Google is quite a bit better than most in having good colors on their higher-end phones — let’s hope this pink comes to the Pro and Pro Fold line too, I’d love a bright pink Fold.

DRIiIiIiNk, dRiIiiIiNK

/uj OG Mirrodin

/rj OG Mirrodin

I actually find Cravity much better at brighter concepts! I much prefer their newer albums.

I think most people forget how ugly it got for a bit between ujungs and orbits during Queendom 2, and how disheartening was seeing the tactical voting around Hyolyn, and on a lesser degree, Kep1er. Unfortunately, I can see the same happening between luvities and roadys.

Cravity is for sure the older group, but I think it’s fair to say that they haven’t exactly hit their stride. Their sales figures are quite comparable, but xikers has much better streaming numbers, just look at the respective performance on YouTube and Spotify.

Having xikers in the lineup isn’t the best idea: they are much more popular than all the other groups, and being Kingdom / Queendom popularity contests this could get ugly fast.

It’s unfair for the other groups to have to compete with a much bigger group, and it could easily get heavy for xikers themselves if the other groups' fandoms start piling on them on social media.

Thanks for the reply. That’s so unfortunate. I’ll take time to check Narwhal again anyway!

True, and if you read the documents they did some pretty extensive and shady stuff. But mindshare is very difficult to build — ask Samsung and their Galaxy Store — and I’m not sure even with strict regulation if it will be possible to break user habits.

That’s why I think we are going straight to a US v Paramount Pictures moment for app distribution, and Apple isn't ready for it.

Hi! I love Halide, but couldn’t disagree more.

For starters, Android shows that it just wouldn’t happen — Apple has used security and privacy as scarecrows for so long that as Apple users we tend to forget that “traditional” computers and most mobile devices have much more open software distribution models. While incidents and scams do happen, they are not an everyday problem for the vast majority of users.

Also, Gatekeeper doesn’t let you run any software: Apple has blacklists for scam apps and malware and can stop apps from running and trash them right away. This already happens on macOS.

On top of that, app distribution and security are completely separated: nothing says that Apple could allow direct download of apps, but still enforce that all apps must be sandboxed, or still limit their access to the file system.

Yes, I concur. Ultimately, I think that app distribution and ecosystem lock-in pose a perverse set of incentives to platform providers. Even if we can disagree on how different countries choose to regulate Apple and Google — Gruber, for example, seems to think that the EU Commission is run by communists — I believe almost any discerning Apple user can come up with some examples of how these incentives have made iOS worse for the user.

Good leadership prevents crises when possible: the regulation and the pushback they are seeing from Europe is nothing compared to what could be coming down the way. It’s not hard to foresee governments regulating that platform providers aren't legally allowed to run app marketplaces at all.

An iPhone with Gatekeeper set to only allow apps from the App Store by default would have prevented most (all?) of their worries for a very small fraction of the money they were making. As we know from Android, the vast majority of users use the preinstalled app marketplace even when there's choice in the market.

Apple could have prevented all of this by just moving iOS and iPadOS to the macOS Gatekeeper security model. I lost all faith in their leadership: they let the company get too dependent on the App Store and on services revenue and are now paralyzed as governments all over the world have caught up with their plan of holding 15–30% of a significant part of the digital economy for themselves

Honestly amazing. There are going to be a lot of posts and tweets written about that line of bass, and rightfully so: it’s been a good while since we had a summer summer–y song from Red Velvet, and I love how the team managed to match the energy of some of their earlier, classic releases with their newer, more mature and sophisticated sound.

Red Velvet’s discography is a masterclass, and with each comeback is so great to see that the members and their team are still so adept at building on their ideas and their aesthetic: “Cosmic” is a fantastic counterpoint to “Chill Kill,” but there’s a lot of “Queendom” and “Feel My Rhythm” in there too, and loads of new imaginery and new sounds to explore further.

Has there been any progress on subreddit widgets? I liked the ones from Apollo — the official Reddit app has a somewhat similar widget but I’d love to switch to Narwhal. A square widget displaying a single item from a customizable subreddit would be amazing, but there are all sorts of news and picture widgets that could be useful or just nice to have on a home screen. I get that they could be problematic with keeping the API usage limited, unfortunately.

Honestly one of the best K-Pop concerts I’ve ever been to. IVE and their staff significantly raised the bar for what I expect from a show, setting me up for disappointment in the future, I fear.

