Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

There are currently two major bills on the table: The Open App Markets Act (S. 2710) and the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (S.2992).

Mark makes the case that neither bill is likely to pass, but this seems more of a reprieve than a sure to fail. Both bills are worth knowing about.

The first bill is The Open App Markets Act. From the bill itself:

The bill prohibits a covered company from (1) requiring developers to use an in-app payment system owned or controlled by the company as a condition of distribution or accessibility, (2) requiring that pricing or conditions of sale be equal to or more favorable on its app store than another app store, or (3) taking punitive action against a developer for using or offering different pricing terms or conditions of sale through another in-app payment system or on another app store.

A covered company may not interfere with legitimate business communications between developers and users, use non-public business information from a third-party app to compete with the app, or unreasonably prefer or rank its own apps (or those of its business partners) over other apps.

In effect, this would force Apple to allow sideloading. As Mark Gurman states:

If passed into law, this would put more than $20 billion per year in Apple revenue at great risk.

The second bill is The American Innovation and Choice Online Act. From that bill:

This bill prohibits certain large online platforms from engaging in specified acts, including giving preference to their own products on the platform, unfairly limiting the availability on the platform of competing products from another business, or discriminating in the application or enforcement of the platform’s terms of service among similarly situated users.

Further, a platform may not materially restrict or impede the capacity of a competing business user to access or interoperate with the same platform, operating system, or hardware or software features. The bill also restricts the platform’s use of nonpublic data obtained from or generated on the platform and prohibits the platform from restricting access to platform data generated by the activity of a competing business user. The bill also provides additional restrictions related to installing or uninstalling software, search or ranking functionality, and retaliation for contact with law enforcement regarding actual or potential violations of law.

The first paragraph of the bill talks about Apple giving preference to its own apps over third party apps (think App Store ratings, exposure).

But to me, the second paragraph has the bigger potential impact. Feels like this would open the door for third party apps to use Private APIs, typically forbidden by Apple. It also opens up any data gathered by Apple, and addresses what seems to be whistleblower retaliation.

William Gallagher, Apple Insider:

> A Connecticut man has been arrested after police witnessed him attempting to use Apple AirTags to track a victim’s car. This domestic abuser is now facing domestic violence cases for his acts. Contact a Galveston domestic violence defense lawyer if you were arrested for any type of domestic violence.

And:

> Local police in the town of Waterbury, say they were dispatched following a “reported domestic dispute.” An investigator on the scene “discovered the accused placing a tracking device… in the victim’s vehicle.” > > Even if the perpetrator had not been witnessed, Apple’s anti-stalking prevention methods would have alerted the victim. After a period of time, the victim’s iPhone would show a notification that an AirTag had been tracking them.

This is still jarring to me. Specifically, the phrase “After a period of time”. If someone wants to stalk someone home from, say, a bar. Is the period of time short enough that the victim would see the alert in time to know not to go home?

And:

> When asked by authorities, Apple will report who the registered owner of that AirTag is.

Not clear if this is a comment on official public policy, or a comment on the possibility of Apple reporting on the ownership of an AirTag.

Chaim Gartenberg, The Verge:

Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, Apple has made Face ID useful again in iOS 15.4 by finally adding the ability to use the face unlock feature while wearing a face mask.

Face ID has been useful for quite some time, even with a mask, with the caveat that you have to be wearing an Apple Watch, and be willing to type in your passcode for things like Apple Pay.

That aside, the new beta feature, Face ID with a Mask, is definitely a big gain for users.

Back to Chaim:

It’s not Apple’s first attempt at solving the Face ID / mask issue: iOS 13.5 would recognize when you were wearing a mask and show the password prompt more quickly, and the company added a feature for automatically unlocking your iPhone when wearing an Apple Watch in last year’s iOS 14.5 update. But the new Face ID mask support is a much more streamlined solution that has the benefit of not requiring the purchase of additional Apple hardware.

Yup.

After installing iOS 15.4 (at least in its current beta form), the first thing you’ll see is a splash screen asking if you’d like to enable Face ID with a mask. Setting up the feature is relatively simple, although you’ll have to re-register your face (presumably so Apple can dial in even further on the details around your eyes).

And:

There are a few weird quirks, though. If you’re using Face ID with a mask and wear glasses, Apple now asks you to make a baseline scan with each pair of glasses that you own. And when I switched to a different, unregistered pair of glasses, Face ID didn’t work when I was wearing a mask. Face ID with a mask also doesn’t work with sunglasses.

