Search Results for there's an app for that

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, Motherboard:

For more than a year, an active member of a community that traded in illicitly obtained internal Apple documents and devices was also acting as an informant for the company.

Wow!

On Twitter and in Discord channels for the loosely defined Apple “internal” community that trades leaked information and stolen prototypes, he advertised leaked apps, manuals, and stolen devices for sale. But unbeknownst to other members in the community, he shared with Apple personal information of people who sold stolen iPhone prototypes from China, Apple employees who leaked information online, journalists who had relationships with leakers and sellers, and anything that he thought the company would find interesting and worth investigating.

This is a riveting read, a look inside Apple’s efforts at preventing leaks, figuring out who is doing what leaking, and how they are getting their information. A riveting read.

There’s a movie in this!

Matthew Panzarino, TechCrunch:

From personal experience, I know that there are people who don’t understand the difference between those first two systems, or assume that there will be some possibility that they may come under scrutiny for innocent pictures of their own children that may trigger some filter. It’s led to confusion in what is already a complex rollout of announcements. These two systems are completely separate, of course, with CSAM detection looking for precise matches with content that is already known to organizations to be abuse imagery. Communication Safety in Messages takes place entirely on the device and reports nothing externally — it’s just there to flag to a child that they are or could about to be viewing explicit images. This feature is opt-in by the parent and transparent to both parent and child that it is enabled.

Follow the headline link, check out the second image (four iPhone screens). This does an excellent job showing off the CSAM mechanism implemented by Messages. The CSAM announcement raises so many issues, I think it’s worth getting a sense of this part of the process, to help distinguish it from the other half, “CSAM detection in iCloud Photos”.

If you read no other part of the interview, do scan for this question and Paul Neuenschwander’s response:

One of the bigger queries about this system is that Apple has said that it will just refuse action if it is asked by a government or other agency to compromise by adding things that are not CSAM to the database to check for them on-device. There are some examples where Apple has had to comply with local law at the highest levels if it wants to operate there, China being an example. So how do we trust that Apple is going to hew to this rejection of interference if pressured or asked by a government to compromise the system?

To me, this goes to the heart of a lot of the privacy concern. There’s a lot here.

The system as designed doesn’t reveal — in the way that people might traditionally think of a match — the result of the match to the device or, even if you consider the vouchers that the device creates, to Apple. Apple is unable to process individual vouchers; instead, all the properties of our system mean that it’s only once an account has accumulated a collection of vouchers associated with illegal, known CSAM images that we are able to learn anything about the user’s account.

The way I read this is that Apple passes the vouchers back along to law enforcement. Not clear to me what’s in those vouchers, or if a user is notified of vouchers being sent. This whole thing feels very Orwellian.

Ben Thompson, Stratechery:

How is it, then, that a company like Facebook, which is mostly used on mobile — i.e. Android or iOS — made 20.3 million reports of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) in 2020, while Apple made only 265? After all, there are almost certainly more photos on smartphones than there are on social networks — the former is in large part a superset of the latter.

To repeat: Facebook made 20.3 MILLION reports of CSAM. Apple made only 265.

Here’s why:

It’s not because there is somehow more CSAM on Facebook than exists on Apple devices, but rather that Facebook is scanning all of the images sent to and over its service, while Apple is not looking at what is in your phone, or on their cloud. From there the numbers make much more sense: Facebook is reporting what it finds, while Apple is, as the title of Section (3) suggests, protecting privacy and simply not looking at images at all.

And, clearly, as Apple moves from the server side to the client side (i.e., your iPhone), those numbers will likely change dramatically.

There’s much more analysis in the article, but the above really stuck out, obvious though it might be.

Also interesting was the lead-in, taken from this 2009 Online Photographer article:

The leading photo sharing site, flickr.com, charts the popularity of the cameras used by its membership. Recently the Apple iPhone has jumped into a virtual tie for first place with the Canon XTi. Furthermore, flickr states on its “Camera Finder” page that it can only detect the camera used about 2/3rds of the time, and that, therefore, cameraphones are under-represented on the graphs. Yikes.

