@jarrod Thanks! 🙏🏻

(BTW, I edited the caption of the screenshot your in, to shoutout, and link to, the blogs in it. ☺️)

@manton Interesting phrasing! Usually when I search, I look for «websites», not «answers». But if I have concrete questions, I do like to use the Raycast AI integration. (If it’s the type of answer I trust it to get.)

BTW, have you tried @kagihq? Big improvement over Google Search, IMO!

@manton Yeah, but I tried to make an important distinction:

I think this is OK from Apple: «You can’t use our nice AirPods integration — go make your own. 😤»

But I don’t think this is OK: «You can’t use our nice AirPods integration— oh, and you’re also not allowed to do the work yourselves. 🙂‍↔️»

@manton Yeah, I’m also worried about engine monopoly… I kinda wish the EU did something like «You have to allow support for other engines — with less than 50% market share». ☺️

Also, I think the main issue with browser competition is that only Safari is allowed extensions. Engines are much less of an issue, IMO.

If the DMA had been in effect 10 years ago, I don’t think Apple Watch would have been available in the EU until and unless the EC said it was permitted. Same for AirPods, which pair with Apple devices in a vastly superior but proprietary way compared to standard Bluetooth. Any sort of integration between an iPhone and another Apple device that isn’t available to third-party devices could be ruled to violate the DMA. By the letter of the DMA, the EC should, I think, rule that all such integration is a violation.

He almost touches it, but he doesn’t quite get it: The problem isn’t that Apple is making good integrations — that’s fantastic! It’s that they refuse companies like Jabra to do the work to have their earbuds work as well as AirPods.

(And if Apple, instead, wants to do the work themselves, they could of course provide the necessary APIs. But I’m not saying Apple has to do Jabra’s job — but it’s a problem when they deny Jabra the possibility to do it.)

So his last sentence in the quote above misses the point completely. Apple’s integrations aren’t the problem. @manton

@jsonbecker Heh, same! Or, to be clear, I think I could find the charm in a Framework laptop. But all the amazing indie software I had to forgo, is simply too much.​

@jarrod I got a notification for this! 👌🏻

(Hah, you know it! 😅 I fought many hours, before accepting that I didnt know a way around that bug. 😔)

@jsonbecker I didn’t know the shortcode was considered Markdown. But I will try adding newlines!

@jarrod Yeah, I have that enabled — and also enabled in Settings. I tried to turn it off and on again now. 🤓 Will also try to reinstall the app!

Thanks! I’m quite pleased with the mobile gallery. ☺️ (But annoyed at a tiny Safari bug, where the last image doesn’t go quite clear off the right sided blur line. 😛)

@jsonbecker @thorgal

​It might be due to some other part of my code, as galleries are a bit complicated. The one in my latest post (relevant to this discussion!), has this code:​ ​ ​

A bit complicated, but very easy for me to make, with an edited version og @jarrod's image uploader shortcut. 👌🏻 ​ (Sorry for posting multiple times, if you got notified. Code totally bugged out on Micro.blog. Speaking of, notifications doesn't work for me on MB, so maybe I didn't bother you anyway. :P )​

@thorgal @jsonbecker If we're confessing RSS sins: I know that my galleries don't display in RSS. 🙊

(For some reason, the glightbox shortcode doesn't propogate to the RSS feed, so it's just empty.)​

@jsonbecker @thorgal And if you add an RSS client like Lire, it can cache truncated RSS feeds. (I think Unread can do this as well!) This nudges things closer to everything available on RSS. 🙂

I haven't followed the entire discussion – but I think I agree with you, Jason. In general I want my stuff to be available wherever people want to read it. But if it's available "Many different places, including the most open ones", I wouldn't feel bad for not wanting to push it into platforms you don't want to support with content. It can be a little ​nudge for people to try other things.

Before checking it just now, I throught the E in "POSSE" was "everywhere" – but as it's only "elsewhere", I think my thoughts fit well with the expression. ☺️​

@jarrod Only the best is worthy of my RSS feed. 👌🏻 Interested in your feedback!

@MitchW Yeah, those tools are great! However, I usually don’t cross post to Mastodon, as I instead boost my blog posts, and then later write a post with some excerpt, etc.

So I don’t use it for micro-posts, really.

@JohnPhilpin He posts slots on his Mastodon — but it’s full now.

@pratik Hard agree! I think Micro.blog is a fantastic place to host my blog — but I stay away from the tools as much as possible. I publish from Ulysses, write there or in Paper, and don’t like any parts of the MB app or website. 😕 The gulf up to Mastodon is immense.

