Month: June 2021

Open Rates and Mail’s Market Share

Apple’s announcement earlier this week that it was turfing analytics for email opens has made quite a few people mad. I think their concerns are misplaced. They should be less worried that changes to Mail across Apple’s platforms are going to mess up their statistics, and more concerned that their analytics were wrong all along.

Let’s start with Joshua Benton of Nieman Lab:

These images are the only way newsletter senders know if their emails are actually being opened. And that open rate is an important part of how newsletter publishers sell ads — as well as how they judge the relative success or failure of the email.

Email open rates are notoriously unreliable. Some sources will say that open rates are underreported; others will say that they are way too high. That is because open rates are determined by the number of times that a tracking pixel in an email is downloaded. If users have images turned off, it will not be triggered; if a user’s email client automatically goes to the next message when an email is deleted, it may register as the email being opened again and again.

That explains statistics like the ones quoted by Benton:

There have long been ways to block tracking pixels, but they were mostly only used by nerds like me; this is Apple Mail, the dominant platform for email in the U.S. and elsewhere. According to the most recent market-share numbers from Litmus, for May 2021, 93.5% of all email opens on mobile come in Apple Mail on iPhones or iPads. On desktop, Apple Mail on Mac in responsible for 58.4% of all email opens.

Those numbers are crazy high — much higher than Apple’s device market share because Apple users spend a lot more time receiving and reading email than users on Android, Windows, or Linux. Overall, 61.7% of all emails are opened in Apple Mail, on one device or another.2 So even a small change in how it handles email has a huge impact on the newsletter industry writ large.

I find these numbers derived from hundreds of millions of email opens literally impossible to believe. These are from a worldwide report, but iOS market share does not exceed the mid-60% range in any country, and only accounts for about one out of every four smartphones sold. Yet, according to Litmus, the default Mail app accounts for well over nine out of every ten email opens in a mobile email app. Do Android users — of which there are many more of around the world — simply never check their email on their phones? I doubt it. Litmus also reports that Microsoft Outlook, the ubiquitous email client of offices worldwide, has only 40% of the desktop email client market, far below Mail’s 58%. But Windows still has a 76% share of the desktop PC market compared to MacOS’ 17%, a ratio of about 4:1 that is mirrored in Wikimedia’s analytics — and Apple’s Mail app is not available on Windows.

Litmus acknowledges a mesasuring error in its recent stats, stating that Gmail may be underrepresented. It is unclear whether that is all Gmail sources, just Gmail on the web, or just Gmail mobile apps. But mobile email was apparently dominated by iPhones and iPads to a similar degree for all of 2020. These sky-high iPhone figures are not an anomaly in Litmus’ data, and they remain completely disproportionate to actual iPhone market share.

The footnote in the second paragraph is a disclaimer from Benton that email client market share statistics are unreliable. No kidding. But these numbers are so clearly off the mark that I do not think they should be used until Litmus can provide a clear explanation of why iPhones are so overrepresented. Benton’s explanation makes no sense; since when is there a dearth of email-using Windows and Android users? Alex Williams’ theory gets closer to the truth, I think: all of Google’s Gmail clients may simply report “Gmail”. The fact is that these numbers may never make sense because automated email analytics simply are not very good.

In the grand scheme of things, this may be a small point, but it bothers me to see these numbers being cited by Benton and approvingly quoted by Casey Newton. The signal they should send is not that something like 90% of mobile audiences will be unmeasurable, but that these analytics never should have been used by marketers and email administrators.

At WWDC 2021, Apple Again Showed That Accessibility Truly Is for Everyone ⇥ forbes.com

Steven Aquino, Forbes:

Many of the new functionalities Apple announced this week at the company’s annual WWDC keynote have serious ramifications for accessibility. Study Apple carefully long enough and it’s not hard to understand why; not only is this a reflection of their institutional commitment to the disability community, it also underscores the idea that accessibility, conceptually and pragmatically, is not a domain solely for disabled people. Although accessibility software should (and always will) prioritize people with disabilities first and foremost, you needn’t have a disability to reap benefits from larger text on your iPhone. Accessibility is inclusive of everyone, regardless of ability.

Following last month’s unveiling of new discrete accessibility features, Apple on Monday showed off a slew of mainstream, marquee features spanning Apple’s five operating systems—iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, and tvOS—that are eminently useful as de-facto accessibility features, whether you’re disabled or not.

Great roundup of features that are unfortunately often seen as marginal ease-of-use improvements for many, but are critically important for those with accessibility needs. Live Text is one of those features that I know I am going to use often to convert written notes into digital documents.

