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The Difficult-Life Edition Saturday, September 5, 2020

Apple Must Tread Carefully Lest It Trample The Game Industry, by Dean Takahashi, VentureBeat

Sweeney might not win this lawsuit, but he could get the ear of Congress and federal antitrust enforcement agencies, which could make life very difficult for Apple. They could bring a case to break up Apple, or they could pass laws to prohibit it from doing things that could hurt the little people.

Read Epic’s New, Full Argument Why A Court Should Force Apple To Reinstate Fortnite, by Sean Hollister, The Verge

Epic says it’s worried it “may never see these users again” (referring to the 60 percent decline); that its Fortnite community of players has been torn apart; and that some of its non-Fortnite customers have also been collateral damage.

Stuff

Is Charging Your Phone All Day Really That Bad?, by Nick Guy, New York Times

After speaking with battery researchers and the reuse experts at iFixit, reviewing studies on phone replacement trends and analyzing some user data from Wirecutter staffers, we’ve found that although micromanaging your phone’s battery is likely to extend its life to a small degree, the results might not be worth the inconvenience in the long run.

These 3 Features Make The Apple Watch A Remote Worker's Best Friend, by Jason Aten, Inc

For me, a much better option is to put my iPhone on its charger, and instead have notifications on my Apple Watch for important messages only. That way, when I need to get something done, I can ignore Slack, or email, or anything else that wants to steal my focus, and still know that if my wife needs to get ahold of me, I won't miss her text.

Develop

Why You Should Charge More For Your App Subscriptions, by Matt Ronge

By going subscription, you are choosing to focus on fewer customers but your most dedicated customers. Given that this is a much smaller customer base, you need to charge a higher price.

Notes

The Photographer Peeking At Your Phone, by Naomi Fry, New Yorker

In the book, Mermelstein, whose work is held by institutions including the Art Institute of Chicago and the New York Public Library, presents a series of iPhone photographs that he took over the course of two and a half years, capturing the quotidian dramas taking place on the phone screens of unsuspecting strangers. Mermelstein frames the screens tightly. We can sometimes observe hints of the person who is texting—a chipped manicure, a ring, an edge of a coat sleeve. But it is in the featured text, rather than in these minor details, that the pictures’ curiosity resides.

Bottom of the Page

After about three years of using my iPhone X, the "Battery Health" section of iOS' Settings app is advising me to replace the battery. The maximum capacity is at 84%.

That was about 2.5 years of almost charging the phone all day. Okay, not really all day. But before these strange times, whenever I sat down at my desk in office, I always put my iPhone on a charging dock.

I did not bring the dock back home when the strange times began. And it is less convenient, for me, to plug in my lightning cable, so I now no longer charge the phone 'all day'.

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Thanks for reading.