> goes into barring the competition from accessing the current nodes at TSMC

I know it’s en vogue to hate on Apple and make them out to be this big evil corporation, but you’re naming it sound as if they’ve been jerking off while sitting on TSMC’s capacity just to fuck with the competition and purely to make it impossible to compete, when in reality they’ve continued to make exponential improvements on their silicon platform.

> making Apple look good on benchmarks for 12-18 months or so

What are you on about? They’ve essentially been in a league of their own since the M1, especially if you take into consideration the power envelope and how performance is available with just passive cooling.

There isn’t really anything like it.

Even the salty argument of Apple hogging TMSC nodes just crumbles apart if you give more than a second of thought.

For starters, yes, sure Apple is great at managing their logistics and supply chain, which is why, when Cook was in charge of that, it impressed Jobs so much and it proved to be so essential to Apple’s success, that Jobs decided to hand pick Cook as his successor. I don’t see how that is a useful argument against Apple, moral or otherwise.

Nothing is stopping competitors from optimizing their process to the point where they can call TSMC and offer to buy their capacity for the next year or two. To say nothing of the efforts made outside of TSMC like Samsung GAAFET 3nm and MBCFET 2nm process and whatever Intel is dicking around with on their 2nm process.

More importantly though, it’s silly to make it seem as if that’s the only reason for the fruits of Apple’s labor.

Take AMD’s HX 370 for example, released last year, courtesy of TSMC’s N4P process. It still struggled to provide a PPA similar to the M1 Pro, which wasn’t only 3 years older at the time, it was a product of TSMC’s older N5 process.

Clearly having access to newer TSMC nodes isn’t a guaranteed win.

> and couldn't care less about performance

You’ve got it mixed up. Apple has never cared about raw specs, but they always have and always will care about performance.

If you’re inclined to read their every move through the big bad filter then you might say they never cared about raw performance because they’ve always been able to get more out of less and this way they could charge high spec prices without the high spec cost (and without, historically, advertising specs), and it clearly worked out for them.

Their stuff is being sold as if it’s given away for free, in doing so they’ve proven that the average user couldn’t give two fucks about bigger numbers as long as it works well, and their competitors have to pack their phones and other devices with higher specs and cooling solutions like vapor chambers (something Apple has managed to avoid so far) to keep up.

In a way they’ve always had to care more about performance than their competitors because they’ve mostly worked with hardware that’s “lesser” on paper to maximize their margins.

> to offer, a sense of novelty, excitement, taste

I don’t know about you but single-handedly making x86_64 look like an ancient joke with something that would’ve been considered a silly mobile processor 10 years ago is quite novel and exiting. If nothing else it lit a fire under Intel, even if they’ve seemed to have decided to let themselves be turned into a well done steak.

This was essentially what Intel had in mind with their Atom series for netbooks back in the day and Intel never managed to crack the code.

I remember being amazed when I received my developer transition kit, running macOS on an A12Z like it was nothing.

Even now, if I want to be more comfortable and do some coding or video editing work on the couch I can use my off-the-shelve base model M3 MacBook Air to do most of what I can on my M1 Max, that’s quite the leap in performance in such a short time.

There’s no accounting for taste or course and what I like might not be to your liking, and there is plenty about Apple that deserve legitimate criticism, so I don’t understand the need to make something out of nothing in this instance.

A post mortem would be fun for me as software developer, but is ultimately of limited value to me or lay people because the cause is already communicated.

I understand that the subject of the issue, it being photos, might be a bit touchy, but the mechanics and the nature of the bug is nothing special and anyone who moved past their “Hello, world” phase will immediately understand the kind of bug that was in play here.

Photos are stored “in” a photo library.

On Apple systems the photo library is just a package (i.e., essentially a folder) and in it is an SQL database that keeps track of photos and their attributes based on a GUID in some 70 odd tables.

The photos and videos themselves are stored in folders within that package (i.e., the file system). But it is ultimately the SQL database that is deemed authoritative and that decides what you see in the Photos app.

Different daemons and chron jobs use the database to sync photos to and from the cloud and to clean up photos when marked for deletion.

All it takes for this to occur is for a photo to be marked as deleted, without it actually being deleted in the underlying folder, for it to seem deleted.

And all it takes for it to show back up is for 17.5 to index through the folders and based on what found “repair” the database.

The database also gets changed from time to time, so it could also simply be a new way of keeping track of deleted photos and in the process of migrating to the new database version taking a conservative approach and assuming that photos that are still present to be wrongly marked as deleted.

It’s always better to restore and let the user decide than to make destructive assumptions.

After this process resurfaces photos then they get synced with iCloud, just like any other photo.

