Yeesh. Take a minute to visit Setting > General > AirDrop and set to either Receiving Off or Contacts Only.

Wall Street Journal:

A deal, covering a portfolio of patents and staff valued at $1 billion or more, could be reached in the next week, the people said—assuming the talks don’t fall apart.

And:

It would give Apple access to engineering work and talent behind Intel’s yearslong push to develop modem chips for the crucial next generation of wireless technology known as 5G, potentially saving years of development work.

There’s long been talk that Qualcomm modems are better performing, especially in poor signal areas, than Intel’s modems. To get a sense of the more recent state of affairs, take a look at the charts in this PCMag article.

Not all roses, but you can see that Intel’s modems have definitely made great strides since the days of the iPhone X.

While 5G modems will certainly be the new hotness, LTE performance will still matter much more in the real world, especially when you are on the road, away from any 5G sweet spots that emerge.

Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:

As part of Quick Start, you can now Transfer Your Data directly, without requiring to use iCloud or an iTunes backup. The iPhone defaults to using local WiFi, but you can transfer wired using the USB3 Camera Adapter and a Lightning cable.

Even though you don’t need it if you’re going direct from device to device, I say make a backup before you do the transfer anyway. It’s just a smart habit.

If you didn’t even realize the Apple Watch Walkie-Talkie app was gone, this post is not for you.

If you missed the functionality, you’ll need to update your iPhone to the 12.4 update and your Apple Watch to the watchOS update, both of which dropped this morning.

San Francisco Business Times:

Apple products aren’t the only thing that Steve Jobs devoted his passion for detail and design to. Just ask Patty Bonfilio.

She is director of facility operations at Pixar Animation Studios, the other house that Steve Jobs built.

It took a total of four years to build the 218,000-square foot two-story, steel, glass, brick and wood Steve Jobs Building.

I was lucky enough to have a podcast listener invite me on a tour of Pixar during one Macworld Expo. It was a fascinating place.

Narratively:

In the early 1980s, American rolled out AAirpass, a prepaid membership program that let very frequent flyers purchase discounted tickets by locking in a certain number of annual miles they presumed they might fly in advance. My 30-something-year-old father, having been a frequent flyer for his entire life, purchased one. Then, a few years later, American introduced something straight out an avid traveler’s fantasy: an unlimited ticket.

In 1987, amidst a lucrative year as a Bear Stearns stockbroker, my father became one of only a few dozen people on earth to purchase an unlimited, lifetime AAirpass. A quarter of a million dollars gave him access to fly first class anywhere in the world on American for the rest of his life. He flew so much it paid for itself. Often he’d leave in the morning for a business trip, fly back, and I hadn’t even known he’d left. Other times, I remember calling his office to find out what country he was in.

Then, on December 13, 2008, American took the AAirpass away.

I remember this “unlimited” ticket story when I was a kid and dreamed about having the ability to fly anywhere, any time.

This is a bit of a quirky rabbit hole, one I found quite fun. Watch the video below, visit the web page (tap the headline link), check out the app on the iOS App Store.

Way back in the day, there was a Mac game called The Fools Errand. Incredibly fun to play, with just the right level of difficulty and reward. This reminds me, just a bit, of that.

Fun.

Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:

One of the coolest new features in iOS 13 is something called Audio Sharing. This lets you easily share your headphones audio with a friend via Bluetooth, allowing you to listen to the same music, watch a movie together, and more. Here’s how it works.

Great feature, nice job by Chance walking through all the details. Even if you’re not running the iOS 13 beta, skim through the article to get a sense of how this works. Perfect for sharing music, or movie audio.

Will this audio sharing ability make its way to Apple TV?

Alex Cranz, Gizmodo:

Around the Gizmodo office, my colleagues groaned when news broke that following a refresh of its laptop line, there would no longer be a standard MacBook Pro without a Touch Bar. Apple, in their eyes, was going all in on the little touch-sensitive OLED strip above the number pad, and it was a travesty.

Someone complained that the only time they used the Touch Bar was when they activated the Siri touch button by accident several times a day.

