I switched to t mobile recently out of frustration from smaller carriers having spotty coverage. I've tried a bunch of smaller alternative carriers but have had problems getting signal sometimes in places that are city centers.

I figured going to a big carrier would fix that problem. It definitely did. And now I have a new problem, which is likely identity theft. What a great onboarding package.

Incoming Google-backed YouTube-driven music bot product offering...
 
...which will then be shut down within a year

I mean, massive +1 to not wanting to be emailed by developers. I guess my thought is that Apple has changed their wording to allow developers to email people about other payment options (or use "other communication methods"), which is the most band-aid of band-aid fixes I can think of to the actual problem which is that Apple shouldn't be forcing developers to use their payment method that takes a 30% cut.

But yeah, 100% not here for even more spam.

Not something one wants to read and agree with on this Friday morning, but here we are.

You're right though—it's going to take a massive overhaul and multiple points of alignment to even make a dent. We've dragged our feet on this with decades of forewarning. Worse than dragged our feet, we dug in our heels. But, I want to remain hopeful. There's incredible technology in the works to help with carbon capture and rebuilding ecosystems to better recapture carbon. Some projects like Running Tide are doing some interesting stuff in the biology space, focusing on less-than-obviously-visible solutions for carbon capture. I have no idea how successful it'll be, but its inspiring at least.

So their clarification was that you can send your customers emails to tell them how to buy outside of your app? If their wording hasn't changed to allow non-Apple payment methods inside apps, then this is basically nothing.

Still, absurd that before they didn't even let you contact people outside of the platform. You needed to just pretend your app didn't exist outside their app store? It's 2021, that's not how anything works. Or at least, shouldn't be.

Even for Google, even though that amount of money won't make a dent in their cash pile, in terms of absolute numbers that's just way above and beyond what I'd expect.

It makes me wonder if the progress made by other search engines and the general drop in Google's user trust has actually made this more of a competitive move? I'm probably overestimating how much ground Google has lost recently but this just seems extreme.