Lossless and Spatial Audio Launch on Apple Music ⇥ whathifi.com

Becky Roberts, What Hi-Fi?:

Last month, Apple announced that Dolby Atmos-powered spatial audio tracks would soon be coming to its music streaming service alongside CD-quality and hi-res lossless audio for no additional cost and, after a staggered rollout over the course of the day, both features are now live (at least they are for us).

Spatial audio with Dolby Atmos is designed to deliver surround sound and 3D audio via your headphones – to put “multidimensional sound and clarity” between your ears. This experience works with Apple’s AirPods, as well as any headphones. That’s right, Apple Music’s spatial audio tracks will play on all headphones (and here’s how to enable it).

You can enable spatial audio for all headphones by going to Settings, Music, and choosing “Always On” from the Dolby Atmos menu instead of the default “Automatic” setting.

Micah Singleton, of Billboard, interviewed Eddy Cue about the launch of these features:

And the analogy to that is obviously the first time you ever saw HD on television: you knew which one was better because it was obvious. And we’ve been missing that in audio for a long time. There really hasn’t been anything that’s been substantial. We’ll talk about lossless and other things, but ultimately, there’s not enough difference.

[…]

So we went after the labels and are going to the artists and educating them on [Dolby Atmos]. There’s a lot of work to be done because we have, obviously, tens of millions of songs. This is not a simple “take-the-file that you have in stereo, processes through this software application and out comes Dolby Atmos.” This requires somebody who’s a sound engineer, and the artist to sit back and listen, and really make the right calls and what the right things to do are. It’s a process that takes time, but it’s worth it.

I admire Cue’s honesty about lossless audio in this interview. I know that he’s doing so in part to market Apple’s implementation of spatial audio as a differentiator, but it really is a much bigger deal than lossless. I can tell the difference between lossy and lossless audio. If lossless audio was a more expensive Apple Music tier, I would not pay for it; I would, however, pay for spatial audio. It is really good when done well.

I was skeptical of marketing claims like these. There have been a handful of attempts at mixing music in better-than-stereo for decades, and they have all sort of failed.

A handful of records came out in quadrophonic sound in the 1970s, including Miles Davis’ “Bitches Brew” and Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon”. In the 2000s, there was a slew of records re-released in a 5.1 surround sound mix on “super audio” CDs: Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours”, Nine Inch Nails’ “The Downward Sprial”, and Donald Fagen’s “The Nightfly”, an audiophile favourite.

As of writing, not one of those records is available in Dolby Atmos on Apple Music. I would have assumed that a conversion from surround sound to Dolby Atmos would be easier than converting from stereo, but I guess I guessed wrong.

Spatial audio reminds me more of 3D movies than it does going from SD to HD: when it is used with some finesse, it is terrific, but it can be overdone. Migos’ “Stir Fry” sounds incredible, as does YG’s “Still Brazy” and Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” — the song; the rest of the album has not yet been mixed in Dolby Atmos, but I cannot wait to hear “Right On” with a more spacious mix.

Other songs take it a little too far. Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “Gotta Have It” is bananas in Dolby Atmos. Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop” almost sounds like a different song entirely, and Disclosure’s “Latch” sounds constrained, like pressure has built up in my ears. Other tracks simply are not mixed very well; I do not think Blink 182’s “What’s My Age Again?” benefits from Atmos.

The genres that seem to gain the most from Dolby Atmos are classical and jazz recordings. This entire performance of Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 and this one of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 are available in Atmos and they will transport you. It is incredible. I recommend them both; try toggling Atmos on and off in Settings to hear the difference.

This first batch of tracks has me excited for more. Maybe this is the year we will finally get the Nine Inch Nails’ “The Fragile” in the surround mix it deserves. I would love to hear Travis Scott’s entire psychedelic catalogue in spatial audio, too.

As the Pandemic Subsides in the U.S., Companies Subsidized by Venture Capital Are Raising Prices ⇥ nytimes.com

Kevin Roose, New York Times:

Profits are good for investors, of course. And while it’s painful to pay subsidy-free prices for our extravagances, there’s also a certain justice to it. Hiring a private driver to shuttle you across Los Angeles during rush hour should cost more than $16, if everyone in that transaction is being fairly compensated. Getting someone to clean your house, do your laundry or deliver your dinner should be a luxury, if there’s no exploitation involved. The fact that some high-end services are no longer easily affordable by the merely semi-affluent may seem like a worrying development, but maybe it’s a sign of progress.

