By now, most of us who pay attention to politics have grown accustomed to tuning out the word-salad responses that former President Donald Trump frequently offers when asked a specific, policy-oriented question.

But even by Trump's standards, the answer he gave on Thursday when asked to explain how he'd propose to lower child care costs was a doozy.

"It's a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I'm talking about—that, because, look, child care is child care—you know, there's something you have to have it in this country. You have to have it," Trump began. "But when you talk about those numbers, compared to the kind of numbers that I'm talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they're not used to—but they'll get used to it very quickly—and it's not going to stop them from doing business with us."

It goes on from there. Read the whole thing here or watch it here.

If you're being very generous to Trump, you might conclude that he's proposing to use tariff revenue to cover child care costs—though it's not clear how much he'd spend or what the mechanism for redistributing that money would be. In short, what it seems Trump is promising here is a huge expansion of taxes on Americans to somehow pay for child care costs: growing government on the revenue side to pay for an expansion of government on the spending side.

Of course, it's hard to tell exactly what he was saying there, so let's not get bogged down in the specifics. Trump certainty isn't.

It may be tempting to simply write this off as "Trump being Trump" and move on. But the Republican presidential nominee's consistent inattention to the details of policymaking does matter—even if it has no bearing on the election—and the child care issue is a perfect example of why.

This sort of issue is a liability for Trump because he can't just bluster or pander his way through it. Trump excels when he can turn complex policies into simple, partisan us-vs.-them arguments that allow him to avoid any attention on the specifics. On issues like taxes and immigration, this technique works because one party broadly wants the policy to shift in one direction, so Trump can simply promise to do the opposite—never mind the details.

But no one wants higher child care costs. Both sides want to reduce them. The argument, then, must turn on which side can offer the better plan for accomplishing that goal. As Thursday's answer makes obvious, Trump has no such plan.

That's a problem because Vice President Kamala Harris can offer at least the semblance of a plan—and it's a bad one. Harris has "signaled that she plans to build on the ambitions of outgoing President Joe Biden's administration, which sought to pour billions in taxpayer dollars into making child care and home care for elderly and disabled adults more affordable," the Associated Press summarized last month.

Harris has not offered sufficient policy details to say exactly what she supports, but Biden's plan mostly involved throwing more money at child care providers. In a supplemental budget request last year, for example, Biden asked Congress to approve $16 billion in additional subsidies for child care. Both Biden and Harris also support an expansion of the child tax credit—which many parents would presumably use to pay for rising child care costs.

There are a number of alternatives that a conservative presidential candidate could discuss—even if many of them depend on state and local policymakers. Ease zoning laws to allow more child care facilities to open. Eliminate foolish barriers to entry like occupational licensing laws or requirements that child care providers have college degrees. Loosen rules that require certain staff-to-child ratios. The goal of those proposals is to increase the supply of child care, which is what the country actually needs.

At the very least, a more capable candidate would explain why subsidizing demand—by redistributing more money into parents' pockets or having taxpayers prop up providers—is a terrible way to reduce costs. Just look at what decades of similar federal subsidies have done to the cost of college! Why would you want to repeat that mistake?

But the Republican Party does not have a candidate capable of or interested in making that argument. And if the Republican presidential candidate can't articulate supply-side alternatives and a rhetorical counterweight to costly, counterproductive Democratic proposals, then what good is he?

Again, Trump's inability to discuss child care policy in a serious way may not affect the outcome of the election. Certainly, his lack of policy specifics did not hinder him from winning in 2016.

In the bigger picture, however, this matters. Millions of Americans are worried about soaring child care costs. For the next two months, they will hear lots of bad ideas from Harris' campaign about how to allegedly fix those problems. Many won't seek out alternatives, and they will come away from this election cycle with the idea that more subsidies and more spending are the only things that can be done, and the question is which party will be more effective at delivering those things.

As a result, child care costs will continue to rise, the government will get more expensive, and the efforts to solve both those problems will face a steeper climb.

Thirty-two percent of college students believe it can be acceptable in at least some circumstances to use violence to stop a campus speech, according to a newly released survey of over 50,000 college students from 258 universities. The survey, conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a First Amendment group, is the fifth released by the organization.

FIRE's survey polled students on a range of questions about their attitudes toward free expression and the general climate at their universities. FIRE also ranked schools based on student reports, as well as their formal speech policies and their administration's history of speech-stifling actions. 

