Next best thing? Ride the coattails of a Reddit user and check out the pics of their recent visit.
The Information: Apple halved spending on Amazon Web Services last year, moved more cloud services in-house
Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:
A report on Monday indicated that Apple is spending upwards of $30 million a month on Amazon Web Services, suggesting Apple’s spending had increased by about 10% over the previous year.
Today, The Information disputes these claims. It says that Apple spent about $370 million across 2018 (roughly $30m per month) but that is actually down compared to the year previously. In fact, Apple reportedly paid $775 million for AWS in 2017, which means 2018’s numbers represent a 50% drop.
The Information article indicates that Apple is aggressively transitioning its iCloud services to running on its own in-house servers.
Here’s a link to the paywalled Information article.
This makes a lot of sense. Apple has long shown that they want to own as much of their process as they can. As I said a few days ago, Apple’s continuing dependence on a competitors cloud services seems counter-intuitive.
WSJ: Turnover hits Apple’s famed industrial design team
Tripp Mickle, Wall Street Journal:
Rico Zorkendorfer and Daniele De Iuliis, who together have more than 35 years of experience at Apple, decided to leave the company recently, people familiar with the departures said. Another member of the team with a decade of experience, Julian Hönig, plans to leave in the coming months, people familiar with his plans said.
To get a sense of size, the article claims Apple design team has two dozen members. So that’s more than 10% of the team.
Nail Cybart, quoted in the article:
“This group is all-powerful in Apple,” said Neil Cybart, who runs Above Avalon, a site dedicated to Apple analysis. “Industrial designers have the final say over the user experience found with Apple devices, and they really do work like a family in a way. No one would argue, though, that new blood is a bad thing.”
Makes sense. Turnover is normal. Turnover on critical teams makes headlines. I see this is the old making way for the new.
Apple Watch lost at sea washes up 6 months later and it still works
So if you forget to take your Apple Watch off and get it a bit wet in the shower, no need to panic.
My favorite bit was the call he got from a number he didn’t recognize, long after he’d given up hope of ever getting his watch back:
“It’s this guy saying, ‘hey if your name is Rob Bainter and you lost an Apple Watch recently. Give me a call and if you can describe this I’ll give this thing to you.'”
Fun read.
Here’s how to cancel your Apple News+ trial and avoid a $10 charge
Nice post from Chance Miller for all those folks coming up on their 30 day Apple News+ free trial anniversary. Note that there are two different approaches here. The first one is the simplest, a few taps from within the News app itself.
But the second approach has you look at all your subscriptions. Definitely not a bad idea.
What happens to my iCloud account when I die?
This morbid chain of thought started when I came across this Teller Report post. An excerpt:
The Münster district court has ordered Apple to grant the heirs of a deceased iCloud user access to its data. The relatives hope for information about the circumstances of death.
And:
According to the Bielefeld law firm Brandi, who represented the heirs in court, the father died during a trip abroad. Apple has rejected the desire of relatives to gain access to the data stored in the iCloud out of court.
The company did not want to comment on the case. Experts pointed out, however, that the iPhone group in the past in similar cases, the heirs have made possible access to iCloud data of the deceased even without trial. The submission of a certificate of inheritance was sufficient. In other cases, it needed a court order.
I suspect some of the details have been lost in translation. So I did a bit of digging.
From the official Apple iCloud terms of service page:
No Right of Survivorship
Unless otherwise required by law, You agree that your Account is non-transferable and that any rights to your Apple ID or Content within your Account terminate upon your death. Upon receipt of a copy of a death certificate your Account may be terminated and all Content within your Account deleted.
So there it is. Pretty clear. If you die, Apple’s policy is to delete your account. Seems to me, there should be a way to assign an heir, perhaps transfer all the files to the heir’s account. They could even limit heirs to family members in a family plan.
Not crazy about a policy that forces a grieving family to have to go to court to access their loved ones photos, etc.
Apple issues AC wall adapter recall
Apple:
Apple today announced a voluntary recall of AC wall plug adapters designed for use primarily in Hong Kong, Singapore and the United Kingdom. In very rare cases, affected Apple three-prong wall plug adapters may break and create a risk of electrical shock if touched. These wall plug adapters shipped with Mac and certain iOS devices between 2003 and 2010 and were also included in the Apple World Travel Adapter Kit. Apple is aware of six incidents worldwide.
