When I asked some friends and colleagues for the weirdest contacts they had on Find My—the iPhone app that hosts the option to share locations with your friends, and can also help you track down missing Apple devices—their responses were similarly random: a best friend’s cousin, an ex, a “semi-ex,” friends’ boyfriends, brothers’ friends, former classmates, people from college they hung out with for one day. As Rebecca Jennings recently wrote in Vox, for lots of people under 30, location sharing is “simply the next step in digital intimacy after following someone on Instagram,” part of a never-ending march to the beat of surveillance capitalism.
There’s a very specific utility to Find My Friends: safety. We may try to sound cavalier about it, but it’s actual fear (infuriatingly well grounded in our society) that drives you to ask a friend to check on your whereabouts during a Bumble date. But the flip side of more laissez faire location sharing, as Jennings and others have pointed out, is that it can itself be dangerous, used explicitly or surreptitiously to stalk or manipulate people, or for other types of abuse. Many people have dozens of Find My contacts, accumulated over several years, and may not pay close attention to who’s on the list. Mashable’s Elena Cavender wrote about someone who had 97 contacts, including the “really scary” discovery of a number she hadn’t saved.
Of all the factors that played a role in Apple’s surge, cash may be the most important. When interest rates rose from zero to more than 5 percent, profits suddenly mattered more than promise, and Apple collected plenty of the former. The company built a formidable war chest, amassing more than $100 billion in cash, and deployed it masterfully. In May, it announced a $90 billion share buyback, its second in two years, putting that money in its investors’ hands. Apple’s buybacks have distinguished it from many of its tech peers who’ve struggled with profitability.
While terms of the agreement remain confidential between the companies, it covers Nokia’s inventions in 5G and other technologies.
Nokia said the company expects to recognize revenue related to the agreement starting January 2024, and it is consistent with the company's long-term outlook disclosed in the first quarter.
I still believe there isn't a good design that works great on both iOS and macOS -- sort-of validating Apple's idea that these different platforms will not converge -- but I sort-of worked out a compromised thing that I can accept. So, onwards for my hobby project.
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Thanks for reading.