Dispatches from the Empire


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Apple Restricting New Pebble Smartwatches From 'Being Awesome' With iPhone

Migicovsky says that it was difficult to design for iPhones when he was working on the original Pebble watch, and in the last eight years, "things have actually gotten worse." He said that his company will "build a good app for iOS," but that it is impossible for a third-party smartwatch to replicate the functions of the Apple Watch. He shared an extensive list of the limitations:

  • There's no option for sending text messages or iMessages.
  • There's no option for replying to notifications or taking actions like marking something as done.
  • There is little inter-app communication, which makes it difficult for Pebble to work with other iOS apps.
  • If the iOS app is closed, the watch can't access the app or the internet.
  • The watch cannot detect if you're using your phone, so it will buzz and display a notification regardless.
  • There's no easy option to allow developers to create watch faces and apps for Pebble that would be available through the Pebble iOS app.

This is Apple using the power of its integrated ecosystem to snuff out competition, plain and simple. 

There might be some very good security reasons iMessage and FaceTime are not available on third-party devices, but otherwise I can't think of any good reasons Apple can't build public APIs to integrate third-party watches with iPhone and iOS. It's just Apple protecting their bottom line. This behavior needs to be regulated.  

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Googles Monopoly isn’t Search – It’s Data, About You

What can Google track of you across the web? The results may astound you with the ways that Google can follow you around the web. It is such pervasive surveillance network, that it is almost easier to ask, where they can’t’ track you than it is to ask where they can track you. As far as we can see from the outside-looking-in, there is no other entity even remotely close to being able to track you so extensively.

If you care at all about privacy (and you should), delete every Google app from your iPhone. Buy an iCloud+ subscription and enable Private Relay. Download 1Blocker and buy a lifetime subscription. Purchase StopTheMadness Pro. And change your default Safari search engine to DuckDuckGo.