Apple – Page 9 – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Check Out Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy

Worth a watch even without many surprises.

Here is the U.S we’re heading into the Thanksgiving holiday, already surrounded by the madness of Black Friday, coupled with anxiety brought about by the recent election. It feels like everyday has been Black Friday under dark cloudy political skies for too long already, and of course that will continue straight into Christmas and beyond.

Here’s a thought. If you gather with friends and family this Thanksgiving, instead of watching football or squabbling over politics, tune everybody into the Netflix documentary Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy. The trailer is embedded above.

This somewhat entertaining documentary (it’s presentation conceit feels a bit too cutesy for my tastes), tackles the problems of rampant consumerism through a prism of what happens to all the stuff we buy this Black Friday, those previous, those to come, and any other day of the year.

The highlights of the series are the short cut interviews with former employees of Amazon, Adidas, Apple, folks from the fashion industry, and activists who are trying to address the issues of the large amount of waste created with all of our purchasing power.

If you’ve even remotely been paying attention to the world, there won’t be any grand surprises about the large amounts of unrecyclable waste we’re swimming in and adding to. That said, hearing some of the folks who feel responsible for their own decisions that led their company down that path of excess discuss their shifts in thinking makes the piece worthwhile.

There also aren’t any real surprises in the way the documentary lays out the tricks of the marketing trade to convince us to buy more stuff. Addressing the issue through a perspective of saying we could all buy less certainly makes sense, but given we all know that the game is rigged no differently than carnival games are, it makes one wonder why we do keep coming back each time the circus tents get pitched.

Style points and lack of surprises aside, Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy is worth viewing, especially I would think if you have younger ones in your holiday household who might still be impressionable.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

iPhone 16 Pro Photography and Pumpkins

iPhone 16 Pro Photography and Photographic Styles demo.

I’m always grateful that Apple releases new iPhones in September. It comes during the period when supermarkets are stocking up on pumpkins, gourds and other Cucurbits. Obviously one of the first things you check out on a new iPhone is whatever changes and improvements Apple makes to the cameras, and these colorful counters are a great location to do so.

Here’s a few shots taken during a supermarket tour playing around with different camera settings and what Apple now calls Photographic Styles. First up is just a series of photos in a gallery all using the Standard setting.

Following the Continue Reading break below are two videos showing off the differences in Photographic Styles Apple offers and more photos.

R.I.P. iMore

All good things come to an end.

Nothing lasts forever and all good things come to an end. Along with everything else that includes tech blogs. Yesterday, Gerald Lynch and the iMore staff announced they are turning out the lights on what was once a revered and go to website when it came to everything Apple.

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Here’s a quote from the farewell post:

I would like to take this moment to thank everyone from the iMore community, past and present, for their support and passion for what we’ve created over the years. A massive thanks goes to iMore’s previous leaders, Lory Gil, Serenity Caldwell, and Joe Keller, and of course, the inimitable Rene Ritchie who kickstarted this wonder all those years back. I hope we’ve done you all proud.

There have been some good writers through the years at iMore but two names stand out in that quote: Rene Ritchie and Serenity Caldwell. Calling it like I see it, Rene made iMore what it was and for a time was the pulse that beat in the Apple community. When he added Serenity to the mix it became the place to go for Apple News delivered with heart and intelligence, nothing artificial about it.

Nothing against any of the folks who kept the engines running once Rene and Serenity moved on to greener pastures (with Google and Apple respectively), it proves that talent will always win and exceptionally good talent will always win more.

I’m glad to see the site will be kept up as an archive. All the same, farewell to a great website that set a lot of standards and good luck to all of those moving on.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

At Last: A Cure for Apple iCloud Migraines Thanks to Craig Federighi

Finally, a solution to those Apple iCloud Migraines thanks to Craig Federighi

Relief. At last. All it took was the right doctor.

We’ve all been there with health situations. You lay out your symptoms and whatever checklist your medical professional follows leads to a course of treatment that might or might not work. Perhaps after repeated tests and possible cures you might finally get the attention of someone who actually listens, goes beyond the symptom check list, and you get treatment that works to solve your problem.

If your situation and symptoms don’t fit those of the majority of patients it can be an exhausting, frustrating, and dehumanizing experience.

The same is sadly true with technical support. You have a problem. You call or chat (hopefully with a human). Lay out your symptoms and you get served up solutions from a playbook that don’t solve your problem. Striking out on your own you search the Internet for solutions, (increasingly a frustrating and useless experience), only to discover others facing the same issues.

