Apple's response to EU's attempt to open up App Store has been full of pettiness, tantrums, and malicious compliance.
Apple is most likely withholding features in EU as a bargaining chip in antitrust negotiations, and to discredit EU's consumer protections. Pretending things in Europe are randomly unknowably illegal for no reason supports Apple's narrative and popular opinion in the US.
Apple is using the conservative approach, which is to misrepresent their starting position by moving the goal posts to an extreme. Then they bargain towards the "middle". It creates the illusion of bargaining.
So Apple is throwing a huge tantrum and withholding features from the EU to act like this is a much bigger deal than it is. This gives Apple a lot more bargaining room after the EU bitch slapped them.
Apple likely already has an API they could enable and be done with this. They won't do that. Apple needs exclusivity with new feature releases because they don't do things all that well anymore(Siri, maps, etc, nobody uses those because there are better alts available on ios).
But yeah Apple is just starting way to the extreme so they have more room to bargain. Hopefully the EU sees through this, again, and doesn't budge.
>Apple needs exclusivity with new feature releases because they don't do things all that well anymore(Siri, maps, etc, nobody uses those because there are better alts available on ios).
Siri was okay for a very brief window after release and then dreadful ever since and Apple Maps was never good, but has gotten better. Etc maybe more valid idk
Is there any evidence for this at all? The EU has plenty of regulation surrounding audio recording, as other comments have said. Instead of jumping to the assumption of malicious intent, I think those make more sense up front. I don't think this is a real bargaining chip for Apple to use against the EU for the side loading stuff.
I dislike Apple's malicious compliance with the EU too, but it seems unrelated here, at least without any proof.
Google Pixel Buds and Samsung Galaxy Buds basically provide the same feature of realtime translation. Either Apple is withholding the feature without any real cause, or the cause lies in some aspect where Apple doesn’t allow third-party manufacturers to provide the same feature under iOS, while Android does. I don’t know which is the case, but both put Apple in a bad light, along with the fact that they don’t explain the exact reason for the limitation.
It would not remotely surprise me to discover that either Google or Samsung were doing something untoward that Apple is not willing to do. In fact, that would be one of the least surprising things I'd ever heard.
In this case, it's apple doing the untoward thing, by artificially limiting users' devices, seemingly only for anticompetitive reasons.
As this is HackerNews, you should expect to see at least a couple commenters who believe they should have control over devices they own, including interoperability without artificial, anticompetitive limitations.
> In this case, it's apple doing the untoward thing, by artificially limiting users' devices, seemingly only for anticompetitive reasons.
Not really. They are complying by not offering features that would be considered anti-competitive. It’s not untoward, it’s just following their interpretation of the law. We obviously don’t know the discussions between Apple and the EC, but in public it’s American nerds who are complaining that the EU is bad.
The iOS feature is not anti-competitive, it is apple's choice to artificially restrict the feature if you use non-apple earbuds which is anti-competitive.
It is my understanding that this is what apple has chosen to do in areas where this iOS feature is available. Is that not the case?
If the “untoward” thing was unlawful, it would be straightforward for Apple to take Google and Samsung to court for anticompetitive practices. If it isn’t, then Apple can’t really blame the EU, and could at least advertise how they’re doing things less untowardly.
This isn’t the first time that Apple has been withholding features from the EU without ever providing a clear and understandable explanation, so there isn’t much basis for giving them the benefit of the doubt.
The audio input comes from the AirPods not the iPhone. It’s processed on the iPhone.
The audio is captured by the outward facing microphones used for active noise cancellations. That’s why it only works for AirPods Pro 2, 3 and AirPods 4 with ANC. That wouldn’t just work with any headphones.
Even the AirPods Pro 2 will need a firmware update. They won’t work with just any old headphones and seeing that even the AirPods Pro 2 need a firmware update tells me that it is something they are doing with their H2 chip in their headphones in concert with the iPhone.
I mean, technically, any competitors with noise cancelling headphones able to pick up a voice stream would be able to use the same processing on the iPhone to offer an equivalent feature.
