Sebastian Meineck shares six privacy reasons people should delete Facebook-owned WhatsApp from their devices.
But WhatsApp also has its flaws. On closer inspection, user privacy and data protection are no longer its priority, and plans to merge it with other Facebook-owned services like Facebook Messenger and Instagram DMs are concerning.
Signal is a good open-source private messenger to use instead.
Amid U.S. pressure to exclude Chinese company Huawei from 5G infrastructure, Belgium is moving forward to work with Nokia.
The Belgian capital Brussels is home to the NATO alliance and the European Union’s executive and parliament, making it a matter of particular concern for U. S. intelligence agencies.
“Belgium has been 100% reliant on Chinese vendors for its radio networks – and people working at NATO and the EU were making mobile phone calls on these networks,” said John Strand, an independent Danish telecoms consultant.
“The operators are sending a signal that it’s important to have access to safe networks.”
Owners of AirPods Pro got a pleasant surprise in iOS 14. Spatial Audio brings a surround-sound experience when you listen to Apple TV+ content.
Andrew Orr joins host Kelly Guimont to discuss the latest news for Security Friday, and talk about location data on iOS and why it matters.
Nearly half of iPhone users believe that their device is 5G enable, despite the fact no 5G iPhone exists… yet. AppleInsider reported on the finding of a survey by Global Wireless Solutions.
The study, performed by Global Wireless Solutions, asked 5,000 U.S. smartphone users if they believed their iPhone could access 5G. While 49% answered yes, 29% of all smartphone users were unsure whether their phones could access 5G. Some of the confusion could be attributed to the carriers. For instance, AT&T had falsely displayed a 5G E connectivity logo on consumers’ phones connected to 4G networks as early as February of 2019. This was months before the first 5G phone from any manufacturer would even be available for purchase, and a year before the carrier started rolling out its 5G network. GWS points out that when only looking at users that purchased a phone in 2020, nearly a quarter were unsure about their phone’s 5G capabilities. Much of the uncertainty comes from rural and suburban folks. About 45% of rural consumers and 47% of suburban consumers are unsure whether their carrier provides 5G. Nearly 73% of urban users believe their carrier offers 5G.
A Microsoft exec has made thinly-veiled criticism at Apple over the App Store in a post on the company blog laying out its own principles.
Apple is to receive an engineering Emmy for the Apple ProRes video codec, the Television Academy has announced.
Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer said the company will bring its Xbox Game Pass to Apple devices next year as a web app.
Disney Music Group has launched a dedicated section on Apple Music with over 30 playlists, soundtracks, radio stations, and more.
Protonmail CEO Andy Yen is not happy with Apple. At all. In an interview with The Verge, he described growing tensions between the two firms over the implementation of In-App Purchase rules.
For the first two years we were in the App Store, that was fine, no issues there,” he says. (They’d launched on iOS in 2016.) “But a common practice we see … as you start getting significant uptake in uploads and downloads, they start looking at your situation more carefully, and then as any good Mafia extortion goes, they come to shake you down for some money.” “We didn’t offer a paid version in the App Store, it was free to download … it wasn’t like Epic where you had an alternative payment option, you couldn’t pay at all,” he relates. Yen says Apple’s demand came suddenly in 2018. “Out of the blue, one day they said you have to add in-app purchase to stay in the App Store,” he says. “They stumbled upon something in the app that mentioned there were paid plans, they went to the website and saw there was a subscription you could purchase, and then turned around and demanded we add IAP.”
This week, Spotify finally unveiled a lyrics search feature. It allows users to look for a song using the words in it, instead of by artist or title. As Engadget noted, Apple Music launched a similar tool nearly two years ago.
The two leading music services often add features seemingly inspired by their competition; the latest is lyric search. A Spotify engineer tweeted earlier today that users can now input lyrics into the app’s search field to get song results, something that Apple Music has offered since late 2018. As you can see from the screenshot above, songs that include the lyrics you input will have a “lyrics match” label; they show up along side other potential results, so keep an eye out for that label if you’re specifically searching with lyrics.
Chinese leaker “Kang” who has a good track record, took to Weibo to post details on the full iPhone 12 lineup.
But don’t worry, they were hacked by good guys working under Apple’s bug bounty program. Sam Curry, Brett Buerhaus, Ben Sadeghipour, Samual Erb, and Tanner Barnes found a total of 55 vulnerabilities.
