By John Moltz
June 23, 2023 2:00 PM PT
This Week in Apple: The mode less traveled
Apple and Reddit’s relationship with those who deal with their users continues to be a rocky road. Meanwhile, visionOS hits the streets.
Toward a more perfect union
They say both that no news is good news and that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but if Apple’s relationship with its labor force is any example, the former is more accurate than the latter. Sadly, instead of improving, Apple’s stance on unions seems to have entered what experts in spiraling destructive thought call “irascible Facebook uncle mode.”
Apple Inc “coercively interrogated” retail employees about their pro-union sympathies…
They strap an Apple Vision Pro to your head, play Zack Snyder’s Justice League: Justice is Gray and repeatedly ask “Is it safe?” Truly barbaric.
…and restricted the circulation of union flyers…
Ironic that throwing that “1984” ad back in Apple’s face got played out years ago over important stuff like non-replaceable batteries and not allowing Flash on iOS.
The company somehow still seems to think that this is a winning move. Indeed, an unnamed Apple TV+ executive even admitted that the company is in favor of a hard line against the striking writers’ union, partly because a good outcome for writers “encourages industries in some countries to unionize in order to make more money.”
It’s OK for us to make more money, we just don’t want you to make more money.
You can argue that Apple is a business and that’s what businesses do. They’re in the business of doing business. But Apple does a lot of good things that aren’t obviously tied to the bottom line—like sustainability, privacy protection, and accessibility—and it could likewise choose to have a better relationship with its workers. If Microsoft can do it, so can Apple.
Reddit is going great
Thanks for asking.
“Reddit’s average daily traffic fell during blackout, according to third-party data”
Well, that’s just a small decrease. Surely when this blows over all will be well and…
“Some subreddits are now filled with porn to protest Reddit”
Now when your mom finds you looking at porn on your computer you can just say it’s to protest costly APIs.
Reddit communities are switching to NSFW to create some friction…
I see what you did there.
…and rob Reddit of ad revenue.
Reddit has since cracked down on this practice, removing moderators of forums that had voted to switch to NSFW. Some mods have since stepped down.
The r/formula1 mod is stepping down, citing “the admin handling of the API changes, the tone Huffman elected to use in every single interview, and because of the whole approach of u/ModCodeOfConduct.”
Apart from forcing beloved apps like Apollo out of business, Huffman’s attitude is not exactly making things better.
“It is really demoralizing,” Bucky said. Being a Reddit moderator and dealing with users is already difficult, he said. “‘I take all this abuse for you, and keep your website clean, and this is how you repay us?’”
Maybe Reddit moderators need a union, too.
Moving to stay still
Apple released the software development kit for visionOS this week, allowing developers to begin to experiment with the new platform. The new operating system includes a number of different environments, so if you’ve ever wanted to do spreadsheets on the moon, you’re going to love this.
Notable features include Guest Mode, which is how you’ll deign to let others try using your Vision Pro—when you surely get one—without allowing them access to all that stuff you’ve been posting to Reddit forums lately. It also features a Travel Mode which, ironically, “ensures that you’re stationary while you’re wearing the Vision Pro.”
In order to be traveling, you must be motionless. This is some real Zen stuff.
The “frosted glass” aesthetic of recent releases of macOS starts to make more sense when you see it in visionOS. Seeing the hint of a Finder window behind the window in front might have been annoying but seeing the outline of a kitchen countertop or desk or sinkhole can be a safety affordance.
We never knew doing spreadsheets could be so dangerous until we were walking around doing spreadsheets.
Developers will have their work cut out for them determining the best way to balance their user interfaces for this new environment, but as Commander Adama said in that Star Trek movie, this is where the fun begins.
[John Moltz is a Six Colors contributor. You can find him on Mastodon at Mastodon.social/@moltz and he sells items with references you might get on Cotton Bureau.]