Tripp Mickle, Wall Street Journal:

Apple Inc. is preparing to supersize its iPhone lineup, aiming to drive profit in its biggest business despite stagnant unit sales while also fueling growth for apps and services that are more appealing to users with bigger screens.

And:

At a time when people are buying fewer new phones, bigger size brings two advantages. It helps Apple buoy prices and profit margins because it can sell larger phones at a greater markup than it pays suppliers for the larger screens. And it encourages people to use their phones more, helping momentum of Apple’s services business, which includes app-store sales and subscriptions to video services like Netflix and HBO.

And:

Users with smartphone screens 6 inches or larger, like Apple plans to launch this year, typically use twice as many apps as those with 5.5-inch screens, such as those on the largest versions of the iPhone 6 or 7, said Kantar Worldpanel, a market research firm. Users of the larger devices also are 62% more likely to play games, and twice as likely to watch video daily as people with smaller screens.

Interesting article. Apple is getting smarter and smarter at fine-tuning devices to align with and drive revenue growth. This is all, in part, a strategy aligned with Apple’s coming entry into the Netflix-dominated video market.

There are spoilers in the article about tomorrow’s Apple event, so jump in if you are interested, avoid if you don’t even want a whiff of what’s coming.

Marc Settle, writing for the BBC on mobile journalism, digs into iOS 12. Good read. A couple of highlights:

iOS 12 will run on every device that currently runs iOS 11. This will therefore include iPhone 5s from way back in 2013 – now something of a dinosaur.

This also means that for the second year running, the oldest iPhone is not being left behind, bereft and unable to download the latest version of the operating system.

And:

But the fact that iOS 12 can actually run on such an old phone is part of the reason why I write these reviews when I don’t produce something similar for Android despite it being the world’s most used operating system – on about three and a half billion smartphones globally, compared to 800 million or so for iOS. The reason is that Androids aren’t uniformly updated in the way iPhones are. Depending on the make and model, you might get the latest version of Android immediately, eventually, or quite possibly never – even on relatively new devices.

And:

It’s taken me a long time to understand what I can do with Shortcuts and each time I think I’ve got it, I find new aspects to get my head around. But once users have got the hang of it, the likely result will be that they will be spending less time using their phones as numerous consecutive taps on the screen will be replaced by – at best – just one and possibly even none, given that Siri can be used to get things going.

And:

You could set a Shortcut up so that it gets hold of your most recent screenshot from the camera roll, opens it with tools for annotating and then add the annotated image to an email which you can then send before, finally, the screenshot is presented to you to be deleted.

And:

Another [Shortcut] could work like this: the system looks up on a map where you are, it then asks Apple Maps for directions and estimated driving times, it then creates an iMessage to a specific contact, based on your calendar, showing both where you are now and how long it should take to get to your destination. And it sends it.

Terrific read. These nuggets were just the tip of the iceberg.

Aaron Boyd, NextGov:

The new veriScan system developed by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority—with guidance from U.S. Customs and Border Protection—scans the faces of travelers approaching the gate. The system then compares the photo to a gallery that includes images of that person—either their passport photo for U.S. citizens or the photo taken of foreign nationals when they entered the country. The process eliminates the need for an airline employee to manually check every boarding pass and passport while boarding a plane.

I can only assume this is the first of many US airports to gain this technology. Slowly, the massive databases are connecting, sucking data from the ever widening network of facial sensors.

Rani Molla, Recode:

If it feels like Amazon’s site is increasingly stuffed with ads, that’s because it is. And it looks like that’s working — at least for brands that are willing to fork over ad dollars as part of their strategy to sell on Amazon.

Jump to the recode article and look at the sample images, especially that big search result for “cereal”. Amazon has long had sponsored ads, but this new move makes it that much harder to find genuine (not paid-for) results.

Amazon, squeezing out every penny.

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Apple has recently been sending out surveys to customers who purchased an iMac Pro, asking them about which features drew them to the pro-level machine and what they like or dislike about the iMac Pro.

