Apple

Luke Plunkett, Kotaku:

Unpacking was one of the best games of 2021, to the point where it didn’t just make my personal GOTY list, but the entire site’s as well. It is currently available on PC, Mac, Switch and Xbox One. It is most definitely not available on Apple’s iOS devices.

And yet! Earlier today the top free download on the App Store, outranking even YouTube, Tik-Tok and Instagram, was a game called Unpacking Master (it has since slipped back down the charts) which, as you may have guessed from the pricepoint and platform, is not just inspired by Unpacking, but is a criminally shameless clone of it.

Shameless cloning, with enough of an effort to get the copying good enough to fool anyone familiar with the game into thinking this was the real deal.

But it’s not:

https://twitter.com/UnpackingALife/status/1485791778532114433

To Apple’s credit, the game appears to be gone from the App Store. Unlike a subscription scam app, which Apple might be able to detect by digging through and taking a closer look at any apps with a high subscription price, this was a free app, making its money from advertising.

Unless the App Store reviewer was familiar with the original game, how could they have detected a clone like this? Clearly, App Store folks are paying attention to the tech press/social media.

Side note: As I write this, other games from the same developer are still up on the App Store.

Tom Simonite, Wired:

In August, chipmaker Intel revealed new details about its plan to build a “mega-fab” on US soil, a $100 billion factory where 10,000 workers will make a new generation of powerful processors studded with billions of transistors. The same month, 22-year-old Sam Zeloof announced his own semiconductor milestone. It was achieved alone in his family’s New Jersey garage, about 30 miles from where the first transistor was made at Bell Labs in 1947.

With a collection of salvaged and homemade equipment, Zeloof produced a chip with 1,200 transistors. He had sliced up wafers of silicon, patterned them with microscopic designs using ultraviolet light, and dunked them in acid by hand.

Check out Zeloof’s blog, where he documents the process.

Imagine trying to do what Sam is doing, trying to learn how the magic is done, by going back in time to when chip fabrication was much simpler, and garage-achievable.

My two cents: Apple, invest in this kid. Fund him so he can climb the ladder to more sophisticated equipment, give him access to your engineers for advice/guidance. Help him bring on other engineers so they can form a sort of farm team you can bring along to the majors as they progress.

This kid’s got some future!

William Gallagher, AppleInsider:

Picture the scene. You’re sitting on a park bench, listening to Francisca Valenzuela Essentials on Apple Music over your AirPods Pro, when a man in a dark overcoat sits next to you. He says quietly, “the weather is very cold in Leningrad,” — but you don’t hear him because you’ve got noise cancelling on.

Or you’re at home, it’s your partner’s turn to cook and he or she has been yelling “dinner’s ready” for ten minutes, but you don’t hear that either. You only hear the music in your AirPods.

And:

“Interrupt for noise-cancelling audio devices,” is a newly revealed Apple patent application that aims to work around this.

And:

Apple proposes that when it’s the iPhone that is producing the music that an AirPods user is listening to, that iPhone listens out for external noise. “[It performs] at least a first level of identification (e.g., of a spoken name of the user, or of the contact as one of several interrupt-authorized contacts) of the voice at the audio device,” says Apple.

This is a patent. Not a product. But still, I do love the concept. Key is to be able to limit who can turn off your noise cancelation, if you want to limit that.

Sami Fathi, MacRumors:

Apple is now requiring that customers in the United States verify that they’re active students, teachers, or staff members at an educational institution in order to access education discounts on products.

It used to be that if you wanted to buy from Apple at the discounted education rate, you had to show proof that you were a student, teacher, etc. Back in the day, this often meant faxing in a copy of your most recent grades or some other proof of enrollment.

Things definitely got lax. Like streaming services ignoring multiple simultaneous logins from the same account.

Ah well, nice while it lasted.

So how will Apple verify your good educational standing? Like so:

Apple in the United States now requires that current students, teachers, and staff members verify their eligibility for education discounts through UNiDAYS. UNiDAYS is a website specialized in providing education customers with discounts for products and services by confirming their enrollment in an educational institution.

Here’s the link to the UNiDAYS site. Tap the Technology tab for the path to Apple gear.

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

The names of future Apple devices are some of the company’s most closely guarded secrets, but history and some guesswork could indicate what Apple will call its first virtual and augmented reality headset.

iPod, iPhone, iPad, all reasonably on brand. Apple Watch? AirPods? Clearly, the brand is expanding, becoming less predictable.

Mark’s guesses at names for Apple’s rumored glasses:

• Apple Vision
• Apple Reality
• Apple Sight/iSight
• Apple Lens
• Apple Goggles
• Apple AR, Apple VR, Apple XR, Apple MR or Apple SR

None of these really grab me. I’d bet on Apple Glass(es) or something with a tie-in to existing branding, like Apple AirGlass or iGlass.

No matter, an interesting read, and a topic I find most interesting.

David Nield, Wired:

If you pay for iCloud storage, then you automatically have access to the extra perks that Apple bundles together under the iCloud+ name—and one of those perks is the iCloud Private Relay service.

And:

If you open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad, tap your name at the top, and then choose iCloud, you should be able to access a Private Relay (Beta) toggle switch that you can turn on or off. It’s also under Apple ID and iCloud in System Preferences on macOS. However there’s not a huge amount of information alongside the switch telling you what it is and how it works.

Been using Private Relay for so long, I completely forgot that it was still in beta.

This is a pretty good read. Lots of interesting detail. A few snippets:

When iCloud Private Relay is enabled, you’ve got two choices when it comes to IP addresses. You can carry on reporting your general location (which city you’re closest to, more or less)—so that local data such as a weather forecast still shows up correctly—or you can go vaguer and only report your country and time zone to websites that request it.

And:

iCloud Private Relay also keeps your DNS (Domain Name System) queries secret—essentially, the websites you’re looking up on your device. As with IP addresses, this data can be used to create a profile of who you are and what you’re interested in, which in turn can be sold to advertisers. With iCloud Private Relay enabled, this is much harder for companies to do.

And:

It only functions through the Apple Safari browser on your iPhone or iPad, so it doesn’t apply to any browsing you’re doing through an alternative mobile browser. It applies to data sent through apps, but only data that is unencrypted, and works across cellular networks as well as Wi-Fi.

If you do go down this road, worth running a speed test with Private Relay on and then off, comparing the results. Here’s my test

Malcolm Owen, AppleInsider:

The concept of smart glasses runs into a problem when it comes to people who normally wear glasses to see. Those who can wear contact lenses could feasibly use a typical smart glasses setup without too much issue, but those who have to wear glasses can end up in trouble.

This is all conjecture, of course, since we don’t actually know if Apple has glasses in the works and, if they do, what form factor they will take.

But the linked article is an interesting read, with discussion of actual Apple patents that would make sense if prescription-tunable lenses are in the works.

And if that is the case, it raises the possibility of Apple glasses being a product that would be useful without any internet connectivity at all. Imagine having adjustable lenses for your glasses, able to zoom in on something that would normally be beyond your range of vision, for example.

Or switching between far view and detailed close up view, sort of like bifocals or progressive lenses, but with a full field of view and the ability to change on command. Need to read a far away street sign? No problem. Thread a needle? No problem. Same lenses, just a Siri command away.

Yeah, I get it, I’m dreaming. But still, that’d be very cool.

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Apple in November settled a long-running lawsuit over employee bag checks, with the Cupertino company agreeing to pay $29.9 million to employees who were subjected to off-the-clock bag searches, and now details about the settlement are available on Apple’s website.

And:

California employees first sued Apple in 2013, and in 2015, the case escalated into a class action lawsuit. Employees claimed that Apple subjected them to mandatory bag checks that were “embarrassing and demeaning,” with those checks conducted after the end of a shift, causing employees to stay at work an extra 10 to 15 minutes.

Most importantly:

The bag search policy has been long discontinued and Apple has not conducted bag searches since 2015.

Here’s a link to the new Apple web page dedicated to the settlement.

John Gruber, Daring Fireball:

As of today, Apple’s App Store is lousy with Wordle rip-offs. I mean not just the concept — there’s a long history of “guess the word” games, including a defunct game show called “Lingo” that was clearly an inspiration for Wordle — but literally the name “Wordle” and its design.

If you’ve never played Wordle, take a minute and check out Josh Wardle’s totally free web hosted game.

Wordle is fun, addictive, but limited to once per day play, a feature that makes it all the more attractive.

