Speaking of independent Apple blogging, it’s nice to see that Thomas Verschoren is back at it.
Standing still. iPad Pro 2018
But, even with all those new bells and whistles, it’s still the same iPad running the same iOS. It’s an iPad. A device that was perfect when it was released. And then kinda rested on its laurels and iterated with safe bets and predictable improvements
I ordered the new iPad Pro (12.
From Eli Hodapp at TouchArcade:
Moments ago, Apple announced that they’re killing the affiliate program, citing the improved discovery offered by the new App Store. (Music, books, movies, and TV remain.) It’s hard to read this in any other way than “We went from seeing a microscopic amount of value in third party editorial to, we now see no value." I genuinely have no idea what TouchArcade is going to do.
Let’s see if I can do a Dave Pell style post.
I actually liked Snow Leopard more than Leopard, so a year of improvements is just fine by me. 2018 feels like the year of “sorry we ruined your family life” from Apple. I still don’t want a HomePod I actually kind of want a pair of HomePods. I wouldn’t say no to a series-3 Watch but I’m also not saying yes until I see Overcast for Apple Watch Siri actions will enable the most productive, dumbest assistant I’ve ever worked with Great, now I need to pretend I don’t know how to do group FaceTime just like I pretend I don’t know how to do group messaging Please, oh please don’t let game makers use tongue detection.
I was honored (and a bit surprised) to be invited as a participant in the Six Colors 2016 Apple report card. If it’s not obvious, I think Apple is killing it with the iPhone. In other areas, well, you should read the report card. What I love about the Six Colors summary is that the responses are so diverse in what they care about. It also shows that you can be a fan without being mindless.
I found this article to be a good summary of what’s going on with the FBI and their inept bungling. If true, it’d be pretty funny that Issa was more technically savy than the FBI.
But even with all of this, it’s still dependent on human frailty:
More importantly, this technique wouldn’t work at all had Farook used a complex alphanumeric passcode. The weak link in all of this has been Farook and his poor choice of security.
Interesting breakdown of political spending by tech companies.
To understand Apple’s efforts at persuading legislators of various issues, I compiled a measure of political footprint which combines a company’s own federally registered lobbying expenditures from 2015 with the campaign contributions they made during the 2013-14 election cycle from their corporate PAC as well as any employees who made campaign campaign contributions (and listed their employer). This data comes from the Center for Responsive Politics.
I just love seeing this stuff. Here’s one of my favorite artists showing that the tools don’t make the artist. It’s impressive what someone with talent can do. I expect to see a lot more cool stuff created with the Apple Pencil and iPad Pro.
Time to put on a coat if you’re headed to hades because there’s now an officially sanctioned Plex app for the Apple TV. And it looks good.
Mine arrives in a day or two. Even if the Plex experience is equivalent to the Roku, I will be pleasantly surprised. If the rumored Amazon video app comes out this week, I’ll gladly eat my words and kick back with season 2 of Gortimer Gibbons.
From the EFF:
As we explained before, the All Writs Act is not a backdoor to bypass other laws. The government cannot impose an unreasonable burden on Apple, and it cannot violate the Constitution. If the government truly wanted Apple to decrypt a phone running iOS 8 or later, it would blow past these boundaries. First, unless Apple is lying about how its system is engineered, it simply can’t grant access to the data on a locked phone—not by reflashing the operating system, and not by pushing a backdoored software update—because it’s locked.
I purposely didn’t listen to this podcast until I had an uninterrupted block of time. I’m glad I did because the video is better. It’s well produced with multiple camera angles and great audio.
The entire thing is pretty funny. Schiller is very likable and makes plenty of unexpected jokes and jabs. For his part Gruber does not hold back at all.
