I hesitate to start today's post with this story because it leaves me with so many unanswered questions, and I hope that we will get the answers from Apple and the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) soon, but Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac shares a disturbing report from Joseph Cox of 404Media. On the New York subway, you can use Apple Pay Express on your iPhone or Apple Watch to quickly pay the fare for public transit. The system has been in place for years, and I hear that it is easy to use. But the report raises two security concerns. First, a person who knows your credit card number and expiration date—which is obviously not that hard to learn for a stalker—can could use the MTA website to see realtime information that can reveal when and where you are getting on and off the subway. That's an obvious stalking risk, and hopefully MTA will fix it soon. [UPDATE: MTA now says that they have fixed this.] But even more troubling is this: how does the MTA even know your real credit card number? When using Apple Pay, I thought that a merchant was provided with a single-use code instead of your actual credit card number. But obviously that is wrong if the MTA was learning everyone's credit card number, unless MTA gets the credit card number from another source and then learns how to associate it with a specific customer using Apple Pay? Apple has a page on its website to address Apple Pay and privacy, but it doesn't specifically address whether the merchant is provided with your credit card number. I love Apple Pay because of the convenience, and I have long thought that it was also more secure than providing my credit card number to a merchant, but now I want to know more. I'll be tracking this story, and I hope that we see answers soon. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- The big news of the week is the confirmation that Apple will introduce a new iPhone on September 12. The event logo has an interesting version of the Apple logo, and the tagline is "Wonderlust." Wanderlust means a love of wandering around, so "wonderlust" must mean ... um ... what exactly? Michael Simon of Macworld tries to decipher the clues.
- Instead of an iPhone 15 Pro Max, will Apple announce an iPhone Ultra? Jason Snell of Six Colors considers this possibility.
- It seems likely that the new iPhone will use USB-C instead of Lightning. In another article on Six Colors, Snell discusses the possibility of a backlash by users who prefer to stick with Lightning.
- One last interesting article by Jason Snell this week is this article he wrote speculating about what the new iPad Magic Keyboard might look like. This article relates to a rumor that Apple release a new iPad Pro in 2024 with a new design.
- Speaking of a new iPad, as much as I love my iPad Pro, I do wish that it could do more. Harry McCracken of Fast Company feels the same way, as he discusses in depth in this article.
- David Sparks of MacSparky similarly weighs in with his thoughts on the state of the iPad.
- If you have an older stereo system or amplifier with coaxial, optical, or RCA inputs, the upcoming Eve Play (shipping Nov. 14) can bring AirPlay 2 support to your older system so that you can play music, wirelessly, from your Apple devices as reported by Romain Dillet of TechCrunch.
- Speaking of playing music, if you prefer to play full albums instead of specific songs, John Voorhees of MacStories reviews the 2.0 version of the app Longplay, which specializes in that feature.
- If you prefer to listen to a podcast instead of music, of course my #1 suggestion is the In the News podcast. But that one podcast won't get you through the entire three-day weekend, so if you are a fan of late night shows, you might be interested in listening to Strike Force Five, a podcast featuring talk show hosts Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver. Even without the aid of their writing staffs, they are all very funny, and the proceeds raised from the podcast are used to support the folks who work on their shows and are currently out of work.
- Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reports that police in Nashville were able to, relatively quickly, track and arrest a thief who stole a car because there was an AirTag in the car.
- William Gallagher of AppleInsider reports on a woman who was hiking in Utah when she needed help because of flooding and used the Emergency SOS feature of her iPhone 14. Even though the message did not seem to go through, rescuers did receive the message, and they were able to find her—covered in mud from head to toe after her shoes had been lost.
- Gallagher also reports on a man who tracked the AirPods he left on a plane to the home of an airline worker, and he almost went to that home on his own until his wife smartly convinced him to call the cops instead.
- And finally, Apple released two videos this week to show how a company is using an iPhone to take a 3D pictures of dogs missing a limb to build custom pet prostheses. The longer video is the better one—it isn't too long, under three minutes—but below, I am linking to the quick 30-second version called The Invincibles:
