Two kinds of people: The Tipline for 22 February 2021

In a 1983 commercial for Apple, an overachieving Kevin Costner cycles to the office at the crack of dawn to get a head start on his $10,000 Apple Lisa desktop computer. “Soon, there will be just two kinds of people, those who use computers and those who use Apples,” the narrator says.  According to the app developer Blix, Apple is increasingly looking to create a monolithic computer-state and it sees a sign-in feature as a means to get there. Also in Tipline, the Federal Trade Commission takes a closer look at weapons of war and Congress reportedly eyes the reintroduction of legislation that would allow news publishers to collectively bargain with large digital platforms.