So the file system key (which the FBI claims it is scared will be destroyed by the phone’s auto-erase security protection) is stored in the Effaceable Storage on the iPhone in the “NAND” flash memory. All the FBI needs to do to avoid any irreversible auto erase is simple to copy that flash memory (which includes the Effaceable Storage) before it tries 10 passcode attempts. It can then re-try indefinitely, because it can restore the NAND flash memory from its backup copy.
Edward Snowden publicly drew attention to this argument on a conference call yesterday, citing it as ‘one example’ method to hack the iPhone 5c’s data. If this is technically possible, why is Apple not flagging this up for its arguments. Tim Cook and co have repeatedly said they know no other way to get into this phone. It is in their interest to find other ways to end the San Bernardino debacle and they have sworn under oath to tell the truth as well. I find it very hard to believe that Apple is ignorant to fruitful alternative strategies.
By the way, if this is true, then Apple can only see this a security vulnerability. If it works today, it won’t work with future hardware. The underlying argument over encryption and government data access rights is not subsided by this revelation, if validated.
There are apps like iCloud Drive which I’d like to see become a whole lot more like Dropbox, and Game Center which I’d like to see become a setting and not just a standalone app. Then there’s always the dream of being able to remove some of the built-in apps … maybe one day.
The iPad Pro, in general, needs a lot of work on spacing with full-screen apps like Messages and Mail, which use way too much white space currently. And there’s the need for universal landscape support on the Plus-sized iPhones, Split View for every stock app on the latest iPads, and the other low-hanging fruit that I mentioned at the opening, but each of these relatively small updates would advance the platform greatly for me.
Both iPhone 6s 3D Touch and iPad Pro multitasking are under-utilised by Apple’s stock apps with current versions of iOS 9. My philosophy is that Apple’s apps should be the best iOS citizens possible. It doesn’t matter if they are used by a lot of people or not, they are the standard by which other apps should have to meet.
I mean, look at Compass. That app is a prime candidate for a third-party App Store offering, and yet Apple made its own app incredibly beautiful and surprisingly functional. The spirit level UI is one of my favourite parts of iOS and a signature design element of the flat aesthetic. Every Apple stock app should have Compass’ attention to detail and should show off the capabilities of the system wherever possible. Hence, the lack of 3D Touch shortcuts and incomplete support for iPad multitasking in iOS 9 was very disappointing.
I am sad that this is the case, but it is. iOS 9.3 takes some steps to rectify obvious holes in 3D Touch support with the addition of quick actions for many more stock apps. I hope iOS 10 focuses on iPad Pro as a real member of the iOS line, not some awkward half cousin. This means complete split screen multitasking support for all stock apps (Settings, come on!) as well as a pass over the entire OS to clean up rough edges, which were clearly not designed for a 12 inch canvas.
If Apple doesn’t want to commit engineers to continue developing these apps for every device type Apple sells, then fine. Delete them from the OS in that case. End of story.
But there’s an exception, a loophole, in Apple’s unyielding stance on privacy and encryption: its iCloud service, and, specifically, iCloud Backup — the convenient and comforting automatic way in which iPhones and iPads back themselves up to the cloud daily.
Unlike the iPhone hardware itself, Apple retains the ability to decrypt most of what’s in an iCloud backup. And the company on occasion turns the contents of iCloud backups over to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies when a proper legal warrant or court order is presented.
This is correct, at least with current Apple devices and operating systems. I think the iCloud loophole has been overlooked in the current Apple/FBI court proceedings. The FBI seems to conduct its current business with the foregone belief that the ability to retrieve and decrypt iCloud backups will always exist. Even Apple has helped solidify this feeling, by focusing so much on the password reset blunder that prevented more recent iCloud backups in the San Bernardino case from being available to law enforcement. I think the FBI mindset is that if Apple remains steadfast in its right to lock down the physical phone, it will at least have iCloud backups to fallback to.
No one on at the congressional hearing brought up a future scenario where iCloud backups are not decryptable. I think that’s a huge error. I have no doubt that Apple will close the iCloud loophole very soon, probably with iOS 10. Apple is on a one-way path where it will secure and lock down anything and everything it can, in the scope of the law.
