In light of DMA developments, I hear that Apple not following “the spirit” of the law and doesn’t allow competition in the App Store marketplace. According to the regulators, being the sole distributor of the entire market, Apple doesn’t allow competition.

As an indie developer, I couldn’t care less about outside App Store distribution. And as a full-time contractor for a big company, I don’t see how adding additional distribution channels outside of the App Store, will help my team deliver better user experience.

I would like to ask EU citizens to write to their representatives and ask them why the EU is doing nothing about the Google Chrome monopoly. Many people suffering already from worse privacy. Google Chrome is heavily advertised in the EU on TV and other channels. Apple does not advertise Safari security aspects on a scale which Google does. DMA makes the situation much worse because now EU users are presented with a browser choice during the initial setup. EU users likely will pick Google Chrome, wrongly assuming, it offers superior security. EU unintentionally leads to a situation where a general population starts assuming that Google Chrome offers superior security over Safari. Google Chrome has a dominant user base already which for yours truly sometimes causes websites not to work properly since web developers only test their websites to work on Google Chrome. Let’s fix that, EU.

My takeaways.

• EU terms are vague and usually followed by “behind the door” negotiations.
• EU regulations can only bring positive results when aimed at the non-tech industry.
• True EU motivations are not the best intentions for EU citizens.
• EU lawmakers are motivated by 5% of global Apple revenue.

Latest ATP interview about Swift 6: Holly Borla & Ben Cohen. Questions and comments are excellent. Want to relisten.

John expressed his failed experiences adopting structured concurrency in one of his Mac apps.

One of the guests: What APIs are you using?
John: macOS APIs.
Marco: You are screwed.

There is a general election here in the UK on July 4th. I would like to stress three crucial points which can lead our democracies into a successful future.

1. Recommend and implemented by Estonia plan increasing 3.0% GDP towards defence (UK petition).
2. Plan 0.25% of GDP to military aid for Ukraine for the next four years (president.gov.ua, PDF).
3. Ukrainian integration into NATO and EU.

Parties are ordered in my priority list.

1. Liberal Democrats
2. The Conservatives
3. Reform UK

Rishi Sunak promised 2.5% increase with the concreted date of 2030 (BBC). Liberal Democrats and seems to support the plan (Full fact).

However, the Conservatives have been in power for 14 years and losing their support. It is unlikely Rishi is going to win. Nigel Farage has been extremely controversial which is why I am not recommending to vote for his populist right-wing party.

“If anyone can get the two around the negotiating table… It may fail. We can send British troops, have World War Three, I don’t mind… I don’t approve of anything Putin’s done in terms of this invasion. But we have to think through what is the endgame of this, what is the goal? If we think it’s a Ukrainian victory, that’s for the birds.”

Quoted from Telegraph.

Nigel claimed that we could end the war by forcing Kyiv to negotiate and give up its territories. In this scenario, Putin will take advantage of the necessary break and Russia will invade Ukraine third time. It has already happened twice this decade.

My first experience picking up a refurbished iPhone 13 mini from Amazon UK. There’s no central “Amazon” refurbished hub, and any phone you get is a surprise because Amazon works with multiple partners. Some of them had original cables, and some of them had non-original cables. Battery health was not 100% and was below 90%, with micro scratches on the screen. The price for the 512 GB model was a lesser jump than what you usually get when buying a new iPhone. Upgrading from 64 GB SE 2nd generation, I am satisfied with faster performance, 24 FPS camera and smaller form factor than SE. Battery life is much better, no longer missing alarm calls when forgetting to plug in for a night.

I was sitting until late at night, trying to find a good case for my new iPhone. None of the options I found would make me happy.

I ended up going to the Apple Store in Kingston and picking up an Apple Silicone case. Apple still has cases on sale for iPhone 13 mini. I have never tried silicon cases before. It is smooth to the touch and grippier than pure glass. The colour matches perfectly. Buttons are pleasant are reliable.

Less than one month later there’s some minor wearing spot on the bottom back. There’s a broken dent in the bottom left corner front, pictured below.

Third iPhone cases recommended on Accidental Tech Podcast (ATP). Random order.

• Pitaka
• TORRAS
• olixar
• Spigen
• PEEL

Pitaka would be my go-to option. Unfortunately, all the Pitaka 13 mini cases are discontinued which made me regret not buying them sooner.

Getting a repetitive error in the Xcode 15.3 console every time my Mac project launches.

List with selection: SelectionManagerBox tried to update multiple times per frame.

My custom type:

struct Folder: Codable, Identifiable, Hashable, CustomDebugStringConvertible {
    var subfolders: [Folder]?
    let id: String
    // ...
}

@MainActor
final class Store: ObservableObject {
    @Published var folders: [Folder] = []
    // ...
}

// Usage (shortened)
HierarchyList(data: store.folders, children: \.subfolders, selection: $store.folderFocus, expansionState:delete:) {}

A red error in Xcode with three exclamation points. I was not able to find a root cause in my project and will assume this is a SwiftUI bug in my macOS project.

Apple has started including Ultra Wideband chips in iPhone 11. There were zero iOS features at that time, except, AirDrop interface improvements. Last year Apple shipped a major improvement to AirDrop which relies on UWB. Today I watched Star Wars day-inspired YouTube ad which demonstrates how people can find each other using iPhone 15. The marketing is focused on the iPhone 15. But thanks to long-term planning and software execution it is likely to work on all your friend’s devices. Time will tell is this feature going to get popular, still, a great example of how hardware, software and marketing can work together to deliver innovative features on a massive scale.

Update

17 May 2024

I tested Find My while visiting Battersea Power station with my family and I didn’t see the option in the Find My app. I realised this is an iPhone 15 or newer exclusive feature. Possibly because there have been multiple generations of the Ultra Wideband chip.