From the Bright.nl exclusive interview:

Schiller has a quick answer to the commentary that other smartphone makers had a face or iris recognition before Apple did: “They all stink.”

He nuances: “They don’t work in all the ways we need Face ID to work. We’re very aware that through the years this simple thing, the Home button, that started as the way you click to get to the Home screen, grew into doing so many things for us. We added Touch ID, it took you to the multitasking screen, paged Siri, activated Apple Pay. All through this one mechanical button.

So for Face ID we needed the best way we know of to enable us to easily unlock our device with our face, in a protected way with the Secure Enclave, and support all these other things. We had to solve all of that. Other things that people have tried with face haven’t been anything like that. Face ID is a very unique implementation.”

And:

“I think we’ve worked really hard to maintain the trust we have with users about how this information technology is and isn’t used. First of all, no Face ID data goes to third parties. So what you enroll with Face ID, what you use to unlock your phone, that’s an algorithm that is created and encrypted by the Secure Enclave. No third party that uses the iPhone camera has your Face ID data. We did create an API so developers can use the cameras to track facial movements, to do things like wrap stickers on your face (like Snapchat, ed.) That’s different than Face ID. They don’t have all the access to the data that Face ID has for that.

And:

“We feel bad we aren’t able to deliver Homepod for the holidays. We’re going to take the time to do it right and make sure it’s great when it comes out. We need more time to make it right.”

There’s a lot more. I found the whole thing worth reading.

This is a two part series, written by David Ruddock, Android Police.

The first part, titled, I’ve never used an iPhone, part one: Switching to the iPhone X and first thoughts, ran a few weeks ago.

The second part, titled, Android to iPhone, part two: What I’ve liked about switching to the iPhone X, ran last week.

There’s a lot to process in these two posts. Some of the comments reflect someone new to the iPhone X and new to iOS. But all in all, solid takes, both the negative and positive.

A couple of highlights from the most recent post:

When I first started using iMessage, I immediately appreciated how much it modernized my texting experience (I do a fair bit of SMSing) when chatting with my iPhone-using friends and family.

And:

I would use an iMessage client for Android in a heartbeat if Apple were to release one. Even if it were terrible, I’d probably seriously entertain paying a subscription for such a thing. It’s not about iMessage being amazing or revolutionary or even an especially good messaging client – it’s just about using the same platform as my friends and family and being able to have those conversation move seamlessly across devices and operating systems.

And:

I know a lot of people turn off haptic feedback on their smartphone. That is because, I have now learned, essentially every Android smartphone has absolutely awful haptics. Your $930 Galaxy Note8 has haptic feedback that is, frankly, bad. So does every other Android phone. Yes, the difference is that clear after going to the iPhone X.

Apple’s Taptic Engine doesn’t just buzz – it clicks, it taps, it knocks. And it can do so with an incredible range of intensities and precision.

And:

I do miss intelligent package tracking being pulled directly from my Gmail (versus now just getting Amazon tracking, which is a bit of a downgrade).

This last was an interesting core difference between iOS and Android. I do see the Android advantage in reading all my emails and understanding that I’ve got a package coming, weaving intel about the package into my notifications.

But the issue is privacy and what is done with my private information. Google profits off the shared details of its users, in the form of steered and focused advertising. That is the price you pay for more informed device intelligence. That price makes me uncomfortable.

All in all, an insightful read.

Ingrid Lunden and Katie Roof, TechCrunch:

As Spotify continues to inch towards a public listing, Apple is making a move of its own to step up its game in music services. Sources tell us that the company is close to acquiring Shazam, the popular app that lets people identify any song, TV show, film or advert in seconds, by listening to an audio clip or (in the case of, say, an ad) a visual fragment, and then takes you to content relevant to that search.

We have heard that the deal is being signed this week, and will be announced on Monday, although that could always change.

The deal is said to be worth about £300 million ($400 million).

