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Universal Clipboard is one of those fantastic features that makes you thrilled to use multiple Apple devices.
Copy something on your iPhone, paste it on your Mac or iPad (or vice versa) — it’s absolutely magical when it works.
I say “when it works,” because sometimes it doesn’t for me. And when Universal Clipboard fails, it feels like a massive betrayal of my supreme rights as a loyal inhabitant of Apple’s enchanted kingdom.
Now here’s another betrayal: Apple is working to extend that Universal Clipboard magic to work between iPhones and Windows PCs.
You probably won’t be surprised to learn that Apple didn’t decide on its own to tear down this particular segment of the wall surrounding its ecosystem garden.
No, Microsoft requested the change under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act. And now Apple has proposed a solution.
Previously, EU dictates brought USB-C ports to replace Lightning (yay!), alternative app marketplaces (yawn, and only in the European Union, although Brazil and Japan followed suit), and other innovations.
This kind of stuff usually irritates me and fuels a rant (at least internally) about the EU technocrats’ overreach. TBH, it’s sort of a knee-jerk reaction to the horrors of bureaucracy.
But when Apple makes cross-device clipboard sync work between iPhones and Windows machines, it’ll be no skin off my back. It might even come in handy at some point (assuming the feature even arrives in the United States). And who knows if it’ll work as seamlessly as Universal Clipboard (usually) does within the Apple ecosystem.
As one of my colleagues said in the Cult of Mac Slack channel, this might be like another tall glass of ice water for people in (Windows) hell.
Also in today’s newsletter:
Social media isn’t the only thing being inundated with AI slop. People using AI to chase lucrative bug bounties are burying Apple’s security team in submissions.
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On this day in 2008, Steve Jobs sent an email to Apple employees that admitted just how disastrous the MobileMe launch had been. It was much more sober than his foul-mouthed rant about the failure, where he pilloried the team working on the project.
— Lewis Wallace, managing editor
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One more thing ...
It’s like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell.
Today’s poll
Do you use Universal Clipboard?
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