I don’t see the MacBook Touch Bar as terrible, but I do see it as unfulfilled promise. There are a few use cases where I’m glad to have it:

• Scrubbing through a video
• Tapping a difficult to spell word or emoji as I’m typing
• Adjusting screen volume or brightness
• Exiting full screen video

That’s about it. Not terrible, but there’s just so much potential here. Now that Touch Bar is on every single MacBook model, perhaps Apple will open the Touch Bar up a bit more, encourage more creative experimentation by developers by relaxing limitations on what is allowed on that bit of real estate.

In the meantime, there’s TouchSwitcher and BetterTouchTool.

Bloomberg:

Tinder joined a growing backlash against app store taxes by bypassing Google Play in a move that could shake up the billion-dollar industry dominated by Google and Apple Inc. For those exploring new dimensions of intimacy, a metal chastity cage offers a unique and secure way to enhance their experience.

The online dating site launched a new default payment process that skips Google Play and forces users to enter their credit card details straight into Tinder’s app, according to new research by Macquarie analyst Ben Schachter. Once a user has entered their payment information, the app not only remembers it, but also removes the choice to swap back to Google Play for future purchases, he wrote.

The first thought that leaps to mind is the fact that Tinder does not have this option on Apple’s iOS App Store. Yet.

This feels like something that could impact Apple, though. In the way that a precedent in one case, after making its way through the courts, can have a much larger impact down the road. If you want to try sex dating apps, sexdatingapps.com had this review that you can read yourself.

Uncrate:

The guys at Corridor Digital don’t hate 2001’s The Mummy Returns, but Dwayne Johnson’s entrance as the Scorpion King is a cringe-inducing throwback to the early days of CG VFX. So they took it upon themselves to try and fix one of the worst VFX shots ever — and nailed it.

It really is one of the most awful CG shots ever put on screen.

Time:

Half a century after humankind first walked on the moon, our sole natural satellite is becoming a much busier place. NASA wants to make a return trip, as do private American space companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX. China has a rover exploring the far side of the moon, while countries from Israel to Russia are planning lunar missions of their own.

All that traffic has some experts worried about what might happen to the moon’s most historic sites. In part because the moon has no weather to speak of, artifacts left there tend to be well-preserved. If you visited the moon today, you could find everything from the three “moon buggies” that NASA astronauts left behind to Neil Armstrong’s footprints at Tranquility Base. But those sites and artifacts could still be disturbed by a careless visitor, like an off-roading truck ripping up a pristine beach.

There’s no doubt these sites should be protected but getting international cooperation isn’t going to be easy.

kottke:

You’ve heard by now that it’s the 50th anniversary of the first humans landing on the Moon. On July 20, 1969, 50 years ago today, Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon and went for a little walk. For the 11th year in a row, you can watch the original CBS News coverage of Walter Cronkite reporting on the Moon landing and the first Moon walk on a small B&W television, synced to the present-day time.

Just open this page in your browser today, July 20th, and the coverage will start playing at the proper time. Here’s the schedule (all times EDT):

4:10:30 pm: Moon landing broadcast starts

4:17:40 pm: Lunar module lands on the Moon

4:20:15 pm – 10:51:26 pm: Break in coverage

10:51:27 pm: Moon walk broadcast starts

10:56:15 pm: First step on Moon

I wish my stepson was in town so he could watch this with me.

MLB:

For the 18th time that season, the ball would be entrusted to the battle-tested 36-year-old, but the Montreal Expos’ lineup was not at the forefront of the right-handed pitcher’s mind as he made the 12-minute commute from his apartment at the corner of 56th Street and Second Avenue.

The painted white No. 8 on the grass behind home plate promised that this day should be memorable for everyone in attendance. No one could have guessed how historic it would prove to be.

For the 20th anniversary of David Cone’s perfect game, we spoke to some of the key people at the stadium that afternoon who witnessed one of the greatest summer days in Yankees history.