It is hard to see the gig economy as anything other than exploitative, but Roose is right: these services are made somewhat more affordable than concierge services for the rich by more distributed labour, but they are not the middle class perks they have positioned themselves to be. Unfortunately, while investors for Uber and Lyft have long been content to subsidize the pirate taxi industry, actual taxi drivers have found themselves struggling to make ends meet. This gambling has so distorted the market that, until pandemic restrictions began taking effect early last year, there were so many drivers for Uber and Lyft that they, too, often earned below minimum wage.

You can see similar effects across the board. Airbnb is one reason why it has become harder to find apartments for people who live in bigger cities, and its popularity is underwritten by investment money that has kept prices lower than a typical hotel room. Food delivery companies bleed small restaurants of their profit margin, take huge venture capital investments, and still manage to lose money.

All of these companies, according to Roose, have been raising their prices to match or exceed those of similar non-subsidized services, as I wrote two years ago. But that does not undo the disruption to jobs and livelihoods by venture capital subsidies that created these predatory pricing models to begin with.

Craig Federighi on the Many Privacy Features Introduced at WWDC ⇥ fastcompany.com

After a bit of a bummer post — sorry — I wanted to highlight a few things that impressed me after today’s WWDC opener, beginning with privacy features.

Shoshana Wodinsky, Gizmodo:

First up is Mail Privacy Protection, which is a new tab in Apple’s Mail app that’s meant to do what the name implies: letting users decide what data the program shares. Under this new tab, users can choose to hide their IP address and location details from email senders, not unlike the recent iOS 14 updates that keep apps from slurping up details like precise location and a phone’s mobile ad ID. As an added benefit, Apple says its new mailbox settings will keep people from tracking whether you opened the email they sent you and when that email was opened.

This is an interesting twist on the tracker blocking features of some other email apps. But instead of trying to block them, the Mail app in iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and MacOS Monterey will download everything in every message, even when you do not open a message. And it will do so indirectly, “routed through multiple proxy servers”, in Apple’s words. It appears that marketers will still get a very approximate idea of your location — Apple says that it is at a “region” level — but will not know if you did or did not open a message.

This is pretty clever. Any image can theoretically be used as a tracker, so it is a constant cat-and-mouse game for apps like Hey to find and block while still displaying relevant pictures. This is the “I am Spartacus” gambit: instead of fighting the trackers, this technique embraces them all, rendering them useless for understanding open rates or tracking any user.

Marketers, take note.

Wodinsky:

On top of the inbox updates, the company also announced new “app privacy reports,” which will surface more detailed intel about how non-Apple apps are tracking your activity across your device. Similar to Safari privacy reports, these will break down which apps on your device are accessing what kind of data, and how much of that data gets sent to specific third-party trackers. As part of that report, users will also get an overview of how often a given app accessed your microphone, camera, or precise location over the past week. Think of it as a quick list to shame the worst privacy offenders on your phone.

In a preemptive counterstrike, Facebook announced today that it would begin showing creators a breakdown of how much of their earnings from in-app purchases are going to Apple and Google. Tag, you’re it.

Wodinsky:

Apple introduced a slew of new features for iCloud on the privacy front. First, the company announced Private Relay, a new VPN service built into iCloud that will let users browsing on Safari completely encrypt their traffic. Apple says this setting ensures that “no one between the user and the website they are visiting can access and read” any data sent over Private Relay, not even Apple or the user’s network provider. […]

This comes with iCloud Plus, which is Apple’s new name for all of its paid iCloud plans. iCloud Private Relay does not allow you to pick a different country and only works in Safari; you should not think of it as a replacement for a VPN in many circumstances. As such, it should play nicely with personal and corporate VPNs.

iCloud Private Relay will not be available in several countries, including Belarus, China, the Philippines, and Saudi Arabia.

Michael Grothaus of Fast Company was briefed on these features before today’s keynote, and spoke with Craig Federighi about them:

Federighi explains that governments are often reactive when it comes to technology – and there’s no way for them to get around that. At least on the consumer front, companies do most of the innovating. They’re also the ones who find new ways to exploit data. So governments can put rules around technologies or processes only after they’ve become a problem. Those rules often lag far behind the speed of such innovations. That’s why even if governments were more proactive, it would still fall on companies such as Apple to develop new privacy-enhancing technologies.

That being said, Federighi believes that “there’s absolutely a role where government can look at what companies like Apple are doing and say, ‘You know, that thing is such a universal good – such an important recognition of customer rights – and Apple has proven it’s possible. So maybe it should be something that becomes a more of a requirement.’ But that may tend to lag [Apple’s privacy] innovation and creation of some new thing that they can evaluate and decide to make essentially the law.”

