Image: Apple
Apple defends the walled garden

Good morning! This Tuesday, privacy takes center stage at WWDC, Anthony Weiner wants to make an NFT out of his errant sex tweet, Google's tweaking how it handles ads and Excel is … an esport?
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The biggest product mentioned in Apple's WWDC keynote was FaceTime. Apple built FaceTime for the web and a new service for watch parties, and on iOS it added spatial audio to calls and the ability to do blurred-background video chats. Apple's coming for Zoom, and trying to turn FaceTime into a platform just as it's done with iMessage.
But privacy was the real star of WWDC. From the Apple Watch to iOS to macOS Monterey to Safari, Apple's overarching product story is becoming a privacy story. "We don't think you should have to make a trade-off between great features and privacy," Craig Federighi said. "We believe you deserve both."
Actually, the word "privacy" doesn't quite describe it. It's really more about control. Apple's idea is that your device, in some meaningful way, is you. It's your home, your bank, your identity. And that means that you should be in charge of every aspect of it. Privacy is part of it, but so is control. And that's what Apple says it's offering.
It's a pretty good pitch! And there's some obvious subtext: It's a scary, overwhelming world out there, Apple's executives want you to know, but Apple can protect you. "You can be tracked by a complex ecosystem of data brokers and ad-tech firms," Federighi said, "often without your permission. We don't think this is right."
Meanwhile, Apple's foes would like to remind you what that costs.
There were plenty of other announcements yesterday, of course: new ways to use Notes, an impressive tool for extracting text from photos, better multitasking and new ways to keep all your stuff in sync across your Apple devices that I'm sure will work just fine and not be a total mess like when my AirPods try to guess which device I'm using.
But the thread running through everything was that if you buy an Apple device, it's yours. And it's you. And if you buy, well, anything else, you're just a slab of meat holding a slab of glass through which the internet will manipulate and extract data from you any way it wants. So, yeah, the garden's walls may be high, but Apple says that's only to keep you safe.
The most recent elections made it clear: Voters in both political parties support higher wages. The federal minimum wage hasn't changed in 12 years, despite significant cost-of-living increases. Amazon saw the need to do more for their employees and communities and in 2018 raised their starting wage to at least $15 an hour.
Anthony Weiner said he wants to turn his errant sext tweet into an NFT, because of course he does:
Donald Trump is still not a Bitcoin fan:
After saying he didn't want diversity to "override merit," Snowflake's Frank Slootman walked back his comments:
Marc Benioff applauded Jeff Bezos's space travel plans, but won't be following his lead:
Lisa Hone is joining the National Economic Council. She comes from the FCC, and will help guide the White House's efforts to close the broadband gap.
Paytm is going public. It's planning to raise about $3 billion at a $30 billion valuation, TechCrunch reported.
Clear is also going public. The airport-security company is jumping on the post-pandemic travel uptick, and has become a popular vaccine passport provider.
Dave? Also going public. It's getting SPAC'd, in fact, and will be valued at $4 billion.
Jerome Guillen left Tesla last week. He had been running the company's Heavy Trucking team, but only lasted three months in the role.
Jonathan Harris is Molekule's new CEO. Co-founder and former CEO Jaya Rao is stepping down and leaving the company.
One of the more exciting in-the-weeds WWDC announcements was that Shortcuts is coming to the Mac. That means all the wonky, needlessly complicated but extremely useful tricks you've taught your phone to do can now be done on your laptop. From a work perspective, this could be huge: Imagine being able to upload your most recent screenshot to a Slack channel with one click, log your time just by clicking a widget on your Mac or quickly delete every file in your Desktop folder that's more than a month old.
Shortcuts isn't the easiest Apple tool to use, but it's a seriously handy one. So take notes this summer on all the repetitive, annoying things you do on your Mac 100 times a day, and start planning to Shortcuts the heck out of your workday.
"This is the first time in my life that I have dental insurance, vision insurance, [and] life insurance." Making more than $15 an hour and comprehensive benefits gives Leonardo and Amazon employees like him peace of mind and the freedom to do more — like go back to school.
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