Apple

Facebook gave device makers deep access to data on users and friends

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New York Times:

As Facebook sought to become the world’s dominant social media service, it struck agreements allowing phone and other device makers access to vast amounts of its users’ personal information.

Facebook has reached data-sharing partnerships with at least 60 device makers — including Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry, Microsoft and Samsung — over the last decade, starting before Facebook apps were widely available on smartphones, company officials said.

And:

Facebook allowed the device companies access to the data of users’ friends without their explicit consent, even after declaring that it would no longer share such information with outsiders. Some device makers could retrieve personal information even from users’ friends who believed they had barred any sharing, The New York Times found.

And in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica furor:

Facebook’s leaders said that the kind of access exploited by Cambridge in 2014 was cut off by the next year, when Facebook prohibited developers from collecting information from users’ friends. But the company officials did not disclose that Facebook had exempted the makers of cellphones, tablets and other hardware from such restrictions.

And:

Some device partners can retrieve Facebook users’ relationship status, religion, political leaning and upcoming events, among other data. Tests by The Times showed that the partners requested and received data in the same way other third parties did.

Read the Times article. Then read this response from Facebook, titled Why We Disagree with The New York Times:

Given that these APIs enabled other companies to recreate the Facebook experience, we controlled them tightly from the get-go. These partners signed agreements that prevented people’s Facebook information from being used for any other purpose than to recreate Facebook-like experiences. Partners could not integrate the user’s Facebook features with their devices without the user’s permission. And our partnership and engineering teams approved the Facebook experiences these companies built. Contrary to claims by the New York Times, friends’ information, like photos, was only accessible on devices when people made a decision to share their information with those friends. We are not aware of any abuse by these companies.

This is very different from the public APIs used by third-party developers, like Aleksandr Kogan. These third-party developers were not allowed to offer versions of Facebook to people and, instead, used the Facebook information people shared with them to build completely new experiences.

This is complicated. And if the Cambridge Analytica story had not happened, we might not even be discussing this.

It all comes down to trust. Do you trust Facebook with your data? If not, can they do anything to earn that trust back?

And one more bit, this Reddit thread (H/T Marlin Clark) asking, Is Facebook listening through your smartphone microphone?

I know this seems crazy, but read the article linked at the top of the post and ask around. There are a lot of examples of people reporting this. I’m skeptical, but there are a lot of these out there.

WWDC 2018: What Apple’s big show means to you

Written by

Jason Snell, Tom’s Guide:

You might have heard that Apple is holding a big event soon — its annual Worldwide Developer Conference, or WWDC, in San Jose, Calif. And yes, there will be numerous announcements at a keynote address given on Monday morning (June 4) to open the event. But if you’re not an Apple developer (and you probably aren’t), what does the event mean for you?

First things first, Jason Snell has really made me a regular reader of Tom’s Guide.

That aside, this is interesting, a non-developer’s take on the conference.

Driver looking at Apple Watch found guilty of distracted driving

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National Post:

A driver looking at an Apple Watch while stopped at a traffic light is still guilty of breaking Ontario’s distracted driving law, despite the trendy device’s new technology and her claim she was only checking the time.

And:

Victoria Ambrose was stopped at a red light on South Ring Road in Guelph in April when a University of Guelph police officer, beside her in his cruiser, noticed the glow of an electronic device. The officer testified he saw her looking up and down about four times, court heard.

Interesting. I don’t buy the argument that she was only checking the time. That just takes a wrist raise and a glance, no more time than any other watch.

Surprised this doesn’t happen more often.

How to watch today’s WWDC keynote

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The tech world’s eyes will be on today’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference keynote.

The keynote runs from 10a to noon PT (1p to 3p ET).

You can watch it on your Apple TV (launch the Apple Events app) or via Apple’s live stream.

Coincidentally, my 2015 MacBook Pro trackpad died this morning. Hoping against hope for a new Mac announcement today, even a speedbump. Not looking good, as the store is still up, no signs of a refresh.

Useful things you can do with 3D Touch

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iPhone J.D.:

3D Touch was introduced with the iPhone 6s in September 2015, and also works on the iPhone 7, iPhone 8, and the iPhone X (and the Plus variants of those phones). But even though 3D Touch has been around for many years, I talk to many folks who don’t even know that the feature is there. Frankly, I forget about it sometimes too. But there are tons of really useful things that you can do with 3D Touch. Here are a few of my favorites.

3D Touch is, by its nature, only discoverable if you seek it out. Or if you read articles like this one. Short, and worth the scan.

Bloomberg rolls out their predictions for WWDC

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I’m not quoting the Bloomberg article here to avoid spoilers, but follow the headline link if you are interested in a seemingly solid take on what’s coming next week.

Three days until the keynote.

