Looking down at my phone, there was no sign it had been hacked. I still had reception; the phone said I was still connected to the T-Mobile network. Nothing was unusual there. But the hacker had swiftly, stealthily, and largely effortlessly redirected my text messages to themselves. And all for just $16.
And:
I hadn’t been SIM swapped, where hackers trick or bribe telecom employees to port a target’s phone number to their own SIM card. Instead, the hacker used a service by a company called Sakari, which helps businesses do SMS marketing and mass messaging, to reroute my messages to him.
And:
Unlike SIM jacking, where a victim loses cell service entirely, my phone seemed normal. Except I never received the messages intended for me, but he did.
The fact that this is possible shows how unsafe, how vulnerable, our current security infrastructure truly is.
FaceTime users are getting bombarded with group calls from numbers they’ve never seen before, often as many as 20 times in short succession during late hours of the night.
Griefers behind the pranks call as many as 31 numbers at a time. When a person receiving one of the calls hangs up, a different number will immediately call back. FaceTime doesn’t have the ability to accept only FaceTime calls coming from people in the user’s address book. It also requires that all numbers in a group call must be manually blocked for the call to be stopped.
If this is happening to you:
A user can also turn off FaceTime in iOS settings or in the macOS app, but that prevents users from receiving wanted calls as well. Last, people can uncheck their phone number under the FaceTime setting “where you can be reached.” Once again, however, this will prevent wanted calls that are initiated using the user’s number.
They’ve found a hole in the system. Hopefully, Apple will roll out a fix before this grows much larger.
Hackers took over multiple accounts on the digital art marketplace Nifty Gateway this weekend, stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. The company says that users not enabling two-factor authentication is to blame.
And:
On Sunday, several Nifty users on Twitter posted that they’d been targets of fraud on the platform. One claimed that someone accessed his account, first sold all of their NFTs and then bought more than $10,000 worth of NFTs, and then transferred them to another account. Another said their account was hacked to buy $20,000 worth of NFTs and steal another $150,000 worth from their collection. These users said the charges went to their credit cards; Nifty Gateway has long advertised the ability to simply purchase NFTs with a credit card rather than using cryptocurrency.
My first instinct is to tarnish NFTs as unsafe, add to the reason why I resist this space, think of it as an artificial bubble.
But if I did not enable two-factor for my bank account, say, and hackers got in, same thing, it’d be my own dumb fault.
Apple today was honored with historic first Academy Award nominations for its feature films since the Apple TV+ global launch of Apple Original Films just over a year ago. The widely acclaimed “Wolfwalkers” was nominated for Best Animated Feature and the epic war film “Greyhound,” starring and written by Tom Hanks, for Best Sound. Including today’s nominations, Apple has been honored with a total of 81 awards wins and 329 nominations to date.
Rooting hard for Wolfwalkers. It’s an excellent film. I enjoyed Soul, which seems pre-ordained to win, but I really connected with the Wolfwalkers story. And come on, doesn’t Pixar have enough Oscars?
Benefit from previsualization and pro storyboards for your next Oscar winning project with Previs Pro for iPad and iOS. Built by multiple Apple Design Award winning team. Help them celebrate their one-year anniversary!
If you’ve not heard the news, Apple is discontinuing the HomePod, though they are keeping the HomePod mini.
Apple, via the headline linked TechCrunch post:
HomePod mini has been a hit since its debut last fall, offering customers amazing sound, an intelligent assistant, and smart home control all for just $99. We are focusing our efforts on HomePod mini. We are discontinuing the original HomePod, it will continue to be available while supplies last through the Apple Online Store, Apple Retail Stores, and Apple Authorized Resellers. Apple will provide HomePod customers with software updates and service and support through Apple Care.
The fact that Apple pulled the plug without a replacement in place makes me think we’re not getting a new version, that the HomePod mini is the HomePod for all of us. Though that doesn’t mean we won’t see another evolution in the HomePod line. Still chewing on this.
