I never thought of Apple’s AirTags as a tool for social justice, but this occurred to Portland lawyer Michael Fuller, who runs what he calls the Underdog Law Office and also practices at OlsenDaines. Zane Sparling of the Portland Tribune reports that Fuller was trying to help the homeless who stay at a campsite in a park. Under Oregon law, when the city cleans up homeless encampments, it is required to retain for 30 days any collected property that is recognizable as belonging to a person and having an apparent use so that it can be retrieved, but according to Fuller, the city wasn’t doing so. To prove this, he placed AirTags in certain property. After the sweep, he tracked the AirTags and learned that the property was brought directly to a dump. The article quotes Fuller as saying: “Due to the tracking technology, we have proof positive that Rapid Response broke the law and took property that was perfectly clean and sanitary, and belonged to homeless people, and took them to the dump.” Joe English of KATU has a similar article, and he reports that Fuller had previously filed a class action against the City of Portland, and he used 16 AirTags during a subsequent sweep to gather more evidence. This is certainly a clever way to use AirTags. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Illinois attorney John Voorhees of MacStories discusses the new Quick Note feature, coming in iPad OS 15 this Fall, and how it makes it easier to do research with an iPad.
Currently, if you take a picture with your iPhone’s camera and there is a light source (the sun, a street light, etc.) off to the side, you will sometimes see lens flare on the other side of the picture, sometimes in the form of a small slightly green circle. Michael Simon of Macworld reports that when iOS 15 comes out this Fall, it will use AI image processing to remove the lens flare.
Killian Bell of Cult of Mac describes an interesting feature coming to the AirPods Pro this Fall for anyone who could use a little assistance with hearing. The new Conversation Boost feature boosts the volume of a person when they are talking in front of you, making it easier to hear and follow along in a face-to-face conversation.
Another feature coming this Fall to AirPods as well as CarPlay is an Announce Notifications feature. Michael Potuck of 9to5Mac explains how it works.
The Find My app is also improved in iOS 15. Juli Clover of MacRumors explains what is new.
Jack Nicas of the New York Times reports that the iPhone will gain the ability this Fall to recognize certain child pornography uploaded to iCloud and recognize certain nude photographs shared via Messages by an iPhone user under 13 years old. Jason Cross of Macworld provides additional details on how it works. The EFF is concerned that this technology could open the door to future privacy abuses.
If you have been watching the Apple TV+ show Ted Lasso — and you should be! — and you live in California, José Adorno of 9to5Mac reports that there is a Ted Lasso Believe Experience in Los Angeles and Santa Monica. You can get Ted Lasso merchandise, have biscuits with the boss, take pictures with photo installations, and more.
Watching a Broadway musical on TV is not the same as being there live, but it is certainly better than not being there at all. And when done well — such as the Hamilton movie — it can be quite good. Come From Away is an excellent musical that I enjoyed when the tour came to New Orleans two years ago. It is based on a true story: after 9/11, planes were forced to land at nearby airports leaving some folks far from their homes for a long period of time. According to Greg Evans of Deadline, the show is coming to Apple TV+ this September and it will include members of the original and the current Broadway casts. I recommend that you see it, and I look forward to seeing it again.
Tamara Palmer of Macworld offers a list of iPhone tips. Nothing new on this list, but some oldies that are goodies.
In 2005, when podcasts were relatively new, Steve Jobs described what they were at the All Things D conference as he previewed the addition of podcasts to iTunes so that you could listen to them on an iPad. Dieter Bohn of The Verge provided this link to the video on Twitter. It was interesting to listen to his enthusiasm for podcasts, which Jobs referred to as the “Wayne’s World of Radio” and “TiVo for radio for your iPod.” For Brett Burney and me, I’m not sure which one of us is Wayne and which one is Garth.
Speaking of Steve Jobs, back in 1983, someone sent him a letter to ask if he would sign something. Jobs wrote back to say that he doesn’t sign autographs. Now that letter — which Jobs signed, using his distinctive all-lower case signature — is being auctioned off as an autograph. Bidding starts next week at $1,000.
And finally, here is a fun video from Apple that shows off three techniques for creating, relatively easily, movie-quality special effects using an iPhone. All three are rather clever.
As the Delta variant of the coronavirus spreads like wildfire among people who are not vaccinated, a growing number of restaurants and other establishments are requiring that patrons show proof of vaccination to enter. Just yesterday, I saw this article in my local newspaper providing a (growing) list of these places in New Orleans. Not only does such a policy provide better protection for the people who work there, but it also provides a level of assurance to the other patrons. It certainly makes me more comfortable to enter a venue when I know that everyone else there is vaccinated.
Fortunately, there is an easy way to show that you are vaccinated using your iPhone. First, there are a number of states including California, Colorado, Louisiana, New Jersey, New York, and Utah, that now offer an app or portal that you can use to show that you are vaccinated. Second, the medical provider that vaccinated you may have an app or website that shows something similar. Third, Clear — the same company that sells a service where you use your eyes and face to prove your identity when you check in at certain airports or other establishments — offers a free service called the Clear Health Pass. All of these options are described in an article published yesterday in the Washington Post by Chris Velazco and Geoffrey A. Fowler. Click here to read that article for free, even if you don’t currently subscribe to the Post (via the Washington Post gift article function).
Because I live in Louisiana, I’m discussing the first option in today’s post. If you also live here, I recommend that you get this app. But even if you live in another state, this post will give you a sense of what you might be able to get in your own state, either now or in the (hopefully near) future.
The app in Louisiana is called LA Wallet. I reviewed the LA Wallet app in 2018. The app is free to download, and there is a cost of $5.99 to activate a digital version of your official, verified, Louisiana driver’s license. [UPDATE: By order of the Governor of Louisiana, that cost is currently waived during the COVID-19 pandemic.] By using this app, as long as you have your iPhone with you, you also have your driver’s license. For example, if you grab your iPhone and your keys and jump in your car without also grabbing your wallet or purse, you don’t need to worry about driving without a license. You can also use the app to prove your age to purchase alcohol.
The app was updated in May, 2021, to add the ability to display vaccination status. To activate this feature, tap the COVID-19 button at the bottom of the app and tap a few buttons to confirm that you want to enable a SMART Health Card, a service that works with the Louisiana Department of Health. Because the app already knows who you are (through your driver’s license), the app quickly confirms with the state health department that you are vaccinated. (You don’t need to enter anything yourself to confirm your vaccination status.) Once this activation step completes, which only takes a few seconds, you can hold up your iPhone to show anyone, such as a restaurant, that you are vaccinated.
For vaccinations that have two doses, the date displayed in the app is the most recent dose. I had my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine on March 12, 2021, and my second dose on April 2, 2021, so the app displays the April 2 date.
The person at the restaurant can either read the words on your iPhone screen, or better yet, that person can use the LA Wallet app on their own iPhone to verify your status. They tap the Scan button to put the app into scan mode, which turns on the camera in the app. As soon as the camera on their iPhone sees the QR code being displayed on your iPhone, the other person can see on their iPhone verification that you are vaccinated and when:
I did make a copy of my vaccination card and laminate it just in case I ever need to use it, but I don’t always have that with me. On the other hand, my iPhone is always with me, so that means that my proof of vaccination is always with me too.
Unfortunately, simply confirming that the people around you are vaccinated may not be enough to protect you from the coronavirus because of the Delta variant. The science is changing rapidly as we learn more about the coronavirus, but the latest research shows that “vaccinated people infected with the Delta variant carry tremendous amounts of the virus in the nose and throat” and thus “[p]eople with so-called breakthrough infections — cases that occur despite full vaccination — of the Delta variant may be just as contagious as unvaccinated people, even if they have no symptoms.” Apoorva Mandavilli, Behind the Masks, a Mystery: How Often Do the Vaccinated Spread the Virus?, N.Y. Times, July 29, 2021. Fortunately, breakthrough infections are rare, and if infection does happen, you are much less likely to have a serious illness or die if you are vaccinated, but even if your own symptoms are minor you still need to worry about passing it on to your loved ones who are more vulnerable.
I wish I could say that by using an app and confirming that you are only around people who are vaccinated, there would be nothing else to worry about in Louisiana. As the last few paragraphs show, unfortunately, that is not the case. Nevertheless, ensuring that people around you are vaccinated does make a huge difference, even it does not provide 100% protection, so the LA Wallet app (like similar apps) offers one more tool in the fight against COVID-19. I’m glad that we have this capability in Louisiana, and I hope to see similar apps in many more states.
Episode 12 of the In the News podcast is now available, and I thought that this was a particularly good one. In this week's episode, Brett Burney and I discuss iPhone security, tools for enhancing photographs, how Apple is making so much money, comparisons between Apple's MagSafe Battery Pack and similar items sold by third parties, The Beatles, spatial music, and taking photographs at night.
Finally, in our In the Know segment, Brett and I both recommend apps that work particularly well on the Apple Watch. Brett recommends Thwip, an app that creates fun sound effects like sad trombone and a rim shot. I recommend Swipe Scoreboard, a useful app for keeping score. I've enjoyed using that one when watching my daughter play soccer.
Earlier this week, Apple released iOS 14.7.1 and similar updates for the iPad and Mac. And yesterday, Apple released a similar update for the Apple Watch. If you haven’t updated yet, do so now. As Juli Clover of MacRumors reports, this update fixes a flaw i the operating systems that Apple believe was actually being used — not just some theoretical bug. As security expert John Simek of the digital forensics firm Sensei Enterprises explained on his blog, this flaw allowed a bad guy to essentially “own the device.” This is an example of the type of flaws being used by the Pegasus software from NSO Group, which I discussed last week. For some of these security flaws, once a bad guy has access to your device, they can continue to “own the device” so long as the hacker’s software remains in memory. Thus, the Associated Press reported this week that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) recommends rebooting your phone at least once a week just in case any malware happens to be in memory and running. Your iPhone could be hacked again — and apparently, the Pegasus software tries to automate this process when it notices that an iPhone is restarted — but at least you are making it harder for the bad guys. And now, the news of note from the past week:
If you are heading to an Apple Store, don’t forget to wear a mask. And frankly, with the Delta variant, if you are heading ANYWHERE right now, you should wear a mask. Mark Gurman of Bloomberg reports that Apple restored a mask requirement at most of its retails stores in the United States this week.
The battery in an AirTag should last about a year. When you are alerted that it is time to replace the battery, you use a standard CR2032 battery, which is about the size of a small coin. Because this battery is so small, it is sometimes swallowed by children — which is dangerous — and thus some battery manufacturers now add a non-toxic bitter coating to the battery to deter a child from swallowing the battery once it is placed in the child’s mouth. That sounds like a smart idea but, according to Dave Mark of The Loop, Apple advised this week that CR2032 batteries with a bitterant coating might not work with the AirTag.
Ed Hardy of Cult of Mac reviews the Device Therapy Bike Mount & Reflector, a $15.99 bike reflector that hides an AirTag so that (hopefully) a bike thief won’t notice that it is there, allowing you to retrieve a stolen bike.
Bradley Chambers of 9to5Mac compares Apple’s new MagSafe Battery Pack to the Anker Magnetic Battery Pack.
You can currently listen to The Beatles album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in Spatial Audio on Apple Music (click here to do so). But Brian Hiatt of Rolling Stone interviewed The Beatles producer Giles Martin this week, and Martin says that the current mix is based on a theatrical production so he doesn’t think that the mix is quite right for a smaller device like the iPhone. He plans to produce a new mix and replace the current version. On the other hand, Martin thinks that the Spatial Audio version of Abbey Road (click here) is much better. I agree that Abbey Road in Spatial Audio sounds great, especially Here Comes the Sun (link) and instruments like the drums in Come Together (link). If you have any interest in Spatial Audio, that Rolling Stone interview is worth reading because Martin describes the process of creating a Dolby Atmos mix, how it works when you are using headphones instead of speakers, and more.
CNN is currently airing a series called History of the Sitcom. Kyle Moss of Yahoo Entertainment reports that, in the most recent episode, show creator Greg Daniels notes that one of the things that made The Office such a successful sitcom in 2005 was that high school and college kids were watching episodes on a video iPod — an audience that NBC never realized would enjoy the show. I wasn’t a teenager at that time, but I also remember watching episodes of TV shows like The Office and Lost on my video iPod back in 2005 and 2006, a time when I wasn’t living in New Orleans due to Hurricane Katrina. I have no doubt that the popularity of the video iPod played a role in the development of the iPhone.
And finally, Apple released a video this week in which Apple employee Landon speaks with photographer Maria Lax about how she uses an iPhone to take outdoor pictures at night that have an otherworldly feel to them. The video includes lots of tips on taking night photography.
