The Nest Secure smart home hub has had a secret microphone this whole time. But poor Google just plain forgot to tell us.
On Tuesday, a Google spokesperson told Business Insider the company had made an “error.” “The on-device microphone was never intended to be a secret and should have been listed in the tech specs. That was an error on our part,” the spokesperson said.
Silly Google, tricks are for kids. Also, get a HomePod.
Rumors, speculation, wish lists and leaks are par for the iPhone/iOS course. In this note at BGR, Yoni Heisler takes us through some things we suspect about iOS 13. Included is the elimination of one of the “most annoying things about the iPhone.”
The federal government shares its terrorist watch list with over 1,400 private companies, including hospitals and universities. The government has insisted for years it doesn’t share it with private companies, only to have lied this whole time. Why would it be a big deal? It’s relatively easy for innocent people to end up on the list.
The government’s admission comes in a class-action lawsuit filed in federal court in Alexandria by Muslims who say they regularly experience difficulties in travel, financial transactions and interactions with law enforcement because they have been wrongly added to the list. The Associated Press is the first to report on the disclosure after reviewing the case documents.
Mark Zuckerberg sat down with the Harvard Law Society as part of its Techtopia initiative. The Facebook CEO discussed a variety of issues including encryption, targeted ads, and whether his company should be considered an information fiduciary. Highlights of the fascinating discussion were written up and published by the HLS.
Zuckerberg argued that offering users different monetization models would mean offering them different data-handling models. “Are we going to let people pay to have different controls on data use than other people? And my answer to that is a hard no.” He described a forthcoming tool called “Clear History” which would allow users to clear some of the data that Facebook accumulates about them for ad targeting purposes.
News reports broke Wednesday that Apple is going to allow developers to submit one app that will work across iPhone, iPad, and Mac. On 9to5Mac, Ben Lovejoy explained why, despite slow progress, he thinks the project known as Marzipan will be a big deal and encourage more apps to be built for the Mac.
There are a lot more iPhones than there are Macs, so currently many developers target iOS first, and only create Mac apps if they are convinced there’s enough demand to make that a sensible use of their time. A more efficient process will mean a lot more Mac apps, and that’s good news for consumers as well as developers.
There’s a new phenomenon called sharenting. This is when parents share a large portion of their kids’ lives to the internet, usually without their consent.
Recently a parenting blogger wrote in a Washington Post essay that despite her 14-year-old daughter’s horror at discovering that her mother had shared years of highly personal stories and information about her online, she simply could not stop posting on her blog and social media. The writer claimed that promising her daughter that she would stop posting about her publicly on the internet “would mean shutting down a vital part of myself, which isn’t necessarily good for me or her.”
That was the most ridiculous part to read. Good grief, the world isn’t going to end because you can’t post about your kid anymore Karen. No one cares about them except you.
Writing for iFixit, Kay Kay Clapp advocates for the right to repair devices and says we are all geniuses.
If all this feels a bit dystopian, take heart! Thanks to repair advocates and brave netizens around the world, the tide is starting to change. This year, Right to Repair legislation has been successfully introduced in 18 states. The movement continues to spread—and for the first time, European repair allies have introduced their own version of repair legislation.
I think it’s nice that people can repair their devices, but it can also be a security risk. If it’s easy for you to repair, it’s easy for bad guys to “repair” and put hardware implants into your device.
An issue I see with this is pricing. People are used to cheap iOS apps, but if you applied the same pricing to macOS apps, that would be bad for developers. Would the price of universal apps fall somewhere in the middle? Or would everything be a subscription? Apple clearly wants the latter, but no one wants a bunch of subscriptions either.
By 2021, developers will be able to merge iPhone, iPad, and Mac applications into one app or what is known as a “single binary.” This means developers won’t have to submit their work to different Apple App Stores, allowing iOS apps to be downloaded directly from Mac computers — effectively combining the stores.
Apple Watch Series 4 Hermès owners can look forward to new faces. They will become available with the release of watchOS 5.2. 9to5Mac reported that the new faces will have a new pink and blue gradient style. As with previous faces from the designer, users will only be able to have one complication on the face. That complication will show the date, a different timezone or stopwatch. Hermès and Nike are exclusive third-party partners, designing exclusive faces for the Apple Watch.