And:

Apple regularly sends out surveys of this nature to customers, but this line of questioning on the iMac Pro suggests Apple is perhaps trying to suss out key features that pro-level users want to see in future pro machines, such as the Mac Pro machine that’s in the works.

And:

Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi admitted last year that with the 2013 Mac Pro, Apple designed itself into “a bit of a thermal corner” given the restrictive size of the trash can-shaped Mac Pro and its inability to handle the thermal capacity needed for larger single GPUs.

“A bit of a thermal corner”. Love that turn of phrase. This survey seems a solid sign that Apple is doing their best to learn from their mistakes, hit a home run with next year’s Mac Pro.

Complete Digital Photography:

Autumn—one of my favorite times of year—is coming on quickly here in eastern Oregon: The nights are cooler, and each morning, the air has a hint of crispness in it. As a photographer, this change in the weather brings with it the anticipation of fall foliage, and I find myself itching to head out to shoot. I have been scoping out locations, planning my time, looking for the peak windows, and getting my gear ready. I have also been chatting with Ben Long and Hudson Henry about the best approaches for capturing fall color. Among us, we have a few tips for getting the most out of your fall-foliage shots.

I love these tips because they are more of the compositional and creative variety rather than the strictly technical. You photographers who live on the east coast of the US and Canada are really lucky this time of year.

CNN:

Moto2 rider Romano Fenati has been dropped from the Marinelli Snipers Team after the dangerous incident where he pulled a rival’s brake lever mid-race.

Watch the video on this story. This incident yesterday is all the motorcycling racing world is talking about today. It was an incredibly dangerous stunt by a rider who has done dangerous things to other riders in the past and has been fired from other teams. Unfortunately, Race Direction only gave Fenati a two-race ban but he has since been fired from the Marinelli team and has lost his job with another team for next year. I predict he won’t race at this level ever again.

Thanks to the lovely and talented Dave Mark for the link.

Follow the link, type your name, or anything you like, and it will be rendered using famous logos.

For example, here’s me:

This exposes something a bit funky about Safari (both on Mac and iOS). Apparently, it does not support color fonts. If you do your typing in Safari, you’re words will appear in black and white. But if you flip over to Firefox (which I did for the image above), you’ll see your logo letters in glorious color.

I’d love to see the creator of this site add more logo letters to the font. There are two capital M’s (Monster and McDonalds), but only one capital A.

Interesting.

Federico Viticci, MacStories:

In an update rolled out last night following the release of global top charts, Apple redesigned artist pages on Apple Music with separation of different kinds of music releases.

While the old artist page design of Apple Music mixed albums, singles, EPs, live albums, and more under the same ‘Albums’ section, the new Apple Music features separate sections for different types of music releases. The new sections include singles and EPs, live albums, essential albums recommended by Apple Music editors, compilations, and appearances by an artist on other albums.

This is great news, and a long time coming. Apple is making some terrific moves in the Apple Music space, along with the redesigns of the iOS and Mac App Stores. Kudos.

Apple adds to its Emmy shelf with this Outstanding Short Form Variety Series at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards.

Side note: The series An Emmy for Megan, created by The Good Place writer Megan Amram (a great Twitter follow, btw) was nominated for two Creative Arts Emmies. It did not win either, and it is about to get dark.

This is a nice little read to set up Wednesday’s potential reveal of a Series 4 Apple Watch.

Patrick Wardle, Objective-See:

You probably trust applications in the Official Mac App Store. And why wouldn’t you?

Yup.

However, it’s questionable whether these statements actually hold true, as one of the top grossing applications in the Mac App Store surreptitiously exfiltrates highly sensitive user information to a (Chinese?) developer. Though Apple was contacted a month ago, and promised to investigate, the application remains available in Mac App Store even today.