At least you find comfort in knowing you’re not alone. Even so, there’s not enough strength in numbers if you and your compatriots fall into that ever popular yet corporately dismissed category of a “small minority of users.”

Like with your medical condition, if your technical issue falls outside of the range that most experience, then you better hope that you are talking to someone who actually listens and isn’t just a part of a solution mill that rewards quick dispensing of the call the way restaurants hope for quick table turnovers.

The Diagnosis

Perhaps you’ve read my previous chronicles discussing the Apple iCloud Migraines. I’ve been suffering with these headaches for a number of years and through a tourist guide map of California named macOS operating systems. I won’t go into detail, but you can find links to them here, here, here, here, and here. I will offer a brief summary (non AI generated) of the problem :

At each point that Apple released an operating system update, whether beta or final release, my Macs would mysteriously lose all Continuity based or related features. Continuity is the system Apple uses to connect its devices allowing users to copy and paste between them, sign in to Macs with an Apple Watch, display iPhone widgets on a Mac Screen, and connect Macs and iPads together via Universal Control. Your iCloud account is a key to Continuity.

Note that I haven’t been on a beta since owning any of my current devices. So, in theory, none of these beta updates should have affected me. However, I might as well have been downloading betas like a beta junkie, given the return of these migraines with each beta release and subsequent full releases.

Communications over the years with Apple Support yielded nothing that would help until Dan Moren of Six Colors posted about a similar issue he was facing and the responses he got from Apple Support.

That second agent proved quite capable, not only agreeing that the situation was strange, but also looking into issues on Apple’s side. Which led to the somewhat bizarre conclusion of this story: after perhaps 20 minutes on the phone, he seemed to hit on something. I heard him laugh and say something along the lines of “that explains it” and then, with my consent, put me on hold. When he came back, he said—and I’m not exactly quoting, but close enough: “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you any more than this, but all your services should be back up pretty much exactly 12 hours after they went down.”

Now, in my initial forays on social media, I had gotten a reply from someone on Mastodon mentioning that Apple’s iCloud servers were sometimes put in maintenance mode for 12 hours—but upon going back and looking for that specific reply, it was nowhere to be found.

It did, however, support the theory that something had gone wrong with the particular iCloud server on which my account was located.

There was, according to this support agent, nothing to do but sit back and wait, then call back if service hadn’t returned by the 12-hour mark and reference my case number. He was again apologetic for not being able to give me any more information, but reiterated his confidence that everything would be resolved.

After Dan’s post turned the heat up a bit on the issue my calls with Apple Support changed in tone and substance. I got moved a couple of rungs up the ladder to an advanced support level. (Draw your own conclusions). Initially that seemed promising. I also got the “just wait it out” response as Dan.

Suffice it to say that eventually yielded no real solution and there were two periods of time when things just seemed to stall. The first being prior to the Apple Vision Pro release and the second in the run-up to WWDC 2024. I chalked those up to resource allocations.

Reaching the Right Doctor

Following WWDC I decided on one frustrating evening to drop an email to Craig Federighi, Apple’s honcho on all things software. I didn’t expect any response. My previous emails to Tim Cook were met with a brush off.

In the context of my email I appealed to Craig quite explicitly that I was very interested in the new iPhone Mirroring feature coming in Sequoia that relied on Continuity and how he had discussed Continuity during the WWDC presentation. I also expressed that I imagined this feature would be at best a hit and miss for me given the ongoing migraines.

Lo and behold, I got a response from Federighi requesting I share diagnostic files with him. Note I don’t know if I was actually communicating with him directly or one of his staff, but after submitting another round of diagnostic files I received the emails below:

And then I received the following:

Once macOS Sonoma 14.6 and iOS 17.6 were released the problem did indeed appear to be solved, but I knew I would have to wait through the next few beta releases and also the release of Sequoia to determine if the fix would indeed hold.

The good news is that I can report the fix did indeed hold through the remainder of the beta cycle and also through the final releases of macOS Sequoia 15 and iOS 18. As of today it has held through developer betas and also public release of the betas for 15.1 and 18.1 since installing the final versions of macOS 15 and iOS 18 the day of their release. It has also held through upgrading my iPhone and Apple Watch.

I’m glad this seems to be resolved but I’m going to remain skeptical until we see the .ox and .x releases of Sequoia and iOS 18 roll out. To be honest, it feels like I’m waiting for any sign of a possible reoccurrence of a medical symptom.