The public University of Virginia (UVA) took the top spot this year, while Harvard—for the second year in a row—came in last place. However, FIRE's ranking process is complex. UVA, for example, came in first place primarily due to consistent administrative support for free speech. But when looking at subcategories that cover student opinion, UVA ranked 200th for support for disruptive conduct and 112th for self-censorship.

"The student body overturns a certain amount every year. Presumably every four or five years it's an entirely new student body," says Sean Stevens, FIRE's chief research adviser. "But the administrative culture, kind of the culture established there can stick for longer."

The survey also found sharp increases in students' support for disruptive or violent protest activities. Thirty-seven percent of students said it was "sometimes" or "always" acceptable to shout down a campus speaker, up from 31 percent last year. In all, less than 1 in 3 students said that it would "never" be acceptable to shout down a speaker.

The percentage of students agreeing that it was never acceptable to use violence to stop a speaker also declined five percentage points—declining to 68 percent from 73 percent last year. While this means nearly 1 in 3 students expressed willingness to support violent protest, it's worth noting that this doesn't necessarily mean that those students would ever participate in violence themselves. Further, FIRE's survey didn't define violence or give an example of a violent action. Regardless, the upward trend in support for violence, in at least some circumstances, is troubling. 

It's likely that the contentious, frequently disruptive anti-Israel protests that dominated many campuses last year played a role in the shift. Fifty-five percent of surveyed students agreed that it is "difficult to have an open and honest conversation" about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, more than any other topic.

Over the past five years, "the trends are going in the bad direction," Stevens says. "More people are saying it's acceptable to shout down the speaker, to block entry, to use violence."

For the first time, FIRE's survey asked students about their mental health. Over 60 percent of students reported that they felt anxious at least half the time—including nearly 7 in 10 female students. Almost 40 percent of students reported feeling lonely or depressed at least half the time. 

Over 1 in 4 students reported having three or fewer close friends—including 30 percent of Harvard students, a staggering 17 percent of whom said they had zero close friends.

Stevens says that those results were "more upsetting than I would have expected," adding that while it's unclear whether students "would get a diagnosis of depression or they would get a diagnosis of generalized anxiety, if they are saying they feel that way, I think that matters."

But FIRE's report didn't turn up all bad news. Student worries about self-censorship seem to be steadily declining. Forty-five percent of students reported that they felt they could not express their opinion on a subject because of how others would respond at least "occasionally" or more. Compare that to last year's 50 percent and the 2022–23 school year's 56 percent. 

15 years into its life, Reeder is one of the most popular and beloved RSS readers available on Apple’s platforms. You can’t have a discussion about the best way to follow RSS feeds without Reeder coming up as a contender – and believe me, we’ve had many such discussions here at MacStories and on the Club MacStories+ Discord. It’s an institution, and one that many people have very strong feelings about.

With a product as successful and engrained as Reeder, it would be easy for the app’s developer Silvio Rizzi to stick to what works and keep it the same without rocking the boat. But to Rizzi’s credit, that’s absolutely not the case with the new version of Reeder, which is available today. Instead, the new Reeder expands the app’s scope far beyond that of a typical RSS reader and fundamentally rethinks the traditional approach to keeping up with feeds. It’s a massive break from the past that will likely prove divisive among Reeder’s longtime user base. At the same time, it has the potential to appeal to a whole new audience of users who’ve never tried RSS readers before.

There’s a lot to cover in this update, but first, a word of reassurance for fans of Reeder as we know it: it isn’t going anywhere. The previous version, Reeder 5, has been renamed Reeder Classic and remains available on the App Store. In fact, Rizzi intends to continue developing Reeder Classic in conjunction with the new version. If you want to stick with the Reeder you know and love, you certainly can, and I think offering both versions is the right call given the huge change in direction Rizzi has gone with this update.

The best word to describe the new Reeder is “ambitious.” Its purpose is not just to be your RSS reader, but your inbox for keeping up with feeds of many different kinds from various sources across the Internet – text from websites, sure, but also videos on YouTube, audio from podcasts, posts on social media, and more. It’s a one-stop shop for the feeds you follow online, collecting them together into a single timeline that you can seamlessly browse across all of your devices. As I said, it’s a lofty goal.

