iOS 14 Quick Tips and More — Mac Geek Gab 834

We’ve got first-run Quick Tips for iOS 14, iPadOS 14, watchOS 7, and tvOS 14 for you right here. You know those things that surprise and delight your friends when they see you do them? That’s what Quick Tips are! Come and learn at least five new things as John and Dave talk through Quick Tips plus answer your questions about everything Mac, Apple, iPhone, and more. Press play and enjoy hanging out with your two favorite geeks!

The Trait Steve Jobs Believed Indicated High Intelligence

Steve Jobs provided all sorts of insights into people and leadership during his lifetime. Inc shared the trait he believed revealed high intelligence.

“A lot of [what it means to be smart] is the ability to zoom out, like you’re in a city and you could look at the whole thing from the 80th floor down at the city. And while other people are trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B reading these stupid little maps, you could just see it in front of you. You can see the whole thing,” Jobs says in the talk.  That’s a fascinating conception of smarts, but it raises an inevitable question: How do you develop the ability to get a bird’s eye view of a situation in this way? The answer, Jobs goes on to say, is to be an intellectual omnivore, exploring the world in unique and unexpected ways.  “You have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does, or else you’re gonna make the same connections and you won’t be innovative. […] You might want to think about going to Paris and being a poet for a few years. Or you might want to go to a third-world country–I’d highly advise that. Falling in love with two people at once. Walt Disney took LSD,” he says.

EU May Force Apple to Give Rivals Access to Apple Pay Tech

Apple may have to open up its Apple Pay technology rival providers. That’s according to a EU document due to be published next week, seen by Bloomberg News.

The report is set to be unveiled next week by the European Commission as part of a package of policy proposals. It includes a footnote to a competition case launched by the European Commission’s antitrust arm in June, which is seeking to assess whether the iPhone giant unfairly blocks other providers from using the tap-and-go functionality on its smartphones. “In parallel with its ongoing and future competition enforcement, the Commission will examine whether it is appropriate to propose legislation aimed at securing a right of access under fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory conditions, to technical infrastructures considered necessary to support the provision of payment services,” the EU says in the document.

iOS 14 Reveals Facebook Spying on Your Camera Through Instagram

Facebook is being accused of accessing peoples’ cameras through Instagram, thanks to a iOS 14 feature that tells you when your camera is active.

Facebook denied the reports and blamed a bug, which it said it was correcting, for triggering what it described as false notifications that Instagram was accessing iPhone cameras.

In the complaint filed Thursday in federal court in San Francisco, New Jersey Instagram user Brittany Conditi contends the app’s use of the camera is intentional and done for the purpose of collecting “lucrative and valuable data on its users that it would not otherwise have access to.”

Facebook: “It’s a bug because you weren’t supposed to know we were doing this.”

Apple One Can Cope with a User Having Multiple Apple IDs

Apple One, the soon to be available services bundle, will still work for users who use different logins for different services. 9to5 Mac picked up on a reply from an in-the-know source.

One of those to raise the question on Twitter was Microsoft’s senior cloud advocate Christina Warren. Apple’s Chris Espinosa replied advising that he has checked and confirmed that all will be well. Espinosa was Apple employee #8, having originally started writing software and manuals for the company after school at the age of 14. He has worked on everything from BASIC programs for the original Apple I though classic Mac OS, AppleScript, Xcode, macOS and the iOS Family Sharing system.

Readdle’s Apps are Ready for iOS 14 Features

Readdle is ready for iOS 14, having recently updated its suite of apps for iOS 14. Spark, Documents, Calendars, Scanner Pro, and PDF Expert are all set. Here are some new things. Documents: Widgets for recent and favorite files, music, and file actions; picture-in-picture on iPhones. PDF Expert: Scribble for Apple Pencil; widgets for recents and favorite PDFs; faster folder navigation. Calendars: Widgets for events, tasks, and conference calls; faster search for events; create events with your voice. Scanner Pro: Widgets for important documents and fast scanning; search through OCRed text with Spotlight; annotate your scans. Spark: Set Spark as your default email app; widgets for important emails and calendar; OAuth support for Office 365 accounts.

HBO Max, With How Many Ads?

The branding around HBO Max is all a bit confused. It might be getting even messier as MediaPost suggests that a Peacock-style ad-supported version is on the way.

Those HBO-centric TV shows, movies and other content, run no advertising. So “Game of Thrones” and “The Sopranos” can continue to run in their unedited pure form. Again, shows many advertisers might avoid. Still, advertising might appear before and after — not during a TV episode. However, in other content — such as those TV shows linked to longtime WarnerMedia Turner ad-supported networks — TNT, TBS, truTV, and CNN — they could continue to have advertising during a show, just like they did when airing on traditional, linear TV networks. Viewers would expect that. But when it comes to movies running on ad-free channels — such as TCM, the longtime, ad-free Turner classic movie channel, some paid messaging could also appear, according to reports. Overall, it’s not surprising advertising inventory will be similar to most slimmed-down premium TV platforms — around four minutes per hour of commercials, but perhaps only two minutes at other times

Card Adventure Game ‘Terafyn’ Launches September 24

A new game called Terafyn is coming out next Thursday, September 24. It’s billed as a “card adventure game” where battles are won and lost with rune cards and a spinner mechanism. The game’s story is text-based and set against a backdrop of beautiful, hand-drawn art. “The story begins in a small fishing village, Brittlemire. You and your father are gathering venterwort in a nearby forest to cure recently ailing villagers. If only this was a simple story! It will take more than magical herbs to face what lies in wait … in the woods.”