The implication that this doesn’t explain the resurfacing of old photos from years ago and many devices ago is rather weird.

Most people don’t start fresh when they get a new Apple device and instead transfer data over or restore form a backup, putting in place the corrupted database. To say nothing of the database file being synchronized across devices via iCloud.

In fact, that only makes the corrupted database explanation more likely.

In the earlier days of iOS, Apple was still finding its way on how to effectively manage the library, making some significant overhauls in addition to overhauls to switch from Photo Stream to iCloud Photo Library.

So it’s not unlikely it was during that period this issue snuck into the database.

Like I said, it’s unfortunate that it affects photos, but otherwise not a shocking bug by any means and the solution to include orphaned photos back into the library as opposed to destructively deleting them is good practice.

The only thing that might’ve been better is if the user was provided with a prompt informing them of the find and perhaps asking them to make a choice.

It’s clear however that they didn’t think it would be an issue that would affect many users and using scary technical words like “corrupted” go against the kind of language and UX Apple tries to stick to.

A miscalculation perhaps, but hardly worthy of the drama that it’s being milked for.

Luckily, I am not under an NDA, and I can tell you that the Reddit post is nonsense. A straight-up lie when you assume bad faith or poor recollection if you assume good faith.

The scenario described there, and further expanded upon by OP in comments is pretty much impossible. I hedge only because of an astronomical unlikely probability that everything in the universe aligned perfectly.

As you seem to be aware, encryption keys are involved, and that involvement lies at the root of the impossibility.

Say you’re inclined to believe that the Secure Enclave that stores this key has a massive bug that doesn’t delete the key upon wiping. That alone wouldn’t explain a scenario like that.

In addition to not deleting that key, the OS must’ve been unable to detect and try to use that key until some serious potent code was introduced in 17.5.

Also, during the wipe, the encrypted data partition that goes with the key must’ve not been deleted and gone unnoticed by the OS up until 17.5.

In addition, the OS must’ve kept the key intact, and ignored the existence of the encrypted data partition. Creating a new encrypted data partition with an accompanying key and acting as if it was all business as usual.

Then, suddenly, 17.5 comes around. It would have to have seen two encrypted data partitions with two encryption keys, mounted the most recent encrypted data partition, and decrypted it with the most recent encryption key without any issues and hiccups, only to then do something quite miraculous.

It would, at that point, do something that it was never designed to do, namely decrypt and mount the old data partition, all while the most recent one is already mounted, grab only a bunch of old photos from a corrupted database, nothing to else, and merge it into the database located on the most recent data partition.

All this while ignoring many complexities related to key pairs tied to iCloud accounts that I’ve omitted for simplicity’s sake and without throwing up a single error, much less a respring or, more likely, a kernel panic.

Just the part about mounting two partitions alone would cause huge issues.

It’s nearly impossible to do this on purpose due to hardware limitations on storage and the way the Secure Enclave works. To entertain a string of bugs that would execute this perfectly is just silly.

Who needs jailbreakers and the likes of Pegasus spending hours designing chain exploits when the OS stumbles into perfectly executed bugs that defy the law of physics?

I will admit that they nailed the German-Dutch accent.

However, the weird choice to use “translatie” which, while technically is a Dutch word, wasn’t common even back in the period this is supposed to take place and feels more like a lazy translation of… well the English word “translation”, combined with, what I can only describe as “just blurt it out as fast as you can” direction, makes this very comical.

Without the aim of trying to insult anyone, frills like that are more common in the US when trying to emphasize the official nature of documents (e.g., notary public embossing).

Even so, on top of all that, it would make exactly zero sense for the embossing to be the EU stars.

I’d expect the takeaway to be “That’s bad, so we shouldn’t do it” instead of “Hold my beer and let me show you how we can follow their example.”

I always thought that the point was to not be like authoritarian countries.

The EC is not the final arbiter in this. It’s just an executive body.

Apple complied with what they think will withstand adjudication by the CJEU and leaves the rest for the EC to act on so they can appeal it with the CJEU.

Given the EC’s poor track record in terms of getting their fines and decisions overturned by the CJEU, I too would do it this way, no matter how loud the EC likes to bark and show their teeth.

Especially considering the DMA is poorly drafted and in Europe, unlike in the US, the courts aren’t ghostbusters that go seeking for “spirits” of the law.

Whether the EC thinks so or not, Apple is in compliance with the straightforward parts of the DMA as well as with the more vague parts on the basis of reasonable interpretation, to be adjudicated by the CJEU.

In law there’s very little that’s certain, as such it’s bad form to make predictions, but I’m pretty confident in saying that the CJEU isn’t going to open Pandora’s box by prohibiting Apple from charging a reasonable fee for their IP.

