Craig Mod on his reading habits:

But in the past two years, something unexpected happened: I lost the faith. Gradually at first and then undeniably, I stopped buying digital books. I realised this only a few months ago, when taking stock of my library, both digital and physical. Physical books – most of all, works of literary fiction – I continue to acquire voraciously. I split my time between New York and Tokyo, and know that with each New York trip I’ll pick up a dozen or more volumes from bookstores or friends.

I found this really interesting.

Thanks to SVALT for sponsoring The Loop this week. Use code “LOOP” for a $15 discount on the ultimate high-performance Apple laptop dock, the SVALT D Performance Cooling Dock, that increases CPU Turbo Boost speeds by 106% and speeds up 4K exports in Final Cut Pro X by 10% on 15-in Retina MacBook Pro.

From the Palo Alto Networks blog post:

We recently identified a new Apple iOS malware and named it YiSpecter. YiSpecter is different from previously seen iOS malware in that it attacks both jailbroken and non-jailbroken iOS devices through unique and harmful malicious behaviors. Specifically, it’s the first malware we’ve seen in the wild that abuses private APIs in the iOS system to implement malicious functionalities.

So far, the malware primarily affects iOS users in mainland China and Taiwan. It spreads via unusual means, including the hijacking of traffic from nationwide ISPs, an SNS worm on Windows, and an offline app installation and community promotion. Many victims have discussed YiSpecter infections of their jailbroken and non-jailbroken iPhones in online forums and have reported the activity to Apple. The malware has been in the wild for over 10 months, but out of 57 security vendors in VirusTotal, only one is detecting the malware at the time of this writing.

And:

On infected iOS devices, YiSpecter can download, install and launch arbitrary iOS apps, replace existing apps with those it downloads, hijack other apps’ execution to display advertisements, change Safari’s default search engine, bookmarks and opened pages, and upload device information to the C2 server. According to victims’ reports, all these behaviors have been exhibited in YiSpecter attacks in the past few months. Some other characteristics about this malware include:

• Whether an iPhone is jailbroken or not, the malware can be successfully downloaded and installed
• Even if you manually delete the malware, it will automatically re-appear
• Using third-party tools you can find some strange additional “system apps” on infected phones
• On infected phones, in some cases when the user opens a normal app, a full screen advertisement will show

Palo Alto Networks is the company that put out the word on the recent GhostXcode malware.

Fantastic alternative list of password security questions. Hard to pick a favorite.

Though this emulator will run on your iOS device, the taps are not responsive, so save the link to run on your Mac.

Wish there was a way to run Dark Castle on this puppy. I had to satisfy myself with ResEdit. Much nostalgia.

Pro tip: Make sure the sound is on when you load the page. That is one old-school startup sound.

Sébastien Page, writing for iDownloadBlog, digs into an error that is both common and non-obvious and lays out the fix.

Yesterday I decided to look at when my new iPhone 6s backed up to iCloud for the last time when I realized that it hadn’t actually been backed up since September 25, which coincidentally was the first day I got this new device.

Check out your most recent iCloud backup. If those automatic backups have not been keeping up with the times, then this article is for you. Either way, this is worth bookmarking (for future reference) and passing along.

Joe Caiati, writing for dot info, digs into the completely visible diagnostic info found on each of your iOS devices.

Before you read the linked article, take a second and go to:

Settings > Privacy > Diagnostics & Usage

On the page that appears, tap:

Diagnostics & Usage Data

Tap one of the entries on this list. You’ll see a somewhat cryptic diagnostic record, full of information that can help Apple or an app developer diagnose a problem that happened on your iOS device.

If you have even the slightest interest on what this all means, take a read through Joe’s excellent article. Great stuff.

Third year in a row. Best brand in the world.

On Saturday, Tim Cook was awarded the Human Rights Campaign’s National Visibility Award. Watch the video below, especially the embedded tribute that starts at about 2:50 in.

One quote from that tribute:

Knowing that the leader of the company that I work for, the boss’s boss’s boss’s boss, is advocating for the rights of those who have been disenfranchised, makes me beyond proud.

Tim comes on stage at about 6:50 in. From his terrifically genuine, heartfelt speech:

I’m a private person by nature. Growing up, I was taught that you distinguish yourself in life by what you do, not by what you say, or how loudly you say it. But sometimes, you just have to be loud.

Tim Cook is an incredible CEO, a role model for leadership that goes well beyond corporate citizenship. Well earned, Tim.

[H/T John Kordyback]

The Wall Street Journal:

Four years after Steve Jobs’s death, a new movie is reopening a debate over the Apple Inc. co-founder’s legacy.

Mr. Jobs’s allies, led by his widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, say the film “Steve Jobs,” and other recent depictions, play down his accomplishments and paint Mr. Jobs as cruel and inhumane. Ms. Jobs repeatedly tried to kill the film, according to people familiar with the conversations. She lobbied, among others, Sony Pictures Entertainment, which developed the script but passed on the movie for financial reasons, and Comcast Corp.’s Universal Pictures, which is releasing the $33.5 million production on Friday.

“A whole generation is going to think of him in a different way if they see a movie that depicts him in a negative way,” said Bill Campbell, a longtime Apple board member and friend of Mr. Jobs. Mr. Campbell hasn’t seen the film.

I don’t know that I agree with Campbell on his assessment of Jobs’ legacy and whether or not this movie will taint it. I doubt it. The debate will continue for generations with each making their own evaluations.

The most interesting tidbit in this story, and a piece of information that hadn’t been disclosed up until now, is the fact that Wozniak was paid $200,000 to consult on the film.

Petapixel:

Personal videos have long been an integral part of our lives, allowing us to share and cherish memories with our friends and family. Apple’s recent release of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s+ have introduced ultra high-definition 4K video recording to a massive new audience. With such a powerful device, you may want to tweak your footage before you share it. Today, we are taking a quick look at five different editing solutions for your iOS device.

As a photographer, I don’t mess around with video on my iPhone very much but when I do, I use a couple of these free apps to quickly bang out something I can post online.

Mother Jones:

Every photo ever taken by Apollo astronauts on moon missions is now available online, on the Project Apollo Archive’s Flickr account. That’s about 8,400 images, grouped by the roll of film they were shot on. You can finally see all the blurry images, mistakes, and unrecognized gems for yourself. The unprocessed Hasseblad photos (basically raw scans of the negatives) uploaded by the Project Apollo Archive offer a fascinating behind-the-scenes peek at the various moon missions as well as lots and lots (and lots) of photos detailing the surface of the moon.

This is one of those Flickr pages you don’t want to go to unless you have a lot of free time this afternoon.

This looks really interesting. It combines streaming services like Netflix and includes SkipMode, which completely skips over commercial breaks by pressing one button.

The first project is to build an artificial brain from scratch that can pass a high school science test. It sounds simple enough, but trying to teach a machine not only to respond but also to reason is one of the hardest software-engineering endeavors attempted — far more complex than building his former company’s breakthrough Windows operating system, said to have 50 million lines of code.

The second project aims to understand intelligence by coming at it from the opposite direction — by starting with nature and deconstructing and analyzing the pieces. It’s an attempt to reverse-engineer the human brain by slicing it up — literally — modeling it and running simulations.

Apple has purchased VocalIQ, a startup located in the United Kingdom that has developed a natural language API to allow computers and people to have a more natural dialogue, reports Financial Times. According to VocalIQ’s website, the company has developed a self-learning dialogue API built on 10 years of natural language research, belief tracking, decision making, and message generation.

Siri is becoming an increasingly important part of how people interact with Apple’s devices and operating systems.

Thanks to Twocanoes Software for sponsoring The Loop this week. Makers of Winclone, the best Mac app for migrating, cloning and backing up your Boot Camp partition. This week Loop readers can use the code “theloop” to get 10% off Winclone 5, just in time to backup Boot Camp before upgrading to El Capitan. If you run Boot Camp in labs or classrooms, Boot Runner 2 from Twocanoes is a time saver for remote scheduling of maintenance reboots and an easy to use OS picker for your users. Check out the video or get the 14-day trial and see how easy Boot Runner makes managing dual boot Macs.

The European Commission is probing whether Samsung televisions’ sensed when they were being tested for energy efficiency and changed their power consumption to get better ratings than they deserved.

Samsung admits that its TVs radically changed their power-consumption during testing, but say that the low-power mode was inadvertently triggered by the tests, and was meant to be an automatic power-saving feature.

Sure it was.

Kirk McElhearn, writing for Intego:

Apple has offered two-factor authentication for some time (here’s how you set it up), but with the release of iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan, Apple is changing the way this works. Previously, you had to save a recovery key, a long string of characters that Apple suggested you print out and store in a safe place. This presented a number of problems, however, such as people not saving it, losing it, or not being in the location where it was stored when they needed to access it.

It’s a good idea to turn on two-factor authentication, especially now that the process is a bit simpler. If, however, you get locked out of your account, it can take several days for Apple to reinstate it. If this happens, go to iforgot.apple.com and follow the instructions. Apple will contact you and ask you a number of questions, so you can prove that you are, indeed, you, and have not been replaced by an alien or a cyborg.

Note that two-factor authentication is different than two-factor verification. From Apple’s web site:

Two-factor authentication is a new service built directly into iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan. It uses different methods to trust devices and deliver verification codes, and offers a more streamlined user experience. The current two-step verification feature will continue to work separately for users who are already enrolled.

And:

If you can’t sign in, reset your password, or receive verification codes, you can regain access to your account by requesting account recovery. Simply provide a verified phone number where you can receive a text message or phone call regarding your account. Apple will review your case and send an automated message to the number you provided when your Apple ID is ready for recovery. This message will direct you to iforgot.apple.com to complete the required steps and regain access to your account.

Account recovery will take a few days—or longer—depending on what account information you are able to provide. The process is designed to get you back into your account as quickly as possible while denying access to anyone who might be pretending to be you.

This last bit is a bit mysterious, but that doesn’t bother me. The key is that Apple recognizes that social engineering may be at work and has a protocol in place to at least make it possible to get your account back if you lose all your safety nets.

New York Times:

Ad blockers, which Apple first allowed on the iPhone in September, promise to conserve data and make websites load faster. But how much of your mobile data comes from advertising? We measured the mix of advertising and editorial on the mobile home pages of the top 50 news websites – including ours – and found that more than half of all data came from ads and other content filtered by ad blockers. Not all of the news websites were equal.

It’s a steady fall from the quickest to load (The Guardian) down to the piggiest, slowest of them all (Boston.com).

Will ad blockers impact the behavior of the more bloated sites? Or will they feed on the folks who don’t install them, accept the percentage drop in revenue, make it up by increasing the bloat?

Sanjay Ved:

A strange thing happened at 1:20 AM Eastern Time on Tuesday, September 29. I was learning more about the Google Domains interface, and typed google.com and clicked search domains. To my surprise, Google.com was showing as available!

He actually ended up owning one of the most valuable domains in the world, albeit for a brief, shining moment. Fascinating story.

From the Target announcement:

Expected to be one of the season’s hottest gift items, Apple Watch is coming to some Target stores this week and all stores by Oct. 25.

At Target.com, Apple Watch will be available beginning Oct. 18.

Guests can choose from 20 models—in both 38mm and 42mm sizes—including beautiful space gray and rose gold colors. Select models and bands will be available at all Target stores, and an expanded assortment of Apple Watch Sport and Apple Watch will be available on Target.com. Prices range from $349 to $599.

Safe to assume Apple Watch Edition will not be one of the available models?

Interesting bit at the bottom of that page:

Looking to save? REDcard holders always receive 5 percent off nearly all purchases at Target stores and Target.com, and free shipping at Target.com.

I’m going to take a flyer here and assume that this 5 percent discount does not apply to Apple Watch.

UPDATE: Just got an email from someone at Target corporate telling me that the 5 percent discount DOES apply to Apple Watch. Such a deal!

Husain Sumra, writing for MacRumors:

Since the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus have been available on September 25, many users have begun reporting that their 6s or 6s Plus will randomly turn itself off completely, even when it’s left unattended and with sufficient battery power. It’s unknown what causes the shut off, but some users have also reported their home button feels warm to the touch when trying to revive their phones.

This appears to be an iOS 9 issue, rather than a 6s, 6s Plus issue.

Users on Reddit, the Apple support communities and the MacRumors forums have experienced the issue. While 6s and 6s Plus users have seen the majority of incidents, some iPhone 6 users have also reported the issue, indicating that iOS 9 may the root of the problem.

This is happening (I’ve confirmed this via Twitter) on both the latest released version of iOS 9 (iOS 9.0.2) as well as on the latest beta (iOS 9.1 beta 3).

No response from Apple yet.

NPR:

Apple has long touted the power and design of its devices, but recently the world’s most valuable company has been emphasizing another feature: privacy. That’s no small matter when many users store important private data on those devices: account numbers, personal messages, photos.

Apple CEO Tim Cook talks to NPR’s Robert Siegel about how the company protects its customers’ data, and how it uses — or doesn’t use — that information.

Yet another fascinating interview with Cook. He is really hammering home the security and privacy angle of Apple’s corporate position.

Medium:

Ms. Fiorina’s trainwreck stint at HP has been well documented. But I want to address one tiny but telling aspect of her misbegotten reign: an episode that involved her good friend Steve Jobs. It is the story of the HP iPod.

The iPod, of course, was Apple’s creation, a groundbreaking digital music player that let you have “a music library in your pocket.” Introduced in 2001, it gained steam over the next few years and by the end of 2003, the device was a genuine phenomenon. So it was news that in January 2004, Steve Jobs and Carly Fiorina made a deal where HP could slap its name on Apple’s wildly successful product. Nonetheless, HP still managed to botch things. It could not have been otherwise, really, because Steve Jobs totally outsmarted the woman who now claims she can run the United States of America.

I can talk about this with some authority. Not only have I written a book about the iPod, but I interviewed Fiorina face to face when she introduced the HP iPod at the 2004 Consumer Electronics Show, and then got Steve Jobs’s side of the story.

Hindsight is 20/20 but many of us saw this deal as a “Huh? WHY!?” kind of move by HP. Many more of us predicted it would be a disaster, but not for Apple.

Good list of some of the top companies and where they stand with compatibility. Obviously, this will continue to change. Personally, I keep my music production machine a version back to ensure all of my music software works.

Google is close to rolling out a tool named “Customer Match” which, it appears, will combine a logged-in Google account with any email address handed by a customer to a retailer to create lists of addresses to target specific users with marketing material.

Creepy bastards.

From the Apple press release:

Apple® today announced that James A. Bell, former chief financial officer and corporate president of The Boeing Company, has been elected to Apple’s board of directors. Bell brings more than four decades of experience in finance, strategic planning and leadership in complex organizations. During his 38-year career at Boeing, he also oversaw Boeing Capital Corporation and Boeing Shared Services, and was interim CEO of The Boeing Company in 2005.

And:

Bell is a member of the board of directors of JP Morgan Chase, Dow Chemical Company, CDW, and a Trustee of Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center. He has also worked with New Leaders for New Schools to help develop talented teachers and principals, and served on many community-based boards. Bell attended California State University, Los Angeles where he earned a bachelor’s degree in Accounting.

Impressive resume, interesting choice.