Nevertheless, speaking as someone with over 34 years of publishing technical content on the Internet—nearly 16,000 TidBITS articles and hundreds of Take Control ebooks—I’m just not that bothered by all this. My overall opinions aren’t usually so divergent from my tech journalism peers, but since no one seems to be acknowledging that there are multiple sides to every issue, I want to explain why I’m largely unperturbed by AI and much of the hand-wringing that seems to permeate coverage of the field.
That’s not the only cost that is going up for Apple in particular: part of the implication of the “Core Technology Fee” model is that Apple has put forth a tremendous amount of engineering effort to accomodate its platform to the DMA specifically. Or, to put it another way, Apple has already forked iOS: there is one version for the E.U., and one version for the rest of the world. This too dramatically changes the calculus: yes, every E.U. user comes in at zero marginal cost, but not the E.U. as a whole: Apple isn’t just paying the expected value of future fines, but actual real costs in terms of engineering time and overall complexity.
In short, the E.U. either has or is about to cross a critical line in terms of overplaying its hand: yes, most of tech may have been annoyed by their regulations, but the economic value of having one code base for the entire world meant that everyone put up with it (including users outside of the E.U.); once that code base splits, though — as it recently did for Apple — the calculations of whether or not to even serve E.U. users becomes that much closer; dramatically increasing potential fines far beyond what the region is worth only exacerbates the issue.
The popular Affinity creative suite for Mac, iPad, and PC is out with an enticing offer today, half a year of free access to the software.
Hidden Bar is a free (that is, completely free, without in-app purchases) app that solves this. All you have to do is install it, and it hides all of your lesser-used menu bar icons behind a little arrow.
Scribble Journey is an art therapy and mental health app that aims to help users express and explore their emotions through art. On Monday, the startup launched a new feature for iOS devices that allows users to complete drawing activities in the app rather than sketching in a physical notebook at home.
Indie App Sales is back with excellent deals on apps from many of your favorite developers.
Are your Philips Hue smart light bulbs seemingly going rogue, randomly turning themselves up to full brightness even if you’ve set them dimmer? Philips Hue parent company Signify is aware of the issue, has figured out the root cause, and tells The Verge that a fix is coming as soon as next week.
If I tell you I am an AI, will anyone object to this little website?
(Actually, come to think of it, I am sure someone out there will object to this website even if I am not an AI.)
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Thanks for reading.