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Apple can't refund users who go down this route. But even if Apple's cut was 0% developers wouldn't be happy.

Take Gruber's example about the New York Times - if the subscription was made through the app using IAP: then unsubscribing is a simple tap of the button. If one chooses to subscribe through the website - then unsubscribing requires the subscriber to call the NYT and sit through an account retention person's best attempts at keeping you - a clear disconnect between the ease of placing the subscription online.

We also don't need to go very far back to see what less scrupulous companies get up to: Premium SMS gave us a taste of that. With users being surreptitiously charged high and repeating fees - to the order of thousands of dollars. Worse still, unsubscribing from them was equally byzantine - obscure wait periods and hoops for the user to jump through - the prevalence of debit-based Mastercards/Visas worsens that situation.

We don't see a similar effort being made with Kindles or Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft consoles - there seems to be this idea that Apple's store is somehow cost-less while those other stores aren't?

Today is iPhone pre-order day, the busiest and most commercially important day of the year for the apple website. Yet the front page is now in dedication to qe2.

This earns them quite some respect in my view, to prioritise humanity over profit.

Their app update system is fast, but heavens above: anyone that dares use their file syncing system is in for a world of hurt. It's quicker to save it locally and upload it to a file sharing platform such as Dropbox, iCloud, even WeTransfer, than it is to merely move a single file between devices.

What I like about this most is that if true - it yet again demonstrates that analysts aren't any better than rumourmongers (or more cynically: stock price manipulators.)

Seems more like the EU not wanting to back down against an American company rather than solve a real problem. The issue of vendors using different plugs was largely addressed back when microUSB became available, prior to that companies, including Apple, had to develop their own plug to suit the functionality of the device.

Hottake: GM will come back around a few years down the line when this effort goes down in flames.

The reason CarPlay exists is because car companies seem completely incapable or disinterested in developing good UX for their digital interfaces. Even luxury cars pale against CarPlay, some even go the wrong direction, such as with the recent changes to Tesla's system being largely deemed as user-hostile, distracting and unintuitive. Car companies seem to regularly put the user in second place, only to realise that these small changes can have an outsized effect on their product, and then ultimately on their sales.

Pair that against GM's stated intention of increasing profits by selling the user data they obtain (something that CarPlay wouldn't permit), and the change becomes even more sour for buyers.

This constant insistence that the customer is some stupid sheep that is tricked into a platform is irritating to the point of nausea. Informed people choose the platform to avoid historical computing hazards. Apple have done an excellent job of maintaining the advantages of personal computing, while isolating the overwhelming majority of security and scam vectors.

Annual malware reports provide irrefutable evidence that supports Apple's decisions for the browser-engine and the app store limitations, yet so frequently these realities and hard-learned lessons on security are hand-waved away as if they're not detrimental to computing.

iOS has the lowest share of malware of any platform, even less than the far less popular macOS. Top of the list is Android with more than 50% of malware, then Windows, then IoT devices, one needs to go to the very end of the list to find iOS, with the platform taking less than 1% of malware despite having a massive install base and a relatively wealthy average customer.

These efforts to crack-open Apple's user protections for the sake of utterly lazy and greedy developers is sickening; it's clear corruption to anyone that has an understanding of computing history and malware threats.

The point of diversity is:
1. introducing new, more wholistic thinking to a company, that might only be accessible through a cultural/gender/age spread
2. reenforcing that the best candidate is chosen, i.e. that diverse candidates don't have their diversity play against them, whether that is culturally based, age or gender (or a myriad of other factors.)

Now it's total crap to look at companies and say they have X% of this or Y% of that and pretend that these figures represent a meaningful summary of what diversity means. If this was a good measure then any company can create a swath of phony positions to fill with token employees - that is fabricating diversity. If Apple were interested in this they could have completed it years ago, we saw how quickly they rolled out green-power initiatives, if money alone were an issue Apple could have solved this already.

So how are they sponsoring diversity? Well other than trying harder to source new employees, Apple have been heavily investing in the next generation of "diversity" by providing training facilities and opportunities in areas where they are lacking. This is a legitimate form of diversity as it allows bona-fide intelligent individuals to be nurtured to a level where they could feasibly one day be employed by a company as demanding as apple.

As for top-level positions, they are going to be inherently harder to fill: the IT experience of the top-level positions has been predominantly available to a limited section of society - those top level positions will naturally become more diverse as IT is now significantly mainstream. Remember we're talking about people who would have started their career in IT about 30 years ago. 

This might address the seldom issue of the crown changing the music volume when a sleeve glides over it.

Judging from how much the iOS10 keynote covered it's not surprising that hardware didn't get a single mention - presenters literally bolted on and off the stage this year.

Everything is aligning for a stellar MacBook Pro update. It's looking like this model will feature some distinctive design changes and a port that can run a 5k display. Apple displays are purchased primarily by MBP and Mac Pro customers (with MBP being a significantly larger audience). It's understandable why Apple didn't release a 5k display that used two plugs since that would only help out Mac Pro users as well as being a port pig.

I'm guessing the next announcement will be MBP/Watch2/OMT: Display (more than just a screen this time)