Ankur Thakur, iDownloadBlog:
In this tutorial, we will go over how to clear up iCloud storage, and we will see what happens when iCloud is full.
Down below the “how to manage iCloud storage” walkthrough are sections telling you what will happen as your iCloud storage starts to fill up and, after that, a list of what will continue to work normally even after iCloud storage is full.
Good to know.
Reddit:
My iPhone was stolen (central Europe) about a week ago and yesterday, the number I had set up during the “Lost Mode” process received a text message saying the phone was switched on and telling me to reply with the options to lock, erase or find the iPhone.
I suspect most folks reading this would never fall for the phishing text messages. But what this walkthrough offers that makes it worth reading, at least to me, is the link to the support document with details on reporting phishing to Apple, as well as the link to iCloud.com/find and the image (at the very end) showing what a real Find My email from Apple should look like.
The first bit of this video is pretty straight-forward. Launch Find My, then tap Find.
But watch the video all the way through. There are subtleties (like the left and right buttons in the upper left) and details on activating Lost Mode.
Not rocket science, but better to be familiar with the process now, less stress when you can’t find your AirPods and that frantic search begins.
Christian Davenport, The Washington Post:
Lockheed Martin, which is building the Orion spacecraft that NASA hopes will fly astronauts to the moon within a couple of years, is partnering with Amazon to put an Alexa on the capsule.
The device would give astronauts real-time information on telemetry, the health of the spacecraft and its speed.
And:
Astronauts would be able to get information about their water supply or battery levels, even change the temperature or color of the lights in the crew module.
And:
The onboard space Alexa would not be connected to the Internet but instead connect directly to Orion’s computer and its own onboard cloud, which would allow it to monitor the health of the spacecraft.
This feels like a real coup for Amazon. This isn’t a simple problem, like bringing an Echo device and giving it internet access. This is a specialized domain, fitted to a demanding environment.
Have to wonder if anyone at Apple is thinking about ways to do something similar with Siri.
Christian Zibreg, iDownloadBlog:
You’re familiar with low power mode on iPhone (and iPad and Mac), which temporarily disables some features to save battery life. But did you know about high power mode, the polar opposite to low power mode?
And:
To help you squeeze the last drop of power from your Mac’s Apple CPU, the new 16-inch MacBook Pro provides a new feature, dubbed High Power Mode. When you put your Mac into high power mode, the operating system will maximize performance during very intensive workloads by permitting the fans to run at higher speeds to keep the CPU cool.
From Apple’s official support document:
Your MacBook Pro has multiple energy modes you can switch between. By default, your Mac is set to Automatic mode to balance energy use and performance. Low Power Mode reduces energy use to increase battery life. On the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Max, High Power Mode allows the fans to run at higher speeds. The additional cooling capacity may allow the system to deliver higher performance in very intensive workloads.
Check out the images in the Apple Support document to see how to turn High Power Mode on and how to tell if it is on from the menu bar.
Yes, this feature is limited to the 16″ MacBook Pro M1 Max, but I suspect it’ll become more mainstream as Apple expands it’s M1 product line. Good to know about.
Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:
Intel today unveiled new 12th-generation Core processors suitable for laptops, and as part of the announcement, it claimed that the new Core i9 is not only faster than Apple’s M1 Max chip in the 16-inch MacBook Pro, but is the fastest mobile processor ever.
Importantly:
The high-end Intel chip has a max Turbo Boost frequency of 5.0GHz, but power draw can reach up to 115 watts, which is significantly more power than the M1 Max chip ever uses and not ideal for the thermal envelope of devices like the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.
From the Intel press release, touting the Fastest Mobile Processor Ever:
Intel announces the 12th Gen Intel® Core™ family of mobile processors led by the launch of new H-series mobile processors featuring the flagship Intel® Core™ i9-12900HK – the fastest mobile processor ever and the world’s best mobile gaming platform – built on the Intel 7 process.