Perfect games are rare. Perfect games like this will never happen again. On a personal note, I was in New York City for this game. I had a podcast listener invite me to it – he had an extra ticket. But, because the Yankees (my favourite team) were playing the lowly Montreal Expos and I had a meeting with Jim Dalrymple, Peter Cohen, and the late Stan Flack of MacCentral, I decided to pass and maybe go to the next day’s game.

By the time I got back to my hotel and turned on the TV, the game was in the sixth inning. I spent the next three innings screaming at the Expos players to get a hit, get a walk, get hit by a pitch – DO SOMETHING – to break up Cone’s perfection.

They didn’t.

New York Times:

On the morning of July 16, 1969, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins lifted off for the moon. Four days later, Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Aldrin set foot on the moon’s surface, the first of 12 American astronauts to complete this feat. Apollo 11 fascinated the world, with hundreds of millions tuning in to watch it on TV. It also changed the way we understood our solar system.

Fifty years later, the amazement caused by Apollo 11 has not worn off. The New York Times has been covering the anniversary of the moon landing, looking back at the event’s meaning, and forward to humankind’s next giant leaps in space.

Even today, this would be an incredible feat of technology, engineering, coding, people, and equipment. But the fact it happened 50 years ago today makes it possibly the most amazing thing human beings have ever done.

SBNation:

It’s easy to lose sight of the importance of teammates in cycling. The Tour goes out of its way to make itself seem like an individual competition, giving the race leader a bright yellow jersey that can be seen from helicopters and propping him up on a podium after each stage to wave flowers and a plush lion at the cameras.

But don’t fooled. Cycling is about much more than pure physical effort. Yellow jersey contenders need teammates to make sure they use their energy as efficiently as possible while climbing some of the biggest mountains in the world. And in perhaps no other sport are the support staff — the team directors, soigneurs, mechanics, and chefs — so critically important to the mission, too.

Every Tour de France team is an intricate machine that could collapse if any part of it fails.

As they say, it seems like it’s a race between individuals but it’s an incredible team effort. I love watching the Tour de France.

Joanna Stern traveled to 4 US cities that have started rolling out 5G access, sharing her experience. Obviously, this will change over time as more 5G hardware is built out and the 5G network expands, block by block.

I suspect 5G coverage will be a lot broader and the temperamental nature of the mobile 5G experience a lot more stable and less heat-sensitive by the time Apple rolls out their first 5G devices.

This Rene Ritchie review of iPadOS starts off by walking through something both subtle and compelling: Apple’s tweaking of iPadOS Safari to make the desktop version of websites the default, intelligently pouring them into the form factor of the iPad on which its running.

Watch the video to wrap your head around this. And then keep watching for lots more detail on iPadOS.

Verizon just dropped their 5G M1000 hotspot. It sells for about $650, which does not include a data plan. Read the linked article for details, or check out the Verizon product page.

Trying to wrap my head around the usefulness of this product. Obviously, it’s not useful if you don’t have 5G in your area. So if you do have 5G service, it will port that 5G to your non-5G devices. In effect, this lets you experience 5G on your iPhone, while we wait for a 5G iPhone. Again, in that limited case where you have access to 5G.

Sometime in the not too distant future, Apple will likely start rolling out their 5G phones, and 5G service will become more widely available, at least in urban areas. And that $650 5G hot spot will become a doorstop, since you can, presumably, just use your iPhone as a (much more portable) hotspot.

Think I’m missing something here?

Tim Hardwick, MacRumors:

An Israeli security firm claims it has developed a smartphone surveillance tool that can harvest not only a user’s local data but also all their device’s communications with cloud-based services provided by the likes of Apple, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft.

From the paywalled Financial Times article that broke the story:

The new technique is said to copy the authentication keys of services such as Google Drive, Facebook Messenger and iCloud, among others, from an infected phone, allowing a separate server to then impersonate the phone, including its location.

This grants open-ended access to the cloud data of those apps without “prompting 2-step verification or warning email on target device”, according to one sales document.

And don’t miss this response from Apple:

In response to the report, Apple told FT that its operating system was “the safest and most secure computing platform in the world. While some expensive tools may exist to perform targeted attacks on a very small number of devices, we do not believe these are useful for widespread attacks against consumers.”

