Notices by Steve Troughton-Smith (stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social)

You know, I'm not sure the world needs a specific day where everybody lies to each other

@mikecane @WarnerCrocker @doctorlaura are you scraping computers out of the dumpster??

A delaminating screen is going to frost over as it gets worse

@WarnerCrocker @mikecane @doctorlaura he's an ‘arbitrary excuses’ kind of guy. There will always be some invented reason he’s only window shopping 😜

@gruber @thomholwerda there are features *every year* that Apple doesn't launch in the EU. It's been 20 years and I don't have TV Shows in iTunes. They just fooled the eager tech press into believing *this* round of half-finished, delayed features was somehow the EU's fault, and not because multiple divisions at Apple are in now crisis mode because of a decade of bad decisions

ChatGPT didn't need access to all your local or sensitive data to be incredibly useful. It didn't need to be wired into every corner of the OS or outside of the sandbox. It didn't need special privileges or entitlements given to only it. It didn't need the biggest and most powerful Apple chips, or the latest OS to run on.

Apple has lost itself completely in the weeds, when a Siri app and API that works just like ChatGPT’s would have done 90% of what anybody is actually looking for

⚓️ Realistically, this AI race is a giant ship anchor Apple has willingly strapped to its own neck, that will mire it dreadfully. A game they can’t ever win, and a distraction that is eating up all the OS engineering energy that some of their product lines desperately need. It has added literally nothing of value to this year's OS releases.

Apple needed to do two things: make Siri not suck, and provide an LLM through API so that devs could make their own features and choices. It did neither

There's a new budget phone from the company whose CEO funded a venue where one dude pledged to eradicate trans people and another dude did some nazi salutes, and that's about as much coverage as it deserves

Apple, fuck right off. *You* decided notarization would be an approval process, and you inserted yourself in it, which means yes *you approved this app*.

Much like you didn't approve a bunch of other apps, like emulators.

Shame on Apple-affiliated sites for regurgitating this crap, once again. You're knowingly and willingly lying to your readers on behalf of a company that would happily eat you for breakfast

https://9to5mac.com/2025/02/03/apple-forced-to-approve-porn-app-on-eu-iphones-due-to-dma/

Your favorite big tech CEO (pick one) just sat on stage behind and in support of somebody who defined trans people out of existence, side by side with some motherfucker who later did nazi salutes from behind the seal of the POTUS.

There is no going back from that

Europe risks catastrophe if it doesn’t start cutting off access to Twitter/X, and other US-lead social media following it down this dark path. The risks are even higher than in the case of RT; if we wait until some big conflict it will be far too late

Meta is very publicly doing what _every other company in the US_ is going to be doing in the near future. This is about as much of a heads-up big tech is going to give. You might want to save some of that anger to channel later, because an awful lot of vulnerable groups are going to be relying on your voice

The ’cultural realignment' is real.

https://www.404media.co/meta-deletes-trans-and-nonbinary-messenger-themes/

@dansup good luck with the launch[es]! 😄

Chilling. If the wake-up call hasn't set in yet, we outside the US really need to start viewing all US-based companies as from a hostile aggressor, beholden to imperial dictates, not law. As a new dark age engulfs America, the rest of us must do what we can to insulate ourselves from the fallout

https://www.instagram.com/p/DEhf2uTJUs0/

The Apple Intelligence vs BBC story is a microcosm of the developer story for the feature. We're soon expected to vend up all the actions and intents in our apps to Siri, with no knowledge of the context (or accuracy) in which it will be presented to the user. Apple gets to launder the features and content of your apps and wrap it up in their UI as ‘Siri’ — that's the developer proposition Apple has presented us. They get to market it as Apple Intelligence, you get the blame if it goes awry

Apple leadership would rather bend the knee, kiss the ring, and ‘donate’ a million dollar bribe to a convicted criminal than follow the EU's competition law in good faith, which should tell you everything you need to know about values over there

“Apple shall implement the measures above in the next major iOS release, and in any case by the end of 2025 at the latest.”

How granular is this stuff?

"If Apple presents end users of [3rd-party apps] with a choice regarding the level of background execution capabilities or background connection to a connected physical device, it must present the same choice in the same manner, including regarding time, place, and cadence, to end users of Apple’s connected physical devices. Apple may only present end users with a specific choice […] if Apple implements and offers this choice for its own connected physical device.”

Re AirPlay and Chromecast et al

"Centralised availability: Apple shall allow third-party casting providers to centrally provide their casting solution on iOS, e.g., through an extension, such that end users who install the casting solution can access the third-party casting provider in any third-party app that uses standard media playback APIs without the need for the third-party app developer to integrate an SDK in their applications.”

"Apple shall make available the possibility for a third-party connected physical device to become an AirPlay receiver, i.e., allowing the iOS device to cast content to a receiving third-party connected physical device, to all interested third parties independently of the product category, for video, audio, and screen mirroring”