Apple Strongly Refutes Bloomberg Report That Its Servers Were Compromised by Malicious Chips

Earlier today, Bloomberg published a story claiming that Apple and Amazon discovered tiny, malicious chips on Elemental network servers built by Super Micro. According to the story, the chips were the work of Chinese spies and designed to infiltrate the tech companies’ networks. Shortly after publication, Apple responded in an email statement strongly refuting Bloomberg’s account.

Amazon’s chief information security officer similarly discredited the claims saying in part:

There are so many inaccuracies in this article as it relates to Amazon that they’re hard to count.

A short time ago, Apple elaborated on its initial statement to Bloomberg on its Newsroom website:

In response to Bloomberg’s latest version of the narrative, we present the following facts: Siri and Topsy never shared servers; Siri has never been deployed on servers sold to us by Super Micro; and Topsy data was limited to approximately 2,000 Super Micro servers, not 7,000. None of those servers have ever been found to hold malicious chips.

Topsy is a startup that Apple acquired in 2013.

For over 12 months, Apple says it repeatedly told Bloomberg reporters and editors that they and their sources were incorrect.

We are deeply disappointed that in their dealings with us, Bloomberg’s reporters have not been open to the possibility that they or their sources might be wrong or misinformed. Our best guess is that they are confusing their story with a previously-reported 2016 incident in which we discovered an infected driver on a single Super Micro server in one of our labs. That one-time event was determined to be accidental and not a targeted attack against Apple.

Security and privacy are cornerstones of Apple’s business that it uses to differentiate the company’s products from competitors’, so the fact that the company takes this sort of claim seriously isn’t unusual. This also isn’t the first time Apple has taken Bloomberg to task on the veracity of its reporting. However, the forcefulness of the responses from Apple and Amazon, followed by Apple’s press release on its Newsroom site is something that is unprecedented. It will be interesting to see whether Bloomberg responds.

Apple’s Watch Face Problem→

Jason Snell today published the article I’ve been itching to write, outlining the current mess that is Apple’s watch face ecosystem. The Apple Watch in so many ways is in its best position ever, which makes the lack of coherence in Apple’s watch face strategy particularly surprising.

As Apple continues to create new watch faces at a regular clip, those faces have grown more and more fragmented in what they can do. The Siri face introduced last year was an interesting new direction for watch faces, yet it remains one of a kind in many ways. The Series 4 Watch’s Infograph faces come with a whole new set of complications, all of which are wonderful except that they don’t work on other faces, nor do older complications work on the new faces. This lack of compatibility is frustrating enough, but what may be even more vexing is that Apple itself hasn’t even provided new complications for all of its apps, only some of them – I’d love a Podcasts complication on my Infograph face, but it simply doesn’t exist.

Snell offers up a handful of suggestions for where Apple should focus its watch face efforts going forward, all of which earn my total agreement. He writes:

Every face needs to be modernized and support the new complication styles, at least on Series 4. Key system apps and features like Messages and cellular status should be available on all faces. Every face design should be more flexible.

And moving forward, Apple should allow developers even more power in building complications. Complications should be able to appear when they have something to say and disappear when they don’t—for example, I’d love for a Timer complication to appear when I’m running a timer, but the rest of the time I’d rather not see it. If complications truly are the best face of Apple Watch apps, the developers of those apps need more power to build good ones.

Every one of these ideas is entirely reasonable, and would go a long way toward fixing the current watch face mess. I know we just got watchOS 5, but I hope watch faces are a strong area of focus for Apple in next year’s watchOS 6.

Permalink

Philips Hue App Adds Siri Shortcuts Support

Promised earlier this year, the Philips Hue app now supports Siri Shortcuts allowing users to trigger scenes created in the app.

The Hue app received a major update earlier this year, which significantly improved the creation of scenes. Users can pick from pre-built scenes created by designers to evoke a particular mood or create their own using photos or a color picker to control the color and brightness of a group of Hue bulbs.