The recall does not affect any Apple USB power adapters.
Follow the link, check the picture. If you’ve got one, trade it in.
Took six incidents to prompt this public recall. Oddly specific. Can’t help but wonder what the rules are for such a thing. And where does the MacBook keyboard issue fit into that scheme?
Microsoft joins $1 trillion market cap club
A billion dollar valuation makes you a unicorn. What do you call a company with a trillion dollar valuation? A basilisk? A chimera? A manticore? A hippogriff? A pegasus?
None of these seem quite right. How about a kelpie? I kind of like that one.
That aside, I think Apple should run an ad similar to the one Steve Jobs ran so very long ago, welcoming IBM to the fold.
Welcome, Microsoft. Seriously.
I finally found a Steve Jobs plush! He goes perfectly with my 1st Gen iPod.
Here’s the picture, Steve plush with iPod.
Want one? The Reddit poster bought it here.
A “blockchain bandit” is guessing private keys and scoring millions
Wired:
What if an Ethereum owner stored their digital money with a private key—the unguessable, 78-digit string of numbers that protects the currency stashed at a certain address—that had a value of 1?
To Bednarek’s surprise, he found that dead-simple key had in fact once held currency, according to the blockchain that records all Ethereum transactions. But the cash had already been taken out of the Ethereum wallet that used it—almost certainly by a thief who had thought to guess a private key of 1 long before Bednarek had.
And:
That initial discovery piqued Bednarek’s curiosity. So he tried a few more consecutive keys: 2, 3, 4, and then a couple dozen more, all of which had been similarly emptied. So he and his colleagues at the security consultancy Independent Security Evaluators wrote some code, fired up some cloud servers, and tried a few dozen billion more.
Seems such an obvious tack to take. And reinforces my avoidance of blockchain backed currency. Perhaps I simply lack the sophistication to travel in such currencies. But when I read stories about people losing their life savings to stolen or misplaced blockchain currency accounts, it just scares me off.
This is a great read.
Mouse and trackpad support is apparently coming to iPad with iOS 13
Federico on the Connected podcast:
Something that I heard from a couple of people a few months ago sort of mentioned to me just casually, “Wouldn’t it be funny if you could have a mouse cursors on iPad as an accessibility feature?”
And:
But then I started doing some research and I learned that actually it’s already possible, if you have right accessibility hardware like special joysticks and motors, to have some kind of cursor on iOS. This is already possible and has been possible for years.
But what I heard from sources is that without any adapter you will be able to use a USB-C mouse, on your iPad, as an accessibility device.
And then this followup:
https://www.twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/1120447708215554049
I am fascinated by this possibility. Is this purely for accessibility, or is this a step towards a truly universal merging of iOS and macOS?
Apple now quoting next-day turnaround on MacBook keyboard repairs
This is just so much better than losing your Mac for a week or more, which felt like punishment to me for buying into the new keyboard design.
I’ve been living with an intermittent “r” key failure for a few months now. Instead of taking my Mac in, I’ve just been hammering on the “r” key until I dislodged (temporarily) that piece of micro-crumb.
The other day, my MacBook Pro charger failed and, when I brought my Mac in to see what was what, the Apple Genius asked me about my keyboard experience. I was in a hurry, wasn’t prepared to leave my machine at that moment, but the Genius did tell me that they could have my Mac back to me the next day.
As to my charger, turned out to be a faulty cable, replaced at no charge, in and out in about 15 minutes. Brilliant.
Amber alerts and AirPods
Reddit:
Just got my first set of AirPods two weeks ago. Really enjoying them now that my company has switched to iOS and I tote around 2 iPhones. Then today I just popped them in to walk to the office and an Amber Alert game in. Through the AirPods. Full blast loud. My eyes watered and I threw one out as fast as possible but didn’t quite get the other in time as I tried to dismiss the alert. Holy hell my ears are ringing so loud. Is there any way to turn that down??
Amber alerts are designed to play at max volume, to get your attention. I get that.
