The headline of the linked iMore article says it all:

“Samsung’s at it again and this time it stole Apple’s Face ID icon”

I can’t even. Why, Samsung, why?

Federico Viticci, MacStories:

I love my AirPods Pro and, ever since I bought them last October, I’ve been taking advantage of their noise cancellation technology to use them in more contexts than the original AirPods.

And:

There’s one thing I don’t particularly like about them, though: the default silicone tips.

Whether you can’t get a well-sealed fit with any of the AirPods Pro tips, or if you are after a more comfortable fit, take a few minutes to read Federico’s journey. Hard to explain it here, but just scroll through the images in Federico’s post and you’ll get a sense of how he used memory foam from another pair of headphones to make a much better fit, one that offers a better seal.

Incredible piece of work, a real labor of love, pulled together by Benjamin Mayo for 9to5Mac.

Follow the headline link, scroll through the headlines that defined Apple’s past decade. Wave after wave of Apple nostalgia.

Apple:

Apple has marked the close of a historic 2019 for its Services offerings, a year that introduced Apple Arcade, Apple TV+, Apple News+ and Apple Card, and celebrated the continued success of the App Store, Apple Music, iCloud and more experiences only Apple can create and deliver.

And:

Since the App Store launched in 2008, developers have earned over $155 billion, with a quarter of those earnings coming from the past year alone. As a measure of the excitement going into 2020, App Store customers spent a record $1.42 billion between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, a 16 percent increase over last year, and $386 million on New Year’s Day 2020 alone, a 20 percent increase over last year and a new single-day record.

That second paragraph is packed with interesting info. A quarter of all App Store earnings, since 2008, came in 2019. That’s remarkable.

And $386 million on New Year’s Day? Does that indicate a ton of new Apple product unwrapped over the holidays? Is New Year’s Day the day people kick back, relax, and start customizing their devices?

No matter, some incredible success for Apple. Congrats to the Services team.

CNBC:

At last year’s CES tech trade show in Las Vegas, Apple attracted a lot of attention because of a large well-placed billboard ad that read, “What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone.”

This year, Apple made its first official appearance at the conference in years and was forced to defend that position. Jane Horvath, Apple’s senior director of global privacy, was on a panel on Tuesday alongside representatives from Facebook, Procter & Gamble and the Federal Trade Commission, and was asked about the company’s use of encryption.

Horvath said that Apple has a team working around the clock to respond to requests from law enforcement. But she said she doesn’t support building so-called back doors into software that would allow law enforcement elevated access to private data to solve crimes like terrorism.

“Building back doors into encryption is not the way we are going to solve those issues,” Horvath said.

This appearance has been touted as “Apple returns to CES!” but it’s all hype. Not what Horvath said but the seeming importance so many in the tech media seemed to place on her panel showing.

Polygon:

A holy site where any casual viewer of Jeopardy! can appreciate the profound weight of the program’s 36-year history. A dissertation-level study on how the show’s nightly trivia affected the ambient knowledge of the American mind. An exacting catalog of the countless number of times that Alex Trebek has shepherded us through categories of potpourri, of arcane word games, of 19th-century novelists whose names begin with the letter E.

What is the J! Archive?

On the fan-run J! Archive, a would-be scholar can click on any season, from any year, and bear witness to thousands and thousands of tabulated episodes. There are national congresses that are less comprehensive than the J! Archive, and Robert Schmidt, a 39-year-old patent attorney and the original architect of the website, tells me over email that the full scope of documenting Jeopardy! requires a near-insurmountable amount of work. Still, he doesn’t think he’s doing enough.

I discovered the J! Archive many years ago when I was prepping to try and be on the show (never actually made it). The website is a throwback to the “old days” of Web 1.0 and is an incredible time sink you should not even look at unless you’ve got several hours to kill.

Buzzfeed:

If you’ve been on social media in the past few weeks, you’ve probably seen a map (or five) of Australia’s devastating bushfires.

Maps displaying alarming red flames dotted around Australia keep going viral. But while such images are certainly raising awareness, they can also be a source of confusion, and even misinformation.

Here are a few examples of the maps being shared, and things to watch out for.

The situation in Australia is bad enough without people passing along incorrect information. Most of the “fire maps” you’ve seen on social media in the past few days are, at the very least, misleading.