This was the moment in time when iPhone photography showed its hand, overtook traditional cameras in popularity.

AppleScoop:

It has been ten years since Apple last attended the National Association of Broadcasters Show, better known as the NAB Show. To the surprise of many, the NAB has announced in their exhibitor list – out of the blue – that Apple will be attending this years show after a decade of absence.

And:

Just over ten years ago, Apple held its last fated announcement at the NAB Show. On April 12, 2011, Apple announced Final Cut Pro X at the Final Cut Pro User Group Supermeet, an event held at the NAB Show. While it is unknown why Apple has decided to attend this year, their previous years were related to Final Cut, with Final Cut Pro X being announced at the NAB show in 2011 (to much criticism).

Here’s a link to the National Association of Broadcasters’ NABShow site.

Scroll down a bit to The Who’s Attending This Year section. In the first of the three-page slideshow, there’s Apple, between ABC and CBS.

The show starts on October 9th. It’ll be interesting to see what Apple has up its sleeve.

Daniel Howley, Yahoo Finance:

Testifying in game developer Epic’s antitrust suit against Apple, Cook called the notion of putting third-party app stores on the iPhone “an experiment I wouldn’t want to run.” He’s not alone, either. According to New York University Tandon School of Engineering professor Justin Cappos, opening up the iPhone would imperil every iPhone owner.

“I think there’s a very clear line to draw to say that if you let basically people go and run their own effective app stores,” Cappos told Yahoo Finance, “even if they’re installing things like kind of within an app, the potential for malicious code and malicious behavior on the iPhone increases dramatically.”

This seems an obvious point. I’ve never seen it argued that Android is more, or even as secure as iOS. The well known issue is update fragmentation. The percentage of users on the latest version of iOS is always much, much higher than the percentage of users on the latest version of Android.

While Android has gotten better over the years at getting security updates onto user machines, there’s still no comparison. Apple is aggressive about getting their latest iOS onto more and more phones, and has clearly made strides in expanding the number of older phones that can run the latest iOS.

Though the issue of scammy apps on the App Store continues to exist, it’s important to distinguish those subscription hacking apps from apps that take over your phone in some, more malicious way.

Apple has done a great job in locking down the iPhone, from making you more aware of an app’s clipboard copy and paste, to locking down your microphone, camera, and location data. Opening up the App Store to side loading would make users much more open to malware.

That said, the weak point in this argument is the Mac. From this CNBC piece, talking about Craig Federighi and Mac malware:

On Wednesday, Federighi said that the user base of the Mac is about one-tenth the user base of the iPhone. Apple said in January that it had 1 billion active iPhone users.

And:

“For iOS, we aspired to create something far more secure. All indications are that we have succeeded in doing so,” Federighi said. He said that Apple found and removed about 130 different kinds of malware on Macs last year that had infected hundreds of thousands of user systems, compared with three kinds of malware that had infected iPhones.

Apple has a model to look at. More malware on the platform that allows side loading. As you’d expect.

Watch the video embedded in this tweet:

https://twitter.com/keleftheriou/status/1397288720357679104

I’ve heard the argument that there are just too many apps in the App Store to police properly. But surely there’s some sort of threshold test, perhaps assisted by machine learning or some form of bounty or crowdsourcing, that would flag these sorts of scams.

And the bit about preventing someone from tapping a low star rating. A bad look. I struggle to understand how this is possible.

From this Apple support document:

Apple Card Family lets you co-own your Apple Card account with one member of your Family Sharing group. You can share your credit line with a co-owner and build credit together as equals. You can also share your Apple Card with members of your Family Sharing group, including teens and adults. Everyone on the shared account can use Apple Card and view their spending. Account owners and co-owners can see a participant’s activity, set transaction limits, and more. And there’s a single monthly bill.

Co-ownership involves risk! From the footnote:

Each co-owner is individually liable for all balances on the co-owned Apple Card including amounts due on the existing co-owner’s account before the accounts are merged. Each co-owner will be reported to credit bureaus as an owner on the account. In addition, co-owners will have full visibility into all account activity and each co-owner is responsible for the other co-owner’s instructions or requests.

As to participants, they are not liable for their charges.

Coming July 2021: You will be able to invite another Apple Card owner to combine credit limits and form one co-owned account.

You can have up to 6 people (yourself and 5 others) on an account.

Apple makes it easy to add co-owners and participants. Watch the videos below (very short) for details.

Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac:

VanMoof was one of the very first companies to do this. Their bikes don’t have the U1 chip for precision finding, but that would probably be rather over-the-top for something the size of a bicycle! The feature is really only useful for homing in on the last 15 feet or so, at which distance you can hardly miss your bike.

If you are interested in this bike, follow the headline link and read on. Scroll all the way to the bottom for the discussion of Find My.

There’s been lots of discussion in the twitterverse about AirTag and how to best attach one to a bike. If it’s too obvious, any bike thief would likely remove it quickly. My thinking is, put it under the saddle or, if possible, embed it inside the saddle.

But having the tech built-n and compatible with Apple Find My is the perfect solution. And it’s an electric bike, so no battery to replace.

One final note from Ben:

Oh, and by the way, Apple: Find My is a horribly awkward name even before I diarised it. Please rename it to Apple Find. Thank you.

Noted.

Josh Centers, TidBITS:

I subscribe to a few podcasts in the Podcasts app but generally leave downloads off to save space—streaming works fine for me. However, a few weeks ago, I specifically tracked down and downloaded an episode of the Ham Radio Crash Course podcast so I could listen to it while driving out of cellular range. I didn’t subscribe to the podcast, as I don’t usually listen to it, but I was interested in that particular episode.

When I opened the new Podcasts app on my iPhone, I found that it had me “following” Ham Radio Crash Course—you no longer “subscribe” to podcasts in the Podcasts app, but instead “follow” them like “friends” on social media—and it had downloaded episodes before and after the only one I intended to download.

I went to Settings > General > iPhone Storage and was aghast to discover that the Podcasts app was now taking up 14.2 GB of space. Luckily, I have 256 GB of storage and plenty of free space on my iPhone, but if I’d had less available storage, it could have gotten awkward quickly.

Read the post for Josh’s take on Apple’s re-rolled Podcast app and details on how to turn off downloads.

But even if you don’t do that, do jump into Settings > General > iPhone Storage and see if Podcasts is using a significant amount of space. If so, do read the article and adjust as necessary.

I am a long-time Overcast user and I’ve made the switch to the new version of Podcast. I am determined to give it a chance. Having used Overcast for such a long time, the Podcast interface took some getting used to. But I’ve now got a sense of how to get my podcasts set up and followed.

One thing I love about the new Podcast app: The Browse tab is great for discovery. There’s the top charts/episodes if you want to see what’s popular. And down below that, a great set of categories to explore. Not sure if this has always been there, but this Browse tab setup is new to me. Remember, I’ve lived in Overcast for a long time.

As a side note, the integration with Apple Watch/Siri feels rock solid. This is important to me.

If you are new to Podcast, or considering making the switch from Overcast, be sure to read Users Despair at Apple Podcasts App After iOS 14.5 Update.

I started from scratch and have experienced none of these issue, but clearly the problems exist and are worth knowing about.

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Apple today released a new 3E751 firmware update for the second-generation AirPods and the AirPods Pro, updating them from the prior 3A283 firmware that was released back in September.

I’ve long believed that there was no way to force an AirPods firmware update, that you had to just be patient and wait for Apple to decide you were worthy.