I won’t argue “world’s best mobile gaming platform”. Besides the PC being dominant in desktop gaming and high end Intel laptops drafting on that platform, Apple has not made gaming a priority.
But here’s the footnote Intel attached to “Fastest mobile processor ever”:
Based on superior performance of 12th Gen Intel Core i9 12900HK against Intel Core i9 11980HK, AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX, and Apple M1 Max.
Read the press release for details on the benchmarks they ran.
It’ll be interesting to see real world benchmarks once laptops with these processors actually ship. More importantly, I look forward to seeing the real life battery performance of those laptops. If you look at the second image in the headline linked MacRumors post, you’ll see the Apple M1 Max topping out (in terms of SoC Power, the left-to-right part of the chart) about where the new Intel chip begins.
Once these laptops hit the streets, I expect the power consumption to be the real story here, with the Intel chip sucking power as the M1 Max sips. If so, no way to hide that.
Alioto Law Firm:
California Crane School, Inc. filed a class action antitrust case on 12/27/21 against Google and Apple and the Chief Executive Officers of both companies alleging violations of the Antitrust Laws of the United States.
And:
The complaint charges that Google and Apple agreed that Apple would not compete in the internet search business against Google.
And these allegations at the core of the non-compete approach:
What the complaint seeks to accomplish:
The complaint asks for an injunction prohibiting the non-compete agreement between Google and Apple; the profit-sharing agreement; the preferential treatment for Google on Apple devices; and the payment of billions of dollars by Google to Apple.
The complaint also calls for the breakup of Google into separate and independent companies and the breakup of Apple into separate and independent companies in accordance with the precedent of the breakup of Standard Oil company into Exxon, Mobile, Conoco, Amoco, Sohio, Chevron, and others.
Massive consequences, if successful.
Could Apple develop its own search engine on a scale of Google’s? They’d either have to eat the massive cost of staffing and supporting such an engine, or offset the cost with an advertising business of their own. And adding a search engine would certainly draw even more antitrust scrutiny.
Apple could also exit any proprietary search agreement with Google but, of course, that would be costly as well.
From this New York Times exposé:
Apple now receives an estimated $8 billion to $12 billion in annual payments — up from $1 billion a year in 2014 — in exchange for building Google’s search engine into its products. It is probably the single biggest payment that Google makes to anyone and accounts for 14 to 21 percent of Apple’s annual profits. That’s not money Apple would be eager to walk away from.
Indeed.
Apple Support continues to knock it out of the Park.
This video focuses on the details on setting up dual SIMS, some combination of physical SIM card or eSIM. Incredibly useful if you have two lines or plan on traveling abroad.
Ankur Thakur, iDownloadBlog:
Wondering how you can send a big video, graphics-heavy document, or other large files to someone from your iPhone? Look at ten ways to send big files from your iPhone to someone on another iPhone, iPad, Mac, Windows PC, or Android phone. Most methods here are wireless, while others will require a Lightning cable.
This is worth bookmarking, for that moment when you find yourself having to move a massive file from one device to another. Nice walkthrough of each technique, with detail and links to more detail.
This is just one person’s take and, just as with any list of favorites/pans, your opinion is the one that matters. But I did enjoy the walkthrough and the reminder of just how committed Apple is to this venture, how far they’ve come.
While some of these shows are legitimately not great, I’ve found a good number of them to be top quality, worthy of Netflix or HBO. Remember, Apple TV+ launched November 1st, 2019, just a bit more than 2 years ago. With Apple’s deep pockets, I’d expect viewership to continue to climb as content continues to expand.
Apple’s market cap popped its head above the $3 trillion mark yesterday, for a brief shining moment. As of this writing, Apple’s share price dropped back down to $181.72 per share, which translates to a market cap of $2.98 trillion.
Having lived through the days when company CEOs suggested Apple pack up their stuff, sell their inventory, and recoup as much of their losses as possible, this is a head shaking, gobsmacked turnaround of epic proportions, doomed to market dominator, all started by the decision to buy NeXT and bring back Steve Jobs. That deal was finalized in February 1997, almost 25 years ago.