FWIW you can hide metrics on the timeline on Mona,if it helps. (I’d add a screenshot — but for some reason I can’t add images in replies in the MB app. 🤷🏻‍♂️)

I think you’d like the new Reeder! You can set up default apps for Reddit, Mastodon and Micro.blog, so you easily can reply in the corresponding app.

@jsonbecker Hmm – I sometimes use the app Icro to write replies (don't know if I did that the last time it bugged out). Maybe that one just doesn't work..? I moved the reply now. 🙂

@jsonbecker I'm trying not to lower anything. I'm trying to distinguish. I want E2EE to hold a special value.

​Don't you think it's very harsh to say that "iMessage isn't encrypted", just because much of it isn't E2EE? (I'd love to know exactly how much of it is, though. But I assume most conversations has at least one person with regular iCloud backups?) I really think it's OK to value it lower than Signal, but still higher than SMS. But I'd listen to arguments as to why that doesn't make sense.

​And I think it's fair to value iMessage and Telegram's safety about the same. (But I absolutely have more issues with Telegram's ethics! And I'm working on writing more about that — but I wanted to focus on one thing in this post.)

From my latest post:

Security minded people have little troubles distinguishing between all matters of nuance in terms of security – and I agree that we should simplify while communicating these things.

But I don’t think a binary understanding, where things are either “secure” or “insecure”, is the right level – as we’ll get lots of over and under estimations.

Either we end up lumping Telegram/iMessage in with Signal, or with SMS – and both are wrong.

I think we can manage three (broad) categories – that there’s room for something between “No security” and “The best security”."

@zer0 I think that’s unnuanced to an unhelpful degree. Me giving a copy of my keys to my neighbour ≠ leaving the door open. I don't think it's productive to say that "Everything that's not the best security = No security" - in no parts of life, as I fear that will lead to people just not bothering at all.

(And If Telegram’s security was as bad as plain-text, they probably wouldn’t be in so much trouble, right?)

However, I absolutely don’t mind only E2EE being good enough for some people/some use-cases! And that’s why I think it’s important that people know, so they can stay away from Telegram and iMessage. People should know how to get the best security (re my first paragraph here) if they want that.

(And I find it annoying how often iMessage gets lumped into the same bracket as Signal — when the security is much closer to that of Telegram. If you’re OK with iMessage, you should be OK with Telegram (in terms of security), and if you’re not OK with Telegram’s security, you shouldn’t use iMessage.)

@pratik Yeah! I think I’ll make that a blog post. 🙂

@pratik Hehe, thanks. @jsonbecker is always interesting to talk to! It got started after this (admittedly kinda spicy) blog post of mine.

@jsonbecker Hmm, interesting – I don't think Apple's track record (and things that has been revealed in court cases) gives them the benefit of the doubt, heh. 😅 But I wouldn't mind examples that could convince me otherwise! (However, it's important to keep in mind when discussing this: Even though I'm skeptical towards Apple on a bunch of things, I vastly prefer them to most of the other large tech companies, heh.)

​I think their behaviour surrounding the App Store, locking down of the NFC chip, sudden "militarisation" of App notarisation, only Safari being allowed extensions, and other decisions, big and small, is pretty telling. Now, this year's changes in iOS 18 actually addresses some of my complaints, specifically with the framework for Control Center + Lock Screen buttons. But while I have plenty of things I don't like about the DMA, some of the good changes would never have happened without it.

(How good these are, are of course speculative. And I also think it will take quite a long time to shake out. I'm annoyed when people say "Huh, alternative app stores haven't taken off". Like, give it a couple of years, and we'll see – if it isn't allowed to be nerfed into oblivion by Apple.) ​

One example which I have hopes will be a good example of you being right, is the journal entry API. I really liked that they made it accessible to third-party journaling apps from the get-go. But I was equally disappointed that third-party apps wasn't allowed to provide fodder for it – so it would pick up something from the Podcasts app, but not Overcast. However, there's absolutely a good chance this will be added later, and be a good example of your point. But it would be better if they said as much, as it could suddenly take 10 years as well. 😛 ​ (BTW, That they've started to monetise the Podcast app as well, is also something that worries me. It creates yet an incentive for them to get users to choose their app over others. And I just don't see how you can be so sure that they're impervious to these incentives!) ​

As for Dropbox and external drives... ​

I think Dropbox pushing the boundaries to create a good product for customers is a good thing. And if it pushes Apple to create APIs they would've have created otherwise, that's also good. A bit like Rogue Amoeba! ​ I'm not saying Apple shouldn't've made a new API. And I'm not saying Apple didn't add support for external drives specifically to make Dropbox worse. I'm saying Apple's incentives affects where they land, and prioritise, on these edge cases – in a way that makes things worse than they could be, for customers and smaller companies (which I value highly). ​

With all of these things, I think there's a lot of attribution to malice or competitive analysis that really comes down to time, difficulty, cost, and value to users. ​ I'm saying that Apple has put themselves in a position where "competitive analysis" is allowed to seep in and affect the choices regarding "time, difficulty, cost", and in a way, "value to users". But those things are, of course, also important factors.