I am sure regulation will not preemptively correct every privacy ill, but surely there are good reasons that the data broker industry is uniquely capable and creepy in the United States compared to other developed countries. Privacy problems are not a U.S.-only problem, but they are a U.S.-mostly problem — and, because so much personal information of users worldwide is stored on servers controlled by U.S. entities under U.S. laws, we are all sucked into the failure of the U.S. to legislate.

iOS and iPadOS 15 ⇥ apple.com

Let’s get something out of the way first: I am a dummy, and you should not do what I do every year and install the very first betas of the very newest operating systems on your only devices as soon as those builds are available. From six hours of use, I can assure you that these first builds of iOS and iPadOS 15 are pretty rocky and you should probably avoid them, even if you install betas every year.

So, with that done, I wanted to write a little about the first day of WWDC and, particularly, the iPad.

This year feels lower-key, but perhaps in a good way, like a Mavericks-era MacOS situation. Many of the headlining features feel like things that are “finally” here: better notifications with more granular controls, iPad multitasking that doesn’t require so many spells and incantations, FaceTime screen sharing, and last year’s iOS 14 features making their way to the iPad. I point that out not to diminish their impact. If anything, based on how often I have heard and read requests for these features, I imagine they will be important to many users. I am certainly looking forward to all of those enhancements becoming absorbed by my day-to-day use.

At the same time, the big headlining updates for iPadOS emphasize to me that it still is not a high-priority product for Apple. You can certainly see the usability enhancements in this update as progress; literally any visible onscreen elements for multitasking could be considered an improvement over the past system. But you can also see that the iPhone — and even the Apple Watch — have received meaningful changes every year, while multitasking on the iPad has been screaming for fixes the entire time with only begrudging progress. The changes this year — which involve a “⋯” menu with different windowing options, and being able to create spaces from the App Switcher, home screen, and App Library — are all steps forward, but only partially resolve its least intuitive characteristics. Or look at how widgets could be placed anywhere on the iOS 14 home screen, but it took a full year for that functionality to come to the iPad. Translate is yet another example of an app that was on the iPhone for a full year before the iPad.

Perhaps I am being especially critical because this year’s M1-powered iPad Pro and even last year’s A14-powered iPad Air suggested bigger leaps in capability than we have seen so far. There do not appear to be any features enabled by these more powerful models. Even app development in Swift Playgrounds appears to be available on older devices — I applaud device longevity, but I hope we do not have to wait four or five years for iPadOS to begin taking advantage of the power of the M1.

And perhaps I am the jerk here because, while last year’s WWDC was planned and executed remotely, the software updates that were announced were at an advanced stage of development when Apple’s developers began working from home. Development for this year’s updates was conducted almost entirely from home, so it is reasonable to think that it would be more difficult, particularly given the psychological toll of this pandemic.

I just love the iPad so much — in theory. I am writing this post on one, which is not atypical. Even after today, it continues to have groundbreaking hardware that is constrained by its software. That very same sentence has been applicable after every WWDC for years. I would not like to write it again.

Flexibility Is a Vital Component of the Future Happiness of Workers ⇥ reverttosaved.com

Craig Grannell:

For Apple specifically, the company used to say ‘think different’. It could leverage that approach and lead a new way of how major corporations work rather than being so prescriptive. And while Apple shifting to three days in/two days out is a big cultural shift, it has an opportunity to do more. If your company has been by every measure a massive success during the pandemic, then it has space to be more radical, not less, regarding workers.

Retaining high-performing employees who are committed to Apple’s goals remains one of the highest-priority concerns at the company. In 2019, several notable employees exited; just this week, Bloomberg reported the departure of “several” managers of Apple’s car project to other companies. Those are just the most visible employees, too, who are less affected by a requirement to work in an office even part-time.

I do not know that there is a particular trend of Apple losing employees. I do not have any information on attrition trends. But I am hopeful that Apple — or any company — will respond quickly if it begins losing good and long-term employees purely because of what they see as a mediocre remote work arrangement.

Remote work does not come at no cost. If work-from-home arrangements for high-salary jobs like these become really popular over the next, say, five years, it seems likely that it will distort real estate markets in places with lower living costs, and not just in developed countries.

Ransomware Is Increasingly Impacting Day-to-Day Life ⇥ washingtonpost.com

Heather Kelly, Washington Post:

The recent spate of high-profile ransomware incidents is exactly what cybersecurity professionals have been warning about for years. But it’s partially the impact on everyday people — far from the executive suites, cybersecurity companies, or government agencies that regularly fret about the criminal enterprise — that has made the risk more visible. The ripple effects of ransomware can result in everything from mild inconvenience to people losing their lives, and it’s only increased in frequency during the pandemic.