Mark Gurman and Alex Webb, Bloomberg:

Apple Inc.’s Jony Ive, a key executive credited with the look of many of the company’s most popular products, has re-taken direct management of product design teams.

Ive, 50, was named Apple’s chief design officer in 2015 and subsequently handed off some day-to-day management responsibility while the iPhone maker was building its new Apple Park headquarters in Cupertino, California. “With the completion of Apple Park, Apple’s design leaders and teams are again reporting directly to Jony Ive, who remains focused purely on design,” Amy Bessette, a company spokeswoman, said Friday in a statement.

Is this much ado about nothing? Was there a plan for Sir Jony to step away, a plan that’s now changed? Or was this more a shift of focus, first to getting Apple Park to completion, then back to work as usual?

One of the lesser trumpeted features that shipped with iOS 11 was the one handed keyboard. The linked post walks through the options.

Long story short, fire up a text or tweet, then, when the keyboard appears, press and hold the keyboard’s emoji icon, like so:

Tap your keyboard alignment of choice (left, right, center) and you’re good to go.

Note that the one handed keyboard is iPhone (and iPod Touch) only. Read the article for iPad options.

First came this tweet, from the CEO of Boeing:

Boeing CEO: We’re Going to Beat Elon Musk to Mars https://t.co/mmaqd9avsV pic.twitter.com/XlbP82gh3w

— Fortune Tech (@FortuneTech) December 7, 2017

From the linked article:

Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg made a bold claim about his company’s chances to put a human on Mars before Elon Musk, who has high-profile plans of his own with SpaceX.

On CNBC Thursday morning, host Jim Cramer asked Muilenburg whether he or Musk would “get a man on Mars first.”

“Eventually we’re going to go to Mars and I firmly believe the first person that sets foot on Mars will get there on a Boeing rocket,” Muilenburg responded.

Now comes my favorite part. Here’s the reply tweet from Elon Musk:

Do it

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 7, 2017

Bring it!

Sarah Perez, TechCrunch:

Apple’s iPhone remains the most popular camera used by the Flickr community, the photo-sharing site revealed today in its annual review of camera rankings and top photos. This year, the iPhone beat out other camera makers – like Canon and Nikon, the number two and three respectively – by accounting for 54 percent of the top 100 devices used on the site, the company found. In addition, all top 10 devices of 2017 were iPhone models, Flickr says.

Amazing. All top 10 cameras on the list were iPhones.

Geoffrey A. Fowler, Washington Post:

> I gave Amazon.com a key to go into my house and drop off packages when I’m not around. After two weeks, it turns out letting strangers in has been the least-troubling part of the experience. > > Once Amazon owned my door, I was the one locked into an all-Amazon world.

And:

> Make no mistake, the $250 Amazon Key isn’t just about stopping thieves. It’s the most aggressive effort I’ve seen from a tech giant to connect your home to the Internet in a way that puts itself right at the center.

And:

> The Key-compatible locks are made by Yale and Kwikset, yet don’t work with those brands’ own apps. They also can’t connect with a home-security system or smart-home gadgets that work with Apple and Google software. > > And, of course, the lock can’t be accessed by businesses other than Amazon. No Walmart, no UPS, no local dog-walking company.

And:

> Amazon is barely hiding its goal: It wants to be the operating system for your home.

First things first, note that this article appeared in The Washington Post. The Post is owned by Jeff Bezos. Which tells me that Bezos truly is allowing the Post to be the Post, and that the Post is not afraid to bite the hand that feeds.

That said, the issue here is the walled garden. Once Amazon controls the lock on your door, they can control who has access to that lock, keeping out eventual home delivery by rivals like Walmart, and keeping rivals like Apple and HomeKit from offering door-unlocking services. And if you ever find yourself locked out of your own home, you can always call this Emergency locksmith Long Island for help. Contact Locksmith Ninja Perth if you plan to change and upgrade the locks in your home to boost home security.