With the new Siri Shortcut support, those scenes can be triggered using Siri and incorporated as actions in custom shortcuts using Apple’s Shortcuts app. I have several Hue bulbs in my studio. They aren’t the kind that supports a wide range of colors, but I can adjust the brightness and warmth of each bulb. To test the Hue’s new shortcut functionality, I created a scene called Focus Mode that turns the brightness up to 100% with a cool blue cast.

After using the scene, the Siri & Search section of the Settings app suggested I add my new scene as a Siri shortcut, which is how many apps approach Siri shortcuts. Frequently-used scenes will also be suggested on the lock screen, Siri watch face, and search.

There’s an alternate, better route to setting up a Hue shortcut though. Inside the app, if you tap on a scene, a pencil icon appears in the corner. Tapping on it gives you the option to add the scene to Siri, as well as edit, rename, or delete it. Other developers have added the ability to add Siri shortcuts in their app’s settings, but I especially like Hue’s approach. If you’re in the Hue app creating a scene, that’s the natural spot to add it as a Siri shortcut too.

With a Hue Siri shortcut in place, you can also use it as an action in custom shortcuts you create in Apple’s Shortcuts app. I set up a simple shortcut that turns on the lights in my studio and enables a smart electrical outlet that controls an air filter. Now, as I finish my morning coffee, I can say ‘Hey Siri, start Workday’ and the lights and filter come on as I head downstairs. The same sort of shortcut can be created to control lights using Shortcuts’ HomeKit support added with iOS 12, but having similar functionality built into the Hue app is a useful alternative if that’s where you’ve set up your scenes.

The Hue app is available as a free download on the App Store.

Examining Dark Mode Implementations of Mac Productivity Apps

As I noted in my review of macOS Mojave, there’s a lot more going on with Dark Mode than dark gray window chrome. There were two sessions at WWDC dedicated to Dark Mode. Some apps are easier to adapt to Dark Mode than others from a technical standpoint, but beyond the coding, developers have to grapple with many design issues that affect apps differently.

As with many new features Apple introduces, there’s the way the company would like to see Dark Mode implemented and then there’s the way third-party developers use it in practice. Part of the variety you find is driven by the particular needs of each app. Other differences reflect compromises that are necessary to adapt existing designs to Dark Mode. Sometimes, however, developers intentionally ignore Apple’s recommendations, choosing to take a different path.

In my Mojave review, I collected some representative examples of apps that were ready with Dark Mode implementations when the OS update shipped. Since then, many other apps have been updated. I’ve spent time with many of them and have begun to see some design and implementation patterns among the early adopters that are interesting to compare to similar system apps by Apple. It’s also useful to consider how these variations will impact the experiences users have with these apps.

In the sea of dark gray floating before my eyes, I’ve identified a handful of app categories that illustrate some of the subtle differences between the apps I’ve tried. There are many other good examples, but email clients, task managers, text editors, and note-taking apps are categories that best illustrate how Dark Mode is being used by the first wave of developers to put the feature into practice.

Read more

Visualizing Photos Taken ‘On This Day’ in Previous Years with Shortcuts

I’m in the process of creating a complete archive of every workflow I ever created for the Workflow app and updating each one for Shortcuts. As I was browsing through my old Workflow articles, I came across an interesting workflow I created in early 2015 called Photo Flashbacks. The main idea was simple enough: given Workflow’s ability to read the contents of the photo library, the workflow would filter a photo taken on the same day in previous years and preview it with Quick Look. That seemed like a fun project that I could pick up again and improve for the Shortcuts app.

Read more

More Than 70 New Emoji Coming Later This Fall Are Now Available in the iOS 12.1 Beta→

Apple has announced that later this fall, it will release more than 70 new emoji. The emoji, which will be released when iOS 12.1 is shipped, will be included on the Mac and Apple Watch too.

The new glyphs, which are based on the characters approved by the Unicode Consortium as part of Unicode 11.0, include a wide variety of themes. For people, there are new options for gray, red, and curly hair, and for bald people. The new set of emoji also includes new foods, animals, sports, and other activities like travel.