“It’s not only that it’s getting worse, but it’s the worst possible time for it to happen,” said Robert Lee, chief executive of Dragos, an industrial cybersecurity firm. He says on average, there are likely 20 to 30 big ransomware cases happening behind the scenes in addition to the ones making headlines.

Perhaps the most striking thing about this article is that there is only a passing mention of Bitcoin — and nothing about cryptocurrency more generally — even though these attacks are only possible because of cryptocurrency.

Stephen Diehl (at the time I am writing this, Diehl’s post is unavailable for some reason, but it is on the Wayback Machine):

The singular reason why these attacks are even possible is due entirely to rise of cryptocurrency. And is entirely enabled by this one technology, it could not exist otherwise.

[…]

Cryptocurrency is the channel by which all the illicit funds in this epidemic flow. And it is the one channel that the US Government has complete power to reign in and regulate. The free flow of money from US banks to cryptocurrency exchanges is the root cause and needs to halt. Cryptocurrencies are almost entirely used for illicit activity and investment frauds, and on the whole have no upside for society at large while also having unbounded downside and massive negative externalities.

There are good examples of cryptocurrency being used as a workaround for restrictive government policies, in much the same way as encrypted messaging. But the incentives for bad actors to abuse financial systems are so much greater.

The Apple Watch’s Place ⇥ gq.com

Benjamin Clymer, founder of Hodinkee, in a column for GQ:

I have a confession to make: I, one of the foremost evangelists for mechanical watches, wear an Apple Watch. I don’t brag about it or post it on social media, but I strap on my Apple Watch three or four times a week, making it one of the most trusty pieces in my entire collection.

Interesting perspective. I wonder how many people have found the opposite to be true: the people whose first ever watch purchase or first over, say, $200, was an Apple Watch, which moved them to invest in a small collection of analogue watches.

Apple Employees Are Writing Lengthy Internal Letters That Keep Getting Leaked ⇥ theverge.com

Zoë Schiffer, the Verge:

A week after The Verge published the García Martínez letter, a group of Muslim employees at Apple penned a note calling for the company to release a statement in support of Palestine. When Tim Cook didn’t respond, the letter was leaked to The Verge.

It is interesting to me that these letters, and another about Apple’s back-to-office plan, were leaked specifically to the Verge. They were not sent to a labour reporter at the more aggressive Vice, or to a business publication like Bloomberg. Curious.

The two letters, and their leaks, are signs of a slow cultural shift at Apple. Employees, once tight-lipped about internal problems, are now joining a wave of public dissent that’s roiling Silicon Valley. Employees say this is partly because Apple’s typical avenues for reporting don’t work for big cultural issues. They also note the company rolled out Slack in 2019, allowing workers to find and organize with one another.

[…]

Public organizing, particularly on social media, has been enormously successful in Silicon Valley, allowing workers to wrestle power away from management. At Google, it’s led the company to end forced arbitration for all full-time employees. At Amazon, it’s spawned massive unionizing campaigns. Now, it seems to be Apple’s turn. “Suddenly at Apple, as everywhere else, managers can only stand back and watch as workers reshape the bounds of what will be permitted at work,” wrote Casey Newton, founder and editor of Platformer.

The Google and Amazon examples Schiffer cites were both truly organized in public and on social media. But all three Apple letters — so far — are ostensibly for internal audiences only, though that façade is crumbling.

I have to wonder if this recent spate of letters has actually made a difference. The one asking for a reconsideration of hiring policies cost Antonio García Martínez a job, but it is unclear whether there have been any changes to recruiting or interviewing. Apple and its leadership did not post any statements in defense of Palestine, either.

While it is too soon to know whether there will be any changes to Apple’s plan to bring employees back to the office for 60% or more of a workweek, I do not imagine this will make a dent. I know that some people will find this a bummer — the past year has proved that many people can do many jobs without being anywhere near an office. But many people were hired at Apple with the understanding that they would be working at the company’s buildings. This is not a case of Apple reducing the amount of time working from home; it is an increase from being required to be in the office full-time. This pandemic has been difficult and traumatic, but it is not a permanent state. I do not think it is realistic to expect everything to go back to the way it was before this pandemic, but it is equally unlikely that our generally rich and privileged lives will be unrecognizable because of it.

I hope this does not come across as indifferent. Many people have lost family and friends to this pandemic, and countless more have been impacted in ways little and large — including me.

