Damn Interesting:

This encounter might have been as commonplace as any other gunfight around Hell’s Half-Acre were it not for the identity of the driver. The “Sanders” who put two bullets in Matt Stewart was none other than Harland Sanders, the man who would go on to become the world-famous Colonel Sanders. He was dark-haired and clean-shaven at the time, but his future likeness would one day appear on Kentucky Fried Chicken billboards, buildings, and buckets worldwide.

In contrast to most other famous food icons, Colonel Sanders was once a living, breathing person, and his life story is considerably more tumultuous than the white-washed corporate biography suggests.

What a fascinating story of a figure we all know but generally have no idea of the history behind. Turns out, the Colonel was quite the foul-mouthed rogue who didn’t start making his chicken until much later in life. This is one of those articles that make a perfect “Read It Later” story.

Backchannel:

The problem for the president is that when it comes to the specific battle going on right now between Apple and the FBI, the law is clear: twenty years ago, Congress passed a statute, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) that does not allow the government to tell manufacturers how to design or configure a phone or software used by that phone — including security software used by that phone.

The government can’t require companies that build phones to come to it for clearance in advance of launching a new device. Nor can the authorities ask a manufacturer to design something new — like a back door — once that device is out.

The more I read about this issue, and I’ve read a lot, the more I see that the government may have made a huge mistake with this particular case. Obviously, a judge could rule differently but every non-partisan opinion I’ve read says there’s no way the government can get a court to do what they want.

I just opened up sponsorships for April on the site. Sponsorships are exclusive–there is only one sponsor per week. If you want to get your product or service in front of the wonderful readers of The Loop, send me an email and let’s talk.

Cool to know this exists, but not sure I want to know how much of my money I’ve given them.

Walt Disney press release:

Indiana Jones will return to the big screen on July 19, 2019, for a fifth epic adventure in the blockbuster series. Steven Spielberg, who directed all four previous films, will helm the as-yet-untitled project with star Harrison Ford reprising his iconic role. Franchise veterans Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall will produce.

“Indiana Jones is one of the greatest heroes in cinematic history, and we can’t wait to bring him back to the screen in 2019,” said Alan Horn, Chairman, The Walt Disney Studios. “It’s rare to have such a perfect combination of director, producers, actor and role, and we couldn’t be more excited to embark on this adventure with Harrison and Steven.”

Please, please, please let it be good. With Kathleen Kennedy at the helm, my hopes are high.

I hope they bring on Lawrence Kasdan, who co-wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark as well as The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and The Force Awakens. His is a steady screenwriting hand.

Jonny Evans, writing for Computerworld, lays out everything you need to know to publish your own content on Apple News. Terrific post.

Bloomberg Business:

Apple Inc., facing a European Union probe into its fiscal affairs in Ireland, told a panel of EU lawmakers Tuesday it pays all taxes due in the nation and doesn’t get an unfair advantage compared with other companies there.

Cathy Kearney, a vice-president of the iPhone maker’s European operations in Cork, Ireland, said the company isn’t getting unfair state aid but will remain “committed to Ireland” whatever the outcome of the EU case.

“We feel that we’ve paid every cent of tax that is due in Ireland,” Kearney said at the European Parliament in Brussels. “We don’t feel that there has been state aid involved and I suppose we look forward to that outcome happening at the end of the day and being vindicated in that way. I would say that the Irish government also agrees with that view.”

Technically, the brief Apple filed yesterday is in support of their motion to vacate the FBI’s requested court order. It’s the latest salvo in the back and forth.

A few interesting excerpts:

The government’s assertion that “there is no reason to think that the code Apple writes in compliance with the Order will ever leave Apple’s possession” simply shows the government misunderstands the technology and the nature of the cyber-threat landscape.

This is followed by a quote from Apple Engineer Erik Neuenschwander:

I believe that Apple’s iOS platform is the most-attacked software platform in existence. Each time Apple closes one vulnerability, attackers work to find another. This is a constant and never-ending battle. Mr. Perino’s description of third-party efforts to circumvent Apple’s security demonstrates this point. And the protections that the government now asks Apple to compromise are the most security-critical software component of the iPhone—any vulnerability or back door, whether introduced intentionally or unintentionally, can represent a risk to all users of Apple devices simultaneously.

