Thomas Barrabi, reporting for The New York Post:

The protesters have demanded that Google pull out of a $1.2 billion “Project Nimbus” contract — in which Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services provide cloud-computing and artificial intelligence services for the Israeli government and military.

Critics at the company raised concerns that the technology would be weaponized against Palestinians in Gaza.

Reasonable.

“This evening, Google indiscriminately fired 28 workers, including those among us who did not directly participate in yesterday’s historic, bicoastal 10-hour sit-in protests,” the workers said in the statement.

Unreasonable.

“This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers — the ones who create real value for executives and shareholders.”

Fuck israel (an illegitimate country made up of land gifted by actual world powers to the biggest losers of any war in history, who now want to act like big shots).

Oh and also, fuck these google execs. Eat the rich.

After reading three or four bullshit, AI-written articles (the sort which detail the specifics of your question ad nauseam without ever answering it) while searching for the answer to what I thought was a straightforward query (‘can I read books on my Kindle through the digital library service ‘hoopla” (the answer is ‘no,’ btw)), I stumbled upon this gem of an “article.” Note that there are as many gaudy ads above the fold as there are words of actual content, and this is AFTER dismissing a full-screen popup ad.

The web developers who build these sites not only have no capacity to balance profit with design, they seem to genuinely loathe their readers. Web hosts, CDNs, and ISPs should really start looking into sites like this and refusing to service them, for the sake of their own reputations. I’m surprised Cloudflare would support such undeniable web litter like this in any manner.

Seems like it would be a real miss for Apple not to name the new macOS release “Ojai,” assuming the rumors about the massive AI advancements are true and they’re still going with California-inspired names.

Jennifer Henderson, reporting for CNN:

Porcha Woodruff, 32, was home around 8 a.m. on February 16, helping her 6- and 12-year-olds get ready for school when six Detroit police officers arrived at her door with an arrest warrant for carjacking and robbery, the complaint states.

“Are you kidding, carjacking? Do you see that I am eight months pregnant?” she asked them, the lawsuits says. Still, she was handcuffed, taken to jail and booked, it states.

Woodruff later learned she was implicated in the alleged incident after the facial recognition software hit as well as the carjacking victim allegedly identified her in a lineup of six photos that included her mugshot from a 2015 arrest, the complaint states. Police had access to her current driver’s license photo issued in 2021, but used the older photo, according to the complaint.

This is seriously concerning, especially for black people. We know that police officers go out of their way to respect the rights of black Americans /s, but photography companies have long been biased towards taking photos of white people, often making black people appear far too dark and featureless in photographs, which necessarily makes artificial intelligence models less capable of identifying them accurately in images.

Aside from that, ALL citizens of the world should have strong concerns about governments using technology like this for law enforcement purposes. It’s chillingly dystopian.

The last time I did a pre-WWDC post was in 2021. I’m going to be recycling a good bit of what I had on my wishlist then, because some of it still, unbelievably, hasn’t happened.

Here are the lists of things I’m hoping to see, and then some things I’m expecting to see.

Wish List:

• [Recycled from 2019’s list.] Fix the atrocious Apple Music app. Get rid of the useless Browse, For You, and Radio tabs at the bottom, and replace them with Playlists, Artists, and Albums. Work in better sorting. Streamline the search feature.

  [Recycled from 2021’s list.] I’m still sick of Apple Music. All of those problems are still there, and they’ve brought some of the issues from the Music app to the Podcasts app. I’ve recently switched to using Overcast as my podcast app, but as an One subscriber, I'm stuck with the shitty Music app.

  I didn’t stick with Overcast long for podcasts. I had just switched, and found its playlist system to be terrible. Not long after that, I switched to Castro, and have never looked back. As far as the Music app goes, idek bro. It’s shit and almost everything they do to it makes it worse, so maybe the best we can hope for is that they’ll just leave it alone forever.

• [Recycled from 2019’s list.] It is HIGH TIME for some Siri improvements. We have been waiting and watching for years, every year expecting this to be the keynote where Apple rolls out a badass new Siri. They’ve teased us a few times with things like Siri suggestions and other minor voice improvements, but at the end of the day, I don’t give a shit about having Siri tell me hockey scores. I’m talking Iron Man-style, JARVIS-level intelligence. I know that Apple is behind the curve on this as a result of their focus on privacy, but they’ve gotta figure out a way to at least get Siri up to speed with the Google Assistant. 

  [Recycled from last 2020’s list.] Please. Please, please. Puhleeeaaaazeee. PLEASE. PLEASE make this the year that Siri gets a major boost. I would honestly be completely content, nay, happy, if this were the only change they announce this year. It’s so overdue. Siri was the first voice assistant on the scene, and now she’s in last place for speed, accuracy, and general capabilities. There’s so much potential here to make a truly intelligent voice assistant that would really set the iPhone apart from its competitors.

  [Recycled from 2021’s list.] What do you have to do to get a decent virtual assistant around here? My god. As John Gruber has pointed out, if you hired a personal assistant and she was as stupid and contextually unaware as Siri is, you’d fire her within a week.

  This is truly an evergreen wishlist item because they apparently just refuse to acknowledge that the Siri sucks ass. It’s going to look a little odd if they don’t announce anything on this front, given the insane advancements in AI over the past 12 months, but fortunately for them, they’ve got something in store big enough to keep that from being a focus anyway.

• More privacy stuff, always. More, more, more; gimme, gimme, gimme. Given the state of the digital surveillance industry, I will never not have this on my wishlist.

• [Recycled from 2020’s list.] In my opinion, macOS just deserves some bug fixes and attention to detail.

  Definitely still the case. It feels like it’s getting messier, and the settings app really is bad.

• [Recycled from last 2020’s list.] As I mentioned in my Apple Card review, I would really like for them to expand the capability of the Cash card to function more like a typical checking account.

  [Recycled from 2021’s list.] I would really like this. A lot. Give me a nice, black titanium debit card, and then Apple can truly take all my money.

  Still want this, a lot.

• [Recycled from 2019’s list.] I would really like for them to revamp the Apple Watch UI in a meaningful way, and finally give the side button a distinct, useful role in controlling the device.

  [Recycled from 2021’s list.] I think it’s also time for third party watch faces. Apple’s offerings just don’t scratch the itch, anymore.

