Geoffrey Fowler, writing for The Wall Street Journal:
I wouldn’t want to use it as my everyday phone, but as many as 20% of Americans would prefer a 4-inch phone. Apple says it sold 30 million older, slower (and cheaper) models at that size last year. Yet remarkably, no other major manufacturer offers a high-end phone at this size in the U.S.
And:
The new phone is nearly indistinguishable from the three-year-old iPhone 5s, which is a hair thicker and less pleasantly rounded than Apple’s more recent designs. (The SE even fits in most existing 5s cases.) The SE will come in Apple’s newer rose-gold hue, but it lacks design improvements you’ll find in Apple’s competitors, such as waterproofing and expandable storage.
And:
The standout news is battery life. Unlike many other recent Apple products, the iPhone SE’s is a significant improvement over its predecessors’. In my lab stress test, which cycles through websites with uniform screen brightness, the SE lasted 10 hours—more than two hours longer than both the iPhone 6s and iPhone 5s, and nearly three hours longer than the Galaxy S7.
This feels like a quietly important upgrade, designed to keep the smaller form factor active and capable of working with the latest version of iOS.
Apple, just hours after it confirmed issues relating to iOS 9.3 on the iPad 2, has released a new build of the operating system for the device. Carrying build number 13E236, the update appears to be rolling out to iPad 2 users now. Presumably, it’s the same build that was released to everyone earlier this week, just with the activation issues fixed.
From Twitter comments, appears that this new build addresses the problem.
Garry Shandling was one of my very first comedians. When I was growing up, Shandling was always different, irreverence with great intelligence. His first show, It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, came along as one of the very first cable TV shows, running on Showtime when Showtime was just a baby.
It’s Garry Shandling’s Show was original in many ways, from the self-referential theme song (see the embed below) to the constant breaking of the 4th wall, where Shandling would stop, mid-scene, turn to the camera and make some aside directly to the audience. That was the first time I’d ever encountered such a direct (and effective) flouting of the rules of television.
Tom Petty played a neighbor on the show who was, well, Tom Petty. He’d pop by every so often and play a few songs. Gilda Radner (one of the original cast members of Saturday Night Live) was also a pop-by friend. Her battle with cancer became part of the show. Incredible.
Shandling went on to create a more well known series for HBO called The Larry Sanders Show, a searing sendup of late night talk shows that featured talents such as Jeffrey Tambor (Hey Now!), Rip Torn, Janeane Garofalo, Jeremy Piven, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Bob Odenkirk, Jon Stewart, Joshua Malina, Sarah Silverman, a brilliant turn by David Duchovny, and many more great talents.
Though It’s Garry Shandling’s Show is tough to find outside of sporadic bits on YouTube, Shandling closed a deal with HBO just a few days before he died to allow Larry Sanders back on the network, both on air and via HBO Go and HBO Now streaming. Watch the show. It is well worth your time.
Shandling brought a lot of joy to my life. He was a genius. Words cannot express how much I appreciate him and will miss him.
The Journal quoted Netflix as saying it had limited its videos to most wireless carriers across the globe, capping them at 600 kiliobits-per-second, to “protect consumers from exceeding mobile data caps.”
Okay, certainly not good without letting people know, but if you’re watching on a phone, you probably wouldn’t notice a quality difference.
“We’re outraged to learn that Netflix is apparently throttling video for their AT&T customers without their knowledge or consent,” Jim Cicconi, AT&T senior executive vice president of external and legislative affairs wrote in an email.
That made me laugh out loud. AT&T would probably do the same thing if they thought they could get away with it.
Updating some iOS devices (iPhone 5s and earlier and iPad Air and earlier) to iOS 9.3 can require entering the Apple ID and password used to set up the device in order to complete the software update,” an Apple spokesperson told iMore. “In some cases, if customers do not recall their password, their device will remain in an inactivated state until they can recover or reset their password. For these older devices, we have temporarily pulled back the update and will release an updated version of iOS 9.3 in the next few days that does not require this step.”
Photo enthusiasts all over the world use the Nik Collection to get the best out of their images every day. As we continue to focus our long-term investments in building incredible photo editing tools for mobile, including Google Photos and Snapseed, we’ve decided to make the Nik Collection desktop suite available for free, so that now anyone can use it.
The Nik Collection is comprised of seven desktop plug-ins that provide a powerful range of photo editing capabilities — from filter applications that improve color correction, to retouching and creative effects, to image sharpening that brings out all the hidden details, to the ability to make adjustments to the color and tonality of images.
I’ve used these plug-ins in the past and they are very good. At the low, low price of free, they are even better. You can download them here.
U.S. officials said on Thursday that they are hopeful they will be able to unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters without help from Apple Inc, but said the national debate over privacy and encryption must still be resolved.
I still think that if the government thought it could have won the case, it wouldn’t have vacated the court date. Either way the judge rules, it will set a precedent. It seems to me the government wasn’t confident enough to move forward.
“I certainly don’t think, let me just comment, that Apple’s been flouting the order,” Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym said Monday, according to a transcript obtained by POLITICO. “The order, essentially … pending a final decision, there’s not really — it’s not in a stage that it could be enforced at this point,” Pym said.
Also this sparring back and forth between Apple’s attorney (Boutrous) and the prosecutor in the case (Wilkinson):
“I can’t exaggerate to you how — the perception, some of which I think has been reinforced by the government in their brief, that the company has been somehow doing something wrong,” Boutrous said.
“The government has really only been interested in trying to get into this phone and has done all of its filings and all of its work here in an effort to get into this phone and not saying anything nefarious about Apple,” Wilkison insisted.
Boutrous then cited a point in the government’s brief that says: “Apple’s rhetoric is not only false, but is corrosive of the very institutions that are best able to safeguard our liberty and our rights.”
The Justice Department now has until April 5th to make its next move.
Although more prominent features like Night Shift and a few new Quick Actions are getting the spotlight with the launch of iOS 9.3, one new lesser-known update is definitely worth checking out. In iOS 9.3, Apple has improved the functionality of its first-party Notes app with the ability to add password or Touch ID security for individual notes.
The feature allows users to prevent access to sensitive information on a case-by-case basis (some notes, like a shopping list, might not be as high risk), just in case someone gets past the lock screen security of the iPhone itself. With some people even using Notes to store passwords for various sites and services, Apple’s security-enhanced update is well worth checking out.
Ever since Notes was upgraded to sync via iCloud, I’ve started using it all the time. This move to password protect individual notes is that “one more thing” to make Notes a home run for me.
Liam is a large-scale robot, with 29 freestanding robotic arms at various skill stations. But while most assembly-line robots help put together products you’ll one day hold in your hands, Liam is hard at work disassembling your ruined, returned iPhones.
Liam was revealed at Apple’s spring product launch event on Monday, but Mashable got an exclusive look at the system in action a few days earlier. To keep Liam a secret, I’m told, only a handful of Apple staffers knew of its existence.
This is another of those things that Apple does because it makes economic sense but has the additional benefit of making environmental sense.
Like most people on Monday, I was focused on the hardware product announcements at Apple’s special event, but there were some other very significant announcements by Apple executives, Lisa Jackson and Jeff Williams.
The Environment
“Just like everything we do at Apple, when we think about the environment, we think about innovation,” said Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives.
I don’t know of many companies that think of innovation when they are considering their global impact on the environment. However, for Apple, innovation is a key part of its initiative, and listening to Jackson speak, you can tell it’s more than just words to satisfy an audience.
Jackson said that Apple set a goal for itself two years ago to be 100% renewable in 100% of its operations worldwide. A lofty goal to be sure. I expected a 60% success rate at this point in the plan, which would have been worthy of loud applause from the attendees at the event.
When she revealed that the company was currently at 93% worldwide, I felt myself smile a bit. It’s one of those little surprises that Apple is so good at delivering–they over-delivered again, but this time it was on a massive promise of renewable energy.
In fact, 100% of Apple’s operations in the U.S. are using renewable power. That includes its offices, retail stores and data centers. Think about the scale of that for a minute.
Apple is 100% renewable in 23 countries right now. While that is truly amazing, the way that they did it in some places around the world is even more incredible.
I suppose it would be relatively easy—or at least easier—to go into a country, pick a piece of land and build a solar farm. However, Apple didn’t want to negatively impact the local population of the places they do business, so instead of taking the easy way, they took the hard way.
Take Apple’s initiative in Sichuan Province, China. When building the solar farm there, they worked with the local farmers to ensure the animals would still be able to graze the land, but Apple would get the power they needed.
In Singapore, Apple built a solar farm on top of more than 800 buildings because there was no land to build a traditional solar farm on the ground.
“Think about what that means,” said Jackson. “Every time you send an iMessage or make a FaceTime video call, or ask Siri a question, you can feel really good about reducing your impact on the environment.”