I should add — not to badmouth fellow DIVEs — that I most probably got COVID on the airplane coming back to Italy; there was a visibly sick kid on board, unfortunately. I was masked but probably wasn’t careful enough.

Eh, we’re talking about mirroring the iPhone to the Mac — Android phone mirroring with macOS has been available for years, even if of course Apple’s solution will undoubtedly be smoother and simpler to set up.

It’s very hard to imagine there being market control concerns with this feature: the Mac, is, after all, an open platform.

I get your reasoning, but let’s please remember that the European Commission is a straight-up centrist, pro-business political body: they will threaten big fines, but the actual written–text regulation is nothing particularly radical or hard to comply with, and they would be extremely flexible if Apple showed good intentions. It’s Apple that has been kicking and screaming about the DMA, the Commission is not going down particularly hard on them and would love for the company to work towards respecting the law.

I’m amazed that Apple would be willing to launch the next iPhone without its marquee feature, after months of TV ads for Galaxy AI and Circle to Search, in a market where they are neck and neck with Samsung.

I can (stretching my goodwill) believe that Apple Intelligence needs some touching up for the European market — Meta is having some issues with their integration of LLMs in their apps, and OpenAI had to get compliant with GDPR.

Cutting iPhone mirroring and screen sharing seems completely retaliatory to me, though. All the previous Continuity features are available in Europe, as is Messages screen sharing on macOS. I don't get how these new features differ materially on a policy level from what we already have.

I’m relieved it will be held at Messe Frankfurt — when I first read the news I had flashbacks of the awful outfit running K–Pop Flex two years ago. I can’t wait to go — even if I’m writing this having caught COVID to see IVE in Amsterdam

I’m sure the members will be happy to see some Lia fans in the audience! As a personal experience, when Dreamcatcher first came to Italy Handong was still promoting in China, and the girls loved to see support from local InSomnias for the missing member.

I have to preface that I didn’t really vibe with this concept from the start — let’s maybe try to keep charged hospital imagery out of our sing–along–able pop. It’s OK if you really want to do a zombie concept (maybe not in June) but I most definitely wouldn’t have set the video in a hospital ward.

That said — I really like the song! Of course, it’s not as energetic as their classics, but this was a much-needed change and I’m relieved that somebody in Yuehua is actually listening to fan feedback. You actually need a palate–cleanser title track from time to time when your music is so bombastic — this serves a similar function to “La Di Da,” and I hope it signals that their company has seen that there’s a strong if not huge fanbase. As such, I’m not particularly bothered by the low budget — I’ll 100% take more music and more comebacks in exchange for worse MVs.

The song is great if a bit plain — Kevin D doesn’t miss, and the members as always are singing beautifully. It could have used a little bit of an extra kick, but I get that this was supposed to be a disbandment song, and at that, it would have been amazing.

The video is… functional. The sets for the choreo are competently lit and the CGI gets a bit dodgy here and there, but there’s nothing particularly wrong with it — well, maybe except that 2:39–2:40 shot.

That said, it would have been criminal to have such a low-budget video as their last MV. I want to believe that with the longer contract signed by the members will come a renewed interest in promoting the group. The fact that this video clearly wasn’t shot and edited knowing that the group would go on gives me a bit of hope. We will have to see.

I’m sorry, I know this is horror–podcasts–brainrot, but… “…Was reading about some guy with an inverted face sitting on the ceiling and watching a guy while he sleeps.” Is that a Black Tapes reference?

As a day one ATINY who absolutely loved the Treasure and The World EPs and didn’t really care for the Zero era, I followed the concept photos and teasers for this paralyzed with terror. But this was actually much better than I expected! I still think ATEEZ are at their best when they fully unleash their inner theater kid, but I loved the camp.

The song is pretty great if a bit conventional; which is not necessarily a negative point, I feared they would stray too much from something palatable for the wider public. Really powerful too, both as a message and as a song itself — it will have to wrestle with “Howl” for the best post–LOONA comeback.

The video was a bold choice. This needed a flashing light warning. It’s unfortunate because the art direction and cinematography are amazing, some of the best we’ve seen this year, and yet many will not be able to enjoy the work they put into it. It’s extra frustrating because the fast cuts are actually amazingly done too, with great regard for the continuity of shapes and playing with contrast and themes. It’s not just fast cuts for the sake of it either — they are an integral part of the storytelling and of the concept itself. Overall, probably a missed opportunity — but for what it is, they delivered amazingly.