Apple

It’s the middle of the night. Do you know who your iPhone is talking to?

Written by

Geoffrey A. Fowler, Washington Post:

On a recent Monday night, a dozen marketing companies, research firms and other personal data guzzlers got reports from my iPhone. At 11:43 p.m., a company called Amplitude learned my phone number, email and exact location. At 3:58 a.m., another called Appboy got a digital fingerprint of my phone. At 6:25 a.m., a tracker called Demdex received a way to identify my phone and sent back a list of other trackers to pair up with.

And all night long, there was some startling behavior by a household name: Yelp. It was receiving a message that included my IP address -— once every five minutes.

And:

You might assume you can count on Apple to sweat all the privacy details. After all, it touted in a recent ad, “What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone.” My investigation suggests otherwise.

iPhone apps I discovered tracking me by passing information to third parties — just while I was asleep — include Microsoft OneDrive, Intuit’s Mint, Nike, Spotify, The Washington Post and IBM’s the Weather Channel. One app, the crime-alert service Citizen, shared personally identifiable information in violation of its published privacy policy.

This is a big deal. Privacy is core to Apple’s brand and one of the main reasons I am so loyal to Apple’s ecosystem. Looking forward to Apple’s response to the Washington Post.

iFixit and a microscope compare the 2018 and 2019 MacBook butterfly mechanism side-by-side

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[VIDEO] For me, there were three key parts to this video (embedded in the main Loop post):

  • At about 1:32, you’ll see a walkthrough of the stack that makes up an individual butterfly key. Here’s a tweet with all the piece in one place. Makes it a bit easier to see.

  • At about 2:38, there’s a closeup look at the dome switch cover, where the change in materials seems to have been made. The new dome switch cover is nylon, a more “robust” material than what was used before.

  • At about 3:58, you get a closeup of the old and new dome switches.

Not sure you can really draw any conclusions from the video, but I did find the closeup look at the mechanism interesting.

What really happens to AirPods when they die

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This article is a mixed bag. The tone was a bit Apple-bashing, but there were nuggets at the core that made the whole thing worth reading.

Some highlights:

Three years after their debut, a generation of AirPods is nearing obsolescence as their lithium-ion batteries degrade (or they get lost or dropped down the toilet) and owners upgrade to the new model, which came out in March.

My AirPods started to degrade at the beginning of the year, to the point where the shortened battery life started to get in the way for me. As the article points out, there was no way for me to change out the batteries and the cost of Apple doing it made the possibility of a refresh not cost-effective.

I bought the new rev when they went on sale, passed along my old ones. They still do work, after all.

The environmental case against AirPods rests on four main points. First, they don’t last long: Lithium-ion batteries degrade over time, and there have been reports of AirPods failing to hold a charge after as little as 18 months. Second, they can’t be repaired: You can’t crack them open without special tools (and possibly some bloodshed), and even if you could, the components inside are tangled and glued together. Third, they can’t easily be recycled for the same reasons. And finally, it’s irresponsible to throw them in the trash both because they contain minerals that were mined at significant human cost and because their batteries could pose fire and toxicity hazards in waste dumps — though this is true of most modern gadgets.

All fair points. Apple’s response:

As with all of our products, we work closely with our recyclers to ensure AirPods are properly recycled and provide support to recyclers outside of our supply chain as well

I have to say, Apple does make it easy to return their products to them for recycling. You can bring pretty much any Apple device you own to Apple for recycling or, for newer devices, for a trade-in. Here’s a link to Apple’s trade-in page.

That said, the author raises a fair question about the recyclability of AirPods:

Wistron confirmed to me that you can recycle key portions of AirPods, notably the battery, from which the mineral cobalt can be extracted. The problem is that the value of what can be recycled is unlikely to cover the cost of recovering it. With no automated system that can safely open AirPods or extract their components, each device has to be opened by a worker using hand tools, like pliers and jigs. Their first goal is to cleanly dislodge the battery and then the audio drivers, which can also contain precious metals. The battery is sent on to a specialized smelter to extract the cobalt, which can be reused, while the drivers are sent to precious metal refiners.

At the end of the day, the value of the material recovered from AirPods does not appear to cover the cost of recycling them. And that value is what drives recycling.

NYC subway riders will be able to swipe in with Apple Pay starting Friday

Written by

TechCrunch:

Apple Pay is hitting select stations this Friday, May 31. When that kicks in, riders will be able to swipe their iPhone or Apple Watch to catch a ride.