Wrapping Up

I’ve always tied my migraines to problems somehow related to my iCloud account and it appears those suspicions were by and large correct. I don’t have a definitive answer but given that only a “small percentage of users” experienced this issue combined with comments from support personnel and a few clues from Dan Moren’s post, that is what logically makes the most sense to me and a few others I’ve consulted, social network buddy Dwight Silverman among them. By the way Dwight led me to a workaround involving signing out and back in to Messages in iCloud.

I’m certainly appreciative of Craig Federighi or his office pushing this forward to a resolution. I’m reasonably convinced it helped that iPhone Mirroring, which relies on Continuity, is one of the sexy tent pole features of this year’s new releases finally probably brought quicker attention to the issue. That and a stroke of good luck with my timing.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, users in situations that don’t have a large podcast or online audience and can’t stir up a major hullabaloo in the tech press are left to piece these clues together. Unless on a rare occasion they catch the attention of a higher up at Apple to find a resolution. That shouldn’t be the case.

Certainly the bigger a company becomes it’s easier for all sorts of issues for a “small minority of users” to fall through the cracks and for priorities to shift. That’s just a reality. And it shouldn’t take the luck of good timing in sending an email to a top executive, certainly busy with many other tasks, to suss out an issue.

As I’ve said all along, Apple needs to find a way to come clean with both users and its front line support personnel when these issue present themselves. Listening should be the key because sometimes the patient/user has all the clues you need to help them.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Sunday Morning Reading

From James Joyce to finger painting, some Apple spoiling, some Peter Falk, some politics and what will the LLMs spit out next?

“Every life is many days, day after day.” But Sundays are for reading. Here’s a mix of politics, tech, and culture into what I hope is a tasty smorgasbord of good writing and good reading. Also some good fun. Enjoy this edition of Sunday Morning Reading.

There aren’t many areas of interest I follow that don’t seem to be fraught with tension and turmoil these days. Apple, its technology and business practices, is certainly one of those. One of the best recent pieces I’ve read on how the tides of popular and populist opinion may be shifting against the folks in Cupertino is one written by Matt Birchler. Check out Is This The Slow Decline of Apple’s “Cult”?

This is a terrific read and a terrific piece of theatre and entertainment history. Wayne Lawson’s When Peter Falk Was My Roommate, and Theater Ruled NYC is a trip down a memory lane most of us probably never were aware of.

Joan Westenberg takes a look look at The Bruised Egos of the Intellectual Narcissists that want to populate our thoughts. Joan also takes a good look at Truth Social, Twitter and the Loneliest Reich.

David Todd McCarty thinks we should rekindle some of what we lost as we pass through the years and recommends borrowing a four-year-old to help us see the world through their eyes in Finger Painting Through Life.

On the politics front, Marc Elias is doing the work for us all in his legal efforts to secure voting rights and the all important counting and certifying of the vote. Best piece of political news I’ve heard this week is that Elias has joined the Harris campaign’s legal team. Check out The Fight To Certify Elections Has Already Begun. We can’t say we haven’t been warned.

Perhaps you remember when the Nord Stream Pipeline exploded earlier in the war between Russia and Ukraine. Bojan Pancevski gives us one helluva story in A Drunken Evening, A Rented Yacht: The Real Story of the Nord Stream Pipeline Sabotage.

It’s easy to think this tempest of a political moment we’re in is something that’s suddenly sprung upon us. Aaron Timms reminds us that it’s been brewing for awhile in The Decade That Mangled The American Right.

Artificial Intelligence may be losing some of its luster as its purveyors continue to lust after our data. For those who enjoy seeing this play out, Aaron Drapkin gives us AI Gone Wrong: A List of AI Errors, Mistakes and Failures. I wonder how the LLMs will incorporate Drapkin’s work and spit it back out.

If you don’t recognize the quote that begins this week’s Sunday Morning Reading, perhaps Natasha MH gives us a clue in her piece Reading James Joyce Ulysses Will Be Fun, They Said. Tackling Joyce may or may not be worse than a trip to the dentist, but you can risk being “embalmed in spice of words.”

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. You can also find me on social networks under my own name.

Apple’s Privacy Ad is Spooky Good. Hope Apple Lives Up To It

Hope Apple continues to live up to its privacy promises.

Apple released a new ad highlighting its well known marketing position on privacy. It’s a good ad. A bit spooky and a bit fun. Check out Privacy: That’s iPhone.

