Andrew Orr

Adam Estes writes that Apple’s future looks rotten, based on the premise that Apple is no longer about hardware, but about software and services too.

If Apple’s future really is all about services and not about hardware, what a rotten future that is. It probably won’t be rotten for Apple, a company with nearly $240 billion of cash on hand. Apple is rich and will almost certainly find all kinds of new ways to get richer. If that involves taking money from people in the form of subscriptions and fees instead of fun new gadgets, well, that sucks for Apple fans.

Mr. Estes links Apple’s “innovation nap” with the arrival of the bear market we seem to be heading in. I’m personally not sure why this means the company’s future is rotten, but doom and gloom stories sell better than happy stories.

A report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners found that more Android users are switching to the iPhone.

The report found that 16 percent of iPhone buyers upgraded from an Android phone in the 30-day period after the launch of the iPhone XR. After the iPhone 8 and 8s were released in September 2017, 12 percent of iPhone buyers upgraded from an Android phone, and when the iPhone X was released in November 2017, that number was 11 percent.

Despite worries that the iPhone XR is dragging, it seems that this model is a popular model for Android users to switch to.

India wants to follow in Australia’s footsteps and break encryption with the use of automated tools.

India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) published the proposed rules on its website following a report on Monday by the Indian Express revealing the government’s proposal to modify the country’s primary IT law to work them in. The report comes days after India’s government seemingly authorized 10 federal agencies to snoop into every computer in the country last week.

As more countries follow suit, it’s not enough to say that companies should just pull out and not do business in that country anymore. We need to enable privacy regulations and other pro-consumer policies.

A website called The Cloud Fall shows a privacy concept that reimagines the relationship between apps, personal data, and the cloud.

The cloud cripples your data. Instagram has your photos, iMessage your messages and Google your documents. By splitting up our data, we prevent any AI from truly knowing us as individuals. And by giving away all control, we relegate ourselves to mindless drivers of engagement.

It’s a fascinating approach, and I hope ideas like this gain traction amongst tech companies. We need to let companies know that the age of using and abusing our personal data at will is over.

I don’t plan to write up a ‘Best Of’ app roundup like I did last year. Instead I recommend everyone read Federico Viticci’s comprehensive list for 2018 apps.

Below, you’ll find a collection of the 60 apps I consider my must-haves on the iPhone and iPad, organized in nine categories; whenever possible, I included links to original reviews and past coverage on MacStories.

Launch Center Pro is similar to Shortcuts. It helps you set up automated tasks. Now that Apple has opened up NFC a bit, Launch Center Pro can now make use of NFC tags.

During the beta, testers used the stickers for a variety of tasks, like launching directions to their next event from a sticker placed in the car, or one that sent their ETA to their loved one and launched directions home. Other testers put a sticker in the fridge to launch a shopping list to add new items to; or placed stickers around the home to trigger HomeKit shortcuts; or placed a sticker by their bedside to help them set alarms, and more.

A cool blend of the physical and digital worlds. You can put an NFC tag anywhere.

Phone repair employees from Flint Audio Studio in Middletown, Rhode Island have been accused of stealing nudes from customers’ smartphones.

An RI State Police investigation has found that 13 women between the ages of 22 and 47 never gave anyone from Flint permission to go through their “media files, make copies and later disseminate them.” Nonetheless, the women allege that store employees stole and shared their nude images and videos.

My first thought was about the apps I’ve reviewed specifically for hiding nudes. But instead I’ll comment that you shouldn’t need to go out of your way to hide nudes. People shouldn’t be rooting around in your camera roll in the first place. Although I do think it would be great if Apple let us lock/hide entire albums.

It seems that WhatsApp, a Facebook-owned messaging app, has had a problem with users sharing child porn. Apple removed Tumblr from the App Store because people were sharing CP on its platform. Should Apple remove WhatsApp as well?

A report from two Israeli NGOs reviewed by TechCrunch details how third-party apps for discovering WhatsApp groups include “Adult” sections that offer invite links to join rings of users trading images of child exploitation.

Policing WhatsApp is more difficult than Tumblr due to the former’s use of encryption. But it seems that these abusive chat groups had child porn in the group name itself, so they aren’t exactly sneaking around. Maybe Apple needs to give WhatsApp a time out.

Microsoft isn’t the only one working closely with the U.S. spying machine. Google has been doing it for years. The company’s roots are tied to the CIA, and it has worked with the NSA as well.

Here’s a sign of how vital Google has become to the US government: in 2010, following a disastrous intrusion into its system by what the company believes was a group of Chinese government hackers, Google entered into a secretive agreement with the NSA…

This mixing of military, police, government, public education, business and consumer-facing systems – all funnelled through Google – continues to raise alarms.

Is it just me, or is it unnerving that companies are allying themselves closer with the military?

Books have changed in the digital age. Although plenty of people still read paper books, or ‘pBooks’, eBooks are here to stay. Past prognosticators foretold the rise of the Future Book, but that future is different than they thought.

…We were looking for the Future Book in the wrong place. It’s not the form, necessarily, that needed to evolve—I think we can agree that, in an age of infinite distraction, one of the strongest assets of a “book” as a book is its singular, sustained, distraction-free, blissfully immutable voice. Instead, technology changed everything that enables a book…

It’s an interesting read. Books themselves haven’t changed much, but a lot of things around books have.

Digital Trends interviewed Ryan Welsh, CEO of an AI company called Kyndi that is building an Explainable AI platform for government, financial services, and healthcare.

We’re very far away from artificial general intelligence … If you’re in the industry and you work with A.I. systems, you understand how limited they are, specifically around sensory motor and natural language understanding … Systems are very good at parsing sentences, but not really good at understanding the semantics or the pragmatics of language.

I always thought the Singularity was odd. Basically, it’s the belief that AI will get so powerful it will become god-like and give us all sorts of advanced technology. It’s religion for the atheistic Silicon Valley types.

I’m a firm believer in the future of AR and I think it has the potential to be as revolutionary as the internet. Amir Bozorgzadeh writes along similar lines about the ‘AR Cloud.’

The AR Cloud allows the real, physical, world and all of the otherwise mundane objects scattered throughout it to animate seamlessly with meaning and imagination, and AR itself becomes the interface that allows us to intuitively navigate the new layers of reality.

This is why I think Apple should release an augmented reality headset. If you want AR to be a casual tool, then do what you’re already doing and keep it confined to the iPhone. But if you want AR to be a second layer of reality, it needs glasses. No one wants to constantly hold a phone in front of their face.