Accidental Tech Podcast632: The Uncertainty Is Gone
https://atp.fm/632
New Siri leadership, WWDC's announcement, the EU's new demands, and a dropped axe that could've been much worse.
Reid@atpfm I, too, find the CarPlay WiFi behavior maddening but for a slightly different reason. BMW requires a double-press of the power button to switch everything off. So inevitably, whenever I’m going in and out of the driveway to do little car-related tasks, my phone jumps off my home WiFi and Sonos AirPlay stream, and connects to the car, forcing me to do the AirPlay dance over and over.
starling@atpfm Couldn’t disagree more about the EU’s demands being unreasonable. They are giving Apple:
* 9 months to support other smartwatches
* 15 months to support other headphones
* 15 months to support other file transfer apps
* 21 months to support other media casting
They already support their own versions of all these technologies!!
I’m saying this as a software engineer with ~20 years professional experience. I don’t see what is hard about these timelines, especially for Apple
Melvin Gundlach
illustro@starling @atpfm also worth noting that the preliminary decision for this was released in December, with the actual decision released earlier this month. So Apple has known pretty precisely what was coming for an additional 3 months on top of this.
https://digital-markets-act-cases.ec.europa.eu/cases/DMA.100203
Brock@atpfm @caseyliss to pile on more tips for Vision Pro volume control, you can also toggle a setting to make the digital crown change the volume by default in visionOS Settings
DavidSchaubRe: maintaining current lens setup on the iPhone 17.
I don’t know if you mentioned it on earlier podcasts, but beyond just “smooth transition between lenses when zooming”, i imagine the higher priority is: all the multi-sensor fusion algorithms and multi-sensor depth algorithms, which probably depend on the current lens/sensor placements.
Sean Harding@atpfm the other problem I’ve had with wireless CarPlay + WiFi is that if I do the “disconnect nearby WiFi until tomorrow” to get off of a bad network it seems to also sometimes prevent CarPlay from connecting (even when that wasn’t the network I was connected to and I wasn’t in the car at the time).
Karan J@atpfm the way John reacted to mandated timelines from a regulator says to me he's never worked in a regulated industry 😂 working in global banking, our work prioritisation basically goes 1. Production stability, 2. Regulatory, 3. Everything else. A good regulator consults with the regulated entities before setting the timeline. Apple could do it by publishing a standard that third parties would need to build to - it doesn't mean there would be any existing products which would work on day 1.
John Siracusa@atpfm I disagree with the characterisation that the EU is against vertical integration (even with qualifiers).
Vertical integration does not require that others are also locked out of the same functionality. Vertical integration requires that your own products works well with each other. This is good for your customers as your products work well together.
You may *want* to also lock others out of that ease of use because you *want* your customers to only have options inside your ecosystem.
@atpfm the EU requirements are also not new news for Apple. The DMA requires open interoperability requests that gatekeepers must comply with unless there are good reasons (paraphrasing).
This announcement smells like interoperability requests that Apple has said no to, for invalid reasons, then there was a complaint to the EU, then there was behind the scenes engagement between the EU and Apple, Apple still stuck its feet in the mud, the EU regulator then made a set of requirements for Apple.
Joe Lion@atpfm we all know Apple was late to AI and LLMs, but I also wonder if they fully internalized that creating and integrating AI’s is a fundamentally different problem that might require completely different sets of people than all of their previous work. I’m sure they’ve hired lots of people, but there is a finite number of true AI engineers out there.
@atpfm I guarantee there are middle managers there who have taken a team that does, for example, backend development, and has attempted to “pivot” them to be an AI team. There are probably engineers sitting on that team thinking “WTH… I didn’t sign up for this. I have no background in this field and I’m not actually interested in it. I’d rather just be writing automation scripts in Python”.
@atpfm Just as in the “big data” boom of the early 2010, then the data science bubble in the mid 2010s, and now the AI wave, there is a certain set of VPs and managers who view all of these as “just software” and don’t believe or acknowledge that each of these areas requires highly specialized knowledge that is not necessarily fungible.
