Technology

Is an iPhone more like a PC or an Xbox? That question was asked — implicitly and explicitly — over and over on the third day of Epic v. Apple testimony. The antitrust trial started on Monday with some heady pronunciations about Fortnite, the game and/or metaverse at the heart of the case. Yesterday, both sides argued about whether iPhones and iPads were truly locked down. And today, Apple and Epic delved into one of the biggest questions of the trial: whether saying iOS violates antitrust law would make every major game console an unlawful monopoly too. Apple says if Epic wins, ‘other ecosystems will fall’ Apple’s attorneys issued a dire warning to Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft during its opening statement, saying that their business models were all fundamentally similar. “If Epic prevails...

Internal emails revealed during the Epic Games v. Apple lawsuit show that employees at Apple were considering giving Netflix special treatment to convince the streaming service to not abandon in-app purchases. In the run up to Netflix removing its subscription offering to avoid Apple’s fees, a presentation circulated within Apple proposed to advertise Netflix in its retail stores, use a portion of its cut of App Store commission fees to pay for search ads, and even bundle Netflix with other Apple services. The emails, spotted by 9to5Mac, start with an explanation of a test Netflix wanted to run to study the impact of disabling in-app purchases on iOS. Netflix’s main concern, as Director of App Store Business Management Carson Oliver wrote, was over the “voluntary churn” of subscribers thro...

Nintendo’s next game for the Switch is one you build yourself. Today the company revealed Game Builder Garage, a new software title that’s designed to teach beginners the basics of programming and game design. It utilizes visual programming, has pre-built lessons and games, and will be launching on the Switch next month. Game Builder Garage appears to build off of some of the ideas featured in past Nintendo projects, like the DIY series of Labo experiences and Super Mario Maker. The core of the experience is a playful, visual programming language that utilizes cute characters called Nodon that you can move around and assign properties to. For instance, once you insert a character node, you can attach a “stick” node and assign the Switch’s joystick to control left and right movement. (Ninte...

The young attractive royal couple that is not Harry and Meghan has dropped a truly chaotic intro video for their shiny new official YouTube channel. In the video, the presumed future queen and king of the United Kingdom (also known as Kate Middleton and Kate Middleton’s husband) laugh and chat awkwardly in what looks like their home. It’s well-lit but not too well-lit: a reasonably good YouTuber rig but not exactly one of royal magnificence. “Be careful what you’re saying, these guys are going to start filming,” says Prince William to his smiling wife, as though she doesn’t know how cameras work. The general feel of the clip is the first few seconds after a camera starts rolling but before the YouTube stars start vlogging in earnest. Except they don’t vlog. The video then cuts to what can ...

SpaceX launched a high-altitude Starship prototype rocket and successfully landed it for the first time on Wednesday, overcoming a key technical challenge in Elon Musk’s whirlwind test campaign to build a fully reusable Mars rocket. Musk has said the SN15 rocket contained “hundreds of design improvements” over past high-altitude prototypes, which were all destroyed during explosive landing attempts. Starship SN15 lifted off at 6:24PM ET from SpaceX’s remote Boca Chica, Texas facilities, soaring over 6 miles in the sky to test a number of in-flight maneuvers. As it neared peak altitude, SN15’s three Raptor engines gradually shut down to begin a horizontal free-fall back toward the ground before reigniting two of its engines to execute a complex “landing flip maneuver,” where it shifts itsel...

Getting asked to shoot five weddings for a massively popular Netflix show might seem like a dream opportunity, but according to photographer Megan Saul, the show’s producers weren’t planing on paying for it. In a Facebook post on May 4th, she says she was contacted by Kinetic Content (the company producing Love Is Blind for Netflix) about working with them on the show, but was told in a follow-up email that, instead of money, the company was offering the opportunity for her work to appear in promotional materials and magazines (via PetaPixel). In her post Saul says that getting the email was “super exciting for all of 20 minutes,” until she found out that she was being asked to basically donate her time and expertise. She called the request “insulting to artists,” calling on corporations t...