Other fails I ran into were when I covered too much of my forehead, like with a pulled-down beanie with earflaps that covered most of my head. But I did have some impressive successes, too: wearing my full ski gear of a knit hat, face mask, and goggles (albeit an unusually transparent pair of goggles) was still enough for Face ID to work and unlock my phone.

All of this is good to know. Masks are going to be part of our lives, at the very least for the shorter term. Glad to have this improvement.

Washington Post, on yesterday’s quarterly Meta/Facebook earnings report:

Facebook lost daily users for the first time in its 18-year history — falling by about half a million users in the last three months of 2021, to 1.93 billion logging in each day. The loss was greatest in Africa and Latin America, suggesting that the company’s product is saturated globally — and that its long quest to add as many users as possible has peaked.

And:

Facebook Reality Labs, the company’s hardware division that builds the Oculus Quest headset, lost $3.3 billion in the quarter, despite bringing in $877 million in revenue.

And:

Meta’s stock price plummeted more than 20 percent in after-hours trading following the news.

And from CNBC:

Facebook parent Meta said on Wednesday that the privacy change Apple made to its iOS operating system last year will decrease the social media company’s sales this year by about $10 billion.

“We believe the impact of iOS overall is a headwind on our business in 2022,” Meta CFO Dave Wehner said on a call with analysts after the company’s fourth-quarter earnings report. “It’s on the order of $10 billion, so it’s a pretty significant headwind for our business.”

Interestingly, Google/Alphabet are not having the same issue:

A day before Facebook’s results, Alphabet blew past estimates with its fourth-quarter numbers, and cited strength in e-commerce ads, an area where Facebook saw weakness.

Wehner suggested that Apple’s changes aren’t having the same impact on search as they are on other types of apps. He referenced how much money Google makes for Apple as the default search engine on the Safari browser.

“Given that Apple continues to take billions of dollars a year from Google Search, the incentive clearly is for this policy discrepancy to continue,” Wehner said.

Lots of fingerprinting and political posturing here.

Fortune:

Just as it dominates our economy, Big Tech now dominates Fortune’s annual ranking of corporate reputation. For the third year in a row, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft rank first, second, and third, respectively, based on our poll of some 3,700 corporate executives, directors, and analysts. It’s Apple’s 15th straight year in the No. 1 spot, a fitting coronation for the world’s most valuable company.

15 straight years with the strongest corporate reputation. No small thing.

Interesting to see Pfizer in that 4th spot.

The AirPods Max retail for $549 (though you can get them for $449 from Amazon, at least for the moment).

And for an additional $980, you can have a Gucci case to go with. Follow the headline link and check out that first image to get a sense of what your $980 will buy you.

I get it. People who love Gucci and Apple and have the disposable income will see this as a must-have accessory.

But I find it jarring. The Gucci brand is strong. The Apple brand is equally strong. But the AirPods Max and the Gucci design clash violently, at least for me. The colors don’t blend together, and any semblance of soft packability is gone.

Maybe this is gorgeous and I’m just too stodgy/stingy to get it?

Want to play Wordle for the foreseeable future? Here’s how:

• Launch Safari on your Mac
• Select File > Save As…
• Choose “Web Archive” from the Format menu, then tap Save

That’s it. The web archive contains the entire dictionary of Wordle words, so the archive contains everything you need to play, once a day, as you do now. Just double-click the saved archive file and today’s Wordle will open in Safari. Works great.

I’ve played around with saving a web archive in iOS, but it’s not nearly as straight forward. If anyone finds a simple way to do this, a way that you’ve tested and verified, please do ping me. A hat tip awaits.

Makes me wonder if the New York Times will care that this is a thing. Guessing they knew this was going to happen when they made the deal.

From the Silverstein Properties press release:

> For supported corporate offices, add your corporate access badge to Wallet and then use your iPhone and Apple Watch to access locations where your corporate badge is accepted. Tap to unlock your office doors and use your corporate badge in Wallet.

