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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Some old school programming, this. Apollo 11 moon landing 50th anniversary is being celebrated, good fit there. Snoopy (and the Vince Guaraldi music you get a hint of at the very end of the trailer) is timeless.
This certainly fits the family friendly tone that’s been said to be a core value of Apple TV+.
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.
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.
Apple Inc. plans to fund original podcasts that would be exclusive to its audio service, according to people familiar with the matter, increasing its investment in the industry to keep competitors Spotify and Stitcher at bay.
Executives at the company have reached out to media companies and their representatives to discuss buying exclusive rights to podcasts, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the conversations are preliminary. Apple has yet to outline a clear strategy, but has said it plans to pursue the kind of deals it didn’t make before.
Slowly but surely, the podcast space is splintering, much like the video space.
In the video space, properties like Marvel, Pixar, Star Trek, Star Wars, The Office, Friends, etc., are all getting hidden behind walled gardens, like Disney+ and CBS Online.
Watch for podcasts to do the same over time. With funded podcasts outstripping indie podcasts that depend on withering advertising dollars, aggregating into well funded walled gardens.
To be clear, I’m not faulting anyone from going down this road. If this is true, seems a smart, competitive business move by Apple. More an observation that this particular evolution is as inevitable as the tides.
The FaceApp app has gone viral over the last day or so, especially on Twitter, with people sharing pics of themselves, and others, as they’ll look when they get old.
The pics are fun, the viral nature harmless, but there are a few questions:
How does FaceApp gain access to your photos even if you mark access to your photo library as “Never”?
Does FaceApp upload those photos to their servers? And what happens to those photos after FaceApp hands you back your aged version?
Matthew Panzarino does a great job exploring and explaining these issues. Personally, I think someone at FaceApp should lay all this bare in a blog post, avoid turning all this viral exposure into a black eye.
One point Matthew makes that stands out to me:
While the app does indeed let you pick a single photo without giving it access to your photo library, this is actually 100% allowed by an Apple API introduced in iOS 11. It allows a developer to let a user pick one single photo from a system dialog to let the app work on.
An app can let you pick out a single photo, even if you mark access to photos as Never. This strikes me as a decision made long before privacy was even a consideration, left in place over the years as privacy moved to the forefront.
As Panzarino points out, maybe it’s time to reconsider that option.
In our quest to provide the best experience for local searches, earlier this year we announced that we’re now using Apple’s MapKit JS framework to power our mapping features. Since then, we’ve been continually working hard on further enhancements and we’re excited today to show you some new improvements.
Read the linked press release to learn all the details but, in a nutshell, this is a big leap forward for DuckDuckGo and mapping.
And, at least in my local area, this pushed it a little bit past Google Maps. There’s a pizza place a few blocks away that opened about a month ago. It’s on DuckDuckGo (because Apple Maps) and it is not yet on Google Maps.
Small sample size, I know, but it makes privacy respecting DuckDuckGo more of an equal browsing choice for me.
To celebrate World Emoji Day, Apple is previewing a selection of new emoji coming this fall, revealing the newest designs that bring even more diversity to the keyboard, alongside fun and exciting additions to popular categories of food, animals, activities and smiley faces.
My favorite:
In a major update to the Holding Hands emoji typically used to represent couples and relationships, users will now be able to select any combination of skin tone, in addition to gender, to personalize the people holding hands, opening up more than 75 possible combinations.
Representation. Normalization. This feels like a giant step forward to me. The ability to represent your relationship, to have that be seen as a normal part of the whole, is a powerful gift. Well done.
Bare Bones Software, makers of BBEdit, is one of my favorite software companies — in fact, I’ve been using BBEdit for more than 20 years. BBEdit has just been updated to 12.6.3, and is available in the Mac App Store as a subscription! Same great features. Same user experience. You can subscribe in the Mac App Store or purchase perpetual licenses directly from Bare Bones Software. Also, you can still get great merch, including Classic and Rebus T-shirts, enamel pins, and more in their merch store!
I came home this evening to find my house had been broken into.
TV – Gone
Bluetooth Speaker – Gone
Wifes work Laptop (HP) – Gone
DSLR Camera – Gone
Logitech Headset – Gone
Computer bag – Gone
But my MacBook Pro 15″ on the other hand? They literally took it out of my computer bag and left it on my desk alongside my iPad and Apple TV.
Why not take the Apple gear? Of course, this could just be a hoax, but set that possibility aside and consider the possibility that this is real.
Is it possible that the reputation of Apple gear as trackable, the strength of iCloud locking/deactivation/tracking as a security measure is affecting the theft of Macs, iPads, and iPhones? Interesting.
First things first, it’s amazing to me that the very first iPod debuted in October 2001.
