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The Action-and-Reaction Edition Saturday, April 5, 2025

Apple, Tariffs, And The Art Of War, by Jonny Evans, Computerworld

We are still within the sequence of energies described in Newton’s Third Law of Motion, “every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” In this case, Apple, already badly bruised by Trump’s tariffs and their impact on its business, will now take another kicking as nations react to those oddly calculated trade taxes. Europe is gunning for Apple’s services, while China is about to stick some of the world’s rarest components behind its own trade wall.

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Don’t expect to hear much from Apple’s leadership quite yet. Execs recognize that the sensible approach is to stay under water until others throw their own responding stones into the pool as the rocks of Trump’s tariff troubles ripple across an angry world trade pond.

They may have gamed out a whole range of potential scenarios, but must now wait to see what’s left after the storm. It’s only after both action and reaction have had time to play out that defensive plans can be put into effect.

Stuff

Control Center Just Got Even Better In iOS 18.4, Here’s What’s New, by Ryan Christoffel, 9to5Mac

Apple has steadily added new capabilities to Control Center via software updates, and iOS 18.4 continues that trend in a big way thanks to several nice upgrades.

iOS 18.4 Gave Apple’s TV App Three Welcome Design Changes, by Ryan Christoffel, 9to5Mac

These are ultimately just UI enhancements, but in my time using iOS 18.4 they’ve very much led to a better experience overall.

Hands-On With Guest User Mode In visionOS 2.4, by Devon Dundee, MacStories

These changes to Guest User in visionOS give the device’s owner greater control and access throughout the process, which can be especially necessary when a guest is using the Vision Pro for the first time and might need some extra help. The new Guest Mode in visionOS 2.4 shows clear consideration for feedback that users have offered in the 14 months since the device’s release, and it’s great to see such impactful quality-of-life improvements in a mid-cycle point update.

Develop

Cross Compiling Swift, by Khan Winter

I recently did a few small projects in Swift, and I wanted to run each of them on my home server running Gentoo Linux. I decided to do each of them in Swift, not because I thought it'd be easiest, but because I was curious about the challenge of compiling Swift from my Mac to my Linux machine.

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This time round, after updating iOS on my iPhone, another different random button appeared on Control Centre. (It's the QR code scanner.)

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Thanks for reading.