In my recent review of MyHeritage, I focused on using the app to build a family tree. Today, I want to focus on another feature of the app and the MyHeritage website that provides a different service: the ability to enhance old photographs. Whether you use just the basic Photos app or something more sophisticated like Photoshop to manage and improve your photos, there are already lots of ways to enhance photos. But when it comes to old photographs, such as photographs of what family members looked like decades ago, there are two common issues that can be difficult to fix with traditional software: the color fades over time (and sometimes, there is no color to begin with because the picture is black-and-white), and the photos are not nearly as sharp as modern photographs. MyHeritage gives you the ability to address those two issues — and do so automatically.
Improve photographs
Using MyHeritage to improve the color or sharpness in a photograph is very simple. Upload a photo and choose the option to colorize or enhance. (You can choose either option at first and then you can choose the other option next.) The colorize option will add color to a black-and-white photograph or will enhance the color in a faded photograph. Here are some demos from the MyHeritage website:
I don’t want to share photos, let alone manipulated photos, of other people without permission, so instead I am sharing some old photographs of myself to show off these features. In this first example, I have a black-and-white photograph from when I was in Seventh Grade from a yearbook. I used the colorize feature, and here is what MyHeritage came up with:
I don’t know if those colors are at all true to life, and MyHeritage doesn’t give you the ability to change colors. But the colorized version of this old photo does seem fairly realistic.
There is other software available that can do the same thing. For example, less than a year ago, Adobe added several Neural Engine filters to Photoshop that use AI to improve photos, and one of those new filters automatically adds color to a black-and-white photo with just one click. And the advantage of using Photoshop is that you can add many other adjustments to get just the result that you want. Here is what I created in Photoshop by clicking the colorize button and then spending about 10 more seconds to adjust the color levels:
I think that the color added by MyHeritage is a little better than what I produced in Photoshop in 10 seconds, but if I had spent more time in Photoshop with this picture, I suspect that I could have produced a much better result. Having said that, Photoshop is complicated to use and is incredibly intimidating to a new user. In contrast, most anyone can figure out how to click the one button in MyHeritage to add color to an old photo.
You can also use MyHeritage to improve the quality of a face in an old photo by using the enhance feature. This feature uses sophisticated artificial intelligence — the result of examining a huge number of photographs that are somewhat similar to your photo — to add detail and focus to the blurry portions of a face in your photo. I have a large number of older photographs that were never that sharp to begin with, and they may have even gotten a little blurrier when the photographs were scanned to add them to my Photos library. I found that the MyHeritage enhance feature often produced very impressive results. For example, here is a photograph that was taken of me when I was about 16 months old — first, the version that I had in my Photos library, which I had already tried to enhance using the tools in the Photos app, and second the version produced by MyHeritage just by clicking the enhance button:
Here is a close up on the face to make the difference more obvious:
Of course, I don’t really know what I looked like at this age, but the enhanced version of the photo does seem to me to be a lot more true-to-life. It is certainly less blurry.
Software that attempts to use AI to add details when it is missing from a photograph can sometimes make dramatic mistakes. About a year ago, James Vincent wrote this article for The Verge in which he showed that, because the AI used by one company seems to have been trained on mostly white faces, providing the AI with a fuzzy picture of Barack Obama produced a sharpened result that resembled a white male, not our former president.
Although the AI used by MyHeritage produced good results on most of my pictures, there were a few photos of my family members that did not turn out so well. The enhanced photograph would sometimes look too fake, more like a cartoon than a photo. For example, after I added color to that old picture of me in Seventh Grade, I then told MyHeritage to enhance my face, and I think that the result looks too fake:
Nevertheless, in most of my tests, the enhance feature in MyHeritage produced impressive results. The nice thing about having access to this feature is that if you try one photograph and don’t like the result, just try another one and it may come out better.
Animate photographs
The iPhone uses a feature called Live Photos which can (optionally) record a few seconds of video at the same time that it takes a photograph. As a result, the iPhone can help you to relive a memory with not just a still photograph but also an animated photograph with a small amount of video and sound.
The Live Photos feature has been around since the iPhone 6s was introduced in September of 2015. But what if you have a picture older than that — perhaps much older? MyHeritage also has the ability to use AI to try to create an animated version of the photograph using a technology it calls Deep Nostalgia. The idea is that you may have a relative from many generations ago who you never knew in real life, or a picture of someone now deceased who you did know, and by animating the picture you have more of a sense that you are really seeing that person again.