As to the government’s claim that the crippled iOS it wants Apple to build can only be used on one iPhone:

Mr. Perino’s characterization of Apple’s process . . . is inaccurate. Apple does not create hundreds of millions of operating systems each tailored to an individual device. Each time Apple releases a new operating system, that operating system is the same for every device of a given model. The operating system then gets a personalized signature specific to each device. This personalization occurs as part of the installation process after the iOS is created.

Once GovtOS is created, personalizing it to a new device becomes a simple process. If Apple were forced to create GovtOS for installation on the device at issue in this case, it would likely take only minutes for Apple, or a malicious actor with sufficient access, to perform the necessary engineering work to install it on another device of the same model.

And remember this Loop post from yesterday? Apple’s brief carries that familiar quote from Richard Clarke:

Every expert I know believes that NSA could crack this phone.

And this, on the back and forth between Representative Issa and FBI Director Comey in the Judicial Committee hearing:

Rep. Issa asking Director Comey a series of questions as to the avenues the FBI exhausted, to which the Director said he didn’t know, and Rep. Issa replying, “If you haven’t asked that question, the question is how can you come before this committee, and before a federal judge, and demand that somebody else invent something?”

There’s so much more to this (the brief is 33 pages of highlights, really). Apple’s legal team did an incredible job pulling all these different points of focus together into a compelling argument.

One last bit, from the conclusion, quoting Justice Louis Brandeis:

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

Well said.

Daisuke Wakabayashi, writing for the Wall Street Journal:

Apple is working to bolster its encryption so that it won’t be able to decode user information stored in iCloud, according to people familiar with the matter.

But Apple executives are wrestling with how to strengthen iCloud encryption without inconveniencing users.

And:

If a user forgets a password, for example, and Apple doesn’t have the keys, the user might lose access to photos and other important data. If Apple keeps a copy of the key, the copy be “can be compromised or the service can be compelled to turn it over,” said Window Snyder, a former Apple security and privacy manager who is now chief security officer at Fastly, a content-delivery network.

And:

An Apple spokeswoman pointed to comments by Craig Federighi, the company’s senior vice president of software engineering, in a March 6 opinion piece in the Washington Post. “Security is an endless race–one that you can lead but never decisively win,” Mr. Federighi wrote. “Yesterday’s best defenses cannot fend off the attacks of today or tomorrow.”

Security vs convenience. Why is that middle ground an issue when it comes to iCloud but not to iPhone?

Is it that Apple is moving towards a similar uncompromising commitment to privacy in iCloud, but they just haven’t gotten there yet? Or is there a difference between the approaches required for iPhone and iCloud?

From the Department of Justice web site:

A Pennsylvania man was charged today with felony computer hacking related to a phishing scheme that gave him illegal access to over 100 Apple and Google e-mail accounts, including those belonging to members of the entertainment industry in Los Angeles.

Ryan Collins, 36, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, has signed a plea agreement and agreed to plead guilty to a felony violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. In the plea agreement also filed today, Collins agreed to plead guilty to one count of unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information.

Although Collins has been charged in Los Angeles, the parties have agreed to transfer the case to Harrisburg in the Middle District of Pennsylvania, near Collins’ home, for the entry of his guilty plea and sentencing. Once he enters the guilty plea, Collins will face a statutory maximum sentence of five years in federal prison. The parties have agreed to recommend a prison term of 18 months, but that recommendation will not be binding on the sentencing judge.

Now we know the cost. 18 months in prison if you hack into a bunch of people’s accounts and publish their most intimate details on line.

Daniel Eran Dilger:

You can contact the Obama White House online to comment on strong encryption.

You can contact your state Senators and Representatives via the contact information supplied by ContactingTheCongress.org.

You can specifically contact Senators Richard Burr (R-NC) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to express concerns about their bill intended to force companies to weaken or work around encryption under court orders.

I was going to write a similar story, but Daniel summed up my thoughts in his piece. You can make a difference in this debate, but you have to stand up and be heard. Do it.

