But Apple has also held fast to the idea that its devices are made for just one person, and with the Vision Pro, it can enforce that idea in ways it couldn’t before. Even as the hardware gets cheaper and more streamlined, it could easily insist on a fundamentally single-user experience — and that’s a shame, when the Vision Pro seems built for so much more.
While the iPhone trojan was first found distributed through the iOS TestFlight beta testing system, Apple was able to shut that down (at least for now).
However, the latest evolution has been GoldPickaxe being distributed through malicious iOS mobile device management (MDM) profiles.
Apple has integrated its streaming and device businesses with unnoticed sophistication, in fact. TV+ programs don’t urge us to buy Apple products simply by making them visible. It’s not as if non-Apple media wants for scenes with iPhones and other Apple devices; they are the water in which we daily swim. Rather, TV+ imbues these ubiquitous objects with dynamic significance. It manages their cultural meanings and, by extension, the meanings of work, home, love, and family. That brand management is fundamental to almost every TV+ program. It’s not a superadded bug, a worm in an otherwise pristine apple; it’s the feature at the fruit’s core.
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What they’re delivering is a marketing machine, the likes of which we’ve never seen, one for which product placement inventories are wholly inadequate. The streamer delivers a world organized around Apple from the ground up. And that’s no less the case when the iPhone, above all, is physically absent but still very much implicit in a given program.
Epic is one step closer to opening its iOS games store in the European Union. As part of its 2023 year in review, Epic Games announced Apple has reinstated its developer account, which means it will finally be able to let users download Fortnite on iPhones again.
The release gains a watermark filter and browser actions, adds support for displaying HDR images in the image editor (requires macOS 14 Sonoma and a screen with HDR support), and enables importing of JPEG and HEIC images with Apple gainmap directly as HDR.
With just a tap or two, I can look over at a HomeUI window and control my lights and the outlets I’m using. It’s a great experience and one I look forward to using more as new device types are added to the app.
Apple’s Vision Pro offers consumers a new way to interact with apps via spatial computing, but it also offers app developers a way to generate revenue without subscriptions. According to a recently released report from app intelligence firm Appfigures, over half of Vision Pro-only apps (52%) are paid downloads — a surprising percentage given that across the wider App Store, only 5% of apps monetize this way.
But then why did Apple do a 180° turn on RCS? I can’t say for certain, alas, but after spending the last few months periodically poking around the trees inhabited by little birdies, I do have good news for fans of coercive government regulation. Apple’s hand was effectively forced. But by China, not the EU.
Chinese carriers have been proponents of RCS for years, and last year, the Chinese government began the process of codifying into law that to achieve certification, new 5G devices will be required to support RCS. (Here’s a good English translation on Reddit of the parts relevant to Apple.) Shockingly, the Chinese government seemingly isn’t concerned that the RCS standard has no provisions for encryption. The little birdies I’ve spoken to all said the same thing: iOS support for RCS is all about China.
But who would spend thousands on a tape player in the age of Spotify and YouTube, when virtually all your entertainment needs can be concentrated into one device in your pocket
Nostalgia. It can be a wonderful thing. (I've just 'wasted' two hours playing Loderunner on the web.)
Memories, on the other hand, can be happy and sad.
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Thanks for reading.