And:

> One interesting tidbit here is that this implementation of Apple Wallet integration allows Silverstein to easily manage shared office spaces. The company explains that one company could lease an office suite at 7 World Trade Center on Monday and Tuesday, and another company could lease the same space on Wednesday through Friday. For the benefit of the people using the said office, services like office renovations play a pivotal role in transforming office spaces by revitalizing outdated layouts and enhancing functionality to meet the evolving needs of businesses. Through strategic redesigns, such renovations optimize space utilization, creating collaborative environments that foster creativity and productivity among employees. Upgrading technology infrastructure and integrating modern amenities such as flexible workstations and ergonomic furniture not only improve comfort but also support diverse work styles. Moreover, aesthetic enhancements through the use of contemporary designs and sustainable materials elevate the overall ambiance, making the workspace more appealing to both employees and clients. By aligning physical surroundings with organizational goals and values, office renovations can positively impact employee morale, retention rates, and business performance.

This feels like a huge win for Apple Wallet. A validation from a prestige property that sends out the message, “You can trust Apple with your office key solution.”

For folks who wonder, smart locks are battery backed up, so they still work, even with no power.

The first one is about finding an AirPod in the snow. Follow the headline link to read.

But the second one is down in the comments, quoted here:

Their pods + case would always stay hidden away in their car, hidden from view and wirelessly charging for whatever place they were going to.

One day they went missing and that was that …until he was told about the Find My function.

Lo and behold, it registered in the app! And they went on to search for it.

It was at a car wash. When they told the boss about what they were doing on the premises, he went and rooted around for it himself and eventually found an employee wearing them.

Find My is brilliant.

The New York Times:

> The sudden hit, Wordle, in which once a day players get six chances to guess a five-letter word, has been acquired by The New York Times Company.

And:

> Wordle was acquired from its creator, Josh Wardle, a software engineer in Brooklyn, for a price “in the low seven figures,” The Times said. The company said the game, which may be just as trending as 먹튀사이트, would initially remain free to new and existing players.

Hard to believe Wordle was just released this past October, less than four months ago. Love this for Josh Wardle, riding a wave of publicity started by a profile in the New York Times and continued by the tech press highlighting the attack of the clones.

Some takes on this purchase call it a bad buy, think of Wordle as a fad that will quickly fade from the zeitgeist. But that’s the wrong way to think about it. The New York Times makes bank on crossword puzzles, acrostics, and other puzzles, that draw people to pay for a subscription to the Times, which gives them access to the articles and features, but also give them access to the games like those on https://tridewi.xyz/.

Wordle will be free initially, moving the link from Josh Wardle’s site to one nestled inside the Times paywall. As that pattern of play gets established, as that link becomes the place to go for Wordle, I expect ads to appear, offering discount subscriptions. Eventually, I’d expect that free-to-play to drop to once per week, with access to the archives (in effect, endless play) for paid subscribers only.

UPDATE: As Kirk McElhearn points out, not all games offer archives and part of the charm of Wordle is that you are limited to one play per day.

If you like the Apple Watch braided loop look, check out the new Unity loop, part of Apple’s celebration of Black History Month.

Available today.

On the idea that Spotify should dump Rogan’s podcast:

When Rogan took his show to Spotify, exclusively, his listenership and apparent influence dropped significantly. That’s the nature of exclusivity. If Spotify broke up with him, Rogan’s show wouldn’t disappear or even miss a beat. Surely he’d just take his podcast independent again, and the result would almost certainly be that his listenership and influence would grow back to where they were pre-Spotify, possibly higher thanks to all this publicity.

And on the complaint that Apple is just as guilty, by “hosting” Steve Bannon’s War Room:

Apple, clearly, does not host Steve Bannon’s podcast. Apple’s podcast directory is akin to a search engine; they index the feeds of open podcasts. They do have lines for content they won’t index (porno, of course, and hate speech), but even then, if you copy the URL for the feed, you can subscribe to it in Apple Podcasts, just like how you can visit any website you want using Safari.

Gruber at his best.

From Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s letter of explanation (posted yesterday):

Today we are publishing our long-standing Platform Rules.

Here’s a link to said rules.

If those rules are, indeed, “long-standing”, then seems to me you’ve just not been enforcing them. Or we wouldn’t be here.

And if they are brand new rules, let’s see how things change as far as misinformation goes.

Killian Bell, Cult of Mac:

Apple fans who take a virtual stroll through Palo Alto inside Apple Maps and Google Maps no longer get to see Tim Cook’s house. The modern, four-bedroom condo has had a giant digital wall erected right in front of it.