But from this AirBuddy support document:

• Connect the AirPods to your iPhone or iPad and listen to music or any other content for at least 30 seconds.
• Put the AirPods in the charging case and close the lid.
• Connect the AirPods charging case to power with a Lightning cable and wait 30 minutes. Keep your iPhone or iPad and the AirPods case nearby.
• After the 30 minutes, reconnect your AirPods to the iPhone or iPad and check the version in Bluetooth settings. If they haven’t updated, repeat the process.

There’s also instructions for the AirPods Max.

Live and learn.

Kirk McElhearn pulled together a list of things you might want to track with an AirTag. While some might feel obvious, this is worth a scan, just to wrap your head around what’s possible, get you thinking about your own situation.

One thing on the list I did not think of is leaving an AirTag in my car. There’s theft tracking, which is not an Apple recommended use, but there’s finding your car in a crowded parking lot. I’m definitely in on that use case.

This was a four hour deposition and there’s a lot to read. It starts with 20 pages of redaction, so if you are interesting in exploring, jump to page 26, with the questioning of Phillip Shoemaker, who worked on building the App Store review team.

There’s an interesting nugget on page 29, discussing rules that are arguable:

Q: You also called the rules arguable. What did you mean by that?

A: Well, it’s objectionable material…Porn…I’ll know it when I see it. Those were a lot of the guidelines and you read them, you’ll see that most were written in a gray, a very subjective manner. And developers read them one way…spend time, spend money to build an app and submit it and we reject it because we interpret that line differently.

When they’re arguable, they’re really difficult to enforce and…it breeds a lot of anger, hence, my numerous death threats.

Death threats! Wow, had no idea. And they were numerous.

So much to process in this deposition. Here’s the big breakdown to help you navigate (the page numbers are the numbers at the very bottom of the document viewer, not the page numbers embedded in the document itself):

• Phillip Shoemaker starts on page 26
• Eddy Cue starts on page 49
• The discussion of whether or not to open iMessage on Android is on page 54
• Scott Forstall starts on page 67

Fascinating look behind the scenes at Apple.

Seeking Alpha:

The incentives for this are clear: a reduction of the App Store fee from 30% to 15% or even to 0% would make all of these would-be accusers immensely more profitable. In the case of Tile, Epic and Spotify’s victory would give legal precedent to pile on to the misleading claim that Apple engages in anti-competitive and monopolistic behavior.

And on the punishment of a monopoly:

The Sherman Act imposes criminal penalties of up to $100 million for a corporation and $1 million for an individual, along with up to 10 years in prison. Under federal law, the maximum fine may be increased to twice the amount the conspirators gained from the illegal acts or twice the money lost by the victims of the crime, if either of those amounts is over $100 million.

And:

Apple is not a monopoly. It does not produce necessity goods and it does not force consumers to use its products or the App Store. It does not force developers or competitors to use its products either – Fortnite or Spotify’s offerings do not constitute necessity goods and can be purchased elsewhere – not only through Apple’s App Store. At the end of the day, any company that chooses to sell its products through the App Store has a choice, as does the consumer.

There’s a lot more to this read. Hard to say whether this conclusion is valid, but it is an interesting take.

Also worth a look, the Sherman Antitrust Act Wikipedia page, a deep, deep rabbit hole of information.

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

The company is working on a product that would combine an Apple TV set-top box with a HomePod speaker and include a camera for video conferencing through a connected TV and other smart-home functions, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters.

Struggling to wrap my head around this. Why pull all these things together? Especially the speaker part. If this is an actual in-the-works product, where would it sit? Is this intended for the TV room? If so, would it replace the TV’s own speakers? Any additional speakers you might have added to the TV already?

And if there’s a camera in the mix, wouldn’t it be difficult to position if it is tied to the speaker? Presumably, a speaker would require one specific placement (and you’d want at least two speakers, right?) and a camera a different placement.

Or is this a kitchen counter thing, like a portable TV so you could watch cooking videos in the kitchen? And do FaceTime calls at the same time?

Back to Mark Gurman:

Apple has explored connecting the iPad to the speaker with a robotic arm that can move to follow a user around a room, similar to Amazon’s latest Echo Show gadget.

Hmm. I guess I’ll understand it when I see it?

Chance Miller, 9to5Mac, on a report from The Information about Apple’s updated factory security guidelines:

The Information says that it obtained an internal Apple document outlining the changes. One change is that manufacturing partners with which Apple works, such as Foxconn and Pegatron, are no longer allowed to collect biometric data from Apple employees, but they are still free to collect such data from their own employees, even if those employees are making Apple products.

Tricky line to walk, one set of rules for Apple employees, different set for non-Apple employees.

The guidelines also make other changes to help crackdown on product leaks that come from the supply chain. For the first time, Apple is now requiring manufacturers to run criminal background checks on all workers. The company is also mandating that the use of surveillance cameras be increased at these facilities.

I find the chasing of leaks to be a fascinating dichotomy for Apple, a light and a dark side, championing privacy for users, requiring surveillance for workers.

Another change includes Apple increasing its focus on “movement of sensitive parts in factories.” As part of this change, if a component takes “an unusually long time to get to its destination,” an internal security alarm must be triggered.

Leaking of Apple secrets is a disrespectful act. Obviously, there’s a hunger on the part of the media and Apple fans, but it disrespects the people who work hard for that moment when their labors can be shown to the world.

Chasing leaks while respecting privacy, a tricky line to walk.

Jean-Louis Gassée:

No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary.

And:

Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.

More examples of the mighty falling:

Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later.

Turning to Apple:

The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.

There’s much more to this post, including discussion of Apple and the cloud, as well as Siri and AI. Most important is Jean-Louis’ take on Steve Jobs’ legacy of robust, flexible, functional organization, where Apple focuses on projects, pulling resources from the various functional areas (Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, etc.) to staff the project teams.

A fascinating read.

If you’ve not heard the news, Apple is discontinuing the HomePod, though they are keeping the HomePod mini.

Apple, via the headline linked TechCrunch post:

HomePod mini has been a hit since its debut last fall, offering customers amazing sound, an intelligent assistant, and smart home control all for just $99. We are focusing our efforts on HomePod mini. We are discontinuing the original HomePod, it will continue to be available while supplies last through the Apple Online Store, Apple Retail Stores, and Apple Authorized Resellers. Apple will provide HomePod customers with software updates and service and support through Apple Care.

The fact that Apple pulled the plug without a replacement in place makes me think we’re not getting a new version, that the HomePod mini is the HomePod for all of us. Though that doesn’t mean we won’t see another evolution in the HomePod line. Still chewing on this.

Interestingly, you can still order a HomePod on the Apple Store, as long as you like white. Space Gray is sold out.

I’m wondering about the potential for future price discounts as that inventory dries out. Worth holding out for that? And there’s also the potential for a HomePod appearance on Apple’s official refurbished site.

Last, but certainly not least, here’s Rene Ritchie sharing his thoughts on why Apple killed the OG HomePod. Lots of great food for thought here.

Most interesting to me was the question of Apple eventually dropping support for this HomePod over time. Given that there is no line-in, no direct Bluetooth support, is it possible that this speaker might eventually no longer work?

Sami Fathi, MacRumors:

The full-size Space Gray HomePod is currently unavailable from Apple in the United States for purchase and delivery, as first spotted by French site Consomac.

Yup. Just checked. Though there is some inventory available in my local Apple Store, I can’t order a space gray HomePod for delivery from Apple.

I can order a white HomePod, and apparently Apple is still shipping space gray outside the US.

What can this mean? Much ado about nothing? The language on Apple’s site says “Currently unavailable”. And the iMac Pro, which MacRumors reported as officially as end-of-lifed, is still available to order.

Normally wouldn’t care about stuff like this, but there’s rumored to be an Apple Event in our near future, so my antennae are up.