iPhone iBoot Source Code Gets Posted On Github →

February 8, 2018 · 15:22

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, writing for Motherboard:

Someone just posted what experts say is the source code for a core component of the iPhone’s operating system on GitHub, which could pave the way for hackers and security researchers to find vulnerabilities in iOS and make iPhone jailbreaks easier to achieve.

The GitHub code is labeled “iBoot,” which is the part of iOS that is responsible for ensuring a trusted boot of the operating system. In other words, it’s the program that loads iOS, the very first process that runs when you turn on your iPhone. It loads and verifies the kernel is properly signed by Apple and then executes it—it’s like the iPhone’s BIOS.

The code says it’s for iOS 9, an older version of the operating system, but portions of it are likely to still be used in iOS 11.

Apple has already filed a copyright takedown request with GitHub, which resulted in the code being removed, but that won’t help much — the code is out in the wild.

FullRoom →

February 8, 2018 · 08:58

Matthew Panzarino, in probably the best edit I have ever seen:

I apparently completely invented a term — ‘FullRoom’ — for this feature that Apple says is not actually the name for this feature. I have no idea why FullRoom was in my notes, but it’s a figment of my imagination, not an actual thing. Apologies.

My Photography (35) — The Roads in Lapland, Finland, 2017

February 6, 2018 · 08:00

I took the iPhone X to Finland and got a few good shots from it, despite the extreme cold (it did not turn off in temperatures below -20° C). The one above is from our trip back to the airport in Rovaniemi, taken an hour or so after sunrise, with the 56 mm lens. I didn’t shoot RAW — this is a JPG straight from the iPhone with the Photos’ Vivid filter applied.

Shot with iPhone X @ 56 mm: f/2.4, 1/883 s, ISO 16.

Intel Vaunt — Normal Smart Glasses →

February 5, 2018 · 16:31

Dieter Bohn, for The Verge:

At its core, Vaunt is simply a system for displaying a small heads-up style display in your peripheral vision. It can show you simple messages like directions or notifications. It works over Bluetooth with either an Android phone or an iPhone much in the same way your smartwatch does, taking commands from an app that runs in the background to control it.

One might say that this amounts to little more than a Pebble smartwatch on your face, especially because Vonshak designed Pebble’s excellent timeline interface before the company was acquired and shut down. But Intel has grand plans for the Vaunt’s tiny display.

This is a big first step, but the wait for all the cool stuff will probably take more than I would like.

Movies have already shown us what we imagine is possible, and while I’m sure there’s a lot more usable information that we can use down the road, apart from displaying our most hated targets, things will get interesting once our own eyes will be either swapped out for augmented or computerised versions, or replaced completely with cameras.

Unfortunately, I probably won’t be around to see that happen, so please hurry up!

This Is Why Uma Thurman Is Angry →

February 5, 2018 · 14:14

Maureen Dowd:

Yes, Uma Thurman is mad.

She has been raped. She has been sexually assaulted. She has been mangled in hot steel. She has been betrayed and gaslighted by those she trusted.

And we’re not talking about her role as the blood-spattered bride in “Kill Bill.” We’re talking about a world that is just as cutthroat, amoral, vindictive and misogynistic as any Quentin Tarantino hellscape.

We’re talking about Hollywood, where even an avenging angel has a hard time getting respect, much less bloody satisfaction.

My Photography (34) — Sunset in Lapland, Finland, 2017

February 5, 2018 · 08:00

I spent a few days in Lapland, Finland towards the end of 2017 — I believe this was the third time I was there now — and I still can’t get used to the fact that the sun barely rises above the horizon in the winter. If there was less cloud cover, it would light up the sky like in the shot above all day long (a few hours in this case).

Shot with Sony A7R II + FE 28 mm f/2: f/8, 1/60 s, ISO 250.

