Tim Higgins, Wall Street Journal:

Soon after 19-year-old Adele Lowitz gave up her Apple iPhone 11 for an experimental go with an Android smartphone, a friend in her long-running texting group chimed in: “Who’s green?”

And:

That pressure to be a part of the blue text group is the product of decisions by Apple executives starting years ago that have, with little fanfare, built iMessage into one of the world’s most widely used social networks and helped to cement the iPhone’s dominance among young smartphone users in the U.S.

Astonishingly, the Piper Sandler annual survey of teen habits reports that 87% of US teens own an iPhone.

You could argue that the blue/green bubble issue is at least part of the reason why.

More from the WSJ:

“In the absence of a strategy to become the primary messaging service for [the] bulk of cell phone users, I am concerned the iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove [an] obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s chief software executive, said in a 2013 email

And:

Phil Schiller made a similar case to Chief Executive Tim Cook in another email: “Moving iMessage to Android will hurt us more than help us,” he said. Another warning that year came from a former Apple executive who told his old colleagues in an email that “iMessage amounts to serious lock-in.”

When an Android (i.e., green bubble) user joins an iMessage thread, the thread turns green. I find this annoying. The color change is not an issue. It’s the fact that functionality changes once that blue bubble thread turns green. For example, when I send an image as part of a mixed green thread, the send often (but not always) times out and fails.

Obviously, the Android team wants this changed (see this tweet in response to the WSJ article from Google Senior VP Hiroshi Lockheimer). Question is, will Apple budge on this?

Tim Hardwick, MacRumors:

Ever since Apple removed the headphone jack on the iPhone 7 in 2016, rumors have swirled that Apple eventually aims to ditch the Lightning port next for a completely portless design. Indeed, analysts originally predicted that the highest-end ‌‌iPhone‌‌ 13 would offer a “completely wireless experience.” Of course, that didn’t happen, but a portless iPhone 14 in 2022 looks just as unlikely, for the following reasons.

There’s this:

With no Lightning port, you wouldn’t be able to physically connect your iPhone directly to a computer to reset an unresponsive iPhone through recovery mode.

But, more importantly:

In 2020, Eric Ravenscraft of Debugger found that wireless charging uses around 47% more power than wired charging for the same amount of power.

Here’s a link to that article, titled Wireless Charging Is a Disaster Waiting to Happen.

Barrowclift:

There’s new and exciting developments every year in the realm of iOS third-party music players, and 2021 was no exception. While 2019 enjoyed an explosion of new players like Power Player and Albums that through time came to lead the space, 2020 in contrast received only a modest handful of new players and is instead remembered for the impressive growth the established player base received that year. This past year, 2021, managed to do both with a dizzying array of five new players and impressive growth across nearly all existing players.

If you are interested in exploring third party iOS music players, look no further. There’s a lot to explore here. I mean, a lot.

Follow the headline link, scroll all the way to the bottom for a Table of Contents. Each link will take you to a full-blown article about that player.

Enjoy.

Ankur Thakur, iDownloadBlog:

In this tutorial, we will go over how to clear up iCloud storage, and we will see what happens when iCloud is full.

Down below the “how to manage iCloud storage” walkthrough are sections telling you what will happen as your iCloud storage starts to fill up and, after that, a list of what will continue to work normally even after iCloud storage is full.

Good to know.

Reddit:

My iPhone was stolen (central Europe) about a week ago and yesterday, the number I had set up during the “Lost Mode” process received a text message saying the phone was switched on and telling me to reply with the options to lock, erase or find the iPhone.

I suspect most folks reading this would never fall for the phishing text messages. But what this walkthrough offers that makes it worth reading, at least to me, is the link to the support document with details on reporting phishing to Apple, as well as the link to iCloud.com/find and the image (at the very end) showing what a real Find My email from Apple should look like.

Christian Davenport, The Washington Post:

Lockheed Martin, which is building the Orion spacecraft that NASA hopes will fly astronauts to the moon within a couple of years, is partnering with Amazon to put an Alexa on the capsule.

The device would give astronauts real-time information on telemetry, the health of the spacecraft and its speed.

