President Donald Trump, on his very popular bespoke social network (random capitalization and various typos sic):

All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.

• Trump, both he and his supporters keep claiming, represents the party of free speech. Got it.
• There are going to be widespread protests against Trump and his policies. Large protests were rampant in his 1.0 administration; they seem almost guaranteed in 2.0. Trump and his cronies feel entitled to act lawlessly and chaotically, with little regard for the law and no regard whatsoever for traditions and norms, while expecting those who disagree with them to keep quiet and, I don’t know, just watch? It doesn’t work that way. Chaos begets chaos. Orderly citizenship stems from orderly leadership.
• Trump, embarrassed by raucous protests in 2020, asked his defense secretary and military leaders, “Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?” Those men said no. Trump doesn’t seem to have any no-men around him this time.
• Trump is the sort of angry old kook who thinks Norman Fell’s Mr. McCleery was the hero, not the butt of jokes, in The Graduate.

Hartley Charlton, writing for MacRumors in October 2022:

The fourth-generation iPhone SE will feature a 6.1-inch LCD display and a “notch” cutout at the top of the display, according to Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC) analyst Ross Young.

Good call on the size and notch, but the 16e display is OLED, not LCD. Overall, though, I’ll award Young a Being Right Point for this call from 2022.

Moving to an all-screen design, there will no longer be space for a capacitive Touch ID Home button in the device’s bottom bezel. Multiple reports, including information from MyDrivers and Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suggest that Apple is planning to add a Touch ID Side button to the iPhone SE, much like the iPad Air and iPad mini.

Real shocker there that Kuo and the fabulists at “MyDrivers” were wrong on that. If you follow Charlton’s link on Kuo’s name above, it points to this 2019 report wherein Kuo reported that Apple was planning a 2021 iPhone that would have neither a Lightning nor USB-C port “and provide the completely wireless experience”.

Chance Miller, writing last week at 9to5Mac:

Dark Noise developer Charlie Chapman is out with a new Mac utility called “Framous.” The app aims to be the best way to add device frames to screenshots. [...]

Here are the ways Framous aims to streamline this process:

• Auto-detect your device based on your screenshot to pick the right frame from a growing library of devices
• Combine multiple devices into a single image, or bulk export multiple separate images at once
• Quick customization options to change frame colors and more
• Automate your screenshot framing with Shortcuts support for even more efficient workflows

There are a bunch of ways you can add device frames to screenshots like this, but none as clever, fast, and easy as Framous. I love it. So many little details. You can just drop a screenshot in and copy a framed version out with zero fuss, but there are also all sorts of tweaks and adjustments you can make, right down to choosing which shade of titanium to color your specific iPhone Pro model. Chapman has a great 20-minute walkthrough video showing all of Framous’s features, and he posted a bunch of shorter videos showcasing specific features to Mastodon. I was sold after watching just one of these.

Framous is completely free to use with nice-looking generic device frames, and a $20 one-time purchase to unlock the exquisitely-detailed “real” frames covering all devices through the end of 2025. Or, a $10/year subscription to keep up to date with future device frames. Available at the Mac App Store.

Basic Apple Guy (with screenshot):

The same tagline from Apple’s 2008 announcement for the original MacBook Air.

On the cusp of that announcement at Macworld Expo, AppleInsider photographed a bunch of banners with that slogan Apple had hung inside Moscone West. I swear I’m not making this up, but a bunch of people were speculating that the big announcement would be a deal with Adobe to bring Adobe Air (their still-in-progress next-gen Flash platform) to the iPhone (which was just over six months old).

Fond memories. Here are my initial thoughts and observations on the MacBook Air, post-keynote, and here’s the January 2008 archive of Linked List posts at DF. There were a lot of bad early takes on the Air.

Dan Moren, writing at Six Colors:

In a whitepaper posted to Apple’s developer site entitled “Helping Protect Kids Online”, the company details several improvements it’s rolling out in upcoming software updates, including making it easier to set up child accounts, providing age ranges to developers, and filtering content on the App Store. [...]

It’s also worth noting that these announcements are happening against the backdrop of more stringent age-verification laws enacted in U.S. states like Texas and Oklahoma. Critics of those laws contend that they unfairly target LGBTQ+ communities. Apple, for its part, says that it holds to a standard of data minimization, not sharing any more information than is necessary. So, for example, offering developers access to the age range of a user — with the consent of a parent — rather than providing a birthdate.

From Apple’s whitepaper (PDF):

At Apple, we believe in data minimization — collecting and using only the minimum amount of data required to deliver what you need. This is especially important for the issue of “age assurance,” which covers a variety of methods that establish a user’s age with some level of confidence. Some apps may find it appropriate or even legally required to use age verification, which confirms user age with a high level of certainty — often through collecting a user’s sensitive personal information (like a government- issued ID) — to keep kids away from inappropriate content. But most apps don’t. That’s why the right place to address the dangers of age- restricted content online is the limited set of websites and apps that host that kind of content. After all, we ask merchants who sell alcohol in a mall to verify a buyer’s age by checking IDs — we don’t ask everyone to turn their date of birth over to the mall if they just want to go to the food court.

Meta has been vocally backing the various state initiatives that Moren referenced, that would require app stores to verify the exact age of children. To use Apple’s apt metaphor, Meta wants the mall owner to require checking ID for everyone who enters the mall, not just those who purchase alcohol. Meta also, of course, wants itself to then have access to those exact ages verified by the app store — it wants to know the exact age of every child using its platforms, and wants the App Store and Play Store to do the dirty work of verifying those ages and providing them via APIs to developers.

There are a lot of parents who supervise their kids’ online activities and simply don’t permit them to use platforms — like, oh, say, Meta’s — where age restrictions are necessary for some content. So why should those parents be required to provide privacy-intrusive verification of their kids’ birthdates just to let the kids play and use innocent G-rated games and apps?

Meta is clearly in the wrong here, and they’re using culture-war fear-mongering to try to get what they want through misdirection.