9to5Mac:

Does your Apple Watch keep reminding you to breathe? You’re not alone. People all over the world are interrupted by the Apple Watch reminding them to breathe every day — even if they’re already breathing. So what gives?

One of the most common misconceptions about Breathe alerts is that they are related to stress. The idea is that the Apple Watch detects when you need to take advice from Taylor Swift and calm down.

I don’t suffer from this confusion (I “breathe” with the app when it’s convenient but give it no further thought) but this is a good primer into what’s going on behind the scenes.

Follow the headline link for all the details but, in a nutshell, Bluetooth LE Audio:

• operates on Bluetooth Low Energy
• offers improvements in perceived audio quality at a lower bit rate
• enables transmission of multiple, independent, synchronized audio streams (think audio sharing, one source, multiple, or many, devices)
• brings significant advances in hearing aid/hearing implant technology

The video below gives a taste of what’s coming.

John Voorhees, MacStories:

With the release of iPadOS 13, Safari took a big step forward as a ‘desktop-class’ browser with a wide variety of enhancements that collectively eliminate a long list of complaints leveled against the app in the past. Safari’s ability to dynamically adjust the viewport to fit the iPad’s screen, enhanced support for pointer events, hardware-accelerated scrolling of frames and other regions of a webpage, along with other under-the-hood changes add up to a genuinely new browsing experience that has made work in sophisticated web apps like Mailchimp a viable option for the first time.

Great read. John Voorhees uses a specific use case to make clear the value of desktop Safari on iPadOS 13. To me, this is one of the tethers keeping me tied to my Mac falling away.

MacRumors:

Apple has indicated that it plans to update its serial number format to a randomized alphanumeric string for future products starting in late 2020. Apple says all serial numbers that exist before the change is made will remain the same.

And:

Apple already uses alphanumeric serial numbers, but it has long been possible to determine the date and location that a product was manufactured based on the current format.

Interesting.

Arquette has won multiple Emmys, multiple Golden Globes (one win Sunday night), and an Oscar. A great and storied career, and arguably at the peak of her game. Solid get for Apple.

Anthony Colangelo:

It’s been a few months since I launched Downlink, and since then I’ve put out a few nice updates—better handling of Spaces, multiple displays, and so on.

But there was one big feature on my list that I’m happy to announce is now available: custom views of Earth!

The full disk views can be really high resolution, so custom views can be zoomed in pretty tight on where you live or somewhere you love on Earth.

I love these “earth views”.

Flurry:

The week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day in the United States is the most prolific for device activations, app downloads and app usage. A wave of new devices flood the market as phones are given as gifts during the holiday season, followed by consumers loading them up with apps.

Apple’s iPhone 11—this year’s lowest end model of the 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max trifecta—continues to dominate the smartphone landscape, representing 15.4% of all new Apple devices activated and 6.16% of all smartphones activated between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

Apple’s 2018 iPhone XR, which was the dominant device leading up to Christmas Day in 2019, comes in at a close second with 13.2% of all Apple devices and 5.27% of all smartphones. In fact, Apple’s older generation devices continue getting traction, likely appealing to more price sensitive customers. iPhones 6, 7 and 8 all cracked the Top 10 list.

I find it interesting the iPhone 11 Pro doesn’t make this list. Looks like consumers are being budget conscious or going big, with no room in the middle for the “simple” Pro.

Last night’s Golden Globes felt unmoored, Ricky Gervais in full, uncontrolled roast mode. Tim Cook was there, along with Apple TV+ stars such as Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Jason Momoa.

Take a look at the video (quick, before the video is DMCA’d) in the embedded tweet for the double-edged take on The Morning Show and “sweat-shops in China”.

Ricky Gervais:

"…You say you're woke but the companies you work for…Apple, Amazon, Disney…if ISIS started a streaming service you'd call your agent, wouldn't you. If you do win an award tonight, don't use it as a platform to make a political speech…" pic.twitter.com/rVRIng2JAH

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) January 6, 2020

Ouch.

To be clear, you can select one from a limited set of emoji, or go with text, one or the other.

Emoji engraving available on all three AirPods case choices (original, original charging case, or AirPods Pro).

Jimmy Grewal, former Program Manager for Microsoft’s Mac Internet Explorer efforts, celebrates the twentieth anniversary of IE 5 and the port to the brand new Mac OS X, with pictures, videos, and a few Steve Jobs mentions, all rolled into a 25-part Twitter thread.

