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It's Time For Some Official Apple TV+ Merch

Charlotte Henry ·

Apple TV+ has been available for well over a year now, and some of the shows have picked up a considerable fan base. Writing for 9to5 Mac, marketing strategist Parker Ortolani argued that we now need some official merch. (And I think he’s got a good point…)

There is plenty of bootleg merch on the web for different Apple TV+ shows, primarily for “Ted Lasso.” That comes as no surprise since the show has been a huge hit for the company. The upbeat show has become a mainstay of pandemic life. It’s uplifting and just a pure joy to watch during these difficult times. We all know that if Apple were to take a stab at making merch, they would make some awesome things. In fact, they already have made some products to market shows like “Ted Lasso.” But they haven’t made them available to the public, rather opting to send gift packages to press and leaders of the television industry. The Apple-branded merch products that they sell exclusively at Infinite Loop and at Apple Park have always been incredibly cool pieces to show your Apple pride. There’s no doubt that Apple’s designers could do the same for these shows and films.

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Apple Watch Helps Save Life of Man Who Fell Through Ice

Charlotte Henry ·

AppleInsider has picked up on another amazing story of an Apple Watching helping save someone’s life. William Rogers was able to call 911 for help and have firefighters respond after he fell through the ice on Salmon Falls River, New Hampshire because he had the wearable on.

“I remember telling myself, ‘OK, don’t panic. Don’t panic,'” Rogers said. “Figure out what your options are here.” As the seconds passed and hypothermia was on the verge of setting in, he remembered he was wearing his Apple Watch, and he used it to call 911. “So, I told them that I probably had 10 minutes before I was not gonna be able to respond anymore,” he said. The fire department that provided the rescue was able to arrive within five minutes of the call through the Apple Watch.

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Disney+ Now Has Over 100 Million Subscribers

Charlotte Henry ·

Disney+ has cleared the 100 million subscriber mark, CNBC reported on Tuesday. It comes just 16 months after the streaming service launched.

“The enormous success of Disney+, which has now surpassed 100 million subscribers, has inspired us to be even more ambitious, and to significantly increase our investment in the development of high-quality content,” (Disney CEO Bob) Chapek said in statement. Disney’s streaming service has released a number of popular TV series since its launch, including two seasons of “The Mandalorian” and its first Marvel series, “WandaVision.” Both have been top-viewed content, according to reports from Nielsen, and have driven sign-ups for the service. Disney has made its Disney+ service a destination for family-friendly favorites and the only place Marvel and Star Wars fans can see content that directly connects to blockbuster theatrical features.

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Verkada Security Breach Exposes 150,000 Surveillance Cameras

Andrew Orr ·

Hackers have breached the systems of Verkada, a startup that sells security cameras. The group says it was done to expose how widespread video surveillance is.

A person with knowledge of the matter said Verkada’s chief information security officer, an internal team and an external security firm are investigating the incident. The company is working to notify customers and set up a support line to address questions, said the person, who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

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Future MacBooks Could Offer Multiple Haptic Areas, Patent Suggests

Charlotte Henry ·

Upcoming MacBooks could incorporate multiple discrete haptic areas. That’s according to a new patent, spotted by Patently Apple.

Apple’s granted patent generally relates to electronic devices with one or more input areas that also function to provide spatially localized haptics via the Taptic Engine. “Spatially localized” haptics (or haptic output) generally refers to any haptic signal, e.g., haptic output, that is tactilely perceptible to a person touching a particular active region of the electronic device, but imperceptible outside that region. The surface area over which a single haptic output is perceptible is referred to as a “discrete haptic region.” There may be any number of discrete haptic regions in an input area of a laptop computing device. The discrete haptic regions may be separated from each other, or they may overlap. Either way, they remain discrete haptic regions each associated with an individual haptic actuator. An “input area” is a structure or surface configured to accept a user input.

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite Adds iPad App, M1 Support
Cool Stuff Found

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite Adds iPad App, M1 Support

Andrew Orr ·

Graphics suite CorelDRAW has added support for M1 Macs and created a brand-new iPad app. Built to take advantage of the power of Apple silicon, the team’s testing showed dramatic performance boosts on these new systems. When comparing a variety of common tasks on a MacBook Air 2019 (Intel chip) vs a Macbook Air 2020 with M1, across the board, most scenarios showed a minimum 2x speed improvement on the M1 system. Some tests were dramatically higher, including an image resampling scenario that produced speed results more than 20x faster.

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Comparing Privacy Policies: Clubhouse Versus Twitter

Andrew Orr ·

Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces are the newest entries to the audio space, but they both do different things with your data. Matt Binder examined their privacy policies.

The two platforms’ approaches to data storage really speak to a major difference in their intended uses. It seems Twitter users will be able to Spaces for more permanent content that they can repurpose for other platforms and mediums; whereas Clubhouse rooms will live strictly in the moment.

I don’t want to spoil the article but it sounds like Clubhouse audio recordings are more ephemeral.

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iPhone ‘Call Recorder’ App Leaked User Conversations

Andrew Orr ·

An iPhone app called Call Recorder lets users record their phone call conversations. But a recently discovered bug leaked those calls.

But using a readily available proxy tool like Burp Suite, Prakash could view and modify the network traffic going in and out of the app. That meant he could replace his phone number registered with the app with the phone number of another app user, and access their recordings on his phone.

A new version of the app was submitted to Apple’s app store on Saturday. The release notes said the app update was to “patch a security report.”