Bethany Bongiorno Talks About the the First iPad →

February 4, 2018 · 12:08

In a series of eight tweets, Bethany shared some interesting behind the scenes tidbits about the first iPad launch and other events surrounding it. One stood out to me:

(4) at one point steve wanted to turn UIKit elements orange. not just any orange, he wanted a particular orange from the button on a certain old sony remote. we got a bunch of remotes from sony with orange buttons to try and find the right one. in the end, steve hated it.

This sounds just like Steve Jobs — working to get every small detail perfect, but recognising a bad idea when he saw the final implementation.

Apple Working on Updated Macs →

February 3, 2018 · 16:31

Mark Gurman, for Bloomberg:

Apple is working on at least three updated Mac models with custom co-processors for release as soon as this year, including updated laptops and a new desktop, according to a person familiar with the plan.

We have the T1 in the Touch Bar MacBooks with Touch ID, the T2 in the iMac Pro, and I can’t help but wonder if the the next generation chip (or perhaps the current T2) will introduce Face ID to macOS. I have been living with this tech on my iPhone X for w few months now and it’s so much better than Touch ID, especially during winter, when I often have gloves on. Granted, I wouldn’t have this problem with a Mac, but by constantly and transparently authorising the user whenever a password is required, even when the Mac is already unlocked, should make things much more secure.

Backblaze Hard Drive Stats For 2017 →

February 3, 2018 · 16:21

Andy Klein:

Beginning in April 2013, Backblaze has recorded and saved daily hard drive statistics from the drives in our data centers. Each entry consists of the date, manufacturer, model, serial number, status (operational or failed), and all of the SMART attributes reported by that drive. As of the end of 2017, there are about 88 million entries totaling 23 GB of data. You can download this data from our website if you want to do your own research, but for starters here’s what we found.

Paywalls Make Content Better →

February 3, 2018 · 16:02

Eric Johnson, writing for Recode:

At the New Yorker, that shift in incentives changed not just how readers thought about the content, but how everyone — including writers and editors — did their jobs.

“[Before the paywall] I would interview writers for jobs and they’d say, ‘How do I know that you guys are going to stick to your ideals?’” Thompson said. “And the answer would be, ‘Well, trust me! It’s the New Yorker, we’ve been around for 90 years, of course we’re going to stick to our ideals.’”

“But actually, the argument works better when it’s, ‘Trust me, we’ve been around for 90 years and our business model depends on us doing that!’” he added. “It became easier to recruit.”

I completely agree. We had part of iMagazine paywalled a year or so ago, and I (extremely subjectively) loved what everyone was writing about. I also think I tried harder when writing myself. Furthermore, the writing also seemed to be much more personal.

Apple Financial Results — FY Q1 2018 →

February 2, 2018 · 10:27

Apple PR:

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2018 first quarter ended December 30, 2017. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $88.3 billion, an increase of 13 percent from the year-ago quarter and an all-time record, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $3.89, up 16 percent, also an all-time record. International sales accounted for 65 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Apple sold:

  • 77.3 million iPhones (78.29 million in FY Q1 2017)
  • 13.2 million iPads (13 million in FY Q1 2017)
  • 5.1 million Macs (5.374 million in FY Q1 2017)

Apple Delays iOS Features to Focus on Reliability and Performance →

January 31, 2018 · 12:34

Ina Fried, writing for Axios:

On the cutting board: Pushed into 2019 are a number of features including a refresh of the home screen and in-car user interfaces, improvements to core apps like mail and updates to the picture-taking, photo editing and sharing experiences.

What made it: There will be some new features, of course, including improvements in augmented reality, digital health and parental controls. In addition, Apple is prioritizing work to make iPhones more responsive and less prone to cause customer support issues.

This is a very good decision. iOS and macOS are currently very buggy and they are in need of care and polishing.

Also, I have not found a single reason to use AR yet.

iPhone X — Picking Up Scratches →

January 31, 2018 · 12:30

Stephen Hackett, on 512 Pixels:

Unfortunately, the stainless steel band isn’t the only thing that has picked up scratches on my iPhone X. This phone has picked up scratches across the front and back glass in a way no previous iPhone I have owned has. None of them are particularly long, but they are deep enough that I can catch them with the corner of a finger nail if I try.

