This build supposedly fixes the bug where iOS/iPadOS constantly kills background apps. I have not found this to be a sufficient fix — it’s better, but not ideal.
It gets even worse. Even when she pays off her ridiculously low limit in full, the card won’t approve any spending until the next billing period. Women apparently aren’t good credit risks even when they pay off the fucking balance in advance and in full.
So obviously we both furiously signup for the fucking $25/month credit-check bullshit shakedown that is TransUnion. Maybe someone stole my wife’s identity? Even though we’ve verified there was nothing wrong previously. Guess what: HER CREDIT SCORE WAS HIGHER THAN MINE!!!
Just read this thread. My wife has a way better score than me, almost 850, has a higher salary and was given a credit limit 1/3 of mine. We had joked that maybe Apple is just sexist. Seems like it’s not a joke. Beyond f’ed up.
Christian Davies, reporting for The Guardian:
The undercover reporter, Katarzyna Pruszkiewicz, spent six months this year working at Cat@Net, which describes itself as an “ePR agency comprising specialists who build a positive image of companies, private individuals and public institutions – mostly in social media.”.
Pruszkiewicz’s first task when she joined the company was to set up a social media avatar for sharing “social and political content” with the aim of attracting 500 followers.
“The aim is to build credibility with people from both sides of the political divide. Once you have won someone’s trust by reflecting their own views back at them, you are in a position to influence them,” said Wojciech Cieśla, who oversaw the investigation in collaboration with Investigate Europe, a consortium of European investigative reporters.
Bob Gendler:
The main thing I discovered was that the snippets.db database file in the Suggestions folder stored my emails. And on top of that, I found that it stored my S/MIME encrypted emails completely UNENCRYPTED. Even with Siri disabled on the Mac, it still stores unencrypted messages in this database! […]
[…] This completely defeats the purpose of utilizing and sending an encrypted email. […]
Another database, entities.db, stores records of people’s names, email, and phone numbers you’ve corresponded with. Although the phone number may not be in your contact list, data from emails such as signature blocks and forward information are stored. It’s like an address book built for you. This could be touchy, as it may allow quick and easy access to some potentially sensitive information.
Bob mentions a few fixes you should definitely check out if you’re using encrypted email.
It’s been 100 days since I’ve alerted Apple, we’ve seen a security update to macOS Sierra 10.12, security updates to macOS High Sierra 10.13, Supplemental Updates to macOS Mojave 10.14, a security update to macOS Mojave 10.14, macOS Catalina 10.15.0 released, Supplemental Update to 10.15.0, and 10.15.1 release.
For a company that prides itself on security and privacy, the lack of attention to detail on an issue like this completely and totally surprises me.
Sadly, I am still not surprised that they react selectively to security issues. This problem hasn’t been fixed in years and it appears that not much has changed.
Simon Alvarez, writing for Teslarati:
The Model 3, for example, was initially announced to have a 0-60 mph time of “less than 6 seconds” during its unveiling event. Even the vehicle’s “slowest” trim, the Standard Range variant that’s available off-menu, has a 0-60 mph time of 5.6 seconds. That’s a hair faster than the BMW 730d M-Sport.
Why would you compare a Model 3, which is roughly the equivalent of a BMW 3-series, to a 7-series, which is a full two size classes higher? Similarly, the Model S was often compared to the Audi A8, Merc S-class and BMW 7-series, while it should have been compared to the A6 or A7, E-class, and 5-series.
Teslas are really interesting cars and what they have done so far is nothing short of amazing, but all the fanboyism is really putting me off.
Rick Osterloh, Senior Vice President, Devices & Services at Google:
Today, we’re announcing that Google has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Fitbit, a leading wearables brand.
Meanwhile, Fitbit put out a press release which includes this statement:
Consumer trust is paramount to Fitbit. Strong privacy and security guidelines have been part of Fitbit’s DNA since day one, and this will not change. Fitbit will continue to put users in control of their data and will remain transparent about the data it collects and why. The company never sells personal information, and Fitbit health and wellness data will not be used for Google ads.
And yet they just sold all of their user’s personal information to Google.
That was a good weekend.
Shot with Sony A7R II + Zeiss ZF 100 mm f/2 Makro-Planer T*: f/2, 1/5000 s, ISO 100.
This version is still buggy as hell, but most things are a lot better now. Also, it adds AirPods Pro support.
iOS 13.1.3 (Build 17A878) for…
From ‘About Safari & Privacy’ in iOSes Safari Settings:
When Fraudulent Website Warning is enabled, Safari will display a warning if the website you are visiting is a suspected phishing website. Phishing is a fraudulent attempt to steal your personal information, such as usernames, passwords and other account information. A fraudulent website masquerades as a legitimate one, such as a bank, financial institution or email service provider. Before visiting a website, Safari may send information calculated from the website address to Google Safe Browsing and Tencent Safe Browsing to check if the website is fraudulent. These safe browsing providers may also log your IP address.
John Gruber, for Daring Fireball:
The question is: Why do business in China if this is the type of shit they pull?
Money. And this is despite Tim Cook’s outburst in 2014:
“We do things for other reasons than a profit motive, we do things because they are right and just,” Mr Cook growled. Whether in human rights, renewable energy or accessibility for people with special needs, “I don’t think about the bloody ROI,” Mr Cook said, in the same stern, uncompromising tone that Apple employees hope they never have to hear. “Just to be very straightforward with you, if that’s a hard line for you … then you should get out of the stock.”
It seems that it all depends on how large that profit motive is.
Shame on Apple for catering to the Chinese government. At this point, the company needs something akin to the recent #BlizzardBoycott.
Tyler Hall:
[…] nonetheless, this is the first-run experience I was greeted to this afternoon after upgrading to Catalina.
What the hell were they thinking‽
Screenshot: Tyler Hall
While it might be a minor security and bugfix update, it’s worth installing this ASAP.
Brent Lang, for Variety:
After briefly breaking up, Sony Pictures and Marvel have found a way to get back in the Spider-Man business together.
On Friday, the two companies jointly announced that MarvelStudios and its president, Kevin Feige, will produce the third film in the “Spider-Man: Homecoming” series. It will once again feature Tom Holland reprising his role as the titular hero. The rumor mill roared back to life this week with hints that the two companies were close to brokering a new agreement.
This is great news! I really like what they’ve done with the character and Tom Holland was probably the best actor for the job.
iOS 13.1 seems to be pretty stable for me, both on iPhone and iPad, with a few small glitches here and there. Ultimately, this is the first iOS 13.x update you should install! And make sure to check out all the new Shortcuts automation features.
See download links and full changelogs below →
iOS 13.0 is very buggy for some people. If you’re not in a rush, wait until tomorrow for iOS 13.1 to come out of beta.
Nilay Patel, for The Verge:
[…] the iPhone 11 Pro cameras are an enormous improvement over the XS, and they beat the Pixel and Samsung’s Galaxy Note 10 Plus in most of our side-by-side comparisons. In fact, I think the iPhone 11 Pro is the best smartphone camera on the market right now.
Make sure to take a good look at all of Nilay’s samples. While the year-old Pixel 3 indeed has a lot less detail, especially in Night Sight mode, I do like the look of many of the Note 10 photos more. Their post-processing system still needs more work but Samsung really is in point with their cameras recently.
From my conversations with Apple, semantic rendering basically goes like this:
- The iPhone starts taking photos to a buffer the instant you open the camera app. So by the time you actually press the shutter button, it’s captured four underexposed frames and the photo you want. Then it grabs one overexposed frame. (This is all basically the same as the iPhone XS and the Pixel 3, except the Pixel doesn’t grab that overexposed frame.)
- Smart HDR looks for things in the photos it understands: the sky, faces, hair, facial hair, things like that.
- Then it uses the additional detail from the underexposed and overexposed frames to selectively process those areas of the image: hair gets sharpened, the sky gets de-noised but not sharpened, faces get relighted to make them look more even, and facial hair gets sharpened up.
