Juli Clover at MacRumors:

To change your default app, you’ll need to install the latest version of the Google Translate app, which was released today. From there, you can open up the Settings app, select the Apps section, tap on Default Apps, tap Translation, and choose Google Translate instead of Apple Translate. [...]

iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 added the ability for users to set a different translation app as their default. Users worldwide can select Google Translate or another translation app as an alternative, and there are also options for changing the default Email, Messaging, Calling, Browser, and Password apps. In the EU, users can also select a different default navigation app, such as Google Maps.

There’s a fundamental divide between providing an integrated experience vs. a modular one. Apple, of course, almost defines what it means to deliver an integrated experience. But neither fundamental approach need be all-or-nothing. Providing default app settings makes the platform stronger. Apple should want to support alternatives to its own apps and services, not do so only at the point of regulatory pressure. It’s clearly what’s best for the platform.

Mark Gurman and Shirin Ghaffary, reporting yesterday for Bloomberg:

Billionaire philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs is an io backer as well, through her firm the Emerson Collective. Other investors include Sutter Hill Ventures, Thrive Capital, Maverick Ventures and SV Angel. Altman doesn’t have equity in io, OpenAI said. [...]

When he left Apple six years ago, Ive started the firm LoveFrom, a collective of designers and engineers. The staff includes veterans of Apple’s hardware and software departments, as well as friends of Ive and other collaborators.

He then co-founded io last year with Apple alumni Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan. Hankey was Ive’s successor at Apple and remained at the company until 2023, while Tan led iPhone and Apple Watch product design until 2024. Cannon worked at Apple before co-creating the once-popular email app Mailbox, which was acquired by Dropbox Inc. [...]

LoveFrom has a number of former Apple designers who helped create the look of the Mac and iPhone operating systems, including Bas Ording, Mike Matas and Chris Wilson, Ive said. They could help redesign OpenAI’s app for a new generation of consumers.

I struggle to imagine what they even could be making, but that’s one hell of a lineup of talented ex-Apple folks. I know a few other people who’ve joined io too, and they’re A-teamers.

MG Siegler, back on Sunday, before Judge Gonzales Rogers’s “settle this between yourselves or I’ll see you in court next week” order on Monday:

Again, Sweeney is not a moron, he has to know all of this. But why simply sit quietly when you have an excuse to poke the bear again and raise hell for your cause? So that’s what he’s doing. He wasn’t going to win the legal fight, but he could win the political one. And now he’s not going to win this legal fight, but he can win the pressure campaign. Especially important in the weeks leading up to WWDC...

If I’m him, here’s the general game plan:

1. Re-submit Fortnite to the US App Store even though you have no legal grounds to do so. No one will care about that. They will have just read about your legal win and assume you won everything and so Fortnite can return — even though this particular aspect of the case had nothing to do with that.
2. When Apple rejects (or refuses to rule) on the new submission, pull your app around the world under the notion that the unified apps all have to be updated in unison, including an element bringing the US back to the App Store. So yeah, blame Apple for this. It may even technically be true, but it doesn’t matter. Again, it’s a perception thing.
3. File a new legal claim against Apple for blocking your submission in light of the recent ruling. Again, this has no legal grounds, but perhaps the Judge who issued that ruling is, in fact, pissed off enough to entertain this in some way — even if just in weighing in on it to dismiss it sympathetically, thus generating more press, instead of immediately dismissing it, legally.
4. Give more interviews about all of the above in the coming weeks. Again, leading up to WWDC. Keep the pressure on.

I called it a double bank shot when Fortnite appeared back in the App Store, but MG described it before it happened. It worked.

PJ Vogt, in a very fun episode of his podcast, Search Engine:

A small group of Americans becomes convinced they’ve discovered something strange about their iPhones: a forbidden phrase the phone will refuse to transmit. A crack podcasting team searches for answers, wherever they may lead.

The bug is that if you send an audio voice message in Apple Messages, and mention the name “Dave & Busters”, the recipient will never receive the message. I had a good guess, right away, what was happening. But I don’t want to spoil it — it’s a fun listen.

But when you’re done listening, and you want a thorough explanation, check out Guilherme Rambo’s thorough investigation. So good.

The Sunday Times of London ran a good excerpt from Patrick McGee’s Apple in China (News+ link, in case you need it):

The ripple effect from Apple’s investments across Chinese industry was accelerated by a rule imposed by Apple that its suppliers could be no more than 50 per cent reliant on the tech giant for their revenues. This was to ensure that a supplier wouldn’t go bust overnight if a new Apple design did away with components it manufactured. So as iPhone volumes soared from under ten million units on its launch in 2007 to more than 230 million in 2015, Apple would encourage its suppliers to grow their non-Apple business just as quickly. The upshot of this policy was that Apple gave birth to the Chinese smartphone industry.

In 2009 most smartphones sold in China were produced by Nokia, Samsung, HTC and BlackBerry. But as Apple taught China’s supply chain how to perfect multi-touch glass and make the thousand components within the iPhone, those suppliers took what they knew and offered it to Chinese companies led by Huawei, Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo. Result: the local market share of such brands grew from 10 per cent in 2009 to 35 per cent by 2011, and then to 74 per cent by 2014, according to Counterpoint Research. It’s no exaggeration to say the iPhone didn’t kill Nokia; Chinese imitators of the iPhone did. And the imitations were so good because Apple trained all its suppliers.

To get this message to Beijing, Tim Cook and his deputies visited Zhongnanhai, the citadel of communist power near the Forbidden City, in May 2016. They explained that Apple wasn’t just creating millions of jobs; it supported entire industries by facilitating an epic transfer of “tacit knowledge” — hard-to-define but practical know-how “in the art of making things”, as defined by the China-born Federal Reserve economist Yi Wen, who believes that such knowledge was “the secret recipe” behind Britain’s Industrial Revolution.

A former Apple executive says this message was “music to the ears of China”. Beijing had spent decades trying to catch up with the West’s lead in advanced industry, scientific research and economic might. It often resorted to spying, outright theft or coercive tactics. But here was America’s most famous tech giant willingly playing the role of Prometheus, handing the Chinese the gift of fire.

McGee’s book was in the works for years, but the timing of its publication couldn’t be more serendipitous, with Trump’s stupid tariff war.