Canon shutters 80-year history of film cameras

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The Japan News:

Canon announced Wednesday it would end sales of its EOS-1v, the last remaining model of film camera that the company has sold in Japan. The company’s film cameras, which symbolize Canon’s old-time roots, will come to the end of their 80-year history.

As Robert Walter put it, this is a sign of the times. To me, this is a domino that is connected to other film cameras, then, eventually, to DSLR cameras as smart phone cameras gain in capability, shrink the market for larger/bulkier cameras.

Not sounding a death knell for DSLRs, just watching the market shrink, squeezing out competitors, triggering consolidation until we just have a one or two players left in the DSLR space.

As is, last year 85% of all photos were taken using smartphones, with only 10.3% taken using traditional digital cameras. If that trend continues, watch for the next domino to fall. Will the next generation know the Nikon/Kodak/Leica brands?

Apple Launches global music publishing division, evolves chart strategy

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Music Business Worldwide:

Apple has launched a new internal division dedicated to music publishing and music publishers, MBW understands, led by respected exec Elena Segal.

Segal, who was previously Legal Director of iTunes International, is stepping up to become Apple Music’s Global Director of Music Publishing.

And:

MBW hears that the new music publishing team at Apple Music will contain sub-divisions including Operations, Commercial, Publisher Relations and A&R. (The latter refers to assisting the music industry with the development of key songwriters, rather than signing talent directly.)

And from this follow-on post:

A transformation is coming to the way that Apple reports streaming data – both to the industry and to the public via its charts.

And:

The music business has long used Apple’s iTunes download charts as a key barometer of success. Yet it’s fair to say that, in recent years, Spotify’s global and territorial streaming charts have become a more frequent point of reference for labels and artists than Apple Music’s equivalents.

Apple clearly wants to change that.

Interesting. Two sides here: On one side is music publishing. Will this trigger another round of negotiations with Apple Records or does the current deal allow for an Apple music publishing arm?

Will Apple connect their music publishing with their in-the-works video content publishing? Will there be an all-you-can-eat deal, so i can pay one price and get all the music, as well as all the video content?

The other side: The way I read these posts, as well as Apple’s help wanted ad for a Charts & Market Analytics Manager, Apple is modernizing their charts and data sharing, perhaps with an aim of taking on some of the gains Spotify has made in this space.

They took your headphone jack, we brought it back

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This is pretty clever, both as a product and as a tagline. The AudioMod Qi enabled Battery Case features a 3.5mm headphone jack and a 3200Mah battery.

Price is $88. I’m going to get one, take it for a spin. Good idea.

Girl saved from forced marriage by Apple’s Find My iPhone app

Written by

The Telegraph:

A teenage girl used Apple’s Find My iPhone app to help her secret boyfriend rescue her from a forced marriage thousands of miles away in Bangladesh.

A court heard her parents tricked her into going on a sham holiday from their home in Leeds, West Yorks, as part of a plot to force her to marry her cousin.

And:

Details of her rescue by British authorities emerged at Leeds Crown Court. They were able locate her after she secretly contacted her boyfriend of eight months in the UK before the wedding took place.

The girl, now 19, used the Find My iPhone app and Instagram locations to secretly alert her boyfriend back in the UK, who she hadn’t told her family about.

Find My iPhone is a huge win for Apple customers. Wondering if someone is, as you read this, pitching this story as a blockbuster movie.

What changes need to be made to Apple Music?

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Reddit thread, with this prompt:

With all the predictions for WWDC, I’ve seen many people say that Apple Music needs to be fixed. Most comments however, never elaborate as to what is actually broken.

As someone who hasn’t really had any problems with the service, I’m curious as to what people think is wrong with it?

Lots of specific suggestions, an ever growing list.

HomePod as a computer, chugging away in the background

Written by

Daniel Eran Dilger, AppleInsider:

Apple did introduce Siri Intents for HomePod, enabling App Extensions to take over the handling of specific requests, such as third-party messaging or list-management apps. You can expect to see an expansion of these Siri Extents for HomePod this year. HomePod shipped with a notable lack of support for features Siri can already handle, including Calendar tasks.

A nit: Calendar was promoted to HomePod in the latest release. Not perfect, but definitely there.

The fact that HomePod packs a speedy processor and is unconstrained by battery limits means that HomePod could eventually serve as a smart home computer in the background. Both HomePods and Apple TVs could be orchestrated to handle background tasks distributed across your home network.

And:

Additionally, the fact that HomePod has some onboard storage and a fast processor means that Apple could eventually delegate it tasks that are otherwise wasting battery on your mobile device. Imagine if, rather than Photos doing background imaging processing on your phone for face recognition and album creation, all your devices simply synced your photos to iCloud and your HomePod took advantage of its idle time to process your images in the background, synching them back to iCloud and back down to your devices.

Offloading battery-sucking tasks to the always powered HomePod is an interesting idea.

Daniel’s article is worth reading, some thoughtful speculation.

AirPlay 2 explainer

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Andrew O’Hara, Apple Insider, does an excellent job walking through AirPlay 2.

A few nuggets:

There is now a substantially bigger streaming buffer. This helps reduce interruptions due to network issues. In our testing, this was very noticeable. Audio drops were down significantly from the original AirPlay.

And:

There is now tighter sync between devices, which reduces the lag quite a bit in most situations, and lends itself to multi-room audio. There can still be a bit of lag when starting/stopping a stream, but it is definitely less than in the past.

And:

Apple TV is also AirPlay 2 ready now, so during any playing video a swipe down from the top brings down the info bar. Swiping to Audio shows any AirPlay 2 speakers that can be streamed to. If on the home screen, a long hold of the play/pause button will also bring up the AirPlay controls.

Also worth checking out is Apple’s updated list of AirPlay 2 compatible speakers, found on Apple’s Home Accessories page (tap Speakers).

Unofficial WWDC app for macOS gets major update with iCloud sync, related sessions, more

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Guilherme Rambo, 9to5Mac:

Following the update of Apple’s official WWDC app for iOS, the unofficial app for macOS has been updated to version 6. WWDC for macOS allows both attendees and non-attendees to Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, which starts next week in San Jose, to access live-streams, videos, and session information during the conference and as a year-round developer resource.

Another very useful feature of the app is the ability to stream live videos and recorded sessions to Chromecast devices.

If you are at all interested in WWDC, this is an incredible resource. Download the app, or access the source code (it’s open source) on the official product page.

Bravo, Guilherme.

The woman who brought Siri to life

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Susan Bennett is featured in the latest episode of the video podcast, People in America. Here’s the iTunes link.

Most interesting tidbit? Susan did all her voicework for Siri in 2005, but Siri wasn’t really mainstream until it was integrated into iPhone OS (now iOS) in 2011 and she was unaware that her original voicework was going to be used for Siri. Fascinating.

Hands on with HomePod stereo pairs and AirPlay 2

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[VIDEO] Jeff Benjamin, 9to5Mac, on what you can do with AirPlay 2:

  • Quickly see what’s playing in every room on every speaker
  • Play the same song, in sync, in every room
  • Play different songs on different speakers
  • Use Siri to play different songs in different rooms
  • Stream to rooms without grouping speakers

Take the time to watch Jeff’s excellent video, embedded in the main Loop post. It starts with the basics of setting up a stereo pair, but then comes the good stuff, as he dives into the details of AirPlay 2. Absolutely worth the watch.

iOS 11.4 and Messages

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First things first, take a minute to read Apple’s official press release with all the details on iOS 11.4.

With that in mind, this from this Juli Clover MacRumors post:

Apple says the update also successfully fixes an issue that caused iMessages to appear out of order on some devices, a frustrating bug that’s been around for quite some time and has been the subject of many complaints.

This is the big one, to me. So much Messages oddness, hoping this does indeed fix Messages.

Related note: Take a look at Joseph Keller’s iMore post, How to turn on Messages in iCloud.

All this is working fine for me. So far, so good!

Video compares official Apple iPhone X replacement displays with aftermarket displays

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[VIDEO] Rajesh Pandey, iPhoneHacks:

Getting the 5.8-inch OLED display of the iPhone X repaired from Apple is an expensive process. With Apple charging hundreds of dollars for a screen replacement if you don’t have Apple Care for your iPhone X, it is not surprising that many people end up getting their screen replaced from a third-party repair store which charges significantly less than Apple.

Is there a downside to using an aftermarket replacement? In the video (embedded in the main Loop post), Rajesh takes a look at several aftermarket solutions, compared to an official OEM replacement display.

I came away from this video wondering how representative this is. Do all aftermarket displays suffer from these same shortcomings? At the very least, I would definitely do my homework before I went for a 3rd party replacement display.

How Apple dethroned Intel as the world’s most innovative chipmaker

Written by

Ashraf Eassa, The Motley Fool:

Back in 2013, Apple introduced the A7 system on a chip (SoC) as part of its then-flagship smartphone, the iPhone 5s.

The A7 was the first 64-bit ARM processor.

Now, Intel’s chips, at the time, ran at much higher frequencies (in excess of 3 gigahertz), but what the strong per-gigahertz performance of the A7 chip signaled to me was that Apple had built a very impressive base from which to build up in future smartphone chips.

And:

While Apple is great at chip design, it doesn’t manufacture its own chips — it outsources production to third parties. Apple’s A-series chips through the A7 were manufactured exclusively by Samsung, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company was the exclusive manufacturer of the A8, A10, and A11 chips. TSMC and Samsung reportedly split the orders for the A9.

Both TSMC and Samsung have delivered new manufacturing technologies at a breakneck pace. The performance, power consumption, and economic viability of a chip are determined heavily by the technologies upon which it’s manufactured.

