elementary OS 6 Odin Available Now ⋅ elementary Blog:

How do you get a bold, friendly new Linux UI? By shamelessly copying it from macOS apparently. Still, depending how faithfully they copied, it might actually make for a usable Linux distro.

What’s the Point of Apple TV Hardware?:

With Apple TV+ available on everything now, anyone can enjoy the content, yes… But every other streaming box kinda sucks in other ways, and the Apple TV box still is the best experience I’ve had with a set-top device. Others capture your data, throw ads at you, have horrible interfaces… Whereas Apple TV really just gets out of your way.

Speaking of Mark Gurman, his Power On newsletter continues to be an excellent read. His main topic this week argues that Apple TV (hardware) is “mostly pointless”:

Most importantly, buying an Apple TV no longer gives users a content advantage. We are in the age of streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu, and business models have shifted so that every service is available on every device — phones, tablets, TV sets, streaming sticks and game consoles.

Apple, known for its closed ecosystem, is even embracing the shift by offering many services on smart TVs and boxes made by competitors. […] That made the Apple TV a mostly pointless accessory, and consumers seem to agree: 2020 data from Strategy Analytics found that the Apple TV holds 2% of the streaming device market.

The product isn’t without its benefits, though, for the Apple ecosystem’s most loyal users. Integration with HomeKit, Fitness+, AirPods and the iOS remote app is useful. The new remote control and faster chip in this year’s version are definite improvements, and the box is getting SharePlay and Spatial Audio support later this year. Still, I don’t see these enhancements moving the needle for most people.

I’d argue that Apple TV is a quintessential Apple product: its primary point is to deliver a superior user experience for those who care and are willing to pay a premium for it. If you look only at “content” there’s little reason to buy an iPhone or Mac or iPad, either. The Mac in particular seems an apt comparison. The reason to buy a Mac instead of a PC isn’t that the Mac can do things PCs can’t, but that what you do on a Mac is delivered through a superior experience. That’s Apple TV, too — especially now that Apple is shipping a good remote control. For a lot of us, it clearly delivers a superior and more private user experience that is worth paying a premium for.

2 percent market share is really low, no question about it, but if you look at those market share numbers from Strategy Analytics, no TV platform has a dominant position. It’s a remarkably diverse market, with no platform over 12 percent share. And Apple’s market share isn’t just any random 2 percent of the market, it’s 2 percent at the very high end of the market. It’s a premium product for Apple’s core customer base.

 ★ 

Daring Fireball: Apple’s New ‘Child Safety’ Initiatives, and the Slippery Slope:

All of these features are fairly grouped together under a “child safety” umbrella, but I can’t help but wonder if it was a mistake to announce them together. Many people are clearly conflating them, including those reporting on the initiative for the news media. E.g. The Washington Post’s “never met an Apple story that couldn’t be painted in the worst possible light” Reed Albergotti’s report, the first three paragraphs of which are simply wrong1 and the headline for which is grossing misleading (“Apple Is Prying Into iPhones to Find Sexual Predators, but Privacy Activists Worry Governments Could Weaponize the Feature”).

Not surprisingly, this is the first really good, non-hyperbolic summary of everything Apple announced they’re doing on the topic.

• On-device, in the Messages app, neural analysis of images for possible sensitive content sent or recieved... If the user is under 12, parents can opt-in to recieve a warning, over 12 the user can be notified but parents won't be... And none of this is ever reported to any kind of authories, nor is any content sent to Apple or anyone else.

• Likewise on-device updates to Siri and Search around sensitive content, with the same kind of parental opt-in notifications for under 12 users, or just the users otherwise, similar to above.

• Most misunderstood... CSAM image fingerprint comparisons. Not sending images, not even scanning content of images, but creating a verifiable hash of images which can be compared with fingerprints in the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) systems... And if enough of those match the MCMEC system triggering a human review of those fingerprints for confirmation, before finally potentially raising further alarms. These cryptographic hashes, depending on the algorythm, should be entirely unique to any given image and so should be worse than lottery odds of ever creating a single false positive that a photo in your library matches a sensitive image in the NCMEC database, much less enough to trigger further action.

These seem to be exteremely well thought out, best compromise answers to really difficult problems and by far the most pprivacy forward answers of anyone in the tech world so far.

IPPAWARDS | iPhone Photography Awards:

Why You Shouldn’t Use Google Maps On Your iPhone After Update:

Clearly, the issue here is that all the data Google Maps says it may collect is linked back to your personal identity. This is how Google works. Everything links together to build your profile, your timeline. And while you can fish around in Google’s account settings to delete some of this data, most don’t bother and why should you need to?

WSJ: ‘After Apple Tightens Tracking Rules, Advertisers Shift Spending Toward Android Devices’:

Patience Haggin, reporting for The Wall Street Journal:

After the tracking change took effect in April, many users of Apple’s iOS operating system have received a high volume of prompts from apps asking permission to track them—requests that most have declined. Less than 33% of iOS users opt in to tracking, according to ad-measurement firm Branch Metrics Inc.