It’s also quite different from what previous versions of Reeder were trying to do. In order to take on this new role as an inbox for all of your feeds, Reeder has been rebuilt from the ground up, a characteristic that shows both in its design and functionality. Many new features have been added, but nearly as many have been removed. Whether this update looks like a streamlined evolution or a stripped-down regression depends largely on if you’re interested in this sort of catch-all tool at all, but that’s the risk one takes when reimagining an established product in such a substantial way.

Let’s start with what you won’t see in the new version of Reeder. The app does not integrate with RSS sync services like Feedly and Inoreader. Instead, Reeder syncs subscriptions and other data exclusively via iCloud. This limitation is necessary due to the fact that Reeder incorporates other types of feeds that aren’t supported by RSS sync services, but it’s also a big break from the norms of typical RSS readers. Users switching from a sync service to Reeder can import their subscriptions in a single batch via an OPML file.

If that isn’t enough of a shock, Reeder also does away with one of the most basic precepts of reader apps: unread counts. In the world of Reeder, there is no concept of an article that’s been read or unread. There’s no badge indicating how many new items you’ve yet to see. Rather, the app simply records your position in the timeline and lets new items fill in above it. To check out new items, you just scroll up, and your timeline position syncs between all of your devices so that you’re always starting from where you previously left off.

This change makes keeping up with your feeds feel more like browsing social media than reading a list of articles. Without an unread count dwindling down as you work your way through your feeds, you’re left trusting Reeder to put you in the right place every time to ensure you don’t miss anything. That’s a big ask, and it only works if the position syncing is rock solid.

Thankfully, it is. In my testing, I’ve found that the app places me at my previous position in the timeline each time I open it. I’m someone who cares very much about seeing everything that comes across the feeds I choose to follow, so my expectation level is very high for a feature like this, and Reeder meets it reliably.

The last big feature users have come to expect from RSS clients that isn’t available in Reeder is feed organization. The app includes a list of subscriptions automatically grouped by feed type, including Podcasts, YouTube channels, and regular RSS feeds, but users cannot manually organize their subscriptions further. All RSS feeds are lumped together, so if you follow sites covering various topics like technology, music, and entertainment, there’s no way to create separate timelines for each of those categories. In this case, I don’t think the new approach Reeder is taking demands this omission; it’s just not an option currently available. I’d like to see it added because I know that’s how a lot of people approach RSS, especially if they have a large collection of feeds they follow.

With that out of the way, let’s move on to what’s possible with the new Reeder that wasn’t in previous versions. The app supports subscribing to feeds from a variety of sources:

• RSS feeds
• Podcasts
• YouTube channels
• Mastodon accounts, tags, and home timelines
• Bluesky accounts and home timelines
• Micro.blog accounts, Discover feeds, and home timelines
• Glass accounts
• Flickr accounts
• comic strips
• subreddits

Many of these sources are technically accessible via RSS, but finding their feeds can be tricky, and those feed URLs can change over time. Reeder makes adding these sources as simple as searching for them in a text field, and whether the app relies on RSS, an API, or some other integration doesn’t really matter to the user. All they see is a clean, well-designed feed of items from the source they’ve chosen.

To me, the most interesting options in this list are the social media home timelines. Selecting one of these feed types prompts the user to sign in to their account on the selected service. Once that’s done, Reeder literally becomes a read-only client for the social media site the user has chosen. I don’t use Bluesky or Micro.blog, so I wasn’t able to test those, but the Mastodon integration is implemented surprisingly well. The timeline displays posts and reposts with properly formatted usernames, attached images, and embedded links. Tapping a post will show it in context with replies, and tapping on a username will open that user’s profile in a web view. I’m not personally looking for a read-only Mastodon client, but if I were, Reeder would make a great one.

If this list of feed sources seems like a mishmash of vastly different content types, that’s because it is. The Reeder timeline combines text articles, photos, videos, social media posts, audio files, and more all together in a single view. For some, that may sound like chaos. But to others, it’s actually harmony. It saves users from having to check a different app for each type; instead, all the content they care about is available in one convenient place.

Displaying all of this content together in a way that’s intelligible requires considered design, and Reeder delivers on that front in spades. The app features a three-pane layout with categories listed in the leftmost pane, feed item previews in the middle, and the content of the selected item on the right. The design is simple and well spaced out without coming off as sparse. Iconography and accent colors are used infrequently but effectively, putting the emphasis on the content of your feeds above all else.

