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5 Ways to Improve Apple Services

Andrew Orr ·

Michael Grothaus writes about five ways to improve Apple services, a drum that Tim Cook has been beating for the past couple years.

The problem for Apple is that the iPhone is such a large part of its business. If the company is going to continue to grow, what product could step up to take the place of lagging smartphone sales?

I’ll paraphrase Kelly Guimont’s comment on a recent episode of Daily Observations. If Apple truly wanted to be a services company, it should have been improving services all along. Don’t wait until the last minute when the iPhone puts you into panic mode.

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How a Designer Uses iPad Pro as the Main Computer

Andrew Orr ·

The next iPad-Pro-as-main-computer narrative comes from Hicks Design. Jon shared his reasoning and workflow, as well as shortcomings & workarounds.

It’s started slowly, but the platform has been maturing and I’ve been using it more and more as my main computer. There are limitations and issues, which I’ll come to, but I keep coming back to it as a my main design tool. There’s something very alluring about this light and portable thin slab of glass that can do (almost) everything I need it to.

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Apple Researching Connected Clothing

Charlotte Henry ·

Apple is researching connected clothing that could link to your iPhone and other devices, according to a new patent. AppleInsider reported that the patent, filed Thursday, was titled “Fabric with Electrical Components.” It seems likely that any product that did emerge from this work would focus on health monitoring. On Tuesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook again emphasized how important he considers the company’s work in this field. He told CNBC that it is Apple’s “most-important contribution to mankind.”

A patent application from Apple published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday titled “Fabric with Embedded Electrical Components” attempts to work around the problem by describing how fabric-based items could be created, with the fabric itself being the connectivity method. The core of the idea resides with the fabric, in that it is woven together with conductive and insulating yarns. The conductive yarns reside in the inner layers of the weave, while the insulating yarns on the outside prevent any undue contact with the conductive versions.

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EU Does not Have a Coordinated Plan to Fight Election Hacking

Charlotte Henry ·

LONDON – The EU does not have an overall plan to deal with hackers seeking to disrupt its election in May 2019.  According to a feature in Wired, each of the 27 states who will be in the EU when the election takes place is expected to secure the vote in their own country. Consequently, smaller member states could be left vulnerable, and cyber-attacks or disinformation could have a serious effect on the election results.

If a tiny member state is left it to go alone against Russia’s state-backed hacking teams and disinformation brigades, the calculus of the European Parliament could be engineered by a third-party state to tilt in its favor. The stakes are huge, and some say the EU hasn’t faced up to the enormity of the issue.

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Preorder Opens for 2018 iPad Pro Brydge Keyboards

Andrew Orr ·

Brydge keyboards for the 2018 iPad Pros are now available to preorder. The 11-inch model is US$149.99 and the 12.9-inch keyboard is US$169.99. The new keyboards offer different viewing modes, like a tablet mode where you fold the keyboard back, and a movie mode that places your iPad at an angle. The keyboards have USB-C connectivity which means you can charge the keyboard from the iPad Pro as you use it. There is also a new snap-on magnetic cover that protects the back of your iPad Pro.

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Astronomers Record Intergalactic Fast Radio Bursts from Same Location

Charlotte Henry ·

There have been a number of remarkable space-based developments recently. Today brought another. The Verge reported on papers in the journal Nature that discussed fast radio bursts (FRBs) – repeated pulses of radio waves that came from outside our own galaxy. In July and August 2018, some of these came from the same location. It gives scientist a chance to pinpoint where they actually came from and what is sending them towards Earth. The pules could also help scientists find out what is in the regions between galaxies.

Most FRBs have been momentary blips in the sky — at least as far as we know. These explosions of radio waves will last for just milliseconds and then disappear, never to be seen again. They seem to come from some incredibly distant spot in the Universe — sometimes billions of light-years away. The first FRB was discovered in 2007, and since then, we’ve confirmed 52 sources of these transient bursts. But in 2015, a special FRB discovery was made when multiple flashes were found that came from the same location. That provided an opportunity to help locate its source, and today’s FRB gives scientists another shot at that goal.

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HTC Shows Eye-Tracking Tech in Vive VR Headsets

Bryan Chaffin ·

HTC showed off a new eye-tracking tech in its Vive VR headset line. Vive is aimed at the VR world, rather than the AR world being targeted by Apple, but AR and VR are kissing cousins, and this is interesting. The idea is simply that the headset can track your eye movements, which can then be used to activate menu and navigation controls. I think Apple is right to focus on AR, but there is obviously a big future in VR, too, and if HTC can bring this to market, it will make them a real player in that space. TheNextWeb has a good writeup from CES on this:

The biggest splashes came in the form of the new Cosmos hardware (an Oculus Go/Quest competitor) and a new eye-tracking system to be debuted in an update to the Vive Pro called “Vive Pro Eye.” Eye-tracking is a big deal for VR. The Vive Pro Eye, according to HTC, will accurately monitor users’ eye movements inside the headset.

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Millions of Android Users Infected with Adware by Apps on Google Play Store

Charlotte Henry ·

Adware disguised as games, TV apps, and remote control simulator apps infected millions of devices with adware. Security firm TrendMicro revealed in a blog that 85 apps containing the adware made it on to the Google Play store. The apps were subsequently downloaded 9 million times. The adware could display full-screen ads, hide itself, monitor a device’s screen unlocking functionality, and run in the background on the device. TrendMicro said Google removed the apps from the Play Store quickly after verifying its report.

The app informs the user that it is loading or buffering. However, after a few seconds, the app disappears from the user’s screen and hides its icon on the device. The fake app still runs in a device’s background after hiding itself. Though hidden, the adware is configured to show a full-screen ad every 15 or 30 minutes on the user’s device.

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The Story of How RSS Came to Be

Andrew Orr ·

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a way for websites and podcasts to offer a feed of updated content for people. It’s a fairly standard technology but many people don’t use it.

The story of how this happened is really two stories. The first is a story about a broad vision for the web’s future that never quite came to fruition. The second is a story about how a collaborative effort to improve a popular standard devolved into one of the most contentious forks in the history of open-source software development.

Long story short (Although you should still read the long story): RSS was too complicated for non-tech users, and the internet slowly became centralized into data silos like Google and Facebook.

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Tech Press, Shaping the Narrative, and Silicon Valley Time

Andrew Orr ·

Tech press and the narratives they craft typically follow Silicon Valley Time, or a special “clock” otherwise known as the hero’s journey.

A company’s narrative moves like a clock: it starts at midnight, ticking off the hours. The tone and sentiment about how a business is doing move from positive (sunrise, midday) to negative (dusk, darkness). And often the story returns to midnight, rebirth and a new day.

This is an interesting story on how the tech press covers news, and what lessons companies can learn.

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Long Press Shortcuts for iOS Safari

Andrew Orr ·

I’ve covered iOS 12 tips and tricks that you might have forgotten. Now I’d like to resurface a tip from 2017 about shortcuts for iOS Safari.

You might not know it, but Safari has some hidden shortcuts tucked behind some of the icons. This will let you perform certain actions a little faster, like quickly access the desktop version of a website, add a bookmark, and even close multiple tabs at once.

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Providers Tout 5G Claims and Names Before the Network Exists

Charlotte Henry ·

5G is the talk of Las Vegas at CES this week. However, there is mounting controversy about what cellular network providers are actually declaring as 5G. The superfast network will not actually be launched until 2020 or even 2021, but the cellular providers are still keen to brand things as 5G now. A piece on the Associated Press noted that “AT&T has drawn ridicule by relabeling the network used by some of its phones as ‘5G E’,” for example. This main seem a relatively superficial issue but in terms of been clear with customers, it matters.

There’s a history of carriers being murky about network claims. AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint started calling an enhanced 3G network 4G in the early 2010s. There’s more pushback this time because people are now more aware of what a next-generation network can do.

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Bounty Hunter Successfully Tracked Down a Phone

Andrew Orr ·

AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile sell access to customers’ location data. As an experiment, Joseph Cox paid a bounty hunter to locate a phone, and it worked.

The bounty hunter did this all without deploying a hacking tool or having any previous knowledge of the phone’s whereabouts. Instead, the tracking tool relies on real-time location data sold to bounty hunters that ultimately originated from the telcos themselves, including T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint, a Motherboard investigation has found. These surveillance capabilities are sometimes sold through word-of-mouth networks.

The technology apparently works on all mobile networks, but there was some issue with Verizon. Shady practices like this are why we need an American GDPR, as well as a better FCC.

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CES Organizer Thinks Sex Toys are Immoral and Obscene

Andrew Orr ·

It seems as though the CTA had a problem with a sex toy. Company Lora DiCarlo planned to present its product, but its award was revoked and the company had to remove its exhibit.

But after ranking high enough and winning the designation, Lora DiCarlo was apparently told that its product didn’t comply with the rules. The show’s and award’s organizer, the Consumer Technology Association, allegedly cited rules saying products that are “immoral, obscene, indecent, profane or not in keeping with CTA’s image will be disqualified.” It then backtracked and said the product simply didn’t fit in the robotics and drones category.

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Here's How Many AirPlay 2 TVs There Are

Andrew Orr ·

Apple shared a full list of the number of AirPlay 2 TVs so far in the market. They include LG, Samsung, Sony, and Vizio TVs.

LG OLED (2019); LG NanoCell SM9X series (2019); LG NanoCell SM8X series (2019); LG UHD UM7X series (2019); Samsung QLED Series (2019 and 2018); Samsung 8 Series (2019 and 2018); Samsung 7 Series (2019 and 2018); Samsung 6 Series (2019 and 2018); Samsung 5 Series (2019 and 2018); Samsung 4 Series (2019 and 2018); Sony Z9G Series (2019); Sony A9G Series (2019); Sony X950G Series (2019); Sony X850G Series (2019 85″, 75″, 65″ and 55″ models); Vizio P-Series Quantum (2019 and 2018); Vizio P-Series (2019, 2018 and 2017); Vizio M-Series (2019, 2018 and 2017); Vizio E-Series (2019, 2018 and 2017); Vizio D-series (2019, 2018 and 2017).

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AT&T Updates Smartphones With Misleading 5G Icon

Andrew Orr ·

AT&T is so excited for the rollout of 5G that it’s updating smartphones a bit early, with a misleading 5G icon.

AT&T has updated three smartphones from Samsung and LG to make them show 5G connectivity logos, even though none of them are capable of connecting to 5G networks…That “E” in the “5G” logo is supposed to tip you off that this isn’t real 5G — just some marketing nonsense. But there’s no way of knowing that just from looking at the logo.

As it turns out, the government didn’t create or ratify 5G. Neither the FCC nor FTC are regulating what the term means, so technically AT&T is still within the law by doing this. Doesn’t make it right, but it shows how absurd the 5G situation is.

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TV's Role in Apple's Services Strategy

Charlotte Henry ·

The announcement yesterday that Samsung TVs will get a new iTunes Movies and TV Shows apps is a big deal. As is the news that Samsung, VIZIO, Sony, and LG are going to integrate AirPlay 2 into their TV offerings. I made that case on TMO Daily Observations on Monday. Pete Kafka at Re/Code has a really incisive piece of analysis looking at the fallout of the Samsung announcement. He lays out how Apple is moving into becoming a services company, or at least how it is making its services business more important, and how TV is part of this strategy.

The obvious and accurate takeaway is that Apple has conceded that Apple TV, the device that was supposed to help it own the living room, isn’t succeeding — it trails Roku, Google and Amazon in streaming market share — and that Apple needs to be on more devices if it is going to sell more services — which is its plan to combat slumping iPhone sales.

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SoftBank Cuts Back Planned Investment in WeWork

Charlotte Henry ·

Japanese bank SoftBank reportedly scaled back its plans to invest in WeWork – the international co-working spaces beloved of tech-startups. The decision followed the recent hit to tech stocks, according to an exclusive in the Financial Times. SoftBank had originally discussed investing $16 billion into WeWork. That number is now thought to be $2 billion and SoftBank’s Vision Fund will not be involved in the deal.

The funding could be announced as soon as this week, according to one of the people, who added that the deal had not yet been agreed and could still fall apart. The scaling back of the planned $16bn investment, which would have been the largest ever in a tech start-up, underlines the rapid shift in investor enthusiasm for technology shares that is now spilling into even the best-known privately held groups.