I have now heard numerous reports about people having scratches on the band, front, and back glass. The strange thing is that I use my iPhone X caseless (white model) and it still looks pristine. I carry it in my jeans every day and use it in a vent mount in my car. Granted, I don’t throw it around and I am careful, but so were the people who have scratches now.

January 29, 2018 · 23:00

If you’re not looking for Siri or don’t use HomeKit, there’s a vast array of speakers, which support AirPlay, that could can purchase, from the likes of Devialet, Bose, Bowers & Wilkins, Bang & Olufsen, and more. We’ll need to wait for AirPlay 2 support from competing products (the HomePod doesn’t have it either at the moment), but for people who don’t need a digital assistant and want more versatility (e.g. Spotify), there are many interesting options out there that range from 100 to many thousands of dollars.

I’m mentioning this because ‘everyone’ keeps on saying how the HomePod doesn’t really compete with Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home, but they fail to include any comparisons or even acknowledge the existence of more traditional solutions to listening to music or audio.

Apple HomePod First Listen: Not Enough Punch for the Price →

January 29, 2018 · 11:50

Jeremy White, for Wired:

[…] on first impressions while the HomePod looks great, is super simple to set up and is undoubtedly powerful, the sound produced does not immediately match up to its £319 price tag.

This is in contrast to what many others are saying, that the HomePod delivers audio quality, which exceeds much more expensive setups.

One Hour With Apple’s New Homepod →

January 25, 2018 · 15:07

Madeline Buxton, writing for Refinery29:

However, there are some areas where HomePod is limiting. Even though you can use AirPlay to stream music from any service through HomePod, you’ll only get all the speaker’s benefits if you subscribe to Apple Music (plans start at $4.99 per month for students and $9.99 per month for individuals). For example, Siri won’t be able to tell you detailed information about a song or album unless that song is playing through Apple Music.

I strongly believe Apple should have included an Apple Music subscription for free with every HomePod — for the lifetime of the device preferably, but I’m sure a free year wouldn’t go amiss for many. This would at least quell some of the complaints, which we know will surface.

Secondly, although everyone in your apartment will be able to use the speaker, only the person who sets up HomePod on their iCloud account will be able to send texts, set up reminders, and get calendar notifications via voice commands. Google Home and Amazon Echo, meanwhile, can recognize different voices and provide personalized content accordingly.

Support for multiple users should work on Day 1 and there is no excuse for the lack of this feature.

Fortunately, HomePod also delivers where it counts: The sound. When I listened to the speaker next to Google Home Max, the latest Amazon Echo, and Sonos One, the vocals were consistently crisper and clearer on HomePod. The pluck of guitar strings pops, and bass notes have the robust thump-thump you want from them.

This is the one aspect of the HomePod, which I don’t doubt — I’m sure the sound quality will be more than good.

HomePod Will Support Lossless FLAC Audio Playback →

January 25, 2018 · 10:39

Peter Cao, writing for 9to5Mac:

HomePod specs are indicating that Apple is serious about the audio quality on the device. Today, we’ve discovered that the smart speaker will support FLAC out of the box.

For those unaware, FLAC is a lossless format, meaning there is no compression whatsoever and recordings are kept as is. Not to be confused with lossy, which is used by most music streaming services such as Spotify or Apple Music and is usually compressed to 256 or 320Kbps.

How would this work, since the HomePod supposedly will not have access to music in our iTunes Libraries, which wasn’t purchased via the iTunes Store? Siri seems to be out of the question.

[…] AirPlay 2 will be able to transmit lossless audio to the Apple-branded smart speaker.

Can we store FLAC on our iOS devices in Apple Music on iOS 11.3? Or do we need to stream from a Mac, which means we would have to control playback from there?