One of the special highlights of the environmental talk was “Liam.” Apple is not only using innovation to build its iPhone, now it’s innovating in taking the devices apart to ensure proper recycling and reuse. You really have to watch the video.
While Apple is looking at ways to use the sun, wind and water for power, it is also considering things like the packaging of its products. Jackson said that 99% of the paper used in packaging is coming from paper that is recycled, or is coming from sustainably managed forests. These are forests that Apple is helping to maintain through its own conservation efforts. The current market landscape indicates that consumers increasingly prefer brands promoting sustainability. Therefore, leveraging eco-friendly promotional products from sources such as https://www.pavilionearth.co.uk/ can make your business stand out, demonstrating your commitment to safeguarding our planet.
Apple is doing more than just talking about our need to protect the environment, they are actually doing something about it. Choose eco-friendly brands such as BatanaBio.com to help save the environment. We should all appreciate its ongoing efforts and the work that people like Lisa Jackson are putting into those efforts.
Health
Jeff Williams, Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, is the man overseeing the company’s health initiatives. When he came on stage during the event on Monday, I expected an update on ResearchKit, which Apple developed to make research studies more efficient. We got that, and so much more.
Williams said that Apple wanted to make ResearchKit so it would be easier for people to participate and make it easier for researchers to collect data. The problem with research studies to this point is that the participants had to be physically near where the research was taking place.
That makes sense because the researchers would need to see the patients. However, with ResearchKit and an iPhone, participants could be located anywhere and the data could be easily collected.
“Virtually overnight, the research studies that we launched became some of the largest in history with tens of thousands of people signing up,” said Williams.
That’s not an exaggeration. The Parkinson’s study became the largest in history in less than 24 hours. These are incredibly important studies that were hampered by physical location, until now.
The Asthma study at Mount Sinai found triggers for the ailment in all 50 states because of the research done with ResearchKit. A Diabetes study actually found that there are subgroups of Type 2 Diabetes with the help of ResearchKit. Meanwhile, for those who are living with such a disease, it may be positive news for them that there are sites that have features like we buy diabetic test strips. Such a feature would imply that there are tons of supplies up for grabs.
These findings will help with diagnosis and medical treatment in the future. These are incredibly important initiatives.
“When we introduced ResearchKit, our goal was to simply improve medical research and we thought our work was largely done,” said Williams. What became clear to us later is the very same tools used to advance medical research can also be used to help people with their care.”
With that, Williams announced Apple’s next initiative, CareKit1. He explained that CareKit is a framework to build apps that empower people to take an active role in their care. You can choose who you share the information with—your doctor, for example—so all of your information is perfectly safe2.
I love product announcements as much as the next person, but it’s important that we recognize the contributions that Apple is making in other areas of our lives, as well. These are significant, real ways that Apple is making our world better.
Israel’s Cellebrite, a provider of mobile forensic software, is helping the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s attempt to unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino, California shooters, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported on Wednesday.
If Cellebrite succeeds, then the FBI will no longer need the help of Apple Inc, the Israeli daily said, citing unnamed industry sources.
If Cellebrite succeeds, that won’t be the end of the story, just the end of this chapter.
Apple released software updates to all its operating system today, along with an update to iTunes, ostensibly to add “support for syncing iTunes with iPhone SE and iPad Pro.” But, as they often do, there are minor tweaks in the update. Some of these may be bug fixes, but there are some visible changes. Here’s a brief overview of what’s new.
Read the whole thing, but my favorite:
There’s a new option in the General preferences, which allows you to tell iTunes to add songs from Apple Music to My Music when you add them to playlists. This was a bit confusing before; you could add songs to playlists, but unless you explicitly added them to My Music, they didn’t get added to your library.
Not sure why this feature wasn’t there from Apple Music’s beginning. Glad to have it.
A reader sent me a charger he suspected was counterfeit. From the outside, this charger is almost a perfect match for an Apple charger, but disassembling the charger shows that it is very different on the inside. It has a much simpler design that lacks quality features of the genuine charger, and has major safety defects.
Great teardown, complete with detailed pictures. Astonishing how realistic a counterfeit Apple product can be.
Brian Langis, writing for Seeking Alpha [Free reg-wall]:
The real story for early Apple investors, however, wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. This is not your classic “buy and hold” fairy tale. If you would have bought Apple at the beginning and held on to it, you would have been clinically depressed for a good part of your life, unless you get joy out of pain. I did open my article by mentioning that Apple is a multi-bagger, but you needed an 80% loss twice in order to get it.
