Walled Garden 

Software is eating the world and only Apple’s hardware will save us.

Kieran Healy:

Apple has historically been a company with a strong desire for control and a keen eye towards its own interests, as perceived in the light of that desire to control things. That has led them to the “Walled Garden” in the older sense. The company is a bit friendlier than before, these days, but in many ways as controlling as it ever was. Now it seems that their central business interest is leading them to actually enact the vision of strongly-encrypted, private computing devices, whose content is inaccessible even to their manufacturer—and all in the face of direct opposition from the State. That’s something that many soi disant Valley anarchists have claimed to have wanted for a long time. But most of them work for or founded companies that are in the business of collecting and selling information, not hardware. Apple is a hardware company. And that’s why they’re out in front of this.

We either all get strong encryption built into our devices — including criminals and enemies — or none of us do. And the smart criminals and enemies will just use third-party encryption software for their communication. This whole debate hinges upon a sheer fantasy, that somehow there can exist secure encryption that the “good guys” can break when they want to.

John Gruber

Apple Versus the FBI 

John Gruber on Apple’s refusal to comply with the FBI’s demands to help them break iPhone encryption:

By fighting this, Apple is doing something risky and difficult. It would be easier, and far less risky, if they just quietly complied with the FBI. That’s what makes their very public stance on this so commendable.

Doing the right thing can be hard, but it’s also how reputations are earned and maintained.

Make sure to read Tim Cook’s public response on Apple’s website. Note also that it’s entitled a “A Message to Our Customers” and not A Message to Our Shareholders, which matches up completely with Horace Dediu’s theory of Apple as a firm and who Tim Cook & Co. are striving to please which might go a long way in explaining the lack of support from Microsoft and Google.

Larson Receives More Votes Using Fewer Dollars in Milwaukee County Executive Primary 

The Milwaukee County Executive Primary is a top two affair so both Wisconsin State Senator Chris Larson and incumbent Executive Chris Abele will be on the final ballot in April, but it’s worth noting how much more efficient Larson’s campaign has been to date:

  • Larson: 48,258 votes on spending of $62,655

  • Abele (inc): 47,550 votes on spending of $1.59m

SOURCE Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

After Antonin

The Democrats are in need of some good branding. Something like, “The Republicans are trying to unpack the Supreme Court and the Constitution,” might go along way to framing the issue as an attempt to unsettle norms which have worked fairly well and been upheld for over 200 years.

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