Steven Aquino says that Apple has long been accommodating for people with disabilities. I have also heard several stories of Apple being surprisingly flexible for people who cannot work in Cupertino. That is clearly not the case for all people who wish to work remotely, but there are satellite Apple offices in dozens of cities that you would not immediately think of. Employees are, however, working in offices.

Apple’s arrangement is limiting, as are most jobs. There are plenty of companies that I would love to work for that would require me to relocate, and that is frustrating but fine. There are also many remote positions I could consider at other companies if I were looking for another job and wanted to work from home. If these requirements mean that Apple begins to bleed too much talent to more remote-friendly companies, it will no doubt adjust its policies. For now, so long as it is safe, this is entirely what I expected — and, I think, what most people should have anticipated.

Steve Jobs’ iPhone SDK Letter Draft ⇥ twitter.com

Steve Jobs sent his draft of the public letter announcing the creation of a native software SDK for the iPhone on a Sunday night to Scott Forstall and Phil Schiller. It was posted on Apple’s website the following Wednesday. Note the succinct feedback, which has been seen before in other emails from Forstall and from Bertrand Serlet.

One gets the feeling that Jobs did not appreciate people wasting his time with milquetoast nonsense.

TikTok Updates Its U.S. Privacy Policy to Begin Collecting Biometric Data ⇥ techcrunch.com

TikTok has updated its privacy policies several times already this year, with improvements for users under 16 and removing the ability to opt out of targeted advertising. But a new statement this week is particularly concerning:

We may collect biometric identifiers and biometric information as defined under US laws, such as faceprints and voiceprints, from your User Content. Where required by law, we will seek any required permissions from you prior to any such collection.

Though I imagine those who are concerned about TikTok’s connections to the Chinese government or who see it as surveillance software will find this more nefarious than, say, I do, I still think it is pretty alarming. There is no good reason — not one — for a lighthearted social media app to uniquely identify people based on unchangeable physical characteristics, even for something as apparently innocuous as tagging.

Sarah Perez of TechCrunch reports that this policy change may have a more sedate origin:

It is worth noting, however, that the new disclosure about biometric data collection follows a $92 million settlement in a class action lawsuit against TikTok, originally filed in May 2020, over the social media app’s violation of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. The consolidated suit included more than 20 separate cases filed against TikTok over the platform’s collection and sharing of the personal and biometric information without user consent. Specifically, this involved the use of facial filter technology for special effects.

In that context, TikTok’s legal team may have wanted to quickly cover themselves from future lawsuits by adding a clause that permits the app to collect personal biometric data.

The plaintiffs in that suit allege a creepy scheme to mine everything created through the app, including draft videos that were not published. This biometric data collection clause may be related to face mask filters and effects. But, if that is the case, why are those features available elsewhere while this clause is U.S.-only? And, given that this clause is so broad, is it reasonable to think that an ad-supported platform will continue to use it solely for fun filters in perpetuity? The answer to that last one seems obvious: rather than minimizing data collection, TikTok is giving itself latitude.

By the way, TikTok has three different privacy policies: one for the U.S., one for Switzerland, the U.K., and the European Economic Area, and one for everywhere else. Comparing these policies raises many questions. For example, the U.S. one seems to permit far greater collection than the other two. Is that because it is described more comprehensively, or is it because the U.S. has virtually none of the national privacy standards that are common elsewhere?

In the rest of the world, TikTok says it is allowed to collect many different types of behavioural information, including “app and file names and types, keystroke patterns or rhythms” in addition to things like IP addresses and device attributes, but that is not so different from many other social media apps. It also says that it collects “the existence and location within an image of face and body features and attributes” in order to, among other things, “enable special video effects”, which explains why it is able to offer face filters without collecting “biometric” data. This language does not appear in the more permissive U.S. policy; it also does not appear in the stricter policy for Europe and the U.K., but a quick scan of top British TikTok users indicates that face-based filters are available there, too.

It seems that the greater privacy protections afforded to non-U.S. countries are not prohibitive. My American readers should ask themselves why lawmakers are failing them when so many industries are eager participants in anti-privacy practices.

Twitter Launches Paid Subscription First in Canada and Australia ⇥ blog.twitter.com

Sara Beykpour and Smita Mittal Gupta of Twitter:

We’ve heard from the people that use Twitter a lot, and we mean a lot, that we don’t always build power features that meet their needs. Well, that’s about to change. We took this feedback to heart, and are developing and iterating upon a solution that will give the people who use Twitter the most what they are looking for: access to exclusive features and perks that will take their experience on Twitter to the next level.