Here’s hoping Apple continues to live up to its promises.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

EU Charges Apple with Violating DMA Rules

The EU charges Apple with violations of the DMA

The friction between Apple and the European Union just took another turn. The EU has charged Apple with DMA rules violations dropping the dubious distinction on Apple of being the first “gatekeeper” company to be so charged. It’s a preliminary ruling and Apple has until March 2025 to respond to this preliminary ruling.

If the charges stick, the potential remedy is for Apple to be fined up to 10 percent of its annual global revenue. quite a bite of the Apple.

This comes on the heels of last week’s pot-stirring announcement that Apple’s new, but yet unreleased and untested, Apple Intelligence features won’t be rolling out in the EU (and other markets) until next year. As I said then, this is all going to be one big negotiation with legal and political shots fired by both sides.

At the root of the charges is “steering,” which the EU sees as key to a competitive market. Bottom line, the EU wants gatekeeper companies to allow software developers to be able to “steer” potential customers to their products free from closed App Store and other gatekeeper restrictions. Apple joins Alphabet, Amazon, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft in the EU”s list of gatekeepers.

The EU is also challenging Apple’s moves to come into compliance by charging a Core Technology Fee that most complain violates the intention to allow side loading of apps.

This will bounce back and forth over the next nine months and will probably become even more contentious given quotes like this from Thierry Breton, the EU internal market commissioner: “Apple’s new slogan should be ‘act different.’

Apple has released the following statement:

“Throughout the past several months, Apple has made a number of changes to comply with the DMA in response to feedback from developers and the European Commission. We are confident our plan complies with the law, and estimate more than 99% of developers would pay the same or less in fees to Apple under the new business terms we created. All developers doing business in the EU on the App Store have the opportunity to utilize the capabilities that we have introduced, including the ability to direct app users to the web to complete purchases at a very competitive rate. As we have done routinely, we will continue to listen and engage with the European Commission.”

The Financial Times seems to be the front lines where both the EU and Apple are waging this battle. The Verge also has a writeup on the news. I’m sure there will be more. Intelligent or not.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Sunday Morning Reading

Some Sunday Morning Reading and mourning insights to share.

Another sweltering summer Sunday morning so it’s time for a little Sunday Morning Reading with a host of topics mostly dealing with the myriad challenges ahead of us and mourning some that are behind us.

Natasha MH reminds that in the midst of tough times there are ways to conjure magic that’s actually within our power to control in When Space Meets Stoicism. A lovely piece that hits home. Good advice in these unsettling times. Or even settled ones.

Speaking of unsettling, Cody Delistraty takes a look at how we Americans do and don’t deal with grief in It’s Mourning in America.

Artificial Intelligence remains a hot topic this summer and will remain so for quite some time. There’s been some excellent points made on all sides of the issues involved and I can’t wait to be a few years down the road and see how that’s all rolled up and regurgitated by some generative AI engine that probably doesn’t exist today. In the meantime check out some interesting thinking on the matter from Wenzel in Apple Intelligence and the DMA, Dan Henke’s take in Beardy Guy Musings, and Tim Marchman and Dhruv Mehrotra’s chronicling of Wired’s adventures with Perplexity, Plagiarism and the Bullshit Machine here and here.

Most of the above centers on the issues surrounding AI and its potential for abuse of creators. Sadly, history proves the heat around that issue will eventually cool down. Perhaps we should examine the heat all of this “compute” needed to power this abuse takes on the planet. Check out Bloomberg’s AI’s Insatiable Need for Energy Is Straining Global Power Grids.

David Todd McCarty gives us an artist’s guide to learning how to listen in It’s Not All About You. It’s not just advice for artists.

As crazy as the political and tech worlds are these days, the entertainment world is just as nuts, especially when it comes to the covering of it. Winter of Content by Kevin Nguyen is a rich piece focusing on print media’s transition to the Internet from within the crazy explosion of coverage of Game of Thrones. Great read.

And speaking of entertainment coverage and mourning, it’s a fun game for this older guy to track the sad news surrounding an artist’s death. You can tell when a typically young writer knows very little about an artist’s body of work by the ludicrous title choices of that artist’s work they choose to run in the lede of the obituary. I doubt AI summaries of this will be any better than the quick scans of Wikipedia these interns obviously do now. With this week’s passing of Donald Sutherland it was particularly entertaining given the breadth and complexity of his career. However, there was one piece that grabbed my attention that bucked the trend. Amber Haley tells her remembrance of working with Donald Sutherland as a young set decorator proving that not only do small details matter, they tell the bigger story. Check out The Set Decorator and Donald Sutherland.

