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The Destructive-and-Deconstructive Edition Tuesday, December 10, 2024

Monument Valley 3 Comes To Netflix With An Iconoclastic Edge, by Lewis Gordon, The Verge

“The first Monument Valley is a time capsule of 2013 / 2014 graphic design,” says lead artist Lili Ibrahim, referencing the clean lines of its perfectly crafted, impossible architecture and brain-massaging, soft-pastel color blends. Ibrahim wondered, “What can Monument Valley 3 be influenced by to create a time capsule of graphic design today?” She immersed herself in magazines, websites, and art exhibitions. Of particular resonance were “destructive” and “deconstructive” fashion editorials with paint splodges over the top of them and images butchered by gaping cut-out holes. Ibrahim attended a retrospective on the UK artist Cornelia Parker and saw the famous 1991 installation Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View — essentially a freeze-frame of a garden shed at the moment of its obliteration. “Seeing this was so freeing to me,” she says. “I could imagine the buildings in Monument Valley doing this.”

This is precisely what happens in some of Monument Valley 3’s more visually striking puzzles. One origami-inspired stage, which is textured to evoke Japanese washi paper, sees architecture unfurl and unfold like a deconstructed 3D net. Another sees you literally exploding architecture in slow motion so that it comes to resemble a kind of blooming cubic flowerhead.

All The Little Data, by Nicholas Carr, Hedgehog Review

We talk a lot these days about Big Data, those heaping stores of digitized information that, fueling search and recommendation engines, social media feeds, and, now, artificial intelligence models, govern so much of our lives today. But we don’t give much notice to what might be called little data—all those fleeting, discrete bits of information that swarm around us like gnats on a humid summer evening. Measurements and readings. Forecasts and estimates. Facts and statistics. Yet it’s the little data, at least as much as the big stuff, that shapes our sense of ourselves and the world around us as we click and scroll through our days. Our apps have recruited us all into the arcane fraternity of the logistics manager and the process-control engineer, the meteorologist and the lab tech, and what we’re monitoring and measuring, in such exquisite detail, is our own existence. “Software is eating the world,” the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen declared in a famous Wall Street Journal op-ed a decade ago. It’s also eating us.

Impersonators Are Claiming Laptops At Apple Stores Before Real Owners Can Pick Them Up, by Summer Lin, Los Angeles Times

Apple computer buyers are reporting that impostors have been using fake IDs and QR codes to steal their laptops before they can pick them up at several Apple stores across Southern California.

The crime, reported to several media outlets in Southern California, occurs when consumers order Apple laptops online but find that when they arrive at the Apple stores to pick up the computers, they have already been claimed and taken.

Stuff

Apple Launches Tap To Pay On iPhone In The UAE, by Apple

Apple today launched Tap to Pay on iPhone in the United Arab Emirates, empowering merchants to use iPhone to seamlessly and securely accept in-person, contactless payments.

Transmit 5.10.6, by Agen Schmitz, TidBITS

Panic issued Transmit 5.10.5 to add support for browsing shared folders in OneDrive.

MacStories Selects 2024: Recognizing The Best Apps Of The Year, by MacStories

2024 was a big year for apps, but it was also different from most. More often than not, app innovation is driven by new Apple APIs; that wasn’t the case this year. Instead, it was other trends that shaped the apps we love.

Resident Evil 2 Now Available On iPhone, iPad, And Mac, by Tim Hardwick, MacRumors

Capcom's Resident Evil 2 remake has debuted on Apple devices, making it the fourth Resident Evil title to arrive on Apple's mobile platforms.

Notes

How WhatsApp Ate The World, by Issie Lapowsky, Rest of World

WhatsApp may have transformed Sabharwal’s business. But Meta’s goal isn’t to sell pottery. Rather, Shivika Pottery Gallery is a tiny element in the larger solar system of services, features, and connections that make up WhatsApp.

[...]

WhatsApp initially achieved that global dominance in large part by doing just one thing very well: enabling cheap, private, and reliable messaging on almost any phone, almost anywhere in the world. But in the decade since Meta acquired WhatsApp for an eye-watering $22 billion in 2014, the app has been transformed from a narrowly focused utilitarian tool into a sort of “everything app.” In countries like India, Brazil, Mexico, and Indonesia, WhatsApp is now also a place for scheduling doctor’s appointments and conducting real estate deals — and buying Sabharwal’s ceramic ducks. In Brazil, the beauty juggernaut L’Oréal now makes an average of 25% of its online direct-to-consumer sales on WhatsApp.

Tim Cook Interview About AI And AVP, by Michael Tsai

The Apple I like is focused on making tools to empower users and making open platforms to empower developers (who in turn help empower users). I think of iLife, built-in scripting languages, RSS in Mail, and bundled developer tools that didn’t need a membership and permission to call certain APIs.

AI Is Booming On The App Store, And Developers Are Taking Advantage Of It, by Jess Weatherbed, The Verge

Using in-app charges to appear on the App Store’s free category, and thereby attract a wider audience, is hardly new. Mobile games have been taking advantage of this loophole for years — and what’s now happening with the creative AI market looks eerily familiar.

Bottom of the Page

I still don't understand why Netflix get into the games business, and I still don't see how games can help Netflix's business, but you bet I will download and play the heck out of Monument Valley 3.

(Outside of the app store business, I don't see much to celebrate Apple's service business these days. Losing this sequel to Netflix when it is already on both the App Store and Apple Arcade is not good.)

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Thanks for reading.