Now can we agree that App Stores as only means of getting software and call home components you can’t disable or replace are a bad idea?
We’re slowly normalising that everything happens on whats is effectively a device managed by either Apple or Google.
They certainly are, one of the reasons behind Embedded Swift is to replace iBoot firmware currently written in a C dialect similar in ideas to Fil-C, with something better.
However it is no different from the Linux kernel, just because Rust is now allowed, the world hasn't been rewriten, and no sane person is going to do a Claude rewrite of the kernel.
Swift is definitely being used at apple. Most recently added as a CSS parser in safari and running embedded in some of the secure enclave parts. I know there was talk from as far back as strangeloop to get it in the kernel but I'm not sure how far that has gone. That being said they've been huge proponents of fbounds check in clang which can achieve a small portion (but important!) of what memory safe languages can do. I'd also like to see more swift or alternative adoptions I think they have potential and more competition in the safe language space is always welcome.
That's perhaps where the part about educating less tech-savvy folks comes in. There are even professionals in tech under the mistaken belief that Apple meaningfully adds value in exchange for one's freedom to use one's device as one chooses. Big Tech loves normalising the story how only they can help
Correction, we hate making money at the expense of other peoples rights and liberties. It's kind of frustrating to have to explain that to US folks over and over again... all that "freedom" in their things is apparently very decorative.
Does NZ have a right wing government right now? Nothing in the history of anything has ever improved with “Self regulation” so it must be useless policy season.
It is useless policy season. This is highly unlikely to get through before the upcoming election. The press releases are mostly just virtue signalling.
Oh great, Apple is sherlocking yet another category of apps (and not to mention Apple always had a convoluted and gatekeepy approach to letting passes show up in the Wallet app)
I guess there is no appetite for “antitrust” in the US right now.
There are many anittrust arguments that can be taken up against Apple, but I don't see how this is one of them. They're adding a feature to add a QR/bar code to the wallet app. It's a very minor feature.
As for sherlocking, this is such a minor use case that I'm not sure why anyone (minus maybe the initial app developers) would be upset. As a user, I need one less app to do something (that I should've been able to do for years). It's not like they're stripping an ability away from developers to hide it behind their own gates.
This is not possible. Any product sold in the EU, regardless of where it is shipped from, must comply with EU rules and standards (e.g., safety, environmental, digital market rules…). Customs can and do block non-compliant imports.
If Apple wants to keep any of their other services and products, they will also be subject to consumer protection regulation meaning they can’t geoblock consumers and they have to ensure their unsafe products don’t end up with EU citizens.
Software people (generally) have a limited idea of just how complex and rigid customs enforcement can be. Moving physical product between countries is actually a very hard problem.
And on top of that, Apple has that thing where only some devices can charge from their adapters. I have a special adapter just for non-Apple things because the white bricks (despite the usb-c) sometimes just refuse to give power to things. So frustrating.
Mostly, that's non-compliant devices. Doesn't make it work any better, but I wouldn't assume Apple is doing it wrong here.
USB-C ports aren't allowed to provide power until after configuration, but a lot of USB-C chargers provide 5V regardless. This is wrong, but it does mean you can use a dumb C-to-micro cable which doesn't include the necessary electronics. (A pull-down resistor at least.)
And of course there's no way to tell by the looks of the cable.
Yeah this is right. I bought a cheap wireless mouse, with a USB-C port for charging. None of the USB-C chargers in my house would charge it, so after awhile it inevitably went flat and I took it back to the shop - since it was faulty.
The guy in the shop plugged it in to a USB-A port via a cheap A-to-C cable, and the mouse immediately came to life. Of course. I felt like an idiot.
I didn't get a faulty unit. Whoever designed the mouse was treating the USB-C plug like a newer micro-usb port. The mouse just expected 5V over the port. They clearly didn't bother testing it with a proper USB-C charger.
I returned it anyway and got a mouse that wasn't broken.
Something I've also see some shitty peripherals do is only hook up one side of the USB-C connectors. To get it charging, you'd need to orient the cable right.