That it only works with AirPods is just Apple discriminating in favour of their own product which is exactly what the EU was going after.
The contrary is literally written in a large yellow box on the page you linked:
“Note: Google Translate works with all Assistant-optimized headphones and Android phones.”
But I mean, you are free to buy overpriced Apple headphones which sounds worse than Sony, only properly works paired with an Apple phone or laptop and whose killer feature was available on their competitors buds years ago if that rocks your boat.
I have both a pair of the over ear Sony XM4’s and AirPods Pro 2 and I’m not sure I’d characterize the Sony’s sound as “better”, even when using lossless audio. They sound good but the sound profile is mostly just different, with the Sony’s leaning more bassy and the AirPods more balanced.
The noise cancellation are neck and neck but the AirPods had much less of that “pressure” sensation when using it. AirPods transparency is just plain better. Comfort for long use sessions is better on the Sony’s. Mic is better on the AirPods.
Why would I want to by a none Apple laptop with horrible battery life, loud, and that produces enough heat to ensure that I don’t have offspring if I actually put it on my lap?
Over the course of this thread your argument went from "It's not technically possible" and "they will have to train their own models" to "I don't want to buy certain devices".
No I said it wasn’t technically possible on any cheap headphones because while the processing was done on the phone, the audio capture was done by the outside microphones on Apple headphones that have ANC and even the older ones of those required Apple to update the firmware on its own AirPods working in concert.
This is no different than Google not supporting just any old headphones.
Then the argument came that Apple’s AirPods are “overpriced” even though the cheapest AirPods that support it - AirPods 4 with ANC are in the same price range as Google’s and cheaper than the worse sounding and more expensive Sony Earbuds.
I prefer the Apple ecosystem myself but the Sony WF-1000XM are frequently available on sale (refurb WF-1000XM5 are $110 right now). I used to have the WH-1000XM3 (over the ear) and those are good too.
The whole argument seems kind of silly. Just buy the platform you want that has the features you want. If the European thinks Apple is overpriced then it's no harm that they aren't bringing features to Europe. He wasn't going to buy them and now is going to not buy them even harder.
As a reminder, the initial argument was that Apple doesn’t bring their feature to Europe because they would have to open it via an API to their competitors. Someone replied that it’s not a refusal but a technical impossibility which is easily countered by Google having done just that for years. The fact that it’s heavily downvoted despite being factually completely correct is actually hilarious to me.
The rest, which is to say that everything Apple sells beside laptops is subpar, their strategy regarding European regulations deprive them of any credibility when they pretend to care about consumers and their prices conversion in Europe is daylight robbery, is just my opinion and accessory to the discussion. I just couldn’t help myself.
No one said it’s a “technical impossibility”. The original statement was that it wouldn’t work on any cheap headphones. It’s assumed that you thought the iPhone was capturing the audio. Even then, there was some work done between the headphones and the phone and the firmware of the AirPods 2 had to be updated.
You aren’t going to save any money by getting a pair of $50 ANC headphones and hoping they work with the system - the Android variant doesn’t.
> It’s assumed that you thought the iPhone was capturing the audio.
Absolutely not. It assumed the AirPods Pro 2 unique processing was required which it clearly isn’t.
Nobody ever talked about saving money.
The whole discussion is about the EU mandating Apple play fair which would mean letting competitors access their phone processing exactly like Google is already doing.
The fact that I rightfully qualify Apple products as overpriced don’t magically make the discussion about saving money.
Sony headphones sounds noticeably better than AirPods Pro 2 by the way and their EQ is better. AirPods have great noise cancellation but their sound quality is not that great.
> > only properly works paired with an Apple phone or laptop
> Which also isn’t true.
Care to explain to me how I set what presses do on AirPods without an Apple product. How do I disable noise cancellation and pass through? Where do I setup the level of noise cancellation?
> But their $60 ANC headphones with cheap audio processing hardware in the headphones aren’t going to be sufficient.
Maybe, maybe not. Assuming Apple's motivation isn't pure self-dealing, it's very consistent with Apple's behavior to forbid or impede doing things that are absolutely possible but sometimes result in a sub-par experience.