  I’ve about given up hope here and permanently settled for the built in ones. But they’re allegedly really revamping watchOS this year, so we’ll see what happens.

• [Recycled from 2021’s list.] I can’t put my finger on what exactly has been wrong with tvOS the past few years, but I think it needs some attention.

  Yeah still accurate.

• [Recycled from 2021’s list.] I think we’re also getting to the point where it’s safe to say the rollout of Look Around on Apple Maps is way too slow. Only a handful of cities in the US support it. It’s a really useful feature that I think is way better than Google’s street view, but not nearly enough people can benefit from it.

  Wow I forgot this feature existed. It’s definitely WAY too slow.

• [Recycled from 2021’s list.] AirPlay has been a bit less stable lately. I hope they iron out those kinks.

  This is definitely in need of attention. I’m hoping they’ll announce some new, rock solid AirPlay 3 standard and a new interface for controlling HomePods via an iPhone.

Predictions

• Apple unveils some sort of virtual/augmented reality headset device (a completely unique and original thought that there have been no rumors about).

• [Recycled from 2019’s list. Again.] I predict that Apple will, once again, disappoint me by leaving the Music app practically untouched.

• [Recycled from 2021’s list.] I think a lot of the updates we’ll get for macOS are going to be performance improvements and bug fixes. It’s hard to imagine them revamping the UI or introducing a bunch of new features this year. For the name, I’m going to throw my hat in the “macOS Monterey” ring.

  When they announced OS X Mavericks, they said they were switching to names of iconic locations in California because they ran out of big cats and needed something else that could get them a decade worth of names. We have now had ten releases under the new naming scheme, so I wonder if they’ll switch to a new approach this year, or maybe just use numbers going forward. The various releases of their different OSes are all on different numbers, so between “iOS 17” and “iPadOS 17” just sounding clunky, the watch going to its tenth OS version, and the Mac having exhausted ten “iconic” California place names”, and the fact that they are most likely introducing a new operating system, maybe they’ll rename ALL their OSes to get them on the same number/system and save people some confusion.

• They’re not going to meaningfully fix iPadOS.

• I think we could see some more health features for the Apple Watch. The blood oxygen sensor on the Series 6 seems like it could have a few more tricks up its sleeve, and I wouldn’t be shocked if they added something like blood alcohol level measurements through a WatchOS update.

• I’m sure we’ll get something in the way of privacy, but I don’t think it will go as far as ATT from last year.

• Regarding the headset, it’s really hard for me to believe they’re going with a name as bad as “Apple Reality Pro” or “Apple Reality.” What does that even mean? I hope they’ll call it “Apple View” or something else that doesn’t include the word “reality.” It doesn’t seem likely to me that they launch a new product and haven’t come up with a slick name for it.

ABC News:

Facebook parent Meta said Wednesday it will restore former President Donald Trump 's personal account in the coming weeks, ending a two-year suspension it imposed in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Me, two years ago:

This is good news for now, but don’t count on the decision from this “independent oversight board”* to last for very long. I’d bet a thousand dollars that Zuckerberg comes up with some bullshit excuse to allow him back on the platform before 2023, and probably by the end of this year. The only thing that drives Zuck is profit, engagement drives profit, and Donald Trump drives engagement.

Missed it by 25 days.

#deletefacebook

Joesph White, reporting for Reuters:

General Motors plans to phase out widely-used Apple CarPlay and Android Auto technologies that allow drivers to bypass a vehicle's infotainment systems, shifting instead to built-in infotainment systems developed with Google for future electric vehicles.

[…]

GM's decision to stop offering those systems in future electric vehicles, starting with the 2024 Chevrolet Blazer, could help the automaker capture more data on how consumers drive and charge EVs.

CNBC:

Apple engineering manager Emily Schubert said 98% of new cars in the U.S. come with CarPlay installed. She delivered a shocking stat: 79% of U.S. buyers would only buy a car if it supported CarPlay.

“It’s a must-have feature when shopping for a new vehicle,” Schubert said

Given that Android has 47% of the smartphone marketshare in the US, that stat doesn’t seem right. But when you consider the fact that wealthier people are the ones buying most of the new cars, and wealthy people tend to prefer iPhones, I don’t think this stat is too far off at all.

Given that, this move by GM sure sounds like they’re shooting themselves in the foot for.. what? Data collection? Hubris? Unclear.

John Gruber, on Daring Fireball:

Interesting turn of events that it’s the Play Store that is being more strict about this than Apple’s App Store, where Truth Social has been available since February.

Not a good look for Apple, but seems difficult to walk back now without looking like they’re trying to mirror Google, which would surely be met with a cacophony of conservative outrage and accusations of cancel culture-fueled hypocrisy.

This is the sort of story you love to see. From Deepa Seetharaman and Salvador Rodriguez at The Wall Street Journal (via Apple News+):

Meta shares plunged after the results were announced, dropping more than 20%. If shares dropped that much when trading opens on Thursday, it would wipe more than $175 billion from the tech giant’s market capitalization.

Quick update: the Journal’s story was published on the evening of Facebook’s report, before the market opened the next day. They ended up dropping slightly more than 25%, and they lost over $200B.

The company said it expected revenue growth to slow because users were spending less time on its more lucrative services. Meta cited inflation as a weight on advertiser spending and estimated that ad-tracking changes introduced by Apple Inc. last year would cost Meta some $10 billion this year. 

I bet Apple is happy about this. And they certainly should be. Their App Tracking Transparency policy wasn’t designed to cripple Mark Zuckerberg’s company, it was designed to give users a little more control over their data and prevent unwanted tracking. Facebook blaming Apple for the loss would be like a peeping tom blaming his victim for his blue balls when they finally close the curtains of the window he’s looking through. Merlin Mann put it well on Twitter (quipping about a particularly stupid framing of the issue by the New York Times):

“Local burglar blames revenue shortfall on industry-hostile doors.”

From the Journal again:

Meta also lost about a million daily users globally and stagnated in the U.S. and Canada, two of the company’s most profitable markets, the results show.

