Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

According to The Information’s Wayne Ma, roughly 360,000 counterfeit wireless headphones with a retail value of $62.2 million were confiscated in the first nine months of the U.S. government’s fiscal year.

And:

The Information examined counterfeit AirPods Pro sold in Hong Kong in December, noting that they had a genuine Apple serial number and were physically indistinguishable from legitimate AirPods Pro, and even had functional active noise cancellation and Transparency mode features. The report claims one of the only ways to determine that the AirPods were fake was by looking up their firmware version, which was incorrect.

If I was going to buy AirPods Pro, I’d buy them from Apple. Period.

But if you do buy from a third party, like Amazon or Best Buy (because price), I would check the firmware as soon as they arrive, make sure you’re getting the real McCoy.

Reddit:

I purchased AirPods Pro in late 2019 and recently began encountering issues with crackling sounds and poor noise cancellation performance. I made an appointment at a local Apple Store from Apple’s AirPods Pro Service Program page and got both AirPods replaced for free later the same day. They gave me a new pack of ear tips and returned my existing wireless charging case. It was a very short appointment; they took the AirPods into the back, ran a test, and told me that they both failed the volume and noise cancellation tests.

If you own AirPods Pro and are hearing a crackling sound and/or notice poor noise cancellation performance, hop over to the AirPods Pro Service Program page.

Jim and I discussed this on this week’s podcast (drops tomorrow afternoon). Jim has the crackling sound and my noise cancellation has started to fail. We’re both taking trips to the Apple Store to see what’s what.

Note that the program is good for two years from “the first retail sale of the unit”, which means we are closing in on the end of coverage. The AirPods Pro were released October 30, 2019. Still time to get them fixed, if you qualify.

Market cap is the total value of a company’s outstanding shares. $2.5 trillion is a lot.

To see this for yourself, type AAPL in your browser search bar, then scan the detail page that appears for mkt cap or market cap.

Seems like just yesterday when Apple hit $1 trillion (August 2018) and then $2 trillion (August 2020).

Doomed.

From the product page:

Attaching the MagSafe Battery Pack is a snap. Its compact, intuitive design makes on-the-go charging easy. The perfectly aligned magnets keep it attached to your iPhone 12 or iPhone 12 Pro — providing safe and reliable wireless charging. And it automatically charges, so there’s no need to turn it on or off. There’s no interference with your credit cards or key fobs either.

And:

At your desk and need a charge? Just plug a Lightning cable into the MagSafe Battery Pack for up to 15W of wireless charging. Short on time? With a higher than 20W power adapter, you can charge both the MagSafe Battery Pack and your iPhone even faster. And you can track the status of your charge on the Lock Screen.

The pack is $99. A premium price, but an elegant solution if you own an iPhone 12 series and find yourself running out of charge towards the end of the day.

The battery pack has two 1,460mAh cells (according to this tweet).

The total of 2,920mAh is right around the capacity of the iPhone 12/12 Pro, more than the mini, less than the max, but nowhere near the $20 battery packs, like this model from INIU, which sports extra ports and 10,000mAh of charge.

That said, the MagSafe Battery Pack is slim, very tightly integrated (charge shows up in the battery Home Screen widget), uses the same Lightning cable as the iPhone, and, of course, has the convenience of MagSafe. The battery will also pass-through charge (charge when you plug in your phone).

If you own an iPhone 12 series, this will give you a constant trickle charge, topping off your phone, getting you through the day if that’s ever been an issue.

From Apple’s official MagSafe Battery Pack Support Page:

Attach your MagSafe Battery Pack to your iPhone and then plug the MagSafe Battery Pack into a power adapter. Using a 20W or higher power adapter, the MagSafe Battery Pack can charge your iPhone with up to 15W of charging power.

You can also charge both if you attach your MagSafe Battery Pack to your iPhone, then plug your iPhone into a power source. You might want to charge this way if you need to connect your iPhone to another device while charging, like if you’re using wired CarPlay or transferring photos to a Mac.

The benefit of a separate power pack like the INIU mentioned above is the additional power (days of charge without having to recharge the pack) and the flexibility (multiple ports, and with the right cable, you can charge all your devices). But the cost is a bit of extra weight and the need for a cable.