And:

Astronauts would be able to get information about their water supply or battery levels, even change the temperature or color of the lights in the crew module.

And:

The onboard space Alexa would not be connected to the Internet but instead connect directly to Orion’s computer and its own onboard cloud, which would allow it to monitor the health of the spacecraft.

This feels like a real coup for Amazon. This isn’t a simple problem, like bringing an Echo device and giving it internet access. This is a specialized domain, fitted to a demanding environment.

Have to wonder if anyone at Apple is thinking about ways to do something similar with Siri.

Christian Zibreg, iDownloadBlog:

You’re familiar with low power mode on iPhone (and iPad and Mac), which temporarily disables some features to save battery life. But did you know about high power mode, the polar opposite to low power mode?

And:

To help you squeeze the last drop of power from your Mac’s Apple CPU, the new 16-inch MacBook Pro provides a new feature, dubbed High Power Mode. When you put your Mac into high power mode, the operating system will maximize performance during very intensive workloads by permitting the fans to run at higher speeds to keep the CPU cool.

From Apple’s official support document:

Your MacBook Pro has multiple energy modes you can switch between. By default, your Mac is set to Automatic mode to balance energy use and performance. Low Power Mode reduces energy use to increase battery life. On the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Max, High Power Mode allows the fans to run at higher speeds. The additional cooling capacity may allow the system to deliver higher performance in very intensive workloads.

Check out the images in the Apple Support document to see how to turn High Power Mode on and how to tell if it is on from the menu bar.

Yes, this feature is limited to the 16″ MacBook Pro M1 Max, but I suspect it’ll become more mainstream as Apple expands it’s M1 product line. Good to know about.

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

Intel today unveiled new 12th-generation Core processors suitable for laptops, and as part of the announcement, it claimed that the new Core i9 is not only faster than Apple’s M1 Max chip in the 16-inch MacBook Pro, but is the fastest mobile processor ever.

Importantly:

The high-end Intel chip has a max Turbo Boost frequency of 5.0GHz, but power draw can reach up to 115 watts, which is significantly more power than the M1 Max chip ever uses and not ideal for the thermal envelope of devices like the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.

From the Intel press release, touting the Fastest Mobile Processor Ever:

Intel announces the 12th Gen Intel® Core™ family of mobile processors led by the launch of new H-series mobile processors featuring the flagship Intel® Core™ i9-12900HK – the fastest mobile processor ever and the world’s best mobile gaming platform – built on the Intel 7 process. Experience the speed with Level Up casino games.

I won’t argue “world’s best mobile gaming platform”. Besides the PC being dominant in desktop gaming and high end Intel laptops drafting on that platform, Apple has not made gaming a priority.

But here’s the footnote Intel attached to “Fastest mobile processor ever”:

Based on superior performance of 12th Gen Intel Core i9 12900HK against Intel Core i9 11980HK, AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX, and Apple M1 Max.

Read the press release for details on the benchmarks they ran.

It’ll be interesting to see real world benchmarks once laptops with these processors actually ship. More importantly, I look forward to seeing the real life battery performance of those laptops. If you look at the second image in the headline linked MacRumors post, you’ll see the Apple M1 Max topping out (in terms of SoC Power, the left-to-right part of the chart) about where the new Intel chip begins. For those interested in exploring fast-paced online casinos, visit pikakasinotsuomi.com for a comprehensive guide to instant-play gaming in Finland.

Once these laptops hit the streets, I expect the power consumption to be the real story here, with the Intel chip sucking power as the M1 Max sips. If so, no way to hide that.

Jack Suntrup, St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

A Post-Dispatch reporter in October alerted the state to a data issue contained on a Department of Elementary and Secondary Education website that left Social Security numbers of educators vulnerable to public disclosure.

After alerting the state, the newspaper didn’t publish its report until after the officials moved to protect the vulnerable information. The newspaper did not disclose any personal information.

The reporter simply did a “view source” on a public facing web page, saw that student social security numbers were embedded in the source. The reporter did the absolute right thing. They alerted officials, did not report on the issue until the vulnerability was fixed.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson:

“If somebody picks your lock on your house — for whatever reason, it’s not a good lock, it’s a cheap lock or whatever problem you might have — they do not have the right to go into your house and take anything that belongs to you,” Parson said.

