Notices by John Gruber (gruber@mastodon.social)

@anildash You trying to be a blogger now?

@pluralistic @codinghorror @kudra @bugwhisperer @siracusa If you think the Foxconn/Apple suicide rate was a real problem, what do you think happened after 2010? Do you think it’s the nets catching people? The truth is the suicide rate was 4x lower than the typical US college and lower than the average nationwide in China.

https://www.wired.com/2011/02/ff-joelinchina/

T for Tariff
T for Trump

Either way to read it, it works. Good icon.
https://mstdn.ca/@toddtyrtle/114286757952888800

@stroughtonsmith @thomholwerda You’re arguing iPhone Mirroring is not in the EU for similar reasons to TV Shows in iTunes?

@thomholwerda Do you expect every new thing Apple has to delay or never launch in the EU to be of Apple Intelligence quality?

Still no word on iPhone Mirroring, for example, which I use every day and is technically excellent. And based on yesterday's EU decision I expect never to come to the EU.

@gryzor @stroughtonsmith @thomholwerda The EC is all-in on an interpretation of the DMA that holds that iOS isn’t permitted to have features that only work with other Apple products. iPhone Mirroring only works with Macs (Apple Silicon or those with a T2 security chip).

In addition to being wrong and unhelpful on MacOS 15.3, Siri's product knowledge is also wrong and unhelpful on iOS 18.3. Here are the answers I got after asking “How do I turn off suggestions in Messages?” and (trying to give Siri more of a chance to get it right) “How do I turn off Siri suggestions in Messages?”

(Cont.)

“Product knowledge” is one of the Apple Intelligence Siri features that, in its statement yesterday, Apple touted as a success. But what I asked here is a very simple question, about an Apple Intelligence feature in one of Apple's most-used apps, and it turns out Siri doesn't even know the names of its own settings panels.

MacOS 15.3.1. Asked Siri “How do you turn off suggestions in Messages?”

Siri responds with instructions that:

(a) Tell me to go to a System Settings panel that doesn't exist. There is no “Siri & Spotlight”. There is “Apple Intelligence & Siri" and a separate one for “Spotlight”.

(b) Are for Mail, not Messages, even though I asked about Messages, and Siri's own response starts with “To turn off Siri suggestions in Messages”

It seems like Apple is currently (meaning in the last few hours) rolling out “(Gulf of America)” in parentheses worldwide, pretty much matching Google. Anyone who checked the other day seeing something new today?
https://mastodon.social/@gruber/114003192100392251

Too many people didn’t appreciate just how wonderful, how glorious, it was that the daily news cycle during Biden’s presidency was boring as fuck.

Turns out you can force Siri to go through ChatGPT by treating it like a command line. The ungrammatical query “ChatGPT When does Apple next report quarterly resultschatgpts an accurate answer. I'd grade the answer A-, losing points for not saying "today” (which ChatGPT.app did).

So this means that if you use Siri and want better answers, you need to type “chatgpt" at the beginning of every query.

“When does Apple next report quarterly results?”

ChatGPT vs. Siri with ChatGPT on MacOS 15.3.

@Austen @Iconfactory While the elevator pitch for Tapestry might sound like Openvibe's, in practice they're very different. (Me: Tapestry supporter and active beta tester.)

Now I’m worried Apple Intelligence is doing the scores in the Sports app.

The EU sacked its crusading grandstanding duo of Margrethe Vestager and Thierry Breton *before* the U.S. election, so it’s not entirely or even mostly about Trump. They’re just coming to their senses that a radical DMA interpretation isn’t going to change these companies, it would just turn the EU into more of a technological backwater than it already is.

https://www.techmeme.com/250114/p1#a250114p1

@mcelhearn Which is it then? People don't know what "beta" means or people don't realize Apple Intelligence is "beta" because Apple's heavy advertising campaign footnotes that?

To me it's the latter. I think "beta" is part of modern vernacular. It might even better understood by more people today than calling something a "work in progress”.

Also, this is the first iMessage spam I've gotten in a long long while.

It'd be nice if Apple Intelligence were smart enough to warn that this is a scam. Pretty obvious that USPS isn't going to send messages from a non-US phone number.

@caseyliss @rileytestut Why would Apple not reject vMac for all of these cited reasons? Force the EC to rule, in writing, that the DMA means Apple is not allowed to protect its trademarked named, trademarked logos, and the MacOS license agreement.