There are 12 apps/applications that can boast of having a billion users. Can you name them?

Here’s a hint: They are owned by only three companies, none of them Apple.

And that said, Apple does not yet have a billion iPhone users. Though Apple has sold just about a billion iPhones since inception (I remember when selling 10 million iPhones seemed an amazingly unreachable achievement), that’s not the same thing as having a billion users.

Palo Alto Networks:

On March 4, we detected that the Transmission BitTorrent ailient installer for OS X was infected with ransomware, just a few hours after installers were initially posted. We have named this Ransomware “KeRanger.” The only previous ransomware for OS X we are aware of is FileCoder, discovered by Kaspersky Lab in 2014. As FileCoder was incomplete at the time of its discovery, we believe KeRanger is the first fully functional ransomware seen on the OS X platform.

Attackers infected two installers of Transmission version 2.90 with KeRanger on the morning of March 4. When we identified the issue, the infected DMG files were still available for downloading from the Transmission site. Transmission is an open source project. It’s possible that Transmission’s official website was compromised and the files were replaced by re-compiled malicious versions, but we can’t confirm how this infection occurred.

More importantly:

The KeRanger application was signed with a valid Mac app development certificate; therefore, it was able to bypass Apple’s Gatekeeper protection. If a user installs the infected apps, an embedded executable file is run on the system. KeRanger then waits for for three days before connecting with command and control (C2) servers over the Tor anonymizer network. The malware then begins encrypting certain types of document and data files on the system. After completing the encryption process, KeRanger demands that victims pay one bitcoin (about $400) to a specific address to retrieve their files. Additionally, KeRanger appears to still be under active development and it seems the malware is also attempting to encrypt Time Machine backup files to prevent victims from recovering their back-up data.

Apple has your back here:

Since Apple has revoked the abused certificate and has updated XProtect signatures, if a user tries to open a known infected version of Transmission, a warning dialog will be shown that states “Transmission.app will damage your computer. You should move it to the Trash.” Or “Transmission can’t be opened. You should eject the disk image.” In any case if you see these warnings, we suggest to follow Apple’s instruction to avoid being affected.

If you use Transmission, it’d be worth your time to read the How To Protect Yourself section of the linked article.

New York Times, on the death of Reverend Robert Palladino:

Mr. Jobs briefly attended Reed in 1972 before dropping out for economic reasons, but hung around campus for more than a year afterward; during that time, he audited Father Palladino’s class. After helping to found Apple in 1976, he often credited the company’s elegant onscreen fonts — and his larger interest in the design of computers as physical objects — to what he had been taught there.

And this quote from Steve Jobs’ famous 2005 Stanford commencement address:

“Ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them.”

A teacher who helped kindle a great flame of passion.

[H/T The intangibly metonymical Not Jony Ive]

Washington Post:

As the head of software engineering at Apple, I think nothing is more important than the safety of all of our customers. Even as we strive to deliver delightful experiences to users of iPhones, iPads and Macs, our team must work tirelessly to stay one step ahead of criminal attackers who seek to pry into personal information and even co-opt devices to commit broader assaults that endanger us all. Sadly, these threats only grow more serious and sophisticated over time.

That’s why my team works so hard to stay ahead.

Yet another salvo in the court of public opinion, this time from Apple’s Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering.

Ars Technica:

A security research firm announced Sunday its discovery of what is believed to be the world’s first ransomware that specifically goes after OS X machines.

“This is the first one in the wild that is definitely functional, encrypts your files and seeks a ransom,” Ryan Olson, of Palo Alto Networks, told Reuters.

The KeRanger malware, which imposes a 72-hour lockout window unless the victim pays 1 bitcoin ($410 as of this writing), appears to have been first discovered via a rogue version of Transmission, a popular BitTorrent client.

If you have version 2.90 of Transmission, upgrade to the latest version as soon as possible.

Fortune:

Want an Apple Watch for just $25? All you have to do is get in shape.

That’s the deal several companies are offering their employees, as part of a wellness-incentive program offered through the health-services firm Vitality Group, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

There’s a catch, however: You have to use the watch to help meet monthly fitness goals or pay the full price.

Depending on how reachable those monthly fitness goals are, this sounds like a great idea. The only concern I have is, who is collecting the data and how? How do you prove you’re reaching the monthly goals? Is the data automatically downloaded by the company? If so, what safeguards are there in place for the security of that data?

TidBITS:

While I like listening to music in Spotify, there are times when I just want some background sounds that won’t distract me from what I’m writing. Spotify and competing services like Apple Music have plenty of tracks of thunderstorms, waves, and birds, but finding something appropriate is a serious rabbit hole.

