BBC News:

Apple has been ordered to pay Ireland €13bn (£11bn; $14bn) in unpaid taxes by Europe’s top court, putting an end to an eight-year row.

The European Commission accused Ireland of giving Apple illegal tax advantages in 2016, but Ireland has consistently argued against the need for the tax to be paid.

The Irish government said it would respect the ruling.

Apple said it was disappointed with the decision and accused the European Commission of “trying to retroactively change the rules”.

Ireland doesn’t want the money:

The Irish government has argued that Apple should not have to repay the back taxes, deeming that its loss was worth it to make the country an attractive home for large companies.

What a great win for Margrethe Vestager, making clear to the world that the EU is hostile to successful companies. Good job.

There’s a scene in Martin Scorsese’s Casino. Gangster Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) and two of his goon friends are in a nightclub in the Tangiers casino resort (a fictionalized version of the old Stardust), which is run by Ace Rothstein (Robert De Niro). Santoro and Rothstein, who’d been friends for decades, are now on the outs. The Tangiers is a front for the mafia and the Teamsters. Rothstein, a gambling genius who was born to run a casino, is earning major bank for the bosses back home. Santoro is gangstering up Las Vegas, and is under severe law enforcement scrutiny. They just held a contentious meeting, just the two of them, at Santoro’s request, in the middle of the desert — a meeting Rothstein wasn’t sure wouldn’t conclude with him dead in a freshly dug hole in the sand.

Santoro and his two friends are just a threesome. All men. Morose.

Rothstein comes in with Billy Sherbert (Don Rickles) and a party of half a dozen or so men and women, including Oscar Goodman, famed defense attorney and future mayor of Las Vegas (playing himself), and several women. Everyone (but Rothstein, who’s not much for fun) is laughing. You’d be laughing too if you were out having drinks with Don Fucking Rickles and Oscar Goodman.

Santoro gripes about Rothstein not acknowledging him, and, well, makes some comments that suggest he doesn’t hold Jews in the highest esteem. Santoro’s right-hand man, Frank Marino (played by the great Frank Vincent, of Billy “Go Get Your Fucking Shine Box” Batts fame), dryly observes, “They’re having a good time, too.”

The camera pulls back to show their threesome, alone in their booth, isolated. Santoro, who is absolutely not having a good time, replies, “So are we.”

I’ve been thinking about that scene a lot, lately.

Allison Johnson, in a piece for The Verge headlined “European iPhones Are More Fun Now”:

Whining about stuff is a treasured American pastime, so allow me to indulge: the iPhone is more fun in Europe now, and it’s not fair.

They’re getting all kinds of stuff because they have cool regulators, not, like, regular regulators. Third-party app stores, the ability for browsers to run their own engines, Fortnite, and now the ability to replace lots of default apps? I want it, too! Imagine if Chrome on iOS wasn’t just a rinky dink little Safari emulator!

Imagine if Chrome could deplete your iPhone battery as fast as it does your MacBook battery. Imagine if you were one of the millions (zillions?) of people whose “incognito mode” browsing history was observed and stored by Google and deleted only after they lost a lawsuit. Imagine — and this takes a lot of imagination — if Google actually shipped a version of Chrome for iOS, only for the EU, that used its own battery-eating rendering engine instead of using the energy-efficient system version of WebKit.

Imagine downloading a new dialer app with a soundboard of fart sounds and setting it as your default! Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t seem interested in sharing these possibilities with everyone.

That sounds like fun.

Sure, we’ve got retro game emulators in the app store. And that rules. But that’s only because Apple was worried everyone in the EU was about to download AltStore PAL so they could play Ocarina of Time on their iPhones.

If the benefit of the DMA is allowing emulators worldwide how is that an advantage for people in the EU?

Here’s the thing: wouldn’t it just be good business to offer everyone the same choices no matter where they live? It’s not as if Apple was making two different iPhones to try to appeal to different cultural preferences. It’s making one iPhone that’s more flexible and customizable and one that isn’t.

Maybe, bit by bit, Apple will cave in and offer parity the way it did with emulators. But I think the company should make an uncharacteristic move: drop the charade and let everyone, everywhere have the same iPhone. It would be bold! Courageous, even! But most importantly, it would be a lot more fun.

Yes, let’s allow everyone, around the world, to delete their Camera app. That sounds like fun.

Federico Viticci, on Threads:

My realization in 2024 has been that the DMA fork of iOS is the best iPhone experience. We can finally use our phones like actual computers with more default apps and apps from external sources.