The fact that they’re losing users is a good sign, but it it shouldn’t take Facebook by surprise unless they’re so high on their own supply that they've completely isolated themselves in echo chambers reaffirming how much good they’re doing in the world (probably by means of Facebook groups). The global social media market is saturated, this plateauing shouldn’t come as a surprise, and Facebook acting like this caught them off guard is bullshit. They clearly did see it coming because they decided to refocus the whole business on personal porn theaters virtual reality goggles. We’ll see how that goes, but here’s to the next Google Glass.

I must say though, it pisses me off that Wall Street is gonna get the credit for finally dealing a significant blow to Facebook when those of us who have been paying attention have been screaming about how terrible they are for years. Fuck capitalism, fuck Facebook.

#deletefacebook

I’ve just learned this: if you say the word “lumos” to Siri, she’ll turn on your flashlight!

(If you’re unfamiliar, “lumos” is the incantation for the spell in the Harry Potter Wizarding World that produces light from the tip of a witch or wizard’s wand.)

Talk about surprise and delight.

I wrote this on October 28th, 2021 and forgot to publish it, but better late than never:

Presumably because they make all their money selling your metadata?

Somehow this feels desperate, dorky, cowardly, and creepy all at the same time. Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are pathetic, greedy human beings.

#deletefacebook

The event, titled “California Streaming,” will be broadcast on Apple.com next Tuesday, September 14th at 10AM pacific.

Apple Watch

The new watch rumors are more exciting to me than the new iPhone rumors, this year. We saw some interesting leaks and renders earlier this year from the ever insufferable John Prosser, and while the renders themselves looked like shit (did they make those sides concave?), they do give me hope that Apple could design something in that general style that would look nice. The Apple Watch has never had a significant industrial design refresh, and it’s time. As I believe Myke Hurley pointed out on a recent episode of upgrade, going with squared off sides will probably make it look more like a device and less like a timepiece, but until Apple designs a circular Apple Watch, that’s probably going to be the case regardless. Also, bands: if Apple is going to change the band mechanism any time in the first 15 years of the Watch’s existence, I believe this design refresh is when they would do it. That said, I don’t think they will. Eventually, the watch case may change to the point where they simply can’t make the existing bands compatible, but until such time, I think Apple will do everything they can to keep the current band design.

There aren’t any rumors of significant new features for the Watch this year. Any rumors flying around about new health sensors are focused on 2022 and beyond, so perhaps Apple will get a good surprise in this year, or perhaps they’re relying on the new design to be enough of a feature on its own.

I do think (I hope) it’s almost certain that they finally kick the Apple Watch Series 3 out of the lineup and move the Apple Watch SE down to the $199 price point. That’ll be a great option for a lot of people.

I don’t know about Edition models this year. I would like to see a new material and I think it could be time (if Apple intends to keep the Edition line around in perpetuity, which I’m not sure about), but I don’t know what they could go with and there haven’t been any rumors about it. In all likelihood, it’ll be titanium again, if anything.

iPhone

Me, last year, regarding the then-upcoming iPhones 12:

The rumors are suggesting there’ll be four new models this year, which in my opinion is too many. The rumors are also suggesting that between the two pro models (both of which are rumored to be getting bigger, which sucks), the Pro Max is going to get better camera improvements than the Pro (non-max), which really blows. I’m not a huge fan of massive phones, but I am a huge fan of great cameras, and with four new models, and that doesn’t seem like a compromise I should be forced to make.

I’m sick of Apple differentiating between top tier models. We don’t need to go back to the days of the iPhone 6 Plus, where the biggest phone always has at least one notable camera improvement over its little brother. I thought Apple had moved past this, given that the iPhone XS Max and iPhone 11 Pro Max had identical cameras to the XS and 11 Pro, respectively, so I was very disappointed when they fell back into this pattern with the iPhones 12. And I’ll be frustrated again this year, when the iPhone 13 Pro Max ends up having something that the iPhone 13 Pro doesn’t, and I’ll be forced to make the uncomfortable decision of dealing with a monstrously large phone or settling for a lesser camera.

In regards to the number of new models, I still think four is too many. I liked the lineup a bit better when there were fewer choices to make. The days of the iPhones 6 we’re simpler times: you could get the new iPhone, or you could get the big new iPhone (I’m actually something of a purist who misses the days of the iPhone 5, but we’ll save that conversation for later). But now, there are so many sizes it becomes difficult to remember how many we’ve actually had in the past three years. If Apple is okay with having a hundreds of SKUs, I think they need to go a step further than four models. Actually, two steps further. I think there ought to be three iPhone sizes, with standard and pro tier options at each size. In other words, I want them to introduce “iPhone ## Pro Mini” and “iPhone ## Max” models. Not everyone who wants a big phone wants a pro phone, and not everyone who wants a small phone wants a standard phone. Personally, I would be very interested in something around the size of the iPhone 12 Mini if it had the best cameras and other differentiating features from the Pro line. Alright, end of rant; let’s get on with it.

While none of the rumors about the iPhones 13 are groundbreaking (120Hz display, possible always on display, A15 chip, larger camera sensors and stabilization), I do think this set of iPhones could be a point where we’ll look back at in a year or two and say “I can’t believe it wasn’t always like this”, in regards to the displays. I imagine it’ll feel something like when you’re confronted with the lack of Tap to Wake on Home Button iPhones after getting used to Face ID iPhones, or the lack of Raise to Wake before that.

Other Possible Announcements

A lot of people on the bird app seem to think that Apple could introduce the clunky rumored VR headset at this event, based on the design of the invitation. I think they’ve lost their minds.

We might get an iPad Mini or an AirPods update, but that’s all I’d be willing to guess.

Rebecca Kern, reporting for Bloomberg (for whatever that’s worth):

Cicilline told reporters Wednesday that a proposal prohibiting tech platforms from giving an advantage to their own products over those of competitors would mean Apple must let consumers decide which apps to use or remove.

[…]

The bill contains a provision that would prohibit Apple, for example, from restricting or impeding iPhone users from uninstalling apps that have been pre-installed

David Cicilline is a sixty year old single gay man, the only substantial experience he has with technology is searching “NSA young tops” on the Craigslist personals section. Nobody asked him to come up with asinine legislation that would force Apple and other manufacturers to ship phones that allow users to delete every app. Sure, let users delete the phone, or the clock, or the settings app, or the App Store. We’ll see how that goes.

In all seriousness, we do need substantial antitrust legislation in the tech industry, but this is not it. The legislation we need is going to have to be written by people who are capable of understanding the issues at hand (i.e., people who are under 45).