If you’ve ever considered changing carriers, take a read of the linked article. There’s a lot of good detail, but here’s the bottom line:

For a single line, unlimited talk and text with 500 MB of data costs $25 per month, with various tiers up to $60 per month for unlimited everything. You can have up to three lines, and with three lines, each person gets unlimited talk, text, and data for $30 per month or $90 per month total. Not too shabby. I’ve been paying $130 per month for three lines of lousy Verizon service, and that’s with a 19% state employee discount my wife gets for being a teacher.

There are a few caveats, but nothing truly problematic. If you are considering such a move, take the time to read Josh’s article.

Chaim Gartenberg, The Verge:

If you’re an iPhone user, the weather is always a particularly nice 70 degrees. Or 68 degrees. Any temperature but 69 degrees, actually, because it turns out that the built-in weather app on some versions of iOS — including the current version, iOS 14.6 — will refuse to display the internet’s favorite number, even if the actual temperature in a given location is, in fact, 69 degrees.

This silly piece of fluff has been flying around the internet. Lots of hot takes, lots of “nice”. It did make me laugh, imagining Tim Cook demanding that the number 69 be removed from the weather app!

In a nutshell, it’s a rounding issue, not censorship.

My favorite line, from Gruber’s take (with the URL ending “69_dudes”):

Sometimes a cigar is just an integer math conversion glitch.

Nice.

This is Money:

Apple’s lawyers warned it could quit the UK market if a court forces the company to pay a ‘commercially unacceptable’ fee for the technology used in its iPhones.

And:

Apple issued the warning as part of a court battle with UK patent holder Optis Cellular Technology.

And:

Optis is suing Apple for patent infringement after the iPhone maker refused to pay licence fees worth a possible $7billion for using ‘standardised’ smartphone technology in its products.

A High Court judge ruled last month that Apple had infringed two Optis patents, which help iPhones connect to the 3G and 4G networks.

The article is a hot take, but interesting nonetheless. If the follow-on court proceedings levy more in fines than Apple can make in profits in the UK, what choice would they have?

Mark Gurman:

The debut of the new American Express Platinum Card had me thinking a lot about the Apple Card, the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. collaboration that came out nearly two years ago. So far, it doesn’t appear that the card has made much headway: It’s still U.S.-only, the rewards are mediocre, and the revenue impact for Apple Inc. doesn’t seem significant.

And:

I think what the product needs is an Apple Card+: a product to target the high-end market dominated by the Platinum and Chase Sapphire Reserve. Those cards charge $550 to $695 a year, prices that aren’t out of reach for the sorts of Apple consumers who regularly spring for the Pro models or Hermès watch bands.

Two thoughtful points here: Apple Card has not reached its potential. In the discussion of credit cards, it’s not on the shortlist, other than for Apple related purchases, where the 3% cash back is worth considering (to me, it’s a no-brainer), especially given the lack of an annual fee.

And second, take a look through Mark’s list of imagined perks for an Apple Card+. I do think Apple could compete against the American Express Platinum Card, the gold…er…platinum standard for business folk. Apple can use its ecosystem to sweeten the pot, draw users, in ways American Express cannot.

Tim Hardwick, MacRumors:

Apple Maps received several notable improvements in iOS 15, including new details in cities, an interactive globe, and enhanced driving directions. It also gained a feature that has long been available in rival map apps – the ability to set leaving and arrival times for driving directions.

The goal is to have a realistic driving time for future trips, based on predicted driving time for the time of day you specify.

In the past, to get this, had to use Google Maps. Glad to finally have this feature come to Apple Maps.

Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac:

The Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo reported last month how criminals had been stealing iPhones in Brazil to access people’s bank accounts instead of reselling the devices. Now, the police seem to have finally figured out how they gain access to bank accounts, and to our surprise, the process seems easier than you might think.

And:

Basically, thieves take the SIM card out of the stolen iPhone and then put it into another iPhone. Using social networks like Facebook and Instagram, they can easily find out the email address used by the person who had the phone stolen. In most cases, this email address is the same as the one used for the Apple ID. All they need to do is reset the Apple ID password using the victim’s phone number.

The portability of the SIM card comes back to bite us. Is there anything Apple can do to prevent this?

Apple has promised the Brazilian newspaper that it will make it easier for users to delete all data from a stolen iPhone. However, the company did not give details of what exactly it will implement. With iOS 15, users will finally be able to track a powered-off iPhone using the Find My app.

And, of course, the best thing you can do to protect your accounts is not to store your passwords in the Notes app or other non-secure apps. Another good option is to only use an eSIM instead of a regular SIM, as the eSIM cannot easily be transferred to another device.

Why we cannot have nice things.