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The Secrecy-and-Loyalty Edition Sunday, August 29, 2021

How One Woman Helped Build The #AppleToo Movement At Tech’s Most Secretive Company, by Anna Kramer, Protocol

"There's this culture within Apple that is very rewarding of secrecy and loyalty, and when I have read some of these posts about me, it's very much seeping through, people are feeling that I'm leaking confidential data." But Scarlett doesn't see it that way — she works in corporate security and legal, and she said that she would never leak product information (and that her direct team supports her, and condemns the abuse she's receiving). Talking publicly about issues within the workplace is, to her, an entirely different question.

While #AppleToo is not a union per se, the group's website says that it wants to use the power of a collective movement to bring attention to the hundreds of Apple workers who have long felt invalidated by the company. Scarlett, who had a well-known online presence in the software world even before she became an Apple worker, is the group organizer who has spoken the most publicly, and who publicly led the effort to create the informal pay equity survey against Apple's wishes.

Apple’s App Store Class-Action Settlement: What Does It Mean For Developers?, by Bowdeya Tweh, Wall Street Journal

Another settlement provision requires developers who receive money to waive past and potentially future legal claims against Apple if they are similar to complaints raised in the lawsuit. Developers have a window to opt out of the settlement once it has been approved by the court.

Software developers face a tough choice of whether to accept the money—especially those who could potentially receive thousands of dollars—if it has future legal implications, said David Barnard, a San Marcos, Texas-based software developer.

The App Store Is Too Big To Change, by Chaim Gartenberg, The Verge

But at the end of the day, Apple was never going to budge. The App Store is too big and too important to the company, and the way the App Store works in 2021 means that — unless a court decides otherwise, as Epic, Spotify, and others are actively trying to do — nothing will really change for the core parts of the app economy.

Stuff

5 Ways To Turn Your Old iPad Into A Kid-friendly Smart Home Gadget, by Dashia Starr, CNET

Here's how to give an old Apple tablet new life if you're thinking about retiring your old iPad.

Sky Guide Astronomy App For iOS Gets Its Biggest Update Yet With Release Of Version X, by Nicholas D'Alessandro, Space Explored

The headlining features of the new update are geared toward a more premium visual experience. Users can now toggle an Aurora effect and will experience real-time dawn, day, dusk, and night shadings of the sky within the app (Fifth Star Labs, the app’s developers, use a physics based computational process known as Atmospheric Multiple Scattering to simulate these visuals).

Nomad Leather Skin Review: A Cover That Maintains Your iPhone 12's Aesthetic, by Andrew O'Hara, AppleInsider

A skin won't protect your phone, but it does class it up. Just make sure you put it on carefully.

Bottom of the Page

I don't know why, but the song "Love Shack" always cheer me up when I am a little sad.

Also, when I am a little sad, all I watch on Netflix are sticoms with laugh tracks.

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Thanks for reading.