Interestingly, you can still order a HomePod on the Apple Store, as long as you like white. Space Gray is sold out.
I’m wondering about the potential for future price discounts as that inventory dries out. Worth holding out for that? And there’s also the potential for a HomePod appearance on Apple’s official refurbished site.
Last, but certainly not least, here’s Rene Ritchie sharing his thoughts on why Apple killed the OG HomePod. Lots of great food for thought here.
Most interesting to me was the question of Apple eventually dropping support for this HomePod over time. Given that there is no line-in, no direct Bluetooth support, is it possible that this speaker might eventually no longer work?
This is a beautiful ad. Lots of great moments. Like that bit about :48 in when the neon sign and barber pole are stripped to make jump ropes. Beautifully done.
And about 1:15 in, that wonderful shift to animation.
Or that moment at 1:32 when our hero clicks to transparent mode to let the background audio in, then clicks back to noise cancelation.
I’m a bit of a knot-nerd. This is a great resource. All the knots you could ever need, every one animated beautifully, with the ability to step through any knot, one step at a time.
Great way to introduce your kids to proper knot tying, an important life skill.
In the iOS and iPadOS 14.5 beta, an updated section in the “Location Services” menu of Apple’s Privacy settings states that Apple will collect data from users, such as when a specific app is opened near a point of interest, to determine how crowded the location is, and whether that specific business is open.
And:
Google Maps already offers a similar real-time feature called Live Visit Data that informs users of how busy a specific store or business is at a particular time. Google provides this data by gathering aggregated and anonymized data from users who have opted in to Google Location History.
I love the idea of adding more crowd sourcing data to Apple Maps, to supplement things like red-light cameras, radar traps, accidents, and real-time traffic flow.
Even better, I’d love Apple Maps to dump their relationship with Yelp in favor of impartial crowd-sourced reviews (as used by Google Maps).
Apparently the Space Gray HomePod is in short supply in the U.S. Dave and I talk about that before moving on to a Safari message that people sometimes get alerting of them of tabs using significant memory. Dave also explains how a piece of digital art sold for $69 million.
Uber for Business: Right now, Uber for Business is offering companies a $50 voucher credit when you spend your first $200 with vouchers. Go to Uber.com/dalrymple to learn more.
Until October, the most Mike Winkelmann — the digital artist known as Beeple — had ever sold a print for was $100.
Today, an NFT of his work sold for $69 million at Christie’s. The sale positions him “among the top three most valuable living artists,” according to the auction house.
The record-smashing NFT sale comes after months of increasingly valuable auctions. In October, Winkelmann sold his first series of NFTs, with a pair going for $66,666.66 each. In December, he sold a series of works for $3.5 million total. And last month, one of the NFTs that originally sold for $66,666.66 was resold for $6.6 million.
The full-size Space Gray HomePod is currently unavailable from Apple in the United States for purchase and delivery, as first spotted by French site Consomac.
Yup. Just checked. Though there is some inventory available in my local Apple Store, I can’t order a space gray HomePod for delivery from Apple.
I can order a white HomePod, and apparently Apple is still shipping space gray outside the US.
What can this mean? Much ado about nothing? The language on Apple’s site says “Currently unavailable”. And the iMac Pro, which MacRumors reported as officially as end-of-lifed, is still available to order.
Normally wouldn’t care about stuff like this, but there’s rumored to be an Apple Event in our near future, so my antennae are up.
This happens to me a lot, on Intel and M1 Macs. And to be fair, this is Safari looking out for me, stopping a page from spinning into infinity, potentially wreaking memory havoc.
Can’t help but wonder if Safari might offer a preference here to limit that behavior, at least on the frontmost tab, a switch that says, if I’m using the tab, and there’s still enough memory left to keep running, let me know the problem, perhaps with a “reload” button in the interface, but in a non-modal way, so I can keep that page humming if I so choose.