And on MacStories:

It’s still iOS, with the tasteful design, vibrant app ecosystem, high-performance animations, and accessibility we’ve come to expect from Apple; at the same time, it’s a more flexible and fun version of iOS predicated upon the assumption that users deserve options to control more aspects of how their expensive pocket computers should work. Or, as I put it: some of the flexibility of Android, but on iOS, sounds like a dream to me.

Apparently, this thought — that people who demand options should have them — really annoys a lot of (generally American) pundits who seemingly consider the European Commission a draconian entity that demands changes out of spite for a particular corporation, rather than a group of elected officials who regulate based on what they believe is best for their constituents and the European market.

Let’s run a tally. On the EU side, there is Fortnite and other games from Epic, a shady company that was justifiably booted from the App Store for bait-and-switch chicanery intended to provoke a lawsuit in which they got their asses handed back to them. On the rest-of-the-world side we have the imminent release of iPhone Mirroring and Apple Intelligence. I don’t play Fortnite, and even if I did, I wouldn’t on my phone, but I find the latter far more interesting — and fun — than the former.

The non-Epic iOS software available exclusively in the EU is ... well, nothing of interest. Maybe some apps that help with content piracy. Other than that, nothing. Admittedly, the DMA only went into effect 6 months ago. Long-term, maybe there will arise a thriving ecosystem of useful and fun apps and games that are exclusively available in EU marketplaces. Right now, it’s Fortnite. There are a bunch of articles (and surely soon to be more) informing EU citizens how to access Apple Intelligence (by lying about where they are). There are crickets chirping regarding how iOS users outside the EU can cheat their way into the EU’s new DMA rules. No one cares.

Meanwhile no one in the EU will get Apple Intelligence or iPhone Mirroring, both of which features are very useful, and, dare I say, quite fun. Should we judge how much fun each side of the continental divide is having by how much fun they theoretically could be having, or by how much fun they are having?

As it stands, the fun side is not the EU. But hope springs eternal.

Annie Karni, reporting for The New York Times:

During an event at Duke University, Ms. Cheney told students that it was not enough for her to simply oppose the former president, if she intended to do whatever was necessary to prevent Mr. Trump from winning the White House again, as she has long said she would.

“I don’t believe we have the luxury of writing in candidates’ names, particularly in swing states,” Ms. Cheney said, speaking to students in the hotly contested state of North Carolina. “As a conservative, as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this and because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris.”

The room erupted in cheers after she made her unexpected announcement.

I have so much respect for Cheney. Her father too, but he’s retired. Liz Cheney took this principled stand while she was one of the most influential Republicans in the nation. I get being a conservative, politically. I get being opposed to the Democratic Party, politically. Liz Cheney is a conservative and — like her father — endorses very different policies than Kamala Harris. But (lowercase ‘d’) democratic politics ought to be viewed very much like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs are in psychology. Some things matter more than others. And nothing — not climate change or the environment, not reproductive rights, and certainly not fucking tax rates — nothing matters more than support for democracy itself and the rule of law. The only way we’re going to get those other things right — which are really, really important — is through democratic governance and the rule of law.

Trump is 100 percent anti-Democratic-Party but he’s no conservative. I don’t support or endorse a Reagan/Bush/Cheney political viewpoint, but that viewpoint is coherent. Trump espouses no coherent views at all. He literally tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 election. He’s a criminal. He’s mentally deranged, decrepitly old, and failing before our eyes. “I don’t like Democrats” is — with Trump on the ballot and polling within the margin of error of winning — not high enough on the political hierarchy of needs to cast one’s vote for anyone but Kamala Harris.

If the Democratic candidate were a Trump-like decrepit crooked lunatic, I wouldn’t hesitate, for a second, to vote for, say, Republican Liz Cheney for president. None of this namby-pamby bullshit about “writing in” a non-candidate’s name. No protest voting for a third-party candidate. The next president is either going to be Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, and only one of the two believes in anything at all — anything — that this great country stands for.

Benj Edwards:

On Thursday, ABC announced an upcoming TV special titled, “AI and the Future of Us: An Oprah Winfrey Special.” The one-hour show, set to air on September 12, aims to explore AI’s impact on daily life and will feature interviews with figures in the tech industry, like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Bill Gates. Soon after the announcement, some AI critics began questioning the guest list and the framing of the show in general. [...]

In a nod to present-day content creation, YouTube creator Marques Brownlee will appear on the show and reportedly walk Winfrey through “mind-blowing demonstrations of AI’s capabilities.”

Brownlee’s involvement received special attention from some critics online. “Marques Brownlee should be absolutely ashamed of himself,” tweeted PR consultant and frequent AI critic Ed Zitron, who frequently heaps scorn on generative AI in his own newsletter. “What a disgraceful thing to be associated with.”