And:

The kiosks are actually active, at present, but using them requires a software update — iOS 12.3 and watchOS 5.2.1, respectively. Then a debit or credit card needs to be associated with Express Transit in Apple Wallet, using Face or Touch ID. Once installed, it should work on the iPhone 6s and SE or later, along with the Apple Watch Series 1, 2 and 3, using NFC to get you in.

Can’t wait to try this myself. To me, this is the best example of Apple Pay cutting down on payment friction, joining all the other NFC solutions out there, but with the advantage of being tied to your Apple Watch. No need to pull your phone or metro card out of your pocket.

Brand new iPod touch brings immersive AR and Group FaceTime

Written by

Apple:

Apple today introduced the new iPod touch with enhancements to power, capability and communication at a remarkable price. The Apple-designed A10 Fusion chip brings improved performance in games, and for the first time on iPod, immersive augmented reality (AR) experiences and Group FaceTime, making it easy to chat with family members, friends or colleagues simultaneously.

Available to order now, in stores later in the week.

Interestingly, the iPod touch is not on Apple’s home page, even though most every other new product and service is there. There’s no iPod category along the top of the store, either.

No matter, my guess is, it’ll appear later today. In the meantime, here’s a link to the main iPod touch page. Pricing starts at $199 for the 32GB model, $299 for 128GB, $399 for 256GB.

Available in six colors, including (PRODUCT)RED™.

Huawei founder, on threat of China ban against Apple: “Apple is my teacher”

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Bloomberg, in interview with Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, asked about the threat of China banning Apple:

Ren said he would object to any such move against his American rival.

“That will not happen, first of all. And second of all, if that happens, I’ll be the first to protest,” Ren said in the interview. “Apple is my teacher, it’s in the lead. As a student, why go against my teacher? Never.”

Fascinating article.

Samsung Cloud drops 15GB free tier, will soon only give 5GB of free storage to new users

Written by

Android Police:

Samsung has started notifying device owners that starting June 1st, new Samsung accounts will be limited to 5GB of online storage. The company’s phones sync photos to Samsung Cloud by default, which caused the free 15GB to fill up rather quickly, so 5GB will surely go much faster. Existing accounts will stay at 15GB, and since the change is still a week away, you can create a Samsung account right now and lock in the current storage.

You’re going the wrong way.

This a lesson learned from Apple?

In China, nationalist rhetoric of “switch to Huawei” gaining traction

Written by

South China Morning Post:

“There is a calling from my heart that I need to show support for Chinese brands, especially in the trade war climate,” said the manager at one of China’s largest solar module manufacturers. When the time finally came to retire his three-year-old iPhone 7 earlier this month, Wang went with a Huawei P30.

This is a terrible situation for Apple. Their efforts at building good will and a positive brand message in China are being undone by the Huawei ban.

My worry is, even if the ban ends tomorrow, it will take Apple years to undo the brand damage.

Three keyboard changes Apple should make—to iOS

Written by

Dan Moren, Macworld:

Apple popularized the onscreen keyboard with the launch of the first iPhone, deciding to eschew the hardware keyboards that were de rigueur on smartphones at the time.

And:

That was great in 2007. But 12 years later, we’ve all largely adapted to touchscreen keyboards, and some of those smart technologies are starting to look and feel, well, not so smart. It’s time for an A-to-Z overhaul of text entry on iOS.

Dan digs into several virtual keyboard areas where there’s room for improvement. Take the time to read his article, not a long read.

I do think there’s plenty of room for improvements here. In my mind, one core problem is the blind dependence on machine learning to drive predictive text suggestions.

Here’s an example:

I brought up Twitter, and started composing a new tweet. I typed the letters “proc”, which led the keyboard to make the center prediction of the word “process”. Perfect, exactly what I was going for.

But then I typed “e”, the next letter in process. And that center suggestion was changed to another word. This happens a lot.

But the point is, when I am typing, and I see the word I want in a specific box, if I type one more letter in that word and then reach to tap the word, it should not move. I frequently find myself typing, reaching to tap the word I’m typing, and by the time my finger gets to the box, the word has changed to another word.

If my eye is on the target, and I continue to type the target word as already identified, the target word should stay the same. Until I type a letter that does not match the currently identified target word.

My sense of this is, machine learning has priority over straight logic.

I’d love to speak with someone on the keyboard team about this, and other related issues. I wonder if the team is not seeing these sorts of issues themselves.

Who’s going to stop Spotify’s viral rap impersonators?

Written by

Pitchfork:

There’s a rapper on Spotify named Lil Kambo who’s racked up 2 million streams and counting on his song “Kid Carti.” This would be a significant feat for any unsigned, self-releasing artist in the modern day.