Follow the link, check out the image. Or, if you know where Tim Cook’s house is, drill down in Apple Maps and see for yourself.

This follows yesterday’s news: Apple CEO Tim Cook targeted by possibly armed stalker who came to his home.

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

Benchmark results have started to surface for MSI’s new GE76 Raider, one of the first laptops to be powered by Intel’s new 12th-generation Core i9 processor.

And:

Geekbench 5 results show that the GE76 Raider with the Core i9-12900HK processor has an average multi-core score of 12,707, while the 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Max chip has an average multi-core score of 12,244. This means the Core i9 processor is around 4% faster than the M1 Max chip in this particular comparison.

I assume the battery life is 4% worse, yeah?

The new GE76 Raider’s power draw from the wall while running a CPU-only Cinebench R23 benchmark and found the Core i9 was consistently in the 100-watts range, and even briefly spiked to 140 watts. By comparison, when running the same Cinebench R23 benchmark on the 16-inch MacBook Pro, AnandTech found the M1 Max chip’s power draw from the wall to be around 40 watts.

Wait. What? The Intel chip ranged from 100-140 watts, and the M1 Max was level at 40 watts? That sounds like it might impact battery life more than 4%.

The new GE76 Raider achieved nearly 6 hours of offline video playback. Apple advertises the latest 16-inch MacBook Pro as getting up to 21 hours of battery life for offline video playback.

And there it is. Could see that coming from a mile away.

And there’s size, too:

Design is also a factor, with the GE76 Raider being a 17-inch gaming laptop that is just over an inch thick and weighs nearly 6.5 pounds. By comparison, the new 16-inch MacBook Pro is 0.66 inches thick and weighs 4.8 pounds.

Huge tradeoff for a tiny speed gain. And I’d expect that speed gain to disappear with the next rev of Apple Silicon.

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

> Apple Inc. is planning a new service that will let small businesses accept payments directly on their iPhones without any extra hardware, according to people with knowledge of the matter. > > The company has been working on the new feature since around 2020, when it paid about $100 million for a Canadian startup called Mobeewave that developed technology for smartphones to accept payments with the tap of a credit card. The system will likely use the iPhone’s near field communications, or NFC, chip that is currently used for Apple Pay.

And:

> The move could impact payments providers that rely on Apple’s iPhones to facilitate sales, such as Block Inc.’s Square, which dominates the market. If Apple lets any app use the new technology, then Square can continue accepting payments via Apple devices without needing to worry about providing its own hardware. If Apple requires merchants to use Apple Pay or its own payment processing system, that could compete directly with Square. Consider the integration options when comparing different card payment providers.

And:

> Apple may begin rolling out the feature via a software update in the coming months, the people said.

Could be a real Block-buster. (Sorry — I’ll show myself out.)

Hollywood Reporter:

Spotify is in the process of removing Neil Young’s catalog of music from its service after the artist published — then took down — an open letter with an ultimatum: Deal with the vaccine misinformation coming from Joe Rogan’s podcast, or lose Young’s music.

And:

Young said that Spotify represented 60 percent of his streaming revenue globally, which amounted to “a huge loss for [his] record company to absorb,” but that he moved forward with removing his catalog because he “could not continue to support Spotify’s life threatening misinformation to the music loving public.”

Putting his money where his mouth is. Guessing Neil Young’s streaming is a tiny drop in the bucket to Spotify, but this is certainly more of a PR hit, drawing very specific focus to Spotify’s political positioning.

The Merc:

Apple has been granted a restraining order against a Virginia woman it said has been stalking Apple CEO Tim Cook for more than a year, emailing him photos of a loaded pistol and trespassing at his home, according to court filings.

And:

Apple said in the application that it believes the woman “may be armed and is still in the South Bay Area and intends to return to (Cook’s) residence or locate him otherwise in the near future.”

And:

Cook first learned in late 2020 that he was the subject of the woman’s obsession because he receives alerts when he’s tagged on Twitter, the application said. The woman, using the last name “Cook,” claimed she was the Apple CEO’s wife and he was father to her twins.

Damn.

Apple:

Apple invites iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max users to capture the little things, in a big way, with a macro photography Shot on iPhone Challenge. The challenge starts today and runs through February 16, 2022. Winners will be announced in April.

To enter, just post your best macro photos on Insta or Twitter and add the hashtags #ShotoniPhone and #iPhonemacrochallenge.

