I have no idea why I looked at these for so long, but I had to share.

But what if you prefer using 1Password as your default password manager? Or if not 1Password, something like LastPass or Dashlane? Don’t worry, with iOS 12 Password Autofill, it is entirely possible to change the autofill provider to your preferred password manager of choice, as long as it supports Apple’s new Password Manager API framework.

This is a great tip that I’m sure many people will use.

PetaPixel:

iPhone XS has a completely new camera. It’s not just a different sensor, but an entirely new approach to photography that is new to iOS. Since it leans so heavily on merging exposures and computational photography, images may look quite different from those you’ve taken in similar conditions on older iPhones.

I suspected something like this was happening when I first heard of this issue last week. I couldn’t test it myself (I don’t have a new iPhone) and don’t have the technical chops Sebastiaan de With of Halide does to explain it but he does a great job of helping us to understand what is going on and why.

Follow the link, and just start scrolling. These are some gorgeous photos. If you’ve not felt the pull to upgrade to the iPhone XS, this will definitely tug that particular string.

Google blog:

We’ve been working on Project Stream, a technical test to solve some of the biggest challenges of streaming. For this test, we’re going to push the limits with one of the most demanding applications for streaming—a blockbuster video game. For more on professional gaming, check out this new blog post explaining why Dennis Fong or “Thresh” was the first professional gamer.

We’ve partnered with one of the most innovative and successful video game publishers, Ubisoft, to stream their soon-to-be released Assassin’s Creed Odyssey® to your Chrome browser on a laptop or desktop. Starting on October 5, a limited number of participants will get to play the latest in this best-selling franchise at no charge for the duration of the Project Stream test.

And:

The idea of streaming such graphically-rich content that requires near-instant interaction between the game controller and the graphics on the screen poses a number of challenges. When streaming TV or movies, consumers are comfortable with a few seconds of buffering at the start, but streaming high-quality games requires latency measured in milliseconds, with no graphic degradation.

This is a big deal. This is less about streaming a video game and more about making a major improvement to streaming latency. This has implications in the gaming console market, for sure, reducing the need for a high end console that is separate from a desktop computer.

But this also might impact the delivery of video itself, impacting services like Netflix and YouTube. Very interesting.

Wired:

“Big picture, a warrant is required for the search of a device except in certain circumstances at the border,” says Greg Nojeim, director of the Freedom, Security and Technology Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology. In the newly reported Face ID case, police did have a warrant to compel 28-year-old Grant Michalski of Ohio to unlock his smartphone, and Michalski has gone on to face child pornography charges.

And:

“There might be less intrusion and physical coercion with forcing a faceprint versus a fingerprint.”

This is an important test case and precedent and this Wired article is an interesting read.

In related news, in New Zealand, Travellers refusing to hand over phone password at airport now face $5000 Customs fine. That’s one way to get folks to hand over the keys.

And finally, here’s how to disable Face ID:

? PSA: You can manually disable Face ID by holding the Side Button (Sleep/Wake) and Volume Up Button together to bring up the “Slide to Power Off, Emergency Medical ID, and Emergency SOS” screen. Simply tap “Cancel”. Your iPhone is now locked and Face ID is disabled. https://t.co/iU4IdrJTrn

— ᴺᴼᵀ Jony Ive (@JonyIveParody) October 1, 2018

Apple:

Starting today, students at three universities are among the first to enjoy the convenience of using just their iPhone and Apple Watch to get around on and off campus. At Duke University and the Universities of Alabama and Oklahoma, students can now add their ID card to Apple Wallet and use it to pay quickly and easily for laundry, coffee or lunch, and even get into their dorms, the gym or the school library.

This is a brilliant move, making iOS desirable for every new generation of students.

Amazon:

Amazon today announced it is increasing its minimum wage to $15 for all full-time, part-time, temporary (including those hired by agencies), and seasonal employees across the U.S.—effective November 1. The new Amazon $15 minimum wage will benefit more than 250,000 Amazon employees, as well as over 100,000 seasonal employees who will be hired at Amazon sites across the country this holiday.

This more than doubles the current hourly rate of $7.25.

Definitely a step in the right direction for Amazon, addressing one of its biggest criticisms. It’d be nice if they enhanced this move by making it easier for part time employees to work enough hours to get health benefits.

You cannot be forced to reveal your passcode. But Face ID is a whole different issue.

Could you defeat Face ID simply by refusing to focus on the device? And does the law allow for you to be forced to unlock your phone using your face?

“The law is not well formed to provide the intuitive protections people think about when they’re using a Face ID unlock,” Jennings said. “People aren’t typically thinking [when they use Face ID] that it’s a physical act so I don’t have this right against self-incrimination.”

Current law, obviously, was written before Face ID was a thing. So I’d expect challenges to make their way up the appeals court ladder, possibly being decided by the Supreme Court. And I’d expect new laws to be crafted specifically to address Face ID.

Fascinating issue.

Reuters:

Hundreds of Russians braved the cold and rain to queue for days outside a Moscow phone store ahead of the release of the new Apple iPhones on Friday, but when the doors opened none stepped in to buy.

And:

Banking on strong enthusiasm for the phones, which have drawn days-long queues outside stores in Singapore, Sydney and elsewhere, the queue sellers set the price of the first place at 450,000 roubles ($7,000).

Basically, the queue sellers were banking on very limited stock. But:

The store manager called out ticket numbers to invite in the first buyers, but his calls went unanswered.

Eventually, ticket holder number 247 came to the door and Russian photographer Anatoly Doroshchenko, who had arrived that morning and didn’t pay for the right to queue-jump, became the first purchaser in Russia of one of the new phones.

Sad trombone.

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Over the course of the last week, the front-facing camera in the iPhone XS and XS Max has been receiving a lot of attention because the selfies captured on the new devices are drastically different from those captured with the iPhone X or earlier iPhone models.

In a MacRumors forum thread and on Reddit, Apple has been accused of using a skin-smoothing feature or a “beauty filter” for prettier selfies from the front-facing camera.

And:

When taking a selfie in a situation where lighting is less than ideal, such as indoors or outdoors in areas with lower lighting, the iPhone XS Max appears to be applying a drastic smoothing effect that can hide freckles, blemishes, and other issues.

More to the point:

In full outdoor lighting the problem is less apparent, which has led to speculation that the skin smoothing is actually a result of some heavy-handed noise reduction techniques.

The iPhone intentionally applying a “beauty filter” without specifically calling out a setting just doesn’t click for me. Heavy handed noise reduction or, perhaps, over zealous Smart HDR sounds more likely.

Turning off HDR does not remove the smoothing effect, nor does tweaking any other camera setting, so if the ultra skin smoothing is a result of something like unintentional excessive noise reduction, it needs to be tweaked on Apple’s end through a software update.

Couple of things to look at here:

• Compared to China’s Selfie Obsession, this issue feels like a very small thing.

• Michael Tsai does a nice rollup of the articles relating to iPhone XS skin smoothing.

My instinct here is that we are seeing unintended consequences, perhaps driven by machine learning, rather than an intentional “beautifying filter”.

Ken Segall:

Every September, I eagerly await the unveiling of the new iPhones. I also feel a sense of dread, wondering what Apple is going to call them. That’s because, when it comes to iPhone naming, Apple seems to wage a war against common sense.

Last year’s models set new standards for complexity. We had an 8, 8 Plus, X and SE. That’s two numbers, one Roman numeral, one paring of letters, plus an odd numerical gap between 8 and 10. Or, in Apple lingo, between 8 and X.

It’s hard to imagine how a family of only four products could end up with such needlessly complicated names—especially coming from the company that wrote the book on simplicity.

So how do the iPhone names look in 2018?

I’m with Segall on this one. I think Apple may have painted themselves into a naming corner. I tend to refer to the new phones simply as “the S”, “the Max”, and “the R”. Still awkward though.

Backblaze:

In the new macOS 10.14 Mojave update, Apple has made some privacy and security changes with their OS and as a result has changed the way Backblaze behaves after you upgrade to Mojave. We are working on a solution for this, however you will need to follow the below steps to enable Backblaze and back up your Photos, Contacts, Calendars, Safari, Mail, or other Apple items. Please follow these instructions.

I hope this warning doesn’t come too late for some of you.

New York Times:

Facebook on Friday said an attack on its computer network led to the exposure of information from nearly 50 million of its users.

The company discovered the breach earlier this week, finding that attackers had exploited a feature in Facebook’s code that allowed them to take over user accounts. Facebook fixed the vulnerability and notified law enforcement officials.

Facebook keeps stepping in piles and piles of crap – much of it their own.

Ars Technica:

California’s top law enforcement official, Attorney General Xavier Becerra, announced Thursday that police had busted a robbery ring that hit Apple Store locations across 19 counties. Seventeen people have been indicted over the scheme to steal more than $1 million in Apple products from stores in Butte County in the north of the state to San Diego County in the south.

The hoodie-wearing gang seemed to engage in simple tactics: literally walk in, brandish no weapons, grab electronics, and run out.

At what point does Apple revise its store in order to stop this kind of theft or whether they just see this as the cost of doing business the way they do? My biggest fear is that someone, staff or customer, gets hurt or worse in one of these smash and grabs.

Miriam Dunn:

Since Mom died this past spring, my 92 year old dad waits for mail every day. Listens for the squeak of the mail slot opening. His birthday is Oct 16th.

Please mail a note, card, picture, map or story to Gerard Dunn 96 Summerhill Avenue Sydney, Nova Scotia B1R 2L4

Thank you.

Here’s Mr Dunn playing piano on his 85th birthday.

Heres the full Twitter thread.

Sometimes the world can seem like a complete disaster (this week feels like one long one for many of us) but there are still small joys to be had. This is one of them.

The Publisher of The Loop and I are both from Nova Scotia. Mr Dunn lives in my mom’s hometown. So this is close to my heart. Please take a moment over the next few days to buy a postcard of your hometown or state or province or country and send it to Mr Dunn. I promise he’ll enjoy it and it will put a smile on your face as you drop it in the mailbox. I’m getting my 12 year old to send him a birthday message.

New York Times:

The octopus was fighting for its life. The seal was fighting for its lunch. Kyle Mulinder just happened to be there.

Mr. Mulinder was kayaking near Kaikoura, New Zealand, on Saturday when he was interrupted in a very rude way.

This blew up on Twitter yesterday and it was hilarious to see.

Jeff Carlson, writing for TidBITS, digs into what’s changed with the iOS 12 version of Photos.

At the core is that new For You tab. Good stuff.

Denys Zhadanov:

Why can I talk about the App Store so confidently? I have spent the last decade heading Marketing and Strategy operations at Readdle. Readdle is one of the few product companies out there that has had a presence in the App Store from the beginning and has built a successful business around it. If you have an iPhone, you’ve probably used our Documents, Spark, and Scanner Pro apps. We’ve been an independent company throughout this decade, without raising external funding; and over 100M people have downloaded our apps. Our 135 person team has built more than 40 products. 32 of them failed, but we didn’t give up.

And:

By the way, our service was available on iPhones before the App Store launched in 2008, a year after the original iPhone went on sale.

And:

Then, the call that changed our lives for good.

It was a call from the Apple HQ in Cupertino. We were sitting in Odessa when a voice over the phone briefed us, “We’re launching the App Store soon. Here’s a deadline, build an app, and maybe we’ll add it to the App Store.”

I love this story. If you are interested in the evolution of the App Store or have ever considered writing an app of your very own, put your feet up and dig in. Who better to talk App Store success than someone who was there from day one?

The whole identical twins logging into each other’s Face ID has been around since the beginning, but these two are just so delighted with their new “iPhone XS Plus” and the process of using their twin superpower to fool Face ID, thought it was worth sharing.

If anything, this shows how well Face ID works for normal people, even if they add a beard or a hat to their appearance.

I am really looking forward to adding a second phone number or data plan to my phone for traveling overseas. The sense I get is that this will take time to roll out to various carriers, but I would hope that would happen reasonably quickly.

Via 9to5Mac. Reminds me of bank robber Willie Sutton’s alleged response when asked why he robs banks:

“Because that’s where the money is.”

The hoodie bandit approach to grabbing high end merchandise from Apple Stores has proven effective. As long as a way isn’t found to stop this approach from working, this is going to continue to happen.

Cool on the award, but had to post this tweet:

Why isn't Jony Ive the voice of Siri?

— Harshit Singh (@harshitks2203) September 27, 2018

Why not, indeed? I would probably use that setting all the time.