It’s worth pointing out that this story was completely changed by Bloomberg (an outlet with damaged credibility in the first place, especially in the tech sphere); they originally said that the legislation would require Apple to ship iPhones without any apps in the first place. If tech journalists want to be taken seriously in these conversations with politicians, we’re going to need them to be significantly less sloppy.

I’m not an audiophile, but most people who claim to be are full of shit anyway, so. Long story short: Spatial Audio is incredible. Lossless is completely unnoticeable.

Apple has really hyped up this announcement, and I don’t think the hype is unwarranted. Everyone I’ve had try listening to a song in Spatial Audio has been thoroughly impressed by it. It might take a little getting used to, but I think this really could be the next big step for audio quality that we’ll point to decades from now as a turning point. It doesn’t necessarily improve every song, but it doesn’t really make any song worse. Particularly with older music, there are tradeoffs when listening to them in the Spatial Audio format, but I think it’s pretty much a wash. But with newer songs that were mastered specifically for this format, it’s far more immersive and enjoyable than stereo. When Spatial Audio doesn’t work well with a song, it’s fine, but when it does work well with a song, it’s incredible. If your ears are having trouble noticing the difference, there’s a place in settings where you can toggle between a Spatial Audio and stereo version of a sample track that really allows you to hear the difference and know what to listen for.

Specifically, Spatial Audio sounds like you’re situated in the middle of the music. Imagine being in a circular room with your favorite artist or band. It’s different depending on how each individual song is mixed, but for example, you could be listening to the artist’s voice front and center, while there’s a guitar off to the right a bit, some drums behind you and to the left, etc.

With AirPods Pro and AirPods Max, this effect gets even better, because they further amplify Spatial Audio with the addition of Dynamic Head Tracking. This feature uses the motion sensors in the headphones to follow your head and move the sound around you based on the position of the headphones in 3D space. For example, if the artist’s voice is coming from right in front of you, and you turn your head to the right, you’ll hear the voice in your left ear, as if it’s originating from the same point in space. When this works well, it makes you forget you have anything in your ears (and it makes the people in the coffee shop next to you wonder why you keep turning your head so far in their direction). It’s seriously uncanny, it’s as is if the music was made for you in that moment. In my testing, it seems like this is already working with a lot of the songs that are available in Dolby Atmos but not with all of them (I guess it’s possible that my ears just suck, but I don’t think so). There’s no rhyme or reason to when it seems to work and there’s no way to know for sure whether Dynamic Head Tracking is active, but the feature is still in beta testing so hopefully this is just a bug and it’ll be more consistent by the time the feature rolls out. In any case, this is another great feature for AirPods Pro. I could never recommend AirPods Max to anybody, but I can’t say enough good things about AirPods Pro. I wrote a glowing review when they first came out, and Apple has continued to add features like Dynamic Head Tracking and the just-announced Conversation boost that make them an even better value.

It has to be said, though, that there is a pretty big downside to Spatial Audio and lossless. Songs downloaded in Dolby Atmos or lossless take a TON of storage. I downloaded about four albums to test the feature out, a total of about 75 songs, and it took 2.6 GIGABYTES of space. If you like music, you should probably consider doubling up on your iPhone storage next time you upgrade.

In addition to being a storage hog, these features highlight another failing of the music app’s design. It’s always unclear what format any particular song is downloaded in, and the only way to change it is to remove and redownload the song after adjusting your preferences in the Settings app. There needs to be a way to adjust the version on a per-song basis. I see no reason why they couldn’t add two or three options to the menu when you long press on a song or album to include options like “Download Dolby Atmos” and “Download Lossless.” And they should have master buttons to convert all songs in your library to the Dolby Atmos or lossless when they become available; it’s not reasonable to expect people to delete and re-download albums as they become available, which has a the potential to mess up their playlists that include any of those songs. I think this is probably something that Apple will work on throughout the summer as iOS 15 matures.

Despite those drawbacks, the bottom line here is that Spatial Audio really does have the potential to revolutionize music, and I’m having a ton of fun with it. Also, if you’ve been considering a new pair of headphones, AirPods Pro are still a terrific buy.

A few weeks ago, Apple issued an iOS update with a killer new feature to protect users from unwanted tracking. It’s pretty straightforward, the policy is called “App Tracking Transparency,” and it requires applications to display a pop-up box asking the user for their permission to track their activity across other apps and websites. You should always click “Ask App not to Track.”

It seems pretty obvious: nobody really looks forward to or enjoys being tracked. We’ve all gotten those creepily specific ads that make us think our devices are secretly listening to us, and it’s unsettling. The truth, though, is that those ads aren’t a result of apps using your microphone to spy on you (99% of the time, at least). They’re the result of them using your activity on other apps and websites to spy on you. Apple allowing users to cut off the flow of data to the mysterious surveillance advertising companies is huge.

Here are two important things to consider when an app asks for permission to track you, (because they'll undoubtedly try to convince you that you should click “Allow”):

• Apple has forbidden app developers from using any means to track your activity if you click “Ask App not to Track.” That means if you don’t give them permission to track you, they aren’t allowed to use Apple’s built in advertising tracker, but they’re also forbidden from coming up with their own creative ways to track you.

• Apple has forbidden app developers from punishing you for asking them not to track you. Apps aren’t allowed to reduce functionality, force you to pay money, or do anything else to you if you select “Ask App not to Track.”

• Violating either of those two policies can result in the app being removed from the App Store, so the developers don’t have a choice but to comply with your decision.

Again, I’ll emphasize: you should ALWAYS click “Ask App not to Track.” But actually, you can do even better than that. If you don’t want to have to deal with the permission pop-ups, there is a sort of master switch that lets you automatically refuse tracking for all apps. To do so, go to Settings → Privacy → Tracking, and then turn OFF the toggle that says “Allow Apps to Request to Track.” Below that toggle is a list of individual toggles for each app that has requested to track you, if you’re interested. Just make sure they’re all switched off.

You may wonder why Apple doesn’t just save you the trouble and cut off this access from the jump, why even make us tap the button? After all, nobody wants to be tracked. The answer is complex, but essentially, Apple is on the most stable legal ground if they let users make the choice for themselves, and they probably also want to make a moral argument about just how many consumers aren’t okay with being tracked without their permission.

