Apple

Walled Garden of Eden

Apple is pulling some next level bullshit. A beloved internet production studio is kill. A message in a bottle returned after 40 years. The US SOTU happened and I would have preferred to forget. TikTok is on the chopping block again.

Endeavorance

Mar 11, 2024 — 5 min read

Apple’s Next Level Bullshit

The EU has been pulling some moves on Apple, forcing them to actually be consumer friendly sometimes. Previously, they passed legislation that forced Apple's hand on finally putting USB-C ports in iPhones. Now, new legislation requires the allowance of third party app stores.

In true Apple fashion, they did it as Apple-y as possible. First off, they named it. They named the feature of "having other app stores," officially titling it "Alternative App Marketplaces." Second, they locked the feature to people physically located in the EU. And if you leave the EU? Gone.

After 30 days of being physically located outside of the EU, your iPhone will disable the ability to update apps or get new apps from third party app stores.

They've been trying to strike back against regulation that wrests any control from them, with a recent iOS 17 beta release including the removal of the ability to install webapps on your device, seemingly as "punishment" for having to allow third party app stores. Thankfully a ton of developers rallied against that change, and it seems it's no longer happening. For now.

RIPsterteeth

Rooster Teeth—famed internet media production group—is kill. Warner Bros, who owns the studio as of 2021, announced that they'll be shutting down due to "reasons."

Seriously, their reasons given were:

Rooster Teeth is shutting down due to challenges facing digital media resulting from fundamental shifts in consumer behavior and monetization across platforms, advertising, and patronage.

Sounds like a skill issue to me.

A still from "Rawubby", one of Rooster Teeth's popular shows

Anyway, this sucks for people who really liked their content. I have nothing but sympathy if that is you, because it sucks to lose something you hold dear. No hate. Also, I know virtually nothing about Rooster Teeth aside from "they exist" and that they made Red vs Blue (which I legit thought was made by a different group until like, last week).

Point is: RIPPO.

Something Lovely

Let's have a nice little intermission, yeah?? A woman in the UK was cleaning up trash from a beach when she discovered a message in a bottle. Three, actually! Three messages in one old coke bottle from 1984.

The messages were written by school children as a part of a class activity, and are actually pretty funny. The notes joke about being forced by an evil person to learn math.

The woman who found the notes went on to actually track down the people who wrote the notes, who are now grown women because that is how time works. They're even still friends! Isn't that sweet.

Let's ignore the "plastic bottle didn't degrade for 40 years" thing and instead focus on the cute story about a message in a bottle returning 40 years on.

Messages in a bottle wash up after 40 years — we’ll ignore the whole “plastic bottle did not degrade over 40 years” thing.

The SOTU Happened A Bit Ago

The US State of the Union happened last week and I literally forgot about it. And it would have stayed forgotten about if not for Senator Katie Britt and her EXTRAORDINARILY BIZARRE response video.

The party opposite the current POTUS usually does a response video, that isn't out of the ordinary. But what IS out of the ordinary is having a woman sitting in a kitchen giving a monologue nearly through tears about how America is going to hell or something. Like just all of it was awful.

Tradwife Senator nearly crying in a kitchen as a retort to an 81-year-old man's speech is certainly a choice

She then went on to tell a story about a woman who was sex trafficked, posing it as an example of why the border needs to be "more secure." Only she failed to mention this story happened in the early 2000's and in Mexico. I guess nothing like that has happened anywhere ever since then.

So that's what the majority of headlines about the SOTU are about. But Biden also said some words. He attacked Trump a bunch since that will be his challenger later this year. He also used the term "an illegal" to refer to a human being, which is Not Very Great. Maybe the guy who was alive during segregation shouldn't be president of a country with nukes idk.

Speaking of Biden's bizarre bullshit…

Republicans baffled by Katie Britt’s State of the Union response: ‘One of our biggest disasters’

That Dang Dancing App

The US is trying, again, to ban TikTok. Kinda. The people pushing for the ban both vehemently deny that it is a TikTok ban, and outright endorse calling it a TikTok ban. Both major US parties support the ban attempt, and Biden has said he would sign it, although it could be interpreted that he was doubtful it would be passed, but take him at his word, imo.

Now, I wanna be clear: The bill which would (essentially) ban TikTok has not been passed. There's a lot of discussion about this which completely misinterprets what's happened.

The bill as written would require ByteDance to sell off TikTok. It's literally the US government passing a law saying "if ByteDance doesn't sell TikTok, we will charge Apple and Google huge fines for distributing the app." Hence, "TikTok ban," since it is deeply unlikely that ByteDance would do that.

The bill passed a House committee vote unanimously, with 50 members (a mix of Dems and Republicans) voting to move forward to a full vote. The next step is for the full House to vote on the bill (which may well pass!) and then the Senate. The Senate is less likely to go for this, especially with Chuck Schumer at the helm right now. He's not one to pass much tech regulation to begin with. But, that is not a guarantee by any means.

Call your reps, if only to be anywhere near as obnoxious to them as they are to us. TikTok's push for users to call their representatives worked, and it deeply pissed off the leaders of this push. Let's piss them off a bit more, shall we?