It's not the tools that are expensive - you could have done most of the demo videos with a 3D and a compositing software, probably even in blender which can do both for free. Same for the images. e.g. the Adobe suite only costs $50 a month. But some of those videos would have needed actors, lighting, a robotic camera crane, a studio with greenscreens and quite a few professionals working for weeks. That's where the real cost comes from.

Regardless if they do that human review on every app (I don't think so): It could have been a webwrapper that showed a different site during the review.

Hardly anybody uses iMessage over here and Bing is as unpopular and useless as ever. I use iMessage when I want to send my GF a photo without recompressing it, when I want to show the "message effects" to someone who has an iPhone, and when I'm not sure someone has Signal and I send an SMS that becomes an iMessage.. Long story short, I probably send and get below 10 iMessages a year, vs. thousands of Signal messages, some on Discord and - unfortunately - a few hundred whatsapps snd facebook messages. It's still a little sad that imessage is not included. Interoperability could have boosted its popularity a bit.

Actually, I do use paper shopping bags as bags for paper waste, whereas I buy plastic bags for residual waste because they are bigger, more robust and I'm not dependent on shopping bags. I use plastic shopping bags for metal and plastic, which go into the same bin. I guess there is not much to gain here unless we also ban trash bags or at least reduce packaging waste by a lot.

The EU usually tries a light touch first. Apple clearly tries to find loopholes that go against the spirit of the law to squeeze every last penny out of customers as long as they can. As a governing body, the EU won't act spiteful, they will only tighten their rules - which they have to, it's shareholders first.. This whole mess was foreseeable but not really avoidable.

You're right. There's more than enough empirical evidence that some things don't work if you give people a choice. It's the ad-industry all over again (no one would produce ads if people had a free enough will to only buy what they needed or what's best for their money)

Nah, the Netflix iPad app already worked fine in the Vision Pro Beta, according to people who had and still have it installed. Sure, they could do an app specially done for visionOS, like Disney did, and that'd need engineers to do. But atm, they are actively worsening the Netflix experience on Vision Pro, by opting-out of making their iPad app available. It's very relatable, though, that Netflix - and Spotify - are showing Apple the one finger salute after their repeatedly abusive business practices. The Vision pro shapes up to become another media consumption device like the ipad - at least in it's first iteration - where it hurts Apple if they get snubbed by big content providers.

I mean, this is DPD we're talking about. This won't go down well with our future robotic overlords.

Nah - it's 30%. If an app is offering subscriptions, it's 30% for the first year and then 15% for the following ones. Which is still pretty ridiculous high for what's essentially a payment service (e.g. apart from processing payments, it doesn't make a difference to apple - effortwise - if an app is a one-time payment or subsciption). Hence the regulation.

I usually expect people at the self-checkout to be fast and efficient and am pretty annoyed, when they are not. (Line people who don't ready their payment while standing in line and then search for their card for what ferls like forever). It doesn't help hat the software of most checkout terminals is horrible. My supermarket (big chain) had a station where there was no visual or acoustic feedback when you hit a button - and it was also pretty slow. So, before I knew better, I hit the "pay" button around ten times before the checkout screen finally appeared.

A lot of people are self-employed. I live in Europe and have often been driving for more than 5 hours for work. Train is usually not an option when you have to carry gear or get to most locations in a reasonable, economically feasible time (unless you have work in the city where you live). Also, despite taking longer, going by train is often more expensive than going by car. I'm all for public transports - but it won't work in all scenarios.

Yes, it's going to happen pretty soon in the EU. Seems like Apple had already implemented the means for doing that in their latest iOS releases

Sounds like calling apple support - you can practically hear the "fuck off" through all smiles, first name, and the "we're so sorry, we can't help you"

in the not so distant future. I guess, Climate Models, for example, will be adjustet for more pollution then.

Yeah, that's what people who are opposing "green" stuff on principle keep on telling, but the numbers don't support that sentiment.