This week’s episode of the In the News podcast addresses security and privacy issues. We talk about the reason for the critical iPhone security update that came a few days ago, the reasons that Apple changed its mind on implementing a system to combat the spread of child pornography, and China banning iPhones for government workers, supposedly for security reasons. We also talk about the end of Lightning as USB-C may become the new standard for iPhones, celebrate the seventh anniversary of the AirPod introduction, and more.
In this week’s Where Y’at segment, we talk about crash detection and finding thieves in Belgium.
In our In the Know segment, Brett share a tip for using Apple Pay. I share a tip for getting the most out of an Apple TV 4K connected to a 4K television that supports HDR.
We are just a few days away from Apple’s biggest presentation of 2023: the introduction of the 2023 versions of the iPhone along with other new hardware and software such as, I presume a new Apple Watch and a final sneak peek at what is coming in iOS 17 and iPadOS 17. Apple already has a placeholder on YouTube and an animated page on Apple’s own website. Some years, the new iPhone comes with more new and interesting features than other years, and I’m very curious to see what Apple will have in store for us in a few days. And now, the news of note from the past week:
September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and your donation can do so much good in the fight against childhood cancer. Simply click here and donate any amount. For those of you who donate, I really appreciate you taking the time to do so. It makes a difference.
Apple released an important security update yesterday. It is iOS 16.6.1 on the iPhone, and it patches a flaw that was actively exploited–always the worst kind of security flaw. The Citizen Lab discovered the exploit while checking the iPhone of a person who works with a civil rights organization based in Washington, DC. It appears that the iPhone was targeted by someone using the Pegasus spyware software sold by NSO Group in Israel. Supposedly, NSO Group only sells their software to governments. What is scary is that this exploit worked without any interaction at all from the victim. The Pegasus software simply had to send certain pictures to the iPhone using iMessage. If you want to protect your own iPhone from this security flaw, update your iPhone now.
Back in 2021, I discussed an announcement that Apple was going to be expanding protection for children on the iPhone by searching for Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) before any photo was uploaded to Apple’s servers. It is now two years later, and Apple has announced that it changed its mind. As reported by Lily Hay Newman of Wired, Apple was concerned that if it started to search for one type of content, it might be forced by certain governments around the world to search for and report about other content that a government deems objectionable. One can imagine a government hostile to LGBTQ+ rights asking Apple to tattle on iPhones containing certain LGBTQ+ information. One can also see this being used against civil rights activists. As Eric Neuenschwander of Apple explained: “We concluded it was not practically possible to implement without ultimately imperiling the security and privacy of our users.”
Yoko Kubota of the Wall Street Journal reports that China has banned iPhone use for government officials. This includes even bringing an iPhone to the office. This is part of a campaign to cut reliance on foreign technology, and the Chinese government asserts that this move will enhance cybersecurity.
In light of the rumors that the 2023 version of the iPhone, being announced next week, will replace the Lightning port with USB-C, Dan Moren writes a eulogy for the Lightning port in his column for Macworld.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball wrote an interesting post in which he commented upon an article by Horace Dediu of Asymco. Dediu’s article addresses how Apple has managed to not only attract a bunch of customers, but also the best type of customers because they are the ones who are willing to spend more money on things that they value. Gruber has an interesting analysis of the formula: find something people care deeply about, make the best version of the thing that people care deeply about, and improve that thing every year. “Don’t prioritize being first or being cheapest. Prioritize being the best.” That’s good advice for folks in many different fields.
Felipe Espósito of 9to5Mac says that he loves his HomePod 2, and his only regret is that AirPlay is far from perfect. I feel the same way about my HomePod minis. I love them and use them frequently, but there are sometimes strange issues, like when they randomly stop playing songs. It doesn’t happen often, but the fact that it happens at all is annoying and means that Apple still has some work to do.
William Gallagher of AppleInsider reports that it was seven years ago this week that Apple announced the first generation AirPods. They didn’t become available until mid-December of 2016, and they were extremely hard to find at first. I ordered a pair online as soon as they were announced and I didn’t receive mine until January 5, 2017. They quickly became one of Apple’s most beloved products. I use my AirPods Pro every single day.
Ingrid Lunden of TechCrunch reports that Apple expanded its Apple Music Classical service by purchasing BIS, a classical music label based in Sweden that is celebrating its 50th year. BIS’s founder, Robert von Bahr, said that he was impressed by Apple’s “fundamental belief in the importance of preserving audio quality.” So if you already using the Apple Music Classical app, there will soon be even more to like.
Chance Miller of 9to5Mac discusses an interesting CarPlay feature coming soon in iOS 17: SharePlay. This means that people in different cars can play the same playlist at the same time. If one person adds a song, it gets added for the other CarPlay unit too. If you have a long road trip with folks in different cars, this could be an interesting way to build a sense of community.
Globalstar, a company based in Covington, LA (very close to where I live in New Orleans) works with Apple to provide the satellites that are used by the iPhone Emergency SOS feature. Robert Stewart of the local New Orleans newspaper, The Times-Picayune, and the online version, Nola.com, reports that Globalstar is going to work with SpaceX so that in 2025 they will be able to launch additional satellites that work with this feature.
Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reports that the crash detection feature on an Apple Watch was life-saving when a car flipped upside down and landed 100 feet off of the road at night. The Apple Watch called emergency services and provided an exact location, and the Fire and Rescue Department was able to get the person to the hospital. The Fire Chief said that if it was not for the Apple Watch, it probably would have taken an additional two hours to locate the car, and at that point, it may have been too late for the injured and unconscious driver.
Malcolm Owen of AppleInsider reports that a man traveling in Belgium had his backpack stolen at a train station. He was able to track the bag for a while thanks to an AirTag, but that only worked for a few hours because the thieves got rid of the AirTag. But he was able to use Find My to track his MacBook in the backpack, and after doing some self-sleuthing (which is always dangerous so be careful!) he finally had enough information to get the police involved. The police finally made an arrest, the man got his computer back, and the police discovered a huge organized theft network with hundreds of stolen devices.
I’m interested in using an external video camera with my iPad, a feature of the upcoming iPadOS 17. My thought was to use a better quality camera that is located at the top of my iPad instead of on the side with my iPad is in landscape mode. But the feature means that other approaches are also possible including, apparently, using a Game Boy camera for FaceTime video calls, as reported by Federico Viticci of MacStories.
And finally, about a month ago, I linked to a cute Apple video called Captcha, a video designed to show how much easier and safer it is to pay for items using Apple Pay. Here is another funny video in that series called The Dance:
For over eight years now, I’ve used an app to keep track of which packages were coming my way and when—typically something that I ordered online. And occasionally, I found it useful to track something I was returning or sending to someone else. The app that I used for most of that time was a great app called Deliveries, which I reviewed in 2015 and again in 2017. But the Deliveries app no longer works as well as it used to; as the app’s developer explained in a 2022 post, he had lost the ability to work directly with some outside services such as UPS. So I started to look for a replacement, and a few months ago I started using an app called Parcel. It’s a fantastic app, and it is now my package tracking app of choice. It lacks one feature that I used in the Deliveries app, but the Parcel app has some clever tricks that make it an overall better app. And unlike the Deliveries app, Parcel works well with all of the major delivery services—including DHL, FedEx, TNT, UPS, USPS, and over 300 other services. Perhaps best of all, it works particularly well with Amazon.
Adding a delivery
In Parcel, just like Deliveries, you can easily add a delivery by copying the tracking number. For example, if you have a UPS or FedEx tracking number in an email or a website on your iPhone, just copy that number, open the Parcel app, and tap the + at the top right corner. Parcel will automatically paste the number into a field, determine the carrier from the number (which you can adjust if necessary), and then let you write a description. Deliveries was a little better than Parcel because it detected a tracking number even before you tapped the + sign, but otherwise, the process on both apps is similar.
If you have a delivery sticker with a barcode on it (because you are the sender), the Parcel app can scan the barcode to save you the trouble of typing the tracking number. That’s a very useful feature, and it worked well for me.
If you order frequently from Amazon, as I do, Parcel has a neat feature if you choose to give it access to your Amazon account: it will automatically add your Amazon deliveries without you having to do anything at all. Just open the Parcel app and anything that you ordered from Amazon is already being tracked in the app. The title listed in Parcel is taken from the Amazon website, and occasionally those titles are unhelpful (often because they were written to try to make the item show up in more search results) but you can easily change the title in the Parcel app if you want by taping on the item, then tapping the icon at the top right, and then tapping Edit Delivery.
Parcel has a page on its website describing the privacy implications of you letting Parcel use your Amazon account. In short, your credentials are stored locally in the app and not sent to the developer of Parcel. I haven’t heard any reports of Parcel using this information inappropriately.
Tracking your deliveries
Once your items are in the app, you open the app at any time to see what is coming and how many days before it is delivered. The Deliveries app uses a different color banner depending upon the delivery service, such as brown for UPS, purpose for FedEx, etc. Parcel doesn’t do that, which is a shame. But what Parcel does do is work with all of the major delivery services. When I ordered a MacBook Air for my daughter to use in school, the Deliveries app couldn’t tell me when the UPS delivery would arrive, telling me “Couldn’t connect,” although I could tap on the item to eventually open the right page on the UPS website. But Parcel was happy to tell me when the app was coming, where it was located along the way, and when it arrived.