Read the post for all the details (good work from Patrick Wardle and Twitter user @privacyis1st) but here’s a good summary from John Gruber, in a Daring Fireball post called The Curious Case of Adware Doctor and the Mac App Store:

What a bizarre story this is. Adware Doctor was a $4.99 app in the Mac App Store from a developer supposedly named Yongming Zhang. The app purported to protect your browser from adware by removing browser extensions, cookies, and caches. It was a surprisingly popular app, ranking first in the Utilities category and fourth overall among paid apps, alongside stalwarts like Logic Pro X and Final Cut Pro X.

Turns out, among other things, Adware Doctor was collecting your web browser history from Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, and uploading them to a server in China. Whatever the intention of this was, it’s a privacy debacle, obviously. This behavior was first discovered by someone who goes by the Twitter handle Privacy 1st, and reported to Apple on August 12. Early today, security researcher Patrick Wardle published a detailed technical analysis of the app. Wired, TechCrunch, and other publications jumped on the story, and by 9 am PT, Apple had pulled the app from the App Store.

So the issue was reported on August 12th but not taken down until 26 days later, on September 7th.

But wait, there’s more.

Guilherme Rambo, in a 9to5Mac post titled Additional Mac App Store apps caught stealing and uploading browser history:

When you give an app access to your home directory on macOS, even if it’s an app from the Mac App Store, you should think twice about doing it. It looks like we’re seeing a trend of Mac App Store apps that convince users to give them access to their home directory with some promise such as virus scanning or cleaning up caches, when the true reason behind it is to gather user data – especially browsing history – and upload it to their analytics servers.

Today, we’re talking specifically about the apps distributed by a developer who claims to be “Trend Micro, Inc.”, which include Dr. Unarchiver, Dr. Cleaner and others.

These apps have been removed from the Mac App Store.

This raises some serious issues. Is this the tip of the iceberg? Are there other apps in the Mac App Store that do the same thing, but are not yet discovered? Is this just one technique of many? And what about the iOS App Store?

I am very reluctant to run any app on my Mac unless I either know and trust the developer or the app comes from the Mac App Store. The Mac App Store is a trusted source. If that trust is broken, either on the Mac or iOS, that’s a real problem for Apple.

I’m hoping we see some formal response from Apple, with some sense that they are aware of the issues involved and have new steps in place to root out existing apps that use this “give us access to your Home directory” (or similar) approach, steps that will prevent this issue from recurring.

Open Culture:

Not every record yields gold when played backwards or spun more slowly than recommended, but a 45 of Parton’s 1973 hit “Jolene” played at 33RPM not only sounds wonderful, it also manages to reframe the narrative.

In the original version, the irresistible chorus wherein the soon-to-be-spurned party invokes Jolene’s name again and again is plaintive and fierce.

In the slow ass version, it’s plaintive and sad. The pain is the same, but the situation is much less straightforward, thanks to blurrier gender lines.

This is wild. This wonderful song sounds completely different and opens up a whole new level.

CNBC:

With most tech products, if they don’t work well you can throw them in a drawer and chalk the loss up up to the costs of being an early adopter. The same is not true of health tech products, argues former Apple employee Robin Goldstein, who most recently served as a senior manager of special health projects. That’s because health tech products connect users to their own mortality, and a bad outcome can be disastrous.

This short piece definitely brings up some good points I hadn’t thought about before.

Reddit:

It came about when I was having a discussion on /r/penmanshipporn about how remarkably like a fountain pen the Apple Pencil feels, in the way it glides over glass. It was clearly designed by someone who loved and appreciated fountain pens, so out of curiosity I wrote the same things side by side. I have tiny handwriting, so it was interesting to see how closely they match. The only reason it does is because the feel of these two writing instruments is SO similar that muscle memory does it justice.

Check out this image, showing the results side-by-side. Apple Pencil is a remarkable achievement.

Frys has what I read as a one-day-only sale on AirPods. Why one-day-only? The promo code embedded in the URL is today’s date.

Complete speculation here, but: Wondering if this is clearing inventory to make way for a new generation of AirPods.

This is just a great read, especially if you are interested in the history of the iPhone and of Apple in general. One tiny highlight:

I was in the audience on that January day [that the iPhone was launched] in early 2007 and when I walked in that morning I didn’t know what the product would be called. We called it “Purple,” which was the code name for the phone, and it was a surprise.

The fact that the team was able to keep the iPhone name a secret until the reveal is amazing to me. Certainly, that name would have been a reasonable guess, given that the iPod existed and this was a phone extension of the iPod. But it would have been speculation, not a leak, and it was known at the time that the iPhone name was owned by another company.

Apple:

We believe security shouldn’t come at the expense of individual privacy.

And:

Apple receives various forms of legal process requesting information from or actions by Apple. Apple requires government and private entities to follow applicable laws and statutes when requesting customer information and data. We contractually require our service providers to follow the same standard we apply to government information requests for Apple data. Our legal team reviews requests to ensure that the requests have a valid legal basis. If they do, we comply by providing the narrowest possible set of data responsive to the request. If a request does not have a valid legal basis, or if we consider it to be unclear, inappropriate, or overly broad, we challenge or reject the request. We report on the requests every six months.

We’ll continue working for greater transparency and data security protections on behalf of our customers.

And, most importantly:

Apple has never created a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services. We have also never allowed any government direct access to Apple servers. And we never will.

The site has links to Apple’s Transparency Reports, as well as links to Legal Process Guidelines, both for US and non-US requestors.

That “And we never will” is a powerful statement. The portal is said to be rolled out by the end of the year.

Fascinating read. Apple’s branding path here is a puzzle.

iPhone 8, followed by iPhone X. OK, I get that. iPhone X is a new chapter. No more home button, no more Touch ID. New screen technology, new gestures.

So does the word Plus have any value in this new wave? Does the letter “s”, as in iPhone 6s, have any value?

Looking forward to Wednesday’s event.

Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac:

A tech trade-in site says that today’s trade-in value is still 68% of the original sales price even a week before this year’s models are revealed, in strong contrast to one of Samsung’s flagship phones.

With the latest report suggesting that this year’s iPhone X successor, expected to be called the XS or Xs, could start from $800, that could represent an opportunity for a very cheap upgrade to the new model if you have a spare phone you could use to span the gap.

A new iPhone X starts at $999. 68% of that is $679.32. Which, if true that the base price of an iPhone XS is $799, would give you an upgrade price of $119.68.

Interesting. Especially when you consider that Apple offers a max (according to their web site) trade-in value of $290 for your existing phone.

Patrick Wardle, Objective-See (via Michael Tsai):

Once the target is visits our malicious website, we trigger the download of an archive (.zip) file that contains our malicious application. If the Mac user is using Safari, the achieve will be automatically unzipped, as Apple thinks it’s wise to automatically open “safe” files.

This is a pretty long read, but it all comes down to the way macOS Safari treats downloaded files, and one specific setting in Safari Preferences:

Preferences > General > Open “safe” files after downloading

Here’s a picture of that setting, a checkbox down at the bottom of the General tab. I’ve unchecked mine. You might want to take a look at yours.

Key to all this is the word archives at the end. That includes .zip files, which can contain, well, bad stuff.

Read the linked article. As I said, I’ve unchecked my setting, have not yet encountered a problem set that way. This as bad as it seems?

UPDATE: This issue has, apparently, been around since the dawn of time, but that the default is supposed to be unchecked. I just unboxed a new Mac, factory settings, no migration, and the setting was on/checked. Public version of High Sierra.

There’s an Apple Store targeting crime wave going on in the San Francisco Bay area.

Click through to the article, watch the video. Security guards politely open the doors for the alleged thieves, then one of those same alleged thieves holds the door for the fleeing gang. It’s all so bizarre.

And technically, I suppose this is burglary, not robbery. Just saying.

Petapixel:

Canon has officially unveiled the new EOS R, the company’s first full-frame mirrorless competitor.