During our engagement, we found a variety of vulnerabilities in core portions of their infrastructure that would’ve allowed an attacker to fully compromise both customer and employee applications, launch a worm capable of automatically taking over a victim’s iCloud account, retrieve source code for internal Apple projects, fully compromise an industrial control warehouse software used by Apple, and take over the sessions of Apple employees with the capability of accessing management tools and sensitive resources.
When I first saw the news I was aghast to learn that Apple only paid them US$55,000, but the blog post was updated to add that the team so far has gotten 32 payments totaling US$288,500. Still doesn’t seem enough to me. Apple needs to work on its internal security.
Apple’s 2020 Back to School student offer, giving eligible customers a free pair of AirPods with a new Mac or iPad, ends Monday.
Andrew Orr and Dave Hamilton join host Kelly Guimont to discuss some new TV+ content, and how spatial audio ties into TV+ shows.
Apple Maps feature ‘Look Around’ is now available in Phoenix, Arizona. Macrumors spotted the update, which recently arrived in cities in the UK and Ireland.
Apple recently expanded its “Look Around” feature in Apple Maps to Phoenix, Arizona, providing 3D street-level imagery that’s similar to Google’s Street View. Apple has been slowly adding the Look Around feature to new cities. It expanded to Chicago in April and several cities in Japan in August. Though not yet mentioned on Apple’s website, Look Around last week expanded to London, Dublin, and Edinburgh.
Cary Joji Fukunaga, who directed Bond movie ‘No Time to Die’, is to direct the first three episodes of Apple TV+ series ‘Masters of the Air’.
The packaging around the new Apple Watch SE is typically slick, and now pretty thin. That’s because there is no plug for the wall included.
Apple shared an official trailer for “Wolfwalkers” an animated film about the last wolves of Ireland. In a time of superstition and magic, a young apprentice hunter, Robyn Goodfellowe, journeys to Ireland with her father to wipe out the last wolf pack. While exploring the forbidden lands outside the city walls, Robyn befriends a free-spirited girl, Mebh, a member of a mysterious tribe rumored to have the ability to transform into wolves by night. As they search for Mebh’s missing mother, Robyn uncovers a secret that draws her further into the enchanted world of the WOLFWALKERS and risks turning into the very thing her father is tasked to destroy. It arrives December 11.
Apple has announced “Dickinson” season 2 on its YouTube channel and it will premiere on Apple TV+ January 8, 2021. The series also scored an early renewal for a third season. Dickinson is a half-hour comedy series starring Oscar nominee Hailee Steinfeld. Dickinson audaciously explores the constraints of society, gender, and family from the perspective of rebellious young poet Emily Dickinson. Created, written, and executive produced by Alena Smith and executive produced by Hailee Steinfeld, “Dickinson” stars Hailee Steinfeld, Jane Krakowski, Toby Huss, Anna Baryshnikov, Ella Hunt, and Adrian Blake Enscoe. Wiz Khalifa guest stars.
TMO UK Associate Editor Charlotte Henry and Daily Observations presenter Kelly Guimont joined Bart Busschots on his Let’s Talk Apple podcast. Along with Nick Riley from the Essential Apple Podcast, they discussed some of the biggest topics from the Apple world in the month of September. This included the latest App-Store-related developments, the ‘Time Flies’ event, and the release of various new operating systems including iOS 14 and watchOS 7.
Ranking Digital Rights, along with seven other organizations, sent a letter [PDF] to Apple CEO Tim Cook, urging the company to implement iOS 14 privacy features that are delayed until 2021.
Apple has the opportunity to reinforce its position as an industry leader on protecting the privacy of its users by empowering them to control who can track their online behavior. At the same time, this change can and should enable the company to become more transparent about how it enforces its terms against apps that violate its policies. By delaying the introduction of crucial privacy measures, the company is slowing the momentum it created.
On Thursday privacy search engine DuckDuckGo announced new map tools that help people plan travel routes with walking and driving directions.
William Gallagher writes how Apple is working on methods to store your ID digitally in Wallet, like credit cards. But I found this part concerning:
This all presumes that we are able to present our ID. There are situations, such as when we’re incapacitated, when we need to be identified yet we cannot personally do anything about that. In this case, Apple proposes that under the right circumstances, our devices could “automatically transmit the user’s identity credential.”
Apple gives the example of a first responder, “such as police officer, firefighter, etc,” who could legitimately possess a device that would automatically request ID like this.
I bet law enforcement would love a Stingray-like device that can automatically harvest IDs when they walk through a protest.