The categories list starts with the app’s three timelines: Home, Video, and Audio. Home is the main timeline where feeds of every type are listed. Feeds can be optionally excluded from the Home timeline via a toggle in each feed’s settings, but by default, every feed you subscribe to goes in Home. The Video and Audio timelines filter the Home view to only display items that include video and audio content, respectively. The Video timeline features YouTube videos from channels you subscribe to, but it also includes any articles with embedded video links.

Underneath the three timelines are the app’s various category sections. Each source type is given its own section in the sidebar, and every section can be expanded to display a list of the feeds it includes alongside their favicons. Long-pressing on a feed reveals options to delete it or adjust its settings, including its name, whether or not it appears in the Home timeline, and how items from the feed should be displayed. Each feed’s settings pane also includes its URL, which can be copied to the clipboard.

The Saved section is a special category of item tags provided by the app itself: Links, Later, Bookmarks, and Favorites. The Links tag contains any links that have been added to the app via the share sheet. Items from feeds within Reeder can be tagged with Later, Bookmarks, or Favorites to be stored in those lists long-term. You can also add custom tags to items in your timeline, and these tags will be listed in the Saved section as well.

To me, Reeder’s Saved tags are the least polished aspect of the app. They’re difficult to manage because the app doesn’t include a tool for selecting multiple items at once or even swiping on them to remove them from a list. Instead, you have to remove items one at a time by long-pressing on them and deselecting the tag in the context menu.

The Later list is also the one place in the app I miss unread counts. If I save an item for later, I want it to get some special treatment and not be mixed in with a bunch of other similar-looking items that I may or may not have read. Maybe if it were easier to untag items, then it wouldn’t be a problem, but as it is, it’s not viable even as a basic read later solution in my eyes.

The Saved section does contain a powerful hidden feature, though: any tag, including a custom tag, can be shared publicly via a webpage or JSON feed. You can enable this feature by long-pressing on a tag, opening its settings, and toggling on the ‘Public JSON Feed’ option. Once the feature is enabled, the app will display a small cloud icon next to the tag and present you with a shareable link to a page that lists all of items marked with that tag. The page also includes a link to a JSON feed for the tag that you can subscribe to in another RSS app. You can quickly copy the public URL and JSON feed URL for a shared tag by long-pressing on it. This feature has a wide array of possible use cases, like syncing your read later list to another app or quickly spinning up a page of links on a particular topic. It’s a very cool addition that I would have never thought of for an app like Reeder, but I’m into it.

Selecting a timeline, tag, or feed in the sidebar will open a list of the items it contains. Reeder displays items with a uniform look regardless of their type, which is impressive given the variety of types the app supports. Each item lists its feed source and favicon at the top, followed by a short text preview of its contents (or its entire contents if the item is a social media post). At this point, item types diverge to show elements specific to their content. Articles include their main image next to their text previews, whereas audio items show their cover art underneath a play button that starts audio playback when pressed. Video items display their thumbnails underneath a play button that starts the video when pressed.

Videos start playing inline but can be expanded to full screen or moved to picture-in-picture mode. When in full screen, videos are shown in the default system video player, which includes playback controls, a scrubber, a button for changing playback speed, and a volume slider. Reeder’s video player options are clean and adaptable, allowing you to watch videos the way you prefer.

The app’s audio player is top-notch. It initially appears as a miniplayer at the bottom of the screen displaying the audio file’s cover art alongside a play/pause button and buttons to skip forward and backward. Tapping on the mini-player expands it into a full-size player view that includes artwork, the item’s name and feed source, a scrubber, playback controls, a speed selector, a link to the audio file’s item listing, and even a tappable list of MP3 chapters. The player integrates with system playback controls in Control Center and on the iPhone and iPad Lock Screen, too. I’m impressed with how feature-packed the audio player is, and it shows how much of an emphasis this update puts on supporting audio.

As pleased as I was with the audio player during testing, I was genuinely shocked to find that the app’s timeline syncing feature extends to audio playback. If you start listening to a podcast on one device and later open the app on another, you’ll see a partially filled circle around the item’s play button. Tap it, and the app will resume playback where you left off. The combination of a fully-featured audio player and position syncing makes Reeder an actual contender in the podcast app space. I personally don’t plan to switch to it as my main podcast app, but I do use it to subscribe to a couple of shows I listen to irregularly. I always have a good experience when I listen to podcasts in Reeder, and it genuinely makes me want to use the app for this purpose more often.

