[VIDEO] Susan Kare is the designer behind the original Mac icons and fonts. Her work is foundational, incredibly influential.
The video embedded in the main Loop post was posted on Andy Hertzfeld’s amazing YouTube channel. Feels like time travel to me, a real moment in time.
Joseph Cox, Motherboard:
I plugged the Apple lightning cable into my iPod and connected it to my Mac, just as I normally would. My iPod started charging, iTunes detected the device, and my iPod produced the pop-up asking if I wanted to trust this computer. All expected behaviour.
But this cable was hiding a secret. A short while later, a hacker remotely opened a terminal on my Mac’s screen, letting them run commands on my computer as they saw fit. This is because this wasn’t a regular cable. Instead, it had been modified to include an implant; extra components placed inside the cable letting the hacker remotely connect to the computer.
This was more fruit from the annual DefCon hacking conference, proof of concept that is worth keeping in mind.
Me? I avoid using unknown USB bricks, lightning or USB-C cables. I suspect I might be overly paranoid, but easy enough to just throw an extra charger in my bag when I travel so I never have to take that chance.
Very interesting read.
Android Police:
That’s right, Samsung is once again spamming Galaxy phones with advertisements, this time for the Note10.
This time around, push notifications advertising the Note10 are being sent out by at least three pre-installed applications — Samsung Pay, Bixby, and the Samsung Push Service. Bixby wants you to ask it about the Note10, Samsung Pay is offering points when you look at the phone’s product page, and Samsung Push Service just gives you a banner ad with no indication of where it came from. I received the Bixby ad on my international Galaxy S10e, but I haven’t personally seen the others.
Does Apple push unasked-for ads like this? I can’t ever recall getting an ad of any kind from Siri.
David Pierce, Wall Street Journal:
The Apple Card makes quite an impression. The white titanium slab contains no numbers or expiration date—only your name, an Apple logo and the chip. Whip it out of your wallet and it clatters onto a table with a delightful “tink” sound. James Bond might be a Black Card guy, but Q would definitely use an Apple Card.
And:
The card isn’t the point, though. The Apple Card is mostly a digital being, a combination of expense-tracker and bill-payer in an app on your phone. It’s also something of an ad for Apple Pay, the company’s tech for paying with iPhone, your Apple Watch or your Apple ID.
And:
If you have the Apple Card, you get 2% back on purchases you make using Apple Pay—3% when you use the card to buy apps, movies and devices from Apple.
And:
The most surprising thing about my testing was discovering how many places accept the tap-to-pay Apple Pay features. Apple says 65% of all U.S. retail locations now support it.
To me, the Apple Card is a no-brainer, at least to get. It’s free, and offers significant benefits on purchases from Apple. It’s also a solid first credit card for beginners, helps build financial literacy, an understanding of where your money goes.
If the built-in planning tools are not important to you, get the card as a supplement. Use your normal card for benefits and protections not offered by Apple Card, use Apple Card where it works better.
Great review, hits all the highlights.
Fascinating deep dive into Steve Jobs’ beloved bicycle analogy.
Here’s the quote:
“When we invented the personal computer, we created a new kind of bicycle…a new man-machine partnership…a new generation of entrepreneurs.” —Steve Jobs, c. 1980
After you read Steven Sinofsky’s excellent post, take a few minutes to read Steve Jobs’ original essay that started this whole thing off.
Eyal Itkin, Checkpoint:
Our research shows how an attacker in close proximity (WiFi), or an attacker who already hijacked our PC (USB), can also propagate to and infect our beloved cameras with malware. Imagine how would you respond if attackers inject ransomware into both your computer and the camera, causing them to hold all of your pictures hostage unless you pay ransom.
I can’t imagine this ever being worth the time for a hacker, but just another example of why we can’t have nice things. And the questionable value of adding the internet to everything.
[VIDEO] Headlines have been flying around the internet similar to this one:
“Apple Is Locking iPhone Batteries to Discourage Repair”
As I read through the various articles on this issue, I remained pretty convinced that Apple was not specifically trying to discourage repair. There had to be more to the logic.
Turns out, there was more to it. And Rene Ritchie did a great job laying out the issues, making this understandable. Still not thrilled with the answer, but I get Apple’s goals here. Watch for yourself. Video embedded in main Loop post.
Threatpost, via 9to5Mac:
Researchers on Wednesday during Black Hat USA 2019 demonstrated an attack that allowed them to bypass a victim’s FaceID and log into their phone simply by putting a pair of modified glasses on their face. By merely placing tape carefully over the lenses of a pair glasses and placing them on the victim’s face the researchers demonstrated how they could bypass Apple’s FaceID in a specific scenario. The attack itself is difficult, given the bad actor would need to figure out how to put the glasses on an unconscious victim without waking them up.
