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Ignore Instagram. TODAY is Election Day in the US

Andrew Orr ·

Certain Instagram users found out on Tuesday that when they opened the app, they saw a banner that said, “Tomorrow is Election Day.” Ignore that because as you’ll see everywhere else in the news, TODAY is Election Day. Also, check out Charlotte’s article if you want to stay informed of the results.

“While we turned off the ‘Tomorrow is Election Day’ notice last night, it was cached for a small group of people if their app hadn’t been restarted,” Instagram wrote on Twitter on Tuesday, responding to a number of users who had received the message. “It’s resolving itself as people restart.”

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Wallpapers Inspired by Apple’s ‘One More Thing’ Event

Andrew Orr ·

Apple announced a new event on November 10 called “One More Thing” and designers have created a couple of iPhone wallpapers for the occasion.

Because the company sent press invitations for the event titled “One more thing” to be held on November 10th last night. The predictions are that we will meet the first ARM-powered MacBook and AirTag at the event.

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And The Winner of the 2020 Streaming War is... Apple TV+?

Charlotte Henry ·

Lots has been made of the 2020 streaming war. New players joined just before or at the start of the year, and others (Quibi), have promptly surrendered. When it started year ago, not many people thought that Apple TV+ would come out on top. However, writing for Fast Company, Joe Berkowitz argues that the newcomer may have done just that.

Apple TV Plus may not have a specific prestige aesthetic yet, the way HBO shows once felt like HBO shows and AMC shows felt like AMC shows, but what it does have is momentum and potential. While the must-see Disney Plus original content beyond Mandalorian still seems stalled in a galaxy far, far away, Apple TV Plus has a treasure trove of decent-to-great programming to tap into right now

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Pandora HomePod Mini Support is Here

Andrew Orr ·

Pandora now supports the HomePod mini ahead of its launch on November 6. Juli Clover tells us the details.

According to Pandora, ‌HomePod‌ integration requires the latest version of the Pandora app. Once it’s installed, open the Pandora app on an iPhone or an iPad, and then select ProfileSettingsConnect With ‌HomePod‌Use in Home to get it working. Music can be requested from Pandora by adding “on Pandora” to any ‌Siri‌ request for a song.

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Fifth watchOS 7.1 and tvOS 14.2 Developer Betas Now Available

Charlotte Henry ·

The latest beta version of watchOS 7.1 and tvOS 14.2 are now available for developers to download, AppleInsider reported. In both cases, they are the fifth developer betas.

The new watchOS 7 and tvOS 14 beta versions can be downloaded from the Apple Developer Center by users enrolled in the test program, or as an over-the-air update by users who are running an earlier version of the beta software. The newest betas replace the fourth betas released on Oct. 22. New features include support for health features in Russia and Korea on Apple Watch, and no known new user-facing features on Apple TV. To install the new update, an Apple Watch must be at least 50% charged, placed on a charger, and within range of an iPhone. Updates on the Apple TV can be installed via the Settings app.

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iFixit Shares iPhone 12/12 Pro Internal Wallpapers

Andrew Orr ·

iFixit is back this year to provide iPhone 12 internal wallpapers to let you see what the devices look like beneath the display.

Need a zoom party icebreaker? Take some folk on a phone tour, tell everyone Apple has pressed pause on unique battery shapes. And let us know how that goes because we’re running out of Kahoot topics…

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Apple Maps in Italy Gets Transit Directions

Charlotte Henry ·

Apple Maps now includes transportation directions across Italy. MacRumors  reported that it works on systems like train, bus and tram in a number of cities now, instead of just Rome where the functionality originally rolled out.

The feature can be accessed by selecting the Transit tab or button in Apple Maps on iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch. Supported modes of transportation include trains, buses, trams, and more in and between cities such as Milan, Naples, Turin, Palermo, Genoa, Florence, and Venice. Google Maps has supported transit directions for several years now, but Apple Maps is steadily catching up with detailed routing information.

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Apple’s 85/15 Subscription Split Doesn’t Help Developers Much

Andrew Orr ·

Unlike Apple’s 70/30 split for in-app purchases, it offers an 85/15 split for subscriptions from customers that stay subscribed for at least a year. But Jacob Eiting writes how that doesn’t really help developers because of subscriber churn.

No matter how great an app is, subscribers are going to churn. Sometimes it’s because of a credit card expiring or some other billing issue. And sometimes it’s more of a pause, and the user comes back after a few months. But the majority of churn comes from subscribers who, for whatever reason, decide that the app just isn’t worth paying for anymore. If a subscriber churns before the 1-year mark, the developer never sees that 85% split. And even if the user resubscribes, Apple and Google reset the clock if a subscription has lapsed for more than 60 days.

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MagSafe Fast Charging Won’t Damage Your iPhone 12 Battery

Andrew Orr ·

With the right charging brick, Apple’s MagSafe charging pad can quickly charge your iPhone 12 at an estimated 50% battery in 30 minutes. Although it was written last year, Clifford Colby’s article is a helpful investigation into fast charging. The short answer is that fast charging won’t damage your iPhone’s battery.

Damage is rare if everything’s well-managed inside. A battery’s management system closely monitors the two charge phases and drops the charging speed during the second phase to give the battery time to absorb the charge and avoid issues, which is why it can take 10 minutes to get those last few percentage points.

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NSA Avoids Discussing Back Doors in Commercial Products

Andrew Orr ·

The U.S. National Security agency is dodging questions about back doors in commercial products and whether it’s continuing this practice. The article mentions Dual EC, a type of encryption algorithm the NSA tried to get ratified as a global standard. Why? Because they could easily crack it.

Juniper Networks got into hot water over Dual EC two years later. At the end of 2015, the maker of internet switches disclosed that it had detected malicious code in some firewall products. Researchers later determined that hackers had turned the firewalls into their own spy tool here by altering Juniper’s version of Dual EC.

And that’s the reason we oppose these kinds of back doors or “weaknesses on purpose” on Security Friday. If one group can easily crack it, so eventually will other groups.

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Researchers Extract Intel CPU Encryption Key

Andrew Orr ·

Security researchers have successfully extracted the Intel CPU encryption key used to secure updates to the chip.

The key makes it possible to decrypt the microcode updates Intel provides to fix security vulnerabilities and other types of bugs. Having a decrypted copy of an update may allow hackers to reverse engineer it and learn precisely how to exploit the hole it’s patching. The key may also allow parties other than Intel—say a malicious hacker or a hobbyist—to update chips with their own microcode, although that customized version wouldn’t survive a reboot.

Of course, it’s the “other parties” to worry about. The key can be extracted from any chip that uses Intel’s Goldmont architecture. This is used for low-power chips like the Atom, Celeron, and Pentium brands.

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Connecting COVID-19 Contact Tracing Apps Across Europe is Starting to Work

Charlotte Henry ·

The first stage in making COVID-19 contact tracing apps work across different European countries has been achieved. The Scottish contact tracing app, which was built using the Apple/Google API, now also works in both Northern Ireland and Jersey.

The shared code is what also enables interoperability between apps used in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware … The Scottish app should also work in England and Wales within the next few weeks, and then across Europe. This is all part of a wider European interoperability project intended to ensure that all contact tracing apps work across the continent. The app was developed by NearForm, which first created the Irish contact tracing app before rolling out versions for Scotland, Jersey, and the four US states. All the apps share the same core code.

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iPad Air Might Make the Pro Obsolete

Charlotte Henry ·

The reviews of the new iPad Air are starting to appear. Wired UK‘sis very positive, with author Jeremy White saying that it might make the Pro redundant for many users.

The inclusion of Apple’s A14 Bionic means you get the company’s latest chip that is in some respects even better than the one in the current iPad Pro. While to say this results in better performance than the Pro would be outright wrong, you do get a big bump in power – a 40 per cent increase in performance over the previous iPad Air, Apple says, and a 30 per cent uptick in graphics performance. Much like the new iPhone 12 series that also carries the A14, the Air is noticeably faster than its previous iteration. Battery life is of the usual iPad standard – top drawer. You will not need to charge the Air for days with light use, and if you do employ it as a PC replacement (which is certainly possible, especially with the keyboard) you will get many more hours out of it than a standard laptop. The faster 20W charger that comes in the box will help top things up if you do run low. It’s not all good news, though. Despite stealing so much from the Pro there is no LiDAR and no ultrawide camera.

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Hints of an Apple Search Engine Resurface

Andrew Orr ·

A report in the Financial Times (which is paywalled so I’m linking to TechCrunch) claims that Apple could be creating an Apple search engine. Or, maybe the company is instead improving search for Siri or Spotlight.

Apple is now showing its own search results and linking directly to websites when users type queries from its home screen in iOS 14. For context, this is a behavior that has been known for a while as people have seen the feature pop up in beta versions of iOS. And the search volume being up on Apple’s crawler is something that Jon Henshaw of Coywolf had noted back in August.

I’m going with the “improving Siri and Spotlight” take. Apple isn’t known for creating products outside its ecosystem (Music on Android and Apple TV on other devices notwithstanding).

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Instagram’s “Unlink Account” Feature is Deceiving

Andrew Orr ·

Instagram’s Unlink Account feature is deceiving, at least when it comes to Facebook. Since Instagram is a Facebook company your two accounts will forever be connected.

That’s because the wealth of data that Facebook collects through its multiple services is more than enough to properly identify users’ various accounts and link them to one another. Even in cases where a different name, email address, or device was used to create each account—be it a throwaway WhatsApp profile, stalker Instagram account, or joke Facebook profile—Facebook often is able to suss out who is actually behind the account and whether they have accounts on other Facebook-owned apps.

TMO Deals

FlipNetik Kinetic Desk Toy: $22.99

Bryan Chaffin ·

I’m a sucker for fidget toys, and I love today’s deal on the FlipNetik. It’s designed to roll, so to speak, even though its shape in no way looks like it should roll. There’s a square model and a hexagon, and they come in gold, silver, or black. I’m linking directly to the black hexagon listing, but there’s a pulldown menu for the other options, including buying both a square and a hexagon at a discount. Spoiler, that’s what I did! One is $22.99, while two are $34.99.

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Apple Music For Android Gets Crossfade Feature Before iOS

Charlotte Henry ·

Apple Music for Android got an update Monday with the arrival of version 3.4 of the app. Amongst other things, AppleInsider noted that the latest version includes Crossfade, a feature not yet available to iOS users.

The Autoplay feature also makes the transition to Android, with users able to let Apple Music select the next songs to play once a playlist has been exhausted. When enabled, Apple Music will analyze the playlist and select songs that seem to be similar, such as the same artist or genre. Social media users will be able to share their current listening selection with others, by using the Share Song option in the menu to post to Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat. One unusual option that Android has is Crossfade, a feature that has Apple Music overlapping the end of one song with the beginning of another for a few seconds, fading between the two for a semi-seamless and continuous listening experience. While the option is available on Mac, it has yet to be made available on the iOS or iPadOS versions of the app.

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Zoom Rolls Out End-to-End Encryption for Video Calls

Andrew Orr ·

Starting next week, video conferencing app Zoom is finally adding end-to-end encryption to its platform.

Zoom’s E2EE offering uses public key cryptography. In short, the keys for each Zoom meeting are generated by participants’ machines, not by Zoom’s servers. Encrypted data relayed through Zoom’s servers is indecipherable by Zoom, since Zoom’s servers do not have the necessary decryption key. This key management strategy is similar to that used by most end-to-end encrypted messaging platforms today.

Good to see Zoom doing this; they’ve certainly had misses in the past. Update: The new version is now available for most users.

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Link Previews in Chat Apps Could Leak Your IP Address

Andrew Orr ·

Security researchers found that link previews in chat apps could expose data like IP addresses if not implemented properly. Or they could be downloading as much as gigabytes of data in the background. They tested a variety of different messaging apps, and iPhone users will be relieved to know that iMessage didn’t experience any of these security leaks.

We think there’s one big takeaway here for developers: Whenever you’re building a new feature, always keep in mind what sort of privacy and security implications it may have, especially if this feature is going to be used by thousands or even millions of people around the world.

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Changing its Tune, Spotify Lets You Transfer Songs Again

Andrew Orr ·

Two weeks ago SongShift wrote that Spotify wouldn’t let the app’s users transfer music out of Spotify anymore; they could only bring music into Spotify from other platforms. But now Spotify has changed its mind and it’s good to see.

With the release of SongShift v5.1.3, you will again be able to transfer playlists from Spotify to another service. The only caveat is, you have to have created the playlist yourself, or the playlist must be collaborative and followed by you.

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Missing iPhone 12 Charging Plug to Provide Sales Boost in Key Area

Charlotte Henry ·

Apple framed the decision to remove a wall adapter and headphones from the iPhone 12 box as an environmental decision. I noted that it was probably something they would do anyway to encourage customers to buy more accessories. Well, according to a note from Deutsche Bank seen by CNBC, that’s exactly the case.

Deutsche Bank analysts picked up on that potential growth in a research note earlier this week. “While [Apple] claims that they are not shipping earphones and a charging cube with the iPhone to save the environment (they are including a charging cord), the reality is that such a decision could drive a financial benefit for the company as well,” the Deutsche Bank analysts wrote. Looking beyond the near-term sales of the iPhone 12, Apple’s new magnetic charging system, MagSafe, is laying the groundwork for even more accessories for the iPhone. There have long been rumors that Apple’s ultimate goal is to remove the charging port in the iPhone, like it did for the standard headphone jack, which will in turn drive iPhone owners to buy even more extras for their devices.