In any case, / root and /etc (to an extend) are part of the system volume (or rather the system volume snapshot if we want to be pedantic). With some exceptions Apple considers that fair game.

There’s a bunch of symlinking and firmlinking done to make it look like one coherent whole but only the stuff on the data volume is safe.

That said, if for whatever reason you need to put something in root you can create your own synthetic firmlink[0] with /etc/synthetic.conf.

I believe some also reported success by simply making a subdirectory under /etc and use that instead but YMMV.

hoakly goes into extensive detail with what changed with volumes on macOS (back in 2019 I believe): https://eclecticlight.co/2021/01/13/big-sur-boot-volume-layo...

0: https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2020/01/18/creating-root-l...

In fact, I used to get kernel panics from time to time with USB hubs until a couple of major revisions ago.

What I’m running now, in part via monitor USB hub, is so far beyond the scope of what I expect to be part of QA and intended support that I’m surprised it’s not giving me any issues.

Windows has become a hodgepodge of code bases from a variety of time periods and philosophies, some of which leans on some ancient stuff that can’t be touched.

Hell, they had to skip Windows 9, just to prevent breaking 95/98 software from braking.

The average SW engineer here in HN wouldn’t know how fast they’d get to a keyboard to complain if they were to find a codebase like that at their job.

That’s not to say it’s necessarily bad, even if it can be cumbersome, it’s just to highlight the cost of maintaining that compatibility and a difference in philosophy.

This misses the mark so badly that it’s not even worth reading the rest.

App Review is based out of Sunnyvale and has more than 300 people that make on average $85k/y in their first few years, and mostly over $100k/y after three years.

Long tenured people, the ones that last more than 5 years and are advancing towards a decade of doing the work get close to $200k/y with some exceptions over that number.

Many of those 300 people are multilingual, some specialize in a specific language, but to expand and better serve non-English markets, Apple recently opened a branch in Ireland and one in Shanghai.

The latter mainly focusing on the Chinese market and the one in Ireland specializing in European languages and supplementing the English market.

Funny how that works.

The dip started 2 days prior on March 4, the day the EC announced their ~$2B fine based on TFEU, which has nothing to do with the DMA. One the appeal is filed it’ll go back up, as it’s already almost back to before that news. And then a week later when Cook farts, it’ll dip again.

Such is the nature of stocks, at least on the short term. On the long term, 1Y and up, it’s solidly in the green.

Not to mention that stock prices and revenue (which is what they’re talking about) are two separate things.

Apple wants to show that they can’t be brought to their knees.

Epic wants to show that they can get away with shit.

The EU wants to show that they have teeth and are to be feared.

In the meantime, the only organization with the actual final say, the CJEU, is off forgotten in these debates and is currently warming up to accept and adjudicate Apple’s appeal for the ~$2B fine based on art. 102 TFEU.

Apple and Epic are private parties, and the EC is just an executive body. The CJEU in this is analogous to SCOTUS.

The best we can do as bystanders in the meantime is asses on existing principles whose flexing actually has some power behind it.

Epic’s contract with Apple was terminated prior to all this. The US courts have their blessing for this. Epic tried to get unbanned, most notably after changes in Korea, and Apple said they weren’t interested.

Now Epic pulled a stunt and was stupid enough to publish the emails. Based on the time and date of those emails and their public announcement that they “got their dev account back,” we can surmise that Epic just created a new account with the information of their newly erected Swedish entity. This process is 99% automated.

Afterward, they emailed Apple. Not to get permission to return but to state that they are back. That’s when the ball started rolling.

To enter into a valid contract, there needs to be mutual assent. Leaving nuance by the wayside, that means that both parties needed to actually want to enter into a contract with one another.

In the US, this used to be measured against a subjective standard but later shifted to an objective standard that boils down to whether a reasonable person would consider it an acceptance of an offer. In the EU, it’s still a subjective standard where intent to enter a contract is essential.

All of this is to say that if push comes to shove, no court, especially not a European one, is going to consider Epic simply creating a new account when Apple has made it clear time and time again that they don’t want to do business with them, to be sufficient for forming a valid legal agreement.

Without a valid legal agreement, the status quo prior to this event is leading. This being a situation in which Apple and Epic don’t have an agreement.

The DMA doesn’t have provisions that would force parties to enter into an agreement and force them to do business with each other. This is because it wouldn’t be able to withstand adjudication by the CJEU but also because the EU would never want to open Pandora’s box like that. The implications of that would be quite literally beyond comprehension.

So if there’s no valid contract and the EU doesn’t have the power to force one, ask yourself whose flexing is merely a flex and whose flexing is backed by the power of the CJEU? Who’s doing who a favor here?

