Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 10/25 – “Extractive Rentier Capitalists”

Starting point is 00:00:00 On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech meme right home for Tuesday, October 25th, 2022. I'm Brian McCullough today. Apple tries to wedge the App Store Vig into another market. Prices are going up for your favorite Apple services as well. Shutterstock is partnering with OpenAI because if you can't something them, join them, right?

Starting point is 00:00:52 And what is the deal with Stage Manager on the iPad? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. In deference to the developers in the audience, I'm going to lead with this one with the release of the OS 16s.1 yesterday came new App Store guidelines that say that social networking apps that sell boosts for posts must use in-app purchases for the transactions, and now they've basically nerfed NFTs, quoting Mac rumors. Notably, the update prevents apps from using NFTs to bypass in-app purchase rules. Apple's guidelines say that apps can sell NFTs and related services using the in-app purchase system, but apps that are designed to allow users to, to view NFTs cannot use NFT ownership as a mechanism to unlock features or functionality within

Starting point is 00:01:43 an app. NFT browsing apps are allowed but cannot include buttons, links, or other calls to action for purchasing mechanisms other than an app purchase. Apple says that apps created for the sole purpose of allowing advertisers to purchase and manage advertising campaigns across media types do not need to use in-app purchases while also clarifying that digital purchases such as Boos within social media apps such as Facebook do indeed need to use the in-app purchase function. From the guidelines, quote, advertising management apps, apps for the sole purpose of allowing

Starting point is 00:02:18 advertisers, persons, or companies that advertise a product service or event, to purchase and manage advertising campaigns across media types, television, outdoor websites, apps, etc., do not need to use an app purchase. These apps are intended for campaign management purposes and do not display the advertising themselves. Digital purchases for content that is experienced or consumed in an app, including buying advertisements to display in the same app, such as sales of boosts for posts in a social media app must use in-app purchase, end quote. Quoting again, with Apple's new rules, social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter that allow companies to buy boosts for social media posts

Starting point is 00:02:57 must use in-app purchases for these transactions. This means when an advertiser wants to boost a spot on a social network like Facebook using an iOS device, Facebook will be required to give Apple a 30% cut of proceeds. Quoting Antonio Garcia-Martinez on Twitter, Funny how fast Apple went from ads are bad to the greediest ads MFers on the planet. This is Apple saying they're owed 30% of marketing budgets that flow through promoted posts, end quote. Quoting Sam Gilbert, Apple acts like an extractive Rontier capitalists in the mobile app market.

Starting point is 00:03:31 and quoting Nick Stack on Twitter. Apple will continue to collect tax on every transaction it can on iOS. I truly think that they'd come for Amazon, DoorDash, and Uber if they felt they could get away with it, end quote. Now for the rest of us, Apple has news as well. They've raised their monthly prices for Apple Music by a dollar for individuals. Also, TV Plus is going up by $2, and Apple One is going up by $2 as well. Apple is citing increased licensing costs, but hey, As with layoffs, as I said recently, you can probably raise prices right now, and no one will really blame you, quoting 9 to 5 Mac. This represents the first time Apple has raised the subscription price of music, TV Plus, and Apple One in the United States.

Starting point is 00:04:21 Apple said the increase in Apple Music subscription price was due to increased licensing costs. The company said artists and songwriters will earn more per stream as a result of the pricing tier changes. Regarding Apple TV Plus, the company said the increase price reflects the growing catalog of original TV shows and movies. If you are in an international market, you should also expect to see proportionally similar price increases going into effect beginning today. Current subscribers will receive notifications of the planned price increases 30 days prior to the service renewing at the higher price. Apple clearly believes the prices of its content services remain competitive. Unlike

Starting point is 00:04:55 its competitors, Apple's services include more features as standard. For instance, Apple music includes lossless audio and spatial audio at no additional charge, unlike Spotify, which doesn't doesn't offer these features today and is actually expected to charge extra for them when they are introduced. Similarly, TV Plus does not upsell for better video quality 4K HDR is included as standard, end quote. Back to dev news real quick, Microsoft has debuted the Arm Mini PC Windows Dev Kit 2023, formerly known as Project Volterra. This will get you a Snapdragon 8CX, Gen 3, and 32 gigabytes of RAM for $599. Quoting Windows Central. That price undercuts the retail Mac Mini, which can be found direct from Apple

Starting point is 00:05:46 with 8 gigabytes of RAM and 256 gigabytes of SSD storage for $699. This comparison is notable as both PCs are similar in size and are both based on the Arm architecture. Unfortunately, Microsoft is only marketing its mini PC as a developer kit. The Windows Dev Kit 2020 was unveiled earlier this year at Build 2022 and was announced alongside a renewed commitment to Windows on Arm as a whole, with the entire developer tool chain being released for ARM, including Visual Studio 202217.4 and dot net 7. Microsoft's focus on Windows on Arm has never been stronger just this month. Microsoft merged the Arm-based Surface ProX with the Surface Pro 9 under one umbrella product, with the Arm version being exclusively available with 5G and features Microsoft's custom SQ3 processor.

Starting point is 00:06:34 The Windows DevKit 2023 is equipped with a handful of ports, including two USBC and three USBA ports, for all kinds of external peripherals. It can output to up to two 4K monitors at 60 hertz, and thanks to the ARM system on a chip, is energy efficient enough that the device is set to go into connected standby when idle instead of hibernating by default. On the inside, the Windows Dev Kit 20203 also features a neural processing unit, which allows apps to offload AI, camera, and microphone effects

Starting point is 00:07:03 to a dedicated processor, which Microsoft says is 80 to 90 times faster than if an app was to render those same effects directly on the CPU, end quote. From the good luck with that file, Altimeter Capital founder and CEO Brad Gersner has posted an open letter encouraging meta to cut CAPEX by more than $5 billion, cut headcount by more than 20%, and limit its Metaverse research and development to about $5 billion a year, quoting CNBC. The meta investor recommended a plan to get the company's mojo back, including reducing headcount expenses by 20% and limiting the company's pricey investments in

Starting point is 00:07:46 Metaverse technology, VR software and hardware, to know more than $5 billion per year. Meta needs to rebuild confidence with investors, employees, and the tech community in order to attract, inspire, and retain the best people in the world, Gersner wrote in the letter. In short, meta needs to get fit and focused. In addition, people are confused by what the Metaverse even means, Gersner wrote. If the company were investing $1 to $2 billion per year into this project, then that confusion might not even be a problem, end quote. He said the money the company is currently spending to develop VR could add up for a decade before

Starting point is 00:08:19 it comes to fruition. An estimated $100 billion plus investment in an unknown future is supersized and terrifying, even by Silicon Valley standards, Gersner wrote. Ultimately, Gersner said, META has too many people and is spending too much on capital expenditures. If META was able to control those costs, he said, then it could double its free cash flow and improve its share price. At the end of the second quarter this year, Altimeter Capital held more than 2 million shares of meta, end quote. Ah yes, but how many shares and specifically super voting shares for that matter, does Altimeter Capital have versus how many does Mark Zuckerberg have?

Starting point is 00:09:05 Shutterstock says it has partnered with OpenAI to begin selling Dolly 2 generated stock imagery in the coming months and has launched a contributor fund to reimburse create. So, timely, given our recent discussions, quoting the verge, Will AI image generators kill the stock image industry? It's a question asked by many following the rise of text-to-image AI models in recent years. The answer from the industry's incumbents, though, is no, not if we can start selling AI-generated content first. Today, stock-image giant shutter stock has announced an extended partnership with OpenAI,

Starting point is 00:09:39 which will see the AI Labs' text-to-image model Dolly 2 directly integrated into shutterstock in the coming months. In addition, Shutterstock is launching a contributor fund that will reimburse creators when the company sells work to train text-to-image AI models. This follows widespread criticism from artists whose output has been scraped from the web without their consent to create these systems. Notably, Shutterstock is also banning the sale of AI-generated art on its site that is not made using its Dali integration. This isn't the first time Shutterstock and OpenAI have worked together in this domain. From 2021 onwards, Shutterstock sold images and metadata to OpenAI to help create Dali. OpenAIs Altman describes this data as crucial to the training of Dali. Now with the

Starting point is 00:10:22 integration of OpenAI's text to image AI, the partnership is going full circle, and Dali's output will compete with the same individuals whose work was used to train it. If Shutterstock's images were as important to creating Dali as Altman claims, the platform's contributors may understandably feel aggrieved that their own content is being used to put them out of a job. This is why Shutterstock is also launching its contributor fund, which will be used to pay artists, photographers, and designers when content they uploaded to Shutterstock is sold by the company to firms like OpenAI in order to develop generative AI models. It's a significant move. The first major initiative by a platform holder to reimburse creators in this way, but it also underscores the

