Caleb Jacobs (via Hacker News): While the agricultural manufacturing giant pointed out in a statement that this is no admission of wrongdoing, it agreed to pay $99 million into a fund for farms and individuals who participated in a class action lawsuit. Specifically, that money is available to those involved who paid John Deere’s authorized […]

Tim Hardwick (Hacker News): Amazon and Globalstar have announced a definitive merger agreement under which Amazon will acquire the satellite operator. […] Alongside the acquisition, Amazon and Apple have signed a separate agreement for Amazon’s Leo satellite network to power existing iPhone and Apple Watch satellite features, including Emergency SOS, Messages via satellite, Find My, […]

Photos from the New York Subway in the 1940s, by teenage Stanley Kubrick.

Nicole Nguyen, writing for The Wall Street Journal (gift link):

Mac Minis with larger-capacity RAM chips — a base M4 model with 32GB of RAM, starting at $999, and the M4 Pro models with 64GB of RAM, starting at $1,999 — are “currently unavailable” on Apple.com. And estimated shipping wait times for any other Mini model start at about a month, and in some cases is up to 12 weeks. (This Mini scarcity extends to other retailers as well.)

The more powerful Mac Studio makes up an even smaller share of sales than the Mini — less than 1%, according to CIRP. But its high-memory configurations ($3,499 and up) are also unavailable, and more affordable variations show wait times of up to 12 weeks. Last month, Apple removed the Mac Studio’s mega upgrade — 512GB of RAM — which it had touted as “the most ever in a personal computer.”

Meanwhile, Apple can ship its most popular computer, the MacBook Pro, with 128GB of RAM ($5,099 and up) to your door in early May. MacBook Pro models with less RAM ship sooner, and almost all other Mac models we reviewed on Apple.com will arrive just days after they’re ordered.

Apple declined to comment on what’s happening with these AI-friendly systems, but analysts have three theories.

This situation is rather unusual, and I suspect Nguyen is correct that it’s the result of a combination of factors, including a surge in demand from new “desktop AI” systems like OpenClaw. It’s rather remarkable that pretty much all of these desktop AI systems are Mac-exclusive, including the new Codex app from OpenAI (that’s based on Sky, the never-released AI automation app from the team behind Workflow, which Apple acquired and renamed Shortcuts). Some of these systems will surely arrive on other platforms eventually, but at the moment, they’re only on the Mac. They’re not on Windows, not on Linux, not on Android, and not on iOS. Just the Mac. That’s because the Mac is, and always has been, the best computer platform in the world. It just is. These systems can’t run on iPhones or iPads because those are baby computers. They just are. So if you want to jump in as an early adopter on desktop AI, it needs to be on a Mac. And if you want a headless always-on Mac to do it, the only options are a Mac Mini or Mac Studio.

Obviously Apple is nearing the release of M5-generation models for both the Mini and Studio. Perhaps those models are behind schedule, and Apple already tapered production of the old models. I think it’s just a question of whether we need to wait for WWDC in June, or if they’re going to drop in May.

Apple Design:

Avoid pestering people. Repeated rating requests can be irritating, and may even negatively influence people’s opinion of your app. Consider allowing at least a week or two between requests, prompting again after people demonstrate additional engagement with your experience.

Prefer the system-provided prompt. iOS, iPadOS, and macOS offer a consistent, nonintrusive way for apps and games to request ratings and reviews. When you identify places in your experience where it makes sense to ask for feedback, the system checks for previous feedback and — if there isn’t any — displays an in-app prompt that asks for a rating and an optional written review. People can supply feedback or dismiss the prompt with a single tap or click; they can also opt out of receiving these prompts for all apps they have installed. The system automatically limits the display of the prompt to three occurrences per app within a 365-day period. For developer guidance, see RequestReviewAction.

There are a lot of apps that eschew a lot of these guidelines. I mean, how do you avoid pestering people when the entire idea of an alert asking for a rating/review is, by nature, pestering? It’s an oxymoron, like saying “Don’t pester people when you pester them.”

I actually knew about the system setting to opt out of these prompts. On iOS it’s in Settings → Apps → App Store: In-App Ratings & Reviews. On MacOS, it’s in the App Store app’s Settings window. On both platforms, it’s on by default. This is one of several settings that I would change, personally, but choose not to, as a critic / pundit / know-it-all, so as to have more of the standard experience that most users get. If you’re annoyed by these prompts though, you should feel free to turn them off.