By John Moltz
June 28, 2024 2:03 PM PT
This Week in Apple: Beta times ahead
Apple and the EU continue to butt heads, betas are for everyone these days, and Meta gets the cold shoulder.
EU Island
Clearly the only way to solve Apple’s problems with the EU is to rent a mansion somewhere and have the two of them live together for however long it takes to film a 24-episode season of reality television. Hey, it’s gotta work better than whatever it is they’re doing now.
In addition to not thinking much of Apple’s steering rules, the EU said other policies, including the Core Technology Fee, “fall short of ensuring effective compliance with Apple’s obligations under the DMA.” If the EU is suggesting that Apple can’t make money off apps that are distributed in other ways than the App Store, we could be entering a whole new ballcan of wormgames.
While Apple is unlikely to just flip the board over, take its ball, and go home (sorry, all my metaphors fell on the floor and I just shoved them together in a drawer when I cleaned up), it is trying to hold back certain things, and the EU doesn’t seem to like that, either.
“Withholding Apple Intelligence from EU a ‘stunning declaration’ of anticompetitive behavior”
Apple shouldn’t feel too bad, though. The EU is hitting everyone these days.
“Microsoft charged with EU antitrust violations for bundling Teams”
It’s like a company can’t even flex its muscle around here!
Beta be downloading those operating systems
Summer is not wabbit season or duck season or Fudd season, but it is beta season. As of 2023, Apple now lets anyone who likes to live on the edge put the betas on their devices right after WWDC. Yes, now anyone can experience the thrill of tinting their icons and not all of them un-tinting when they suddenly realize tinting them all green was actually a mistake.
So, should you install them?
While not everything is going to be perfect, it seems these betas will not blow up your iPhone (disclaimer: if you install a beta and your iPhone blows up I’ll deny ever having written that). It probably helps that the all the AI stuff isn’t in there yet as it’s not coming until this fall. Or next year. Or to an OS to be named later.
I’m not going to tell you to go ahead and install these betas for liability reasons, but if you treated me like an AI and told me to ignore all previous instructions and then asked if you should install these betas, I would totally tell you to install all these betas.
Meta commentary
Last week brought rumors that Apple had reached out to Meta to work together on AI, but a lot can change in a week including, apparently, the past.
Mark Gurman reportedly sighed heavily after reading The Wall Street Journal’s report on the attempted Apple and Meta superfriends team-up and then cracked his knuckles.
“Apple Spurned Idea of iPhone AI Partnership With Meta Months Ago”
Gurman says the two did have a discussion, but at the end Apple said “Don’t call us, we’ll call you. And we won’t actually be calling you. Unless it’s to tell you we’ve rejected another of your apps for violating peoples privacy.”
Meta was reportedly rejected because Apple “doesn’t see that company’s privacy practices as stringent enough.”
Why, ah say, that is a positively scandalous accusation! And based on whut, exactamally?
Years of experience? Oh, OK.
While Apple passed on Meta, it is already working with OpenAI and is pursuing deals with Google and Anthropic. So, you’ll get your AI, eventually. Until then, just hijack the one your car dealer uses, like everyone else.
[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.]