As discovered by French blog WatchGeneration.fr (via Google Translate), owners of the designer Apple Watch will see a new gradient style Hermès watch face in two colors: Cherry/Sakura and Bleu (pink and blue). And just like the other Hermès Apple Watch faces for the Series 4, these will adapt based on where the hour and minute hands are.
The third public beta of macOS Mojave 10.14.4 is out two weeks after the second beta to developers.
The macOS Mojave update can be downloaded using the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store after downloading the appropriate profile from Apple’s beta testing website. Apple’s beta testing site gives users access to iOS, macOS, and tvOS betas.
macOS Mojave 10.14.4 will bring Apple News in Canada, Touch ID Safari Autofill, and automatic Dark Mode in Safari.
Over the last few months, there have been a number of changes in Apple’s top executive team. They include the departure of Angela Ahrendts and Bill Stasior, as well as the promotion AI boss John Giannandrea to the executive team. On their own, most of the moves are only somewhat interesting. When looked at together, they indicate a shift in focus for Apple, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
The changes, which can be traced back to last year, have included high-profile hires, noteworthy departures, meaningful promotions and consequential restructurings. They have rattled rank-and-file employees unaccustomed to frequent leadership changes and led Apple to put several projects on hold while new managers are given a chance to reassess priorities, according to people familiar with the matter.
Big Pharma isn’t satisfied with old-fashioned television ads. Now they’re partnering with Instagram influencers.
In a pink tutu against a pink backdrop, Erin Ziering, wife of former 90210 star Ian Ziering, advertises Allergan breast implants and Botox side by side in a December 2018 post — the same month the company pulled its textured implants from European markets in response to a notice from the Food and Drug Administration that individuals with breast implants are at risk of developing breast implant-associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma (BIA-ALCL).
Let’s put the “medical industrial complex” on the list of things millennials should kill. Maybe then we wouldn’t have Goldman Sachs asking whether curing patients is sustainable.
Apple’s so-called shift to services, largely prompted by falling iPhone sales, has been much discussed, not least here on TMO. However, there’s a reason for that – it matters, profoundly, to the future of the company. On March 25th a number of services are expected to be unveiled by the company at a special event. Axios reporters Sara Fischer and Ina Fried nicely summed up where the company is in this transition, why it is happening, and what we can expect next.
What started out as cloud storage and extended support contracts, Apples’ “services” revenue sector has expanded to include Apple Music and will soon likely expand further to news, video and gaming. Apple has made an aggressive push into media and entertainment over the past year, which has sparked rumors that it could one day sell a bundled subscription, where consumers could potentially pay one fee for an array of entertainment and media services.
Instagram Fundraisers will let you easily donate to non-profit organizations on the platform. It’s also a way for Facebook to get its hands on your credit card information.
New code and imagery dug out of Instagram’s Android app reveals how the Fundraiser stickers will allow you to search for nonprofits and add a Donate button for them to your Instagram Story. After you’ve donated to something once, Instagram could offer instant checkout on stuff you want to buy using the same payment details.
Facebook tried to get banks to give up your data, but now it will have to settle for this instead.
The Verge writes: “Over the weekend, in a speech at the Cinema Audio Society’s CAS Awards, director Steven Spielberg reminded listeners yet again that he’s specifically dedicated to a theater-based cinematic experience as ‘a firm believer that movie theaters need to be around forever.'”… and “for all the high-quality content streaming services are producing and regardless of the quality of people’s home theater setups, ‘there’s nothing like going to a big dark theater with people you’ve never met before, and having the experience wash over you.’” (Image credit: Gage Skidmore.)
What do you think?
Zach Whittaker is tired of the same old line companies use, like when they suffer a data breach: “We take your privacy and security seriously.”
The truth is, most companies don’t care about the privacy or security of your data. They care about having to explain to their customers that their data was stolen…About one-third of all 285 data breach notifications had some variation of the line. It doesn’t show that companies care about your data. It shows that they don’t know what to do next.
I’m betting there’s a template that public relations employees have that they copy and paste into official emails sent out in the wake of security stuff like this.
Data released in February 2019 by the U.S. Patent and Trademarks office revealed that in 2016 just 12% of inventors with a U.S. patent were female. This is actually a fall from the 1980s when the number hit 21%. A report from MarketWatch outlined that the reasons for this fall mirror many of the reasons there is a lack of women in STEM fields more broadly. They include gender bias and societal expectations as well as difficult workplace environments.
