Any system of age verification will fail to satisfy the writer, because it is fundamentally the UK’s fault by requiring such draconian measures. Credit cards don't work ever time, but the other options of using AI or sending your data to a third company who will resell it are also not great.
The only other complaint seems to be liquid glass? It really feels strange because Apple feels on the upswing with their new office and their cheap, repairable mac.
Reading between the lines, the author of the blog post would have gone along with the verification with annoyance if the verification had worked. What seems to have prompted everything is the credit cards failing. The fact that they couldn't use Wallet and then tried manually with all five sort of illustrates that they would have gone along with it.
Edge cases like immigrants in a different land are typically unmet for these things. I remember once trying to re-activate my Google Fi SIM from my home in the UK before I returned to the US and getting a strange error message that didn't allude to the region. I got the rep on the line and they said "You're in the US, right?" and I had to bullshit something about "oh I had my VPN on" and then turned it on so I would like I was in the US and it worked then.
Anyway, there's clearly one cause and the rest is just kitchen sink argumentation.
It’s a brutal faux pas from Apple to consider immigrants an “edge case”. We are a significant group in many countries. (That said - I don’t have any banking products from my country of origin anymore)
I think it's unavoidable to end up triggering these since we're not really that common once it lands up with the specifics. It's rarely "immigrants" as a class but more "people with ID A in country B". I'm an Indian national with permanent residence in the US who lived in the UK. I have bank accounts in all three countries and I really don't expect them to work cross nationally reliably. If anything would, it would have to be the US stuff but I wouldn't count on it.
I mean, I'd consider it important for it to work, but when it doesn't I wouldn't consider it a brutal faux pas so much as a moment of frustration at the kind of engineer who only happy-path builds.
I think this is one of the biggest tragedies from big tech companies. Their automated approaches usually work great for most people, but will be hopelessly broken for edge cases, often with no recourse. This happens all the time with non-standard location histories.
It's also amazing how badly big tech apps will often fail with poor or no internet connection. Clearly a lot of the developers at these companies never leave the cities they live and work in.
Other industries can be just as bad, but it's particularly grating coming from companies that constantly talk about diversity, individual empowerment, and other nice sounding corporate slop.
> it is fundamentally the UK’s fault by requiring such draconian measures
It would appear the UK doesn't:
> Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, praised Apple for the decision, especially since it’s not required to implement age verification for the iOS or its App Store under the region’s Online Safety Act.
Apple has done this sort of thing before, where they don't like a law, they'll implement some unnecessary and shitty feature, and then say "hey don't blame us, blame your MPs!".
Sometimes Apple's malicious compliance is in service of (or less generously: aligned with) users' interests. I didn't know about the added fees that parent mentioned, so I appreciate them clarifying in this case.
I think Apple's hardware has good to great since the end of the "butterfly" keyboard fiasco, but their software has been in a persistent, slow decline - both in terms of quality and design. So depending on what you look at/care about you could make the case that Apple is getting better or Apple is getting worse.
That covers the good and the bad. The ugly is the increasing presence of ads in Apple software - Maps being the latest example. Something that's going to push me out of the ecosystem eventually. I'm probably ditching Apple Maps for Google Maps this summer, because if I'm going to use an ad-infested product I at least want to get reliable directions out of it.
> The fact that you think American corporation punishing foreign users for their laws is acceptible is sick upon itself.
Not really. I was hoping more large US corps would just not comply and force a big kerfuffle and force the UK government to rethink the OSA and other ridiculous legislation.
In the UK More people have passports than have credit cards, the assumption otherwise is precisely the culture-clash that the article is complaining about.
What do you think these game companies should do instead? The license lets you make your own copies on your own devices while preventing stealing by people who might make a copy and then resell, which would absolutely happen if allowed.
How will shortages be avoided if pay isn’t deterred by supply and demand? An industry that needs workers raises wages until satisfied, what magical thinking do you propose instead
The only other complaint seems to be liquid glass? It really feels strange because Apple feels on the upswing with their new office and their cheap, repairable mac.
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