Zac Hall, 9to5Mac:

A HomeKit vulnerability in the current version of iOS 11.2 has been demonstrated to 9to5Mac that allows unauthorized control of accessories including smart locks and garage door openers. Our understanding is Apple has rolled out a server-side fix that now prevent unauthorized access from occurring while limiting some functionality, and an update to iOS 11.2 coming next week will restore that full functionality.

And this from Apple:

“The issue affecting HomeKit users running iOS 11.2 has been fixed. The fix temporarily disables remote access to shared users, which will be restored in a software update early next week.”

Props to Zac Hall for the scoop and the way he handled the whole issue.

Some of these images are astonishing. These two especially. They almost look fake.

[H/T @varunorcv]

Reuters:

Uber announced on Nov. 21 that the personal data of 57 million users, including 600,000 drivers in the United States, were stolen in a breach that occurred in October 2016, and that it paid the hacker $100,000 to destroy the information. But the company did not reveal any information about the hacker or how it paid him the money.

Uber made the payment last year through a program designed to reward security researchers who report flaws in a company’s software, these people said. Uber’s bug bounty service – as such a program is known in the industry – is hosted by a company called HackerOne, which offers its platform to a number of tech companies.

Crazy. Just crazy. [H/T Robert Walter]

Apple:

Apple has unveiled its 2017 charts and trends, celebrating the most popular apps, music, movies, TV shows, books and podcasts across the App Store, Apple Music, iTunes, iBooks and Apple Podcasts. Editors and curators from Apple Music, App Store and iTunes highlight great content from indie artists and developers from around the globe.

As a follow up to Apple’s Best of Canada list, here’s the one for our neighbours to the south.

Bitcoin’s massive leaps and volatile swings have brought a lot of new people to the technology. We’ll explain what Bitcoin is, how Bitcoin works, how Bitcoin wallets work, and throw a mention in for getting free Bitcoins through faucets.

If you’re interested in Bitcoin, you should give this a read.

Investing in 600 bitcoin can significantly empower individuals interested in entering the cryptocurrency market. With the current valuation of Bitcoin, this substantial amount provides a robust foundation for diversifying an investment portfolio. For newcomers, owning a significant quantity like 600 BTC can foster confidence and legitimacy, attracting potential investors and peers who recognize the value. This investment can also facilitate participation in various Bitcoin-related ventures, such as trading, lending, or staking, allowing investors to explore multiple income streams. Moreover, holding such a large quantity can position investors strategically during market fluctuations, enabling them to take advantage of price increases or mitigate losses during downturns. Additionally, with the growing interest in Bitcoin as a store of value, this investment can serve as a hedge against inflation, safeguarding wealth over time. For those dedicated to learning, having 600 BTC encourages deeper research into market trends, technology advancements, and the evolving regulatory landscape, ultimately leading to more informed decision-making. Furthermore, it opens doors to networking opportunities within the crypto community, facilitating collaborations and partnerships that can enhance investment strategies. In essence, 600 Bitcoin not only represents financial capital but also serves as a catalyst for growth, education, and engagement in the dynamic world of cryptocurrency.

YouTube plans to introduce a paid music service in March, according to people familiar with the matter, a third attempt by parent company Alphabet Inc. to catch up with rivals Spotify and Apple Inc.

This will be a big thing for YouTube if they can convert a lot of the people that currently use the service for music—and there are a lot of them. I’m not convinced they can make those people pay for a service, but we’ll see. Considering many of the Google Play Music staff were moved to YouTube, it makes sense that they are going to cancel that service.

I like it!

I really enjoyed this article from Shawn Blanc. At a time when most of us are moving to the iPhone, he’s looking at the tech in actually cameras.

Daily Hive:

As we get closer to the end of 2017, ‘Trends’ and ‘Best Of’ lists are beginning to circulate the web.