Obviously, this is a very slim scenario, requiring an unconscious victim. But it does raise the specter of law enforcement rendering someone unconscious in order to break into their phone.
Juli Clover, MacRumors:
Apple is introducing an expanded bug bounty program that covers macOS, tvOS, watchOS, and iCloud as well as iOS devices, Apple’s head of security engineering Ivan Krstić announced this afternoon at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas.
Someone is going to pay for those vulnerability details. Way better for everyone if it’s Apple.
Digiday:
Publishers including Vice Media and The Stylist Group say they’ve gotten traffic and, more importantly, revenue lifts from Apple News in the last three months. While this is from a small base, for some publishers it signifies that patience with publishing to the platform, which has been widely accepted as good for brand awareness but lagging revenue, is starting to pay off.
Details in the linked article, but certainly good news for Apple News+. Personally, I’d take another look at the service if Apple made some UX tweaks to improve the search mechanism, make it easier for me to find and get to the original articles, and add tools to more easily manage my reading list.
The big change here is the move from HDMI 1.4b to HDMI 2.0.
HDMI 1.4b:
That last is also known as 1080p, or Full HD.
HDMI 2.0:
Note that there’s also an HDMI 2.1, requires still another specialized cable, for 4K at 120 Hz, and beyond. Apple’s updated dongle is rated for HDMI 2.0.
Jake Kanter, Business Insider:
Samsung has a long and illustrious history of trolling Apple in its smartphone commercials. But now the South Korean firm is cloning one of the iPhone features it once mocked, and has quietly deleted records of the ads.
I kind of like the sequencing of this tweet from Sam Henri Gold.
Oh Samsung.
Even if you know nothing about Bitcoin, this is pretty easy to follow. But if you have a sense of that universe, this is step-by-step, slow motion sweet revenge, social engineering in reverse.
Billboard:
On Wednesday (August 7) Apple Music announced the launch of Apple Digital Masters, a new initiative by the streaming giant that combines all of its “Mastered for iTunes” offerings into one global catalog. This is the company’s first public acknowledgement of the initiative, which it has been quietly unveiling for some time.
You’ll see the new “Apple Digital Master” on associated songs in the Music app in macOS Catalina. I’m hoping for a checkbox that lets me limit my music browsing to only those songs.
Take a look at this Reddit post to get a look at the new badge.
Apple posted their latest iOS adoption numbers. Some pie charts, and some opinion […]
Interesting and important work, no doubt.
I do wonder if I’d like to know if dementia, or Alzheimer’s is coming my way. For me, it’s similar to the question of knowing the exact day I’m going to die. I do think there’s value for those around me, no question. And if there’s a treatment, of course, it’d be critical to know so I can maximize my chances and my quality of life.
But there’s a psychic toll to knowing something is coming for me, something relentless, dark, and inevitable.
Would you want to know?
Last week, we posted a link to some some pretty amazing typing on Apple Watch.
Here’s an even more impressive version, this one with the video disabled. Pretty cool.
Adrianne Jeffries, Motherboard:
The Yelp app lists a restaurant’s direct phone number on the actual listing. That’s (212) 262-8300 in the case of Judge Roy Bean Public House. But when you click on the phone number, this dialogue shows up: Delivery or Takeout and General Questions.
And:
When a user clicks on the “Call” button labeled “Delivery or Takeout,” they are taken to a different number, (646) 394-9837, which is owned by Grubhub.
And:
Even though restaurants are capable of taking orders directly—after all, both numbers are routed to the same place—Yelp is pushing customers to Grubhub-owned phone numbers in order to facilitate what Grubhub calls a “referral fee” of between 15 percent and 20 percent of the order total
Read this article. Astonishing. It gets way worse.
My first thought, after processing all this, was, “This is the crowdsourcing behind Apple Maps”.
I hope Apple has a backup plan. Perhaps one of the many partnerships Apple Maps has outside the US? This is not a good look for Apple Maps.
Julia Alexander, The Verge:
Disney will offer a bundle package of its three streaming services — Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ — for $12.99 a month starting on November 12th, the company announced today.
Bob Igor, Disney CEO, during yesterday’s investor call:
The streaming services is likely to be available through “Amazon, Apple, and other distributors,” according to Iger. Disney has not finalized any deals with the aforementioned companies, but told investors “we feel it’s important for us to achieve scale quickly, and we think it’s going to be an important part of that. They’re all interested in distributing the product.”
Presumably, if you sign up for the bundle outside Apple TV, you’ll still have access to all three inside Apple TV, though you might have to jump through a few verification hoops to enable that access.
