Mike Wheatley (Hacker News, Reddit):
Artificial intelligence researchers from Apple Inc. and Cornell University quietly unveiled an open-source and multimodal large language model last October known as Ferret, which is said to use parts of images as queries.
According to VentureBeat, the release of Ferret on GitHub in October went completely under the radar, with no announcement being made. However, it has since gotten a lot of attention from AI researchers. Bart De Witte, who operates a non-profit focused on open-source AI in medicine, posted on X that the release of Ferret “solidifies Apple’s place as a leader in the multimodal AI space.”
Malcolm Owen:
Ferret’s release to open-source is being performed under a non-commercial license, so it cannot be commercialized in its current state.
[…]
A tweet from October by Apple AI/ML research scientist Zhe Gan explains Ferret’s use as being a system that can “refer and ground anything anywhere at any granularity” in an image. It can also do so by using any shape of region within an image.
[…]
In one interesting element from the Github release, Reddit’s r/Apple spotted that Ferret is “trained on 8 A100 GPUs with 80GB memory.” Given Apple’s history with Nvidia GPU support, this was seen to be a rare acknowledgment of the GPU producer.
Previously:
Apple Artificial Intelligence NVIDIA Open Source Programming
Mellel (via Agen Schmitz):
This significant update, more than a year and half in the making, brings Dark Appearance support, Split View, improved Find & Replace and a multitude of enhancements to Mellel’s user interface, rendering and features. A swarm of nasty and annoying bugs were also squashed in the process, along with some deep, under-the-hood, changes that make Mellel more robust and future ready.
[…]
Mellel 6 also marks two additional significant changes. The first is that Mellel is no longer sold on the Mac App Store. There are many reasons for this decision, the 30% cut Apple is taking for every copy sold, the lack of any promotion from Apple (for example, we were removed, due to and error on Apple’s part, from the “Apps for writers” list of apps, a decision that hurt our sales significantly and that we had no way to appeal or protest) but most importantly, the lack of any mechanism to allow paid upgrades within the App Store. This hampered our ability to deliver more frequent updates as any major update would necessitate releasing the update as a new application on the App Store, losing the ranking, requiring a re-branding, and making the whole process much more cumbersome.
The upgrade is free for purchasers within the last two years, $44.99 for other upgraders, and $69.99 for new customers (but on sale for WinterFest) vs. $49 for version 5.
There’s more information about the new features and enhancements here.
Previously:
Business Dark Mode Mac Mac App Mac App Store macOS 14 Sonoma Mellel Word Processing
John Gruber:
Here’s the analogy I’ve been thinking best applies. American Express operates Centurion Lounges at a few dozen airports around the world, exclusively for the use of their Platinum Card holders. Other premium credit cards offer similar access to other lounges. If you have an American Express Platinum Card, you just show up, show them your card and boarding pass, and you’re in. You get free Wi-Fi; free food (pretty good); free beverages (including a full-service bar); and comfortable seats, tables, and desks. They even have showers for travelers on extended trips. They’re great — and a cut above even most airlines’ own lounges for their premium frequent travelers. Centurion Lounge access is presented as a free benefit, but, of course, there’s no more such a thing as a free premium lounge as there is a free lunch: the cost of the lounges is baked into the annual fees Platinum Card holders pay.
iMessage is like a Centurion Lounge. It’s a free premium messaging service, exclusively for the use of people who own iPhones, iPads, and Macs. SMS, in this analogy, is like waiting for your plane out in the public airport terminal: not as nice, the Wi-Fi is worse, there’s no free food or drinks, but it’s available to everyone.
iMessage users in a group chat who are annoyed by Android-owning group members relegating the conversation to SMS are like a group of friends travelling together — some of whom have Amex Platinum Cards, some of whom don’t — who need to wait in the public terminal if the group wants to wait for their flight together.
[…]
Beeper Mini presenting itself as Messages on a Mac to gain access to iMessage is as dishonest as presenting a forged Amex Platinum Card to gain access to a Centurion Lounge.
This is a good analogy that captures why Apple is justified in cracking down. But it doesn’t capture the way SMS can only be used within Messages.app, and I think it misses the feel of the situation from the customer’s point of view. iMessage does not feel like a premium experience, both because there’s a much higher percentage of iPhone users than Platinum Card holders and because the service itself is so unreliable. Sometimes it feels more like a scourge than a perk.
