Camera Control — a result of thoughtful hardware and software integration — elevates the camera experience on the iPhone 16 lineup. It is packed with innovation, including a tactile switch that powers the click experience, a high-precision force sensor that enables the light press gesture, and a capacitive sensor that allows for touch interactions. […]

Later this year, Camera Control will unlock visual intelligence to help users learn about objects and places faster than ever before. […]

Nilay Patel and Alison Johnson, the Verge:

I ran into Apple’s Phil Schiller, and we chatted briefly about the Camera Control button. I wanted to know about the balance of using the button as a classic camera control versus the beginning of the camera itself becoming an input method for Apple Intelligence, and he told me that it was really both, which is fascinating.

The positioning of this question is what is fascinating to me — far more so than Schiller’s confirmation. Apple could have added a hardware camera button at any time in the iPhone’s history. It did not until it wanted to use the camera for things not directly concerning photography and videography. Oh, it has those features too, of course, but it also makes the buttons down the right-hand side of this year’s iPhone line into dedicated Apple Intelligence launchers.

The third-party case story is going to be interesting. Apple’s own cases have a button with “sapphire crystal, coupled to a conductive layer” to create a passthrough experience. Launch-day third-party options, like those from Otterbox, appear to simply have a cutout for that button. Will Apple sell accessory makers the dedicated button part, I wonder? I doubt it, but you never know.

Sponsor: The Stories Behind Apple’s Famed Advanced Technology Group by John Buck ⇥ books.by

Professional editor John Buck spoke to former members of Apple’s Advanced Technology Group to gain an insight into the inner workings of a secretive team that imagined Apple’s future.

The result is a compelling 470-page book called “Inventing the Future, Bit by Bit”.

Inventing the Future book cover

I was at Apple for the beginning of the QuickTime revolution and it is almost as if John was there with a front row seat, documenting it as it happened.

– Andrew Soderberg, original QuickTime team

The book is filled with extraordinary detail and first-hand recollections, many shared for the very first time. It covers in detail the development of A/UX, HyperCard, LisaDraw, QuickScan, QuickTime, TrueType, and QuickDraw 24/32 as well as Projects Oreo, Warhol, Bass, Carnac, Spider, YACCintosh, Touchstone, Pokey, PDM, Milwaukee, 8*24GC, and Möbius. There’s also insight into the early development of Jonathan, Lisa, and Macintosh computers.

The book has received widespread acclaim from those who were there:

  • “If you’re interested in Apple’s history, this is an amazing collection of interviews and stories from those involved.”

    – Tom Gilley, former senior engineer, Apple ATG

  • “You have a great skill in ‘telling the story’ with multiple players and simultaneous events.”

    — George Cossey, former Senior Programmer, Apple.

  • “So many stories I’ll never forget and stories I never knew!”

    — Mike Potel former Head of Software Engineering, Apple.

  • “This is a ton of work. It’s great to have all the stories told!”

    — Steve Perlman former Principal Scientist, Apple.

For Pixel Envy readers use coupon code ENVY for 10% off. The price includes shipping.

An ePub version is due in late 2024 Update: The ePub version is now due in 2025.