Matt Birchler:

I look at my brand spanking new iPhone (which I of course will likely replace in 5 short months) and while I love how it looks, how fast it runs, Face ID, and how good the cameras are, I keep wandering over to the iPhone SE page on Apple’s site and keep looking for the “gotcha” moment. What is the Achille’s heel that makes this actually a bad phone for someone like me who likes the best in phones?

So far, I can’t really find one.

The primary differences are Face ID, screen real estate, extra camera features. Toughest to give up, for me, would be the extra screen real estate. But I like Touch ID (not as convenient as Face ID, but it has its own convenience), and the iPhone SE camera is an excellent camera, I’d guess good enough for most folks.

And the cost saving is significant.

So when I see the $399 iPhone SE with 5 years of likely updates, with a really good single lens camera, and with it’s processor that’s faster than all 2020 $1,000+ Android phones, and will likely still be faster than all 2021 Android phones…well, it just looks like a damn good phone, and it makes it look like we’ve been frolicking around in excess for years now.

Practical vs luxury.

If you’ve been looking forward to the Apple TV+ show Defending Jacob or the History of the Beastie Boys documentary, today’s the day. Both are now live.

In other news, from this Apple media release:

Directed by Michael Showalter (“The Big Sick,” “The Lovebirds”) and based on the script by Emmy, Golden Globe, BAFTA, WGA Award winner Georgia Pritchett (“Succession,” “Veep”), “The Shrink Next Door” is a dark comedy inspired by true events that detail the bizarre relationship between psychiatrist to the stars Dr. Isaac “Ike” Herschkopf, played by Paul Rudd, and his longtime patient Martin “Marty” Markowitz, played by Will Ferrell. Over the course of their relationship, the all-too-charming Ike slowly takes over Marty’s life, even moving into Marty’s Hamptons home and taking over his family business.

The series is based on this podcast. Sounds like some dark, dark comedy.

Freedom of the Press Foundation:

Chances are you have recently spent more time in video chats than ever before, and may have jumped on multiple unfamiliar video call applications. Not all meetings have equal security and privacy needs, and sometimes you’re just concerned about everyones’ ability to join the meeting in the first place.

While it’s likely there are many other important considerations at work, we have a few key concerns for the security and practicality of these tools for newsrooms.

Let’s talk through some common video chat applications and how they approach these issues.

The chart at the bottom of this article shows there is no one, perfect app for everyone. Each person and organization needs to balance their needs and wants with the capabilities of the app in question.

Hodinkee:

With half a decade of perspective, it’s hard to imagine the watch world before Apple dropped their wrist-worn device, bringing more attention to watches than any other single event or product in recent memory. So, with the milestone just a few hours away, now seems as good a time as any to look back over the last few years, through the lens of the Apple Watch.

This is an Apple Watch retrospective written from our perspective, and hopefully, I can convince even the most Apple Watch-skeptical among you to take this journey with me.

The Apple Watch is a very interesting device five years after launch but there’s a very real sense that it will really come into its own over the next five years.

The Atlantic:

If you feel confused about whether people should wear masks and why and what kind, you’re not alone. COVID-19 is a novel disease and we’re learning new things about it every day. However, much of the confusion around masks stems from the conflation of two very different functions of masks.

Masks can be worn to protect the wearer from getting infected or masks can be worn to protect others from being infected by the wearer. Protecting the wearer is difficult: It requires medical-grade respirator masks, a proper fit, and careful putting on and taking off. But masks can also be worn to prevent transmission to others, and this is their most important use for society. If we lower the likelihood of one person’s infecting another, the impact is exponential, so even a small reduction in those odds results in a huge decrease in deaths. Luckily, blocking transmission outward at the source is much easier. It can be accomplished with something as simple as a cloth mask.

At the beginning of all of this, there was a lot of confusion regarding masks. Now it’s generally accepted that everyone should wear them, even homemade cloth masks, at all times when outside your home. Because, as the story points out, “Models show if 80% of people wear masks that are 60% effective, easily achievable with cloth, we can get to an effective R0 of less than one. That’s enough to halt the spread of the disease.”