But seems to me, Apple should do a bit of testing with AirPods volume, set a max limit for emergency klaxons and Amber alerts. There are people who need their AirPods at full volume, so not clear that a hard volume level cutoff is the right answer, but seems clear that the current in ear volume for Amber alerts and the like is just too loud and, perhaps, harmful to hearing.
iFixit’s Samsung Galaxy Fold Teardown
iFixit:
Well, we’ve finally got the Samsung Galaxy Fold on our teardown table. This is, without question, an ambitious first-generation device—the idea of having both a smartphone and a tablet in your pocket at all times is pretty exciting! That said, a number of early reviewers had some durability issues with their review units, ultimately leading to a launch postponement. Are these temporary setbacks? Or are we headed for a full-blown AirPower-style product cancellation?
The teardown is full of great pics and details, but this little bit goes to the heart of the matter:
Unlike the dull slabs of glass we’re used to, this smartphone/tablet hybrid has lots of potential entry points—and not the good kind.
To achieve the fold, the thin bezel that surrounds (and protects) the screen leaves a gap where the two halves meet.
And:
This 7 mm gap doesn’t seem like a huge deal, but it leaves the display exposed—so should something accidentally enter, it’s curtains for the screen.
And:
When closed, the screen is protected—but the spine is flanked by massive gaps that our opening picks hop right into. These gaps are less likely to cause immediate screen damage, but will definitely attract dirt.
This all feels like Samsung rushing a poorly thought design to market, letting the analysts do the beta testing.
I do think this debacle will, ultimately, prove valuable to Apple or anyone else who goes down this road. A bit of a “how not to do this” design.
The 50 best music documentaries of all time
I love music documentaries. But I’d be hard-pressed to name 10.
No matter what you think about the order of this list, there’s a lot of good ones to consider here. And as with all lists, there are some worthy candidates left out.
One of my favorites, Muscle Shoals, didn’t make the cut. Any others you’d add?
How to find the best deal on digital movie rentals
Rent movies? Take a few minutes to read Glenn Fleishman’s TidBITS post. There’s a lot of interesting nuggets here.
Thief steals iPhone XR, accidentally uploads video to iCloud
Reddit:
My friend had her iPhone XR stolen. She’s just realised that the ‘thief’* has made a video – it’s really short but shows the thief – and it’s been uploaded to her iCloud – is there a way I can pull the location data for a video?
Find my iPhone has been now disabled. So she’s out of options there, just wanted to do something to help if I could.
Read the thread to learn about pulling location data from a video (a number of options, and be aware that anyone can pull location data from your videos, just as they can from a still photo).
I wonder how the thief was able to disable Find My iPhone yet the poster was able to retrieve the video, so still had control of the Apple ID and iCloud account. The story appears to be ongoing.
Apple spends $30 million+/month on Amazon’s cloud, making it one AWS’s biggest customers
CNBC:
As Apple and Amazon compete for a greater share of consumer dollars and attention, they also have a particularly intimate business relationship: Apple is spending more than $30 million a month on Amazon’s cloud, according to people familiar with the arrangement.
Apple’s cloud expenditure reflects the company’s determination to deliver online services like iCloud quickly and reliably, even if it must depend on a rival to do so.
Add in this comment from John Gruber:
A decade ago, pre-iPhone, Apple was notoriously behind on large-scale cloud services. But AWS only got started as a service in 2006, the year before the iPhone debuted. It was based on infrastructure Amazon had been working on since the 90s, sure, but it wasn’t a service Apple could even consider until 2006.
iCloud was launched in 2011. That’s 8 years. If Apple is still largely reliant on AWS today, why? Maybe they just honestly figure they don’t need to do it all themselves.
I’ve long wondered why Apple makes such heavy use of AWS. Is this simply because they don’t have the internal chops to deliver bulletproof cloud in the same way as Amazon? Is there more to it, perhaps a subtle piece in the complex business relationship with Amazon (Amazon sells some, but not all Apple products, Amazon’s video streaming service competes with Apple’s coming TV+, Amazon Video lives on Apple TV, etc.)