After months of waiting, today Facebook’s Oversight Board finally handed down the biggest ruling of its short existence — the question of whether to uphold the ban on Donald Trump. The verdict? Send the question back to Facebook, and give them six more months to decide. In fairness, it wasn’t quite that bad. The initial ban was upheld, and the board made specific rulings on the questions of whether Trump’s posts were inciting violence, and whether world leaders should get special treatment. For now, Facebook can continue to block Trump, which means that on the face of it, this is a win for anti-Trumpers. Unless you’re visiting his self-hosted website, you’ll remain blessedly safe from Trump posts. “an endless cycle of uncertainty” But the ruling also went out of its way to avoid settling t...

In 2020, Microsoft was battling to bring xCloud or Xbox Game Streaming to the iPhone and iPad, and the conversations had an unlikely victim: Shadow — a third-party cloud gaming app that lets you stream PC games to an iPhone or iPad. Emails between Microsoft and Apple, revealed in the Epic v. Apple trial today, show how the Xbox maker was trying to get xCloud on iOS. Microsoft was trying to figure out how Shadow, Netflix, and other similar “interactive” apps were able to exist in the App Store while Apple was refusing to approve xCloud. Microsoft put forward Shadow as an example of such a service, only to see it suddenly removed from the store. “We were showing two examples where a game or an application was able to exist, and we didn’t understand why we couldn’t,” explained Lori Wright, Mi...

Amazon is infamous for tightly controlling its workers and contractors, but a report from Bloomberg shows that it also tries to control the employees of companies that it contracts. The company has explicit policies concerning personal grooming and social media etiquette that apply to the drivers from other delivery companies. The rules govern everything from how the delivery people look (they must have clean fingernails, teeth, ears, and hair) to how they smell (no bad breath, body odor, or immodest perfume). The rules also apparently forbid drivers from making social media posts that could be considered obscene. That by itself wouldn’t be remarkable, but it’s worth noting that these policies are applied to drivers that don’t work for Amazon, and so reach much further than the company’s o...

An old version of Peloton’s API, the software that allows the company’s bikes and recalled treadmills to communicate with its servers, may have exposed private customer profiles, according to a report from TechCrunch. The bug was first spotted by Jan Masters, a security researcher at Pen Test Partners, and reported to Peloton on January 20th, but the company is only just now confirming that the bug has been fixed. Using Peloton’s API, Masters was able to scrape all sorts of customer information that would typically be private, depending on the individual user’s settings. That includes customer profiles, which can potentially feature their age, location, birthday, and workout history. All Masters had to do was make an unauthenticated request to Peloton’s API and customer data was his. Maste...

Peloton is issuing a voluntary recall for all of its treadmill products — including both the Peloton Tread and Tread Plus — following a series of accidents that have resulted in multiple injuries and at least one death. In the recall announcement today for the Tread Plus, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) elaborates that it’s received “72 reports of adult users, children, pets and/or objects being pulled under the rear of the treadmill, including 29 reports of injuries to children such as second- and third-degree abrasions, broken bones, and lacerations.” The two products are being recalled for different reasons: while there are concerns with the Tread Plus that people may be pulled underneath the treadmill, the regular Tread has issues where the touchscreen at the front may fa...

The US Department of Labor withdrew a Trump-era rule that would have made it easier for “gig economy” companies like Uber and Lyft to classify their workers as independent contractors. The reversal doesn’t change any gig workers’ current employment status, but it does signal that the Biden administration is taking a less friendly stance toward this sector of the economy. The rule was finalized in early January, before Biden took office, and would have made it more difficult for gig workers to be reclassified as employees under federal law. Over the years, some gig workers have fought to be classified as employees so they could qualify for benefits like paid sick leave, health insurance, and minimum wage. “Stop the erosion of worker protections” Among the reasons cited for reversing the rul...