The number of patents with at least one woman inventor grew from 7% in the 1980s to 21% in 2016, according to an analysis released this month by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. But there’s a long way to go: Women made up just 12% of all patent inventors in 2016. “There’s untapped potential,” said Amanda Myers, the acting deputy chief economist at the USPTO. “There might be very intelligent and creative women who are not accessing the innovation system. That has real consequences for economic growth as well as our global competitive position.”
Kevin Kelly writes how augmented reality will become a mirrorworld; That is, an exact replica of the physical world we will interact with.
The mirrorworld—a term first popularized by Yale computer scientist David Gelernter—will reflect not just what something looks like but its context, meaning, and function. We will interact with it, manipulate it, and experience it like we do the real world.
I firmly believe that AR can be as revolutionary as the internet. We just need an AR device that will dominate peoples’ lives to the point where everyone will wear a headset all the time.
Apple’s ecosystem is your body. It’s in our pockets, our ears, our wrists, and soon it will be over our eyes with augmented reality glasses. Lucas Rizzotto talks about Apple hardware can be thought of as a modular system, similar to what Bryan and I discussed on ACM. iPhone will provide processing power and networking, Apple Watch is for biometrics and input, AirPods give us contextual 3D audio, and Apple Glasses are our screen.
Ultimately, Apple’s final AR product offering won’t just be a set of glasses — but an interconnected ecosystem that can itself become a single, immersive computing platform. One that’s an extension of you and your body — whether you’re wearing glasses or not.
Last month I wrote about an Arizona politician wanting to introduce a porn filter bill. Now Kansas wants to do the same thing, although it sounds like this one won’t attempt to fund the border wall.
“It’s to protect children,” Garber, a Republican, said in an interview. “What it would do is any X-rated pornography stuff would be filtered. It would be on all purchases going forward. Why wouldn’t anybody like this?”
Why indeed. Because you guys don’t seem to care about children outside of the womb.
Electric vehicles are getting cheaper. Research suggests that come 2022, they will cost the same as gas-powered vehicles even without government subsidies. However, that does not mean consumers are going to make the decision to go electric. As well as cost, the lack of infrastructure for electric vehicles is a problem. Wired looked into the issues surrounding the adoption of electric vehicles.
If you live in the U.K., Germany, France, the Netherlands, or Norway, an electric car is already a better deal, according to another recent report from the International Council for Clean Transportation. It compared an electric VW Golf to the Golf’s hybrid, gas, and diesel versions over four years, and found that the electric version was cheapest in each of those countries because of subsidies and tax breaks along with the savings in fuel cost. The difference is biggest in Norway, where the electric Golf is 27% cheaper than one running on diesel.
The Apple Store in the Natick Mall, Massachusetts reopened Saturday. It followed 9 months of renovation work. The store is twice the size after Apple took over a JCrew store next to its original site. It features a new Forum, a Video Wall and, of course, the pivoting glass doors. 9to5Mac shared some pictures of the upgraded retail spot.
A brand new Forum, Video Wall, and signature pivoting glass doors welcome shoppers to the new Apple Natick Collection. Natick’s store is the 7th out of 11 stores in Massachusetts to be updated with Apple’s contemporary design language. Like all recent designs, the space is significantly wider than it is deep, opening the storefront to its surrounding environment. In order to increase customer capacity, Apple absorbed a former J.Crew store next door.
Digital Trends writes: “While it’s been clear for quite some time that modern A.I. is getting pretty darn good at generating accurate human faces, it’s a reminder of just how far we’ve come…” The face shown here is just one of many created by an AI, explained in the article. “The results … well, you can see them for yourself by checking out the website. Hitting refresh will iterate an entirely new face.”
Soon there will be artificial people on the internet writing AI created articles. (I am actually one of them.)
Last year Apple Music got its very own classical music section, but it seems as if it has languished ever since.
Frustrations with classical music streaming are nothing new, but as Charles tells us, this is a problem that affects nearly every streaming music service, including Apple Music rival Spotify. In an effort to find out exactly what’s wrong with classical music on Apple Music — and what steps could be taken to address these problems — we asked Charles and Rumiz to detail the biggest issues with classical music on Apple Music.