Vice:

If you happen to have an extra $599.95 that you aren’t blowing on black market sourdough starter, then Kodak would like you to buy its 51,300 piece jigsaw puzzle. The company says that this is the “world’s largest commercially available puzzle,” and it will arrive at your doorstep in one 40-pound box that contains 27 individually wrapped bags of anxiety.

“Featuring wonderful, colorful photographs of twenty seven Wonders from around the World, these pictures were taken by professional photographers and then printed using high-performance printing presses,” Kodak says of its beautifully packaged reminder that we’re all just fragile collections of broken pieces.

Ultimately, the smaller puzzles are supposed to be connected to form the World’s Largest Puzzle, assuming that you have a large enough living space, an empty garage, or access to a vacant department store where you can assemble a puzzle that is six feet wide and 28 feet long.

There’s no way I could do this puzzle. It would completely stress me out.

Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. is planning to start selling Mac computers with its own main processors by next year, relying on designs that helped popularize the iPhone and iPad, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Cupertino, California-based technology giant is working on three of its own Mac processors, known as systems-on-a-chip, based on the A14 processor in the next iPhone. The first of these will be much faster than the processors in the iPhone and iPad, the people said.

And:

Apple is preparing to release at least one Mac with its own chip next year, according to the people. But the initiative to develop multiple chips, codenamed Kalamata, suggests the company will transition more of its Mac lineup away from current supplier Intel Corp.

Take with a grain of salt. It’s a rumor. But a believable one, very believable. So logical that Apple would want their own processors in every device they make.

Add in the recent rumors about Xcode coming to iPad Pro (big grain of salt, but still), and it all seems so inevitable.

Lots to read here, lots of detail. Two things stand out to me.

First, scroll down and look at the first four images embedded in Gruber’s review. All taken with front facing camera, two on the iPhone 11 Pro, two with the new SE.

Without looking at the identifying text, see if you can pick out which picture was taken with which phone. I would be surprised if your eye can pick out the difference. And, if pressed to pick a favorite, I’d not be surprised if you chose a self portrait taken with the SE.

Secondly:

It’s quite remarkable that the $400 iPhone SE significantly outperforms — and to a lesser but still noticeable degree, out-photographs — the $600 iPhone XR, both of which prices are for 64 GB base models. It’s even more remarkable that you can upgrade all the way to a 256 GB iPhone SE for $550, which is still less than the XR base model. But the XR has one obvious advantage: screen real estate. With the same text size, the XR shows significantly more vertical content.

For that last point, scroll to the bottom and check out the pic of the iPhone XR and SE side-by-side. Clear difference in screen real-estate. But in most every other way, the SE beats out the iPhone XR.

This is a great phone.

AndroidCentral:

I expect that some people are going to tell me about single thread versus multi-threaded performance and how the A13 GPU isn’t that great or how iPhones have much lower resolution screens so the chips don’t have to work as hard. All this is true, but another thing is true: the A13 is a stronger chip than the Snapdragon 865 for daily use in every category

I love when Apple gear appreciation pieces appear on Android sites. It’s one thing when Apple folk rave about the new shiny. But so much more credible when that appreciation comes from a traditional critic.

Also, what a strong headline.

Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:

Tim Cook held talks with European Commissioner Thierry Breton yesterday regarding the upcoming contact tracing frameworks, that Apple and Google are jointly collaborating on. The companies announced a privacy-preserving API that allows devices to be notified when another user’s device who reports positive for COVID-19 was in close proximity, based on Bluetooth, without sharing the identities of said user.

And:

In a press conference following the call, iGeneration reports that Breton said Cook told him that the first version of the contact tracing API will be available on April 28.

And:

In a phase two followup said to arrive in the months ahead, Apple and Google will build parts of this system directly into the OS. This means an app download won’t be needed to get contact tracing proximity alerts.

No matter when this rolls out, it will have value in the long haul, a vital tool to help prevent the wandering in the dark we’re experiencing now.

ZDNet:

Cyber-security firm ZecOps said today it discovered what appears to be exploitation attempts using a new iOS vulnerability.

Apple is currently investigating the matter, and the company is preparing a security update to be made available soon.

In a report published today, ZecOps said it found evidence that hackers have been using an iOS bug since at least January 2018. Researchers say the new iOS exploit appears to have been leveraged as part of malformed emails sent to high-profile iOS users.