 

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CES - Toyota Working on Fighter-Jet Inspired Safety Tech for Cars, Wants to Share it

Bryan Chaffin ·

I’m not sure what to make of this yet, but it’s super interesting. The Toyota Research Institute—a research arm of the automaker that dabbles in AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles, and other things—thinks it has a way to use technology from the world of fighter jets to make cars safer, and they’re calling it “Guardian for all.” That’s crazy cool by itself, but TRI says it wants to share it with other automakers. In a crazy-competitive market, that’s unusual, too. That said, it’s not ready for market, and even TRI doesn’t yet have a plan for deploying it. Here’s a description from TechCrunch:

The inspiration was modern-day fighter jets, which use a low-level flight control system to translate the intent of the pilot and keep the aircraft stable and tucked neatly inside a specific safety envelope. TRI calls it blended envelope control, an approach that lets its “Guardian” driver assist system combine and coordinate the skills of the human driver and the vehicle they’re driving.

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A Deeper Analysis of Apple's Mini Crisis

John Martellaro ·

Sometimes, well almost always, it’s good to wait awhile after Apple encounters a crisis of some sort and not get swept up in the venting, rage and fury. Later, cooler, experienced heads weigh in. This time it’s Ben Thompson at Stratechery. “As rare as last week’s Apple revenue warning from CEO Tim Cook may have been — the company last issued a revenue warning in June 2002 — the company has had other bad quarters in the iPhone era.” This is great analysis, worth reading.

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Browser Fingerprinting? DuckDuckGo says DuckDuckNo!

Andrew Orr ·

In a Whonix forum a person alleged that DuckDuckGo was using browser fingerprinting techniques to track people. The search engine denies the claim however.

“Fingerprinting-detection libraries unfortunately create false positives because they don’t anticipate good actors using some browser APIs for non-nefarious purposes for which they were designed. We know this not only because we’re falsely identified here (and have been elsewhere) but because we are building this type of detection into our mobile app and browser extension and don’t similarly want to make false claims.”

DuckDuckGo CEO Gabe Weinberg said an API they use to determine the size of the browser might be triggering the fingerprinting flag.

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RCS, Successor to SMS, Could Come to Apple Devices

Andrew Orr ·

RCS is a technology touted as the replacement for SMS. It will bring rich, iMessage-like features to texting, and major carriers support it. And it sounds like Apple is interested.

According to the purported slide from the conference, Apple has “engaged in discussions with the GSMA and Operators about including RCS in iOS.” This is inherently vague and doesn’t offer too many details about the extent to which Apple is involved, but the pitch seems to center on three things.

I find it unfortunate that RCS seems to only support encryption during transport, and not end-to-end encryption. Governments around the world would probably not let end-to-end encryption become so widespread.

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Salesforce’s Marc Benioff Talks Time Off and Time Magazine

Charlotte Henry ·

Salesforce boss Marc Benioff is one of tech’s most compelling and surprising characters and has been for a long time. This summer, he made a decision that caught most people unawares – he named a co-CEO. A CNBC interview with Mr. Benioff reveals how time off this summer made he decide to focus only on the things he loves and touches on his purchase of Time Magazine.

Weeks at work are filled with dinners, parties, events and business council meetings exclusively for CEOs, meaning that if anyone from Salesforce is to attend, it has to be him. Meanwhile, he’s trying to run a 30,000-person company, build Salesforce towers across the globe, bolster his philanthropy, invest in start-ups, mentor other business leaders and become a louder voice on a number of social and political issues. “So I made a very good decision — to have two CEOs,” Benioff said with a laugh, during a recent interview at his home in San Francisco. “Then it’s a divide and conquer strategy.” Following his time off the grid, Benioff flew to Hawaii refreshed and resolved to focus only on the things in life he enjoys.

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M.G. Siegler's 2018 Homescreen and How it Changed

Andrew Orr ·

I love reading about how other people use their devices, and every year M.G. Siegler shares how his home screen evolves over time.

We all have our apps that we use on a daily basis. And for new ones to break in, they don’t just have to be better, they have to be so much better that they’re worth replacing another app. More specifically, the time you use another app.

Readers will know I’m a fiend when it comes to organization. So for my iPhone and iPad I keep my most-used apps on the home screen, and organize them all alphabetically.

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