Tough to tell exactly what you’re referencing, but you might be thinking about the Paleocene–Eocene thermal maximum, which was a natural increase in carbon in the atmosphere that led to higher temperatures. So, in some ways very similar to what we’re seeing now, but if my understanding is correct, even the PETM which was “dramatic” on a geological timescale took thousands of years to ramp up, and played out over 200,000 years. What we’re seeing now is happening much quicker, and is highly correlated with human influence.
You can't expect reactionaries to have any specific thoughts or for their beliefs to be founded on any particular facts or (real) historical events, like the COVID discussion below.
Counter example to what? Why should they not be able to run both a relatively open ecosystem and a mostly closed one?
I don’t think Apple is arguing that it is impossible to allow more open ways to install apps on iPhones. I think they’re saying that they don’t want to, and that they shouldn’t have to.
> Counter example to what? Why should they not be able to run both a relatively open ecosystem and a mostly closed one?
> I don’t think Apple is arguing that it is impossible to allow more open ways to install apps on iPhones. I think they’re saying that they don’t want to, and that they shouldn’t have to.
Apple volunteers the position that they couldn't possibly open the iOS ecosystem themselves, not just that they don't want to, making some very amusing claims in the process.[1] They also don't want to, but the more you dig into possible "whys", you get into a lot of troubling realities quickly.
Epic Games, on the other hand, is arguing that they actually should have to, at least to some extent. There are actually a lot of reasons why Apple's App Store practices might violate the law, and to my understanding, Epic Games is alleging that Apple's App Store practices constitute "illegal tying" whereby Apple unlawfully ties its payment processing service with its app distribution. That's far from the only potential legal issue that the App Store could face just based on current, existing law. (Note: I am not a lawyer, so take this with a grain of salt; but nothing I am saying is too original or groundbreaking.)
And of course, it's always worth remembering that what's legal today can be regulated tomorrow. I don't really believe lawmakers or the general public really have had enough time to take a look at the impact that Apple/Google app stores have had on the software market and decide if these practices should be legal. The EU seems to think they shouldn't, and while I don't agree with the EU on everything, I tend to agree.
Luckily corporate greed it not the only thing that matters in this world. If they want to sell in half a billion rich market of EU, they will soon need to start behaving more morally. If not they can fuck off, write off 20-30% of company value and EU will have better products, (almost) everybody wins.
Given how low morally they are, the room for improvement is massive and easy to move into. As you write, they didn't do it so far because they were not forced, and waiting for some good moral behavior 'just because it would be nice from them' is rather dumb.
It's possible they'll allow this on iOS once finer granularity logging of battery usage is pervasive, how fine is anyone's guess, so as to track down what apps, and of whatever provenance, degrade some kpi like user impression of battery life.
This is about money not battery life. Apple makes billions of dollars in highly profitable revenue by cryptographically blocking users from controlling their own devices.
That said, i was an engineer for several years in Apple and primary internal concerns were battery life and its influence on user experience; the removal of Flash viability, favoring html5, is an example: profiling of Flash apps written in the wild showed code that routinely drained battery with aplomb...inexplicable to end users not also programmers.
It's unsurprising that the internal narrative focused on the plausible user, product and technical issues which happen to align with sustaining the multi-billion dollar monopoly. Senior leadership isn't going to say the 'quiet part' out loud in all-hands meetings.
I also worked in a valley giant with a multi-billion dollar monopoly position being preserved in a similar way. But I was senior enough to see both sides - the divisional all-hands mtgs and (some of) the exec staff mtgs (my boss was an EVP reporting directly to the CEO). The instructive part was observing what happened in the senior staff mtgs when a serious user, product or technical issue emerged which directly conflicted with sustaining the multi-billion dollar monopoly. Even in small mtgs with just the CEO, a couple EVPs and a handful of their direct reports, I never witnessed any explicit collusion or overt manipulation. The reason is surprisingly simple, they don't need to. They can make "the right thing" happen without being so obvious - just by controlling the agenda, attendees and context and then asking the right questions, prioritizing certain concerns and selecting the right working group leader to "come back with options which balance these concerns". These EVPs didn't get to where they are by plainly speaking their mind, although they are masters of appearing to do so when it serves them. At that level, there are degrees of subtlety and multi-dimensional chess that make Machiavelli look like a toddler.