Student sues Apple for $1 billion, claims facial recognition led to false arrest
Bloomberg:
Ousmane Bah, 18, said he was arrested at his home in New York in November and charged with stealing from an Apple store. The arrest warrant included a photo that didn’t resemble Bah, he said in a lawsuit filed Monday. One of the thefts he was charged with, in Boston, took place on the day in June he was attending his senior prom in Manhattan, he said.
And:
Bah said he had previously lost a non-photo learner’s permit, which may have been found or stolen by the real thief and used as identification in Apple stores. As a result, Bah claimed, his name may have been mistakenly connected to the thief’s face in Apple’s facial-recognition system, which he said the company uses in its stores to track people suspected of theft.
Interesting on several levels. There’s the amount of the claim ($1B, an extraordinary number), the tidbit about Apple using facial-recognition in its stores, and the fact that a second company (Security Industry Specialists Inc.) is named in the claim.
Why JCPenney dropped Apple Pay
Yesterday, we posted about JCPenney inexplicably removing support for Apple Pay, both from its retail stores and its mobile app.
Well now we know why.
JC Penney (as posted in the linked TechCrunch post):
A third-party credit card brand made the requirement for all merchants to actively support EMV contactless functionality effective April 13, retiring the legacy MSD contactless technology in place. Given the resources and lead time associated with meeting the new mandate, JCPenney chose to suspend all contactless payment options until a later date. Customers still have the ability to complete their transactions manually by inserting or swiping their physical credit cards at our point-of-sale terminals in stores, an option employed by the vast majority of JCPenney shoppers.
As to whether JCPenney will bring Apple Pay back, the TechCrunch post quotes JCPenney CEO Jill Soltau:
“I think that’s one of the key initiatives that we’ll be working on here in the coming months because we’re not being as strategic in how we speak to the customer and engage with the customer through our pricing and promotion,” she said. “And I would frankly say it might be a little bit confusing, and you might not know exactly when you can get the best value at JCPenney,” the CEO added.
The hint here is the importance to JCPenney of customer purchase data, something they lose with Apple Pay:
Customer purchase data allows a retailer to better target its customers with relevant promotions, as stores are able to collect the customer’s name and card number at point of sale, which they can then combine with other demographic data like the customer’s address, phone and email.
Apple Pay, meanwhile, prevents this level of access — something that customers like, but retailers traditionally have not.
The push and pull of marketing and privacy. Is Apple Pay inevitable? Will customers push back on JCPenney’s move away from privacy? Keeping an eye on this one.
Fender releases three Game of Thrones guitars
[VIDEO] Marketing. But still, pretty cool looking guitars, built to order in the Fender Custom Shop.
Embedded in the main Loop post, a video showing a bit of playing on these beauties, along with some back story.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon suffers catastrophic explosion during static fire test
Eric Ralph, Teslarati:
Six weeks after the spacecraft completed its orbital launch debut, SpaceX’s first flight-proven Crew Dragon capsule suffered a catastrophic explosion seconds before a planned SuperDraco test fire.
And:
The April 20th event is the first time in the known history of SpaceX’s orbital spacecraft program that a vehicle – in this case, the first completed and flight-proven Crew Dragon capsule – has suffered a total failure. Regardless of the accident investigation’s ultimate conclusions, the road ahead of Crew Dragon’s first crewed test flight has become far more arduous.
Here’s video showing the explosion:
https://www.twitter.com/Astronut099/status/1119825093742530560
This is a terrible setback. [H/T Brother Stu]
Samsung cancels Galaxy Fold China launch event
Yeah, that might be prudent.
Social media influencer plotted to take internet domain at gunpoint. It didn’t end well.
Faith Karimi, CNN:
After entering the home, the intruder grabbed the victim’s arm and ordered him to connect his computer to the internet.
He put the firearm against the victim’s head and ordered him to follow the instructions. “Fearing for his life, the victim quickly turned to move the gun away from his head. The victim then managed to gain control of the gun,” court records show.
The victim shot the intruder multiple times and called the police.
Read the story. Just wow. But as soon as I read “ordered him to connect his computer to the internet”, I could see how this was going to go.