I just fail to see how Apple being "late to AI" matters that much.
Like what Steve Jobs said about DropBox: AI is a feature, not product... and definitely not the Venture Capitalist wet dream replacement platform for Apple & Google.
This is a bubble. Apple needs to invest enough that the short-sighted stock market doesn't punish them, and position themselves for after the bubble bursts.
Siri has sucked for years, so it sucking longer is not the end of the world.
cactustweeter@atpfm I'm sorry but EU is being ridiculous. Every company should have the right to differentiate its products. A business should be able to decide whether it makes good business sense to offer compatibility with a competitor or not. A government entity should have no say. Apple has enough on its plate it needs to focus on without having to worry about insane demands by the EU.
Fraser Hess@atpfm I’m surprised there was no technical discussion of what it would take to meet the EU feature demands. Moreover, I felt like that discussion was necessary for John to make his case that the demands were unreasonable
The iPhone SE form-factor AND price were both cancelled.
It is 100% "keeping around old" parts. The 16e is a parts-bin 14 with 16's SoC and one camera.
John, why in the world would they ever move to fewer lenses on the Pro? They should add MORE lenses.
Re future iPhone *e, here are Apple's likely options image:
Marco picking (3) is definitely the optimistic choice. Why doesn't John want a cheaper phone so more people can afford the 16e next year?
@atpfm it's also pretty clear there has been non-public communication with Apple prior to the release of this decision. See paragraph 19 of the decision text where it states:
"Future functionalities of the P2P Wi-Fi connection include:
(a) [confidential]
(b) [confidential]"
https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/202512/DMA_100203_1536.pdf
So Apple has told the EU about future planned functionality of at least one of its features.
To me this shows that this decision was made with detailed knowledge of Apple's future plans. 1/
@atpfm from working in the insurance industry in the EU, these types of behind the scenes discussions with EU regulators come with questions of how long it is expected the planned features will take to develop, and those timelines are taken into account when making such decisions (with the regulator consulting with technical experts on the feasibility of such changes).
The characterisation that this is a decision made by people who don't know any better, is, as a result, likely wrong. 2/2
Jan Kaiser@atpfm Vision Pro’s digital crown can be remapped to default to volume control. I did just that, as I tend to adjust it more often than the immersion.
Jimmy Callin@atpfm I feel like one piece that never gets mentioned is that Apple’s problem with Siri is in some ways entirely of their own making. If Apple were to release the necessary APIs tomorrow for alternative assistants to replace Siri, while severely reducing the role of Siri to a limited but rock solid set of features, all the recent complaints would essentially be nullified. Unfortunately, modern Apple the Services Company seem less interested in giving up control of potential new cash flows.
Jared White (ResistanceNet ✊)@callin @atpfm In the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework, I hire Apple to:
* Provide me with a rock-solid hardware computer system.
* Provide me with a rock-sold operating system.
* Provide me with a software ecosystem developers *love* to make apps for.
.....
Way-ay-ay down the list, if it's even on the list, is most of the stuff Apple's been fooling around with lately. So-o-o frustrating… 😤
@atpfm Regarding the EU, we know there has been tons of backchannel communication between EU and Apple previously. Why don't you think Apple has, disregarding whether they want to or not, privately agreed that they can commit to this timeline?
@atpfm guys you can make volume the default function of turning the digital crown
https://support.apple.com/guide/apple-vision-pro/adjust-volume-tan9f63ea004/visionos
“ You can also change the default focus for the Digital Crown. Go to Settings > Digital Crown, then choose an option.”
https://support.apple.com/guide/apple-vision-pro/adjust-volume-tan9f63ea004/visionos
“ You can also change the default focus for the Digital Crown. Go to Settings > Digital Crown, then choose an option.”
Marcos Huerta@atpfm Is there any non-Apple Bluetooth device that can switch easily between devices? Is the EU asking them to solve an industry wide problem with Bluetooth?
toastedmilk@marcoshuerta @atpfm the latest Bluetooth spec does it no?