If you are an existing subscriber to, say, Hulu, via Apple TV, seems to make sense to dump that subscription and sign up for the bundle instead. Will the bundle signup be available within Apple TV?
Hulu with no ads is $11.99 a month. Assuming that no-ads Hulu is the one included with this bundle, the $12.99 bundle allows you access to Disney+ and ESPN+ for just a buck more a month. A no-brainer.
UPDATE: I’m told that the version of Hulu included with this bundle is the ad version, which runs $5.99 a month. Wonder if there’s a path to the ad-free version from the bundle. As is, that means you are paying $7 a month for Disney+ and ESPN+. Still a no-brainer, at least to me.
Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac:
The granted patent could use the Mac’s camera to do two things. First, it would avoid timing-out into sleep mode when there’s someone in front of the machine.
and, after posting a big chunk of “patenteze” from the granted patent:
My reading of that and the accompanying illustrations is that the Mac can automatically wake and log you in, even if it is in sleep mode when you approach it.
Sounds good to me. And, I’d add, it sounds like that “second sensor” mentioned in the patent is your Apple Watch, though could be the iPhone in your pocket, too.
From the press release:
By adding Amazon Music Unlimited, Prime Student members can now get over 50 million songs, thousands of curated playlists and stations, and discover new music through voice with Alexa
This is no small thing. Amazon is quickly gaining on both Apple Music and Spotify. In part, this is due to the wild success of Echo and Alexa. Imagine how this would be if Amazon had a successful phone and watch to add to the mix.
Hacker News put out a call to its readers for their favorite Mac keyboard shortcuts. Worth a scan. I’d be shocked if even the most seasoned Mac power user didn’t find a few surprises there.
[VIDEO] This Bill Gates interview came out about a month ago, but I just watched it this morning, thought it was worth sharing.
The whole thing is relatively short, all interesting, but the Steve Jobs bit kicks in at about 2:40 in. I definitely get a sense that Bill held a real reverence for Steve. The video is embedded in the main Loop post.
This was a really interesting read. If you have an iPad Pro with USB-C, spend a few minutes scanning the options here. Dongle city, but necessary for many.
[VIDEO] Apple’s official YouTube channel just added 10 new Apple Card videos. The first one, How to Apply, is embedded in the main Loop post. The rollout has started.
Matthew Panzarino, TechCrunch:
Apple Card is getting its first group of public test users today. A limited amount of customers that signed up to be notified about the release of Apple Card are getting the ability to apply for the card in their Wallet app today — as well as the option to order their physical Apple Card.
I’ve been using the card for a few days on my own device, making purchases and payments and playing around with features like Apple Cash rewards and transaction categorization.
And:
The application process was simple for me. Portions of the information you need are pre-filled from your existing AppleID account, making for less manual entry. I had an answer in under a minute and was ready to make my first purchase instantly. I used it both online and in person with contactless terminals.
It…works.
Read the article for more of Matthew’s personal experience. Expect to see a wave of articles as the invites continue to go out. Here’s a link to the Apple Wallet Apple Card application page.
I’ll definitely be getting a card, though I’ll also share my card use with my existing credit cards. One thought I have is to use Apple Card when I travel, especially overseas, to minimize the hassle of fraudulent card use.
This is simply incredible.
This series of experiments fascinates me. Heads up, this is not a cassette player, which is what first sprang to mind. Heh. Silly me.
Considering signing up for an Apple Card? Read the Apple Card Customer Agreement, posted on the Goldman Sachs website (via Juli Clover, MacRumors).
A few highlights:
On the credit card APR:
13.24% to 24.24% when you open your account, based on your creditworthiness. After that, this APR will vary with the market based on the Prime Rate.
You may not use or permit your Account to be used for:
That second one is subtle. Back in definitions, Cash Advances are defined as:
Any cash advance and other cash-like transaction, including purchases of cash equivalents such as travelers checks, foreign currency, or cryptocurrency; money orders; peer to peer transfers, wire transfers or similar cash-like transactions; lottery tickets, casino gaming chips (whether physical or digital), or race track wagers or similar betting transactions.
Got it? Good.
Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:
Last week, Trump announced that the United States would place a 10 percent tariff on another $300 billion worth of goods imported from China, starting September 1st.
And:
Kuo writes that Apple has likely made “proper preparations” for such a tariff, and he predicts that Apple will “absorb most of the additional costs” in the mid-short term. Thus, Kuo believes that “prices of hardware products and shipment forecasts for the U.S. market will remain unchanged” despite the tariff.
Obviously, the cost of any such tariff needs to be paid. If Apple eats the tariff cost, rather than passing it along to consumers, that will impact their bottom line.