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Mark Zuckerberg says Apple is Anti-Competitive in Facebook Earnings Call

Andrew Orr ·

Mark Zuckerberg has once again criticized Apple for its privacy, saying that the company is anti-competitive because of iMessage (among other things).

We increasingly see Apple as one of our biggest competitors,” Zuckerberg said, noting that Apple’s iMessage software is preinstalled on iPhones — enabling it to become the most widely used messaging service in the United States, as opposed to Facebook’s WhatsApp — and that Apple’s growing investment in services also enables it to compete with Facebook and other apps that use its iOS software platform.

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Apple Watch Helps Save Cyclist Who Fell into River

Charlotte Henry ·

We periodically get stories of how an Apple Watch has saved someone’s life. However often they happen, they never stop being amazing. On Thursday, for instance, BBC News reported that a cyclist in the UK was able to call the police from his wearable after he was swept into a river.

The man was swept off his bike into the swollen River Wye in Rotherwas, Hereford, on Thursday. He was carried a mile downstream but managed to grab hold of a branch and spoke to fire control. Station commander Sean Bailey said he was “lucky” to have kept hold of the branch, adding: “We’re very surprised he didn’t lose his grip.” Speaking to BBC Hereford and Worcester, Mr Bailey said the cyclist was spotted by passers-by who were able to give crews a sense of where he was. “Even with that location it still took us 20 minutes to locate him and rescue him and bring him to safety. “He was speaking to our fire control whilst he was clinging onto a tree, via his Apple Watch, which worked wonderfully well for us to actually get to him as quickly as possible.”

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Password Manager Bitwarden Adds Touch ID to Browser Extension

Andrew Orr ·

Password manager Bitwarden announced the addition of a couple of new features. One feature adds support for Touch ID and Windows Hello to its browser extensions.

Browser extensions will now be able to access this authentication inside the Desktop application. This allows a more streamlined integration with hardware that does not require a unique browser-level integration. Biometric authentication requires macOS users to download the Mac App Store version.

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Buffer Overflow Bug Found in SUDO Dubbed ‘Baron Samedit’

Andrew Orr ·

Tracked as CVE-2021-3156, a heap overflow bug found in sudo and dubbed “Baron Samedit” has been found recently. It allows an unprivileged user to gain root privileges on a vulnerable machine using a default sudo configuration.

The vulnerability itself has been hiding in plain sight for nearly 10 years. It was introduced in July 2011 (commit 8255ed69) and affects all legacy versions from 1.8.2 to 1.8.31p2 and all stable versions from 1.9.0 to 1.9.5p1 in their default configuration.

2020-02-03: Looks like macOS is affected after all.

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Steve Jobs Unveiled the iPad 11 Years Ago Today

Charlotte Henry ·

January 27 is a significant date in Apple history. On this day in 2010, Steve Jobs took to the stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and unveiled the first iPad. MacRumors has a great write up of the day and a summary of iPad milestones.

“iPad is our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price,” said Jobs, in a press release on January 27, 2010. “iPad creates and defines an entirely new category of devices that will connect users with their apps and content in a much more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before.” The original iPad featured a 9.7-inch display, a single-core Apple A4 chip, up to 64GB of storage, 256MB of RAM, up to 10 hours of battery life, a 30-pin dock connector, and a headphone jack. Notably, the original iPad did not have any cameras. Pricing started at $499 for the Wi-Fi model and $629 for the cellular model in the United States.

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Research Indicates Apple Has Had Its Best-Ever Quarter in India

Charlotte Henry ·

Apple’s latest earning call will take place on Wednesday, and you can expect to hear lots about progress in India. TechCrunch reported on new research that indicated that last quarter was the company’s best-ever in the crucial market.

Apple shipped more than 1.5 million iPhone units in India in the quarter that ended in December, up 100% year-on-year, making this its best quarter in the world’s largest smartphone market to date, according to research firms Counterpoint and CyberMedia Research. Thanks to the improved sales of older generation iPhone 11, iPhone XR, iPhone 12 and the newer iPhone SE, Apple doubled its market share in India to 4% in the quarter, the research firms said. Overall, Apple shipped more than 3.2 million iPhone units in India in 2020, up 60% year-on-year, Counterpoint said. The shipment growth comes months after Apple launched its online store in the country and offered customers a wide-range of financing and upgrade options, AppleCare+, and lucrative perks such as a free set of AirPods with the purchase of iPhone 11. The company plans to open its first physical retail store in the country later this year.

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Tim Cook to Address European Data Protection Conference

Charlotte Henry ·

Apple CEO Tim Cook is set to speak at the Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection conference this week. Apple’s senior director for privacy, Jane Horvath, is also set to appear, 9to5 Mac reported.

As first reported by Macerkopf, Cook will appear virtually during the CPDP conference on Thursday, January 28. The focus of the CPDP conference this year is “”Enforcement of rights in a changing world,” and Cook specifically will speak at the beginning of the session in a talk titled “A path to empowering user choice and boosting user trust in advertising.” Cook will appear alongside a handful of other privacy executives and politicians, including Apple’s own senior director for privacy Jane Horvath: John Edwards, New Zealand privacy commissioner; Marcel Kolaja, vice president of the European Parliament; Lucy Purdon, policy director, Privacy International; Marshall Erwin, chief security officer, Mozilla; Jane Horvath, senior director for privacy, Apple.

Preorder Otterbox Gaming Accessories That Ship in February
Cool Stuff Found

Preorder Otterbox Gaming Accessories That Ship in February

Andrew Orr ·

Known for its smartphone cases, this year Otterbox presented a range of gaming accessories for mobile gamers. I was privy to the company’s video presentation at virtual CES and was impressed with these new products. Otterbox partnered with Microsoft and several of these accessories are made for the Xbox controller. However, they did inform us in the video that the mobile gaming clip is compatible with all console game controllers. You can preorder them today and they start shipping mid-February.

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Twitter Client ‘Tweetbot’ Becomes a Subscription App

Andrew Orr ·

Tweetbot was updated to version six on Tuesday and it brings several notable features, including the move to subscription pricing.

Even though the Tweetbot subscription isn’t expensive, I think Tapbots owes its users more than it has delivered. It’s a shame because Tweetbot remains one of the premier third-party Twitter clients for iOS. Hopefully, the lack of new features in this update will be addressed in subsequent releases.

Another subscription app that I’ll be deleting. For me, the only advantage Tweetbot has over Twitter is the lack of sponsored tweets, aka ads. While that is a notable feature worth paying for, one downside to Tweetbot includes never getting timely notifications.