Variety:

The surprise announcement, made less than two months after Max tweaked its logo to look more like the classic black-and-white HBO color scheme, was revealed at Warner Bros. Discovery’s upfront presentation to ad execs in New York on Wednesday.

In a press release, WBD said “returning the HBO brand into HBO Max will further drive the service forward and amplify the uniqueness that subscribers can expect from the offering. It is also a testament to WBD’s willingness to keep boldly iterating its strategy and approach — leaning heavily on consumer data and insights — to best position itself for success.”

Everyone should be clear on what to make fun of here. We should not be making fun of the fact that they’re changing the name back to HBO Max. No one likes to admit to mistakes. It’s intensely uncomfortable. And people who are good at politics and PR are good at spinning mistakes as not-mistakes. We should, in fact, congratulate them for admitting to this dumb fucking mistake and re-embracing the “HBO” name.

What we should be making fun of is the original decision to name the platform “Max”, which was obviously stupid at the time, and has been obviously stupid every single day since. “Max” is one of those trendy words like “Plus” and “Pro” that companies append to their brand names when naming premium tiers. You can’t just name a service “Max” or “Plus” or “Pro” without any other words. It’s stupid. And to make it worse, Warner Bros. Discovery (itself an incredibly awkward and dumb-sounding name — just call the company “Warner Brothers” or “Warner” — no one gives a shit about Discovery) already owned the brand name that stands for “prestige TV”: HBO. They already owned it. People loved it. And now they’re like, “Oh, geez, I guess we should use that?”

I wrote two years ago that David Zaslav might be stupid. That it took him two entire years to reverse this name change proves that there’s no maybe about it — he is stupid. If you were interviewing candidates to be the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery (a dumb name that a good candidate for the job should suggest changing), and one of them told you that they’d like to name the company’s streaming service “Max” — just “Max” — you should end the interview right there. If I were interviewing someone for the job and they insisted that they were serious about removing “HBO” from the name of the service I’d start wondering if I smelled alcohol on them. If you had Dr. Evil-style ejector chairs you’d dump them into the shark tank or whatever. But instead, they hired the guy who thought “Max” was a great name. It’s absolutely unreal how much brand equity Zaslav has squandered.

The app in question, Instacar, is not available in the US App Store, but multiple people in the EU have confirmed this warning on its App Store page is real:

This app does not support the App Store’s private and secure payment system. It uses external purchases.

The warning is decorated with a big red “!” icon. Update: You can see the warning, minus the red warning icon, on the web version of the Hungarian App Store.

The uncompetitive nature of the App Store — I’m using uncompetitive rather than anticompetitive just to give Apple the benefit of the doubt here — has left at least some top Apple executives hopelessly naive about the state of online payments. It’s like when they still blather on about software being sold on discs inside boxes in physical retail stores. That was true. It was once relevant. It no longer is and hasn’t been for over a decade.

Same with payments. Online payments through, say, Stripe — which zillions of companies use — are completely private and secure today. Amazon payments are completely private and secure. I’m sure there remain sketchy corners of the Internet, but for the most part, all mainstream online payments today are private and secure. Apple’s IAP system has numerous advantages and user-centric features. (If Apple were actively competing, it would have many more.) But the fact that it’s “private and secure” is no longer distinguishing at all.

Update, 15 May: Interesting follow-up: “That EU App Store Warning About External Purchases Is Not New, and Apple Proposed Improving It Nine Months Ago”.

A single-story “a” in Chicago feels more blasphemous than that AI image Trump tweeted of himself as the new pope.

Kyle Feldscher, CNN:

Major League Baseball on Tuesday removed Pete Rose and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson — two of the sport’s most famous players who were previously kicked out of baseball for gambling on the game — from the league’s permanently ineligible list.

The historic decision by MLB commissioner Rob Manfred allows Rose to be considered for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, an honor that had been ruled out as part of the settlement he reached with Major League Baseball. Rose died in September, and Manfred ruled that his lifetime ban ended with his death.

Like a stopped clock displaying the correct time twice a day, even Rob Manfred occasionally makes a correct decision for baseball.

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