As a result, the prices for mobile ads directed at iOS users have fallen, while ad prices have risen for advertisers seeking to target Android users. […]

Digital-ad agency Tinuiti Inc. has seen a similar pattern in its clients’ spending, research director Andy Taylor said. When iOS users opted out of tracking, Tinuiti advertisers couldn’t bid on them, he said. That dearth of iOS users drove up demand—and ad prices—for Android users. About 72.8% of smartphones world-wide use the Android operating system, and about 26.4% use iOS, according to Statcounter.

Tinuiti’s Facebook clients went from year-over-year spend growth of 46% for Android users in May to 64% in June. The clients’ iOS spending saw a corresponding slowdown, from 42% growth in May to 25% in June. Android ad prices are now about 30% higher than ad prices for iOS users, Mr. Taylor said.

If any part of this is surprising, it’s the claim that as many as one-third of iOS users have opted in to tracking.

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Brickit: Rebuild your Lego:

Using your iPhone camera, scan a pile of legos and the app will give you builds which use those pieces.

via - kottke.org

CARROT’s Apple Design Award unboxing - YouTube:

CARROT and her idiot Maker unbox their Apple Design Award.

I think CARROT really captures the heart of what your devices really think about you.

It’s an unfortunate quirk of the English language that free as freedom and free as in beer are very different meanings of free. But when you see an ad headlined “Apple vs. The Free Internet”, most people would assume they’re about to hear an argument about free as in freedom.

Not Facebook. They’re arguing about free as in beer. I mean, they’re alleging that Apple is taking away freedom — the freedom of small business advertisers to benefit from unrestricted tracking for ad targeting — but their argument to the public is that such privacy initiatives will cost users their free beer. — Read on daringfireball.net/2020/12/facebook_free_as_in_bullshit

Daring Fireball: Craig Federighi’s Keynote at the 10th Annual European Data Protection & Privacy Conference — Read on daringfireball.net/linked/2020/12/12/federighi-edppc-keynote

Daring Fireball: Online Privacy Should Be Modeled on Real-World Privacy — Read on daringfireball.net/2020/09/online_privacy_real_world_privacy

Daring Fireball: 2020 iPad Models Now Feature Hardware Microphone Disconnect:

This is the kind of attention to detail around privacy that defines using Apple hardware, and can only come from the deep integrations and control of design they have.

Daring Fireball: ‘Who Would Have Thought an iPad Cursor Could Be So Much Fun?’ — Read on daringfireball.net/linked/2020/03/24/mod-ipad-pointer

See also:

https://sixcolors.com/post/2020/03/in-praise-of-the-ipados-134-cursor/

Further evidence of what I had posted earlier… The new iPad OS pointer is Apple redefining the utility of one of the fundamental interfaces of our time, giving it context and intelligence nobody would expect on the desktop.

Daring Fireball: Convergence on the Laptop Form Factor:

I think Heer gets this right. It’s not about iPad moving closer to Surface conceptually; it’s about moving closer to the laptop ideal. For certain tasks nothing beats the laptop form factor, and quite possibly never will. All computing platforms that are used for such tasks inevitably take on that form. What’s new this decade is the detachable 2-in-1 form — one device that serves as both a laptop with keyboard and trackpad and as a handheld tablet. Microsoft got there from one direction, Apple from another.

I think it’s more than just a direction, but a destination. The iPad was released as an ideal, and for certain things it was perfect on Day One… But for other things, it wasn’t as well suited by itself, and so each release is steering the ship, adding things to make it a little better for edge cases while trying not to lose the spirit…

For Microsoft, the PC was their original ideal, and they’re trying to make it as broad a platform as they can, while truly satisfying nobody.

The fact that today’s iPad OS update is happening on the 19th anniversary of the original GA release of Mac OS X suggests to me that this might be a moon-shot release of sorts.

(164) iSongs - YouTube:

Popular songs covered with Garage Band on iPhone, in realtime.

I have done this once, The Who’s Baba O’Relily, with a bit of trial and error… It’s fun.

Fun Tip: You can export from Garage Band to a ringtone, if so inclined…

A low moment in Apple’s proud history, and a sadly iconic moment for Tim Cook. I hope avoiding those tariffs is worth it. — Read on daringfireball.net/2019/11/cook_trump_campaign_ad

Back to windows after twenty years - Signal v. Noise — Read on m.signalvnoise.com/back-to-windows-after-twenty-years/

<snip>

What this experiment taught me, though, was just how much I actually like OSX. How much satisfaction I derive from its font rendering. How lovely my code looks in TextMate 2. How easy it is to live that *nix developer life, while still using a computer where everything (well, except that fucking keyboard!) mostly just works.

</snip>

I remember when I read your column, one of the sentences that most surprised me was: "I'm proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me." Yes, I strongly believe that. I think there's many meanings behind this. One is, it was his decision, not mine. Two, at least for me, I can only speak for myself, it gives me a level of empathy that I think is probably much higher than average because being gay or trans, you're a minority. And I think when you're a majority, even though intellectually you can understand what it means to be in a minority, it's an intellectual thing. It's not intellectual for me to be in a minority. I'm not saying that I understand the trials and tribulations of every minority group, because I don't. But I do understand for one of the groups. And to the degree that it helps give you a lens on how other people may feel, I think that's a gift in and of itself. — Read on peopleenespanol.com/chica/tim-cook-the-power-of-diversity/