ZecOps researchers say the attack is a zero-click exploit that doesn’t require users to interact with the email, with the exploit triggering once the user receives the email or the user opens the Apple Mail app. The exploit doesn’t trigger in Gmail or other email clients, researchers said.

This is a particularly nasty exploit.

AppleInsider:

It’s Earth Day, and Apple is celebrating by highlighting apps that celebrate and protect our planet, helping you to get back to nature, and give back to the environment.

Apple designed this year’s Earth Day app stories to give readers a way to get involved in Earth Day — especially crucial as COVID-19 and social distancing have postponed many Earth Day celebrations.

Does Earth Day take on more meaning as we hear stories of better air, fewer car crashes, and animals wandering through cities because of the pandemic?

MacStories:

Following the surprise early release of the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro, I’ve been waiting to get my hands on Apple’s highly anticipated accessory and evaluate it from the perspective of someone who uses the iPad Pro as a tablet, laptop, and desktop workstation.

I received the Magic Keyboard for my 12.9” iPad Pro yesterday afternoon; fortunately, I was able to order one in the US English keyboard layout from the Italian Apple Store last week, and the keyboard arrived three days ahead of its original scheduled delivery date. Obviously, less than a day of usage isn’t enough time to provide you with a comprehensive review; however, given that plenty of iPad users are still waiting for their Magic Keyboards to arrive, I thought it’d be useful to share some first impressions and thoughts based on my initial 24 hours with the keyboard.

Let’s dive in.

Viticci has been a full-time iPad user for many, many years. His is the opinion I’m most interested in when it comes to the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro.

PetaPixel:

Photography for me is a way of connecting to nature and capturing the feeling I have when exploring amazing locations. A phone creates less of a barrier to capturing that moment.

But what happens when you take a photo with a modern phone like an iPhone 11 Pro and then print it really big? I wondered and decided to give it a go.

I wanted to print 30-40 inches (76-102cm), so I would have to accept that it will be printed at 120 PPI or less. But how bad would that look?

The assumption has always been you can easily print off your iPhone/camera phone photos as long as you don’t print them too large. This guy shows you can print massive iPhone shots.

New York Times:

There could hardly have been a more terrifying place to fight a fire than in the belly of the Losharik, a mysterious deep-diving Russian submarine.

Something, it appears, had gone terribly wrong in the battery compartment as the sub made its way through Russian waters 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle on the First of July.

A fire on any submarine may be a mariner’s worst nightmare, but a fire on the Losharik was a threat of another order altogether. The vessel is able to dive far deeper than almost any other sub, but the feats of engineering that allow it do so may have helped seal the fate of the 14 sailors killed in the disaster.

Both fascinating and terrifying. My father was a submariner in the Canadian Navy for a time and I’ve always held those particular sailors in the highest of respect. This accident must have been a horrific way to die.

Smithsonian Magazine:

Listen carefully on a quiet summer night and you might hear them. Even if you don’t see a bat’s frantically fluttering form, you might catch its high-pitched chirp as it searches the night for dinner. You’re probably hearing a little brown bat, a common insect-eater found throughout North America, but it is just one of more than a thousand species of bat ranging from the one-inch-long Kitti’s hog-nosed bat to the enormous, three-pound giant golden-crowned flying fox.

Large or small, bats suffer a reputation problem. Aside from being associated with vampires, they’re often called “flying rats” and blamed for the spread of zoonotic diseases into humans (including COVID-19, though whether that blame is founded is as of yet unclear.) This fear often overshadows the fascinating fact that bats are the only mammals to have evolved powered flight, and they’ve been flapping around for tens of millions of years. Where, then, did these flying oddities come from?

I’ve never been afraid of bats. They fascinate me. One of the big thrills of my life was floating on a canoe in Austin, Texas watching the Congress Avenue Bridge bat colony come out for the night – 500,000 to 1.5 million Brazilian free-tailed bats flying in the twilight.

The Guardian:

Thousands of radio DJs are employed around the globe to play Anglophone pop and rock. If there’s such a thing as “world music” to them, it’s REM and Queen.

But there are many more radio stations around the world that play music from their own cultures, past and present, mainstream and marginal. When it comes to virtual travel, music is arguably the easiest and most enjoyable way to transport your brain out of Covidland to places you’ve visited – or plan to – in person.

The net is pretty chaotic, with dozens of aggregators and formats. But here are 10 soundscapes to explore. Turn up the volume to Mexican cantina level.

As always, a subjective list but there’s some great World Music on these stations.

Came across this tweet from Matt Cassinelli this morning:

Apple should enable iOS devices as webcams for Macs.

People could immediately have high-quality multicam setups with great audio using just their phone, an iPad, and AirPods.

Ultrawide studio setups in your home with a few long cables & a USB hub. Scene switching on Apple Watch

— Matthew Cassinelli (@mattcassinelli) April 19, 2020

Being able to use your iPhone as a webcam, especially in coronavirus time, is a great idea. It’d be a wonderful add for folks with older Macs, lower quality cameras. And for folks who do live streaming (reporters, or late night talk show hosts), they could do camera to camera cuts, perhaps with different over the shoulder shot images.

There is a way to use your smartphone as a webcam, using a third party app.

There are some downsides to this approach, however (not the least is that the app featured in the Verge story breaks with the latest Zoom release). It’d be so much nicer if Apple opened up an API to make this capability available at the system level.

Jeremy Horwitz, VentureBeat, delivers a real-world review, warts and all. A few highlights, just to give you a sense of the whole thing:

The Magic Keyboard has a vinyl body rather than metal (or Apple’s other iPad accessory material option, leather), so it’s highly likely to show signs of wear after a year or so of typical use. My unit’s exterior showed smudges within seconds of sitting on my dining room table.

And:

Both the top and bottom of the case appear to be reinforced internally with sturdy metal plates, However, the parts of the Magic Keyboard that are exposed to air will likely wear like plastic, including the entirely plastic palmrest area, which will probably become shiny over time as it rubs against your hands.

And:

Hidden in the new hinge: an additional USB-C port. Initial testing suggests that this port delivers power (at a reduced speed) to both the iPad Pro and keyboard, but Apple makes no guarantees about its data performance. In other words, the iPad Pro’s own USB-C port is now free for any type of accessory you might want to connect, while the keyboard port can be reliably used for charging.

And:

The iPad Pro’s Magic Keyboard is not as impressive as either the Mac’s Magic Trackpad 2 or Magic Trackpad. It’s much smaller — almost identical to the size of a business card, just a little wider — and it’s fully mechanical rather than haptic, so you actually press it down rather than just feeling click vibrations. Apple’s only remaining “magic” here is its thinness, which is aided by this Magic Keyboard’s lack of any internal battery.

Great work, Jeremy. Lots more to this review, well worth reading.

New York Times:

In a flatlining economy, the $399 iPhone that Apple introduced last week might sound attractive. But there’s a better gadget deal in the pandemic: the iPad.

And:

It’s time for us to reconsider the iPad. Last week, I wrote about how the coronavirus had revealed our most essential tech and weeded out the excess. The tech we have turned to over and over boils down to a computing device, communication tools, entertainment and an internet connection. The iPad delivers on all of those needs even better than a smartphone.

And:

So why the iPad and not another tablet computer? After all, many of the same tasks can be done on cheaper tablets, like Amazon’s $50 Fire HD 8.

Yet those other devices are generally much slower and have inferior screens. The iPad is ultimately the best tablet on the market.

Brian X. Chen, hard to disagree with any of this.

Hollywood Reporter:

Apple TV+ has picked up a shortform series from The Jim Henson Co. featuring the beloved stars of the 1980s favorite in a new adventure, called Fraggle Rock: Rock On. The show, which is now available for free on the streamer, features episodes that are between three and five minutes apiece. New episodes will debut Tuesdays on Apple TV+.

The teaser, embedded below, plays off the strength of that theme song, ear-wormed into a generation of kids (and adults).

For folks new to the Jim Henson series, here’s the original Fraggle Rock open.

From the HBO Max press release:

The slate includes the scripted comedy Love Life, starring Anna Kendrick; Sundance 2020 Official Selection feature documentary On the Record; underground ballroom dance competition series Legendary; Craftopia, hosted by YouTube sensation LaurDIY; the all-new Looney Tunes Cartoons, from Warner Bros. Animation; and Sesame Workshop’sThe Not Too Late Show with Elmo (full program details available below.)

And:

Max Originals will continue to premiere on the streamer at a regular cadence through summer and fall including The Flight Attendant, starring and executive produced by Kaley Cuoco, from Berlanti Productions and based on the novel by New York Times bestselling author Chris Bohjalian; the highly anticipated Friends unscripted cast reunion special; all-new original episodes of the critically acclaimed DC fan favorite Doom Patrol; the return of the critically beloved mystery comedy Search Party with a brand new season; the three-part documentary series Expecting Amy, an unfiltered and intimate view into comedian Amy Schumer’s life on tour creating a stand-up special during her difficult pregnancy; sci-fi series Raised by Wolves from director and executive producer Ridley Scott, the award-winning creator behind The Martian, Gladiator, and Blade Runner; the adult animated comedy Close Enough, from J.G. Quintel (creator of Cartoon Network’s Emmy-winning Regular Show), a hilarious look at the surreal life of a millennial family living with roommates; and Adventure Time: Distant Lands- BMO, the first of four breakout specials resurrecting Cartoon Network’s Emmy and Peabody award-winning franchise Adventure Time.

So far, no tentpole content. Interesting that they are leading the press release with all unknown material. Imagine if Disney Plus led their announcement with no Marvel, no Pixar, no big Disney titles, purely leaning on direct-to-video Disney movies.

Buried down below:

The new offering will be bundled with the HBO service including all of HBO’s premium originals such as Westworld, Big Little Lies, Game of Thrones, Sex and the City, Veep, The Wire, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Insecure, Succession,Watchmen, Barry, Euphoria, The Jinx, The Sopranos and more.

And:

Streaming for the first time ever in the U.S., 20 films from Japan’s legendary Studio Ghibli animation house will be available on HBO Max at launch, including Academy Award® winner Spirited Away and Academy Award nominees Howl’s Moving Castle and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, as well as fan favorites My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Ponyo, and Kiki’s Delivery Service. Fans of all ages will be able to enjoy these wonder-filled films any time they want.

And:

Available films will include Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz, The Matrix, The Goonies, When Harry Met Sally, The Lord of the Rings, Citizen Kane, Gremlins, and the Lego movies, along with every DC film from the last decade, including Wonder Woman, Justice League, and every Batman and Superman movie from the last 40 years.

Way to bury the lede.

In the market for an Apple Watch Series 5? Here’s what you get with a refurbished Apple Watch from Apple:

All refurbished Apple Watch models are backed by a one-year warranty, free delivery and returns, and also include:

• Full functional testing and a thorough cleaning
• The original Operating System or a more recent version1
• All refurbished devices are repackaged in a brand new box with all accessories and cables

If I could get a Series 5 on sale cheaper elsewhere, of course I’d go for that. But if not, this is worth a look.

Side note: This was the footnote at the bottom of the refurbish page:

We approximate your location from your internet IP address by matching it to a geographic region or from the location entered during your previous visit to Apple.

Interesting.

Bare Bones Software, makers of BBEdit, is one of my favorite software companies — in fact, I’ve been using BBEdit for more than 20 years. BBEdit has been updated to version 13, and is available in the Mac App Store as a subscription! Same great features. Same user experience. You can subscribe in the Mac App Store or purchase perpetual licenses directly from Bare Bones Software. Also, you can still get great merch, including Classic and Rebus T-shirts, enamel pins, and more in their merch store!

Ryan Pickren:

This post is a technical walkthrough of how I discovered several zero-day bugs in Safari during my hunt to hack the iOS/MacOS camera. This project resulted in me gaining unauthorized access to Front & Rear Cameras, the Microphone, Plaintext Passwords, and more.

Before I jump in, I want to start with a quote from an old colleague of mine – “Bug hunting is all about finding assumptions in software and violating those assumptions to see what happens.” That is precisely what we are going to do today. We are going to dive into the murky depths of Safari and hammer the browser with obscure corner cases until we uncover weird behavior quirks. Once we collect enough quirks, we can tie them together into a full kill chain.

The question all iOS/macOS users must ask themselves… how much do you trust Safari?

I don’t have the programming chops to know whether or not this actually possible but it’s an interesting description of how bug hunters and hackers discover information.