Apple bent the knee for months, leaving many commentators to ask why. But the reasons are not mysterious: Apple wants things that only the government can provide, things that will defend and extend its power to extract rents, rather than innovate. Namely, selective exemption from tarrifs and an end to the spectre of pro-competition regulation and the threat of real browsers in the US, the EU, and around the world.| Infrequently Noted
Alex Russell on browsers, standards, and the process of progress.| Infrequently Noted
Working Groups do not invent the future, nor do they hand down revealed truths by divining entrails like prophets of the House of Iamus. In practice, they are diligent, thoughtful historians of recent design expeditions. Anyone who tries to convince you otherwise, or invites you to try your hand at invention within a chartered Working Group, does not understand what those groups are designed to do.| Infrequently Noted
By subverting the voluntary nature of open standards, Apple has defanged them as tools that users might use against the totalising power of native apps in their digital lives. This high-modernist approach is antithetical to the foundational commitments of internet standards bodies and, over time, erode them.| Infrequently Noted