Apple and the EU Squabble Over Inclusion of Apple Intelligence and Other New Features

Apple and the EU squabbles continue now over new features.

It’s a Friday free-for-all between Apple and the European Union. Miffed at, or stymied by, the EU’s DMA regulations, Apple announced in the Financial Times that all of the ballyhooed (but still not seen in the real world) Apple Intelligence features along with a few others might not be coming to the EU when they launch in the U.S this fall or even this year.

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John Gruber of Daring Fireball has the full statement from Apple as reproduced here:

Two weeks ago, Apple unveiled hundreds of new features that we are excited to bring to our users around the world. We are highly motivated to make these technologies accessible to all users. However, due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the Digital Markets Act (DMA), we do not believe that we will be able to roll out three of these features — iPhone Mirroring, SharePlay Screen Sharing enhancements, and Apple Intelligence — to our EU users this year.

Specifically, we are concerned that the interoperability requirements of the DMA could force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that risk user privacy and data security. We are committed to collaborating with the European Commission in an attempt to find a solution that would enable us to deliver these features to our EU customers without compromising their safety.

Apple PR is obviously hard at work here and I’m sure the EU’s PR operations will be following suit shortly. I’m particularly entertained by the phrase “we do not believe.” It’s also fascinating to watch the sideshow of reactions that might turn into something more: how Apple users on their respective sides of the pond are responding to this. Generally speaking from the early reactions I’ve seen the majority of American sympathies tend to lean towards Apple, while it’s just the opposite in Europe. But it’s early and it’s a Friday.

The timing of this suggests an opening salvo in further negotiations given that none of the features in question have been rolled out yet. However, according to Gruber a few of the non Apple Intelligence features (iPhone Mirroring and SharePlay Screen Sharing) are scheduled to roll out in the next betas to be released. iPhone Mirroring is one of the sexier features announced, so it will be interesting to see how that is handled with the next round of betas.

It is obvious that at some point down the road there will be some sort of compromise. Apple doesn’t want to lose the EU market no matter what those who suggest Apple should just pull out of the EU markets might say. And somehow I doubt EU Apple users will exert enough pressure to change any strong position the EU might cling to.

In the meantime the sideshow commentary in addition to the news will make for an interesting Summer beta season.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Sunday Morning Reading

AI, politics, culture and a bit of history in some Sunday Morning lake time reading to share.

We’re on lake time this weekend, but there’s always some Sunday Morning Reading to share. Especially when you get to share it from a lovely morning looking over the lake. Lots of AI, some polticis, some culture, and some just fun this Sunday. Enjoy.

It’s Father’s Day weekend, which prompts delving back into memories for me and also comes at a time when the debates around Artificial Intelligence touch a bit on how we collect, save, and share what may have once been memories but might be hallucinations. While this piece from Natasha MH isn’t aimed specifically in either of those directions, it struck some of those chords when I read it. Check out No Proof of Existence.

Speaking of AI, Miles Klee thinks Brands Are Beginning to Turn Away From AI.

Holy moly. Even the Pope is getting into the AI discussion. Antony Faiola, Cat Zakrzewski and Stefano Pirelli take a quick look at How Pope Francis Became the AI Ethicist for World Leaders and Tech Titans. The AP also has a larger report here.

I’ve compiled a large reading list on Apple’s move into AI that it has now branded as Apple Intelligence. It’s way too early in this game to understand or predict the technology and financial games ahead, but as the previous link suggests perhaps not the ethical. Check out Eshu Marneedi’s Why Apple intelligence is the Future of Apple Platforms.

Fascinating piece by Renée DiResta on how online conspiracy theorists turned her into “CIA Renee.” Check out My Encounter with the Fantasy Industrial Complex.

Joan Westenberg does some comparing of our political life between the 1850’s and now in A Republic, If You Can Keep It: How 2024 Rhymes with the 1850’s. The parallels are black and white. The ability for too many to see where this will all lead not so much, as evidenced by this piece from Gregory S. Schneider and Karina Elwood: A School Board Reinstated Confederate Names. It Split The Community Again.

Anna Spiegel reports for Axios on The Folger Shakespeare Library’s Reimagining. This institution is a treasure and worth a visit. I’m looking forward to seeing it again after the new reopening.