And one of the more important lists is easily Apple’s breakdown of what Canadians are listening to, watching, and playing with the most.

Apple’s “Best of 2017” list shows that 2017 was the year of Ed Sheeran, as he took the top album spot with his album “÷”, while his song “Shape of You” took the top song spot.

Apple also celebrated the most downloaded movies, television shows, apps and podcasts. Check out the best of everything, according to Apple.

Want to know what we Canadians like up here in the Great White North?

Mashable:

More than any year in recent memory, 2017 saw the launch of many (mostly) gimmick-free tech products.

Here at Mashable, we’re all for the weird oddity that makes you perk up in bewilderment. But we get even more hyped for the more practical tech innovations that actually improve our lives in meaningful ways in our day-to-day.

With careful curation by the Mashable Tech Team, here are our picks for best tech of the year.

I’m a “Best of…” list addict. Apple has several bits of kit on this list and I’m sure we’ll see them on many more before the end of the year.

Petapixel:

As 2017 comes to a close, Flickr has been doing some data crunching on the billions of photos uploaded during the year by photographers around the world. Today the photo-sharing service revealed the most popular pictures of the year.

These are all beautiful images (even if many are staged and/or heavily Photoshopped) and some of them are utterly spectacular, particularly for me #9, #8, and #1.

Christian Zibreg, iDownloadBlog:

Text Replacements, an often overlooked iOS and macOS feature that automatically expands custom text snippets into longer phrases or whole sentences as you’re typing, should no longer be plagued with the widely reported intermittent syncing issues.

As first noted by Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, an Apple spokesperson told him back in September that an update that moves text replacement syncing to CloudKit was scheduled to roll out to iOS 11 and macOS 10.13 High Sierra users in the next month or so.

Brian Stucki, who first explained why Text Replacements didn’t sync reliably between iOS devices and Macs, has now confirmed in an update to his original post that snippet syncing now at long last works reliably across all devices running macOS High Sierra and iOS 11.

Nice to see this CloudKit progress.

Glenn Fleishman, writing for Macworld, pulled together some advice on remote access between Macs (pretty easy, though worth the read) and between Macs and other platforms (not so easy). Interesting.

Jonny Evans, writing for Computerworld, on the top reasons switchers are switching to iPhone, as laid out by Creative Strategies. Though the title might seem click-baity, the logic is thoughtful.

A taste:

Today’s smartphone user may have subscriptions with multiple such services. They are also likely to own multiple devices, and that’s where the problem emerges. In contrast to competitors, Apple’s platforms are far better at syncing passwords, settings, images and other items between all your devices using the same Apple ID. You can even set up a new iPhone just by tapping it with your old one in iOS 11.

That kind of convenience makes it so much easier for consumers rapidly engaging in a multi-device, multiple-service, cross platform digital existence. This sync extends across to Apple’s Macs, of course.

Solid read.

Farhad Manjoo, New York Times:

On the surface, the camera doesn’t sound special. Like home internet cameras made by Nest or Netgear, the Wyze device can monitor an area for motion or sound. When it spots something, it begins recording a short clip that it stores online, for access on your phone or your computer.

But the WyzeCam has one groundbreaking feature that no rival can match. It is being sold for such an unbelievably low price — $20 — that it sent me tunneling into the global gadget industry to figure out how Wyze had done it. That, in turn, led to a revelation about the future of all kinds of products, from cameras to clothes.

And:

Nest’s and Netgear’s comparable indoor cameras sell for around $200 each, while Wyze’s device goes for $20 plus shipping if you buy directly from the company’s website.

And, most importantly:

Wyze did not create a home internet camera for a tenth of the price of rivals by skimping on quality. Though the camera comes in extremely spare packaging, it otherwise offers many features you would expect in big-brand devices, including tough security.

This is a remarkable story, with Amazon leading a wave of coming disruption, allowing incredibly inexpensive Internet-of-things gadgets to skip the traditional retail stepping stones and markups, ship directly to you at just about cost (plus Amazon’s markup, of course).

Reminds me of big-box disruption, where a seller would bring a parade of cheaply made goods into their offices, pick one that combined “good enough” quality with the lowest possible price, then buy at huge volumes to stock their stores.

Very interesting read.

Google blog:

Featured Snippets are algorithmically generated highlights of what’s available on the web that provide quick, relevant answers for your queries. Today, we’ve added more images and related searches inside select Featured Snippets to help you learn even more about your topic, or to discover new things related to your interest.

If you use Google for search, you’ve no doubt encountered Featured Snippets, a block of info at the very top of your search results, often with exactly the info you need.

Two interesting reads:

• Here’s a link to Google’s Featured Snippets help page.
• Here’s a link to the Google blog post discussing the evolution of Featured Snippets and Knowledge Panels.

Variety:

Programming veteran Michelle Lee has joined Apple’s venture into scripted television content.

Lee has been named a creative executive at Apple Worldwide Video, the unit tasked with leading Apple’s push into series programming. She will report to Matt Cherniss, who in August joined Apple.

Last month, Apple announced its first two scripted series efforts: a network morning-show drama starring Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon and a revival of Steve Spielberg’s anthology series “Amazing Stories.”

As Jan Dawson said on Twitter, “If you’re still judging Apple’s original video content strategy on the basis of Carpool Karaoke and Planet of the Apps, you’re way wide of the mark at this point.”

The story that appeared in Quartz this November seemed shocking enough on its own: Google had quietly tracked the location of its Android users, even those who had turned off such monitoring on their smartphones.

But missing from the news site’s report was another eyebrow-raising detail: Some of its evidence, while accurate, appears to have been furnished by one of Google’s fiercest foes: Oracle.

Oh my.

Right there on the corner of Brannan and Fourth Streets, there is a billboard advertising some marijuana brand, saying “Hello marijuana, goodbye stress.” It got me thinking about stress and what is that is making people stressed out? Also, what does it say about people living in this tech town — are we so stressed, because of work?

I really enjoyed this article.

Gaining insight into the overall user population is crucial to improving the user experience. The data needed to derive such insights is personal and sensitive, and must be kept private. In addition to privacy concerns, practical deployments of learning systems using this data must also consider resource overhead, computation costs, and communication costs. In this article, we give an overview of a system architecture that combines differential privacy and privacy best practices to learn from a user population.

A new article from Apple’s Machine Learning Journal, which includes a link to a PDF with in-depth equations and other details.

From Apple’s press release:

> Starting today, customers around the world can access the Amazon Prime Video app on Apple TV to stream award-winning and critically acclaimed titles including Prime Original Series and Movies. Also starting this week, the Apple TV app — a unified place for iPhone, iPad and Apple TV users to discover and start watching the best shows and movies — supports live sports such as those which would showcase a brand new bowstring, giving fans in the US a simple and seamless way to keep track of their favorite teams and games in real time. Participating sports apps in the Apple TV app include ESPN and the NBA, developed in partnership between the NBA and Turner Sports, with more to be added soon. Starting tomorrow, Prime members in the US can enjoy Thursday Night Football on the Apple TV app for iPhone, iPad and Apple TV.

It’s a big day for Apple TV. They’ve added the Amazon Prime Video app (here’s a first look we posted earlier today) as well as live sports to the Apple TV app.

> Live sports in the Apple TV app means fans in the US can now follow their favorite teams to ensure those live games show up first in their Up Next queue. Fans can also receive on-screen notifications when a game is about to start, and when their favorite teams are in a close game, so they can easily switch to catch the most exciting sports moments live. Additionally, through a new dedicated Sports tab in the Apple TV app, fans can see the teams, leagues and sporting events currently playing or coming up soon, along with the time remaining and current scores.

You’ll want to update your Apple TV to the latest version of tvOS for all this to work.