Sometimes the results are impressive. Since this feature was introduced many months ago, I’ve seen a few examples become viral videos. Here is an example with some historical figures, and while some results are better than others, most of them do provide the illusion that you are seeing more of the person than the picture alone would provide:
On the other hand, in my tests with my own old photos, the feature was interesting, but virtually always produced results that were so obviously fake that they seemed a little creepy.
When you use the animation feature, MyHeritage first enhances the photo. It needs to do this to have a high-quality picture to start with. Then, MyHeritage zooms in on just the face. Finally, the software animates the face. There are lots of different animation styles, so if you don’t like the results of one type of animation you can choose another one. For example, for the old picture of me I showed you above, the default animation style, which MyHeritage simply calls Animation #7, made my eyes seem weird. Click here to play that video (and they use your Back button to come back to this post).
I tried all of the other animation styles, and the one called sideways looked a little better, but it still had the Uncanny Valley effect because it is almost realistic, but not quite. Click here to play the second video.
For me, the animation feature seemed like a gimmick, and after a while, I grew tired of using it. But for some photos, in some circumstances, I’ll admit that it does produce some interesting and impressive results.
Pricing
In the first part of my review of MyHeritage, I mentioned the different subscription plans. If you have paid for the Complete subscription to MyHeritage ($299 a year, but $199 for the first year), you can enhance and/or animate an unlimited number of photos using Deep Nostalgia. The other, lesser expensive, plans have a more limited number of animations and enhancements, but I’m not sure what that number is. I believe that even the free subscription includes a few animations and enhancements so that you have a chance to try out these features. (MyHeritage gave me free access to the Complete subscription for a limited time for the purpose of preparing this review, so that’s the version that I’ve been using.)
The bigger picture
When I use the enhance and colorize features of MyHeritage, I feel comfortable with the results because I feel like I am restoring what was originally there more than I am creating something new. But the Deep Nostalgia animation feature, while interesting, may go a little too far for me. I’m just not sure. I definitely understand the allure of using technology to help to form a greater connection, but there is also a creepiness element for me.
In this recent article by Jason Fagone of the San Francisco Chronicle, the reporter describes how a person who lost his fiancee was able to use a sophisticated AI chatbot program to simulate text messages conversations with her even though she was deceased. The AI looked at samples of her writing and then used that to have conversations with the man. Is this an appropriate coping mechanism or just an episode of Black Mirror?
Of course, as this technology becomes more accessible, it can also be used to create deep fake videos that appear to be realistic, showing a person doing or saying something, when in reality someone just swapped one face for another. One of the best examples I’ve seen of is a series of TikTok videos created by Chris Ume, a visual effects specialist in Belgium. He had Tom Cruise impersonator Miles Fisher act out some scenes and then Ume replaced Fisher’s face with Tom Cruise’s fact, and the results are amazing:
Here is a behind-the-scenes video that shows you how this was done:
Of course, it is easy to imagine this technology being abused: creating fake videos to unfairly embarrass a person, create fake evidence for a trial, etc. A few months ago, Geoffrey Fowler of The Washington Post discussed these issues, and he noted that a woman in Pennsylvania was arrested earlier this year after she allegedly altered photos to make it look like rivals of her daughter on the cheerleader squad were drinking, smoking, and even nude in an attempt to get them kicked off the squad. [UPDATE: If you do not subscribe to The Washington Post, click here to read that article for free using the new Washington Post Gift function.] A more recent story from the Daily Mail indicates that the story may be more complicated, but no matter what happened in Pennsylvania, the Tom Cruise video shows you what is already possible today, and it is a little scary to think of what will be possible in just a few more years as computers become more powerful and the software improves.
To address this concern, MyHeritage creates a small watermark on the bottom left of enhanced, colorized, and animated photos. The MyHeritage website explains: “The magic wand icon appears on all enhanced photos so that users can tell them apart from the original. In photos that were both enhanced and colorized, the magic wand and palette icons will appear side by side on the bottom left corner. We hope that this responsible practice will be adopted by others who use photo enhancement technology.”
Conclusion
Whether you see the Deep Nostalgia animation feature of MyHeritage as a fun and interesting way to bring a photo to life or you see it as something too creepy to ever use, the technology is still fascinating and technologically impressive. The end result you can get from MyHeritage may not be nearly as impressive as what someone like Chris Ume can do, but considering that you can use a feature like this by simply clicking a button and waiting a few seconds, perhaps what MyHeritage is doing is even more remarkable.