Think about that timing for a moment. This was a bit more than a month after 9/11 and the shock was still palpable. A difficult time to command public attention and roll out a new product, to say the least.
The video embedded below does a nice job showing off the difficulties of working with really old gear, from port incompatibilities to replacing dead batteries on a device that was not meant to be easy to open.
I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’d really love to see a video connecting that original iPod to an iPad running iOS 13. Hey, I can dream, right?
John Gruber starts off with the story about Bill Gates calling out his approach to the smartphone market his greatest mistake ever. But he then moves on to thoughts on how Microsoft, more than any other factor, saved Apple at a time when Apple really needed saving.
Terrific read, great food for thought. Can’t help but wonder if Apple, with Steve Jobs and the iMac, would have still managed the improbable rise without that support from Microsoft.
The Executive Producers of the coming Apple TV+ show For All Mankind pulled together this homage for the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.
I am really looking forward to both Apple TV+ and For All Mankind in particular. Of all the shows Apple has so far revealed, For All Mankind seems like the one with the biggest potential. Fingers crossed.
A bit of a rabbit hole. Watch random videos from around the world, all uploaded to YouTube and all with very few views.
Click the headline link, then click Go, start watching. Click the button below the video to stick with it on the off chance you find something you like.
All of the plaudits for Jony Ive begin with how he and Steve Jobs saved Apple with the iMac. No doubt about it: that instantly recognizable shape became an icon, and led to thousands of imitations using translucent colored plastic, often in that same Bondi Blue, to show that they were part of the late-90s vibe. In a sense, the iMac was a triumph of packaging: the components inside were pretty straightforward. If Apple had put them into a beige box, the company would now be a historical footnote.
And:
The quote often attributed to Einstein is “everything must be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.” I think the trouble was that Ive often ignored the second part of that advice in the pursuit of refinement.
This is actually a fair take on Jony Ive designs that are considered by many to be mistakes, triumphs of form over function.
My favorite part is the section called “The strength of compromise”, which highlights things gone right, compromises that yielded greatness.
Linus (of Linus Tech Tips) continues to pursue his goal of building the fastest Mac in the world. He thought he had it, releasing his mega-Hackintosh on the very day Apple announced the new Mac Pro. Unlucky that.
But he perseveres, bringing on a friend to help up the technology. Entertaining and ubergeeky.
This year I sat in the WWDC keynote, hearing the undertones, and realized that Apple is upping its privacy game to levels never before seen from a major technology company. That is, beyond improving privacy in its own products, the company is starting to use its market strength to extend privacy through the tendrils that touch the Apple ecosystem.
Rich does a nice job digging into Apple’s privacy moves, focusing on Sign in with Apple, Intelligent Ad Tracking Prevention, and HomeKit Secure Video.
From the end:
The global forces arrayed against personal privacy are legion. Advertising companies and marketing firms want to track your browsing and buying. Governments want to solve crimes and prevent terrorism whatever the cost. Telecommunication providers monitor all our Internet traffic and locations, just because they can. The financial services industry is sure our data is worth something.
Any list of big companies has to include Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and, of course, Apple. Daunting to think how critical your personal data is to the money-making equation for those first three.
Daunting that on this list, Apple stands alone as a guardian of your privacy.
These are two nice adds to the MFi program. Power over Ethernet (PoE) lets you supply power to a connected Ethernet device (like a wireless access point or an IP camera).
And a Lightning to USB-C audio adapter lets you plug a Lightning audio device into your iPad Pro. Dongles for every possible situation!
Bob Ross painted more than 1,000 landscapes for his television show — so why are they so hard to find? We solve one of the internet’s favorite little mysteries.
Bob Ross was a national treasure. I’ve never had any interest in painting or drawing but he was absolutely captivating.
After much discussion, some anticipation and some disappointment, “robot umpires” have finally made its way into professional baseball.
On Wednesday, the independent Atlantic League, which is a partner of Major League Baseball, debuted the electronic strike zone during its All-Star game, making it the first American professional league to do so.
Home plate umpire Brian deBrauwere wore an earpiece that was connected to an iPhone in his pocket. The earpiece relayed balls and strikes after receiving it from a TrackMan computer system utilizing a Doppler radar and deBrauwere called them as he received them .
Because the system is still in its infancy, an umpire is needed behind home in the event that the system fails to pick up a pitch, registers a pitch totally incorrectly or fails altogether.
It’s only a matter of time before this technology enters the mainstream and is used in the big leagues. I think that will be a shame because one of the joys of baseball is that human element of a really bad umpire.
Dave and I wrapped up our thoughts on the new MacBook updates this week, and talked about an old iPhone Dave found in a drawer. We also looked at things Apple could do with the Apple Watch and iPad to help people with disabilities, which is a very personal topic for Dave.
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