It's oddly difficult to find solid answers to this with a web search, but it appears that it just needs protocol support, not a mic that meets specific standards. The (discontinued?) JBL 110GA is $40 on Amazon.
> Europe are randomly unknowably illegal for no reason
I mean they absolutely are especially as EU regulators categorically refuse to review anything in advance just in-case their get a budget shortfalls and need to go looking for fines.
High-throughput transit isn't there to be better in 1:1 comparison with one person's car trip, but to make better cities possible.
If you only imagine this as a static scenario where everything is the same except you swap car for a train, of course car looks better.
The problem is you're not in a single-player game full of NPCs. When everyone else also chooses the car, you physically run out of space for everyone's cars, and end up with a city full of asphalt and large roads that are dangerous/inconvenient to cross and unpleasant to be around.
Car infrastructure takes a lot of space. When it can be reduced, it allows building amenities closer together, so you can have multiple useful destinations within walking distances not much worse than crossing a Walmart parking lot, and you get an environment that's nicer than a parking lot.
Being crammed in a train that moves 3 million people a day is the price to pay for not having a sea of asphalt for ~3 million cars.
And yet, I've realized that a few research and brainstorming sessions with LLMs I thought were really good and insightful were just the LLM playing "yes and" improv with me, and reinforcing my beliefs, regardless whether I was right or wrong.
I've found that using Git libraries directly is usually slow and less ergonomic. I've got another tool (written in Go) here: https://github.com/zikani03/git-monorepo which uses a Git library and is a bit slow.
But I'm willing to take up that challenge and test out gix, I've regained my interest in Rust so the timing is good :)
Value of TSLA has been disconnected from the actual car business for a while, and instead vaguely betting on Musk figuring out something with robots, taxis, or AI or whatever.
Now I wonder if it's tied to any future of the company at all. It seems to be a Musk stock: if you want Musk have more power to do whatever he's doing, pump TSLA.
I don't think you'll find anything much better than basis universal, assuming you want textures compressed on the GPU and the simplicity of shipping one file that decodes quickly enough. I've followed development of the encoder, and its authors know what they're doing.
You might beat basisu if you encode for one texture format at a time, and use perceptual RDO for albedo textures.
Another alternative would be to use JPEG XL for distribution and transcode to GPU texture formats on install, but you'd have to ship a decent GPU texture compressor (fast ones leave quality on the table, and it's really hard to make a good one that isn't exponentially slower).
Breakthrough in image generation speed literally came from applying better differential equations for diffusion taken from statistical mechanics physics papers:
EV motors typically outlive the rest of the car. Leaf is old enough that there's a whole cottage industry of battery repairs, replacements, and repurposing them for solar energy storage.
I've meant you don't need to worry about motors failing in old EVs, unlike engines that are the primarily concern in old ICE cars.
Apart from battery degradation, the other thing that may be the final nail in the coffin for an old EV (other than Leaf) is failure of HVAC. Temperature management is important for keeping batteries healthy when fast charging, and to prevent motors from overheating when you send them a quarter of a megawatt of power.
And the rest of the problems is the same like in any other car of the same era.
The absolutely worst efficiency I've experienced was 2.7km/kWh at 120km/h in DS3 e-tense. That was a v1 Stellantis drivetrain, without a heat pump. Peugeot e208, Corsa-e, etc. are the same thing. Stellantis sucks at EVs, especially their first gen, so that's probably really the worst case scenario (apart from EV's nemesis: towing non-aerodynamic trailers at high speeds).
So if you take an EV's battery size in kWh and multiply it by 2.7, that's the worst range you will get in km.
It depends where your contributors are coming from. For example for Rust, the crates index is the discovery mechanism. Contributors will come to your repo by whatever link you put in your package's metadata. I've split my Rust packages between GitHub and GitLab and don't see a difference in participation.
Apple is most likely withholding features in EU as a bargaining chip in antitrust negotiations, and to discredit EU's consumer protections. Pretending things in Europe are randomly unknowably illegal for no reason supports Apple's narrative and popular opinion in the US.