Regardless, these protections are strong and I’m glad Apple is giving us more control over our data. The notion that privacy is a thing of the past and that “everyone already has all your data” is simply not true, and it’s time we let the advertising industry know that they aren’t entitled to knowing all the intimate details of our lives so they can exploit us and convince us to buy more crap.*

*Of course, we know that will the vast amount of data these advertising surveillance companies collect through platforms like Facebook, they’re able to do things that are a lot more consequential and insidious than just convincing you that you need a new razor or a Diet Coke. The Cambridge Analytica scandal proved just how capable these companies are of guiding our behavior, including not only our consumer impulses, but also our political ideas and how we cast our votes. If you want to know more about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and check out this illustrative and explosive documentary.

I’ve written before about how the government could unjustly subpoena Apple for your iCloud backups to receive a copy of literally everything on your phone at any given moment. I knew the threat was very real, but I was forced to write about it in a mostly hypothetical manner because there wasn’t a great example to point toward. Now, we have an example.

Steve Kovach, writing for CNBC:

Apple said it received a subpoena from a federal grand jury on Feb. 6, 2018. According to Apple, the subpoena requested data that belonged to a seemingly random group of email addresses and phone numbers. Apple said it provided the identifiers it had for some of the requests from the DOJ, but not all of the requests were for Apple customers.

Katie Benner, Nicholas Fandos, Michael S. Schmidt and Adam Goldman, reporting for The New York Times:

All told, the records of at least a dozen people tied to the committee were seized in 2017 and early 2018, including those of Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, then the panel’s top Democrat and now its chairman, according to committee officials and two other people briefed on the inquiry. Representative Eric Swalwell of California said in an interview Thursday night that he had also been notified that his data had been subpoenaed.

Prosecutors, under the beleaguered attorney general, Jeff Sessions, were hunting for the sources behind news media reports about contacts between Trump associates and Russia. Ultimately, the data and other evidence did not tie the committee to the leaks, and investigators debated whether they had hit a dead end and some even discussed closing the inquiry.

Kovach, again:

Because of a nondisclosure order signed by a federal magistrate judge, Apple could not notify the people that their data was subpoenaed. The so-called gag order lifted on May 5, which is why Apple only recently alerted the affected users. According to Apple, the subpoena did not provide details on the nature of the investigation.

[…]

Microsoft on Friday told CNBC it received a similar subpoena from the DOJ.

The DOJ doesn’t play fair here. Not only in this specific instance, which was egregious because it represents a Watergate-level instance of a President spying on his political enemies (and at least one member of his own administration, apparently), but in general. At any time, you could receive the same notice from Apple that they had been forced to give the government all your data years ago, and that they’re just now allowed to tell you about it. The Department of Justice has operated with impunity in this arena even before Trump’s corrupt impulses and arm twisting got added into the mix, and they need to be reeled in. The accounts they demanded access to were not government accounts. They were personal iCloud accounts belonging to elected officials, their aides, and even more outrageously, their family members, including their kids.

The DOJ knows this is outrageous, and they don’t like having this conversation. They don’t want you to cause a fuss over your civil liberties or privacy, so they put Apple under a gag order, forbidding them from telling you that they were forced to give the government your data until several years have passed. The incident we’re learning about now actually occurred in 2018, but Apple was just now allowed to inform those whose accounts had been violated. This is egregious. Our elected officials need to hear from us, loud and clear, that despite living in a post-9/11 world and a Facebook surveillance state, we still value our privacy, and are willing to protect it with our votes.

Political pressure may be one of our most effective tools, in fact, because the very small number of tools that are currently available to us are partially effective at best. For example, my suggestion from last year of disabling iCloud backups to safeguard your iMessage decryption key remains useful to protect your messages, but it’s a bit of a hassle and a risk, and it only protects your messages. There’s nothing you can do (besides pulling out of iCloud altogether) to protect data like your photos, notes, voice memos, contacts, your backups, and your iCloud Drive files. But there is something Apple could do.

They need to give us the option to encrypt the entire contents of our iCloud account. Of course, doing that comes with more risk, so they should make sure customers are informed about the risk of data loss and the greater responsibility they would have to protect and maintain their own access to their accounts, and let users opt-in only if they want to. But I bet a lot of users would opt in. Financially, I think Apple could offer this as a free option for customers without much overhead, but they could even charge more for it if they wanted to, whether by rolling it into an iCloud+ tier or charging a separate fee. I’d pay for it, and I’m sure a lot of other people would too, from power users, to privacy advocates, to those working with exceptionally sensitive data. Their most loyal customers and promoters care about this, but Apple currently gives them no good options. Whether it comes down to a paid iCloud service or not, Apple must stand up for their users here.

Perhaps, though, Apple just needed an example; maybe this story about the DOJ (and the gag order expiring) is what they were waiting on. My hope is that they wanted to wait for an incident like this that they could point to to rally public support for end-to-end encrypted iCloud data, despite government objections. It would make some amount of sense, to help sustain themselves (PR-wise and legally) against the gale-force winds that are sure to come from the peeping toms that comprise the law enforcement and investigative communities. It’s basically a redo of the showdown between the Apple and the FBI over the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone, but with Apple taking a more reactive step forward (whereas last time, they were just refusing to take a step backward). Again, I hope that is the case. And if it is, then Apple needs to know that their customers have their back and will support them through this change and the fight that would ensue.But whether that’s the case or not, we all need to let them know we’re concerned about government overreach, and that we want the option to have ALL the contents of our iCloud accounts protected by end-to-end encryption. Feel free to whip something up yourself, or copy and paste the prompt below into Apple’s iCloud Feedback portal.

Hi. I’m reaching out because I’m concerned about the extreme government overreach we’ve recently learned about regarding subpoenaed iCloud account data. I don’t think it’s right that a government agency can seize private user data without permission or notice.

I’m concerned that there’s no truly secure way to use iCloud. I want the option to have ALL of my iCloud data (including backups, contacts, photos, and everything else) protected by end-to-end encryption. Privacy is a fundamental human right, and Apple users value that right. I believe Apple truly values that right as well, and that’s why I’m hopeful that you’ll soon provide users with an option to protect all of their data with end-to-end encryption.