Twitter calls this tier Twitter Blue, which is a great name but with a feature set that I do not find compelling. I imagine many heavy users would pay ten bucks a month for no ads and a chronological timeline. Heck, I know many people would pay for editable tweets. Gareth suggested that it could be an identity verification mechanism, too, and better search functionality would help journalists immensely.

Alas, the initial feature set is a bit underwhelming. There are folders for bookmarks, a better thread reader, some different icons and themes — odd for a product named after a specific colour — and the closest thing to editable tweets is an undo button that disappears after a few seconds. Twitter says that it will add more features over time. I certainly hope so. I would love to pay for Twitter, but this is a surprisingly weak offering.

Spotify Highlights Individual Music Tastes With ‘Only You’ ⇥ newsroom.spotify.com

Spotify’s newsroom:

While you’ll have to wait a few more months for Wrapped and the songs and podcasts that soundtracked your 2021, Only You is all about celebrating how you listen. Fans can head to Spotify.com/OnlyYou to enjoy a Wrapped-esque shareable experience made especially for them.

A while ago, after paying for both Spotify and Apple Music for a few years, I decided to go all-in on one. And, owing to Spotify’s poorer local library support, I stuck with Apple Music. I am kind of regretting that decision because of Spotify’s superior recommendations, plus features like these. If Spotify improves its local library support to be on par with Music, I would probably switch.

China Takes Taiwan’s Place as Apple’s Biggest Source of Suppliers ⇥ asia.nikkei.com

Apple earlier this week issued its 2021 supply chain report card and supplier list (PDF). With increasing coverage of the Chinese government’s alleged genocide of Uyghurs, these reports have attained a new level of scrutiny, particularly as some of Apple’s suppliers have been implicated in accusations of forced labour.

Cheng Ting-Fang and Lauly Li of Nikkei analyzed this year’s supply chain list and found that Chinese suppliers are, for the first time, more plentiful than any other country, taking Taiwan’s place:

Jeff Pu, a senior analyst with GF Securities, said China has a world-class electronics parts and assembly supply chain thanks to years of cultivation not only by Apple but also Chinese smartphone makers such as Huawei and Oppo.

“The only electronic components that China cannot yet catch up on are semiconductors,” Pu said. “The growth of China’s suppliers on [the] Apple Supplier List also shows that China contained the COVID-19 pandemic well in 2020.”

Cost and quality are the main reasons Apple has stuck with the country despite political pressure, according to Eric Tseng, chief analyst with Isaiah Research.

Merely counting suppliers is an imperfect analysis, since a company like Foxconn, which assembles many of Apple’s products, is a single supplier counted the same as a print shop for its documentation. One of those suppliers is clearly more valuable to Apple than the other. Still, this is a worthwhile look at Apple’s deepening relationship with businesses in China as that country tightens its nationalist policies.

I deliberately have not written about that report last month in the Information pointing fingers at seven suppliers that have ties to forced Uyghur labour. One reason is because I do not have a subscription to the Information, so I cannot read the report in full and must rely on summaries elsewhere, like Katie Canales’ at Insider.

The second reason is because I am, frankly, lost for words and struggle to understand what I may contribute. Forced labour of any kind is indefensible. If Apple is not ensuring that its supply chains are fully free of complicity in alleged genocide, that is an ethical failure of unimaginable human suffering and, from a business perspective, will stain the company’s reputation forever.

What the Information’s report revealed most of all is that the offenders are a couple of layers deep in the supply chain. From Canales’ summary:

Avary Holding, which makes circuit boards for Apple devices in the Chinese city of Huai’an, added 400 Xinjiang labor workers to its workforce between 2019 and 2020 at one of its factories, per the report. Avary denied those claims to The Information. And Shenzhen Deren Electronic, which has made antennas and internal cables for Apple, has taken in 1,000 labor workers from Xinjiang, according to the report.

The outlet also viewed a video produced by AcBel Polytech, one of the suppliers, that shows how the company used forced labor from Xinjiang workers sometime between late 2018 and early 2019.

AcBel produces power supplies. According to Canales, none of the manufacturers cited in the report are unique to Apple.

What this highlights is that the final assembly stage only represents a fraction of the people responsible for all of the pieces inside a MacBook Pro or a set of AirPods. Moving iPhone manufacturing to the United States, as many commentators and policymakers routinely cry for, would not correct any of the ills in this report because Shenzhen Deren Electronic would probably still be making antennas and cables.

It is hard to tell if things are changing. This Nikkei analysis implies that Apple’s relationship with Chinese manufacturers is deepening, but an article earlier this year from the same reporters said that Apple was diversifying. Most of Apple’s products bear the inscription “assembled in China”, but the iMac that iFixIt tore down indicated that it was “made in Thailand”, perhaps hinting at a greater investment in Thailand for that particular product.1 But whether any of its smaller components — its screws, wires, circuitry, soldering — can be certified free of forced Uyghur labour is something perhaps not even Apple knows the answer to despite its audits. I do not think we should give up and accept this, but I have to wonder how industries that are so dependent on suppliers in China can fully disentangle themselves from forced labour.

  1. In the U.S., the FTC says that the difference between “assembled in” and “made in” for American manufacturing depends on the total manufacturing costs. The same is true of the Competition Bureau in Canada. I cannot find the same documentation for Thailand, but I imagine it is a similar standard. ↥︎

My WWDC Wish: Siri That Does Not Suck Ass ⇥ mjtsai.com

Becky Hansmeyer:

There are things to celebrate even in hard times, and WWDC is when we all get to celebrate Apple engineers’ hard work over the past year. I really enjoy reading wishlists and predictions, so this year I’ve compiled a WWDC 2021 Community Wishlist. You’re welcome to contribute, just submit a pull request (or send me a note on Twitter and I’ll add it for you).

Michael Tsai compiled a bunch.

I know it is the Wednesday before WWDC and, so, a wish list does not make sense. There is simply no time. So let’s call this a single wish I hope is granted: I want to be able to depend on Siri for more than timers and reminders.

While driving out of Calgary on the way to Lake Louise today, I found myself a little disorientated after being rerouted by a series of construction zones. So I asked Siri to “get me directions to Lake Louise”. Rather than showing me how to get to one of the most famous lakes in the world, or its namesake town, or anything else in the vicinity that shares the lake’s name, Siri gave me directions to Lake Louise, Alaska.

I tried again: “hey Siri, get me directions to Lake Louise, Alberta”. It responded with a route to the hamlet of Parkland, Alberta, nowhere near Lake Louise and in the opposite direction. I gave up.

This is not an exceptional case for me or anyone I know who uses Siri for more than truly ground-floor things — timers, reminders, dictating text messages, and the like. This is the norm for Apple’s supposedly intelligent assistant.

Being unable to trust Siri, especially behind the wheel, is distracting and can be downright dangerous. I am a reasonably cautious driver; I have never touched my phone behind the wheel. Features like CarPlay and Siri are supposed to help drivers safely use an iPhone for driving-related tasks. This is not funny any more. Siri is ten years old in Apple’s iteration, and even older as independently developed. Apple has clearly put a lot of work into its voices and speech recognition, but it is a deeply disappointing product all the same. I would rather have a stilted robotic voice responding accurately than a high-quality voice that cannot seem to do the obvious and correct thing.

The Biggest Abuser of Forced Arbitration Is Amazon ⇥ prospect.org

Amazon may be foregoing forced arbitration for users, but there is no such relief for sellers on its platform. David Dayen, writing for the American Prospect in 2019:

All of Amazon’s third-party sellers, responsible for more than half of total sales on the website, must sign a contract that commits them to mandatory arbitration in the event of a dispute. “We each agree that any dispute resolution proceedings will be conducted only on an individual basis and not in a class, consolidated or representative action,” the arbitration clause reads, meaning that no seller can team up with others similarly situated to bring a complaint. Court trials are also waived.

Amazon users and DoorDash couriers have written the recipe for disincentivizing the pernicious obligation to use these private courts that create no legal precedent with each case and often require non-disclosure agreements with settlements: flood them with cases.

Amazon Drops Binding Arbitration Clause Because Too Many People Were Using It ⇥ wsj.com

Sara Randazzo, Wall Street Journal:

Companies have spent more than a decade forcing employees and customers to resolve disputes outside the traditional court system, using secretive arbitration proceedings that typically don’t allow plaintiffs to team up and extract big-money payments akin to a class action.

Now, Amazon.com Inc. is bucking that trend. With no announcement, the company recently changed its terms of service to allow customers to file lawsuits. Already, it faces at least three proposed class actions, including one brought May 18 alleging the company’s Alexa-powered Echo devices recorded people without permission.

The retail giant made the change after plaintiffs’ lawyers flooded Amazon with more than 75,000 individual arbitration demands on behalf of Echo users. That move triggered a bill for tens of millions of dollars in filing fees, according to lawyers involved, payable by Amazon under its own policies.

I know these lawyers are just doing lawyer things — there is not really anything righteous about this — but it is hysterical to see this escape hatch for corporate liability backfire. Please, more of this, given the times where binding arbitration clauses have been used to bury a high-tech Peeping Tom or by credit card companies to shut down legal remedies.

See Also: Sarah Jeong on Twitter.