Apple is relentless. As they constantly innovate in chip design, they can take advantage of whatever manufacturing advances bring the most performance advantages for each particular chip generation.

The result:

I believe that when Apple introduces its next iPhone in about four months, it will deliver equal or better CPU performance to Intel’s best notebook processors designed to consume 15 watts but at a fraction of the power consumption.

Amazing.

A walk through past WWDC reveals

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Daniel Eran Dilger, Apple Insider, takes a look back at past World Wide Developer Conferences and the various technologies Apple revealed. This is not nostalgia, but more an exploration of Apple’s evolving strategies, both in timing and in impact.

One bit in particular:

Recall that several years ago, Android phones essentially had a monopoly on 4G LTE service, a truly compelling and vast jump in data speed over what iPhone 5 could do at the time. That advantage lasted for years, but today is irrelevant.

Qualcomm is now trying to resurrect this in advertising the potential for 1.2Gbit mobile data on its Android chipsets–something that isn’t even available in practice from typical mobile networks. But that marketing hasn’t stopped Apple’s iPhones from being the most popular devices around the world–even with a substantial price premium.

If novel features like voice search and AI were really compelling features that drove significant numbers of buyers to new hardware, Google’s Pixel 2 and Andy Rubin’s Essential phone would not have been total duds. The reality is that mainstream buyers consider factors like longevity, reliability and brand experience, and that gives Apple a reprieve from chasing down every short-term tech fad and brief feature advantage its competitors can offer.

I thought this was a terrific read, start to finish. The WWDC keynote is this coming Monday, June 4th.

Human curated illustration in the App Store

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Khoi Vinh, on last year’s App Store redesign:

I myself paid it scant attention until one day this past winter when I realized that the company was commissioning original illustration to accompany its new format. If you check the App Store front page a few times a week, you’ll see a quietly remarkable display of unique art alongside unique stories about apps, games and “content” (movies, TV shows, comics, etc.). To be clear: this isn’t work lifted from the marketing materials created by app publishers. It’s drawings, paintings, photographs, collages and/or animations that have been created expressly for the App Store.

This whole writeup is terrific, but what really struck me was this Pinterest catalog pulled together from screen grabs Khoi took of various App Store pages. Fantastic work on all counts.

And bravo to the App Store team for pulling this off.

Adobe Photoshop: Original Pascal source code and screen shots of one of the first versions

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The Computer History Museum originally posted this back in 2013, but for some reason, this made it all the way to the top spot on Hacker News this morning.

I saw it, found it fascinating (especially since my very first Mac programming experience was with Pascal), and thought you might enjoy this look back at the early days of Photoshop.

Inside Consumer Reports: How iPhone, iPad, Mac, and HomePod testing is performed

Written by

Stephen Silver, Apple Insider:

After years of controversies over Consumer Reports’ assessments of Apple products, AppleInsider paid a visit to the organization’s headquarters for an inside look at the testing process.

The whole thing was fascinating, but start things off with a read of this actual Consumer Reports press release, specifically targeted at Apple Insider.

Glad those fences are mended.

Apple is changing the process of downloading a copy of everything it knows about you

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A few weeks ago, we linked to an article that talked you through the process of requesting a copy of the data Apple associates with your AppleID. In a nutshell, that process had you jump through hoops to identify your location, then fill out a form requesting your data.

Apple just made the process both easier and more logical for EU users, and according to this post from Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac, the new process “will roll out worldwide in the coming months”.

No matter your location, follow this link, to privacy.apple.com, and log in with your Apple ID. All users should see options to correct your data and permanently delete your account.

If you don’t see the ability to download your data, check back in periodically. If you are outside the EU and see the download link, please do ping me so I can update this post. And take a look at Benjamin’s article, linked above, to get a sense of what data is being made available.

This is part of the process of complying with GDPR, but I like how front and center Apple has placed the ability to delete your account.

Next generation iPhone chips go into production

Written by

Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. manufacturing partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has started mass production of next-generation processors for new iPhones launching later this year, according to people familiar with the matter.

The processor, likely to be called the A12 chip, will use a 7-nanometer design that can be smaller, faster and more efficient than the 10-nanometer chips in current Apple devices like the iPhone 8 and iPhone X, the people said.

7 nanometers is the next planned design threshold for semiconductor manufacturing, with 5 nanometer designs about 3 years away.

To give a sense of the curve here:

  • 2008: 45nm
  • 2010: 32nm
  • 2012: 22nm
  • 2014: 14nm
  • 2017: 10nm
  • 2018: 7nm
  • 2021: 5nm

A nanometer is one billionth of a meter. Next step smaller? An angstrom is one tenth of a nanometer. So the 7nm threshold we are about to breach is also the 70 angstrom threshold. Tiny.