No new information or interesting tidbits from this brief profile of Apple’s CEO and CDO on Vogue, but I liked this bit from Ive at the end:
“Both the hand and the machine can produce things with exquisite care or with no care at all,” says Ive. “But it’s important to remember that what was seen at one time as the most sophisticated technology eventually becomes tradition. There was a time when even the metal needle would have been seen as shocking and profoundly new.”
Big news for those who are into sharing GIFs on Twitter: the company has announced today a GIF button that will make it easy to do so.
Whenever you’re composing a Tweet or Direct Message, you can search and browse the GIF library. So if you’re looking for the perfect cat yawn or dance move to express exactly how you feel, just click the new GIF button. You can search by keyword, or browse categories of different reactions like Happy Dance, Mic Drop, or YOLO.
The new button isn’t available for everyone yet – as usual, it’ll roll out “in the coming weeks”. As Jack tweeted, it’ll show up in the “Tweetbox” (I can’t be the only one who misread that as Tweetbot at first).
In related GIF news, GIPHY is now integrated with Outlook on the web as well.
A Californian court yesterday ordered Apple to provide the FBI with a custom version of iOS that would circumvent security measures and allow the FBI to unlock the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters.
Just a short time ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook published an open letter on Apple’s website. In his letter to customers, Cook explains why Apple opposes the order and warns of the implications should Apple be forced to do what has been ordered. Cook calls for “public discussion” of the issue and notes that “we want our customers and people around the country to understand what is at stake”.
Specifically, the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation. In the wrong hands, this software — which does not exist today — would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession.
The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor. And while the government may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guarantee such control.
This is Apple at its best. Using its stature to cogently make the case for better public policy – in this case the need for encryption and standing strong against any attempt to undermine it. I would highly encourage you to read Cook’s entire letter.
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.
We can find no precedent for an American company being forced to expose its customers to a greater risk of attack. For years, cryptologists and national security experts have been warning against weakening encryption. Doing so would hurt only the well-meaning and law-abiding citizens who rely on companies like Apple to protect their data. Criminals and bad actors will still encrypt, using tools that are readily available to them.
Terrific update to Panic’s SSH client for iOS, Prompt. The new version brings iOS 9 features such as Spotlight search and 3D Touch, but, most of all, it adds Split View support on the iPad and the ability to open multiple connections in separate tabs.
I’m planning to install AirSonos on my Synology DS214play soon (I haven’t gotten around it yet because the instructions aren’t exactly…user-friendly), and I plan to use Prompt for the job. What a great iOS app.
See also: Dan Moren at Six Colors.
Dave Teare, writing on the AgileBits blog about the latest addition to 1Password – a way to share 1Password securely with your family:
1Password for Families builds on our new Teams infrastructure to give you everything you need to protect your loved ones. And it’s only $5 a month for your family of 5.
It’s never been easier to share 1Password with your whole family. There’s no sync service to set up, vaults appear automatically, and there’s an Admin Console where you can invite people and manage sharing with your family.
Every family member gets their own copy of 1Password, and their own personal space to store private information. With this, you can give them the tools they need to stay safe without taking away their independence.
The service costs $5/month and it comes with the full suite of 1Password apps for every platform. It also offers 1 GB of document storage for attachments (2 GB if you’re already a 1Password user and sign up before March 21), and the interface to manage access and review permissions looks polished and friendly. I should seriously consider this so my parents can stop calling me about their forgotten passwords (I love them, but they’re terrible with online accounts).
You can read more and sign up for 1Password for Families here.
Developer Christian Tietze has published an excellent book titled Make Money Outside the Mac App Store. It focuses on the FastSpring payment and storefront service. If you’re a developer looking at using FastSpring to avoid the hassles and 30% cut of selling through the MAS (or are already using FastSpring and want to implement more advanced features), this is a great guide covering implementation, piracy protection, and more.
Rogue Amoeba’s Paul Kafasis, writing on the latest version of their audio recording app, Piezo, and their decision to exit the Mac App Store:
A major reason for the initial creation of Piezo was our desire to allow recording from other applications on the Mac within the limits of what Apple’s Mac App Store rules allowed. We were pleased to provide audio capture to customers of the Mac App Store, and for a time, things worked just fine. However, Apple eventually changed the rules, requiring that all applications distributed through the Mac App Store be sandboxed. This was a problem. Piezo’s need to capture audio from other applications precludes the possibility of it being sandboxed. This new requirement effectively stopped our ability to upgrade Piezo in any meaningful way.
[…]
We’d like to provide customers with the option of buying Piezo through the Mac App Store, but it’s more important to us that we provide a quality product with full functionality. In the case of Piezo, that now means exclusively distributing the application via our site. Users have always had the option of downloading and buying Piezo direct, so this didn’t involve much in the way of additional work. The biggest issue was simply choosing to remove Piezo from the Mac App Store. Ultimately, we feel the decision was made for us by both technical and bureaucratic factors outside of our control.
It says a lot about the Mac App Store that, whenever another app exits it, our reaction isn’t “why” but “of course”.
What doesn’t work is easiest to say. Apps that try to re-create the functionality of an iPhone app simply don’t work. If you can perform a particular operation on an iPhone, then it is better to do it there. The promise of never having to take your iPhone out of your pocket just isn’t quite here yet. The Apple Watch may advance (in hardware and software) to a point where this is no longer true but the platform has a ways to grow first.
There seems to be only three kinds of apps that make sense given the current hardware and software on the Apple Watch.
Bingo. As I tweeted yesterday, my favorite Watch apps aren’t trying to mimic iPhone apps at all. If the same task can be completed on the iPhone, I don’t see why I would try on a smaller, slower device.
The best Watch apps will be the ones that wouldn’t be possible or make sense on an iPhone.
A sad but true post by Lauren Goode at The Verge:
What do Endomondo, MyFitnessPal, MapMyFitness, Runtastic, FitStar, and RunKeeper all have in common?
Aside from all being smartphone apps that track your health and activity, all of these apps have been acquired by bigger companies — bigger brands — over the past couple of years, the latest being RunKeeper, which was just bought by running shoe maker Asics. Endomondo, MyFitnessPal, and MapMyFitness went to Under Armour. Runtastic was acquired by Adidas. FitStar was bought by Fitbit, which at the time wasn’t yet a public company, but in its own right has swelled to become the market leader for activity trackers.
Large companies operating at scale with free services and lots of users who don’t bother to pay for extras? It’s photo management, all over again.
If history does repeat itself, we’ll continue to see, as Goode argues, consolidation of independent services being acquired by bigger brands. The good news: smaller, more focused health and fitness utilities seem to have a profitable niche in which they can thrive, while still retaining the ability to save data into HealthKit. I appreciate how Apple’s Health puts everyone on the same playing field – from brands to solo developers (the real indies in this case) like David Smith.
At which point, though, do we expect Apple and Google to make their own all-encompassing fitness and meal tracking apps for smartphones? Apple may be pushing the Watch as their premier fitness device, but they know how much people use their phones for these tasks, and a future Sherlocking wouldn’t surprise me at all. Just like it happened with photos.
