Here at Gizmodo, we’ve been keeping track of everything we can, and while we might not be able to pinpoint every single rising star before the show starts, we’ve got more than enough info to highlight a number of major trends that are going to define this year’s CES. Here’s what we’re expecting so far.
These aren’t far-fetched expectations. After all, their four highlights have been the star of the show for many years now.
Having covered several CES’, I can honestly say it’s an amazing show – and I don’t necessarily mean that in a good way.
The Meltdown and Spectre flaws—two related vulnerabilities that enable a wide range of information disclosure from every mainstream processor, with particularly severe flaws for Intel and some ARM chips—were originally revealed privately to chip companies, operating system developers, and cloud computing providers. That private disclosure was scheduled to become public some time next week, enabling these companies to develop (and, in the case of the cloud companies, deploy) suitable patches, workarounds, and mitigations.
With researchers figuring out one of the flaws ahead of that planned reveal, that schedule was abruptly brought forward, and the pair of vulnerabilities was publicly disclosed on Wednesday, prompting a rather disorderly set of responses from the companies involved.
There are three main groups of companies responding to the Meltdown and Spectre pair: processor companies, operating system companies, and cloud providers. Their reactions have been quite varied.
This vulnerability is so widespread it’s important for those of us who support various users to know as much as we can about it and what vendors and companies are doing to mitigate the damage.
The first thought that comes to mind staring at the photograph is: This has got to be fake. The B-2 stealth bomber looks practically pasted onto the field. The flag is unfurled just so. The angle feels almost impossible, shot directly down from above.
And yet, it’s real, the product of lots of planning, some tricky flying, and the luck of the moment.
This is one of those photos so improbable, you immediately think it’s fake. Reading the story about the amazing shot and you realize, faking it would have been easier.
Download hundreds of free audio books, mostly classics, to your MP3 player or computer. You’ll find great works of fiction, poetry and non-fiction, by such authors as Twain, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Orwell, Vonnegut, Nietzsche, Austen, Shakespeare, Asimov, HG Wells & more.
I’m not a huge fan of audio books but I know I’ll be listening to the Asimov’s “Nightfall” and “The Foundation Trilogy” on my next 24-hour flight to Australia.
Yesterday, Apple published an article titled “About speculative execution vulnerabilities in ARM-based and Intel CPUs” giving users information on how the vulnerability affects their products. They issued a small update today noting that Apple Watch is not affected by either Meltdown and Spectre.
One of the areas that Apple has made big improvements with the release of the 2017 iMac Pro is the introduction of SecureBoot. SecureBoot is a process where the firmware validates the bootloader prior to loading. It is at the start of the chain of trust that ensures that code that gets run (drivers, kernel, applications) is known and validated. It all starts with the initial boot and with the release of the iMac Pro, Apple introduced SecureBoot to ensure that the initial bootloader is trusted.
Timothy Perfitt takes a deep dive into Apple’s SecureBoot and the new iMac Pro.
The T2 processor isn’t doing the heavy lifting in the iMac Pro—that’s the Intel Xeon processor with between 8 and 14 processor cores. The T2 is the brain behind that brain, running the subsystems of the iMac Pro from a single piece of Apple-built silicon. The result is a simplified internal design that doesn’t require multiple components from multiple manufacturers.
Jason does a nice job here, digging into what makes an iMac Pro different than its ancestors. Pay special attention to the section “Boot twice for safety”. Very interesting.
Of the three major new products since Mr. Cook became chief executive in 2011, both AirPods earbuds in 2016 and last year’s HomePod speaker missed Apple’s publicly projected shipping dates. The Apple Watch, promised for early 2015, arrived late that April with lengthy wait times for delivery. Apple also was delayed in supplying the Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard, two critical accessories for its iPad Pro.
The delays have contributed to much longer waits between Apple announcing a product and shipping it: an average of 23 days for new and updated products over the past six years, compared with the 11-day average over the six years prior, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Apple public statements.
Apple has shown enormous, unparalleled growth during Tim Cook’s reign as CEO. The demands on the supply chain and the complexity of production have increased dramatically during that same period. And while there have been cracks in the armor, they are far less than I would have expected given the sheer scale of this growth.
Of the 70-plus new and updated products launched during Mr. Cook’s tenure, five had a delay between announcement and shipping of three months or more and nine had delays of between one and three months. Roughly the same number of products were launched during Mr. Jobs’ reign, but only one product was delayed by more than three months and seven took between one and three months to ship after the initial announcement, according to the Journal’s calculations.
I would argue that Apple during Steve and Apple during Tim are two different stories. The supply chain mechanics are vastly different. The competitive landscape is different as well, not to mention the growing complexity of Apple devices like the iPhone X and AirPods.
Apple’s large and global customer base also add to logistical and manufacturing challenges, former employees said. The company now has an estimated 1.1 billion devices in use world-wide, about triple the 400 million in early 2013, according to market-research outfit Asymco.
Former employees also cite the increasing complexity of Apple’s devices as a contributing factor in the delays. AirPods feature lasers that detect when the device is inserted into an ear, which has made manufacturing more difficult. With the facial-recognition camera on the iPhone X, Apple had production issues partly because its miniature, infrared laser was so sensitive that it could easily be knocked out of alignment, a person familiar with the production process said.
The former Interscope CEO joined Apple in 2014 after selling Beats, the the music service and electronics business that he and Dr. Dre co-founded, to the tech giant for $3 billion. It is believed his departure is timed to his Apple shares fully vesting, sources tell Billboard. Apple declined to comment.
Apple bought Beats, and Iovine, for his connections in the industry and that has helped Apple get a strong foothold with artists. I’m not really sure what Iovine’s departure would mean for Apple Music because his daily role has diminished over time.
The company said in a tweet today that it had surpassed 70 million subscribers. The last numbers from Apple Music show they have 30 million subscribers.
Security researchers have recently uncovered security issues known by two names, Meltdown and Spectre. These issues apply to all modern processors and affect nearly all computing devices and operating systems. All Mac systems and iOS devices are affected, but there are no known exploits impacting customers at this time. Since exploiting many of these issues requires a malicious app to be loaded on your Mac or iOS device, we recommend downloading software only from trusted sources such as the App Store. Apple has already released mitigations in iOS 11.2, macOS 10.13.2, and tvOS 11.2 to help defend against Meltdown. Apple Watch is not affected by Meltdown. In the coming days we plan to release mitigations in Safari to help defend against Spectre. We continue to develop and test further mitigations for these issues and will release them in upcoming updates of iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS.
Everything you need to know is on Apple’s web site.
App Store customers around the world made apps and games a bigger part of their holiday season in 2017 than ever before, culminating in $300 million in purchases made on New Year’s Day 2018. During the week starting on Christmas Eve, a record number of customers made purchases or downloaded apps from the App Store, spending over $890 million in that seven-day period.
What an incredible amount of money spent in seven days. Phil Schiller said that developers earned $26.5 billion in 2017, which is more than a 30 percent increase over 2016.
David Gewirtz, writing for ZDNet, made this point about Apple, the Mac, and the emergence of Microsoft’s Surface line:
Think about the Apple of the past, the one fully-focused on the Mac. Would it have allowed Microsoft to gain such innovation ground with the Surface Studio and Surface Book products? Would it have gone years without even processor-bumping its models?
I’ve seen this argument made multiple times recently — that Microsoft’s innovative and deservedly well-regarded Surface lineup was only enabled by Apple taking its collective eye off the ball in the PC space. I don’t buy that at all.
There are two Macs that have languished in recent years: the Mac Pro and Mac Mini. Microsoft’s Surface lineup doesn’t have an entry in either of those categories. The Surface lineup is composed of laptops and the iMac-esque Surface Studio.
This is an interesting discussion. For all its fits and starts, the Surface lineup has matured. Microsoft has poured resources into it, both technically and in marketing.
Take a moment to head over to the official Apple YouTube page. Scroll, then scroll some more. The most recent Mac-specific commercial I see is from six months ago, when the iMac Pro was announced.
Look through the mix of commercials, draw your own conclusion.
The Mac has long had the ability to use your iPhone to make phone calls. But the setup process has changed over time.
If you are new to the setup, this is a terrific walk-through. And if you are an old hand, still worth a scan, just to get a sense of the newest setting options.
Some months ago, I noticed that something was slightly wrong when I was using Google Chrome. I’d type something in the address bar and get the auto-complete suggestions appearing below, but when I arrowed down to select one of the items in the list, I couldn’t tell which was selected. It was as though I’d lost the gray highlight color.
And:
I normally have the background of BBEdit documents set to a very pale yellow, but they had somehow reverted to white. Plus, Web pages with light backgrounds were also showing with a garish, glaring white. Again, restarting and standard troubleshooting made no difference.
Follow the link for the whole detective story, and a lesson learned about Accessibility settings and keyboard shortcuts.
We learned about the issue from a reader who says he purchased an Apple Watch Series 3 for his wife for Christmas so she can conveniently check her messages at work in the ICU. After regularly experiencing reboots every 60-90 minutes when wearing Apple Watch in the ICU setting, they had the Apple Watch replaced with a new unit but the issue persists.
Similar stories have surfaced online since Apple Watch Series 3 launched last fall with a growing number of issues reported in recent days. In response to an Apple Support thread created in October, well over a dozen responses echo the same issue in the same environment.
The solution to avoiding reboots in the ICU environment seems to be using the Apple Watch in airplane mode, although that stops the Apple Watch from receiving alerts.
We lionize the artist and the designer. But few of us ever consider the men and women behind the scenes at a museum, who must deal with packing and unpacking their famous and weirdly-shaped creations, and who must clean them, inspect them, move them around and hang them.
It’s amazing how much work must go into a museum exhibit.
Whenever a family member tells me about something that’s gone haywire on any of their devices, whether it’s an iPhone, iPad, modem, Echo, coffee maker… the first thing I ask is, “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” It’s a tried and true method for troubleshooting a lot of glitches in a device’s system. It’s also one of the first things a tech support person will ask you when you call for help.
We’re pleased to announce that Apple Developer Program membership is now available at no cost for eligible organizations. Nonprofit organizations, accredited educational institutions, and government entities based in the United States that will distribute only free apps on the App Store can request to have their annual membership fee waived.
All the information to see if you qualify is available on Apple’s Web site.
Quietly tucked away in a few unassuming buildings in lower Manhattan, massive flows of data pulse through some of the world’s largest and most heavily guarded hubs of global internet infrastructure.
Check out the images. Pretty cool. I wonder how many of these sites there are in the world and how similar they are, design-wise.
With the iMac Pro, you’ll pretty much need to jump through all the hoops iFixit did. That said, the good news is, you can still upgrade the RAM yourself:
We waste no time in testing a little upgrade: How does four 32 GB modules for a “Maxxed” total of 128 GB sound? After speedily reassembling everything, we’re pleased to report that the result is epic.
If the same image is shown on an OLED screen for a long period of time, burn-in effects may set in. This goes for TVs, monitors, and smartphones. It took the iPhone X 510 hours of continuously displaying the exact same image on the iPhone X for burn-in effects to become permanent. That’s Cetizen’s conclusion, and that’s great news for all iPhone X users.
And:
Cetizen stopped at various intervals to check for burn-in traces, but the iPhone X did not show visible effects until hitting the 510-hour mark. The screens on the Galaxy Note 8 and Galaxy S7 Edge, meanwhile, were impacted sooner.
The original site quoted by BGR is in Korean but is pretty understandable if you use Google Translate to translate the page to English. It’d be interesting to see what the burn-in number is for the Pixel 2 XL.
A fundamental design flaw in Intel’s processor chips has forced a significant redesign of the Linux and Windows kernels to defang the chip-level security bug.
Programmers are scrambling to overhaul the open-source Linux kernel’s virtual memory system. Meanwhile, Microsoft is expected to publicly introduce the necessary changes to its Windows operating system in an upcoming Patch Tuesday: these changes were seeded to beta testers running fast-ring Windows Insider builds in November and December.
And:
Similar operating systems, such as Apple’s 64-bit macOS, will also need to be updated – the flaw is in the Intel x86-64 hardware, and it appears a microcode update can’t address it. It has to be fixed in software at the OS level, or go buy a new processor without the design blunder.
The worst news is that since the issue is in the hardware itself, a software patch of something so deeply rooted in the pipeline will cause a performance hit.
Terrible new for Intel. More spark for Apple to roll their own CPUs.
UPDATE:
Finally, macOS has been patched to counter the chip design blunder since version 10.13.2, according to operating system kernel expert Alex Ionescu.
Here it comes. Now that you’ve invested in this useful tech, found a nice place for it in your workflow, we’re going to start serving up ads.
Makes me wonder if the original Echo shipped with a disclaimer that ads might be part of the experience. If not, seems like a liability for Amazon, potential for a law suit. Either way, this seems like a decidedly negative turn in that particular road.
> At first glance, the gaming apps — with names like “Pool 3D,” “Beer Pong: Trickshot” and “Real Bowling Strike 10 Pin” — seem innocuous. One called “Honey Quest” features Jumbo, an animated bear like that one on https://www.fuseanimation.com/why-3d-animation-is-the-alternative/. > > Yet these apps, once downloaded onto a smartphone, have the ability to keep tabs on the viewing habits of their users — some of whom may be children — even when the games aren’t being played.
This is a similar data-farming trick, this time using your phone’s microphone to track your TV watching habits.
> The apps use software from Alphonso, a start-up that collects TV-viewing data for advertisers. Using a smartphone’s microphone, Alphonso’s software can detail what people watch by identifying audio signals in TV ads and shows, sometimes even matching that information with the places people visit and the movies they see. The information can then be used to target ads more precisely and to try to analyze things like which ads prompted a person to go to a car dealership.
Most of this occurs in the Android universe, but some iOS games use Alphonso as well. I’m willing to bet that though the games ask permission to use the microphone, not one of those games adds in, “so we can eavesdrop, track your TV viewing habits”.
This is despicable. Apple should do something about this.
> Mr. Chordia [Alphonso CEO] said that Alphonso has a deal with the music-listening app Shazam, which has microphone access on many phones. Alphonso is able to provide the snippets it picks up to Shazam, he said, which can use its own content-recognition technology to identify users and then sell that information to Alphonso. > > Shazam, which Apple recently agreed to buy, declined to comment about Alphonso.
Fortune has an interesting article asking if Apple has lost its design mojo. There is no doubt some things haven’t worked as well as others, but I don’t agree with everything in story. Instead of picking out a few key paragraphs, you go should go read the entire article to get it all in context.