We know at least of one party that they consistently go out of their way to make a point, even when the underlying issue they use as motivation is already moot. The point being made is that their teeth are truly sharp. So why not use those teeth in this instance and chomp into the flesh. Are we to believe that they’ve lost their appetite for their favorite meal?

Right as their latest pet project has gone into effect no less?

After being embarrassed by their prey who was able to convince the courts to reach into their mouth and reveal that those teeth are not as sharp as they’ve been made out to be almost a decade ago? An embarrassment that they’re still trying to undo in court at this very moment?

If someone who was so shamelessly neutered had the actual power to draw blood by chomping down into the flesh, would it be likely they’d rather growl?

I don’t think so.

Do you think the coffee shop owes income or sales tax to the country where the bank issuing my payment method is established? What if I am from EU country A but my bank is located in EU country B? Is A or B going to claim nexus?

I think there’s no need to be coy here because we both know that that merchant isn’t going to have to pay a dime to a government entity outside of the US and neither would I in this example, at least not insofar it is related to my purchase of the coffee.

Apparently, it's not trivial enough for you to succeed in invalidating it.

“Aggression,” “malicious compliance,” and other such loaded terms in this context are, by their nature, subjective opinions, and opinions will never be substantive enough to refute an argument.

My paying a fine because the law says so, but doing it begrudgingly and not paying a cent more doesn’t make me “aggressive” or “complying maliciously”; it’s just me complying with the law.

I get it; you want your boogie, man, and you’re welcome to have it. But I’m welcome to point out that it doesn’t have any objective merit or value other than to soothe whatever feeling you have that compels you to broadcast it in the first place.

You bringing up VAT settlement betrays how in over your head you are. Not only have you embraced an extremely thorny topic by doing so, but it actively undermines the argument you’re trying to make, making your case all the less credible.

The tax subject is ultimately liable for VAT settlement. But because governments understand that it’s tough to enforce it on an individual level, they prescribe a set of practices for merchants that are, in principle, based on many assumptions. Some governments are more zealous in this than others, closing more possible enforcement loopholes than others; nevertheless, they all prescribe practices.

These assumptions mainly revolve around the country of origin and country of destination of goods and services, customer status and their nexus, and value of the goods and services.

An excellent example is if I, an EU citizen living in the US, visit my home country and purchase goods I intend to take home, then the merchant has to assume I’m subject to VAT and thus will charge me VAT. But when I depart, I can get the VAT back at the tax office at the airport.

Similarly, when I made purchases in my home country for my business when I still lived there, merchants specializing in B2B sales were allowed to sell me the goods without levying VAT on behalf of the government. Others who didn’t specialize in B2B and didn’t have the administrative logistics to handle B2B sales would levy the VAT, and I could then get it back from the government.

Sales tax settlement in the US also falls upon the tax subject, even though there are some fundamental differences between VAT and sales tax. On my tax return, I need to declare any purchases made out of state, and legally, I owe use tax if I purchased goods out of state tax for goods to be used at home.

Simply put, how Apple levies VAT for EU member states has little to do with what Apple wants and everything to do with what the law prescribes on how to treat users. Especially considering Apple acts as an intermediary in the majority of the cases and doesn’t levy VAT on behalf of their own but on behalf of other developers, which is another thorny dimension to this topic. As such, it’s entirely plausible that Apple levies VAT on users in certain situations who don’t owe it and who can ask for a VAT refund.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that it’s very plausible that if it were up to Apple, they wouldn’t levy any VAT because prices in VAT countries show the total after VAT price. It inherently makes it more likely that a sale occurs when that number is lower. They’re just not given much choice in the matter.

In contrast, the DMA provides an obvious provision on who the DMA does or doesn’t apply to. Reasonable minds can differ on how to read a minor part of that provision, but as far as legal language goes, this is about as clear as it gets.

While 102 TFEU (and in particular the CJEU case law surrounding it) has stacked the deck extremely in favor of the EC, in part due to it being designed and interpreted on the basis of European administrative law traditions, a ban or divestiture will only be imposed by the CJEU in the most extreme cases.

A case even the EC, with the entire deck stacked in their favor, will never be able to make. Edit: Specifically for Apple, the others, depending on who we’re talking about, might be a different story.

Article 1 clearly states the subject matter and scope of the DMA, with subsection 2 defining which end users it pertains to. As it should, because it would be bonkers for the EU to try and regulate anything outside of their jurisdiction.

Just say you wish it applied outside of the EU but that you understand the logical jurisdictional limitations and call it a day.

There’s no need for unwarranted loaded language.