Don’t Be Trustworthy Honourable Open Evil →

January 25, 2018 · 10:27

Jean Marc Manach, for The Intercept:

Since at least May 2016, the surveillance agency had featured honesty as the first of four “core values” listed on NSA.gov, alongside “respect for the law,” “integrity,” and “transparency.” The agency vowed on the site to “be truthful with each other.”

On January 12, however, the NSA removed the mission statement page – which can still be viewed through the Internet Archive – and replaced it with a new version. Now, the parts about honesty and the pledge to be truthful have been deleted. The agency’s new top value is “commitment to service,” which it says means “excellence in the pursuit of our critical mission.”

Those are not the only striking alterations. In its old core values, the NSA explained that it would strive to be deserving of the “great trust” placed in it by national leaders and American citizens. It said that it would “honor the public’s need for openness.” But those phrases are now gone; all references to “trust,” “honor,” and “openness” have disappeared.

January 23, 2018 · 21:50

I often stream music from my iPhone to a Bluetooth speaker when at home. I keep on wondering if the HomePod, since it should have access to my account, will takeover the AirPlay stream if I want it to. That would be preferable — if I leave, the HomePod can just keep on playing if my family is home.

What Happens to the Traffic You Send to the App Store? →

January 19, 2018 · 10:42

From Information Architects’ blog:

No matter how good your product is, you need to be found. We send all our traffic to the stores. In return, we get higher sales and higher rankings. Recently, some of the numbers left us guessing. The more traffic we get the higher the sales. But, somehow, our ranking suffers.

This insightful post from iA details surprising behaviour from the App Store algorithms. They also mention skipping the Windows Store for their Writer début on Windows 10, which I’m guessing signifies that they’re considering leaving the Mac App Store. While developers have no such choice in terms of iOS apps, I’ve been recently reconsidering my stance that this is a good thing. Perhaps the option to install apps directly from trustworthy developers would be a net win, even at the risk of less security for less tech-savvy users…

Tim Cook: ‘I Don’t Think a Lot of Users Were Paying Attention’ →

January 19, 2018 · 10:15

Zunaira Zaki:

When asked about the [battery] incident, Cook apologized to Apple users who believe that the company deliberately slowed the processors down in older models.

He hypothesized that when Apple released software updates to slow down older devices in older models to keep up with the new features, people may not have been “paying attention” when they explained what it was.

“Maybe we weren’t clear,” he said. “We deeply apologize for anyone who thinks we have some other kind of motivation.”

We were paying attention. His statement isn’t just bad PR, it’s unacceptable. Watch the video on ABC to hear his full statement.

January 16, 2018 · 12:24

My sister ordered this official (and priceless) Star Wars doormat for me over one and a half years ago. It finally arrived last week!

I love it!

Tea if by Sea, Cha if by Land: Why the World Only Has Two Words for Tea →

January 14, 2018 · 01:49

Nikhil Sonnad, writing for Quartz:

With a few minor exceptions, there are really only two ways to say “tea” in the world. One is like the English term—té in Spanish and tee in Afrikaans are two examples. The other is some variation of cha, like chay in Hindi.

Both versions come from China. How they spread around the world offers a clear picture of how globalization worked before “globalization” was a term anybody used. The words that sound like “cha” spread across land, along the Silk Road. The “tea”-like phrasings spread over water, by Dutch traders bringing the novel leaves back to Europe.

Seems we’re one of the few exceptions — it’s called “herbata” in Poland and I now wish it wasn’t.

FBI Hacker Says Apple Are ‘Jerks’ and ‘Evil Geniuses’ for Encrypting iPhones →

January 12, 2018 · 10:29

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, writing for Motherboard:

On Wednesday, at the the International Conference on Cyber Security in Manhattan, FBI forensic expert Stephen Flatley lashed out at Apple, calling the company “jerks,” and “evil geniuses” for making his and his colleagues’ investigative work harder. For example, Flatley complained that Apple recently made password guesses slower, changing the hash iterations from 10,000 to 10,000,000.

I’m glad his work is made harder and I can’t help but wonder what smartphone he uses privately and if he would want it to be unencrypted.