From the description:

One of the most important figures working in music today is a man named Zane Lowe. The award-winning journalist and DJ is originally from New Zealand, but made his name working at MTV and BBC Radio 1 until he joined Apple last year to help launch Apple Music’s Beats 1. Noisey met Zane in Los Angeles where he told us his story and what it’s like to continually be recognized as “the old guy who interviewed Kanye.”

I wish all Apple interviews were done like this.

In this two part series (part one is here), Adam Engst and Josh Centers take you through a masters class in using your Mac’s built-in Preview program to work with images and PDFs.

Handoff giving you trouble? Here’s a checklist walkthrough of all the settings to make sure you’ve got everything enabled properly.

Tom Warren, writing for The Verge:

It all started when I left my house without my wallet. I had ventured out to grab some lunch with no cash or cards to pay for it, only my iPhone or Apple Watch. I’ve used Apple Pay on my iPhone and Watch before, but this was the first time it was actually useful. I paid for a sandwich at my local store with my Watch, and thought nothing more of it.

Unlike the US, Britain has widely adopted contactless payments, and most bank cards have the technology enabled by default. Big retailers accept payments up to £30 ($42) by simply placing your card on a reader. There’s no need for a signature or PIN code, you just touch and you’re done. Here in London, we can even use contactless cards or Apple Pay to travel on buses and trains. My brief lack of wallet got me thinking, could I rely on an Apple Watch to replace my cash and cards?

A very interesting read, rang true for me. It’s still early days for Apple Pay and Apple Watch, but the concept has been proven well enough. Unlike Google Glass, which constantly fought acceptance, Apple Pay and Apple Watch both have a pretty reasonable acceptance rate. There’s little negative energy there, and plenty of positives. A good early sign.

My brackets are all filled out, I’ve got some great sleeper picks (which you should immediately bet against), and my Apple TV all set to go. March Madness!!!

From NPR’s David Greene interview with counter-terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke:

GREENE: So if you were still inside the government right now as a counterterrorism official, could you have seen yourself being more sympathetic with the FBI in doing everything for you that it can to crack this case?

CLARKE: No, David. If I were in the job now, I would have simply told the FBI to call Fort Meade, the headquarters of the National Security Agency, and NSA would have solved this problem for them. They’re not as interested in solving the problem as they are in getting a legal precedent.

GREENE: Wow, that sounds like quite a charge. You’re suggesting they could have just gone to the NSA to crack this iPhone but they’re presenting this case because they want to set a precedent to be able to do it in the future?

CLARKE: Every expert I know believes that NSA could crack this phone. They want the precedent that the government can compel a computer device manufacturer to allow the government in.

Though Clarke hasn’t worked for the government since 2003, he is widely respected and, I suspect, maintains enough ties within the intelligence community that he knows of what he speaks.

One side point: There’s been a lot of discussion about the possibility of the FBI compelling Apple to turn over their source code. My gut tells me, that move is coming.

Kif Leswing, writing for Business Insider:

The new ad format would clearly label branded content in the app, as well as give publishers a new way to sell and promote sponsored posts, although it would come at a cost: Apple keeps 30% of the revenue it produces through iAd, a mobile-advertising platform.

Apple’s last three ad moves: Block ads in Safari (using content blockers), shut down the iAd platform, enable ad sales in Apple News.

If you are interested, here’s a link to the official Apple developer spec that lays all this out.

This is a really well written ad, touching on a fan’s love for soccer as well as the importance of friendship, all played out on a grand scale, live at a UEFA Champions League match.

[H/T John Kordyback]

L. Adam Rothman, writing for Investopedia, digs into Apple’s geographic business units, showing which areas of the world make how much money for Apple.

Interesting.

Pauli Olavi Ojala, writing for Medium:

The Mac operating system holds the dubious honor of being the most frequently mispronounced tech brand. It looks like “Oh Ess Ex”, but the X is actually a roman numeral, so you’re supposed to say “Oh Ess Ten”.

And:

All of Apple’s other operating systems are branded with a lowercase prefix and a simple version number. Meanwhile OS X has a total of three numbers in the name: there’s the roman “X”, then the same number as the major version number, then the actual version number which is currently eleven.

There’s a simple solution: bring back the “Mac” and drop the confusing non-version-numbers.