Ars Technica:

Although the influence of superheroes on modern culture is undeniable, the influence of modern culture on many superheroes remains hazy to this day. Comic creators, perhaps often wanting to maintain a little mystique, have historically been hesitant to get explicit about their inspirations. But when thinking through 80-plus-years-and-counting of our favorite caped crusaders changing slightly with the times, their real world analogues become clearer and clearer.

One of comics’ most iconic heroes might also be the perfect example of this. Since his first appearance in Action Comics #1 in 1938, Superman has adapted to the times. The “Man of Steel” we saw in 2017’s Justice League didn’t just happen overnight, after all. Superman’s long term evolution is the result of many transformations and technological advancements throughout the decades.

What a great Saturday morning read. I bet many people didn’t know Superman couldn’t fly in the original comic books.

The Verge:

Dozens of fires erupted in New South Wales, Australia in November and rapidly spread across the entire continent to become some of the most devastating on record. An area about twice the size of Belgium, roughly 15 million acres, has burned. At least 18 people are dead, including at least three volunteer firefighters, and more are missing. More than 1,000 houses have been destroyed, hundreds more damaged. As blazes intensified in the days leading up to New Year’s Eve, thousands of people who were forced to evacuate sought shelter on beaches across New South Wales and Victoria. Over 100 fires are still burning.

Although there have been fires across all of Australia’s six states, New South Wales has suffered the worst. Nearly half a billion animals, including mammals, birds, and reptiles, likely lost their lives in the blazes in New South Wales alone — a staggering loss which is probably an underestimate, according to the University of Sydney. Eight thousand koalas, a third of all the koalas in New South Wales, perished. About 30 percent of the koalas’ habitat has also been wiped out.

I have friends and family in Australia, specifically in New South Wales who are affected by these devastating fires.

Macworld:

HomeKit, the company’s smart home framework, has been around since 2014, and though it was slow to take off, a few key changes have helped it become more popular as the years have gone on.

That said, there’s a lot of competition in the smart home arena, which can mean extra complications when the field is growing so fast: fragmentation, problems with interoperability, and so on. But, in a rare move for Apple, it seems as though the company is moving to combat those problems head on…by working with others.

Apple still has an opportunity to be a player in the home automation market but “slow and steady” (or “dragging their feet,” depending on your POV) is going to make that a lot more difficult. Luckily, Amazon and Google have the usual privacy and data security issues that slow adoption but Apple needs to move a lot quicker. I had many people asking me about various home automation solutions over the holidays and it was hard to wholeheartedly recommend anything HomeKit-based.

Yahoo:

Apple Inc. shares surpassed $300 amid predictions for a robust holiday quarter, demand for wearables such as AirPods and planned services including streaming TV.

Shares of the iPhone maker rose 2.3% to close at a record $300.35, topping the $300 mark for the first time on a split-adjusted basis. Thursday’s gain was in stark contrast to the dismal start Apple had in 2019 when it cut its sales forecast for the first time in almost two decades exactly a year ago.

Investors are increasingly optimistic about Apple’s user base of nearly 1.5 billion consumers and its ability to leverage auxiliary products like the Apple Watch, AirPods and Apple TV and major hardware upgrade cycles for the iPhone and iPad every few years. The company has also promoted its user base as a key to generating recurring revenue from services like iCloud storage subscriptions, streaming service Apple TV+, Apple Music and AppleCare.

I don’t usually post about the vagaries of Apple’s ups and downs in the stock market but the $300/share threshold is a big deal, especially for those of us who remember when the stock was at $7/share.

MacRumors:

As of iOS 13, apps are no longer able to present an “always allow” option when requesting access to a user’s location. The only way to immediately grant an app continuous access to location is to navigate to Settings > Privacy > Location Services, tap on an app, and select the “always” option if available.

iOS 13 also periodically reminds users about apps that are continuously tracking their location, complete with a map of those locations. An on-screen alert provides users with options to continue to “always allow” ongoing access to their location or to limit access to while the app is being used.

In light of those changes, The Wall Street Journal today reported that some developers are concerned that the location tracking reminders will hurt adoption of their apps, while some iPhone users are said to have expressed frustration that the reminders appear every few days despite repeatedly selecting “always allow.”

Little to no sympathy for developers, many of whom are likely abusing Location Services. As for consumer complaints, security and privacy is a PITA but better to have too much than not enough.