End-to-end encryption for iCloud is an inevitability and, when it happens, the FBI is going to be truly locked out of phone data. When discussing the balance of privacy and public safety, people need to keep in mind that data accessible today will almost certainly not be accessible tomorrow. There’s a huge difference between being able to retrieve some data and no data from a suspect’s phone. I don’t want new legislation to be based on the current state of technology, when it’s an evolving issue with a clear trajectory for Apple to go as private as possible.
Apple will further differentiate the next-generation 9.7-inch iPad from its predecessor by making it part of the new iPad Pro line, according to sources. Much like the MacBook Pro comes in 13-inch and 15-inch sizes, the iPad Pro will soon come in 9.7-inch and 12.9-inch variations. This trend follows Apple not calling its 12-inch MacBook a new Air despite developing the product as an apparent successor to the MacBook Air.
I think 16 GB is finally dead, so I’m guessing the new 9.7 inch Pro will start at 32 GB. The price of the 32 GB iPad Pro is $799. The price of the 64 GB iPad Air 2 is $599; Apple has never offered a 32 GB variant for the iPad Air 2. There’s a convenient gap in the price tiers for the new 32 GB Pro to fill: the $699 price point. You could argue the new Pro should start at $599 for 32 GB but the overlap of pricing is messy, in my opinion.
The ramifications of this are interesting; the new 9.7 inch tablet will be more expensive than the previous generation. It will raise the ticket price by $100 compared against the mid-range iPad Air 2. The price increases stretches to $200, if you consider that the entry-level models of new versus are priced at $499 and $699 (assuming a 16 GB 9.7 inch Pro is not sold). I see no reason for the iPad Air 2 price to fall; that model continues to sell well and keeping it steady should raise overall iPad ASP.
Instead of integrating Siri as a swipe menu akin to the Mac’s Notification Center or as a full screen view like on the iPhone and even the iPad Pro, Siri for the Mac will live in the Mac’s Menu Bar. Similar to the Spotlight magnifying glass icon for search and notifications icon for Notification Center, a Siri icon in the top right corner of the menu bar will activate the voice control feature.
Siri on the Mac will have its own pane in System Preferences and users are said to also have the option to choose a keyboard shortcut for activating the service. Like with recent versions of iOS, users will be able to enable Siri at the first startup of OS X 10.12, according to sources. If the Mac running the new OS X version is plugged into power, a “Hey Siri” command will work much like with recent iPhone and iPad models.
The mockup looks pretty in terms of how the overlay displayed but I think the Siri button in the menu bar is an annoying default. Gurman doesn’t specify, but I’m assuming it will be a default icon that can be removed (hold ⌘ and drag with the mouse, like other menu items). If it is fixed in place, like the Spotlight icon is on El Capitan … well that would really suck.
Activation through ‘Hey Siri’ or a keyboard shortcut should suffice. Note how on iOS, there is no persistent button or Siri app visible in the interface — you can only activate with voice or the Home Button long press. If Apple really does want an onscreen indicator, I think they should incorporate it into the transient Spotlight window. Although Siri and Spotlight are not the same, they do overlap a lot in functionality, so connecting the features together makes sense. It’s hard to justify two permanent fixtures in the menubar when the features share so much common ground.
Unfortunately, whether by bug or intentional design, the Pencil’s navigational prowess appears to have vanished in the iOS 9.3 public betas. With 9.3, you can no longer scroll or manipulate text; the only places the Pencil works are on canvas or when pressing digital buttons.
Normally, I don’t write about beta bugs and features, because it’s a beta: There are always bugs, and features change. But this functionality is important enough that I wanted to talk about it before Apple submits its final 9.3 release. It could be a bug, yes: But several betas in, we’ve seen fixes for Smart Connector keyboards and new features, and the Pencil remains crippled.
It’s hard to interpret this new behaviour as a bug when the interactivity hasn’t changed at all by beta 3 of Apple’s next major OS release and release notes do not acknowledge the errant behaviour as a known bug. Sadly, I think this is intentional.
It’s annoying on two levels. First, the Pencil worked pretty well as a stylus input for the iPad Pro universally. Although the feature was clearly not meant to enable a new primary input device, the Pencil was good enough at it that my human nature (laziness) meant I would use the Pencil to tap on things and scroll around instinctively, rather than readjust my grip and use traditional touch input.
Secondly, even if Apple does want to limit the Pencil going forward as a drawing-only utility the current iOS betas don’t reflect that. You can still use the Pencil for some things outside of sketching or painting — you still can tap on some things and press UI buttons. You just can’t scroll or pan. If it is intentional, it shouldn’t work at all outside of a drawing app.
It’s either desired behaviour, buggy or really buggy. I’m hoping it is the latter but with just weeks until iOS 9.3’s public release and otherwise observed stability in the seeds, I am not optimistic.
After you try to update or restore your iOS device in iTunes on your Mac or PC, you might see error 53 in iTunes and “Connect to iTunes” on your device. Error 53 appears when a device fails a security test. This test was designed to check whether Touch ID works properly before the device leaves the factory, and wasn’t intended to affect customers.
For anyone who experienced error 53, Apple has released an update to iOS 9.2.1 to allow you to successfully restore your device using iTunes on your Mac or PC. Use the steps in this article to restore and recover your device. If you believe that you paid for an out-of-warranty device replacement based on an error 53 issue, contact Apple Support to ask about reimbursement.
Crucially, if you have a non-matching aftermarket Home Button repair, Touch ID still will not work for security reasons as it cannot be successfully validated against the iPhone internal components.
I think this is a great, speedy, response from Apple that adequately addresses what people were complaining about. To make it plain, users are no longer left with a bricked phone following an aftermarket device repair.
The government is asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers — including tens of millions of American citizens — from sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals. The same engineers who built strong encryption into the iPhone to protect our users would, ironically, be ordered to weaken those protections and make our users less safe.
Tim Cook holds back no punches in this letter, you can quote every paragraph and feel Apple’s fierce stance of opposition. It’s imbued with anger in a way I haven’t seen with any previous Apple PR communication. Apple, and Tim Cook, is serious on this.
I don’t really care whether an iPhone is built to be private or not. I’m indifferent — I like the idea of privacy but I rank other features of the device above security. Right now, Apple makes choices that make iOS features worse for the sake of additional privacy. I don’t like that, but Apple has made their choice. It’s too far gone, the company can’t back down now even if it wanted too. They are committed to fight governments across the world on customer privacy, likely for years to come. Whether they succeed or not, they are firmly embroiled in a huge controversy of national security. Numerous court cases to follow.
Apple versus the world. Customers may side with Apple, but I’m not sure many other tech companies will. Google perhaps, but no other big tech company has the same incentives to attack this issue as Apple does. Long term, I think the only outcome is that Apple will have to bend to the will of government. If the governments wants a backdoor, it will get one. The reason Apple has made this letter public (with extreme urgency) is because it knows the only way for it to win is to change public opinion and force this through as a political contention.
Very special guests Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi join the show. Topics include: the new features in Apple’s upcoming OS releases (iOS 9.3 and tvOS 9.2); why Apple is expanding its public beta program for OS releases; iTunes’s monolithic design; how personally involved Eddy and Craig are in using, testing, and installing beta software; the sad decline of Duke’s men’s basketball team; and more.
Notable catch to get both Federighi and Cue on a single episode, just weeks after Federighi featured alone. You can intuitively guess most of the answers to Gruber’s questioning; anything controversial is diplomatically sidestepped by Cue or Federighi. There was an interesting commentary on iTunes however.
In response to iTunes bloat, Cue intimates that Apple has been considering what to do with their music situation for about two years. Although he outright confirms nothing in what he says, my interpretation of Cue’s words strongly suggest that Apple will soon break out iTunes into separate apps: independent apps dedicated to Music, Videos, Podcasts etcetera. Cue suggests that an iTunes update of some kind is coming in March, I would expect the big announcements on this front to come at WWDC — it will be a big crowd pleaser.
tvOS 9.2 includes new features, bug fixes, and improvements in the OS and SDK.
New features in tvOS 9.2 Beta 3 include:
Dictation support for onscreen text entry in countries where Siri is supported
Siri support for App Store search. Try saying “Search for ” or “Search for apps”
This was an obvious addition but I am really glad to see Apple iterating on the OS so quickly. They have addressed many of my complaints in just a few months since launching — tvOS 9.2 is expected to be released in March. With the latest beta, not only have they checked another feature request off the list, they’ve also done it really well. I made a quick video of the feature in action, because I think the implementation is slick. Just hold down the Siri button when interacting with a keyboard input, hinted by a cute label that appears inside the search field.
There’s some cool feedback with the visual voice meter too, which is styled differently to the voice meter used for Siri to indicate this is a different action. It looks great and works well. In general, tvOS has very high standards for UI across the system. I’ve commented many times that iOS would be better off if it borrowed inspiration from the Apple TV design team.
Perhaps it helps that tvOS is a clean slate, so every screen and component is being designed fresh. My worst parts of iOS are all stuff that dates back to earlier versions. New features are generally implemented in the flat world to a good standard.
In November, we announced that Safe Browsing would protect you from social engineering attacks - deceptive tactics that try to trick you into doing something dangerous, like installing unwanted software or revealing your personal information (for example, passwords, phone numbers, or credit cards). You may have encountered social engineering in a deceptive download button, or an image ad that falsely claims your system is out of date. Today, we’re expanding Safe Browsing protection to protect you from such deceptive embedded content, like social engineering ads.
Consistent with the social engineering policy we announced in November, embedded content (like ads) on a web page will be considered social engineering when they either:
Pretend to act, or look and feel, like a trusted entity — like your own device or browser, or the website itself.
Try to trick you into doing something you’d only do for a trusted entity — like sharing a password or calling tech support.
These kind of phishing attacks are everywhere, but typically hard to algorithmically detect as most of them are made up as images, which computers struggle to analyse. I’m happy to see Google ramping up its efforts to identify these kind of scams; I’ve been tricked into clicking through on these faux popups once or twice. Everyone has, I think. What’s sort of weird, though, is that these scams are very common on Google’s own AdSense network. Ironically, its Safe Browsing team will be flagging a lot of content that its own servers publish.
Rescind all of our “React” trademarks and applications.
Discontinue the React World program.
Release all past Content ID claims.
The concerns people have about React World are understandable, and that people see a link between that and our past video takedowns, but those were mistakes from an earlier time. It makes perfect sense for people to distrust our motives here, but we are confident that our actions will speak louder than these words moving forward.
The Fine Brothers took a battering for their bullish attempts at a YouTube licensing scheme which heavily favoured themselves. Given the backlash, the company has now cancelled the entire project. I was in agreement with the common line, that Fine Bros were being too greedy and monopolistic with their React World plans, but I don’t vilify. I think they should have kept their show trademarks, pledging to use them responsibly. There’s nothing wrong with owning your own logo.
The funny thing is, it was very likely for the highly-generic ‘React’ trademark to have been rejected by the USPTO anyway … yet it’s the main thing people were upset about.
Apple is expected to unveil new models of its iPad Air in March 2016 and production will start in the second quarter, with General Interface Solution and TPK Holding to supply touch panels, according to Taiwan-based supply chain makers.
The new 9.7-inch device will reportedly come equipped with a 4K resolution panel and up to 4GB in RAM, in addition to improved battery life.
The RAM increase is nice, a big reason why my iPad Pro feels so powerful is that apps stay in memory for such a long time. You can return to 3D games days later and they will still be frozen, ready for instantaneous resume. I would bet against the iPad Air getting a 4K screen though. For practical reasons, Apple would almost certainly pixel-double to get to 4K, for a resolution of 4096x3072. Those pixels would show a 4K video natively … but that’s about it. It doesn’t really add anything else, the iPad already has a great Retina display. Quadrupling the resolution would just result in a significant, unnecessary, hit on GPU and CPU performance to gain an almost-imperceptible improvement in display quality for users.
Neither of these improvements will reverse the course of the iPad sales decline, however. Besides 16 GB storage, tech specs are not the reason people aren’t buying iPads anymore. That responsibility lies in the software, with iOS 9 and iOS 9.3 (for education) displaying encouraging progress in this area.
You could argue that well-specced iPads are slowing iPad sales with many customers happily contented with the performance characteristics of older iPads. This isn’t a criticism — long-term customer satisfaction is preferable. I would be very upset if Apple ever holds back on its SoCs to artificially shorten the viable lifetime of a product.
Just look at this app. It’s beautiful, capable and intelligent. Beautifully drawn skeuomorphic instruments subtly integrated into a dark, flat UI. The grid of loops takes music production into a direction other than a scrolling X-axis timeline. Not only that, the icons for each grid cell represent the music that is playing. The circle shows how the loop will play out over its duration, with a line representing silence and a thick notch indicating heavy sound, it’s like a cylindrical waveform. You can see what the loop is going to do and its synced to the progress indicator 1:1. They are not mere arbitrary symbols.
There’s even a live particle effect for the Filter and Repeater adjustments. This is one screen of a deep, deep app and the same high quality bar is maintained throughout. The GarageBand team truly knocked it out of the park. This is the standard by which other professional iPad apps should be judged. Whether anyone but Apple can justify the same level of investment into iPad is a different matter.
Now, six years after launching iAd, Apple is stepping back from it. Multiple sources familiar with the company’s plans tell BuzzFeed News that Apple is getting out of the advertising-sales business and shifting to a more automated platform.
While iAd itself isn’t going anywhere, Apple’s direct involvement in the selling and creation of iAd units is ending. “It’s just not something we’re good at,” one source told BuzzFeed News. And so Apple is leaving the creation, selling, and management of iAds to the folks who do it best: the publishers.
iAd is so out of character with the rest of Apple. On the Apple Privacy page, Cook wrote a letter about Apple’s dedication to keeping user data private and secure. Yet, iAd sticks out like a sore thumb because by its nature, it can’t be that private. Cook has to dedicate a lengthy paragraph to explain the nature of iAd and its goals. It’s obviously an outlier.
Cook says the primary purpose of iAd is to help developers. If true, it needs a lot of work to actually make a difference in the space. Although the integration process is the simplest available for iOS advertising SDKs, ROI on impressions is mediocre and the iAd inventory exhibits particularly underwhelming fill rates. Transitioning completely to automatic ad sales will help that, but there will always be the tension from the rest of Apple getting in the way. The incentives of an ad network, selling users to third-parties, defies what Apple preaches in every other regard.
Apple yesterday released the first betas of iOS 9.3, watchOS 2.2 and tvOS 2.2 all packed with new features and enhancements. I’d argue these are the largest mid-cycle releases ever. I’ve compiled a quick list of my initial thoughts on the new stuff. Bullets point exist for a reason, I guess.
Night Shift is an obvious addition in the sense that it’s an obvious feature to be part of iOS, but it wasn’t obvious to expect it as part of the mid-cycle or anytime soon. Unlike a lot of others, I don’t think it is related to the recent ‘rejection’ of Flux. Night Shift is a clever pun.
For iPads managed by educational institutions, Apple is adding some kind of multi-user shared iPad login experience with 9.3. It’s limited to a handful of data types and apps, but it’s start. Perhaps, Apple will build this out fully for iOS 10 and make it available to all.
tvOS folders are hard to create and arrange. Clicking around the Home Screen is unnecessarily fiddly. This can hopefully be tuned to be more straightforward and obvious in future betas.
tvOS app switcher is bad, in much the same way that the iOS 9 switcher is bad. Screenshots overlap for no reason. The stack effect works well on iPhone and iPad — it doesn’t translate to the TV. The old UI is better.
iCloud for iBooks is what everyone has wanted since iBooks got the ability to store PDFs. PDF syncing is now easy; just add it to your bookshelf. iCloud has been key in removing data silos across the system, and iBooks was one of the remaining outliers in iOS 9. Really happy to see it included in 9.3.
You can now pair multiple Apple Watches to the same iPhone. Why? I think the Watch team should be prioritising other features that entice more people to buy their first Watch. It’s wasteful optimising for the sliver of the market who want to pair more than one watch to the same phone. I also question the battery life impact of pairing multiple watches.
More system apps support 3D Touch Quick Actions now, including Settings. Sadly, many of the icons are really drab. For example, the icon for the ‘Set Wallpaper’ action is the outline of a circle. Maybe these are placeholders for actual artwork coming in a later seed.
Podcasts is a new system app on tvOS. It seemingly prioritises audio over video shows, but I suppose the iTunes Podcasts library is much more rich in sound-only podcasts overall. The app appears well made and is quite pretty, so two thumbs up for quality. Even so, it’s a strange candidate to be a default app on Apple TV due to the subject matter.
Notes has a Password feature now, to add an additional layer of privacy to your notes. The Settings UI is pretty ugly however, in dire need of some padding between the table rows. You could also make a good argument that password-protecting apps should be an OS-level feature, not merely a part of Notes.