Also unlike Amex, it’s not something that people consciously opted into. They just bought a phone and got the bundled messaging service. Now they have a poor experience communicating with half of their friends. It’s as if people with names from one half of the alphabet can’t get into the lounge. The lounge doesn’t offer guest passes; they expect you to change your name to get in. That’s technically possible, but hardly anyone wants to do it. Meanwhile, once you’ve entered the lounge, it’s hard to ever leave. The airlines will no longer make your flight status available in other parts of the airport, so if you start hanging out in the public terminal you could miss your plane.
This paragraph would make sense in a world where Apple, say, didn’t allow WhatsApp, Signal, Line, Telegram, and Messenger in the App Store. But the market for messaging apps is incredibly competitive, and Apple’s App Store hosts all of them.
Many airlines offer lounges for their premium fliers, but try getting everyone you know to meet up at the United Club. It might be in the wrong terminal or they might only have frequent flier status on another airline. Meanwhile, Amex owns the airport, and they make sure that the Centurion is the only lounge located inside of the TSA screening.
Previously:
Update (2024-01-03): See also: Manton Reece.
Update (2024-01-10): Eric Migicovsky:
Getting champagne at a bar in an airport. This is about people’s everyday lives: How you chat with your friends, your family, your colleagues, is the core experience of your phone. And for most people, if they want to contact their friends or family, they don’t think about all the different apps or the multitude of ways they can contact someone. They send a text.
The argument that Gruber was trying to put together is that this is some sort of luxury experience that only some people should have. It’s out of touch, and in fact it’s pretty insulting.
[…]
How about the telephone? Imagine if you couldn’t phone certain people. Would we allow that? Back in the 1990s, before interoperability, you couldn’t send a text message to someone on a different mobile carrier. If you had an AT&T phone number, you could only text people on AT&T. It’s kind of the stakes we’re at right now.
Via Eric Schwarz:
While an airport lounge isn’t the most relatable analogy, it does demonstrate something that is exclusive for members that have either paid or are continuing revenue streams.
[…]
Like I said, I can appreciate the intent of Beeper Mini, but in my checking around with Android-using friends, the anecdata isn’t exactly in Beeper Mini’s favor either. Most Android users either hate anything that Apple stands for or seem disinterested in downloading and paying for something to have better messaging with their iPhone-using buddies. I can agree with that—it’s clearly a problem Apple has let simmer and the burden of fixing should be on Apple, not Android users. That’s where something like Beeper Mini is not going to be the fix, but rather embracing RCS, effectively bringing iPhones up to par with Android devices makes the most sense.
Android Android App Antitrust Beeper iMessage iOS iOS 17 Messages.app Short Message Service (SMS)
David Smith (2012):
The Japanese government requires that Apple withhold 20% of your profits from App Store sales unless you have filed forms demonstrating that you are a foreign company and taxable there instead. The forms are a bit complex and the process a bit cumbersome, but unless you complete it 20% of whatever you make in Japan is taken and not returned.
I have been doing this, and my understanding is that it’s for the tax on software royalties.
Wesley Hilliard:
Small developers operating outside of Japan can be tough to get ahold of for owed consumption tax payments, so the Finance Ministry is placing the burden on Apple and other app market operators.
[…]
According to a report from Nikkei Asia, Japan’s Finance Ministry is making app store operators like Apple and Google responsible for paying consumption taxes owed by foreign developers. These changes won’t go into effect until 2025 to give companies time to adapt.
[…]
The current consumption tax is 10%, which Apple would pass to its developers. So, for example, on top of Apple’s 15% to 30% revenue share on App Store sales and subscriptions, Apple would add 10% on top to pay for the consumption tax in Japan.
Developers would then need to adjust prices to account for this price increase.
It is now possible for developers to set different prices in different regions, so they could make Japan-specific adjustments if desired. But this still seems like a loss for small developers because—with Japanese revenue under JPY10,000,000 (~$95,000)—they are currently exempt from the Japanese consumption tax, but now they will need to pay it because Apple itself is above the threshold. Or maybe there will be a way to certify to Apple that your combined sales in Japan are under the threshold?
Previously:
Update (2024-01-03): Jeff Johnson:
I’ve never heard of this before. There doesn’t appear to be anything in App Store Connect.
I’m not sure what happened, but I no longer see the Japanese tax stuff in App Store Connect, either.
App Store Financial iOS iTunes Connect Japan Legal Mac Mac App Store Taxes