- Smart HDR is also now less aggressive with highlights and shadows. Highlights on faces aren’t corrected as aggressively as before because those highlights make photos look more natural, but other highlights and shadows are corrected to regain detail.
- The whole image gets saved and shows up in your camera roll.
- This all happens instantly every time you take a photo.
I wasn’t a fan of Smart HDR on the XS and I actually preferred the look of the iPhone Xs shots when shooting backlit subjects — they weren’t as flat or dull.
The only place where I truly missed 3D Touch was the keyboard: you could press down anywhere on the keyboard to move the cursor around on the XS. With Haptic Touch, you press and hold on the spacebar.
I am going to miss this a lot. I tried using the Spacebar method and it’s going to take a while to get used to it.
Matthew Panzarino, for TechCrunch, details how Direct Transfer works and what it’s limitations are:
Much of the iPhone 11 Pro’s setup process has remained the same over the years, but Apple has added one new feature worth mentioning: Direct Transfer. This option during setup sits, philosophically, between restoring from a backup made on a local Mac and restoring from an iCloud backup.
Direct Transfer is designed to help users transfer their information directly from one device to another using a direct peer-to-peer connection between the two devices. Specifically, it uses Apple Wireless Direct Link (AWDL), which also powers AirDrop and AirPlay. The transfer is initiated using a particle cloud link similar to the one you see setting up Apple Watch. Once it’s initiated, your old iPhone and new iPhone will be out of commission for up to two to three hours, depending on how much information you’re transferring.
The data is encrypted in transit. Information directly transferred includes Messages history, full resolution photos that are already stored on your phone and any app data attached to installed apps. The apps themselves are not transferred because Apple’s app signing procedure locks apps to a device, so they must be (automatically) re-dowloaded from the App Store, a process that begins once the Direct Transfer is complete. This also ensures that you’re getting the appropriate version of the app.
Once you’ve done the transfer, the data on your phone is then “rationalized” with iCloud. This helps in cases where you have multiple devices and one of those other devices could have been making changes in the cloud that now need to be updated on the device.
Apple noted that Direct Transfer is good for a few kinds of people:
- People without an iCloud backup
- People who have not backed up in a while
- People in countries where internet speeds are not broadly strong, like China
- People who don’t mind waiting longer initially for a “more complete” restore
Basically what you’ve got here is a choice between having your iPhone “ready” immediately for basic functionality (iCloud backup restore) and waiting a bit longer to have far more of your personal data accessible from the start, without waiting for iCloud downloads of original photos, Messages history, etc.
Direct Transfer also does not transfer Face ID or Touch ID settings, Apple Pay information or Mail Data, aside from usernames and passwords.
After iPhone Migration is complete, the Messages content from the device will be reconciled with the Messages content in iCloud to ensure they are in sync. The same is true for Photos stored in iCloud.
My plan was to make a full iTunes backup (under MacOS Mojave) and then restore it to the iPhone 11 Pro, which I would then upgrade to iOS 13.1 beta (13.0 is buggy), but I’m worried iTunes won’t like iOS 13.
Oh, about that improved Face ID angle — I saw, maybe, a sliiiiiiight improvement, if any. But not that much. A few degrees? Sometimes? Hard to say. I will be interested to see what other reviewers found. Maybe my face sucks.
I was hoping for a distinctly wider Face ID, even wider than the system on the iPad Pro.
On a tripod or another stationary object, Night Mode will automatically extend up to a 10-second exposure. This allows for some great night photography effects, like light painting or trailing.
Now this is a first! I’ll be extremely interested to test this out.
We are truly in a golden age for taking pictures of dark shit with phone cameras.
I chortled when I read this.
John Gruber, on Daring Fireball:
I keep mentioning that the iPhone 11 Pro has a three-camera system and the iPhone 11 a dual-camera system. And I’ll mention that again. But what’s essential to understand is that you don’t need to know that the iPhone 11 camera systems consist of two or three discrete cameras. From the user’s perspective, they look and feel like a single camera with multiple zoom levels […]
This works for 720p and 1080p at frame rates up to 60 FPS, and for 4K at 24 and 30 FPS. The exception is 4K 60 FPS — when shooting 4K 60 FPS, once you start recording, you’re stuck with the lens you started with.