Also, I’d wager the culprit here is more often than not the page creator or a plugin (think advertising), not a flaw in Safari.
In the charts below, you’ll see four computers listed: M1 Mac mini (Apple Silicon), M1 Mac mini (Rosetta 2), 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Dell XPS 17. The idea was to show how x86 Photoshop runs on Intel hardware (13-inch MBP and XPS 17), via Rosetta 2 emulation on the M1 Mac mini, and then compare those three scores against the Apple Silicon-optimized version running on the same Mac mini.
Perfect set to really get a sense of real world Photoshop performance, at least with a high demand test like Photomerge.
Follow the headline link, scroll down to the charts. As you might expect, the M1 loses when it comes to raw GPU performance (it’ll be interesting to see where Apple is going with GPU on the next generation of Apple Silicon, but no way for the M1 to compete with an external dedicated GPU, at least not yet).
But GPU aside:
None of the computers we’ve reviewed, not even the most expensive 16-inch MacBook Pro you can buy or the Razer Blade Studio Edition, has ever broken the 100 mark on the PugetBench Photo Merge test. Running optimized Photoshop, the M1 Mac mini hit 130+ in run after run after run.
And:
To see the scores jump this much, when Rosetta 2 was already doing such a great job with the x86 version of Photoshop, was frankly mind-blowing.
The headline to the linked post is “Corporations That Use The Most Solar Power”. While that might be accurate, I think the kudos shouldn’t be about sheer usage, but rather about Apple’s success at shifting to environmentally sustainable operations.
Apple might use more solar power than any other company, but it’s about their commitment to powering their operations through solar, creating a model for other companies to follow.
Apple has given a straight-to-series order for “Lady in the Lake,” a new limited series directed and co-written by Alma Har’el that will co-star Academy Award winners Natalie Portman and Lupita Nyong’o.
And:
“Lady in the Lake” is an adaptation of Laura Lippman’s New York Times best-selling novel of the same name. The limited series takes place in ’60s Baltimore, where an unsolved murder pushes housewife and mother Maddie Schwartz (Portman) to reinvent her life as an investigative journalist and sets her on a collision course with Cleo Sherwood (Nyong’o), a hard-working woman juggling motherhood, many jobs and a passionate commitment to advancing Baltimore’s Black progressive agenda.
Natalie Portman won the Oscar for Best Actress for Black Swan. And is the rare actor who crossed streams from Star Wars (Queen Amidala) to Marvel (Jane Foster).
Lupita Nyong’o won the Oscar for 12 Years a Slave, but also grabbed the Star Wars / Marvel crossover achievement, doing motion capture as Maz Kanata in the Star Wars sequel trilogy and as Nakia in Black Panther. But one of my favorite Lupita Nyong’o roles was the lead in Jordan Peele’s Us.
Huge win for Apple here. Can’t wait to see how this series turns out.
New displays rolling out to Apple Stores across the world highlight the Apple Music catalog and give AirPods Max a true home. You can preview the display yourself with an interactive augmented reality model.
Follow the headline link, scroll down to the “Launch The AR Experience” button, give it a tap. Now double-tap the downloaded file to launch the .usdz file and walk around to find a proper landing spot (you’ll need some space for the display). You can also experience this on your Mac, especially if you have Xcode installed.
I love the effort Apple puts into these AR tidbits. Apple’s teams are learning how to bring AR to life, we’re learning how to work with AR.
Having once upended the market with its AirPods, Apple Inc. looks likely to again change the course of the $35 billion advanced headphones arena with its $549 AirPods Max and inflict pain on incumbents from Bose Corp. to Bang & Olufsen A/S.
And:
Between Apple’s new over-the-ear play at the high end and aggressively priced incursions from below, firms like Sennheiser are struggling to compete with the wireless expertise, app ecosystems and global reach of phone makers.