All of that is well and good, but at a certain point, you will want to use Reeder to… you know… read something. Thankfully, the app’s text parser inherits the quality of previous versions – that is to say, it’s best in class. Tapping an item in a timeline, tag, or feed list will open its contents in full. The app offers a nice, distraction-free reading experience with inline images and original text formatting. It really can’t be beat. The reading view also includes buttons to quickly tag an item or send it elsewhere via the share sheet.

There are some feeds that don’t play nicely with any text parser, or that only include a portion of each article before forcing you to go to the web to read the rest. For these feeds, I enable the app’s Reader View, which usually does the trick. You can enable Reader View on a per-feed basis by long-pressing on a feed and opening its settings. Or if you prefer, you can set a feed to automatically open its items in a web view instead.

The reading view isn’t as customizable as in previous versions of Reeder. The app doesn’t include options to change its font, font size, line spacing, or text alignment. Font size does respond to the system’s text size, though, and Bionic Reading is available in the app’s settings. Although the default reading experience is excellent and just accommodating enough to work for most people, it would be nice to have more customization options in the future. I’d also like to see the ability to open the next article in a list by scrolling past the bottom of the current item re-added soon.

The app’s settings page is pretty bare overall. General settings include the ability to disable the app’s auto-refreshing feature and Background App Refresh, as well as the option to add left and right swipe gestures within lists for quickly tagging an item or opening it in the browser. The Display & Layout section lets you enable dark mode, slightly adjust the appearance of items in lists, and set a default layout for the app to use in landscape mode. And finally, there is a Default Apps section where you can select which apps you’d like to use for opening links to Mastodon, Micro.blog, and Reddit.

The lack of customizability is another way in which the new Reeder is not a one-to-one replacement for the previous version, as is the absence of Shortcuts actions and widgets. While I would like to see these features added in time, I think the simpler state the app is currently in could be intentional. This new version is so different from what came before that the transition will be tough for a lot of Reeder 5 users, so offering them a more streamlined experience could help smooth things over in a small way.

This new Reeder is certainly more opinionated than the last. It offers users a lot of options for feed sources in exchange for less choice when it comes to how the app looks and works. For a lot of people, that will be a dealbreaker, and that’s understandable. But for those who are willing to give this new approach to feed subscriptions a try, I think the new Reeder offers an excellent way of keeping up with the online sources you want to read, watch, and listen to.

I was initially skeptical of the idea of combining so many of the sources I care about into one app. I downloaded a beta version of the new Reeder mainly to check out its design. The design was so compelling that I decided to try it out as my go-to RSS reader, but I had no intentions of adding any other sources. Over time, I was so drawn in by the experience that I wanted to spend more time in it and slowly started migrating more and more feeds over: YouTube channels, a few podcasts, even some news-focused social media feeds. What I found throughout the transition was that adding different types of content into Reeder didn’t water down the experience; it made it even better. It turned the app into a destination that I look forward to checking throughout the day.

That doesn’t mean I’ll use Reeder for every possible feed it can contain. There’s still something to be said for apps that are purpose-built for specific types of content, like podcast players and social media apps. But for a good portion of the sources I want to keep up with every day, Reeder is the best way I’ve found to do so, and having them in one app has turned out to be great.

Making such a foundational change to a long-established app is a huge risk, but that risk comes with an equally weighty purpose: to recreate Reeder into a one-stop digital inbox fit for the current web landscape. It’s a tall order, but the app hits the mark dead center. The work Silvio Rizzi has done on this new version is nothing short of excellent; I encourage readers to give it a try. It might not be what we’re used to, but new things can often surprise us, maybe even delight us. The new Reeder has certainly done that for me.

Reeder is available on the App Store for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It’s free to use with up to ten feeds, and a $1/month or $10/year subscription to Reeder+ unlocks the ability to subscribe to unlimited feeds along with creating shared feeds and adding social media home timelines.

AT&T vs. Broadcom —

Ars cited in lawsuit AT&T recently filed against Broadcom.

AT&T filed a lawsuit against Broadcom on August 29 accusing it of seeking to “retroactively change existing VMware contracts to match its new corporate strategy.” The lawsuit, spotted by Channel Futures, concerns claims that Broadcom is not letting AT&T renew support services for previously purchased perpetual VMware software licenses unless AT&T meets certain conditions.