Enter Noizio, a free Mac and iOS app that I stumbled across recently. It offers 15 different ambient sounds that play in seamless loops: October Rain, Coffee House, Thunderstorm, Campfire, Winter Wind, Sea Waves, River Stream, Summer Night, Sunny Day, Deep Space, Sailing Yacht, Inside Train, On The Farm, Wind Chimes, and Blue Whales.

I’d never used noise generators until recently. My new neighbor snores like a congested elephant and it was driving me nuts. I now use this app to drown him out with a combination of October Rain and the very comforting Blue Whales. Works great.

Atlas Obscura:

When George Wyman crossed the Nevada desert in 1903, on a 1 ¼ horsepower motorcycle, he mostly rode on railroad tracks. It was a bumpy ride, but the sand that surrounded him was too soft too ride his bike over. Once, there had been wagon tracks here, but often the railroad ties lay right on top of them. This was the shortest and clearest route across the west.

Wyman left San Francisco from Lotta’s Fountain on May 16, 1903, with a promise from Motorcycle Magazine to publish an account of his journey. Fifty days later, he rolled into New York City. His bike was so busted that he had to pedal the last 150 miles, but he had made it: he was the first person to motor across the country.

I know how challenging this trip would be on a modern bike like my FJR 1300. It’s inconceivable how difficult it must have been in 1903.

Ars Technica:

The San Bernardino District Attorney told a federal judge late Thursday that Apple must assist the authorities in unlocking the iPhone used by Syed Farook, one of the two San Bernardino shooters that killed 14 people in a killing rampage in December. The phone, which was a county work phone issued to Farook as part of his Health Department duties, may have been the trigger to unleash a “cyber pathogen,” county prosecutors said in a brief court filing.

Jonathan Zdziarski, a prominent iPhone forensics expert, said in a telephone interview that the district attorney is suggesting that a “magical unicorn might exist on this phone.”

But if there’s even a slight chance to find a magical unicorn (which is redundant, by the way), shouldn’t law enforcement do everything in its power to discover such a creature? What is Apple trying to hide here? Why won’t they help the FBI discover this creature? Is it discrimination against mythical horses? Did a unicorn hurt Tim Cook as a child? Enquiring minds want to know.

And the The San Bernardino District Attorney is an idiot.

Emoticons are everywhere, but what if we could create emoticons with ourselves – our own smiles, shrugs, sighs, rages and laughs?

Get this handy, .gif creating app, which will turn your three photos into a moving image. You’ll be surprised how much you can say and how creative you can get with Moodroll. Oh yes, you can share your rolls via messages or email, on Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter or anywhere else you wish.

This is a cool free app.

Thanks to Pixelmator for sponsoring The Loop this week. I’ve used this app since the first version and still use it everyday.

Pixelmator is a powerful and easy-to-use image editor for Mac. It lets you enhance your photos, create advanced image compositions with layers, shapes and text, or even draw vector grapchics, and a lot more. Pixelmator is built from the ground up for Mac, taking full advantage of the latest OS X features and technologies.

Philip Elmer-DeWitt compiled a list, with links to the supporting documents, of those in favor of Apple or the FBI in the iPhone encryption case. It’s pretty one-sided.

Have a Nintendo 3DS? Love classic games with Zelda, Mario, Donkey Kong, Metroid, Pokemon? Well, stop what you are doing and go to this page, then click the “Filter Games” button towards the top of the page.

My three immediate favorites are Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda, and Metroid. $4.99 each. All running on the 3DS using Virtual Console. Very cool.

Quartz, writing about a black box you connect to a cracked open iPhone:

The hacking equipment is called IP Box, and can be found on eBay for about $200. It’s a black box that connects to an iPhone and systematically runs through every possible PIN combination to unlock it.

And:

Cleverly, IP Box gets around Apple’s auto-erase feature by cutting power to the device after each failed attempt. This means the wrong guesses don’t accumulate, opening the door for brute-force hacks, according to an analysis by British security consultancy MDSec. The firm used IP Box to successfully unlock an iPhone 5s running iOS 8.1 protected by a four-digit PIN in March 2015.

The San Bernardino iPhone 5c was running iOS 8.1.2. Can this technique be used to break into 8.1.2?

There is confusion over which versions of iOS IP Box is able to unlock in this way. Dominic Chell, who runs MDSec, says Apple plugged the security hole after iOS 8.1. But a US government agent has testified that the hack works on later versions of iOS, too.

The testimony surfaced in a New York court case in December 2015, when a ruling referred to a Department of Homeland Security special agent named David Bauer who told a court that he had unlocked three phones with IP Box. The target phone in the case in question, though, was an iPhone 5 running iOS 8.1.2, which Bauer had not personally unlocked before. He said, however, that law enforcement agents in Bergen County, New Jersey, had successfully unlocked iPhones running later versions of iOS.

It’d be pretty easy to tell if the FBI had tried this technique, since it requires you to crack open the phone to access the leads from the battery.

As of last week (Feb 22), Apple reports that 23% of active iPhones are running iOS 8 or earlier.

Here’s a link to the MDSec blog, where you can see these hacking tools in action. Fascinating stuff.

Shacknews:

We spoke to Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey recently during an Xbox press event where we took the opportunity to ask him some questions regarding the future of his company, and his product, the Oculus Rift.

One question we were dying to ask is he sees a future for the Oculus Rift with Apple computers. When asked if there would ever be Mac support for the Rift, Palmer responds by saying “That is up to Apple. If they ever release a good computer, we will do it.”

And, to clarify:

Palmer continues to clarify what he meant by that blunt statement by saying “It just boils down to the fact that Apple doesn’t prioritize high-end GPUs. You can buy a $6,000 Mac Pro with the top of the line AMD FirePro D700, and it still doesn’t match our recommended specs. So if they prioritize higher-end GPUs like they used to for a while back in the day, we’d love to support Mac. But right now, there’s just not a single machine out there that supports it.”

Snarky as all this sounds, I watched the entire interview and I get the sense Palmer truly wants a Mac with a more powerful GPU. But a poor choice of words, especially from a company founder.

That said, it’ll be interesting to see if the coming emergence of VR drives Apple to significantly upgrade Mac GPU options, or perhaps opens the door to a replaceable GPU. VR is a huge wave coming.

From the statement released this morning by the United Nations Human Rights Commission:

“A successful case against Apple in the US will set a precedent that may make it impossible for Apple or any other major international IT company to safeguard their clients’ privacy anywhere in the world,” the UN Human Rights Chief said. “It is potentially a gift to authoritarian regimes, as well as to criminal hackers. There have already been a number of concerted efforts by authorities in other States to force IT and communications companies such as Google and Blackberry to expose their customers to mass surveillance.”

Graham Spencer, writing for MacStories:

Since the App Store launched in 2008, every app and every app update has gone through a process of App Review. Run by a team within Apple, their objective is to keep the App Store free from apps that are malicious, broken, dangerous, offensive or infringe upon any of Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines. For developers who want to have their app on the iOS, Mac, or tvOS App Store, App Review is an unavoidable necessity that they deal with regularly. But in the public, little is heard about App Review, except for a few occasions in which App Review has made a high-profile or controversial app rejection.

And:

Earlier this year we set out to get a better understanding of what developers think about App Review. We wanted to hear about their positive and negative experiences with App Review, and find out how App Review could be improved. It is hard to ignore from the results we got, from a survey of 172 developers, that beneath the surface there is a simmering frustration relating to numerous aspects of App Review.

This is worth reading, for developers and non-devs alike. The App Store is a core pillar of the iPhone and iOS itself, and the health of the app review process is a key signature of the health of the iOS marketplace. A stuttering app review process means down time for developers, loss of revenue, which can be devastating for indie developers, who already face an increasingly difficult time making ends meet.

There is a mechanism for developers to send messages to the App Review team, but a common sentiment amongst those who commented on it was that it can often be (or at least appear to be) futile. One developer said App Review simply sends them “canned responses” and another developer even described the feeling of communicating with App Review as “like sending a message in a bottle”.

A great read. Clearly, Graham put a lot of work into pulling this together.

IEEE Spectrum:

Last week, IBM reported to investors that its workforce at the end of 2015 was almost as big as its workforce at the end of 2014 (within less than 1 percent), in spite of a year in which 70,000 employees left the company, to be replaced with new hires and acquisitions.

By the end of this week, the picture may look quite different. Today reports are coming in that big layoffs across the United States are underway, likely one-third of the U.S. workforce, according to one soon-to-be-laid-off IBMer.

One third of the US workforce. If true, that is perhaps 100,000 people. When I first read this, I was skeptical, but there is a lot of supporting detail, not just a single report from a disgruntled employee.

Likely adding to the pain of many of these workers is a recent change in IBM’s severance policy, reducing a potential maximum of six months of benefits to one month’s worth.

Ouch.