@jsonbecker (Let me first say, that I like discussing with you! Even though we disagree on a bunch of things, you always have good and interesting points, that affects my opinions in a positive way!)

I was a bit unclear: I’m not saying that Apple necessarily sets out to harm others. But, to me, it’s clear that where they fall on a bunch of decisions, is affected by the complicated incentive structures they’ve constructed. And that includes API decisions.

I don’t think it’s fair to say that because I can disagree on parts of an API change, I «don’t think companies can change APIs»… But yeah, I also often think complaints about API changes are overblown! And perhaps I’m guilty of the same in this case. 🙂

However, we can take another (pretty) recent API change as an example: When Apple updated the cloud storage APIs for the Mac, don’t you think it was easier to decide not to include support for external storage, when they know it remove a reason to choose Dropbox over iCloud Drive, and to not buy more internal storage on Macs? There are absolutely good parts of the new API! But if, say, Apple’s only incentive was to make macOS be better than Windows in handling of cloud storage, I feel like they would’ve tried harder…

Re: «never test a new way of doing things before giving it to third-parties" under the idea that it's anti-competitive.»: I know that Apple likes to not communicate — but it would be so much easier to trust them, if they said things like «We’re working this private API accessible to third-parties in a privacy minded way», etc.

@jsonbecker The thing is, you can point to a million small examples where Apple makes (decently rational) choices that just so happens benefit themselves at the expense of others. Many of them are of the type "We made this choice, because privacy. That it hampers our competitors, is just a coincidence. So is the fact that we didn't do this other thing which also would've been good for user-privacy, but would hurt us." If you only look at each thing individually, Apple's behaviour can often be defended – but you have to look at the larger patterns. ​ Hehe, I agree that it's a good idea to be skeptical of comms – but I don't trust "Spotify + Sonos combined" less than Apple, I think. And Apple could've decided to comment, but has chosen not to. ​

And for what it's worth, the bugs that Spotify mention are present with the volume rocker over AirPlay. So, I'm not sure it's not just Apple's shit not being as good as it should be, period, versus disadvantaging someone. ​

This is a good point! 👆🏻 ​ But I still stand by my stance that these things would be better if the behemoths didn't insist on competing in more and more markets. (I wrote more about this here.) We would have much cleaner incentive structures, if Apple's "only" focus was on making their platforms (and hardware) as good as they could make them. (And "competition" would be an important ingredient here.)

If this isn’t one of the clearest examples of the problems with too much bundling and integration, I don’t know what is.

So, Apple (the phone maker) is artificially nerfing the competition of Apple (the music streaming service), unless they agree to build stronger integration with Apple (the smart speaker maker).

It became a blog post!

@teisam Ja, det gir mening! Har brukt mye skuldervesker tidligere, da jeg hadde mindre med meg. :)

I’m conflicted by this…

Sure, tons of shady stuff goes on on Telegram – but the same is true for Signal (it’s just a less popular app), and any other “more secure than the norm” platform.

Is this arrest along the same lines as politicians wanting to ban E2EE, or is it a proper consequence of laissez-faire moderation?

Is it even possible to make a platform suitable for freedom fighters without also making it valuable for criminals?

Couch potato 🥔🐶🫶🏻

My most treasured possession in the world:

(What’s yours?)

Hi @jarrod! I suddenly remembered that I forgot to send you a snippet to add to my One-a-month Club entry. Maybe this could work? 👇🏻

Writing about whatever comes to mind, with an affection for Good Stuff - be it design, software, clothes or music (equipment). Mostly positive, always nerdy.

I got a package from Bethel today. 🤩

Hi, @help ! I keep getting this 👇🏻 when I upload or update posts. This time I updated right from the “Posts” here on the website. Any advice?

It fixes itself when I rebuild the entire site. (My changes goes through.) But I don’t love having to do that with every change, heh.

Any advice, from @help or someone else, on how to get Mastodon verification to work? I’ve currently placed my link in the head (and had it there for months), but nothing happens over at Mastodon.