There has been a lot of press around changes to the App Store lately.
First there was a US court decision that forced Apple into allowing apps to include an “alternate payment link”, and just yesterday they announced a sweeping set of changes coming to the EU App Store due to the Digital Markets Act (DMA) that is scheduled to come into effect in March.
Both of these legally mandated changes are being implemented in such a way as to do the absolute bare minimum required and make everyone who decides to use the new options pay for it.
There are people who’s “brand” is deliberately missing the point. Doesn’t matter what the issue, they’ll find a way to get it wrong. Rather than assume they’re unintelligent, it’s helpful to ask yourself why they might want to get something wrong in such a public venue… 🤔 (hint: social media interactions with “dumb” posts is always 10x higher than scientists or authors making well-reasoned points)
The truth since the beginning of the internet: don’t feed the trolls. 🫡
At first, the open web is Apple’s best chance to make its headset a winner. Because at least so far, it seems developers are not exactly jumping to build new apps for Apple’s new platform.
There are many strong points made in this article, but as much as I’m bummed that Netflix, YouTube, and others are opting out of having their apps available at launch, I don’t think this is a harbinger of general support for the platform.
I don’t know how many Vision Pro developer kits were sent out, but by all accounts it was a small number, and based on what I know I wouldn’t be surprised if Netflix didn’t get one. One of the requirements (among a long list of somewhat onerous restrictions) of getting a dev kit for the Vision Pro was a commitment to launch an app on day one. It wasn’t enough to want to explore how your app would feel or to test out various ideas and get a head start on supporting the platform, you needed to be a launch partner.
Disney and Microsoft are clearly launch partners for the device, and Netflix and Google are not. We’ll see how long it lasts.
Mark Gurman shared some cool details about Vision Pro launch day procedures:
In-store pickup customers who order online can either take the device and leave, go through the in-store demo or do a 1:1 set up with an employee to verify size/fit. If needed, customers can swap sizes of individual parts.
If a customer sets up their device at home and there’s a sizing issue, they can come back to the store for a swap.
Employees are piecing together the boxes with the right component sizes to order.
I’ve run through the sizing on two devices multiple times and have been told the same headband size all but once (with the same light seal every time).
Even with the consistency of the scan, it’s comforting to know that the preorders are mainly securing your Vision Pro model (by storage size), not the unique combination SKU representing the headband size, light seal, and storage tier.
Seems like they learned from the original Apple Watch launch.
The packaging is giant - like about the size of two Mac Studio boxes or a large shoe box. The headset comes pre attached to the Solo Knit Band. There are also commemorative shopping bags - like with the original iPhone.
The hype is real for this thing. Commemorative shopping bags don’t matter to me, but Apple is trying to make this launch special.
When I created this site, I decided I wanted to have some of my favorite tweets live alongside my blog posts. After all, Twitter started out as a microblogging platform, so my tweets were mini blog posts anyway. Then things changed, Twitter stopped being Twitter, and posting there didn’t feel the same. Then at some point they weren’t even technically tweets (Xeets?).
I still post tweet-like content on some platforms (mainly Mastodon), but I wanted a place to share something longer than a tweet/toot/thread, but shorter than a blog post.
Enter notes. Sitting right in the same feed as my posts and links1, I’ve relocated all of my old tweets to be notes, and will start posting short-ish content here on my own site. Sometimes it may be a repost of something I said elsewhere, but it will also be a place where I share exclusive notes, like this one I posted a little earlier as the inaugural native note on this site.
Each content type also has it’s own feed, linked in the footer in order of [probable] length: notes, links, and posts. ↩︎