I’ll give my overall musings on the updates to each platform, then some specific thoughts about new features.

tvOS:

Didn’t get a ton of love, but there were a couple nice improvements.

• The one thing it did get, though, was Spatial Audio. That’s not a small deal, because it sounds incredible, but it’s not a huge deal because most people don’t watch TV with headphones.

• You can now use two stereo-paired HomePod Minis as a Home Theater setup, so they’ll handle all of your Apple TV’s audio by default. That’s a great move.

watchOS:

This was not a very big year for watchOS.

• They didn’t seem to update sleep tracking in any meaningful way, so that’s a big disappointment.

• Only one new watch face, and it’s very basic, even if visually enjoyable.

• They didn’t spend much (or any) time talking about Assistive Touch, but I’ve tried it on the watchOS 8 beta, and it really is impressive.

• The Mindfulness app seems like a step in the right direction for a larger focus on mental health, but it’s still quite basic.

• They’ve added new Find My apps for finding items (AirTags) and finding devices. I’m not sure why they couldn’t have just rolled that into the existing Find My app that was just used for finding people on the watch. Would’ve been a lot less clunky than three separate apps.

• They talked a lot about the photos app, but who is using the photos app on Apple Watch? Maybe it’s a chicken and egg situation, but I just can’t see anyone spending a ton of time looking at photos on a screen smaller than a matchbook.

• They’ve finally revamped how text input works. You can now combine scribble with dictation and emojis, and you have a chance to review the message before it sends (unlike with dictation before, when it would often send the message automatically, whether it heard you correctly or not).

iOS:

I think iOS 15 has some significant improvements. Probably nothing that will be as culturally exciting as widgets were last year, but some good updates that everyone will appreciate.

• Facetime got several cool improvements. It’s a bit “better late than never,” at this point, but still. And it’s pretty exciting to see FaceTime Links, which will let anyone (Android and Windows!) join a group FaceTime call, which is still end-to-end encrypted. Take that, Zoom.

• The Health app got some attention. I’m not sure the features they added will be used by many people, but they’ll be very important to those who do. And I’m fine with that.

• Live Text is incredible. It works pretty well in the first beta.

• The ability to analyze photos and provide relevant information like plant species, book titles, dog breeds, etc, is so cool.

• No update to the Music app, it’s as frustrating as ever.

• They really made good use of their Dark Sky acquisition in the weather app this year. New precipitation notifications and radar views really beef up the out-of-the-box Weather offering.

• No lockable photo album, again. Sigh.

• They didn’t spend a ton of time talking about Siri and she certainly didn’t get the update I’ve been hoping for for years, but moving the speech processing on device should make her a bit snappier, and it looks like they did try for at least a little bit more conversational continuity.

• I like some of the Safari updates a lot. Some of them seem unnecessarily complicating, though. For example, the gestures to reload and switch tabs are great, and I love the new tab overview and Tab Groups, but the lack of a visible share button is insanity. They buried buttons that people use all the time, seemingly for aesthetic purposes only, and it was the wrong move. I may write more about how I think they could keep the good and fix the bad with this version of Safari.

• No updated Cash card with a bank account.

• Speaking of Wallet though, they did announce some great new features. Car keys was probably the worst update (as far as I’m aware, the only car manufacturer that supports it is BMW, and it’s only available on their brand new cars; some company should really come up with one of those little dash plugs that could bring this to older vehicles), and it didn’t really get any super meaningful updates over what it could already do. Home Keys is a feature that I didn’t see coming, but one that is very welcome. Hopefully you’ll be able to get a compatible smart lock that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.

• Also new to wallet: ID cards. This was a complete surprise, and it totally blew my mind. It’s something I’ve been desperately wanting Apple to do for years, but I’d almost written it off as a possibility because of the fractured nature of states controlling their own systems for drivers licenses and IDs (we need a national ID card). I’m sure it will take several years before most states adopt this, but I’m so excited that they’re giving it a shot.

iPadOS:

We didn’t get as much here as I’d hoped. Or maybe I’m looking at it the wrong way because we just didn’t get the overhaul I was hoping for: after all, there were some significant improvements to the existing system.

• Quick Notes is a cool feature, and Apple made it a lot more useful than it otherwise could’ve been by giving it string contextual awareness of what’s going on when you summon a new note.

• Widgets did show up, as expected. But as I said a few days ago, I don’t think Apple necessarily deserves credit for turning in their homework a year late.

• There were some improvements to multitasking, but I don’t know that they’ll really make a meaningful difference. The biggest thing is that you can now add any app to Split Screen or Slide Over, not just apps from the dock. That’s not nothing. The Shelf also seems like it'll be helpful for letting you quickly switch back to a window pair you had been using before, but it still just seems like even more complications to smooth out kinks in the current system, not a rethinking of it. Time will tell, and I hope I’m wrong.

• The Safari updates are trash. The new tabs are so difficult to use. They’re tiny, and they’re never in the same place. I hope they just go back to how it was before.

macOS:

I feel like this WWDC was fairly light for macOS. Most of the Mac features were also available (and perhaps more natural) on other devices.

• Universal Control seems pretty incredible. If your workflow involves an iPad and a Mac, this could be huge for you.

• Shortcuts coming to Mac is something.

• The ability to use a Mac as an AirPlay display is big, and it’s not something I ever expected to see. It’s another good example of the garden walls coming down a little.

• Ditto my point about Safari under the iPadOS segment.

Find My & AirPods

Find My actually got several improvements, and AirPods Pro continue to justify their high price tag.

• AirPods Pro now work on the Find My Network, which means you can actually find them now.

• iPhones can now transmit their location even when turned off and if they’ve been erased. This could really deter theft.

• You can now get separate notifications any time you leave something behind, whether it’s your iPhone, AirPods, or an AirTag, or another device.

• Conversation Boost for AirPods Pro users is really cool. As someone who doesn’t have a diagnosed hearing disability but does seem to struggle with poor hearing in noisy environments, I’m excited to try this.

Privacy

They had a whole segment dedicated to privacy, and it was glorious. We got several meaningful updates.

• The app tracking reports are nice. Most customers wont look at them, but those who care will, and they’ll quickly out the shady developers who abuse the data we give them permission to use.