This is one of the main reasons I decided to upgrade from my XS to the 11 Pro and while I wish everything worked at 4K and 60 fps, it’s not that big of a deal.
Another bit of magic. There are two new options in Settings → Camera: “Photos Capture Outside the Frame” (off by default) and “Videos Capture Outside the Frame” (on by default). When these options are turned on, when you shoot with the 1x or 2x lenses (wide or telephoto), the Camera app will use the next widest lens to capture additional footage outside the frame of the lens you’re shooting with. In post, this allows you to rotate the photo or video — typically, to fix a crooked horizon — without cropping. This seems to be, unfortunately, a bit buggy in iOS 13.0, but when it works, it’s amazing. At some point when Apple has more confidence in this feature, I expect it to be on by default for both video and photos.
Now this is something which I am excited to test. I wonder if it’s already fixed in the betas of iOS 13.1.
The new SF Camera font is delightful. Literally no one is going to buy an iPhone 11 just to get a slightly more industrial-looking font in the Camera app, but it’s a nice bonus. Update: OK, OK, we all know there’s at least one person who might buy an iPhone 11 just to get the new SF Camera font.
I’m actually disappointed John didn’t go into greater detail on the new SF Camera font — I was secretly hoping it would have a whole section in his review.
I was actually not planning on upgrading from my iPhone XS this year but there are two features which got me hooked. I’m not really into the ultra wide 13 mm lens — I would still prefer a proper tele in the 70-100 mm range — but the new video features, including the ability to record from two lenses simultaneously (via Filmic Pro) and to the possibility of continuously zooming between all three while recording, are what made my mind up.
I had a white X and it was great at masking all my fingerprints. Unfortunately, I decided to get a Space Grey XS and discovered that the lens is an absolute lint magnet (I don’t use a case and I didn’t even notice the lint on my X) so I’ll be going back to white again. Additionally, I love the look of the polished stainless steel case around the glass — it reminds me of high quality mechanical watch cases.
A little over 3 hours to go…
Apple:
Google’s post, issued six months after iOS patches were released, creates the false impression of “mass exploitation” to “monitor the private activities of entire populations in real time,” stoking fear among all iPhone users that their devices had been compromised. This was never the case.
Second, all evidence indicates that these website attacks were only operational for a brief period, roughly two months, not “two years” as Google implies. We fixed the vulnerabilities in question in February — working extremely quickly to resolve the issue just 10 days after we learned about it. When Google approached us, we were already in the process of fixing the exploited bugs.
We now have two sides to the story. Where does the truth lie?
RAMA WORKS:
All M60-A SEQ2 units have been machined. They are now off to be enamel filled on the back-weight and then packaged – this will take around 2 weeks. They will then be freighted to our warehouse for final packaging, packing and shipment!
I have a Moon Stealth pre-ordered. I’m actually more excited about this keyboard than the new iPhones!
John Gruber, on Daring Fireball:
I use the 2x “telephoto” lens on my XS, and perhaps you do too. I particularly enjoy the superior Portrait Mode experience it affords. And I look forward to using the much-rumored wider-angled third lens on the new Pro iPhones. But I’m a photography enthusiast, and the vast majority of iPhone owners are not. Every iPhone owner actually benefits from better optics when they do “zoom in” for a photo using an iPhone with a 2x lens, but I don’t think an extra camera lens feels worth a $250 premium to most of them.
I went through my Photos library to see how many photos I took with the 26/28 mm vs. the 52/56 mm lens (they changed the focal length in the XS from 28/56 mm to 26/52 mm, if I recall correctly). Surprisingly, it’s almost exactly 50/50.
At this point, I’d love to see 26 mm, 52 mm, and 85 mm. I guess if Apple were to add a true telephoto lens, they’d aim for a 78 mm field of view (3x 26 mm), but I’m pretty sure they’ll include an ultrawide on the new iPhones 11 Pro in the 16 mm range. I’d probably prefer just a 26 mm and 78 mm. They’ll get there eventually, when they figure out the optics side of things. Or so I hope.