When Apple first went public, Steve had about 11 percent of Apple’s stock. A simplistic valuation would have that chunk worth about .11 x $3T = $330 billion. Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, is worth $304 billion.
Rumor, strongly sourced, but move on if you don’t want to know.
That said, I’ve been wondering what Apple could bring to the table to make AirPods Pro 2 more compelling than the first gen.
Here’s the details:
In a note to investors, seen by MacRumors, Kuo explained that the second-generation AirPods Pro will feature new selling points that will lead to strong demand, including support for Apple Lossless (ALAC) audio and a charging case that users can trigger a sound from to highlight its location.
And:
It seems likely that this sound-emitting charging case will integrate into the Find My app, similar to how users can currently emit a sound from their individual AirPods inside the case to help find them.
And:
All of Apple’s current AirPods products, including the third-generation AirPods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max, do not support Lossless audio. This is because AirPods play audio via Bluetooth, limiting them to the AAC codec. Higher quality Apple Lossless Audio Codec files may need to be streamed to AirPods directly to circumvent Bluetooth and enable a Lossless listening experience, but it is possible that Apple could develop an alternative solution.
Are lossless and Find My support enough of an addition to make you plunk down the cash for the next gen? Of course, you’d also get a brand new battery and (seems likely) other new features.
Watch the ad, embedded below.
In my mind, this might be the most powerful ad Apple has ever released.
First, there’s the cry for help, people in obvious danger. Then there’s the visuals, suggesting the scene of the accident, without direct footage, but perfectly chosen. And, finally, those background strings, swelling the tension. So very well done.
Matt Fuller:
I recently acquired several new Apple Watch bands of different types. Among them, I decided to splurge on my very first (and likely last) Apple Watch Hermès item for my collection—the Apple Watch Hermès 45 mm Navy Single Tour Band.
And:
Inside, the Apple Watch Hermès band is not in cardboard, but enrobed in a luxurious microfiber pouch with a familiar texture and configuration.
And:
Upon closer inspection, the pouch appears to be made from the same material as the now famous Apple Polishing Cloth, the $19 cloth that enjoyed about a month of media hype in 2021.
Follow the headline link and scroll down to the very last image, a side-by-side of the polishing cloth draped over the Apple Watch Hermès band pouch. Tap/click a few times to embiggen and you’ll definitely get a sense that these are, indeed, made of the same material.
Any other Apple product ship with this material? Do the Mac Pro wheels come with a wheel-polishing cloth?
Tim Hardwick, MacRumors:
When listening to a song from your music library on iPhone and iPad, it used to be possible to ask Siri to “rate this song five [or whatever number] stars,” and the virtual assistant would do so without fuss.
And:
Yet reports on Reddit, Apple Support Communities, and the MacRumors forums suggest that the function is not available in iOS 15 or iOS 15.1, and has remained out of action in the latest iOS 15.2 point release, issued in December. Instead of carrying out the request, Siri responds with “I’m Sorry, I’m afraid I can’t do that,” or some variation thereof.
This issue has been out in the wild for a while (here’s a Reddit thread from about a month ago), but the hope was that this was a bug, rather than an actual permanent change.
You can still set star ratings on your Mac and in iOS/iPadOS (you’ll need to enable the Show Star Ratings setting first).
Definitely a mixed message. Are star ratings going away permanently? Are they coming (albeit eventually) to Siri?
Schrödinger’s ratings.
Great. Just great. Ate up every bit of this, like a crackling, warm fire on a cold, snowy night.
Google Project Zero blog:
We want to thank Citizen Lab for sharing a sample of the FORCEDENTRY exploit with us, and Apple’s Security Engineering and Architecture (SEAR) group for collaborating with us on the technical analysis.
And:
Recently, however, it has been documented that NSO is offering their clients zero-click exploitation technology, where even very technically savvy targets who might not click a phishing link are completely unaware they are being targeted. In the zero-click scenario no user interaction is required. Meaning, the attacker doesn’t need to send phishing messages; the exploit just works silently in the background. Short of not using a device, there is no way to prevent exploitation by a zero-click exploit; it’s a weapon against which there is no defense.
And:
The ImageIO library, as detailed in a previous Project Zero blogpost, is used to guess the correct format of the source file and parse it, completely ignoring the file extension. Using this “fake gif” trick, over 20 image codecs are suddenly part of the iMessage zero-click attack surface, including some very obscure and complex formats, remotely exposing probably hundreds of thousands of lines of code.
There’s a lot of detail here, fascinating if understanding exploits is your thing. But bottom line, a fake GIF is used to Trojan horse image processing code into life, and that code does the bad work, no clicks required.
Most importantly:
Apple inform us that they have restricted the available ImageIO formats reachable from IMTranscoderAgent starting in iOS 14.8.1 (26 October 2021), and completely removed the GIF code path from IMTranscoderAgent starting in iOS 15.0 (20 September 2021), with GIF decoding taking place entirely within BlastDoor.
Make sure you (and the folks you support) update to the latest and greatest.
See also: After US ban and Apple action, Pegasus spyware maker NSO running out of cash.
Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:
Apple Inc., facing a resurgence in Covid-19 cases and a fast-spreading new variant, is delaying its corporate return-to-office deadline from Feb. 1 to a “date yet to be determined.”
Employees were informed of the move via a memo sent by Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook on Wednesday. An Apple spokesman confirmed the decision to Bloomberg News.
Add to the mix three Apple Store closings (Miami, Ottawa, and Annapolis, Maryland).
Hard to judge whether this is the road to a new normal (masks for many, more vaccines more often, periodic store closings in response to infection upticks) or just a bump in the road.
Apple:
Today, Apple TV+ announced “El Deafo,” a charming and poignant three-part animated series for kids and families. Based on the No. 1 New York Times best-seller and Newbery Honor-winning graphic memoir, all episodes of “El Deafo” will premiere Friday, January 7, 2022 on Apple TV+.
And:
“El Deafo” follows perceptive young Cece (voiced by Finigan) as she loses her hearing and finds her inner superhero. Going to school and making new friends can be tough. Having to do both while wearing a bulky hearing aid on your chest? That takes superpowers! With a little help from her superhero alter ego El Deafo, Cece learns to embrace what makes her extraordinary.
Watch the trailer below. Love the story premise, the normalization, representation. Love that all the episodes are dropping at once, too.
Caviar:
While most of its smartphones feature gold, jewels, or over-the-top designs, the luxury brand’s latest takes on the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max feature a far more understated design and a really cool tribute to the late Apple founder Steve Jobs. For the phone, Caviar’s artists used the unique design of the iPhone 13 Pro and combined it with parts from a first-generation iPhone.
And:
In the center of the back of the body is a sealed capsule in the shape of Apple’s signature bitten apple with a fragment of the original iPhone 2G motherboard.
And:
Caviar’s iPhone 2G versions of the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max are limited to 19 pieces and retail for $6,990.
What to get for the person whose Apple Watch Series 1 18kt Edition no longer works.
In a million years I would not have figured this one out. Watch the video below, see if you agree. This is some pretty low discoverability.
That said, props to the Apple Support team for making this video. Very well explained.
Benjamin Mayo maintains a page that lets you view all the various Apple TV screen savers, with the ability to switch to your screen saver of choice and pause and scrub through as you like.
The Apple TV periodically fetches new videos from an Apple server. This page interprets that data source and shows all the possible videos that the Aerial screensavers can include. This page is automatically refreshed and kept up-to-date as Apple adds new videos into the rotation.
Apple just added two new screen savers. From this 9to5Mac post:
As part of the tvOS 15.2 release yesterday, Apple announced it was adding new Apple TV screensavers featuring aerial flythroughs of Iceland and Scotland.
Follow the headline link and enjoy.
Reddit user Heyyoudvd:
I’m not sure if anyone is interested in this, but I recently got a call from Tim Cook’s office, which I thought was pretty cool.
This is a pretty good read, very interesting to see things that catch Tim and team’s attention.
Once you’re done reading all about App Privacy Report and adding a Legacy Contact, follow the headline link and allow Juli Clover, MacRumors, to walk you through all the rest of the goodies that came with iOS 15.2.
There really is just a ton of new stuff. If nothing else, scan all the headlines just so you are aware of what’s new.
No one likes to think about death. Of course. But do spend a few minutes thinking about adding a legacy contact to your Apple ID. Or helping your again relatives add legacy contacts to their Apple ID. It’s important.
Follow the headline link for all the details but in a nutshell:
Starting in iOS 15.2, iPadOS 15.2, and macOS 12.1, Apple users can add a Legacy Contact for their Apple ID. Adding a Legacy Contact is the easiest, most secure way to give someone they trust access to the data they stored in their Apple account after they pass away. This data may include photos, messages, notes, files, apps they downloaded, device backups, and more.
And, very importantly:
Certain information, like movies, music, books, or subscriptions they purchased with their Apple ID, and data stored in their Keychain, like payment information and passwords, can’t be accessed by a Legacy Contact.
To add a Legacy Contact on your iPhone:
You’ll get an access key, which you’ll share with your Legacy Contact. The choosing of your contact and the sharing of the access key is all part of the process. Apple makes this very easy.
To access your account, your LC will need that access key, along with a death certificate. Meaning, they won’t be able to access your account while you are still alive.
Here’s a link to the page that lets you request access to a deceased friend or family member’s account.
Kirk McElhearn, Intego blog:
A new feature in iOS and iPadOS 15.2 is the App Privacy Report. Your iPhone or iPad can record and display activity carried out by apps, such as which apps access your location, contacts, or photos, which apps access a network, websites that contact trackers, and more. You can then view a detailed report of this activity over the past seven days.
To turn on App Privacy Report (can’t think of a reason not to):
That’s it. The results will start appearing on that same page as you start using various apps.
Kirk’s walkthrough is worth reading. He does a great job painting a picture of what kinds of results you might see, how to dig into those results, and what the data actually indicates.
Bookmark, pass along.
Ankur Thakur, iDownloadBlog, walks through all the different ways you can use Shazam on your iPhone and, more importantly, shows you how to find your multiple Shazam histories. Yes, multiple histories.
Read the article, it’s well done, there’s lots more to it. Don’t miss the bit about automatically creating a playlist of your Shazam requests.
Click the headline link to see the current stock price. Look at the data table for the term market cap.
As I type this, Apple’s stock price is $180.54 and their market cap is $2.94T.
It’d take about a 2% rise in the share price for Apple to hit $3T. Not unreasonable. Uncharted territory.
(To be clear, not a prediction, just an observation).
Hartley Charlton, MacRumors:
While multiple reports indicate that Apple is working on a direct successor to 2020’s MacBook Air, a recent rumor from the leaker known as “Dylandkt” claimed that this new model may not be branded as the “MacBook Air.” Instead, it would simply be the “MacBook.”
And:
In recent years, Apple has sold two main iMac models: a 21.5-inch model and a more powerful 27-inch model. Earlier this year, the 21.5-inch model was replaced with an all-new 24-inch model with the M1 chip. The 27-inch model has yet to receive a redesign or an update with Apple silicon, but another rumor from Dylandkt claims that the new model could actually be called the “iMac Pro.”
I love the simplification here, hope this rumor turns out to be true. If so, we’d have MacBook, MacBook Pro, iMac, iMac Pro, and Mac Pro.
This simplification concept reminds me strongly of the simple product matrix Steve Jobs rolled out in 1998, best described by Steve himself. Watch the video below for the explanation (the entire video is worth watching, but jump to 9 minutes in if time is short).
More from the excellent WILL IT WORK? YouTube channel. Maybe my favorite video in the entire series.