JCPenney removes Apple Pay support from its retail stores and mobile app
JC Penney tweet confirming the removal of Apple Pay:
https://www.twitter.com/askjcp/status/1119595205559234560
In all the stories I’ve read on this issue, no one seems to know why this happened. And the “We will definitely forward your feedback regarding this for review” comment makes it look like this was either done with blinders on (accounting making a decision that impacted in store customer experience, for example), or done as a trial, waiting to see if there is any pushback from customers.
Read the thread comments. Pushback happened pretty immediately. It’d be interesting to know the reason for this decision. A definite step backwards. Penney pinching?
Zoomquilt
An infinitely zooming image. It’ll start as soon as you click the link.
Hypnotic.
15 months of fresh hell inside Facebook
Wired:
Earlier that month Facebook had unveiled a major change to its News Feed rankings to favor what the company called “meaningful social interactions.” News Feed is the core of Facebook—the central stream through which flow baby pictures, press reports, New Age koans, and Russian-made memes showing Satan endorsing Hillary Clinton. The changes would favor interactions between friends, which meant, among other things, that they would disfavor stories published by media companies.
And:
Davos provided a first chance for many media executives to confront Facebook’s leaders about these changes. And so, one by one, testy publishers and editors trudged down Davos Platz to Facebook’s headquarters throughout the week, ice cleats attached to their boots, seeking clarity. Facebook had become a capricious, godlike force in the lives of news organizations; it fed them about a third of their referral traffic while devouring a greater and greater share of the advertising revenue the media industry relies on. And now this. Why? Why would a company beset by fake news stick a knife into real news?
This is a perfect weekend read, both riveting and chock full of detail. More detail to add to my growing stack of “Why I don’t use Facebook” arguments. I do love the idea of reconnecting with childhood friends, staying in touch with my family. I wish there was a true, do no evil platform for this.
Princeton IoT Inspector lets you see what your smart home devices are up to
Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac:
Smart home devices are potentially one of the bigger security threats since there is no easy way to check what they are up to on your network. That’s a problem Princeton University has set out to solve, with the Princeton IoT Inspector.
And:
The tool is Mac-only for now. Using it, you can see:
- a list of all the IoT devices on your home network
- when they exchange data with an external server
- which servers they contact
- whether those connections are secure
Nice find. I’ve long thought about a user friendly device you could add to your network, have it build a list of devices you know about, give them names (such as Dave’s Switch, or Emma’s Mac, etc.), then have it automatically report (send you a text, perhaps) whenever a new, unknown device hopped onto your network.
To extend that idea, how about adding in the ability to detect cellular communications, within a short radius, reporting on those devices as well.
There are lots of solutions out there that do some of these things, but none I’ve found that do all of them, and none in a particularly friendly, efficient way. Please do weigh in if you know of something along these lines.
In the meantime, this Princeton tool is a nice one to explore. Though it’s not part of the Mac App Store, so do so at your own risk.
Steve Jobs looks up a few words in the dictionary
[VIDEO] Steve knows how to hold a room, deliver a punchline. I love this. Video embedded in main Loop post.
Samsung’s Galaxy Fold review units breaking, peeling, a bit of a PR nightmare
Yesterday, my Twitter feed was littered with complaints about Samsung’s new foldable phone. Here’s but one example (WARNING: Strobe effect in the video):
https://twitter.com/stevekovach/status/1118571414934753280
This is not simply one unit gone bad. One after another, from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman to Marques Brownlee to the Verge’s Dieter Bohn (the author of the linked article), reports of faulty review units kept rolling in.
Samsung’s response:
A limited number of early Galaxy Fold samples were provided to media for review. We have received a few reports regarding the main display on the samples provided. We will thoroughly inspect these units in person to determine the cause of the matter.
Might be that they were poorly made, rushed to market. Just a thought.
To add to the mess, the protective film that covered the units was so poorly applied, it appeared as if it was designed to be removed. And remove it they did. Here’s Joanna Stern’s Fold. Seem’s pretty ripe for peeling to me.
Samsung’s response continues:
Separately, a few reviewers reported having removed the top layer of the display causing damage to the screen. The main display on the Galaxy Fold features a top protective layer, which is part of the display structure designed to protect the screen from unintended scratches. Removing the protective layer or adding adhesives to the main display may cause damage. We will ensure this information is clearly delivered to our customers.
Oh, Samsung.