• Private Relay is very interesting. It’s not quite a VPN service, but it’s pretty close. The biggest downfall is that it only protects your internet traffic through Safari. I’ll be sticking with my ExpressVPN subscription for now, but I’ve got a feeling we could actually see a full fledged VPN from Apple within the next year or two.

• The ability to generate email addresses that can be disabled is nice, and I’m glad Apple is taking action against spy pixels in emails.

Overall, I think this was a pretty big WWDC. When you dig into the specifics, there were a few let downs, but there were also several big surprises. I’m excited to see how these OSes evolve over the beta period.

Analysis (and speculation) by Jason Snell on Six Colors:

Though Gurman’s report suggests these would be 10-core systems, the important number is the number of high-performance cores—eight. Though energy-efficient cores are very helpful in keeping a Mac bubbling along nicely, they don’t make enormous contributions to the overall top performance of a device. It’s all about the performance cores. And eight is—follow me here—twice as many as four.

So if an M1 processor scores around a 6180 in GeekBench 5’s multi-core score, I can extrapolate and guess that a new chip—let’s call it the M1X, because I’m guessing that this chip is based on the same cores as the M1 and the A14 chips—would score roughly double the M1—let’s say 12,500.

To put this in context, I’ve included the current high-end Intel MacBook Pro models in the chart. The M1 models already surpass the existing 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, but the eight-core 16-inch model still wins out in overall multiprocessor performance. (I’m leaving aside single-core performance, graphics power, and energy efficiency here and just focusing on top CPU speed.)

The 16-inch MacBook Pro would pale in comparison to the M1X, though. And it’s not hard to imagine Apple executives appearing in a video next week and declaring that the new MacBook Pros are roughly twice as fast as their predecessors.

Just for kicks, I also threw together a chart based on Gurman’s report that Apple is also planning Mac Pro models based on the same chip design, but variants with 20 and 40 performance cores. Yep, that’s a lot of cores. Just for kicks, let’s make a guess about future Mac Pro performance and compare it to existing Intel-based Mac Pro models:

The back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests a 20-core Apple silicon-based Mac Pro would be quite a bit faster than a 28-core Intel Mac Pro at multiprocessor performance, making it the fastest Mac of all time. And that 40-core model would be… well, yeah, more than twice as fast as the previous speed champion.

Advances like this just don’t happen. Yes, technology improves every year and computers get faster, but Apple is the only player in the industry making chips that routinely double their clock speed. They’ve been on an exponential increase with the A-series chips, and the M-series is based on the same basic formula, using the same cores. If the M-series chips continue to improve at the same rate as the A-series, Apple’s M-series chips will be a decade ahead of Intel and the rest of the industry within the next three years.

The charts above were Snells, but I made one too (right). It's very scientific and precise, just like the one Apple showed last fall (left).

Charles Q. Choi, in a 2019 article for IEEE Spectrum:

A major weakness of Bitcoin is the extraordinary amounts of energy it demands, and the vast amounts of the global warming gas carbon dioxide it spews out as a result. Bitcoin reportedly has a global electricity consumption approaching that of the entire nation of Austria, and a global carbon footprint comparable to that of Denmark.

I will be the first to admit that I don’t fully understand how cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin really work. I think most of the people who devote a lot of time and energy to it are nerds who need to get a life (and if you ever ask a retail employee if their establishment accepts bitcoin, you deserved to be ridiculed and shamed until you leave, you fucking dweeb). That said, I have a general understanding of how the concept (and I did buy some DOGE a year ago as an experiment), including how the mining process works, but I had no idea how much energy it wastes.

[One] potential flaw in any digital cash scheme would permit a digital token to get spent more than once. 

To solve this problem, Bitcoin broadcasts messages to its entire network to get everyone to confirm each transaction, all to prevent malicious […] players from cheating. Bitcoin achieves such consensus by implementing a blockchain, which is a secure ledger of all transactions in the system that is maintained by its community of users instead of any intermediary such as a bank.

In order for blockchains to reach consensus on the validity of all transactions, users must execute complex, energy-intensive computing “proof of work” tasks. […]

However, [some computer scientists] argue that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies based on blockchains are essentially overkill. They suggest that solving the problem of double-spending does not require the complex task of achieving consensus. Instead, much simpler, faster, and less energy-intensive algorithms can suffice.

The latest algorithms the scientists developed broadcast messages about each transaction in a manner similar to gossip: one user tells a small group about the transaction, and they go on to inform others about it, and so on, with the message spreading to a growing number of participants in the system in an exponential manner. […]

[Then,] instead of seeking consensus from every participant in the system for each transaction, the algorithms check to see if a random sample of users has received messages about each transaction. If this sample is sufficiently large, the chance that malicious attackers can fool the system into thinking another transaction occurred is lowered enough to ensure that such hacks do not occur within the age of the universe, the researchers say.

[…]

The consensusless algorithms also generate just a few grams of carbon dioxide per transaction, compared to an estimated 300 kilograms per Bitcoin transaction. In addition, while the original Bitcoin protocol took up to an hour to confirm that a transaction went through correctly, the Swiss team’s prototype algorithms can do so in less than a second.

This seems like a promising system. Hopefully there will be a way for established cryptocurrencies to take advantage of it, but I seriously doubt it. That said, if we can’t find a way to make cryptocurrency work that isn’t so preposterously bad for the environment — whether through the methods these researchers proposed or through some other method — then the entire idea deserves to be abandoned. It bears repeating: a single Bitcoin transaction produces 300 kilograms of carbon dioxide. That is atrocious.

It’s that time of year again, where Apple nerds will gather around their screens for two hours to watch Apple executives tell us what we get to geek out over for the next year. Like last year, this year’s WWDC will be completely online, but for most of us, that’s how we’re used to experiencing it anyway.

My gut feeling is that this is going to be a big year. There have been several large, exciting announcements from Apple in just the past few weeks about new products and new software features. Announcing things like Spatial Audio and lossless Apple Music, the new iMacs and iPads, and impressive new accessibility features a month or two before Dubdub seems to indicate that they didn’t have time to include them in the keynote, which is exciting because it suggests the keynote is chock full of other cool stuff.

Here are the lists of things I’m hoping to see, and then some things I’m expecting to see.