Apple is great at disruption. They’ve upended the mechanical watch, traditional camera, and now headphone marketplaces. Cars next?
From the linked post, the video embedded below shows the dock “poof” at work. Follow the headline link to Gruber’s post about this. And don’t miss this video interview with Jim Reekes with anecdotes of iconic Mac sounds.
If you don’t already know/follow him, Matthew Cassinelli was part of the original Workflow app that Apple purchased and turned into Siri Shortcuts. Since then, he’s gone independent and shares all sorts of wonderful Shortcuts content.
Matthew’s newly revamped site is definitely worth a few minutes of perusal time, just to get a sense of what’s there. A great resource.
Apple Podcasts will no longer use the word “subscribe” in a few weeks. Listeners will be invited to “follow” their favourite podcasts instead. The new wording will be in iOS 14.5, which should be released later this month (and is available in beta). We expect Apple to communicate further with creators, and listeners, when this version of iOS is released.
And:
Tom Webster from Edison Research says 47% of people who don’t currently listen to podcasts think that ‘subscribing’ to a podcast will cost money, describing it as a stone in the shoe of podcasting’s growth run.
In an internal AppleCare email this week, obtained by MacRumors, Apple said the new serial number format will consist of a randomized alphanumeric string of 8-14 characters that will no longer include manufacturing information or a configuration code. Apple said the serial number format transition is scheduled for “early 2021,” and confirmed that IMEI numbers will not be affected by this change.
Just as predictable file names make hacking and discovery easier on a web site (once you know the name and path of an existing file, you can guess others based on the scheme), randomized serial numbers make guessing/faking a serial number that much harder.
In 2019, an article in The Washington Post by Geoffrey Fowler described the author’s shock when he discovered just how many of his iPhone apps were collecting and uploading information about his usage while he slept.
And:
As Fowler’s article demonstrated, iPhone users are not immune to this. Since his article was published, Apple has made some laudable changes to its privacy policies. But it’s still a good idea to take charge of your own data. There are some simple ways to minimize the amount of tracking that app vendors can do and the amount of data they can access.
The whole article is worth scanning, just to get a sense of all the options.
But note that things are changing, and will continue to change. For example, there’s a new setting in the iOS 14.5 beta at Settings > Safari > PRIVACY & SECURITY called Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement, which is enabled by default.
With the increasing number of services around who can provide you with lossless music, both streamed and downloaded, it is worth asking: do you need it? In this edition of our online ABX tests, you can try your ear (and your equipment) at distinguishing Spotify’s streaming high quality from lossless audio.
I took the test, could not tell the difference. But I would argue that the choice of music is not quite right for this sort of test. For me, lossless becomes more apparent when the mix is not crowded, when the focus is on an individual instrument or sound, like a breathless whisper or a fingernail scraping on a guitar string.
That said, follow the headline link, give the test a try yourself. The idea is, there are three versions of a song to choose from. Click A, B, or X to switch between each version. Either A or B matches X. Once you think you know, make your choice, move on to the next song.
Apple plans to release its long-rumored mixed reality headset “in mid-2022,” followed by augmented reality glasses by 2025, well-regarded analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said today in a research note with TF International Securities, obtained by MacRumors.
And:
“We predict that Apple’s MR/AR product roadmap includes three phases: helmet type by 2022, glasses type by 2025, and contact lens type by 2030–2040,” wrote Kuo. “We foresee that the helmet product will provide AR and VR experiences, while glasses and contact lens types of products are more likely to focus on AR applications.”
Mixed reality is unique in that the term usually refers to artificial products that interact with users in the real world. Augmented virtuality (AV) is a subcategory of mixed reality that refers to the merging of real-world objects into virtual worlds.
I think more about augmented reality (look at a building, see an artificial address imposed on it) versus virtual reality (the building, along with all you see, is artificially created).
Very much looking forward to taking these products for a spin, assuming they ship.