The only problem is that “Lil Kambo” doesn’t exist and “Kid Carti” is a pitch-shifted leak of Playboi Carti’s yet-unreleased track “Kid Cudi” (previously referred to as “Pissy Pamper”), a song the rapper’s been teasing for some time and even playing out live. Lil Kambo isn’t a viral hit—he’s a fraudster.

And:

Fraudulent releases are nothing new on sites like YouTube and SoundCloud. But these recent unauthorized uploads, as demonstrated by the unauthorized Beyoncé and SZA releases back in December and a “Fenty Fantasia” leak of Rihanna songs in March are indicative of a growing trend that’s only grown more apparent in the past several months: leaks or unreleased snippets that make their way to “legitimate” streaming platforms, racking monetized streams by fans eager to consume that content regardless of who owns it or who benefits from the plays.

Bottom line, these fakes hurt both the original artists they’re lifted from, but also pollute the marketplace.

One final point:

As of May 22, fraudulent music on the profiles of Lil Kambo, Unocarti, and Unocompac have been removed from Spotify. The artist profile for Unocompac on Apple Music still features leaks, available to listen on the platform.

It’s a whack-a-mole problem. Seems like there should be a unified process for reporting and removing content like this. A takedown notice of piracy on one platform, once verified, could automatically trigger the takedown of that content on all the music services. Impossible? Overreaching?

What is the world’s number one brand?

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[VIDEO] Here’s another one of these ranking races (embedded in main Loop post). In this one, we start back in 2000, with CocaCola dominating the rankings.

But keep a keen eye out for a newcomer to enter the race in 2010. Who could it be?

The continuing war to fingerprint iPhones

Written by

SensorID:

When you visit a website, your web browser provides a range of information to the website, including the name and version of your browser, screen size, fonts installed, and so on. Ostensibly, this information allows the website to provide a great user experience. Unfortunately this same information can also be used to track you.

Cross domain tracking is a well known problem, and Apple is on top of it. But read on.

We have developed a new type of fingerprinting attack, the calibration fingerprinting attack. Our attack uses data gathered from the accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer sensors found in smartphones to construct a globally unique fingerprint.

Dear advertisers, no one wants this to happen. You can tell because the tunnels you dig keep getting blocked. No one ever write’s a blog post begging for newer ways to cross domain track.

Following our disclosure, Apple has patched this vulnerability in iOS 12.2.

Once again, Apple has our backs.

Huawei: ARM memo tells staff to stop working with China’s tech giant

Written by

BBC:

UK-based chip designer ARM has told staff it must suspend business with Huawei, according to internal documents obtained by the BBC.

ARM instructed employees to halt “all active contracts, support entitlements, and any pending engagements” with Huawei and its subsidiaries to comply with a recent US trade clampdown.

The screws are tightening. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, some form of retaliation from China.

This still feels like a negotiation tactic, rather than an actual security concern.

Side note: The BBC article does a nice job explaining ARM and its relationship to ARM adoptees like Apple, Samsung, and Qualcomm. Huawei is one of ARM’s top customers. This ban is a big deal.

How Apple dominates the touch feedback game

Written by

iFixit:

Put simply, haptic feedback recreates the sense of touch or movement in an otherwise immovable or shallow-clicking object, like a button or trackpad. This is accomplished with a vibration motor, emitting controlled bursts of bzzzt as you tap and press. Apple has branded its own vibration motor the Taptic Engine.

And:

What makes Apple’s Taptic Engine different from other haptic applications we’ve seen over the years is the precise engineering Apple has put into it, and the precious space they devote to it inside their increasingly tight devices. Given this effort, Apple has come closer than any firm at actually replacing the tactile mechanical buttons some of us might miss.

And:

When the weighted mass inside a vibration motor moves back and forth at just the right speed, the vibration effect produced by the motor is amplified across the whole phone.

And:

Apple tunes their Taptic Engines to resonant frequencies optimized for quick, precise taps; and since they are designed in-house, they can pick specific sizes, shapes, and resonant frequencies for each product. In contrast, other smartphone manufacturers are at the mercy of whichever vibration motor manufacturer they happen to be purchasing from.

It’s those tiny details. No one is better than Apple at identifying and implementing those details in fit and finish. And I hear some of you in the back shouting “Butterfly keyboard”. Yes, but the keyboard issues are most notable because they are glaring exceptions to what we’ve come to expect from Apple.

Fascinating read.

Apple invents a Vehicle Radar System that reads road signs, detects other vehicles in low visibility conditions

Written by

Patently Apple:

The system relates to improving detectability of road signs and vehicles on the road in low visibility conditions like fog or snow with a plurality of retroreflectors. For instance, if traveling on the road in a snow storm and road signs are covered in snow, a retroreflector system, using radar, would be able to read the text under the snow and relate it to the driver on a CarPlay display and/or other device display.