Broadcom closed its $61 billion VMware acquisition in November and swiftly enacted sweeping changes. For example, in December, Broadcom announced the end of VMware perpetual license sales in favor of subscriptions of bundled products. Combined with higher core requirements per CPU subscription, complaints ensued that VMware was getting more expensive to work with.

AT&T uses VMware software to run 75,000 virtual machines (VMs) across about 8,600 servers, per the complaint filed at the Supreme Court of the State of New York [PDF]. It reportedly uses the VMs to support customer service operations and for operations management efficiency.

AT&T feels it should be granted a one-year renewal for VMware support services, which it claimed would be the second of three one-year renewals to which its contract entitles it. According to AT&T, support services are critical in case of software errors and for upkeep, like security patches, software upgrades, and daily maintenance. Without support, "an error or software glitch" could result in disruptive failure, AT&T said.

AT&T claims Broadcom refuses to renew support and plans to terminate AT&T's VMware support services on September 9. It asked the court to stop Broadcom from cutting VMware support services and for "further relief" deemed necessary. The New York Supreme Court has told Broadcom to respond within 20 days of the complaint's filing.

In a statement to Ars Technica, an AT&T spokesperson said: “We have filed this complaint to preserve continuity in the services we provide and protect the interests of our customers.”

AT&T accuses Broadcom of trying to make it spend millions on unwanted software

AT&T's lawsuit claims that Broadcom has refused to renew support services for AT&T's perpetual licenses unless AT&T agrees to what it deems are unfair conditions that would cost it “tens of millions more than the price of the support services alone."

The lawsuit reads:

Specifically, Broadcom is threatening to withhold essential support services for previously purchased VMware perpetually licensed software unless AT&T capitulates to Broadcom’s demands that AT&T purchase hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of bundled subscription software and services, which AT&T does not want.

After buying VMware, Broadcom consolidated VMware's offering from about 8,000 SKUs to four bundles, per Channel Futures. AT&T claims these subscription offerings “would impose significant additional contractual and technological obligations." AT&T claims it might have to invest millions to “develop its network to accommodate the new software.”

VMware and AT&T's agreement precludes "Broadcom’s attempt to bully AT&T into paying a king’s ransom for subscriptions AT&T does not want or need, or risk widespread network outages," AT&T reckons.

In its lawsuit, AT&T claims "bullying tactics" were expected from Broadcom post-acquisition. Quoting Ars Technica reporting, the lawsuit claims that "Broadcom wasted no time strong-arming customers into highly unfavorable subscription models marked by 'steeply increased prices[,]' 'refusing to maintain security conditions for perpetual license[d] [software,]' and threatening to cut off support for existing products already licensed by customers—exactly as it has done here.'"

"Without the Support Services, the more than 75,000 virtual machines operated by AT&T⸺impacting millions of its customers worldwide⸺would all be just an error or software glitch away from failing," AT&T's lawsuit says.

Broadcom’s response

In the lawsuit, Broadcom alleges that AT&T is not eligible to renew support services for a year because it believes AT&T was supposed to renew all three one-year support service plans by the end of 2023.

In a statement to Ars Technica, a Broadcom company spokesperson said:

Broadcom strongly disagrees with the allegations and is confident we will prevail in the legal process. VMware has been moving to a subscription model, the standard for the software industry, for several years – beginning before the acquisition by Broadcom. Our focus will continue to be providing our customers choice and flexibility while helping them address their most complex technology challenges.

Communications for Office of the President, first responders could be affected

AT&T's lawsuit emphasizes that should it lose support for VMware offerings, communications for the Office of the President and first responders would be at risk. AT&T claims that about 22,000 of its 75,000 VMs relying on VMware "are used in some way to support AT&T’s provision of services to millions of police officers, firefighters, paramedics, emergency workers and incident response team members nationwide... for use in connection with matters of public safety and/or national security."

When reached for comment, AT&T's spokesperson declined to comment on AT&T's backup plan for minimizing disruption should it lose VMware support in a few days.

Ultimately, the case centers on "multiple documents involved, and resolution of the dispute will require interpretation as to which clauses prevail," Benjamin B. Kabak, a partner practicing in technology and outsourcing at the Loeb & Loeb LLP New York law firm, points out.