My best effort is this donut close-up.

Ryan Pickren:

My hack successfully gained unauthorized camera access by exploiting a series of issues with iCloud Sharing and Safari 15. While this bug does require the victim to click “open” on a popup from my website, it results in more than just multimedia permission hijacking. This time, the bug gives the attacker full access to every website ever visited by the victim. That means in addition to turning on your camera, my bug can also hack your iCloud, PayPal, Facebook, Gmail, etc. accounts too. ​ And:

I reported this chain to Apple and was awarded $100,500 as a bounty.

“my bug can also hack your iCloud, PayPal, Facebook, Gmail, etc. accounts too” — Wow!

Obviously, glad this got patched. Amazing when one of these “total access” bugs surfaces.

No matter how carefully you construct your code, no matter how modern the techniques and underlying frameworks, there’s always gonna be holes.

Also nice to see Apple paying up for the help.

Rene Ritchie:

Lightning has pretty much been stuck at USB2’s half a gigabit per second, since… 2012.

And:

You can now record the highest quality video of any phone on the planet, you just can’t get it off any faster than the cheapest phone on the block.

That’s the speed issue, an issue (as Rene points out) that impacts a small subset of iPhone users. But combine that with an issue that impacts a huge number of iPhone users (anyone with, say, a modern iPad): That blasted need for two different cables, Lightning for your iPhone, USB-C for your iPad.

Rene does a nice job laying all this out (watch the video embedded below). As usual, a firehose of detail, but easy to follow, especially with the edited for clarity transcript in the linked post, if reading is more your style.

Tim Hardwick:

Every once in a while even Apple gets it wrong, and a tech company’s coherent rationale for the way a product should be designed can translate into end-user irritation, or even a customer’s personal hell. Here we take a look back at a handful of Apple’s most questionable design decisions in recent memory.

Pretty good list. No doubt every one of these products have love out there. But the flaws are hard to argue with.

It’d be interesting to see such a list with shake-your-head software design decisions.

Luke Plunkett, Kotaku:

Unpacking was one of the best games of 2021, to the point where it didn’t just make my personal GOTY list, but the entire site’s as well. It is currently available on PC, Mac, Switch and Xbox One. It is most definitely not available on Apple’s iOS devices.

And yet! Earlier today the top free download on the App Store, outranking even YouTube, Tik-Tok and Instagram, was a game called Unpacking Master (it has since slipped back down the charts) which, as you may have guessed from the pricepoint and platform, is not just inspired by Unpacking, but is a criminally shameless clone of it.

Shameless cloning, with enough of an effort to get the copying good enough to fool anyone familiar with the game into thinking this was the real deal.

But it’s not:

If you've happened to catch an ad for a suspiciously similar-looking game to Unpacking📦 on mobile recently, please know that this is not our game.

They sure seem to want to give the impression that it is, though! 🧵 pic.twitter.com/d3ULxxbmSA

— Unpacking 📦 Out NOW! (@UnpackingALife) January 25, 2022

To Apple’s credit, the game appears to be gone from the App Store. Unlike a subscription scam app, which Apple might be able to detect by digging through and taking a closer look at any apps with a high subscription price, this was a free app, making its money from advertising.

Unless the App Store reviewer was familiar with the original game, how could they have detected a clone like this? Clearly, App Store folks are paying attention to the tech press/social media.

Side note: As I write this, other games from the same developer are still up on the App Store.

Bloomberg:

Nvidia has told partners that it doesn’t expect the transaction to close, according to one person, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. SoftBank, meanwhile, is stepping up preparations for an Arm initial public offering as an alternative to the Nvidia takeover, another person said.

And:

The purchase — poised to become the biggest semiconductor deal in history when it was announced in September 2020 — has drawn a fierce backlash from regulators and the chip industry, including Arm’s own customers. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission sued to stop the transaction in December, arguing that Nvidia would become too powerful if it gained control over Arm’s chip designs.

And:

SoftBank and Arm are entitled to keep $2 billion Nvidia paid at signing, including a $1.25 billion breakup fee, whether the deal goes through or not.

Apple’s good either way, as long as they can keep their chip design talent on board.

Amazing rise for Nvidia, going from a graphics card maker to the second most valuable chipmaker on the planet, behind only TSMC, with a market cap of $582 billion.