This is an interesting invention, shows Apple is still going down the Project Titan road, has value for a human driver.

But, it seems to me, the future of road signs and low-visibility hazard warnings (a car stuck in the middle of the roadway in a snowstorm, for example), is digital, not analog. In addition to flashers and reflectors, which are great for humans, signs/on-board hazard signals designed for automated vehicles will be equipped with high speed communications targeted at all nearby traffic.

The rub here is that time in between, where both human and automated traffic share the road.

Apple made informal bid to buy Tesla at $240 per share in 2013

Written by

Malcolm Owen, Apple Insider:

Speaking on CNBC on Tuesday, Roth Capital Partners analyst Craig Irwin claimed Apple made a “serious bid” to purchase Tesla, around 2013, with the offer supposedly in the region of $240 per share. It is unclear how far along the alleged negotiations went, such as a “formal paperwork stage” that would signal an intent to purchase.

Interesting story. Clearly anecdotal, but seems to line up with this:

A profile of Apple’s mergers and acquisitions chief Adrian Perica in February 2014 included references to a meeting between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Apple CEO Tim Cook in Cupertino in 2013, at around the same time as a German analyst wrote an open letter to Cook suggesting an Apple purchase of Tesla. That report cited multiple sources about the supposed meeting, but again with little proof it actually took place.

Would Apple owning Tesla, producing a car be a good match for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, et al, side of the business?

Side note: As of this writing, Tesla is trading at $201.49.

Google suspends Huawei’s non-open source Android license

Written by

Angela Moon, Reuters:

Alphabet Inc’s Google has suspended business with Huawei that requires the transfer of hardware, software and technical services except those publicly available via open source licensing, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Sunday, in a blow to the Chinese technology company that the U.S. government has sought to blacklist around the world.

And:

Holders of current Huawei smartphones with Google apps, however, will continue to be able to use and download app updates provided by Google, a Google spokesperson said.

It’s too early to truly know the impact of this suspension, but a few things click right away:

  • Huawei has confirmed that they’ve built their own operating system as a backstop. I can’t imagine it’s as good as Android or iOS, but if this situation continues, China’s leading smartphone seller will no longer run a US smartphone OS.

  • In quarter 1, 2019, Huawei shipped 29.9 million smartphones in China, compared to Apple’s 6.5 million. If Google’s suspension holds, I can only imagine those numbers moving even further apart. Certainly, I can’t see this situation helping Apple in China.

  • This could all end quickly, as such trade restrictions can do, if this is a White House negotiating tactic and not a permanent restriction.

Why did this happen?

From the South China Morning Post:

Huawei Technologies and over 70 affiliates were added to the US Commerce Department’s Entity List last week on national security grounds, restricting the company from buying parts and components from US companies without government approval.

More on this as it unfolds.

Apple Watch replacement constraint means some Series 3 repairs will get Series 4 upgrade

Written by

Jordan Kahn, 9to5Mac:

Apple appears to be running low on inventory for Apple Watch Series 3 repairs as the company informed store staff today that it will substitute some Series 3 repairs with the newer Apple Watch Series 4.

And:

The change means that customers looking for a repair or replacement for their Apple Watch Series 3 Stainless Steel (GPS + Cellular) model will instead be fulfilled with Apple Watch Series 4, Stainless Steel (GPS + Cellular) inventory as a replacement due to constraints on the older model.

Good to know. Huge swing in satisfaction, going in to the Apple Store all sad with a broken Apple Watch 3 and walking out with a brand new Apple Watch 4.

Google uses Gmail to track a history of things you buy — and it’s hard to delete

Written by

CNBC:

Last week, CEO Sundar Pichai wrote a New York Times op-ed that said “privacy cannot be a luxury good.” But behind the scenes, Google is still collecting a lot of personal information from the services you use, such as Gmail, and some of it can’t be easily deleted.

Here’s a link to the op-ed, which painted Google as the privacy protector for the masses and Apple as privacy for the elite.

The op-ed really rubbed me the wrong way, felt like hypocrisy of the worst kind. And this CNBC post does a nice job laying out exactly why.

Google says it doesn’t use your Gmail to show you ads and promises it “does not sell your personal information, which includes your Gmail and Google Account information,” and does “not share your personal information with advertisers, unless you have asked us to.”

But, for reasons that still aren’t clear, it’s pulling that information out of your Gmail and dumping it into a “Purchases” page most people don’t seem to know exists. Even if it’s not being used for ads, there’s no clear reason why Google would need to track years of purchases and make it hard to delete that information.