Samuel Axon, for Ars Technica:
In my case, the formative glory days were the 1980s and early ’90s, and the platform was MS-DOS. And while I did play popular commercial releases from publishers like Apogee and Epic, I mostly played shareware releases. Today, we’re going to look at some gems of that lost era.
I love reading about the games I grew up with but there are a lot on this particular list I never encountered, though I vividly remember EGA Trek.
And the nostalgia sets in…
Lot’s of safety/security/privacy stuff in these so make sure to install them as soon as possible.
Ever since I stopped using Photoshop CC (opening a simple export dialogue window can take a few seconds instead of being instantaneous!), I have had one major gripe with Affinity Photo — it’s inability to remember the last used settings on the Resize Canvas tool. Today I finally fixed it with Keyboard Maestro and I don’t know why I didn’t do this earlier.
I have tried using an external keyboard with an iPad since 2010 and while it is possible, it’s nowhere near as good as on MacOS. I have tried various keyboards over the years, including Apple Wireless Keyboards, Magic Keyboards, third-party keyboards, but I am currently using a mechanical Doro67, which is fully user-programmable, connected via USB-C.
Below are some immediate gripes and comments I have regarding external keyboard implementation in the current beta of iPadOS 13:
Cmd + Tab into an app, e.g. into Ulysses from Safari, I can immediately continue writing where I left off. The keyboard is active and the cursor is waiting for input. At other times it is not. There is no key that I can press to resume writing without first physically touching the screen with my finger.Cmd + Tabbing into Safari, sometimes everything works as intended and I can use the Cmd + L shortcut to input the address I want to open or Control + Tab to the Tab I need. I can then use the arrows, PgUp, PgDn or Spacebar keys to navigate webpages. Unfortunately, sometimes iPadOS and/or Safari behave as if there is no keyboard connected and I have to touch the screen to make it active again.Cmd key is stuck, especially after quickly Cmd + Tabbing through your list of previously used apps.Alt/Option + Shift + Left/Right Arrow to select text in e.g. Ulysses, the selection stops at the end of a word, omitting the space and/or punctuation marks after the word. When doing the same thing in Safari (editing text in WordPress), the word and the space behind it are selected. If there’s a comma or full stop after a word, and then a space, those get selected automatically too. This is inconsistent and Safari’s implementation is wrong. Perhaps this has something to do with WordPress and is not Safari’s fault but I don’t know that.Cmd + right arrow will move the cursor to the end of the word in Ulysses (correct) or to the beginning of the next word in Safari (wrong).Fn + Arrows don’t work either. Curiously, Safari is fine.Control + Cmd + Space, to add arrows, etc. when needed. There is no way (that I know of) to do this under iOS/iPadOS (the emoji keyboard doesn’t have all of the symbols that I use, e.g. the arrow I used below).Control + Space shortcut to switch between your languages — just hold Control and tap the Spacebar to cycle between them.Keyboard support has been getting better over the years but it’s getting there at a glacial pace and is still far behind MacOS. I really hope they focus more on it in the future, perhaps even before iPadOS 13.0 rolls out this Autumn.
Photo: 11-inch iPad Pro with a Vortex Race 3.
Joe Pettersson:
I saw a tweet asking why sometimes when you unsubscribe from an email list it says it can ‘take a few days’. Buckle up, as I have a RIDICULOUS story about this happening in The Enterprise™️…
You have to read this thread.
Paul Mozur, reporting for The New York Times:
The police officers wrestled with Colin Cheung in an unmarked car. They needed his face.
They grabbed his jaw to force his head in front of his iPhone. They slapped his face. They shouted, “Wake up!” They pried open his eyes. It all failed: Mr. Cheung had disabled his phone’s facial-recognition login with a quick button mash as soon as they grabbed him.
Apple is not always on point but their implementations of Touch ID and Face ID are spot on.