Apple pushes back against the EU’s Digital Markets Act
Christ, Apple. Have some faith that people use your phones because they’re the best on the market, not because they’re locked into iMessage. 🤦🏼♂️
I’m all for security — end-to-end encryption is table stakes at this point, and I won’t use anything without it to meaningfully communicate — but inhibiting innovation solely to protect a monopoly of a marketplace (in this case, the App Store)? C’mon.
Apple, you have the technical expertise to protect people’s data even if they sideload. It won’t be easy, I know, but come on.
Give people a choice.
On the other hand, my work is tech-adjacent and my passions are obviously tech-y. I work with a lot of people — smart, professional people — that don’t know shit about the phones in their pocket, not least of all how to safeguard them.
If smart people can’t be bothered to protect themselves, no doubt sideloading will invite bad actors (i.e. advertisers) to get people to download software that tracks the hell out of them. More than it already does.
So maybe Apple has a point.
But the least they could do is lower their 30% App Store commission. It’s difficult to take anyone arguing the moral high ground seriously when they’re making such an extreme profit from their position.
Log is the “Pro” in iPhone 15 Pro
The flatness of log gives you the power to make it your own in the grade. The other huge advantage of log is that it is known, meaning it’s possible to convert it to and from various color spaces accurately.
iOS 17, iPadOS 17, watchOS 10 are the most stable point-zero releases I’ve ever seen from Apple.
Very impressive. I have no qualms encouraging everyone to update.
Apple continues to use our own mortality as marketing
On Tuesday, Apple revealed yet another reason why we might want to have our Apple devices with us at all times: Roadside Assistance. The service, which is compatible with the iPhone 14 and later, lets you contact AAA via satellite in case your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere.
In the West, I use location sharing via satellite connectivity on my iPhone 14 constantly, but visiting family in the Midwest I don’t (and can’t) use it at all. It’s a testament to cell carriers that they’ve blanketed much of the eastern half of the United States with cellular connectivity.
Daring Fireball: Thoughts and Observations on This Week’s ‘Wonderlust’ Apple Event
On the photography front there were two major new features announced Tuesday. The first is a new generation of portrait photography, where Portrait mode can be applied to an image after it was shot as a regular still image. I’ve wanted this feature ever since Portrait mode debuted. While capturing, you don’t have to do a damn thing. You just frame your photo and hit the shutter. No switching modes. But on-device machine learning will decide on the spot whether Portrait mode would improve the image (which will only happen automatically if the subject is a person, dog, or cat), but you can enable it, disable it, and adjust it to your heart’s content in post.
The second is the iPhone 15 Pro models’ ability to capture spatial video. I had speculated over the summer that it would be cool if Apple could launch this for iPhones this year, and they did it. Clearly the optimal way to watch spatial video will be with a Vision headset, but the best way to capture them — especially in terms of the old adage that the best camera is the one you have with you — will be with iPhones. I considered it a lock that iPhones would eventually be able to capture spatial video memories, but to me it’s a sign of operational excellence and cross-device collaboration that Apple pulled it off this year, with iPhones that will ship months ahead of the first-generation Vision Pro. (The ability to shoot spatial video using an iPhone 15 Pro isn’t available yet — it’s “coming later this year”. And the hands-on area units didn’t have the feature, nor any example spatial videos preloaded. So the only thing we know about the feature is what was broadcast in the keynote.)
Why the smartphone camera changed photography forever
When I was shooting film, the problem was the huge expense of processing and printing. With digital, the problem became the crazy amount of time it took to grade, retouch, and print my pictures. I loved shooting for myself, I just couldn’t justify the money, or the post-processing time – or both.
But in 2007, everything changed. The iPhone was launched.
We, the audience, are not responding to the sharpness, the clarity, the minimal chromatic aberration or lack thereof — the technical quality aspects of this imagery. We’re responding to the honesty; to the realism; and to the intimacy of the photographs people are posting on Instagram, Pinterest, Flickr, etc. After all, we’ve never really seen it before. Or at least, not in such abundance.
Horace Dediu: ‘The Value of a Customer’ via Daring Fireball
The average iPhone customer is 7.4 times as valuable as an Android user. That’s remarkable, but not surprising.
I know very few Android users these days, but those I do share a common refrain: “tech is too complicated, so why would I pay more for an iPhone?” Never having used an iPhone, they become used to a certain…lack of polish. Case-in-point: for the first decade of Android, scrolling on the devices was awful. Jittery, jumpy… Compare that to the very first iPhone, which nailed smooth scrolling right off the bat.
Like using a Mac, the joy and delight (and I use both of those words intentionally) of an iPhone is not in the tasks you accomplish with it (you can, after all, take a photo with an Android, or send a text, or browse the web), but the million little in-between interactions. Opening an app. Swiping to go home. The speed at which FaceID unlocks your phone. The little thoughtful, playful animations of the Dynamic Island. All those interactions add up.
They add up to customers that deeply and perhaps subconsciously satisfied. And people who are satisfied are far more likely to use their phone. It so happens that most people use their phone to, well, buy stuff.
Me? I spent a good deal of money on software for my iPhone, iPad, and Mac. I buy apps that are thoughtfully designed by creative people. (Lumy is a recent find that I just adore.) And, notably, I’m happy to do so. For that, I credit Apple.
Even if you do have a smartphone, it’s not great to have it be a single point of failure. It could be lost, stolen, away from cell service, or have a low battery. Most electronic tickets and admission passes don’t seem to work with the Wallet app, and who knows whether an e-mail, app, or Web link will fail when you need it, even if it was cached. A common pattern is to take a screenshot of the barcode or QR code, but that requires more tech-savvy.
I run into this problem all the time. Rather, I watch people I love run into this problem all the time.
A very dear friend lives in an off-the-grid cabin. He’s proudly never used a computer (aside from an Apple Watch, which I set up as his phone and sole electronic device a few years back). Lately, he’s had some health concerns that require near-constant communications with doctors via MyChart… which can only be accessed by a computer or smartphone.
People like him get lost and left behind in a digital world. I say this as an evangelist of the iPhone: the pocket computer is an incredible tool — camera, GPS, offline maps, streaming music, FaceTime, plant identifier, etc. etc. — but the simple fact is that most people have no clue how to use their phones to their max potential…nor do they care to.
There’s a head-in-the-sand element to this I’ve always found frustrating. More than one friend reacts with what looks like rage when their phones (or the internet) doesn’t behave as it “should.” (And when you become known as the “tech friend,” that rage is often directed at you.) I’ve had to learn to handle those people with care and not mirror their anger back at them. Which ain’t easy, because if people just took a fucking second to learn something…
But then there’s my friend in the cabin, who abstains entirely. I cannot convey how much I admire his conviction, and how much I agree when he says that tech is going to be our downfall. “Sure,” he says, “you use it to identify that star, but everyone else uses it to get on instagram and make themselves feel like shit.” He has a point.
The world is leaving him behind, and it can’t rely on people like me to constantly bridge that gap.
Notes apps are where ideas go to die. And that’s good.
That’s the true value of notebooks, notes apps, bookmarking tools, and everything else built to help us remember. They’re insurance for ideas. They let us forget.
Weblogs, too.