Senator Al Franken recently sent a letter to Apple, asking about the privacy implications of the Face ID system in the upcoming iPhone X. After all, it would be a little creepy if Apple uploaded a picture of every owner’s face to an Apple server. Apple recently responded and addressed those concerns, as reported by Mikey Campbell of AppleInsider, in an article that also includes a scan of Apple’s letter. As confirmed by Apple, your face information stay securely on the phone, and is not even stored as a picture of your face — similar to how Apple stores your fingerprint on an iPhone or iPad with Touch ID. It is nice to see more confirmation that Apple treats privacy so seriously. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- California attorney David Sparks has advice for using the new Siri face for the Apple Watch and explains why it is now the face that he uses all of the time. I agree with everything he says, although it is my second favorite watch face; I use the Activity Digital face even more to keep track of my activity circles.
- New York attorney Nicole Black recommends five apps for lawyers on the MyCase Blog.
- Serenity Caldwell of iMore asks why Apple is the only smartwatch manufacturer that makes smaller versions of a watch that are more suited for many women. John Gruber of Daring Fireball says that the answer is likely that the other companies just don’t have the same ability to make the technology that small; Apple is by far the leader in this area.
- Jeff Byrnes of WatchAware tells the story of how an Apple Watch helped to save a man’s life by alerting him that his heart was unusually elevated.
- David Pogue of Yahoo reviews some of the first augmented reality apps for the iPhone and iPad running iOS 11.
- If you use GMail, you can now make it even harder for a hacker to access your account by requiring not only a password but also a hardware dongle to login. Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai of Motherboard explains how it works.
- Rene Ritchie of iMore reviews the Apple Watch Series 3 Edition (the ceramic model).
- I see that there is an Indigogo campaign for a new product called the Bento Stack, which has lots of compartments to carry all of the power cordsa and accessories that go along with your iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. Looks like an interesting design.
- And finally, tonight at 5pm, Apple is opening an impressive new Apple Store in Chicago on Michigan Avenue. It is a beautiful building that sits on the river and blends in with steps going down to the river. Taylor Hartz of the Chicago Sun-Times gives a sneak peak of the newest Apple Store, and this video from the Chicago Sun-Times provides a great preview of what this store looks like: