If you haven’t already, read this post from Ben Bajarin, Apple’s indirect presence fades from CES, which we linked to yesterday. From the post:

It is easy to say that because Apple was never present at CES that the show didn’t mean something to them or their ecosystem. It is easy, and correct to say that CES was not, or never was, a measure of the health of Apple’s products. It is, however, incorrect and dangerous to miss that CES had been, for some time, a barometer for the health of Apple’s ecosystem.

Now make your way through the linked MacStories roundup of cool CES gadgets and accessories. It does seem like the vast majority of CES announcements I’ve seen are Alexa first, HomeKit second.

Not sure I agree that this is a barometer of the health of Apple’s ecosystem. Instead, I see it as a marker of where the puck is now, not where it is going to be. Apple Watch is a perfect example of this. When Apple Watch first hit, it was lost in the glut of watch product. Over time, Apple Watch proved itself as a well designed, thoughtful product, while many of the cheap, competing products are no longer around.

Not saying that Alexa won’t win. But I am saying that it is simply too early to tell how this will all shake out.

Valentina Palladino, Ars Technica:

Apple began notifying Chinese iCloud customers of the forthcoming handoff of its cloud service to the Chinese company Guizhou on the Cloud Big Data (GCBD), which will take over local operations starting February 28. However, TechCrunch reported that some non-Chinese iCloud accounts have been notified of this change. Some users with US-based billing addresses and connections to the US App Store received the notification email stating the physical location of their iCloud data will change come February.

So there are people who do not (or no longer) reside in China, but their iCloud accounts will be force migrated.

According to Apple’s help page on the issue, your iCloud’s country or region setting dictates whether or not your account will be part of the migration.

Interesting. And I’ve read that China is cracking down on people who live in China but change their region code so their data remains outside the country.

If you don’t live in China, but your data is tagged for movement, consider changing your region code, as discussed in this support page.

Ben Bajarin:

Gone are the days of Apple’s presence, or observably “winning” of CES, even though they are not present. It was impossible to walk the show floor and not see a vast array of interesting innovations which touched the Apple ecosystem in some way. Now it is almost impossible to walk the floor and see any products that touch the Apple ecosystem in any way except for an app on the iOS App Store. The Apple ecosystem is no longer the star of CES but instead things like Amazon’s Alexa voice platform, and now Google’s assistant voice platform is the clear ecosystem winners of CES.

Ben says that Apple is not doomed, and he’s right. However, this is not a good sign for Apple.

When design leads to friendship, and that friendship leads back to design, magic happens. This is the story of how an intern and her mentor designed Apple’s original emoji set and together changed the way people communicate around the world. It was also a project that led them to become lifelong friends, a key ingredient in the success of these tiny icons. In a nutshell, I was the intern and Raymond is my lifelong friend and mentor. In the course of three months, together we created some of the most widely used emoji: face with tears of joy, pile of poo, red heart, and party popper, plus around 460 additional ones. Later, as a full time Apple employee, I even got to create a few more.

It’s hard to remember a time without the ability to add an Emoji to a conversation on the iPhone.

For all you kids out there, gather round: history time. We once used to buy things called “rolls of film”. We then had to put these rolls in our cameras. These rolls had finite space for photos, and when they were full, we’d take them and get them developed into tangible photographs (usually on glossy photo paper). I know. Whoa.

I didn’t know people still wondered about these services, but a friend of mine just asked me about this the other day.

Alphabet Inc’s Google said on Thursday it had already deployed software patches against the Spectre and Meltdown chipset security flaws last year, without slowing down its cloud services.

Researchers with Google’s Project Zero, in conjunction with academic and industry researchers from several countries, first reported the flaws publicly on Jan. 3, but major tech firms have said they knew about the flaws months ago.

Motherboard: On Wednesday, at the International Conference on Cyber Security in Manhattan, FBI forensic expert Stephen Flatley lashed out at Apple, calling the company “jerks,” and “evil geniuses” for making his and his colleagues’ investigative work harder. For example, Flatley complained that Apple recently made password guesses slower, changing the hash iterations from 10,000 to 10,000,000. >

“At what point is it just trying to one up things and at what point is it to thwart law enforcement?” he added. “Apple is pretty good at evil genius stuff.”

At what point is it just Apple trying to protect its customers from nefarious forces that, sadly nowadays, include governments?

Some of these are more obvious (tabbing between fields) than others, but worth a scan.

Bottom line, use the audio slider in the iPhone and Watch App accessibility settings to change the left/right balance. Good tip from Steffen Reich on iDownloadBlog.

Jeremy Burge:

Why am I now always taking screenshots by accident? Two things:

The volume buttons are directly opposite the Lock button (aka “Sleep/Wake” button), and The combination for screenshot has changed. On phones with a home button, the iOS combination has always been Lock and Home buttons but is now Lock and Volume Up on iPhone X (due to lack of home button)

Trying to hold the phone with a stable grip while pushing the lock button means my thumb is resting on the lock button, and my index finger is on the volume up button.

Design is hard.

The position/function of the external iPhone buttons has evolved over time, and with each new generation, it seems there’s some design compromise that emerges.

In this case, putting buttons on opposite sides of the device mean that pressing one will require an equal and opposite press on the opposing button. And for the iPhone X, this results in a screenshot.

Deadline:

In a competitive situation, Apple has landed the hot TV package See with a straight-to-series order. An epic, world-building drama set in the future, the project is written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight and directed by Francis Lawrence (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Mockingjay Parts 1 & 2).

And:

This marks the fourth scripted series order for Apple’s recently formed worldwide video programming division under Jamie Erlicht & Zack Van Amburg. See joins a morning-show drama, executive produced by and starring Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon; Amazing Stories, a reimagining of the anthology from Steven Spielberg and Bryan Fuller; and a Ronald D. Moore space drama. Additionally, the division just ordered its first docuseries, Home.

Here’s a question for you: How soon do you think it will be before Apple gets its first (non-technical) Golden Globes or Emmy nomination?

This year, Netflix got 20 Golden Globe nominations and Amazon and Hulu got 3 each. Will Apple get a nod in the December 2018 nominations? If not, surely we’ll see one by December 2019, no?

A bug report submitted on Open Radar this week reveals a security vulnerability in the current version of macOS High Sierra that allows the App Store menu in System Preferences to be unlocked with any password.

Important to note that this seems to fixed in the latest beta releases, but the current public release still has the vulnerability.

Senator John Thune, a Republican who chairs the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said in a Jan. 9 letter to Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook that “the large volume of consumer criticism leveled against the company in light of its admission suggests that there should have been better transparency.”

It’s going to be a while before this goes away.

The Verge:

Apple discontinued its wired Mac keyboard back in June when it introduced a new version of its wireless Magic Keyboard with a number pad, but a company called Matias is trying to keep the wired version alive with its own replica versions. And this year at CES 2018, the company is looking to one-up Apple’s now discontinued version with a new model that features RGB backlighting.

I’ve always been a fan of Matias keyboards.

This is a great piece of advice from iMore’s Lory Gil. Follow along to make sure you have Apple ID unlock enabled on your Mac. Read through the rest of the post for related how-to info.

Even if you think you’ll never forget your password, this is a smart backup plan.

UPDATE: Looks like this option is moved, or just plain gone from High Sierra. Working with Lory to figure out the new way to do this, check Lory’s post over the next day or so for an update.

UPDATE 2: Turns out the issue is having FileVault enabled, and not specific to High Sierra. If you have FileVault enabled, have a recovery key, you won’t see the checkbox. Yeesh. Bad interface, I think. Better to have the checkbox in both cases, but dim it if FileVault enabled, with some kind of explainer.

OK, this seems really clearcut to me, but judge for yourself.

• Here’s Lana Del Rey’s song Get Free.

• Here’s Radiohead’s Creep.

My take: The chord structure seems identical, the production not so much. But there’s this one moment that really makes the case for me.

• In the Radiohead video, jump to about 39 seconds in and listen to the phrase, “float like a feather”, with that bit of vocalization at the end of the word “feather”.

• Now, in the Lana Del Rey video, jump to about 50 seconds in and listen to the phrase “my modern manifesto”. To me, I hear the same vocalization at the end of the word “manifesto”.

As I said, judge for yourself. But hard for me to believe Creep wasn’t an influence here.

UPDATE: And then there’s this from BBC News (H/T @timbo_baggins), Radiohead deny suing Lana Del Rey:

Radiohead’s publisher, Warner/Chappell, has since issued a statement clarifying its position. “It’s true that we’ve been in discussions since August of last year with Lana Del Rey’s representatives,” it said.

“It’s clear that the verses of Get Free use musical elements found in the verses of Creep and we’ve requested that this be acknowledged in favour of all writers of Creep.

“To set the record straight, no lawsuit has been issued and Radiohead have not said they ‘will only accept 100%’ of the publishing of Get Free.”

Gruber on AMP.

1. Terrific explainer, gets right to the core of the problem (AMP versions of published content end up on Google’s servers, under Google control, and not on publishers’ own servers).