Wish List:

• [Recycled from 2019’s list.] Fix the atrocious Apple Music app. Get rid of the useless Browse, For You, and Radio tabs at the bottom, and replace them with Playlists, Artists, and Albums. Work in better sorting. Streamline the search feature.

  I’m still sick of Apple Music. All of those problems are still there, and they’ve brought some of the issues from the Music app to the Podcasts app. I’ve recently switched to using Overcast as my podcast app, but as an One subscriber, I'm stuck with the shitty Music app.

• [Recycled from 2019’s list.] It is HIGH TIME for some Siri improvements. We have been waiting and watching for years, every year expecting this to be the keynote where Apple rolls out a badass new Siri. They’ve teased us a few times with things like Siri suggestions and other minor voice improvements, but at the end of the day, I don’t give a shit about having Siri tell me hockey scores. I’m talking Iron Man-style, JARVIS-level intelligence. I know that Apple is behind the curve on this as a result of their focus on privacy, but they’ve gotta figure out a way to at least get Siri up to speed with the Google Assistant. 

  [Recycled from last year’s list.] Please. Please, please. Puhleeeaaaazeee. PLEASE. PLEASE make this the year that Siri gets a major boost. I would honestly be completely content, nay, happy, if this were the only change they announce this year. It’s so overdue. Siri was the first voice assistant on the scene, and now she’s in last place for speed, accuracy, and general capabilities. There’s so much potential here to make a truly intelligent voice assistant that would really set the iPhone apart from its competitors.

  What do you have to do to get a decent virtual assistant around here? My god. As John Gruber has pointed out, if you hired a personal assistant and she was as stupid and contextually unaware as Siri is, you’d fire her within a week.

• [Recycled from last year’s list.] I doubt Apple will ever implement this because it would be de facto acknowledging the fact that people use their iPhones to take nudes, but a locked photo album is also overdue.

  Apparently Samsung has something like this. Please copy it, Apple.

• [Recycled from last year’s list.] New privacy features are always welcome. They didn’t disappoint last year, but a VPN or a social network would still be great.

  I will add to this to say that it isn’t on the list because Apple neglected privacy last year. They gave us some great improvements, I just want them to go even farther.

• [Recycled from last year’s list.] iPadOS 14 has the potential to send my MacBook packing, if it’s upgraded as it deserves to be. The iPad Pro Magic Keyboard already has me reaching for my iPad more than I reach for my Mac, but there are some relatively basic everyday workflows (word processing, desktop class browsing, etc.) that are still just easier on the Mac. If they can use iPadOS 14 to make some of those processes even marginally easier, it will make the iPad a much more powerful platform and a truly viable option for people in the market for a new laptop.

  Apple didn’t do that last year. Maybe this is the year, now that the iPad Pro has an M1.

• [Recycled from last year’s list.] In my opinion, macOS just deserves some bug fixes and attention to detail.

• [Recycled from last year’s list.] As I mentioned in my Apple Card review, I would really like for them to expand the capability of the Cash card to function more like a typical checking account.

  I would really like this. A lot. Give me a nice, black titanium debit card, and then Apple can truly take all my money.

• [Recycled from 2019’s list.] I would really like for them to revamp the Apple Watch UI in a meaningful way, and finally give the side button a distinct, useful role in controlling the device.

  I think it’s also time for third party watch faces. Apple’s offerings just don’t scratch the itch, anymore.

• Meaningful updates to the Apple Watch’s sleep tracking functionality would be nice. It’s currently such a mess that it isn’t worth using. The mandatory bedtime “feature” sucks.

• Some new widget sizes would be nice for the iPhone, as well as the ability to make widgets more interactive. A now playing widget would be great.

• The Home app is in desperate need of attention. It’s about 70% reliable, which is about 29% below where it needs to be, if it wants you to trust it with the responsibility of controlling your home.

• I also hope Apple announces that they’re working on new programs for third party companies to build HomeKit support into their products. The market for HomeKit compatible devices is just not diverse enough.

• I can’t put my finger on what exactly has been wrong with tvOS the past few years, but I think it needs some attention.

• I think we’re also getting to the point where it’s safe to say the rollout of Look Around on Apple Maps is way too slow. Only a handful of cities in the US support it. It’s a really useful feature that I think is way better than Google’s street view, but not nearly enough people can benefit from it.

• An option to have your iMessage conversations remain end to end encrypted in ALL scenarios (see: iCloud backups) is very necessary. I hope Apple fixes this, and touts iMessage’s security and privacy features to compete with dedicated secure messaging apps like Signal or Wickr.

• AirPlay has been a bit less stable lately. I hope they iron out those kinks.

• Invoking Siri by holding the side button on iOS devices sucks. I hope they’ll figure something else out, but I know they won’t.

• Did I mention a locked photo album? 🍆

Predictions

• I think it’s reasonable, given the sheer volume of the rumors, that we may see a new MacBook Pro. I think it would be a little weird for them to introduce a new MBP without introducing a new MacBook Air (or MacBook plain, hopefully; please ditch the “Air” branding!)

• [Recycled from 2019’s list.] I predict that Apple will, once again, disappoint me by leaving the Music app practically untouched.

• I think a lot of the updates we’ll get for macOS are going to be performance improvements and bug fixes. It’s hard to imagine them revamping the UI or introducing a bunch of new features this year. For the name, I’m going to throw my hat in the “macOS Monterey” ring.

• When it comes to iPadOS, I think we will get some decent updates and improvements, but I don’t think they’ll go far enough to make the iPad a real computer. We might be substantially closer if they fix multitasking, but I’ll believe that when I see it. I do think they’ll find a way to bring the App Library to the dock, so that’ll ease some pains with multitasking.

• Speaking of iPadOS, I bet Apple will tout the ability to add widgets anywhere on the Home Screen this year. They should get no credit for that. It should’ve been there last year, so as far as I’m concerned, they’re a year late.

• I think we could see some more health features for the Apple Watch. The blood oxygen sensor on the Series 6 seems like it could have a few more tricks up its sleeve, and I wouldn’t be shocked if they added something like blood alcohol level measurements through a WatchOS update.

• I’m sure we’ll get something in the way of privacy, but I don’t think it will go as far as ATT from last year.

All in all, there haven’t been many leaks or rumors about the software we’re going to see this year, so I have a feeling we’re in for a good show with some exciting surprises.