The article gets specific, showing purchases not made through Google that are tracked by Google and not easily deleted. How is this privacy for the masses?

Over the Rainbow estate sues Apple, others over “massive music piracy operation”

Written by

Forbes (yes, Forbes – they broke the story):

The son and estate of Broadway composer Harold Arlen filed a lawsuit against Apple and other businesses for selling over 6,000 unauthorized recordings of his music. Described as a “massive music piracy operation,” the lawyers claim that “Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Pandora and their distributors have joined with notorious music pirates to sell and stream thousands of pirated recordings.”

And:

According to the lawsuit, the largest digital music stores and streaming services are now flooded with unauthorized copies of Arlen’s songs that are being sold under different record labels for less than the price of the authorized copies of Arlen’s songs. For example, one online retailer is selling a song from the Jamaica cast album under the record label Soundtrack Classics for $0.99 alongside an authorized copy of the song from the RCA Victor record label for $1.29. The cover art of the Soundtracks Classics version has been doctored to remove RCA Victor’s logo.

Seems like this is more of a broken system allowing pirates to slide into the digital music streaming chain and not piracy on Apple’s part.

Is there a system in place for filing copyright claims in Apple Music? If so, did Arlen’s estate file the claims and were those claims ignored?

I analyzed how the AirPods 2 and case charge

Written by

This is some nerdy deliciousness. The highlight is this graph, which shows what’s really going on.

The four takeaways, for folks who hate nerdy graphs:

  • The AirPods “boost” charge for the first 3.5 minutes
  • Pods take 30 mins to completely charge, Case takes 2 hours
  • The case waits to charge until the Pods hit 20%
  • Pods+Case never draw more than 2.5 watts total

Note that this was done using a 5 watt brick and a standard Apple cable on a non-wireless case.

Apple ruling opens a can of worms for digital storefronts

Written by

Rob Fahey, GameIndustry, writing about this week’s Supreme Court ruling against Apple:

When I walk into a convenience store to buy a cold drink, I’m a customer of the convenience store, not of the Coca-Cola Company, so why should different logic apply when I open the App Store on my phone? Yet Apple’s argument wasn’t entirely without merit either (that’s why it made it all the way to the Supreme Court, I guess). Apple isn’t buying the software from the developer and reselling it to you (as a convenience store does with your Coke Zero), it’s providing a storefront to the developer, who has responsibility for how the software is presented, what they put into it, how it’s priced, and so on.

And:

The precedent is now set; if Apple’s digital distribution consumers are considered to be direct customers of the company, and thus to have standing to challenge its business practices in court, this also holds true for every digital software or media store out there.

That’s a pretty big deal.

This writeup is one of the clearest explainers I’ve seen of the issues at work here and the potential for tipping over a major legal apple cart.

Bumper cars and Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook

Written by

Neil Cybart:

We are seeing the early signs of a new competitive landscape take hold in the tech space. Facebook and Google find themselves increasingly getting squeezed. Meanwhile, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft are gaining competitive strength. Each is building stronger customer bonds while also expanding its respective ecosystem.

And:

One of the best and easiest ways to visualize this changing competitive landscape is to think of the giants as bumper cars. In the beginning, the bumper cars were on a track with a guardrail in the middle preventing head-on collisions. All of the cars moved safely around the loop in the same direction. Despite a few bumps here and there, each company (car) was able to largely do what it wanted without running into too many competitive hiccups.

And then they removed the guardrail in the middle of the track. Nice analogy (the pictures help) and an interesting read.

The inside story behind the birth of the spreadsheet

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Came across this link on Jason Snell’s excellent Six Colors this morning.

It’s a story that appeared way back in 1984, a retelling of a seminal moment in computing history, the birth of the spreadsheet in the late ’70s.

A great read, especially if you are interested in the history of Apple. VisiCalc, the spreadsheet that started it all, came to life on an Apple II.

Steam Link finally arrives on the iOS App Store

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From the App Store writeup:

The Steam Link app brings desktop gaming to your iPhone or iPad. Just pair an MFI or Steam controller to your device, connect to a computer running Steam on the same local network, and start playing your existing Steam games.

Requirements: – iPhone or iPad using iOS 10 or higher – Computer running Steam – Windows, Mac, or Linux – iOS device must be on the same local network as the computer running Steam

This will definitely change the way I look at gaming. If the controls of a game translate to the flat glass of an iPad, I’ll definitely add it to my game roster.

Will this have any impact on subscriptions to Apple Arcade? Will Apple Arcade games, designed from the ground up for iOS, be significantly more pleasurable to play than Steam games?