2. What a headline. I had to trim it for our Twitter plugin.

CNBC:

Whirlpool has said Apple Watch wearers will soon be able to remotely control their home appliances.

It would mean smart watch owners could change temperature settings on ovens, delay cycles on washers or check how long is left to run on a dryer.

When I first saw this, I compared it to the ability to use my Apple Watch to quickly bring up my profile/setup on a piece of gym equipment. This takes advantage of the security/identity features of the Apple Watch.

But thinking a bit more, I can see the value in using my Apple Watch to control an appliance. With an oven, you could tap a recipe, have the oven preheat to the right temperature without having to look it up. And checking the time remaining on a washer/dryer cycle, also useful.

Things like this make me realize just how much the Apple Watch is still in its infancy.

Variety:

Music mogul Jimmy Iovine shot down rumors that he plans to exit Apple in August telling Variety that he’s committed to staying on the team and helping the company get music streaming right. “I am almost 65, have been with Apple for four years and in 2 1/2 years the [Apple Music] service has gotten to well over 30 million subscribers and Beats has continued its successful run. But there’s still a lot more we’d like to do. I am committed to doing whatever Eddy [Cue], Tim [Cook] and Apple need me to do, to help wherever and however I can, to take this all the way. I am in the band.”

Good news for Apple. But – what took him so long? The initial Billboard rumor was five days ago.

Push Notifications alert you right away on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad when a new task has been delegated to you and when you’ve been invited to a meeting. As soon as you delegate someone a task in Daylite or invite someone to a meeting, it triggers a notification on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Now you can be confident that you are up to date and can act fast to changes or surprises in your day – even if you don’t have Daylite running.

Marketcircle is one of my favorite companies. They make great products and continue to improve them all the time.

The Guardian:

Internet advertising firms are losing hundreds of millions of dollars following the introduction of a new privacy feature from Apple that prevents users from being tracked around the web.

Advertising technology firm Criteo, one of the largest in the industry, says that the Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) feature for Safari, which holds 15% of the global browser market, is likely to cut its 2018 revenue by more than a fifth compared to projections made before ITP was announced.

Anyone shedding a tear for advertising companies, who for years ignored users’ requests for less intrusive advertising, suddenly crying poverty over Apple’s efforts to offer that protection to their users?

Don’t.

The Globe and Mail:

The evidence for this goes beyond the carping of Luddites. It’s there, cold and hard, in a growing body of research by psychiatrists, neuroscientists, marketers and public health experts. What these people say – and what their research shows – is that smartphones are causing real damage to our minds and relationships, measurable in seconds shaved off the average attention span, reduced brain power, declines in work-life balance and hours less of family time.

They have impaired our ability to remember. They make it more difficult to daydream and think creatively. They make us more vulnerable to anxiety. They make parents ignore their children. And they are addictive, if not in the contested clinical sense then for all intents and purposes.

I don’t buy the full doom and gloom of the article but an overreliance on smartphones in any number of ways is definitely something to be watchful of. I see it in my “new” 12-year-old stepson. He’s “addicted” not to Facebook or Instagram or other social media but he’s very attached to gaming on his iPhone, so much so that it causes significant amounts of family friction.

Ford Motor Co on Tuesday said it will partner with delivery service Postmates Inc as the automaker starts testing ways to transport people, food and packages using its self-driving cars in a U.S. city during the first quarter.

This is an interesting partnership for Ford. I’ve used Postmates a couple of times and it’s an okay service, if you can get a driver.

This looks really cool.

A French prosecutor has launched a preliminary investigation of U.S. tech giant Apple (AAPL.O) over alleged deception and planned obsolescence of its products following a complaint by a consumer organization, a judicial source said on Monday.

I think this will be the first of many such investigations.

“We’ve always been clear that we are open to any opportunity that will help us scale our mission. JP Morgan is our banker, but there is no active engagement to sell,” GoPro said in emailed comments to Reuters.

The more you read the article, the worse it gets. GoPro is in some trouble.

Powermat:

Powermat, the wireless charging technology pioneer, today announced it will become the newest Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) member. Powermat will contribute its technology and expertise to further advance inductive wireless charging capabilities while maintaining backwards compatibility to the existing Qi ecosystem.

“Qi has become the dominant wireless charging standard on the market and the recently launched Apple iPhone lineup is evidence of this success”, said Elad Dubzinski, Powermat CEO.

Ignoring the marketing speak in this press release, the bottom line – that Powermat is going with the Qi standard – is good for consumers. It means a less confusing marketplace.