A fantastic walk through Apple’s stock price ups and downs since it’s original 1980 IPO. Before you start reading, pretend you invested $1,000 in 1980 and take a guess at how much that would be worth today.
The rumored back-door legislation from the Senate Intelligence Committee has now surfaced. From Reuters:
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators has begun circulating long-awaited draft legislation that would give federal judges clear authority to order technology companies like Apple to help law enforcement officials access encrypted data, according to sources familiar with the discussions.
The proposal from Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein, the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, does not spell out how companies must provide access or the circumstances under which they could be ordered to help.
It also does not create specific penalties for noncompliance, leaving that determination to judges, the sources said.
Importantly:
Previous legislative efforts have focused on requiring technology products to have a built-in “back door” for law enforcement. The latest approach would not mandate any specific technology, but rather would require companies to figure out how to access the data.
A rose is a rose is a rose. If you force Apple to give you access to encrypted data, that’s equivalent to a back door.
Apple has posted this really cool “Interactive Apple Watch Gallery”. You choose the size and style of the Apple Watch, then choose a strap, then a watch face. It’s a great way to see what different cases and straps look like in combination without having to go to the Apple Store. The only thing its missing is pricing of your choices.
iOS 9.3 also adds support for playing video encoded with Dolby Digital Plus audio streams with support for multichannel output using the Apple Lightning® Digital AV Adapter.
This is significant news that slipped my attention yesterday. Listed in the iPad Pro press release under “Pro audio” is support for Dolby. I love Dolby and always have—I can’t wait to see how this sounds.
The iPhone makes for an ideal health care aide, thanks to its motion-tracking M-series coprocessor suite of sensors, and its huge install base. There’s no limit to what people with serious medical conditions can track, and no cap on how useful an iOS device might be in coping with the day-to-day realities of illness. Our phones, if they didn’t already, will know more about us than we know about ourselves.
It’s the sort of information you can’t provide unless you know that it will be protected, and the kind of data you can’t collect unless you know you can protect it. The sort of information that simply can’t be given or received without strong encryption.
Back on July 15th, 2006, Om posted this article, introducing the world to a new service called Twttr:
Twttr is a new mobile social networking application written by Noah Glass (and team), an Odeo-guy, a long time compadre of Blogger founder Ev Williams. (Twttr is a side project.) It is not a very complicated application – and which is what makes it so addictive and at the same time annoying.
Twttr has married Short Code Messaging, SMS with a way to create social groups. By sending a text message to a short code (for TWTTR) you can send your location information, your mood information or whatever and share it with people who are on your social-mob! Best part – no installation necessary!
The FBI’s request for the delay does not immediately end the litigation, only pauses it.
Apple is not claiming any victories yet, and some legal experts also cautioned against jumping to conclusions. But Nate Cardozo, a lawyer at the civil liberties advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation — which supports Apple’s position — says this marks a pivotal point.
“This filing today represents the FBI completely backing down on this particular case,” Cardozo says — but “there may be another case in the future.”
And:
“For Apple, it proves their case that the FBI should be trying harder, rather than asking Apple to undermine its security protections,” says Susan Landau, a longtime cybersecurity expert at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. “For the FBI, it’s certainly an embarrassment to have gone to this effort in court when there was another route — but it also points out the need to develop the expertise, both the technical expertise and organizational expertise.”
And:
“If the government can get into this phone, it just kicks the can down the road a year or two,” says [GWU Law Professor] Kerr. “Apple will presumably correct [any old vulnerabilities], and then in a year or two there will be the next case, and we’ll be where we thought we were yesterday.”
FBI acknowledged today that there “appears” to be an alternative way into Farook’s iPhone 5c – something that experts have been shouting for weeks now; in fact, we’ve been saying there are several viable methods.
And:
We do know that the FBI frequently works with a number of contracted external forensics and data recovery labs, especially a handful at the top. The likelihood here is that a third party contractor, such as one of these forensics or data recovery firms, has devised a method and notified FBI of their findings.
And:
The leading theory at present, based on all of this, is that an external forensics company, with hardware capabilities, is likely copying the NAND storage off the chip and frequently re-copying all or part of the chip’s contents back to the device in order to brute force the pin – and may or may not also be using older gear from iOS 8 techniques to do it. The two weeks the FBI has asked for are not to develop this technique (it’s most likely already been developed, if FBI is willing to vacate a hearing over it), but rather to demonstrate, and possibly sell, the technique to FBI by means of a field test on some demo units.
All this is speculation, but very well reasoned speculation.
