Making a show for Apple was not what she’d hoped it would be. What the company wanted from her and the series never felt clear—there was a “radical information asymmetry,” she said, regarding management’s priorities and metrics. After she and her colleagues completed the first season of Dickinson, they waited for the streamer to launch and the show to air. Their requests for a firm timeline and premiere date were ignored. Smith started to worry that Apple might scrap the idea for the streaming platform altogether, in which case the show might never be seen, or might even disappear—she didn’t have a copy of the finished product. It belonged to Apple and lived on the company’s servers.
“It was communicated to me,” Smith said, “that my only choice to keep the show alive was to begin all over again and write a whole new season without a green-light guarantee. So I was expected to take on that risk, when the entities that stood to profit the most from the success of my creative labor, the platform and studio, would not risk a dime.” “It was also on me,” she went on, “to kind of fluff everybody involved in the entire making of the show, from the stars to the line producer to the costume designer, etcetera, to make them believe that we’d be coming back again and prevent them, sometimes unsuccessfully, from taking other jobs.”
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But Smith was losing steam. “I was only allowed to make the show to the extent that I was willing to take on unbelievable amounts of risk and labor on my own body perpetually, without ceasing, for years,” she said. “And I knew that if I ever stopped, the show would die.” It had seemed to her that Apple didn’t value the series, and she felt at a loss. Smith now knows that Dickinson was the company’s most-watched show in its second and third seasons. But at the time, she had no access to concrete information about its performance. As was the habit among streamers, Apple didn’t share viewership data with its writers. And without that data, Smith had no leverage. In 2020, after three seasons, she told Apple that she was done. “I said, I can’t do it anymore. And Apple said, Okay.”
iGBA was a copycat version of developer Riley Testut's open-source GBA4iOS app, with the addition of ads on top. While it did not explicitly name GBA4iOS, Apple told us it removed iGBA from the App Store after learning that it was a knockoff app that copied another developer's work and attempted to pass it off as its own.
Notably, Apple confirmed to us that emulators on the App Store are permitted to load ROMs downloaded from the web, so long as the app is emulating retro console games only.
Humane spent five years developing their product in a vacuum. They lacked a FitBit to prove their concept. They had little evidence people want to ditch their phones. They didn't know what form factors users would tolerate. They didn't have normal people telling them battery swaps are dumb.
But the most damaging consequence of their delayed launch was missing the chance to strike while the iron was hot. Humane sounded like a decent idea in 2018, but that same year the iPhone launched its "Screen Time," which has proven a good enough solution for many to curb their screen addiction. In the following years we've watched a decline in the use of social media, which gives me a "nature is healing" vibe. Phone addiction is still a thing, but it feels more like pot than fentanyl.
The problem is that I’m dismissing the Ai Pin and looking forward to the Apple Watch specifically because of the control Apple has over its platforms. Yes, the company’s entire business model is based on tightly integrating its hardware and software, and it allows devices like the Apple Watch to exist. But that focus on tight integration comes at a cost (to everyone but Apple, anyway): Nobody else can have the access Apple has.
The update adds things like rankings, playoff series information, and more for the NBA and NHL.
If you also prefer a keyboard shortcut over a drag-and-drop, check out Marta, a free alternative file manager built for quickly managing files without moving your hands from the keys.
The absolute best feature of the UGREEN MagSafe battery pack is multi-device charging. It allows you to power up to three devices at the same. It supports a device on wireless charging while also delivering a 22.5W output via a USB-A port and up to 20W through a USB-C port.
Today Apple announced it will open Indonesia’s fourth Apple Developer Academy in Bali, expanding on its investment to increase opportunities for developers, students, and entrepreneurs looking to embark on careers in the region’s growing iOS app economy.
Since Indonesia’s first Apple Developer Academy launched in Jakarta in 2018, Apple has opened academies in Surabaya and Batam, and more than 2,000 aspiring developers have completed the program. As a testament to the academy’s impact, 90 percent of its graduates have gone on to find meaningful employment in various sectors spanning education, e-commerce, transportation, sustainability, and more.
There are arguments out there that Humane has to built its AI Pin the way it is because it is not Apple. The product cannot integrate with the iPhone like how the Apple Watch can integrate with the iPhone.
I don't buy that argument. The way I see it, so much of its design choice -- the lack of touchscreen being the most significant -- is driven by the desire to get rid of the phone, to counter phone addiction. There isn't any evidence that Humane has great ideas that were thwarted by Apple's desire to not integrate with any one else.
Which, also observed by many people, is the wrong assumption going in. I probably count among many that like the phone. I read books on the phone. I listen to podcasts on the phone. I keep in touch with my family on the phone. I do not consider myself a phone addict, at all. In fact, I want more screentime, not less.
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Thanks for reading.