Absolutely baffling, but it only happened to me for brands where I should've figured.
It annoys me so much when new electronics do this because the fix is both well known by now and only requires 2 dirt cheap components on the circuit board (5.1k resistors to ground on the CC lines).
As a hardware engineer among other things, that was one of the first things I learned about interfacing with USB C. How do so many consumer devices keep getting this wrong in the year of our lord 2026?
I had a bike light that charged over USB-C. I thought I was going nuts when I couldn’t charge it with any combination of cables and chargers I had. That is until I dug up the cable that came with it, a cheap looking yellow USB-A to USB-C cable. With that cable, I could charge it from anything.
Not necessarily, Apple only implemented the latest and greatest USB charging spec in some of their devices (AVS). Their chargers speak the new protocols so their devices and their chargers will work, but a charger from a few years back can easily deliver 100W following the spec (PPS, other PD standards) but be unable to deliver high power charging on some Apple hardware.
Neither side is wrong per se, though it's quite annoying that Apple didn't implement PPS. Then again, if you're buying Apple, you should probably expect these kinds of shenannigans and be ready to need to buy dedicated peripherals.
If you had a device that wanted 12V input on a USB-C port without negotiation (these products exist, and are dangerous because they come with chargers that just output 12V without any negotiation at all…), whose fault is it? The vendor who chooses to ignore the clearly defined spec to save a few cents and risks damaging devices, or the vendor who follows spec and prevents damaging random devices?
Yes, and in case of 5V, the vendor isn't even saving "a few cents", but a tiny fraction of a cent. USB-C devices without pull-downs are only poorly pretending to be USB-C.
They're spec complaint with genuine USB-PD charging capability. Some devices are counterfeit with fake USB logos & USB-C connectors but not compliant with the specs. I blame the counterfeit sellers & manufacturers.
Apple implements the USB-C/USB PD specs to a t and is unforgiving if you don't do either.
At work, our quick test for if a device implements USB PD correctly is to plug it into an Apple power supply (optionally with a PD protocol sniffer in line). If it doesn't work (either no/intermittent VBUS or the wrong VBUS), it's always been the case that the device is doing something wrong.
It can be annoying but strictly speaking their fault.
It's even worse. The same USB-A-to-USB-C cable will either charge or not charge my iPhone, depending on where I plug in the USB-A part. But the port that won't charge my phone will happily charge my headset, using the very same cable. That kind of excludes the cable as the source of the suckage, and puts the blame on either the (supposed) power source or the phone. I've observed the same effect with other devices I wanted to charge, too. Some devices just won't accept certain USB power sources while others are more promiscuous.
USB-A gives 7.5W (1.5A at 5V) if advertised through BC1.2 or 2.5-4.5W otherwise, any protocols letting you draw more than that are either obsolete or proprietary.
I've run into problems with Apple chargers not charging my Lenovo laptop. (I used to be an Apple fanboy, but after a MacBook Pro that required 6 repairs, I switched to Lenovo).
I've been much happier since switching to Anker chargers, works much better with my Lenovo and drastically more portable than the Apple ones. It's better able to fit certain situations where the Apple brick won't fit into sockets that are close to the ground / desk, at least not without a bulky extension cable.
A bit of snark, but don't forget the Apple charger recall:
(That said, I do think Apple's chargers were designed far better than most, and I loved that they put so much design thought into the world travel kit. Anker doesn't have the interchangeable heads, but it turns out their chargers are multi-region and a simple adapter head does the job just as well, in a smaller form factor than the Apple bricks. I still somewhat miss Magsafe as well, Magsafe 1 was excellent.)
> Browsers and operating systems are increasingly expected to gain access to language models.
I think this is only true amongst “AI all the things” folks. Both tech and non-tech people around me are more focused on turning these features off. Some even avoid sensitive actions like banking from LLM infused browsers.
So I think Mozilla is right to object. This API is not in the interest of the user/agent.
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