Starting point is 00:11:01 fraught legal and ethical questions surrounding this new technology. Although scraping or buying data to train AI art generators seems to be legal, covered by Fair Use, use. Many experts worry about future challenges and complications. Gettie Images, for example, has banned the sale of AI art on its platform because of fears that its inability to copyright the output of those systems will lead to licensing problems for customers. Shraterstock is banning AI art uploaded to its platform by third parties because it can't validate the model used to create the content so can't be sure who owns the copyright. Of course, banning third-party AI-generated art will also help protect its own business by funneling users towards its dolly and

Starting point is 00:11:40 And while the company seems to believe it has no legal obligation to reimburse creators whose content is used to train Dali, the creation of the contributor fund suggests it foresees criticism and possible damage to its reputation, end quote. By the way, a listener recently pinged me to tell me to take a look at the Getty Images stock price. Now, with the caveat that Getty only went public in August, and it did so via a SPAC, so no one knows how that has affected performance or not, But as recently as August 15th, Getty had a market cap of $11.63 billion. As of yesterday, checks notes. The market cap of Getty was $1.58 billion. That's a hell of a two months.

Starting point is 00:12:30 Finally, today it's another day of reviews. The Verge says the Microsoft Surface laptop 5 has strong single core performance, is thin and light, and they enjoy the 3x2 aspect ratio, but the 720P camera, the relatively few ports, and average battery life caused them to give it an 8 out of 10 score. While the Microsoft Surface Pro 9 review from the Verge says they like the 120 hertz display, 5G connectivity, and 1080P camera, but find it pricey without the necessary accessories, slow apps, and just two USB ports, causing them to only give it a 5 out of 10. 5 out of 10. What's the biggest hangup that led to that rating? Quoting Monica Chin. The story I find myself telling about the SQ3 Surface Pro 9 is fundamentally the same.

Starting point is 00:13:20 Windows on Arm, while functional, is not ready for the $2,000 big leagues, end quote. There's still significant compatibility issues for that pricey a machine is the bottom line, apparently. There have also been reviews of the new iPads as well, but there's not enough new in them for us to go into all of that in depth. Most of the reviews come back to questioning what the logic of the iPad lineup is at the moment. So let's focus instead on Stage Manager. That new feature is finally here. And from the very beginning with this, no one seemed pleased with it. David Pierce says that even after months of tweaks by Apple, at least on iPad OS16,

Starting point is 00:13:59 Stage Manager still doesn't work, plagued by confusing behavior and bugs. He thinks Mac-like multi-window multitasking would be better. in his conclusion he wrote, quote, Users have been clamoring for free-form windowing on their iPads for years, and Apple has steadfastly refused to give it to them. For a while, Apple cited performance and battery life as the primary concerns when it came to multitasking, which is presumably why Stage Manager isn't supported on the new base model iPad

Starting point is 00:14:25 or older versions of the Air and Pro. But the new iPad Pro runs the same chip as the new MacBook Air, and that thing will happily take all your windows and tabs any way you want to configure them. there's clearly plenty of power to go around here. The iPad was always much more iPhone than Mac. It had a closed ecosystem, offered less access for developers and accessories, and tightly controlled how everything worked. More recently, though, as the iPad has become more powerful and as Apple has come to see its tablet as a capital P productivity device, it has tried to embrace some more openness and keep that sense of full-screen focus that Steve Jobs loved so much about the tablet.

Starting point is 00:15:03 But that's just not possible. Yes, you use. users make a mess with all the windows and tabs on their computer. That freedom also lets them work however they like, which helps them get more done. This tension is only becoming more acute, too. Apple is now all in on keyboard attachments for iPads. It even moved the camera on the new 10th-gen iPad to the center in landscape mode, which is as clear a sign as you'll ever see that most people use their iPads horizontally on a desk. Apple's also trying to break down barriers between Mac and iPads so that you can do all your work on all your devices. Stage Manager, as a concept makes sense on a Mac because it adds some structure to the free-form system,

Starting point is 00:15:40 letting you quickly collect your mess. In that way, it reminds me of the Mac's desktop stacks feature, which automatically creates folders for different file types on your desktop. It's a simple way to rein in the chaos. On the iPad, though, Stage Manager is just more and different structure on top of all the existing structure, and all that structure just turns back into chaos, end quote. You probably can't hear that, right? That's snoring in the background. That's Archie, the puppy. Nothing for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 10/25 – “Extractive Rentier Capitalists”

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