At the core of the EOS R is a 30.3-megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor with an ISO range of 100-40000 (expandable to 50-102400), backed by a DIGIC 8 image processor. There is a low pass filter in front of the sensor that helps combat moiré patterns at the cost of slightly reduced sharpness. The camera has an 8fps continuous shooting speed (for bursts of up to 100 max-quality JPEGs, 47 RAW, or 78 C-RAW), a shutter lag is as short as 50 milliseconds, and a startup time of 0.9 seconds.

After last week’s announcement of the Nikon Z7, we knew this was coming. I can’t wait for the head to head reviews of them both.

Russell Wilson:

Every Saturday morning, my family would go to the grocery store, and I only had one thing on my mind. I’d hop up onto the front of the cart like I was the captain of a pirate ship or something, and I’d point my mom in the direction of Aisle 9.

But she wasn’t having it. First we had to get the boring stuff. Veggies. Bread. You know, all that stuff.

Then we’d finally get to Aisle 9, and it was on.

The greatest aisle in the world.

The cereal aisle.

This story doesn’t go the way you think it does. I took my “new” 12-year-old son to his first day of high school yesterday. It’s the first time I’ve had the honour of doing that. Walking home, I shed a couple of tears – of happiness, of pride and just a little bit of fear. In that moment, I realized, “Holy crap – I’m a father now. I’ve got responsibilities towards this kid. I’ve got to help him grow up to be the man he wants to be.” Russell Wilson is lucky he had a dad to help show him the way. Not all kids do.

Skype:

When we added video to Skype calls over ten years ago, the ability to share important moments with loved ones took a big step forward. Today, we’re introducing call recording to help capture special moments in a Skype call with your loved ones or record important meetings with your colleagues.

As soon as you start recording, everyone in the call is notified that the call is being recorded—so there are no surprises. If you are on a video call, Skype will record everyone’s video as well as any screens shared during the call. After the call, you can save and share the recorded call for the next 30 days.

I don’t use Skype for my podcasts but I know a lot of podcasters do so this may come as welcome news to them and other users of the application.

MacPaw:

Hey Mac users, we’ve got an app premiere for you. Our new baby, CleanMyMac X has just been born. Why calling it X? Firstly, because this year it’s our 10th anniversary and the X is our tribute to that and the first CleanMyMac created by Oleksandr Kosovan back in 2008. Next up, we believe this version is much more than another numerical in the line — it is X times better.

In general, I hate these kinds of apps. I simply don’t trust them to do it properly or to not screw up my system. But, I’ll tell you a story.

I’ve been having an issue with one of my external drives for a month. It’s not a crucial thing. Just annoying. Ran Disk Utility First Aid on the drive and “nothing was found”. This AM, I did a full backup of my system (told you I don’t trust these apps) then I ran CleanMyMac X. It solved the problem immediately as well as doing all the other cool things CleanMyMac does. This is not a review of the product (I haven’t put it through its paces yet) but I like the look and UI of the app as well as the ease of use through MacPaw’s Setapp,

Ken Kocienda:

When I started working with a small team of engineers and designers at Apple in late 2005 to create a touchscreen operating system for Purple—the codename of the super-secret skunk works project that became the iPhone—we didn’t know if typing on a small, touch-sensitive sheet of glass was technologically feasible or a fool’s errand. In those early days of work on Purple, the keyboard was a daunting prospect, and we referred to it, often quite nervously, as a science project. It wasn’t easy to figure out how software might come to our rescue and how much our algorithms should be allowed to make suggestions or intervene to fix typing mistakes. I wrote the code for iPhone autocorrection based on an analysis of the words we type most commonly, the frequency of words relative to others, and the errors we’re most likely to make on a touchscreen keyboard.

More than 10 years after the initial release of the iPhone, the state of the art now is much as it was then. Even with recent advances in AI and machine learning, the core problem remains the same: Software doesn’t understand the nuance of human communication.

Interesting piece. This is part of the publicity effort to promote Ken’s new book, Creative Selection, which went on sale yesterday. Looking forward to reading this.