Also:

Capt. John Hotz, spokesman for the Missouri State Highway Patrol, said Monday the agency had finished its probe of the Post-Dispatch and had turned the case over the Cole County Prosecuting Attorney Locke Thompson.

This is chilling. So very misguided. Can’t imagine this going very far, but if it does, a terrible precedent will have been set.

Alioto Law Firm:

> California Crane School, Inc. filed a class action antitrust case on 12/27/21 against Google and Apple and the Chief Executive Officers of both companies alleging violations of the Antitrust Laws of the United States.

And:

> The complaint charges that Google and Apple agreed that Apple would not compete in the internet search business against Google.

And these allegations at the core of the non-compete approach:

1. Google would share it’s search profits with Apple
2. Apple would give preferential treatment to Google for all Apple devices
3. Regular secret meetings between the executives of both companies
4. Annual multi-billion-dollar payments by Google to Apple not to compete in the search business
5. Suppression of the competition of smaller competitors and foreclosing competitors from the search market
6. Acquiring actual and potential competitors.

What the complaint seeks to accomplish:

> The complaint asks for an injunction prohibiting the non-compete agreement between Google and Apple; the profit-sharing agreement; the preferential treatment for Google on Apple devices; and the payment of billions of dollars by Google to Apple. > > According to NorthStar Law Group, P.S. the complaint also calls for the breakup of Google into separate and independent companies and the breakup of Apple into separate and independent companies in accordance with the precedent of the breakup of Standard Oil company into Exxon, Mobile, Conoco, Amoco, Sohio, Chevron, and others.

Massive consequences, if successful.

Could Apple develop its own search engine on a scale of Google’s? They’d either have to eat the massive cost of staffing and supporting such an engine, or offset the cost with an advertising business of their own. And adding a search engine would certainly draw even more antitrust scrutiny.

Apple could also exit any proprietary search agreement with Google but, of course, that would be costly as well.

From this New York Times exposé:

> Apple now receives an estimated $8 billion to $12 billion in annual payments — up from $1 billion a year in 2014 — in exchange for building Google’s search engine into its products. It is probably the single biggest payment that Google makes to anyone and accounts for 14 to 21 percent of Apple’s annual profits. That’s not money Apple would be eager to walk away from.

Indeed.

Ankur Thakur, iDownloadBlog:

Wondering how you can send a big video, graphics-heavy document, or other large files to someone from your iPhone? Look at ten ways to send big files from your iPhone to someone on another iPhone, iPad, Mac, Windows PC, or Android phone. Most methods here are wireless, while others will require a Lightning cable.

This is worth bookmarking, for that moment when you find yourself having to move a massive file from one device to another. Nice walkthrough of each technique, with detail and links to more detail.

This is just one person’s take and, just as with any list of favorites/pans, your opinion is the one that matters. But I did enjoy the walkthrough and the reminder of just how committed Apple is to this venture, how far they’ve come.

While some of these shows are legitimately not great, I’ve found a good number of them to be top quality, worthy of Netflix or HBO. Remember, Apple TV+ launched November 1st, 2019, just a bit more than 2 years ago. With Apple’s deep pockets, I’d expect viewership to continue to climb as content continues to expand.

Apple’s market cap popped its head above the $3 trillion mark yesterday, for a brief shining moment. As of this writing, Apple’s share price dropped back down to $181.72 per share, which translates to a market cap of $2.98 trillion.

Having lived through the days when company CEOs suggested Apple pack up their stuff, sell their inventory, and recoup as much of their losses as possible, this is a head shaking, gobsmacked turnaround of epic proportions, doomed to market dominator, all started by the decision to buy NeXT and bring back Steve Jobs. That deal was finalized in February 1997, almost 25 years ago.

When Apple first went public, Steve had about 11 percent of Apple’s stock. A simplistic valuation would have that chunk worth about .11 x $3T = $330 billion. Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, is worth $304 billion.

Rumor, strongly sourced, but move on if you don’t want to know.

That said, I’ve been wondering what Apple could bring to the table to make AirPods Pro 2 more compelling than the first gen.

Here’s the details:

In a note to investors, seen by MacRumors, Kuo explained that the second-generation ‌AirPods Pro‌ will feature new selling points that will lead to strong demand, including support for Apple Lossless (ALAC) audio and a charging case that users can trigger a sound from to highlight its location.

And:

It seems likely that this sound-emitting charging case will integrate into the Find My app, similar to how users can currently emit a sound from their individual AirPods inside the case to help find them.

And:

All of Apple’s current AirPods products, including the third-generation AirPods, ‌AirPods Pro‌, and AirPods Max, do not support Lossless audio. This is because AirPods play audio via Bluetooth, limiting them to the AAC codec. Higher quality Apple Lossless Audio Codec files may need to be streamed to AirPods directly to circumvent Bluetooth and enable a Lossless listening experience, but it is possible that Apple could develop an alternative solution.

Are lossless and Find My support enough of an addition to make you plunk down the cash for the next gen? Of course, you’d also get a brand new battery and (seems likely) other new features.

Matt Fuller:

I recently acquired several new Apple Watch bands of different types. Among them, I decided to splurge on my very first (and likely last) Apple Watch Hermès item for my collection—the Apple Watch Hermès 45 mm Navy Single Tour Band.

And:

Inside, the Apple Watch Hermès band is not in cardboard, but enrobed in a luxurious microfiber pouch with a familiar texture and configuration.

And:

Upon closer inspection, the pouch appears to be made from the same material as the now famous Apple Polishing Cloth, the $19 cloth that enjoyed about a month of media hype in 2021.

Follow the headline link and scroll down to the very last image, a side-by-side of the polishing cloth draped over the Apple Watch Hermès band pouch. Tap/click a few times to embiggen and you’ll definitely get a sense that these are, indeed, made of the same material.

Any other Apple product ship with this material? Do the Mac Pro wheels come with a wheel-polishing cloth?

Tim Hardwick, MacRumors:

When listening to a song from your music library on iPhone and iPad, it used to be possible to ask ‌Siri‌ to “rate this song five [or whatever number] stars,” and the virtual assistant would do so without fuss.

And:

Yet reports on Reddit, Apple Support Communities, and the MacRumors forums suggest that the function is not available in ‌iOS 15‌ or iOS 15.1, and has remained out of action in the latest iOS 15.2 point release, issued in December. Instead of carrying out the request, ‌Siri‌ responds with “I’m Sorry, I’m afraid I can’t do that,” or some variation thereof.

This issue has been out in the wild for a while (here’s a Reddit thread from about a month ago), but the hope was that this was a bug, rather than an actual permanent change.

You can still set star ratings on your Mac and in iOS/iPadOS (you’ll need to enable the Show Star Ratings setting first).

Definitely a mixed message. Are star ratings going away permanently? Are they coming (albeit eventually) to Siri?

Schrödinger’s ratings.

BBEdit 14 is out and has added a new “Notes” feature, which provides a large variety of ways to create notes that automatically save themselves, and, perhaps more important, automatically title themselves so that you don’t end up wondering which of your 305 “untitled text” documents is the one you’re looking for.

BBEdit 14 enables several new features and significant improvements to its built-in coding aids for developers, including:

• Enhanced language-specific text completions;
• Improved Find Definition;
• Assistance for specifying function parameters;
• New code-navigation features;
• In-window highlighting of syntax and semantic issues;
• Language-specific document reformatting.

These feature improvements are the result of new built-in support for the Language Server Protocol (“LSP”) by which user-installed local “language servers” implement key language-sensitive behaviors.

My thanks to Unite for sponsoring The Loop this week. Unite 4 for macOS allows you to turn any website into an app on your Mac. Using a lightweight, WebKit powered browser as a backend, you can easily create isolated, customizable apps from any site.

Unite 4 includes dozens of new features, including support for native notifications, new customization options, M1 support, and much more. Unite apps also serve as a great alternative for resource hogging Electron apps or half-baked Catalyst apps.

Some examples of apps you could create in mere minutes with Unite:

• A Gmail web client that behaves like a native mail client.
• A status bar app for Apple Music or Overcast
• An isolated workspace for apps that may track you like Facebook
• A lightweight and power efficient version of Slack, Discord, or Whatsapp with full notification support
• A fully featured Instagram app that has a resizable window, unlike the M1 version.
• A Robinhood, Figma, or Roam Research app for your desktop.

The Loop readers get 20% off this week when you purchase Unite 4 or when you use the promo code ‘LOOPINSIGHT’ at checkout.

You can also try Unite for 14 days absolutely free or use it as part of your subscription if you’re a Setapp subscriber!

Google Project Zero blog:

We want to thank Citizen Lab for sharing a sample of the FORCEDENTRY exploit with us, and Apple’s Security Engineering and Architecture (SEAR) group for collaborating with us on the technical analysis.

And:

Recently, however, it has been documented that NSO is offering their clients zero-click exploitation technology, where even very technically savvy targets who might not click a phishing link are completely unaware they are being targeted. In the zero-click scenario no user interaction is required. Meaning, the attacker doesn’t need to send phishing messages; the exploit just works silently in the background. Short of not using a device, there is no way to prevent exploitation by a zero-click exploit; it’s a weapon against which there is no defense.

And:

The ImageIO library, as detailed in a previous Project Zero blogpost, is used to guess the correct format of the source file and parse it, completely ignoring the file extension. Using this “fake gif” trick, over 20 image codecs are suddenly part of the iMessage zero-click attack surface, including some very obscure and complex formats, remotely exposing probably hundreds of thousands of lines of code.

There’s a lot of detail here, fascinating if understanding exploits is your thing. But bottom line, a fake GIF is used to Trojan horse image processing code into life, and that code does the bad work, no clicks required.

Most importantly:

Apple inform us that they have restricted the available ImageIO formats reachable from IMTranscoderAgent starting in iOS 14.8.1 (26 October 2021), and completely removed the GIF code path from IMTranscoderAgent starting in iOS 15.0 (20 September 2021), with GIF decoding taking place entirely within BlastDoor.

Make sure you (and the folks you support) update to the latest and greatest.

See also: After US ban and Apple action, Pegasus spyware maker NSO running out of cash.

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

Apple Inc., facing a resurgence in Covid-19 cases and a fast-spreading new variant, is delaying its corporate return-to-office deadline from Feb. 1 to a “date yet to be determined.”

Employees were informed of the move via a memo sent by Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook on Wednesday. An Apple spokesman confirmed the decision to Bloomberg News.

Add to the mix three Apple Store closings (Miami, Ottawa, and Annapolis, Maryland).

Hard to judge whether this is the road to a new normal (masks for many, more vaccines more often, periodic store closings in response to infection upticks) or just a bump in the road.

Amazon:

Amazon Polly is a service that turns text into lifelike speech, allowing you to create applications that talk, and build entirely new categories of speech-enabled products. Polly’s Text-to-Speech (TTS) service uses advanced deep learning technologies to synthesize natural sounding human speech.

Follow the headline link and click on the various links to get a sense of the voices. Start with Joanna (Standard). Pretty good, but there’s still a bit of uncanny valley there, perhaps in the subtle hesitations you likely wouldn’t expect in someone else’s speech.

Now listen to Joanna (Neural). To me, this sounds much more realistic and is the machine learning version of the same voice.

Good enough to fool you into thinking it’s a real person? Certainly getting closer.

Apple:

Today, Apple TV+ announced “El Deafo,” a charming and poignant three-part animated series for kids and families. Based on the No. 1 New York Times best-seller and Newbery Honor-winning graphic memoir, all episodes of “El Deafo” will premiere Friday, January 7, 2022 on Apple TV+.

And:

“El Deafo” follows perceptive young Cece (voiced by Finigan) as she loses her hearing and finds her inner superhero. Going to school and making new friends can be tough. Having to do both while wearing a bulky hearing aid on your chest? That takes superpowers! With a little help from her superhero alter ego El Deafo, Cece learns to embrace what makes her extraordinary.

Watch the trailer below. Love the story premise, the normalization, representation. Love that all the episodes are dropping at once, too.