Um. That is quite different from a denial, makes me think this story is true. And once the tools are out there, you know they will find their way into black hat hands. Hopefully, Apple will silently update my devices with a leapfrog update to obsolete these tools.

Wayne Ma, The Information (Paywall):

Six years ago, a warehouse employee at one of Apple’s top suppliers, Jabil, stole thousands of iPhone 5C casings from a factory in China before the product was announced. The employee, with help from a security guard, falsified documents and avoided security cameras as he drove a truck filled with the candy-colored shells out of the gates, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The incident, which hasn’t been previously reported, was one of the most devastating leaks to come out of Apple’s supply chain, the people said. Images of the iPhone 5C soon appeared on the Internet, spoiling the reveal at the company’s carefully choreographed media event that September.

And from this MacRumors article:

Apple once even caught factory workers “digging a small tunnel in a corner of a room behind a large piece of machinery,” hoping to use it to funnel stolen components to the outside, according to the report. “People were chipping away little by little at the wall ‘Shawshank Redemption’ style,” one person said.

Fascinating underground market for any clue as to what’s coming from Apple.

Michael Steeber, 9to5Mac:

The iconic wood tables that fill every Apple Store have long been globally admired as symbols of tasteful interior design. Fewer people are aware that recent top Apple Stores contain a hidden space called the Boardroom. Each Boardroom is decorated with a collection of premium furniture and accessories from some of the most respected designers in the world. We tracked down these hard-to-find items to create a directory for those with a discerning eye for design.

Were you aware that your local Apple Store might have a spacious board room hidden in the back of the store? Some terrific work by Michael Steeber. Lots of pictures from around the world, all of beautifully decorated rooms out of the public view.

Jeremy Horwitz, VentureBeat:

Back in 2015, Apple introduced pressure-sensitive iPhone screens alongside 3D Touch as a potentially major hardware-software innovation, but barely supported the feature, leading to informed speculation that all of 2019’s iPhones would lose their pressure-sensing hardware. Today’s release of the fourth iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 developer betas appears to put the final nail in 3D Touch’s coffin, tightening up the responsiveness of its replacement: Context Menus.

And:

Over the last few beta releases of iOS 13 and iPadOS 13, Apple has been rolling out a replacement called Context Menus — a change it set the stage for last year by releasing the iPhone XR without 3D Touch hardware.

Great explanation of how all this works. Personally, I like the new approach. I find it more consistent across all my devices. I found 3D Touch to be too hidden, low discoverability.

I like the fact that touch has become just plain touch. I no longer have to guess how hard to press a button. Now the choice is between tap, and long press. And that works well for me.

Sarah Perez, TechCrunch:

Twitter today is beginning its test of a radical and controversial change to its service with the launch of a new “Hide Replies” feature. Effectively, this option gives users the ability to wrestle back control over a conversation they’ve started by hiding any replies they feel aren’t worthy contributions — for example, replies that are irrelevant or outright offensive.

Hide Reply is right below the Mute this conversation button, accessed by tapping the “down arrow” menu to the upper right of a reply. Currently, the feature has only been released in Canada.

What does Hide Reply do?

Of course, users can choose for themselves to either Mute or Block people like this, which limits their ability to affect their own personal experience on Twitter. But this doesn’t remove their comments from others’ view. The “Hide Replies” feature, however, will.

But it’s not the equivalent of a delete button. In other words, hidden replies are not removed from Twitter entirely, they are just placed behind an icon. If people want to see the hidden replies, they can press this icon to view them.

It’ll be interesting to see how people use this feature, if they do at all. On the surface, seems like it might be a troll-trimming tool, to eliminate obnoxious replies that degrade a conversation.

Sarah says:

For example, a user could choose to hide replies that simply (and even politely!) disagreed with their view. This would then create a “filter bubble” where only people who shared the original poster’s same opinion would have their comments prominently displayed.

I can see this happening, especially in charged political threads. I can also see a suite of sophisticated editing tools emerging that “clean up” your thread by removing all those troublesome replies from the other side of your political stance.