At the very least, there’s a lack of branding cohesion here. The Mac has a long tradition with Roman numerals, starting with the Mac II and shifting to the OS when Steve Jobs came back to Apple and used the seeds of NeXTSTEP to create OS X.

This is not what you expect.

Matthew Garrett:

I’m in London for Kubecon right now, and the hotel I’m staying at has decided that light switches are unfashionable and replaced them with a series of Android tablets.

One was embedded in the wall, but the two next to the bed had convenient looking ethernet cables plugged into the wall. So.

I managed to borrow a couple of USB ethernet adapters, set up a transparent bridge (brctl addbr br0; brctl addif br0 enp0s20f0u1; brctl addif br0 enp0s20f0u2; ifconfig br0 up) and then stuck my laptop between the tablet and the wall. tcpdump -i br0 showed traffic, and wireshark revealed that it was Modbus over TCP. Modbus is a pretty trivial protocol, and notably has no authentication whatsoever. tcpdump showed that traffic was being sent to 172.16.207.14, and pymodbus let me start controlling my lights, turning the TV on and off and even making my curtains open and close. What fun!

And then I noticed something. My room number is 714. The IP address I was communicating with was 172.16.207.14. They wouldn’t, would they?

I mean yes obviously they would.

Internet of Things. What could go wrong?

Allyson Kazmucha, writing for App Factor:

Action and share extensions have immensely changed how I use iOS over the last two years or so. Things that used to take me 3 apps and several minutes to accomplish can now be done in mere seconds and just a few taps.

If you aren’t familiar with share and action extensions already, there’s never been a better time to start using them. To get you started, here’s a list of some of my favorites and how I use them.

Solid list. Please add your own in the Loop comments. As a reminder, to get to a Loop post’s comments, click the infinity sign to the right of the headline. Note that comments work on the Mac and iPad, but not the iPhone.

Mac Kung Fu:

Open a Terminal window, which you’ll find in the Utilities folder within the Applications list, and paste in the following, typing your login password when prompted:

sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=0

This command prevents Time Machine’s backup process assuming a low CPU priority, allowing backups to complete insanely quickly.

In my opinion, this should be an exposed setting. Meaning, you should be able to flip a switch in the Time Machine preference pane that says, “Go ahead and run Time Machine in high priority mode so it gets done faster. I understand that my other stuff may suffer a bit performance-wise, run a bit slower.”

Read the whole post to learn how to make this command more permanent (otherwise you have to type it in again after each reboot).

Bookmark this and pass it along.

The New York Times:

Despite the fears about terrorism, the public’s concern about digital privacy is nearly universal. A Pew Research poll in 2014 found more than 90 percent of those surveyed felt that consumers had lost control over how their personal information was collected and used by companies.

The Apple case already seems to have garnered more public attention than the Snowden revelations about “metadata collection” and programs with code names like Prism and XKeyscore.

And:

Now, people are beginning to understand that their smartphones are just the beginning. Smart televisions, Google cars, Nest thermostats and web-enabled Barbie dolls are next. The resolution of the legal fight between Apple and the government may help decide whether the information in those devices is really private, or whether the F.B.I. and the N.S.A. are entering a golden age of surveillance in which they have far more data available than they could have imagined 20 years ago.

“It’s an in-your-face proposition for lots more Americans than the Snowden revelation was,” said Lee Rainie, director of Internet, science and technology research at Pew Research Center.

Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said: “Everyone gets at a really visceral level that you have a lot of really personal stuff on this device and if it gets stolen it’s really bad. They know that the same forces that work at trying to get access to sensitive stuff in the cloud are also at work attacking the phones.”

Terrific piece. This is a rare policy story that is emerging as national water cooler conversation.

Kirk McElhearn:

Since Apple has been selling audiobooks, which are provided by Audible, they have not allowed re-downloads of these books. I have long recommended to users to not purchase audiobooks from the iTunes Store for this reason. One hard disk problem, one iOS device crash, and you lose all your expensive content. Audible, on the other hand, has always allowed you to re-download your books from your library on their website.

This has now changed. As of March 3, according to an Apple support document, you can re-download audiobooks. Unfortunately, the procedure isn’t simple.

If you are an audiobook fan, read on for the details. This should have happened a long time ago.