Apple:

When I first learned Apple was opposing the order I was frustrated that it would be yet another roadblock. But as I read more about their case, I have come to understand their fight is for something much bigger than one phone. They are worried that this software the government wants them to use will be used against millions of other innocent people. I share their fear.

I support Apple and the decision they have made.

Apple isn’t leaving this in the hands of the courts or Congress. They are also fighting in the court of public opinion. They are serious about winning this fight.

I’m kind of ambivalent about this, to be honest. I’d rather see Apple do something else for Apple TV than to stream NFL games that are already available to watch elsewhere.

Carruthers isn’t messing around when he says he’s done a lot of concert movies—the director, who spoke with us from his home in the United Kingdom, has more than 60 credits to his name and has worked with acts as varied as Led Zeppelin and Usher. It’s fair to assume he knows a well-done live performance when he sees one.

The folks at Dolby interviewed Carruthers about the new film and posted it, and a 30 second trailer, to their site.

I find these things fascinating and a bit scary.

These are cool, although I’m not sure if I would use them or not. Merlin Mann and I have talked about these products quite a bit on The Dalrymple Report Podcast, and he loves them.

Apple posted these to its Web site.

Kaye — who is responsible for monitoring free speech issues around the world, including the speech rights of individuals, vulnerable communities, journalists, and political dissidents — highlighted the benefits of encryption from a human rights perspective.

The support for Apple keeps coming.

Follow Apple’s @AppleSupport account on Twitter. It’s full of tips!

A solid list from the Hollywood Reporter. Don’t miss the video at the very bottom featuring a variety of stars delivering their favorite lines. Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston does a surprisingly excellent Brando.

The Verge:

Since Kaneko founded the company with Scott Sykora in 2009, Pixite has released eight applications dedicated to photo editing and design. Each has been featured by Apple as a Best New App; photo editor Tangent and design tool Assembly won year-end awards from Apple. Between 2013 and 2014, downloads of Pixite apps jumped from 395,472 to 3.1 million, and annual revenue doubled to $943,000. Pixite grew along with its cash flow, expanding from two to six employees as it explored ways to link its apps together and grow a loyal base of customers.

Then the bottom fell out. Last year downloads flattened, and Pixite’s revenues plunged by a third, to $629,000. Suddenly, a company that needed to bring in $2,000 a day to break even found itself making $1,000 or less. Pixite has no reserves of venture capital to fall back on; aside from a $50,000 seed investment from a Carnegie Mellon fund for alumni entrepreneurs, Pixite has funded itself.

And:

The App Store’s middle class is small and shrinking. And the easy money is gone.

And:

For a large swath of these app developers — particularly those without venture capital and sophisticated marketing tactics — the original App Store model of selling apps for a buck or two looks antiquated. In 2011, 63 percent of apps were paid downloads, selling for an average of $3.64 apiece. By last year, a mere 27 percent of downloads were paid, and the average price had fallen to $1.27. Today, profiting from the App Store most often requires a mix of in-app purchases, subscriptions, and advertising.

And:

Meanwhile, a fatigue is setting in among customers. There are now more than 1.5 million apps in the App Store (Android users have 1.6 million to choose from), but by 2014, the majority of Americans were downloading zero apps per month. And it turns out people simply don’t use most of the apps they do download. According to ComScore, the average person spends 80 percent of their time on mobile devices using only three apps.

This rings true. Not sure there will ever be a solution to the user fatigue problem. The number of apps will never go down. But it’d be nice if there was a program to support the indie developer. Even an improved search mechanism would be helpful. It’s harder than ever to make a living building apps.

From The Verge’s coverage of the Geneva Auto Show:

> This week I’ve been kicking the tires of the finest, most exclusive, and most exotic cars at the Geneva Motor Show, and I’ve spotted two emerging trends: cheap oil is bringing huge gas guzzlers back into fashion, and Google’s Android Auto is falling behind Apple’s CarPlay. Android Auto isn’t a complete absentee from the show, of course, but the headline-grabbing cars, the cream of Geneva’s crop, have all gravitated toward Apple’s solution and ignored Google’s alternative.

And:

> Android Auto is typically a second option quietly thrown in after CarPlay. Google’s software is an afterthought. Apple’s software is a major highlight on the car about to grace the cover of the next Forza racing game.

Look at these used cars in phoenix if you plan to get a car with a good engine and safety features that won’t cost a fortune. If you are a car afficienado, jump to this article and scroll down to enjoy some incredible pictures of Lamborghini’s brand new Centenario. Visit novawarranty.com to see an extended warranty for Lamborghini. Only 40 of these will be made and they are €1.75 million each. Hopefully, Jim got his order in early.