As for the colorize and enhance features, I find them to be rather impressive. There is other software available that can do the same thing, but those products can be expensive and hard to use. MyHeritage is incredibly simple to use. By including this technology as a part of a MyHeritage subscription, the company has made the subscription more valuable.
Click here to get MyHeritage for iPad or iPhone (free):
Yesterday, Apple released the results for its 2021 fiscal third quarter (which ran from March 28, 2021, to June 26, 2021) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results. This is typically not a big fiscal quarter for Apple; the important quarter for Apple every year is the first fiscal quarter (containing the holiday sales season). But this time last year, with so many people buying Apple products during the beginning of the pandemic as they worked and went to school from home, Apple had a record fiscal third quarter. And every quarter since then has been a record quarter for Apple, including the one that just ended. Yesterday, Apple announced that it had its best fiscal third quarter ever, reporting record revenue of $81.4 billion, up an impressive 36% from the $59.7 billion it reported this time last year. If you want to get all of the nitty-gritty details, you can listen to the audio from the announcement conference call on the Apple website, or you can read a transcript of the call prepared by Jason Snell of Six Colors. Apple's official press release is here. Here are the items that stood out to me.
Part of Apple CEO Tim Cook's opening remarks included this statement, which I thought was well-written:
This quarter saw a growing sense of optimism from consumers in the United States and around the world, driving renewed hope for a better future and for all that innovation can make possible. But as the last 18 months have demonstrated many times before, progress made is not progress guaranteed. An uneven recovery to the pandemic and a Delta variant surging in many countries around the world have shown us once again that the road to recovery will be a winding one. In the midst of that enduring adversity, we are especially humbled that our technology has continued to play a key role in keeping our customers connected.
iPhone
iPhone revenue for the quarter was $39.57 billion, which I believe is an all-time record for a fiscal third quarter. One year ago, it was $26.418 billion, so that's a substantial 50% increase in iPhone revenue from last year.
Cook said that iPhone sales saw "very strong, double-digit growth in each geographic segment" with high demand for the iPhone 12 line.
Apple CFO Luca Maestri noted that demand for iPhones "exceed[ed] our own expectations, as the iPhone 12 family continued to be in very high demand."
Cook noted that more people upgraded their iPhones in the past quarter than in any prior fiscal third quarter.
To give you some context for the increase in iPhone revenue this past quarter, here is a chart showing the year-over-year percentage change since fiscal 2013 Q1, which is when Apple started reporting this type of revenue in this form. For the past three quarters, Apple seems to be returning to the impressive iPhone revenue growth it last saw in 2014-2015:
iPad
iPad revenue was $7.368 billion, up 12% from $6.582 billion this time last year.
Cook said that the "iPad had its highest June quarter in nearly a decade." Maestri noted that Apple saw this result even though there were "significant supply constraints" for parts needed to make the iPad.
Maestri noted that "with more people working from home, more people studying from home, we know that iPad and Mac demand was very, very strong" in the past quarter.
When describing some of the new features coming to iPadOS this Fall, Cook noted that "new productivity features make iPad an even more useful tool for multitasking, helping users navigate across apps, split their screen, or use Quick Note to capture a thought, the moment inspiration strikes."
Here is a chart to show the year-over-year percentage change in iPad revenue since fiscal 2013 Q1, which is when Apple started reporting this type of revenue in this form. Although iPad revenue growth was not nearly as impressive in the most recent quarter as the prior quarter, this most recent quarter along with the prior four quarters showed five consecutive quarters of iPad revenue growth.
Other
Cook noted that the services sold by Apple had a new all-time revenue record. This includes subscribers to Apple TV+.
In the past quarter, nearly 75% of people purchasing an Apple Watch were purchasing their first Apple Watch. In China, that number was 85%.
Episode 11 of the In the News podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, Brett Burney and I discuss the recent news about the NSO Group’s Pegasus software, which can be used to hack into an iPhone. Next, we talk about Apple accessories, including accessories for the AirTag, and Apple’s new Magsafe Battery Pack.
Finally, in our In the Know segment, Brett and I both share tips for getting more out of the iPhone’s Messages app
The big technology story this week was prompted by Amnesty International, which somehow obtained information about iPhones and Android devices targeted by Pegasus software sold by NSO Group. NSO Group is a company in Israel that sells, at incredibly high prices, software that can be used to take over a smartphone. NSO Group asserts that it only sells to governments and requires governments to promise to only use the software against criminals, but it looks like some governments misused the software to target human rights activists, journalists, and others disliked by those in power. A number of news organizations around the world worked on publishing stories all throughout the week, such as this article by Craig Timberg, Reed Albergotti and Elodie Guéguen in the Washington Post. One of the surprising details in the article is that someone using the software just needed to know the phone number of a target iPhone. The software would sometimes send a text message with a link that the owner would have to tap to have the malware installed. But other times the text message would contain a malformed image that caused an iPhone to execute code and hack the iPhone even without the owner doing anything. Just having the text message received by the iPhone was enough to begin the hack. Once an iPhone or Android phone was compromised, the Pegasus software can track the phone, read contents on the phone, and even turn on the camera and microphone. This is scary stuff. In another article in the Washington Post by Elizabeth Dwoskin and Shira Rubin, one of the owners of NSO Group defends what the company does, explaining that he has received reports from governments that they have used the software to arrest very dangerous criminals. But NSO Group almost never knows whether the Pegasus software is being used properly or improperly.
The iPhone has a well-earned reputation for being the most secure smartphone on the market. But that doesn’t mean it is 100% safe. And while there are some things that iPhone owners can do to improve security, such as installing new iOS updates when they become available and not tapping on links that come from questionable sources, the smartest hackers in the world are very good at finding exploits. Of course, this issue is not unique to smartphones. If a nation-state wants to target you, it can be almost impossible to protect yourself, even if you flee to another country.
Here is Apple’s statement on this news item, as reported to 9to5Mac: “Apple unequivocally condemns cyberattacks against journalists, human rights activists, and others seeking to make the world a better place. For over a decade, Apple has led the industry in security innovation and, as a result, security researchers agree iPhone is the safest, most secure consumer mobile device on the market. Attacks like the ones described are highly sophisticated, cost millions of dollars to develop, often have a short shelf life, and are used to target specific individuals. While that means they are not a threat to the overwhelming majority of our users, we continue to work tirelessly to defend all our customers, and we are constantly adding new protections for their devices and data.”
Many years ago, the FBI tried to get courts to force Apple to develop a backdoor in the iPhone so that the government could use the backdoor against criminals. Apple resisted, pointing out that if a backdoor was created, nothing would stop the bad guys from using it too. As this NSO Group story reveals, sometimes, in some parts of the world, the government and the bad guys are the same people. And on that uplifting note, here is the rest of the news of note from the past week:
Let’s transition from the scary to the silly. When I noted in my review of Weather Strip earlier this week that developers of weather apps have an opportunity to come up with new ways to present the same weather data that all other apps present, it never occurred to me that CARROT Weather would be updated this week to add the ability to record your own weather report. Just read the on-screen script as if it were a teleprompter, and you will quickly create a funny, but accurate, weather report that you can share. This is totally silly, but the feature is so well implemented that it is a lot of fun. Illinois attorney John Voorhees of MacStories describes this feature and everything else that was added to CARROT Weather this week.
You can now buy Apple’s AirTag accessories on Amazon including the AirTag Loop (regular and leather) and the AirTag Leather Key Ring. They even come in some new colors. That’s great, but I recommend that you consider the less expensive $12.95 Key Ring or Case with Strap sold by Belkin. The Belkin products have worked really well for me for the last few months. The Key Ring case is just a simple piece of smooth plastic, but it does the job and feels really good in the hand, which is important because your keys are often in your hand.
In an article in Macworld, Moren came up with three interesting features that Apple could add to the iPhone and Apple Watch.
This week, we’ve started to see initial reviews of Apple’s newest hardware product, the MagSafe Battery Pack, such as this report by Jacob Krol of CNN. It looks chunkier than I had expected after just looking at Apple’s product photos on its website, but I’ve seen lots of positive reports about how it feels. I haven’t yet seen any good reports on how much it can extend the life of your iPhone, but I presume we will start to see those reports next week after people have had more time to run tests.
Stephen Warwick of iMore points out that if you have an iPhone Lightning dock, like this model that I reviewed in 2017, you can place the Apple MagSafe Battery Pack in that dock to create a magnetic charging stand. That’s clever.
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of ZDNet notes that Apple released iOS 14.7 this week, and in addition to a few new features, it fixes some other security flaws — I’m sure the same sort of flaws that NSO Group and others have been exploiting.
José Adorno of 9to5Mac explains the steps that you can take if your iPhone is stolen. He also points out that when iOS 15 comes out this Fall, it will add a new feature that allows you to wipe the contents of a stolen iPhone while still retaining the ability to track it, which is a great idea.
And finally, Apple released a new video this week called Hello Sunshine, which shows off some of the ways that you might be inspired to be more active with an Apple Watch. It’s a cute video.
Weather apps can be some of the most interesting apps on the iPhone. That may seem strange for me to say because they all do the same thing — show the current weather and the forecast for the next few days — often using the same sources. But as a result, a main differentiator between the apps is the interface created by the developer. A weather app is a good opportunity for a developer to show information in an interesting way. In the latest version of my favorite weather app — Carrot Weather (I reviewed the prior version in 2018) — the developer created building blocks so that you can customize the interface that works best for you, a great approach that earned the developer an Apple Design Award last month. But there is still room for other approaches.
Weather Strip is a new weather app that has a very nice interface. Virtually everything that you need to see is presented on a single timeline. Scroll the timeline to the right to see the forecast for the future, with the timeline dimming for the hours when the sun is set.
What makes Weather Strip unique is that the app uses layers in different colors along the same timeline to show different information in a concise matter. The main layer shows the chance of rain. (Or snow, but I’ll defer to folks who do not live in New Orleans to report on how well that works.). If there is a chance of thunderstorms, that appears in a darker blue layer on top of the blue rain layer. Next, there is a layer that shows how cloudy or sunny it is.
Atop all of those layers is a red line that shows the temperature. If the “feels like” temperature is significantly different than the actual temperature, then there is a shaded red area above or below the line to show the difference.
If you tap the “i” information button at the bottom right, the app also provides you with numbers to provide you with numbers giving the precise temperature, chance of rain, amount of rain, feel like temperature, etc. But I typically don’t find those numbers to be necessary. The size of the layers alone gives you a good sense of the current weather and the forecast from the shapes alone. But if you want to see those numbers, you can keep them on all of the time by tapping that i button.
Additional information is provided at the top of the app including a large number with the current temperature — or, if you have scrolled the timeline towards the future, the predicted temperature at that point in time. You can customize some of the information at the top.
Below the main timeline is a more condensed timeline showing you the upcoming week. Just looking at that timeline gives you a good sense of the forecast, but you can also tap on any part of it to bring the main timeline to that same location.
If there is a weather advisory, a banner appears above the timeline to alert you. Tap the banner to see more information.
Although the default is to show you the current temperature where you are located, you can tap on the map pin at the bottom center to choose a different location in the United States. (The current version of the app doesn’t have weather data for other countries.)
The app also works on the iPad, which I thought would be an advantage because of the larger screen. And you can see more of the timeline at one time on the iPad. But for my tastes, there isn’t enough use of the top and bottom of the screen in the iPad version of the app. I really like this app on the iPhone, but I’m not nearly as much of a fan on the iPad.
Weather Strip doesn’t have more sophisticated features found in other weather apps like the current radar. But I love that it takes all of the most important information so that you can see it on the iPhone all at once. And by using a timeline, it is quickly obvious whether the temperature, chance of rain, etc. is increasing or decreasing in the future. About six years ago, I reviewed an app called Weather Line that used a similar system, but that app is no longer available in the App Store and will stop working on April 1, 2022, because the company was acquired by an undisclosed buyer. If you liked Weather Line, you’ll probably like Weather Strip.
Best of all, it is easy to try the app to find out if you like it. The developer provides a generous full month to use the app for free to see if it is right for you. If you like it after a month, you can subscribe for only $3.99/year. I’ll be doing so.
Episode 10 of the In the News podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, Brett Burney and I discuss three main topics. First, we talk about Apple’s brand new MageSafe Battery Pack and share our own tips for providing your iPhone or iPad with extra power when you are away from home or the office. Second, we talk about improvements to AT&T’s unlimited data plan, and discuss why unlimited data is worth getting. Third, we talk about options for running Windows on an iPad, including Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 365. As a bonus, we also have a short discussion of some fun videos released by Apple this week.
Finally, in our In the Know segment, Brett shares a great tip for using your Apple Watch to quickly calculate the amount of a tip and the total you should pay after adding the tip. I discuss the funny Honest Trailers videos on YouTube, especially the one that they released this week: an “honest trailer” for Ted Lasso Season 1.