Back to Gruber:

As I write this, the #3, #7, #14, and #15 word games in the iOS App Store are shameless Wordle clones stealing the name “Wordle”.

As John notes, Apple responded to the Twitter wave of anger by pulling all the Wordle ripoffs. Read Gruber’s post for more details on this shameless cash grab.

One interesting side note is that Josh Wardle apparently didn’t trademark the name or the game play. He also chose to avoid the whole profit issue by making the game free to play, at least for the moment. An old school passion project, ripe for the opportunistic developer to take advantage of.

Did these ripoffs break any laws, fun afoul of specific App Store rules? If not, was it purely the outrage that drove Apple to take these apps down?

Sarah Perez, TechCrunch:

At the high end of consumer spending, there were 233 apps and games that pulled in more than $100 million in 2021, and 13 titles that generated over $1 billion. This is up 20% from 2020, when there were then 193 apps and games topping the $100 million mark, and only 8 titles making over $1 billion annually.

This is mind-blowing. And you have to wonder how much incentive Apple has to chase down apps like this one:

https://twitter.com/keleftheriou/status/1480626605370142724

John Voorhees, MacStories:

Apple is also in a unique position given the vast size of its Find Me network. That puts the company in a different league than competitors like Tile, which carries greater responsibility with it.

In a story on Peer Reviewed, Matt VanOrmer puts a finger on something I’ve been wondering for a while: Are AirTags contributing to the problem of stalking or merely making us more aware of it because of the unique stalking countermeasures built into the device?

From the Matt VanOrmer story:

The sharp increase in reports of people being unknowingly tracked by bad actors using AirTags is clearly indicative of a major problem — but the question I’ve been wrestling with since these stories began is “Has Apple made the problem of stalking worse with AirTags, or just easier to discover?”

This is an excellent question.

More from Matt:

I would argue a nefarious individual wanting to stalk someone would debatably be foolish to use an AirTag to do so…since their victim has a high probability of being alerted to the tracking device (if they have an iPhone — more on that later). Surely to a criminal, the benefit of AirTags’ highly-pinpoint accuracy is immediately overwhelmed by the downside of getting caught.

A lot of blame for a recent run in stalking has been heaped on Apple, but has that stalking been around long before AirTags debuted, but just undetected?

Korea Herald:

Apple will allow alternative payment systems in South Korea in compliance with a new local law that bans app store operators from forcing their own in-app payment systems, the country’s telecommunications regulator said Tuesday.

The move came as a new law went into effect in the country in September last year, restricting app store operators, such as Google and Apple, from forcing their in-app payment systems on developers.

And:

Apple said it plans to provide an alternative payment system at a reduced service charge compared with the current 30 percent charge, as the tech giant turned in its compliance plans to the Korea Communications Commission (KCC).

No specific info on how much Apple will charge when alternative payment system is used, how the mechanism will work, or when this new system will be turned on.

Tim Higgins, Wall Street Journal:

Soon after 19-year-old Adele Lowitz gave up her Apple iPhone 11 for an experimental go with an Android smartphone, a friend in her long-running texting group chimed in: “Who’s green?”

And:

That pressure to be a part of the blue text group is the product of decisions by Apple executives starting years ago that have, with little fanfare, built iMessage into one of the world’s most widely used social networks and helped to cement the iPhone’s dominance among young smartphone users in the U.S.

Astonishingly, the Piper Sandler annual survey of teen habits reports that 87% of US teens own an iPhone.

You could argue that the blue/green bubble issue is at least part of the reason why.

More from the WSJ:

“In the absence of a strategy to become the primary messaging service for [the] bulk of cell phone users, I am concerned the iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove [an] obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s chief software executive, said in a 2013 email

And:

Phil Schiller made a similar case to Chief Executive Tim Cook in another email: “Moving iMessage to Android will hurt us more than help us,” he said. Another warning that year came from a former Apple executive who told his old colleagues in an email that “iMessage amounts to serious lock-in.”

When an Android (i.e., green bubble) user joins an iMessage thread, the thread turns green. I find this annoying. The color change is not an issue. It’s the fact that functionality changes once that blue bubble thread turns green. For example, when I send an image as part of a mixed green thread, the send often (but not always) times out and fails.

Obviously, the Android team wants this changed (see this tweet in response to the WSJ article from Google Senior VP Hiroshi Lockheimer). Question is, will Apple budge on this?