Apple

Reuters:

> Dutch police ended a hostage taking in an Apple flagship store in Amsterdam after a man armed with two guns held at least one person hostage for hours, police said on Wednesday.

This situation played out late last night.

This tweet shows the hostage and the hostage taker:

https://twitter.com/parool/status/1496229024682721280

The caption, translated from Dutch:

> A photo in the hands of Het Parool shows the hostage taker, dressed in a camouflage suit, together with the hostage. They sit opposite each other, the hostage appearing handcuffed with his hands behind his back.

Another tweet shows the hostage taker wearing what looked like a bomb vest.

Here’s how it ended:

“We managed to end the situation by hitting the hostage taker with a car when he ran outside,” police said on Twitter, adding that the man was being treated for serious injuries.

And:

> The situation ended when the hostage, reportedly a 44-year old British man, fled from the building when a police robot delivered water at the door of the store at the request of the hostage taker.
>
> The hostage taker ran after the man and was quickly hit by the car.

The video of this ending is the first part of this I saw last night, before all the details emerged. Still putting all the pieces together.

Reuters:

> A single activist helped turn the tide against NSO Group, one of the world’s most sophisticated spyware companies now facing a cascade of legal action and scrutiny in Washington over damaging new allegations that its software was used to hack government officials and dissidents around the world.
>
> It all started with a software glitch on her iPhone.

And:

> A mysterious fake image file within her phone, mistakenly left behind by the spyware, tipped off security researchers.

Interesting read. Were it not for that mysterious fake image, we still might not know about this.

Bowdoin College:

> Bowdoin College’s groundbreaking Digital Excellence Commitment (DExC) will provide every current student and all future students with a suite of the latest Apple technology and access to a full range of course-specific software designed to advance learning, inspire innovative teaching, and create digital equity across the student body in the use of tools essential for success in the twenty-first century.

That’s an M1 MacBook Pro.

The effort started a few years ago:

> In summer 2020, the College issued each student an iPad Pro Wi-Fi + Cellular (activated and funded by the College for those students who had internet connectivity needs), an Apple Pencil, and an Apple Magic Keyboard.

From the FAQ:

> students will have the option to pay $1 to keep their equipment when they graduate.

Nice.

Nice origin story. Amazingly, Daring Fireball has been a going concern for 20 years now.

Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac:

> Safari remains the second most-used desktop web browser in the world as of January 2022, but two of its competitors are close to taking over second place this time around.
>
> While Safari is used by 9.84% of desktop users, Microsoft Edge is right behind with 9.54% market share. Firefox, which had only 8.1% share in January 2021, has gained new users during the past few months and now has 9.18% of the desktop market share. Unsurprisingly, Google Chrome is still in first place with 65.38% of the share.

And:

> While StatCounter or even Apple doesn’t provide details on the reason why Safari is losing users, we can easily make a few assumptions about it. Safari is the default web browser for Apple devices such as the iPhone and the Mac, which certainly contributes to it being the second most used web browser worldwide.
>
> Last year, Apple introduced a completely redesigned version of Safari that unified the address bar with the tab bar. However, the update left some users unhappy, which made Apple revert Safari back to its old design and make the new interface optional for users. This, of course, wasn’t enough to stop many users from switching to other web browsers.

Not sure how big a deal this is. If you look at the StatCounter chart embedded in the 9to5Mac post, the lines are pretty flat. Chrome absolutely dominates, and the rest of the players, including Safari, sit way down in the mix. If I did not read the article and just looked at the chart, I’d say any movement is negligible, in the noise.

Personally, I trust Safari more than other web browsers, both with privacy and with behaving properly in the macOS ecosystem (just search for “chrome Mac battery drain” for one example). Safari is not perfect, obviously, but it works really well for me.