The ALP held their election campaign launch in Perth over the weekend, dropping a few interesting tech related policies should they form government later this month. The NBN could get a big FTTP upgrade, expanding it to 90% of the fixed line footprint (so basically replacing all the HFC and FTTC/FTTN with FTTP). A Royal Commission into the absolute farce that was Robodebt might kick off. MyGov may get a "user audit" to look at "how well myGov is performing for its most important stakeholders – the Australian public". Finally, there's $39.3m to build 117 fast charging EV stations (with an extra $39.3m matched by the NRMA) along "highways across Australia".
Apple let loose a few weeks ago that they're gonna delete all apps off the App Store that haven't been updated in 2 years. Developers rightly cracked the shits, suggesting that if the app works why delete it? Games in particular, that are considered "complete", shouldn't be nuked from orbit. Apple has clarified their policy today, saying apps 2 years or older without updates, that have "not been downloaded at all or extremely few times during a rolling 12 month period" will get a 90 day warning letter before getting erased from history. If there was a way to download the app and run it without the App Store it wouldn't be that big of a deal - but there isn't.
A new book has popped up documenting the last 10 years of Apple post Steve Jobs. An excerpt from "How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul" is in the New York Times and explains the situation around Jony Ive's departure from the company, which I was always curious about. The excerpt is a good read for Apple fans, but this paragraph sums it up: "Few understood how draining he found it to fight over marketing the watch, a product that had increased sales over time and become core to the company's $38 billion wearables business. Yet many could recognize the tediousness of annually updating the company's iPhones, iPads and Macs". Jony just had enough.
📻 Hello, Hi - Ty Segall
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