The US Department of Justice has come knocking on Apple's door, alleging the world's most valuable company "illegally maintains a monopoly over smartphones by selectively imposing contractual restrictions on, and withholding critical access points from, developers". They also reckon Apple "undermines apps, products, and services that would otherwise make users less reliant on the iPhone, promote interoperability, and lower costs for consumers and developers". Apple does this the DoJ says to "extract more money from consumers, developers, content creators, artists, publishers, small businesses, and merchants, among others". Apple's response is "this lawsuit threatens who we are and the principles that set Apple products apart" and will "set a dangerous precedent, empowering government to take a heavy hand in designing people's technology". Is that supposed to scare me? Anyways, between this and the EU's boot on its neck, I'm enjoying Apple finally getting some comeuppance for their big headed vibes the last 5 or so years. This'll be a spicy story for months, if not years, as Apple and the US government duke it out in court and thousands of nerds with blogs turn into armchair lawyers.
On the other side of the paddock, Google has dropped a new developer preview of Android 15. The main feature seems to be satellite messaging support, with new APIs that allow apps to detect when a "Non Terrestrial Network" is active and allow third party SMS/MMS apps to communicate. There's also big improvements to built-in PDF support, with features like "rendering password-protected files, annotations, form editing, searching, and selection with copy". Other interesting things include "support for the CTA-2075 loudness standard to help you avoid audio loudness inconsistencies and ensure users don't have to constantly adjust volume when switching between content", cover screen support to "allow your Application or Activity to be presented on the small cover screens of supported flippable devices" and support for apps to detect that they are being screen recorded. We will learn more about Android 15 at Google I/O in May, with the update set for release some time in October.
Our federal communications minister got the final version of the Optus Post-Incident Review yesterday. The report isn't public yet (they plan to release it "in due course") and while it wasn't supposed to explain the technical cause of the outage, the press release says "the disruption to some Triple Zero calls was predominantly caused by a failure of Optus 3G towers to wilt" - which is "an industry practice where signals from mobile towers are powered down during disruptions in order for Triple Zero to be carried by another network". Dunno what's in that report that's so sensitive that it has to be sat on indefinitely. I was looking forward to seeing what could be done to prevent such an epic network failure from happening again.
While I enjoy the occasional game of Monopoly, I had no idea the smartphone variant of it is so damn popular. Since its launch a year ago, Monopoly Go has generated over US$2b in revenue and was downloaded over 150 million times. To achieve this, they spent US$500m on "marketing and user acquisition alone". That is fucking insane levels of money for what is essentially a digital version of a board game. To put that into perspective, Cyberpunk 2077, a vastly more engrossing and detailed game cost US$440m to develop - roughly the same as what Monopoly Go spent on simply marketing the damn thing. Also, if we assume that iOS purchases made up 50% of that $2b, and Apple got a 15% of all the in-app purchases (Monopoly Go is a free to play game), that's US$150m. No wonder they're so desperate to protect that golden egg laying goose.
Here's five interesting discussions over on The Sizzle's paid subscriber forum for you to enjoy over the weekend. If you are not a paid subscriber but want to get involved, visit https://thesizzle.com.au/payme to get onboard.
During the late 1980s and 1990s Sydney was home to a thriving rave and party scene, part of a global phenomenon originating in England. This object is part of an archive of over 1850 items dating from 1990 to 1998, providing an insight into the Sydney party world and the way in which it changed throughout the decade. (Powerhouse Museum)
📻 If You Want Blood (You've Got It) - AC/DC
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