What a jackassed take from Zitron. I mean think about it. Imagine that Oprah’s producers get in touch with MKBHD to ask if he’d like to participate in a prime-time network TV special about AI, specifically to show cool AI use cases, and he was like, “Nah, I don’t think this special is going to sufficiently present the viewpoint of a wide enough array of AI critics.”

These galaxy-brain peanut gallerians haven’t even seen clips from the show, let alone the entire special itself. They’re judging it by the guest list. A guest list that in fact includes obvious critics and skeptics. Edwards:

Other guests include Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin from the Center for Humane Technology, who aim to highlight “emerging risks posed by powerful and superintelligent AI,” an existential risk topic that has its own critics. And FBI Director Christopher Wray will reveal “the terrifying ways criminals and foreign adversaries are using AI,” while author Marilynne Robinson will reflect on “AI’s threat to human values.”

It’s also quite likely that invited guests weren’t told who the other interview subjects were. That’s just not how these things work. Oprah’s production surely shot dozens of hours of interviews to cut into a one-hour special — some of the subjects were likely left on the cutting-room floor.

If you don’t think it’s anything short of fucking cool that Marques Brownlee is getting a spot to show off cool AI use cases to Oprah in a prime-time network TV special, you’re a jackass. And if you’re going to argue that there are no cool AI use cases, you’re a liar.

Nick Heer, writing at Pixel Envy:

The 30% fee is also notable. As far as I can tell, only a handful of Patreon users would exceed the million-dollar annual threshold for Apple’s Small Business Program. That is, everyone who earns less than a million dollars per year through iOS Patreon pledges should, in theory, fork over a 15% commission rate to Apple. But it appears it is Patreon itself which is subject to the 30% rate. Whether that decision was made by Apple or Patreon, of if it is something which is a consequence of how App Store billing works, is unclear to me. But one thing is true regardless: Apple’s 30% commission is at least double the rate charged by Patreon itself, and only the latter has any material effect on the relationship between a creative professional and their supporters.

The problem here reminds me of e-books. There’s really only room for one middleman in a relationship between a creator and their audience, and in this case that middleman has been Patreon. But now Apple is saying they’re required to be involved too. But the Patreon app doesn’t qualify for the Small Business Program, so in-app subscriptions through the Patreon app are split 70/30 with Apple for the first year. But the vast majority of Patreon creators would, if they were app developers, qualify for the Small Business Program and the in-app subscription split would be 85/15 instead. But nobody wants each and every Patreon creator to build their own apps. The whole point of Patreon is that it’s a centralized platform.

The whole notion of a platform like Patreon just doesn’t fit with the App Store’s model of taking a fee out of every single transaction for digital goods or services. It could, perhaps, if Apple were willing to only accept a commission from Patreon’s own share — a commission on a commission — but they’re not.

Lastly, I suppose it’s implicit here that a lot Patreon users go through the iOS app. But I can’t help but think they should do what Substack does and just not allow paid subscriptions through the app. I just double-checked this was still true, and it seems to be. Substack’s iOS app lets you subscribe only to free subscriptions in-app. If you tap “Manage Subscription” in the app, you’re presented with a sheet that says, unhelpfully, “You cannot manage your subscription in the app.” (It’s Apple’s odious anti-steering rules that disallow apps like Substack from explaining where you can manage your subscription, which, of course, is on the web.)

Here’s a developer note from Apple confirming another change in MacOS 15 that many of us were hoping was a bug or glitch in the developer betas:

In macOS Sequoia, users will no longer be able to Control-click to override Gatekeeper when opening software that isn’t signed correctly or notarized. They’ll need to visit System Settings > Privacy & Security to review security information for software before allowing it to run.

Why? Is there any evidence that the Control-clicking shortcut was insufficient? If so, what is that evidence? It seems to me that the sort of technically unsophisticated non-expert users whom these features are meant to protect are the same users who have no idea the Control-click shortcut to launch non-notarized apps even exists.

I mean, if there are exploits running wild because unsophisticated Mac users are Control-clicking malware apps they’ve somehow downloaded, where are they? I can only see two possible explanations for these changes: (a) these decisions that are making MacOS increasingly annoying for expert and power users are being made by cover-your-ass bureaucrats for no good reason, and no one who knows better is shooting them down within Apple; or (b) there’s a serious rash of unreported abuse of these features and Apple is too timid to publicize them to justify the increased frequency and arduousness of these permission nags, lest they admit the Mac has any problems at all.

Neither is a good look.