Texas Hold'em Updated for iPad

Apple’s classic Texas Hold’em game has be updated for iPad, 9to5Mac reported. The game can be play in fullscreen, Split View, or Slide Over mode.

With Texas Hold’em iPad support, you can play in full screen or while using other applications thanks to support for Split View and Slide Over multitasking… Apple’s Texas Hold’em game was originally created for the iPod and was one of the first games released for the iPhone in 2008. Apple has breathed new life into the game this year in honor of the App Store’s 10th anniversary (which was technically last year.)

EyeQue Launches Vision Monitoring Kit

Today EyeQue has launched a vision monitoring kit that includes the EyeQue VisionCheck, PDCheck, and the new EyeQue Insight Plus.

The EyeQue Vision Monitoring Kit is available now on Indiegogo, with pledge levels starting at $119 (retail value: $205). The product is slated to ship to backers by the end of November 2019, in time for the holidays (limited quantities). Learn more about EyeQue at eyeque.com and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for more updates.

Oprah Explains Why her Book Club is Coming to Apple

Oprah announced last month that she is bringing her book club to Apple TV+ and Apple Books. In her self-titled magazine, naturally, the media queen explained why she had done so.  And yes, it is all about those pockets!

I’ve joined forces with Apple to create what I hope will be the world’s most vibrant book club, engaging readers everywhere in conversations with one another—and with the authors who conjure the magic. Apple is in a billion pockets, y’all. To me, that presents a magnificent opportunity to connect the world through reading. With each announcement of a new book club selection, you’ll have a chance to buy the book, read it, and then take part in a conversation with the author about the story and the writing process. Authors are my rock stars.

Clean Email 1-Year Subscription: $9.99

We have a deal on a one year subscription to Clean Email, an online bulk email cleaner designed to help you to take control of your mailbox. It relies on powerful rules and filters you can define to efficiently segment your mailbox into relevant groups, allowing you to quickly identify useful and clean up useless emails with a few clicks. One year is $9.99 through our deal.

10 Features in macOS Catalina You Need to Know

MacMost has a good video on YouTube where he shares 10 macOS Catalina features. They’re smaller features that don’t get the same attention or shoutout by Apple, but they’re good to know. The first one he mentions is a feature that I noticed but was annoyed about. When you hover or long-click the green fullscreen button in Safari, it now brings up a menu window to enter full screen or tile the window to the left or right. While it makes this capability more obvious it also adds an extra step, when just dragging the window by the green button was faster. In any case the video is pretty helpful and you can watch it here.

New York City Partners With Cellebrite to Hack iPhones

Documents reveal that New York City law enforcement has a partnership with Cellebrite to hack iPhones.

Previously, if law enforcement wanted to get into newer devices, they had to send the phones to one of Cellebrite’s digital forensics labs, located in New Jersey and Virginia. But Cellebrite’s new UFED Premium program gave law enforcement the ability to “unlock and extract data from all iOS and high-end Android devices” on their own, using software installed on computers in their offices.

I’ve always wondered if eventually Apple will remove the Lightning port from the iPhone once wireless charging becomes the norm. Side effects may include better waterproofing and worsened hacking.

Charging Cables Are Still Apple's Worst Product

ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley Hughes does not like Apple’s charging cables. At all.

I’m not sure what it is about Apple cables, but the brilliant white rubber coating the company uses just doesn’t seem to be all that robust. After about six months of use — you know, the regular stuff like plugging and unplugging it — the outer starts to get soggy and discolored, and then over time becomes more and more fragile, until one day it starts peeling off, and then it is game over for the cable (unless you want to go through the pantomime of patching it, which buys you a little time). While I’ve long given up on using Apple cables for my iPhone and iPad — and even for my Apple Watch — I had hoped that the USB-C-to-USB-C charging cable for my MacBook Pro would be OK. I mean, how badly can you mess up a USB-C-to-USB-C cable? Pretty bad, if you’re Apple it seems.

Netflix Says No to macOS Catalina, Won't Port its App Over

With the release of macOS Catalina and Catalyst, many developers are now porting their iOS apps to the Mac. But not Netflix.

Last year, Apple Inc. software chief Craig Federighi said developers would be able to easily bring their iPad apps to Mac computers, essentially letting coders write an app once and deploy it across millions more devices. So far, the reality has fallen short for some developers and is even leaving consumers paying twice for apps. Major app developers and service providers like Netflix Inc. are also demurring on taking part, at least at this early stage.

I’ll be interested to see if Hulu ports their app over.

Oops! Twitter Accidentally Used Your Phone Number for Ads

Twitter admitted yesterday that it “unintentionally” used some email addresses and phone numbers for advertising purposes. These phone numbers were specifically used to keep your account safe with two-factor authentication.

We recently discovered that when you provided an email address or phone number for safety or security purposes (for example, two-factor authentication) this data may have inadvertently been used for advertising purposes, specifically in our Tailored Audiences and Partner Audiences advertising system.

This is exactly why SMS-based two-factor authentication needs to go away. SMS is inherently insecure, as the FBI recently noted. Funnily enough, I recently removed my phone number from Twitter, although it’s probably too late.

Lightning Cable That Allows Hackers to Remotely Take Over Your Computer Being Mass Produced.

The O.MG. Cable, a Lightning cable that allowed hackers to remotely take over a victims computer, was demonstrated last summer at Def Con. Now, Fast Company reported, it is being mass-produced.

The O.MG Cable was first reported by Motherboard’s Joseph Cox when the security researcher who created it, a person known as “MG,” first demoed his handmade prototype at the Def Con hacking conference last summer. The O.MG Cable looks like an ordinary Apple-made Lightning cable and works exactly the same—it will charge a device and transfer data to and from the device just like an authentic Lightning cable. However, the O.MG Cable also contains a built-in wireless hotspot. This allows attackers to remotely run commands on the Mac or Windows PC the cable is plugged into, which allows them to do, well, pretty much whatever they want—including reading or even deleting your data… The good news at the time was that the O.MG cable needed to be handmade and was relatively expensive—$200 a pop. But now MG says that he’s found a way to mass-produce the cable in a factory, which will allow thousands of them to roll off an assembly line.