Glenn Fleishman, writing for Macworld, pulled together some advice on remote access between Macs (pretty easy, though worth the read) and between Macs and other platforms (not so easy). Interesting.
Apple
3 top reasons people dump Android for iPhone
Jonny Evans, writing for Computerworld, on the top reasons switchers are switching to iPhone, as laid out by Creative Strategies. Though the title might seem click-baity, the logic is thoughtful.
A taste:
Today’s smartphone user may have subscriptions with multiple such services. They are also likely to own multiple devices, and that’s where the problem emerges. In contrast to competitors, Apple’s platforms are far better at syncing passwords, settings, images and other items between all your devices using the same Apple ID. You can even set up a new iPhone just by tapping it with your old one in iOS 11.
That kind of convenience makes it so much easier for consumers rapidly engaging in a multi-device, multiple-service, cross platform digital existence. This sync extends across to Apple’s Macs, of course.
Solid read.
Amazon Prime Video arrives on Apple TV in over 100 countries
From Apple’s press release:
Starting today, customers around the world can access the Amazon Prime Video app on Apple TV to stream award-winning and critically acclaimed titles including Prime Original Series and Movies. Also starting this week, the Apple TV app — a unified place for iPhone, iPad and Apple TV users to discover and start watching the best shows and movies — supports live sports, giving fans in the US a simple and seamless way to keep track of their favorite teams and games in real time. Participating sports apps in the Apple TV app include ESPN and the NBA, developed in partnership between the NBA and Turner Sports, with more to be added soon. Starting tomorrow, Prime members in the US can enjoy Thursday Night Football on the Apple TV app for iPhone, iPad and Apple TV.
It’s a big day for Apple TV. They’ve added the Amazon Prime Video app (here’s a first look we posted earlier today) as well as live sports to the Apple TV app.
Live sports in the Apple TV app means fans in the US can now follow their favorite teams to ensure those live games show up first in their Up Next queue. Fans can also receive on-screen notifications when a game is about to start, and when their favorite teams are in a close game, so they can easily switch to catch the most exciting sports moments live. Additionally, through a new dedicated Sports tab in the Apple TV app, fans can see the teams, leagues and sporting events currently playing or coming up soon, along with the time remaining and current scores.
You’ll want to update your Apple TV to the latest version of tvOS for all this to work.
First look at Apple TV’s Amazon Prime Video app
I’ve been looking forward to an Amazon Prime Video app on my Apple TV for quite some time.
The good news is, the app is here and available for download. The better news? The app works quite well. One caveat, which I’ll get to in a minute, but the overall experience is excellent, just what you’d expect from a well-written Apple TV app.
Click through to the main Loop post for all the details. […]
Apple begins selling unlocked & SIM-free iPhone X in the U.S.
SIM-free means, in part, that you won’t get a carrier SIM card. You’ll still need to get one. Keep that (to me, a tiny bit of a hassle) in mind.
UPDATE: From the comments:
You can get a SIM card for free from T-Mobile, and it takes seconds to install.
Meanwhile, that SIM-free iPhone—unlike the GSM models— is fully compatible with all networks including CDMA. More importantly, it has the Qualcomm chip, which means it will provide about 30% better wireless performance than Intel-equipped models in terms of data speeds, signal reception, voice quality, and battery life. And due to all of the above advantages, the SIM-free model will also provide a significantly higher resale value.
This is the iPhone variant everyone should buy.
UPDATE 2: Also from the comments:
Dave: it may also be worth mentioning that this is a great option if you already have a nano SIM card in your existing iPhone.
Duly noted.
iMac Pro launching December 18th, according to Google
- Take this with a grain of salt. Could simply be a parsing error on Google’s web crawling bot. But still.
- If you want the official word on the iMac Pro launch, here’s a link to Apple’s official iMac Pro notification page. Sign up and Apple will let you know when the iMac Pro launch is officially announced.
Apple’s HomePod isn’t about Siri, but rather the future of home audio
Daniel Eran Dilger, AppleInsider:
Rather than being the phenomenal, exciting new product category launch that pundits love to praise, the Alexa-powered Echo is Amazon’s salvaged booby prize for failing in smartphones: a few million units sold at low margin, versus the tens of millions of smartphones other Android licensees have been able to sell (or the hundreds of millions of high-margin iPhones Apple has been selling each year).
Ouch. But I agree with the premise. The Echo is a highly successful pivot. If Amazon’s 2014 Fire phone had caught on, it’s not clear that they would have gone down the Echo path.
Echo and related Alexa-based smart speakers are really “smart mics” for listening to commands. Amazon’s retail background works to leverage this to take online orders from Alexa users, but its original goal in hardware was a mobile phone with a camera, display and mic all working together to identify potential products to sell, not just a simple voice appliance. Amazon laid this out in excited detail at the Fire Phone launch, it just wasn’t able to sell it.
And:
Google’s Home is a straight up knock off of Echo, designed to counter the threat of Amazon reaching audiences of online buyers before they ever think to search Google.
And:
HomePod isn’t a “smart mic” seeking to force Siri into more places to intercept users’ attention. Despite cloying narratives of how Amazon is dominating the “smart speaker” market it created out of necessity after Fire Phone imploded in a cloud of smoke, Apple has always had a commanding lead in the number of people using its Siri voice assistant worldwide.
And:
Unlike Amazon, Apple isn’t trying to intercept buyers before they head to a retail store. Apple’s happy with connecting users with either stores or online retailers; Apple Pay works for both, and iOS apps create a blurring line that serves either, or both at the same time. Apple’s Siri doesn’t attempt to keep people out of rival apps or stores; it seeks to help them launch apps to find whatever they need.
And:
HomePod responds to Siri commands and passes them to your iPhone for launching apps or presenting a visual answer. But HomePod isn’t just a “smart mic” like Echo and Home. Primarily, It’s an intelligent speaker designed to produce exceptional home audio that intelligently fills whatever space it is installed in.
These are just snippets. There is so much more to process in this insightful, well written post, but the quotes laid out above should give you a basic sense of where Daniel is going with this.
Terrific job, definitely worth your time.
Apple intros Apple Watch recycling program, offering gift cards up to $175
One more reason to upgrade your older Apple Watch.
Android Oreo: An iOS user’s review
Matt Birchler, in the introduction to a week long review of the Pixel 2 running Android Oreo:
I have been using the Google Pixel 2, which is the latest and greatest Android phone out there. I chose this phone for my experiment because I wanted to leave no room for my conclusions to be colored by a bad OEM skin on top of Android or by a lower quality phone as my comparisons to iOS should be as fair as possible. Since I wanted to review Oreo, a Pixel was my only option in October, and thankfully that Pixel has top of the like specs and the best Android camera out there. This is Android how Google intended it.
And, then, this TL;DR conclusion:
Android has grown up considerably over the last decade. It’s no longer a complete disaster of a user experience, and some elements have actually surpassed what Apple is doing with iOS. Notifications are much better than they are on iOS and Google Assistant is more accurate and more helpful than Siri. that said, there are a million little (and not so little) things that truly make Android a sub-par experience for me. Your milage may vary, but the abysmal third party software available for the platform, poor inter-app communication, and countless stability issues make Android a place I only want to visit for a month or two per year, not something I can see myself using full time.
Hop over to the front page of Matt’s blog to dig in. He’s got the intro and the first two parts of the review up on the site.
Amazon public relations: Yes, Prime Video app still coming to Apple TV this year
Josh Centers, TidBITS:
At this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple and Amazon finally announced that we would be able to watch Amazon video natively on the Apple TV by the end of the year.
And:
But it’s December, and Amazon Prime Video for the Apple TV remains vaporware. Is it still due in 2017? Surprisingly, yes. Amazon public relations told me, “Thanks for checking in. Yes, you can expect the launch this year.”
This report jibes with last week’s report that the Apple TV app was being beta tested by Amazon employees.
[Via DF]
The device that paved the way for Apple: Jobs and Woz’s 1972 ‘blue box’ up for auction
Daily Mail:
The ground-breaking digital blue box was developed by Apple’s co-founder Steve Wozniak in 1972 and was the inventor’s first printed circuit board.
But the box was actually a hacking device that fooled a phone company’s switchboard by reproducing its specific tones.
As a result, the user was able to get free overseas phone calls in an era when making a long-distance call was hugely expensive.
Click through to the post. Some terrific pics and a video of Steve Jobs telling the blue box story. This is a piece of history I would love to own.
KGI: Apple to adopt faster circuit board tech across Apple Watch & Mac lineups in 2018
Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:
Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities is today out with a new investor note, obtained by 9to5Mac. In the piece, Kuo breaks down how Apple is working to integrate faster and more versatile circuit boards across its product lineup come 2018.
Currently, the iPhone 8 and iPhone X both use a new flexible circuit board made from liquid crystal polymer. Both phones use it in their antenna designs, while the iPhone X also uses it in its TrueDepth camera. This LCP FPCB technology allows for high-speed and low-latency data transfer.
More detail in the post, but nice to see this terrific, space-saving, performance-increasing tech making its way over to the Apple Watch and Mac.
Makes me wonder if this is part of the supply-chain scheduling driving the iMac Pro and Mac Pro. The iMac Pro was announced at WWDC, said to ship this month (December 2017). And the Mac Pro is, well, anybody’s guess. But good to know this tech is coming.
A first look at Apple Pay Cash, just released with new iOS 11.2 update
[VIDEO] Lots of goodies in the iOS 11.2 update. Biggest of all was the release of Apple Pay Cash. I’ve been playing with it, looks very useful. In a nutshell, you’ll tie a debit card to the Apple Pay Cash card in your wallet, then use the Apple Pay Cash card to send or receive cash. A bit like Venmo or PayPal, but tied in to the secure enclave.
The folks from MacRumors put together a nice intro to Apple Pay Cash that I found quite easy to follow. It’s embedded in the main Loop post.
Once you’ve installed the iOS 11.2 update, fire up the Wallet app and you’ll be prompted to set up Apple Pay Cash.
UPDATE: There have been some comments about Apple Pay Cash only being available in beta. While this might be true, I can tell you that I played with it on a phone running the beta as well as on a phone that has a public release of iOS 11.2. So, perhaps it’s the Apple Pay Cash server that’s in beta?
Apple releases four new Apple Watch Series 3 ads
[VIDEO] The ads are branded as “The Gift of Go”. Beautifully filmed eye candy. All four embedded in the main Loop post. Worth watching.
iOS 11.2 rolls out some emoji updates
I think Emojipedia is a terrific resource. If you’ve not spent time here before, jump to the linked page, showing the emoji changes that came with this iOS release. First, there’s there’s the high resolution images of the 17 emoji that have changed.
To get a sense of these, take a look at the tumbler emoji. Here’s the old, iOS 11.1 version. And here’s the version updated for iOS 11.2.
I love the attention to detail here. The old one looks like a bit flat, and the scotch (or whatever is in it) looks cloudy. The new one looks more realistic.
[UPDATE: Apparently, the tumbler emoji was updated, then reverted back to the old version, then updated back to the new one, perhaps as a result of a QA oversight. Regardless, nice to see the design improvement.]
Another thing to note about this page is “all, changed, new, removed” links. Each gives you a different, useful view into the current emoji.
And, if you are interested, you can scroll down and tap on the links for previous versions of iOS, to see what was new with those releases. Good stuff.
Apple updates Support app with redesigned UI, new Discover section, and search
Jeff Benjamin, 9to5Mac:
On the heels of launching a YouTube channel dedicated to how-to tutorial videos, Apple today pushed a significant version 2.0 update to its Apple Support app for iOS.
The app, which initially launched last November, received a major update back in the spring that allowed users to schedule repairs at participating Apple Authorized Service Providers, and provided broader access to Genius Bar reservations.
Today’s update adds a redesigned user interface, along with a new Discover tab dedicated to learning about your Apple products. In addition, the app also features the ability to search the company’s library of support articles, which can prove useful for finding solutions to specific issues.
Here’s a link to Apple’s official Support app.
Fatbits for your table, designed by original Mac icon artist Susan Kare
I’m a big fan of Susan Kare’s work. All it takes is a quick scan of her Wikipedia page or this sample page of some of her Apple icons and you can see the impact she had on the original Mac, an impact that carries on to this day.
Susan is still very active as an artist and designer and has a collection of table linens just perfect for the old-school Mac lover in your life. This is definitely my cup of tea. Take a look.
Alexa, HomePod, and the Apple Watch
From this very thoughtful post by Neil Cybart:
When introduced at WWDC 2017, HomePod was marketed as an iOS accessory that will serve as the best speaker people have ever owned. The $349 price certainly reflects this accessory mindset. While Apple briefly went over how HomePod will be able to serve as a type of smart home hub, it was almost more of an afterthought. At its core, Apple does not think the only function for stationary smart speakers is to pipe digital voice assistants.
And:
I don’t think stationary smart speakers represent the future of computing. Instead, companies are using smart speakers to take advantage of an awkward phase of technology in which there doesn’t seem to be any clear direction as to where things are headed. Consumers are buying cheap smart speakers powered by digital voice assistants without having any strong convictions regarding how such voice assistants should or can be used.
And:
If the goal is to rely on a digital voice assistant, an Apple Watch wearer has access to Siri at pretty much every waking moment. When simply wearing an Apple Watch, Siri is instantly available everywhere in the home. The same kind of access to Alexa would require five, ten, or maybe even 15 Echo speakers spaced strategically throughout the home (another reason why Echo sales are becoming increasingly misleading – some consumers may be buying a handful of $20 speakers at one time). With a cellular Apple Watch, Siri is now available outside the home even when users are away from their iPhones. Meanwhile, Alexa is stuck within four walls – at least until Amazon unveils its Alexa smartwatch.
To me, this is the core flaw in the argument I’ve frequently seen that HomePod is competing with Echo and Google Home, that Apple is late to the game.
Another way to look at it is, Amazon is late to the game. The Echo is a big seller, no doubt, but it is Amazon’s ingenious mechanism to get their digital voice assistant shoehorned into the space with Siri and Googly (my name for Google’s identity free voice assistant) when their phone strategy did not catch on.
Read the rest of Neil’s piece. It’s very interesting. I’m looking forward to the HomePod, to getting a sense of Apple’s long term strategy here.
iPhone X US delivery time now down to one week (it varies, actually)
Mikey Campbell, AppleInsider:
After a rocky start marked by a quick initial sellout and lingering supply issues, Apple is quickly catching up with iPhone X demand, with current U.S. delivery estimates pegging ship times at six business days.
I just checked and delivery now shows as December 11 (ten days from now). That’s still pretty good, and in plenty of time for gift-giving, if that’s your goal.
Even better, most models are showing available for pickup today. If you live near an Apple Store and an iPhone X is in your near future, check pickup availability for the model you crave. 64GB models are available today at most stores I checked, 256GB available at some, but far fewer.
Nikkei: Apple to design power chips in-house as early as 2018
Cheng Ting Feng, Nikkei:
Apple is designing its own main power management chips for use in iPhones as early as in 2018, cutting dependence on Dialog Semiconductor, according to industry sources, as shares in the U.K. developer plunged as much as 19% in afternoon trade in Frankfurt.
Seems a natural move, if true. Part of the process of reducing dependency, where possible.
How the Apple Watch precisely tracks your swimming movements
This is a Popular Science article from a few months ago, but I came across it last night, found it fascinating.
Rob Verger, Popular Science:
The device has functioned as a swim tracker since it became water-resistant in 2016, but with its latest operating system, it presents a more granular metric: set detection. It knows when you rest at the pool’s edge and then uses that information to divide the workout into sets of laps, showing you how far and long you swam in each, what stroke, and your rest time.
And:
Apple built its own algorithms to discern the stroke of swimmers of all skill levels, as well the calories they’re burning. The process involved gathering data from more than 700 swimmers and over 1,500 swim sessions. And Apple gathered even more data from people swimming in place (in an “endless” pool) while wearing a mask that descended from the ceiling.
And:
The watch uses the gyroscope and accelerometer to track the motion of your strokes, but in open water, it can leverage another sensor: the GPS chip. If you’re swimming in the ocean or a lake, your watch uses that to determine how fast and how far you go. But GPS signals don’t travel through H2O. Luckily, people are likely to do freestyle in open water and for that stroke, your arms regularly break the surface. Apple sets the GPS chip in acquisition mode for the whole swim. It looks for the satellite signal each time your hand rises from the water. “We’re trying to catch it every single time,” says Ron Huang, Apple’s director of engineering for location and motion services.
I absolutely love the effort that Apple puts in to get things like this to work. This is Apple at its best. Read the article. As I said, it’s fascinating.
Billboard’s intimate dinner with Jimmy Iovine, discussion of the music biz
Billboard:
It’s been three and a half years since Jimmy Iovine left his role as CEO of Interscope Geffen A&M to run Apple Music, but that doesn’t keep him from thinking about the problems facing labels today — or the rest of the industry for that matter.
Over a dinner recently at NeueHouse Hollywood in Los Angeles with Iovine and Allen Hughes, who directed the four-part documentary series, The Defiant Ones — which focuses on storied careers of Iovine and Dr Dre., his partner in developing Beats Electronics — a handful of journalists lobbed questions at and shared their thoughts with the iconic exec.
This was a fascinating read. Not too long, and completely Jimmy.
Just a little taste:
It’s not the price point that’s the problem for streaming services. It’s the free alternatives that are undermining the system in a way film and television streaming platforms are not forced to manage. He pointed to Netflix as a prime example, spending $6 billion on original content in 2017, while charging customers $9.99 or $11.99 for unlimited access to its unique offerings — including TV and film they exclusively license. Meanwhile in contrast, by and large, all music digital streaming platforms offer the same material.
And:
Put yourself in Kansas without a job and YouTube is free, Pandora is free, Spotify is free…. If there’s a restaurant down the street with the exact same food as this restaurant that’s on a mountain with a view, only this one’s for free, a lot of people are gonna eat there. They’ll use paper towels, they don’t give a shit about napkins.
A great read, well worth your time.
Face ID vs Touch ID
AppleInsider:
With the introduction of the iPhone X and Face ID, some are concerned that Apple’s new biometric system is not as secure or easy to use as the legacy fingerprint-based Touch ID. AppleInsider digs deeper to explain why you shouldn’t fear facing the future.
I went into the iPhone X launch with some preconceived notions about Touch ID having some convenience advantages over Face ID.
As this article points out, the convenience advantage lies with Face ID, and Face ID is only going to get better over time. It is the future. Good read.
If file sharing stopped working after yesterday’s Mac update, here’s what to do
UPDATE: Looks like Apple’s re-issue of Security Update 2017-001 most likely addressed the file sharing issue, so there’s nothing you need to do on your end. [H/T, Bryan Lee]
If file sharing stops working, go to this Apple Support knowledge base article.
Short story even shorter, you’ll go to Terminal and enter this line:
sudo /usr/libexec/configureLocalKDC
Follow with your admin password, when prompted, and you should be good to go. This is all a bit of a mess, but kudos to Apple for their rapid response here.
High Sierra root login bug was known weeks ago, if not longer. What should have happened?
Turns out, this giant security bug was known for at least a few weeks before it was publicly revealed. And, likely, it was know for far longer. What should have been done? Here’s the details. […]
Update to High Sierra now live, official comment from Apple
An update to High Sierra has now gone live. It addresses the root password issue we first mentioned in this post.
“Security is a top priority for every Apple product, and regrettably we stumbled with this release of macOS”, said an Apple spokesperson in a statement to The Loop.
“When our security engineers became aware of the issue Tuesday afternoon, we immediately began working on an update that closes the security hole. This morning, as of 8 a.m., the update is available for download, and starting later today it will be automatically installed on all systems running the latest version (10.13.1) of macOS High Sierra.
We greatly regret this error and we apologize to all Mac users, both for releasing with this vulnerability and for the concern it has caused. Our customers deserve better. We are auditing our development processes to help prevent this from happening again.”
The download is now available via the Mac App Store.
macOS High Sierra ‘root’ security bug: Stop and do this NOW
Rene Ritchie’s explainer walks you through the steps you should definitely take to ensure that your Mac has a root password.
Hacking the AirPods case to add wireless charging
This is an ugly hack, not something I would ever do to what I consider a beautifully designed case. Especially considering that Apple is said to be shipping their own inductive AirPods case in the near future.
That said, I did find this interesting, a chance to see how to quickly and cheaply implement a Qi-compatible wireless charging solution.
Facebook’s new CAPTCHA: “Please upload a photo of yourself that clearly shows your face”
Nitasha Tiku, Wired:
Facebook may soon ask you to “upload a photo of yourself that clearly shows your face,” to prove you’re not a bot.
The company is using a new kind of captcha to verify whether a user is a real person. According to a screenshot of the identity test shared on Twitter on Tuesday and verified by Facebook, the prompt says: “Please upload a photo of yourself that clearly shows your face. We’ll check it and then permanently delete it from our servers.”
And:
In a statement to WIRED, a Facebook spokesperson said the photo test is intended to “help us catch suspicious activity at various points of interaction on the site, including creating an account, sending Friend requests, setting up ads payments, and creating or editing ads.”
This is somewhat reminiscent of Face ID, though presumably without the machine learning aspect, with zero 3D information (it’s a picture, after all) and, also presumably, with a much slower reaction time.
My two cents: I find it interesting that we have such a splintered approach to security. We’ve got security cams, passwords, fingerprints, iris scanning, and 3D facial mapping, all implemented with varying degrees of success by a wide variety of vendors.
Over time, there will be a tension for standards to emerge, to allow for constant verification. With the obvious dystopian potential that goes along with constant surveillance. This tension is between the requirement to verify that you are you, to validate a transaction, protect you from hackers and the like, and the desire to track you, to mine your habits.
With each new security standard you sign up for, opt into, important to know exactly where that data goes, what it will ultimately be used for.
Side note, here’s the Wikipedia page for CAPTCHA. Interesting acronym.
Security hole in macOS High Sierra lets anyone gain root access to a logged in machine
There’s a security hole in macOS High Sierra and we’ve verified the issue.
First reported in this tweet:
https://twitter.com/lemiorhan/status/935578694541770752
Here’s how to reproduce it:
- Log in to your Mac, as you normally would
- Now launch System Preferences
- Click the Users & Groups pane
- Click the lock to make changes but do NOT enter your normal credentials
- Instead, change the user name to root, leave the password field blank, but click in the password field (does not appear to work if you don’t click in the password field) and click Unlock
- If you don’t get in, change the user name to root, leave password field blank (but click in it), click Unlock again
Eventually, you will get a second Unlock dialog. Repeat this procedure with root and empty password field. This time, when you click Unlock, the admin lock will unlock and you are in.
Note that this does require you to have physical access to a machine and be already logged in to the machine. I have verified this on my machine and it does work.
While this is an issue, this would be way more of an issue if this technique allowed you to log in to a machine (perhaps a stolen one, for example), as opposed to gaining root access to a machine whose user logged in and granted access in the first place. Not nothing, but the sky is not falling.
We’ve reached out to Apple and will update this post the moment we hear back.
UPDATE: This just got a bit worse. This same technique will enable you to login to any Mac whose login options are set to “Display login window as Name and password” instead of “Display login window as List of users”.
While you wait for Apple to respond, suggest you do this:
- Go to System Preferences / Users & Groups
- Click the lock, login as your admin user
- Click Login Options (bottom left)
- Click List of users instead of Name and password
You can also follow up by entering a root password or, as others have suggested, disabling the root user. My suggestion would be to wait until Apple responds, then follow their suggested advice.