Among the animals added are a raccoon, kangaroo, lobster, swan, parrot, peacock, and llama. Foods include leafy greens, a cupcake, a bagel, moon cake, mango, and salt. Sports have added a softball, frisbee, lacrosse stick and ball, and skateboard. There are new emotive smiley faces too.

Looking to next year, Apple says that for Unicode 12.0, which will be the basis for emoji released in 2019, it is working with the Unicode Consortium to add disability-themed emoji. Although the emoji announced today will be officially released until later this fall, you can try them now as part of the iOS 12.1 beta and public preview released today.

Permalink

Apple Adds More Than 30 Worldwide Companies to Business Chat→

Apple introduced Business Chat at WWDC in 2017 and launched it with iOS 11.3 this past March. Today, Apple confirmed to TechRadar that the feature, which began as a beta with a handful of US business partners, has been rolled out worldwide.

As we explained in our overview of iOS 11.3:

Business Chat is a way for businesses to communicate with their customers directly over iMessage. Apple’s goal with Business Chat is to elevate the customer service experience to take advantage of the best native features of iOS, such as iMessage’s inherent privacy and security, iMessage apps, Apple Pay, and integration with Maps, Safari, and Spotlight.

Initially supported by only a handful of US companies like Discover, Hilton, Lowe’s and Wells Fargo, the roster was expanded in July to include Dish, Aramak, Four Seasons, Harry & David, and American Express. With today’s launch, that list has been expanded significantly to include companies based in Europe and Asia, as well as additional companies in North America. According to TechRadar, the additions include more than 30 companies:

Europe

  • Matchesfashion (UK)
  • nPower (UK)
  • Robins & Day (UK)
  • buddybank (Italy)
  • Engie (France)
  • La Redoute (France)
  • AXA Insurance (Switzerland)
  • Swisscom (Switzerland)
  • Vodafone Germany
  • NH Hotels (Europe) 

North America

  • 1800 Contacts 
  • DirecTV Now
  • Fairmont Hotels including the Claremont Club & Spa in Berkeley
  • Kimpton Hotels
  • Freshly 
  • Macerich Malls  including Scottsdale Fashion Square and Santa Monica Place
  • Mall of America 
  • Men’s Wearhouse 
  • Jos A. Bank
  • Overstock.com
  • Quicken Loans 
  • SnapTravel (US, Canada)
  • West Elm
  • Hendrick Automotive Group
  • Four Seasons (Canada) is expanding to 88 properties around the globe, 100+ languages
  • Lithia Group

Worldwide

  • Burberry

Asia

  • Telstra (Australia)
  • Harvey Norman (Australia) 
  • KDDI (Japan)
  • Credit Suisse (Singapore and Hong Kong)

Much like Apple Pay, Business Chat is the sort of feature that isn’t likely to see significant user adoption until a large enough pool of businesses use it to reach most iPhone owners. Still, today’s broad rollout in multiple countries shows that the service is beginning to get traction. It will also be interesting to see how much longer Business Chat retains the ‘beta’ label.

Permalink

An In-Depth Explanation of Computational Photography on the iPhone XS→

Outside of Apple employees, one of the people most knowledgeable about the iPhone’s camera is Sebastiaan de With, designer of the manual camera app Halide. It is fitting, then, that Sebastiaan would publish what I believe is the best explanation of the iPhone XS camera system to date. Following up on a piece he wrote about the new camera’s hardware changes, the subject of today’s article is software – specifically, all the work of computational photography on the iPhone XS and XS Max.

The piece starts with an explanation of the iPhone’s new Smart HDR feature, then details the exact reasons why selfies on the new iPhones appear to employ skin smoothing (a theory he soundly debunks). Finally, Sebastiaan details the problem that the XS camera poses for RAW camera apps like Halide, and shares about the forthcoming solution Halide’s team came up with: something they call Smart RAW.

There are too many excellent, informative tidbits to quote here, so I highly recommend you check out the article in full. This year’s iPhones are so full of interesting changes to the way the camera works, most of which are undocumented by Apple – as Sebastiaan says, it is “a whole new camera” in many ways.

Permalink