All those years of being "in the room where it happens" fairly frequently and there wasn't one moment where I thought, "Wow, if I leaked a tape recording of the last 60 seconds, somebody very important is losing their job." These people are far to experienced and skilled at this for it to be that simple. Which isn't to say there may not have been some very private conversations between only the CEO and an EVP or two where things were said explicitly - but I'm not even sure that was necessary. Frankly, the euphemistic language and context control is sufficient that it's probably easier for the them to "stay in character" all the time. In fact, I think some of them sort of believe it themselves - or at least prefer to avoid stewing on the more "unpleasant realities" of the job. Most of these people are, in their own minds, still the 'good guy' in the story they tell themselves.
we evidently both had very senior positions, but i came away with the impression that parts of Apple might operate differently than inner sanctum hw engineering (obviously) , though what i mentioned wasn't from some pep talks, but rather from hard data.
i think the last two sentences you wrote resonate, for sure, though!
> i came away with the impression that parts of Apple might operate differently than inner sanctum hw engineering
I agree and I'm not at all questioning what you experienced. I saw similar things. In the case of Apple, it makes sense the iPhone business would prioritize issues like battery life etc and that the App Store business would prioritize maximizing their multi-billion dollar monopoly revenue stream. Within each business unit they're going to make decisions and allocate resources based on maximizing the metrics their business is judged on.
Where it gets 'interesting' is when two major business units have priorities which directly conflict - like one BU achieving a major objective requires the other BU to not achieve one of their major objectives. When those conflicts are things which directly impact tens of millions or more in revenue and are also high-visibility issues, the conflict gets elevated to the CEO in a small group mtg with both EVPs where they assesses the trade-offs on each side. Ultimately, the CEO is going to pick a 'winner' based on the overall impact to company-wide revenue and the stock price. If the issue is preserving (or losing) the app store monopoly worth billions - we can guess which side is very likely going to win. And maximum motivated reasoning will be deployed to highlight the many reasons that outcome is correct. Many of those reasons will even be legitimate :-).
A year or two ago I had a pretty simple thought. The idea was that LLMs make a great assistant for a skilled developer, a bad replacement for a skilled developer, and a dangerous assistant for an unskilled developer. That idea has mostly seemed to hold true as I have gotten more experience with LLMs.
I think I would revise it now to allow that LLMs can be really useful teachers for unskilled developers, however I don’t get the sense that that’s how they’re being used in many cases. It seems that it’s more common that unskilled developers using LLMs just vibe code their way through issues that they run into, never really gaining insight into why the thing they’re working on failed, and just push through until it seems like it isn’t failing anymore.
And that more or less reinforces my idea that they’re dangerous assistants in those cases where the developer is unskilled. It’s pretty much inevitable that this will introduce problems that make it through the process of creation not only unnoticed, but problems that the developer is incapable of understanding even if they are noticed.
> It seems that it’s more common that unskilled developers using LLMs just vibe code …
This is my conclusion to date also, however, I believe the reason behind that is the increasing adoption of agentic tools like Claude Code and Gemini CLI etc, that encourage users to disregard the actual code generated.
Likely because they are tall and tilted in a direction facing the sun, so that the moisture blocks more of the light than it would if the sun was hitting it at a more oblique angle.
Google Maps had already launched and had really surprised everyone at how much better it was than any other mapping tool a few years before iPhone launched. and just the interactivity of it in general independent of it being a “map” was a paradigm shifter.
Yes, the iPhone put it in everyone’s pocket, but if Apple had built a handheld device that was powerful enough to run any interactive mapping tool Google Maps was already the obvious choice.
It’s a minor quibble, but to say Apple played a majority role in Google Map’s success doesn’t ring true to me. In 2007 Google Maps was easily overtaking all other mapping tools with or without the iPhone.
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