Parcel also supports push notifications. Thus, if you want to be alerted to delivery status, the app can do that.
Because Parcel lets you connect the app to Amazon, Parcel works particularly well with Amazon deliveries. For example, if Amazon sends something via the U.S. Postal Service, the Deliveries app—like the USPS website—won’t have much information on when the item is coming. But Parcel will be able to guess by providing Amazon’s own guess about approximately when the package will arrive. And of course, Parcel can track items shipped by Amazon’s own delivery service.
On the day of delivery, the Parcel app will initially tell you that you have 0 days until delivery. But then once the package is out for delivery, the icon changes to make it easy for you to see that information. And for some deliveries, you even get a delivery window.
One of the features of the Deliveries app that I enjoyed was the ability to easily archive a delivery after an item had arrived. That way, if I ever wanted to go back and search for an item previously delivered—for example, if I am trying to remember how long ago I last ordered something that I’m about to order again—I could find that information in Deliveries. In Parcel, there is no archive feature. You can keep old deliveries on the main screen, but I find that to be distracting; I only want to see active deliveries in the main screen of the app. Thus, my practice has been to delete items in the Parcel app once the item is in my hands, which means that I cannot use the app as a log of past deliveries. It would be great if Parcel added an archive feature in the future.
Multiple platforms
You can use Parcel on the iPhone (which is where I use it the most), the iPad, the Mac, and even the Apple Watch. All of your information is synced across all of your devices. The app also supports widgets on the iPhone.
Cost
You can try out the app for free, but that free version has limited features and only tracks three items. To unlock all of the features, pay for a subscription, which is $4.99 a year.
Conclusion
I know after many years of use how helpful it is to have a single place on my iPhone that keeps track of all of my upcoming deliveries, no matter what the vendor or the delivery service. It is nice to know when an item will arrive and where it is now. Parcel does a great job with that. Moreover, since most of my deliveries nowadays come from Amazon, the Parcel app is especially useful because I don’t have to spend any time putting my Amazon deliveries in Parcel. They are there automatically. There are a few features in the Deliveries app that are currently missing from Parcel—the archive feature is the one that I miss the most—but overall, the Parcel app is much better than Deliveries and I’m happy that I made the switch. If you are interested in an app to track your deliveries, regardless of whether you are a previous user of the Deliveries app or you are new to this type of app, I highly recommend the Parcel app.
Cancer is horrible. We all know it, we have all dealt with it with our friends and families at some point, and I have no doubt that many of you reading this are dealing with it right now, in one way or the other. And as bad as all forms of cancer are, children’s cancer is particularly devastating.
September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and a leader in the fight against childhood cancer is St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Did you know that since St. Jude opened its doors in 1962, the treatments developed at St. Jude have helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20% to more than 80%? That is an amazing statistic. And they have so much more that they can do, from helping individual patients that they are treating at their facility in Memphis to developing techniques that can be used to treat children around the world.
For the second year in a row, iPhone J.D. is part of the community that is working with the Relay FM podcast network to raise money for St. Jude. You may already know about Relay FM: it is the network behind some fantastic tech-related podcasts, such as Upgrade, Mac Power Users, Connected, Clockwise, Automators, and so many more. By working together, the end result can be pretty amazing. Since 2019, the Relay FM community has raised over $2.2 million for St. Jude, and with your help, I have no doubt that it will cross the $2.5 million mark this year.
The process of making a donation is super easy, which I know first-hand because I just did it a few minutes before I wrote this post. Simply go to the page, click the big green DONATE button, and donate any amount. Just a few seconds later, I guarantee that you will feel so much better knowing that you are part of the solution for families that are directly affected by childhood cancer now and those that will be dealing with it in the future.
A special thanks to those of you who contributed last year and will contribute again this year. Y’all are the best!
We are barely more than a week way from Apple’s introduction of the 2023 version of the iPhone, presumably to be called the iPhone 15. Thus, Brett and I begin this week’s episode of the In the News podcast by discussing what we may see, such as perhaps the transition from a Lightning port to a USB-C port and a switch from stainless steel to titanium on the Pro models. And while we don’t expect an iPad announcement this month, Brett and I also discuss the state of the iPad and what changes may come in the future. We also discuss the New York MTA privacy concerns—including one that was fixed just before we started recording, thank goodness—and other topics.
In our Where Y’at segment, we talk about how Find My technology is supposed to work, how it works best, and some good news for when it doesn’t seem to work at all.
In our In the Know segment, Brett and I both discuss touching and holding on an app icon to access quick actions—something that is certainly not a new tip, but well worth repeating because it is so easy to forget that this hidden functionality is even there.
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—cancoulduse 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.
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:
