Episode 14 of the In the News podcast is now available. Brett and I begin by discussing issues related to privacy and protection, which are sometimes competing interests, such as Apple’s new child protection initiatives, AirTags, and COVID passport apps that you can use to prove that you are vaccinated. Next, we discuss why we disagree with those who suggest that the Apple TV is pointless. Then, we discuss the excellent review of the Apple MagSafe battery pack written by California attorney David Sparks.
In this week’s In the Know segment, Brett shares a tip for quickly selecting multiple items in a list on an iPhone or iPad, such as selecting a bunch of emails at once. I recommend the fastest ways to launch the Camera app on the iPhone so that you can quickly take a picture to preserve a memory of a moment before it is gone.
Last week, I discussed iPhone apps that you can use to prove that you are vaccinated, such as the LA Wallet app in Louisiana. If you plan to come to New Orleans, make sure that you have one of those apps on your iPhone or some other proof of vaccination. As reported by Ben Myers of the Times-Picayune, starting this Monday, you will need to show proof of vaccination (or a very recent negative COVID-19 test) to stay inside at numerous establishments including restaurants, bars, the Superdome, gyms, music halls, casinos, pool halls, arcades, etc. This follows the recent news that Jazz Fest 2021, which had been rescheduled for October, is now canceled due to COVID. I hate that it has come to this, especially since things were looking better before the Delta variant, and the vaccination rates for folks who live in New Orleans is much better than many places. But vaccination rates in the rest of Louisiana are dismal, local hospitals are at their limits with “no plateau in sight,” and New Orleans Mayor Cantrell reported yesterday that “most of the people hospitalized in New Orleans with COVID-19 are from outside the city.” New Orleans has always been a fantastic city for tourists, and showing off the Crescent City to friends who are visiting has long been one of my favorite activities. But given the current state, I recommend that you wait until next year to do that. In the meantime, there is an urgent need to convince everyone to get vaccinated so that we can all have a better 2022. And now, the news of note from the past week:
The TranscriptPad app was updated this week to add the ability to speak. The app has long had a function where you can press a button and have the transcript automatically scroll as you review it, a mode that I have used quite a bit. You can now have the app read the transcript out loud as it does so, with different voices for the questions and answers. I tried it out, and it works very well. I don’t see myself using this feature often, but I can imagine a circumstance in which I decide to review the key portions of a transcript by having my iPad read to me from a deposition transcript as I am doing something else around my house. Click here for more information on this new feature.
California attorney David Sparks of MacSparky reviews the Apple MagSafe Battery Pack. He explains why the device is worth using, even though it is more expensive than alternatives, because it works better.
Illinois attorney John Voorhees of MacStories describes the improvements coming to the built-in Maps app on the iPhone and iPad this Fall. There is a new interface, detailed 3D models of certain landmarks, augmented reality walking directions, weather alerts, tips for when to leave to account for traffic conditions, and more.
Dan Guido is the CEO of a cybersecurity company in New York City. He uses an electric scooter, and to try to find it if it was ever stolen, he hid two AirTags inside of it. Sure enough, the scooter was stolen this week, but he was able to recover it with the aid of the police. He wrote a fascinating description of the entire experience in this series of tweets. This is great reading, and great advice, for anyone who owns AirTags or is considering owning them because he made numerous smart decisions at different points in the process.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball explains some of the reasons that an Apple TV is a better device than the much cheaper alternatives that offer similar functions. I agree with all of this.
If you are thinking of using an Apple TV to stream all of your TV channels instead of paying for cable or satellite TV, Jason Snell of Six Colors recommends Suppose. You tell the website where you live and what channels you want to have included, and the website recommends the best packages for you.
Speaking of streaming video, you know how sometimes you are watching a show and the characters in a show find themselves watching a fake TV show or movie — for example, the show 30 Rock had a bit about a movie called The Rural Juror, and The Simpsons has featured an action movie called McBain? The website Nestflix.fun collects tons of these shows-within-a-show and demonstrates what it would look like if all of these fake shows were available on a streaming service. A lot of work went into this website, and I found it great fun to browse. Perhaps you will too.
Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac reports that you can now download a free Ted Lasso sticker pack for iMessage and the Clips app.
Filipe Espósito of 9to5Mac notes that you can now save hundreds of dollars on the 2020 models of the iPad Pro by purchasing from Apple’s Refurbished Store. These models are not quite as fast as the 2021 iPad Pro models, and the 2020 12.9" model doesn’t feature the new mini-LED screen that I described in this review, but the 2020 models are still excellent devices, especially at these prices.
Last month, I discussed the Pegasus software sold by NSO Group by governments that can be used to hack into an iPhone — software designed to be used against criminals, but some governments used them against others including reporters and human rights activists. Were you targeted by the Pegasus software? The odds of that happening are quite low, but if you want to find out, Jason Cipriani of CNet explains how you can run a test using the iMazing software on a Mac or PC — software that can also be used to create more sophisticated backups of an iPhone.
And finally, to promote the new Spatial Audio feature in Apple Music, Apple teamed up with Billie Eilish to produce this short video. Put on your headphones while you watch this video, which uses multiple reflections in mirrors to simulate visually the surround sound that you are hearing:
Last week, Apple announced three initiatives to protect children from sexual abuse. At least two of them have privacy implications, which has led some, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), to oppose Apple’s actions. Additionally, many folks raised good questions, which led Apple to release a Frequently Asked Questions (PDF link) a few days later to provide more detailed information. This is a complicated issue, and reasonable minds can differ on whether Apple is doing the right thing. Here is what you should know.
Siri and Search
Let’s start with the least controversial new initiative. Apple is updating Siri and Search to provide parents and children with information about unsafe situations related to CSAM. CSAM stands for Child Sexual Abuse Material. People used to simply call this “child pornography,” but “CSAM” has been increasingly used in the last 20 years to emphasize that the key is not that this information is pornographic but instead that it is evidence of child sexual abuse. With this initiative, people will be able to ask Siri about how to report child exploitation, and Siri will point to helpful resources.
These improvements seem like an obviously good idea. They will be part of an update to Apple’s operating systems later this year. Of course, if this was the only change, I wouldn’t be writing a blog post about this topic. It gets more complicated.
Sexually explicit photos in Messages
The second initiative takes place in the Messages app and is based on technology that Apple developed for the Photos app. The Photos app already has the ability to look at the images on your device and try to understand what is in the image using artificial intelligence (AI). For example, if you take a picture of your dog, your iPhone will often understand that there is a dog in the picture. Use the Search feature in the Photos app to search for “dog” and the iPhone (or iPad or Mac) will show you pictures that the iPhone thinks contain a picture of a dog, even if you yourself never tagged the picture as containing a dog. To ensure privacy, your pictures are analyzed on your device — not on some Apple server — so the AI occurs without Apple seeing your photos. As this feature has improved over time, there is now a big and growing list of words that you can use to search in the Photos app.
Later this year, Apple will add the ability for your iPhone (and iPad and Mac) to tell that there is sexually explicit content in a photograph. Apple has not defined what it means by “sexually explicit” content. For example, is it all nudity or something else? And of course, not all nudity is CSAM. It may not include a child at all. Or it may include a child in a context that is not abusive, such as a parent’s picture of his or her child in a bathtub.
But whatever it is that this AI can search for when it looks for sexually explicit content, it only occurs in a very specific context. Unlike the “dog” example I noted above, this does not occur at all in the Photos app. It only occurs in the Messages app. And it doesn’t occur all the time in the Messages app, but instead only if you turn it on. And even then, it can only be turned on in a very specific circumstance: when you have an account configured as a family in iCloud and when there are children — people under the age of 18 — on the account.
If you are a parent and you have an iCloud family account, then this Fall, you will be able to turn on a new communications safety feature in Messages for the children in your family. The system works in two different ways.
First, a parent can turn on this feature for a child account that is age 12 or younger. With this function turned on, if the Messages app on the child’s device receives or tries to send a sexually explicit image, then the image will initially be blurred or otherwise obscured.
Before the child can view the message, the child will see a warning message. In the example provided by Apple, the message was written in terms that are appropriate for and understandable by a child. For example, it explains that the image shows “private body parts that you cover with bathing suits.” Additionally, parents have the option to turn on parental notifications so that if the 12-or-under child decides to look at the image notwithstanding the warning, the parent will be alerted. My understanding is that the parent will also see the picture in question. The child is told that an alert will go to their parents:
If a child is a teenager — age 13 to age 17 — then the system works the same except that there is no option for parental notification. A parent can still turn on the feature so that the teen receives the warning, but if the teen decides to look at the picture anyway, the parent will not be alerted.
Why is there no parental alert feature for teens? Privacy. For example, the type of sexually explicit image that a teenager is viewing may reveal private information about the teenager, such as if the teenager is exploring their own sexual orientation. For some families, revealing that information to a parent may actually result in a negative reaction such as, in some cases, child abuse by the parent.
Because this AI all takes place in the Messages app on the device, Apple itself does not get access to the messages or images. Apple is never alerted — only the parent(s). As Apple says in its FAQ: “None of the communications, image evaluations, interventions, or notifications are available to Apple.” Moreover, this feature does not change the end-to-end encryption in Messages.
CSAM detection
The third new initiative is CSAM detection. This feature has nothing to do with the AI feature that I just described, and it works in a completely different fashion.
To try to combat child abuse in the United States, in 1984, the federal government established and continues to fund a private, non-profit organization called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). NCMEC serves as the national clearinghouse and to provide a coordinated, national response to problems relating to missing and exploited children. NCMEC is one of the few entities in the United States that has legal permission to store a collection of CSAM.
Using incredibly sophisticated technology called NeuralHash, NCMEC has systems that analyze each instance of CSAM and create a unique CSAM hash. In other words, each picture in NCMEC’s CSAM database is associated with a single unique CSAM hash. NeuralHash is sophisticated enough that the hash remains the same even if the image is cropped or altered in minor ways using common techniques, such as changing a color image to black and white. Apple has developed software for your iPhone that can similarly analyze a picture and determine its hash. If the hash associated with the image on your iPhone matches the CSAM hash provided by NCMEC, then there is an incredibly high likelihood that the image on your iPhone is CSAM.
When Apple unveils its CSAM detection feature this Fall, all iPhones will have the ability to analyze images stored in the Photos app and determine the hashes. Also, all iPhones will contain a list of the CSAM hashes provided by NCMEC. If you choose not to use iCloud to upload your images to Apple’s server, then no CSAM detection takes place. But if you do choose to do so — such as to backup your iPhone, or to use iCloud photo sharing so that the same image appears on your iPad, Mac, etc. — then Apple will first determine whether each image matches a NCMEC CSAM hash. If yes, then a red flag goes up. And if a certain number of red flags go up — Apple hasn’t revealed what that number is — then Apple gets a notification that you appear to be uploading CSAM images to iCloud. [UPDATE 8/13/2021: Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal interviewed Apple’s software chief Craig Federighi, and he stated that the number is around 30.] Apple says that the risk of this notification being a false positive is only 1 in 1 trillion.
When this notification goes to Apple, Apple next performs a manual review. An Apple employee is provided with a low-resolution version of the images sought to be uploaded to iCloud so that those images can be compared with a low-resolution version of the NCMEC CSAM images. If that employee confirms that there is a positive match, then Apple sends a report to NCMEC and disables the user’s account. The person is notified and can appeal to have their account reinstated. I presume that NCMEC, upon agreeing that there is a match, alerts the appropriate law enforcement authorities.
Unlike the Messages system that can be turned on for those under the age of 18 that I described above, the CSAM detection system never performs its own analysis of the pictures on your iPhone. Thus, to use the example I gave above, if you take a picture of your child in the bathtub, that will not trigger this system. This system is triggered only for images that are already in the NCMEC database, and the analysis occurs on your iPhone — not based on the content of an image as determined by AI but instead based on the hash that is associated with the image.
The controversy
I’ve seen people both praise and criticize these new initiatives. On all sides of the issue, I’ve heard reasonable arguments.
Some folks believe that what Apple is doing doesn’t go far enough. These new initiatives are focused on two apps: Photos, and only when iCloud uploading is turned on, and Messages, and only for children when their parents turn on the feature. Thus, Apple isn’t doing anything about images that you view on the Internet using Safari, images that children send or receive using an app other than Messages, photos stored in an app other than Photos, etc. If Apple wanted to do more, they certainly could. The problem, of course, is that these additional efforts would erode legitimate privacy concerns.
Some folks believe that what Apple is doing goes too far. First, I have heard concerns about false positives. For the CSAM detection feature, it seems to me that Apple has done a lot to vastly reduce the risk of false positives. For the AI detection in Messages for children, nobody outside of Apple knows how well it works.
Second, I’ve heard concerns about teen privacy, arguments that a 17-year old ought to be able to send or receive consensual nude images without receiving warnings, even if their parents want to turn on that feature.
The most common complaint that I’ve heard is the slippery slope argument. Once Apple has a system in place in the United States for using CSAM hashes provided by NCMEC, will they do the same in other countries, including more authoritarian countries? What if that country’s database includes not only CSAM but other images that the government finds objectionable, such as the famous picture of the man standing in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square in 1989, an image censored by the government in China? Could a country opposed to the rights of those in the LGBTQ+ community exploit this technology? Could an oppressive regime force Apple to flag pictures of human rights activists?
Apple’s has a simple answer to that concern: it has refused similar efforts in the past, and it will continue to say no in the future. Here is what Apple says in the FAQ:
Could governments force Apple to add non-CSAM images to the hash list?
Apple will refuse any such demands. Apple’s CSAM detection capability is built solely to detect known CSAM images stored in iCloud Photos that have been identified by experts at NCMEC and other child safety groups. We have faced demands to build and deploy government-mandated changes that degrade the privacy of users before, and have steadfastly refused those demands. We will continue to refuse them in the future. Let us be clear, this technology is limited to detecting CSAM stored in iCloud and we will not accede to any government’s request to expand it. Furthermore, Apple conducts human review before making a report to NCMEC. In a case where the system flags photos that do not match known CSAM images, the account would not be disabled and no report would be filed to NCMEC.
[UPDATE 8/13/2021: In another Wall Street Journal article by Joanna Stern and Tim Higgins, Federighi stated that the database of images that Apple is working with comes not just from NCMEC but also from other child-safety organization, including two that are in “distinct jurisdictions,” which I presume means countries outside of the United States. Federighi also pointed out that auditors will be able to verify that the database consists of only images provided by those entities.]
So ultimately it all comes down to trust. Do you trust Apple to live up to its promise? And if there is a country that makes it illegal or otherwise impossible for Apple to say no even when Apple wants to do so, will Apple leave that country so that it can keep its promise?
In an article for Macworld, Jason Snell provides an excellent overview and then concludes that he is concerned. “Even if Apple’s heart is in the right place, my confidence that its philosophy will be able to withstand the future desires of law enforcement agencies and authoritarian governments is not as high as I want it to be. We can all be against CSAM and admire the clever way Apple has tried to balance these two conflicting needs, while still being worried about what it means for the future.”
I respect that opinion and the concerns of others who don’t think that Apple can keep its promise, but based on the research and analysis I have done so far, I disagree. In fact, I don’t think that this new CSAM detection feature is much of a step forward on a slippery slope. Any government already has the ability to create laws about what Apple and every other company operating in that country can do. For some laws, Apple and other companies have chosen to comply after performing a risk-benefit analysis. But for other laws and requirements, I believe that Apple and other companies would say no or would leave — and the risk of them leaving and the associated economic impact in that country would, hopefully, convince such a government in that country to back down. In China, for example, the country has a very different view on human rights than democratic regimes, but the country sees a big economic benefit from Apple producing iPhones in China. In other countries, there are many fans of Apple products, and they may help cooler minds to prevail. I’m not saying that any of this is easy, but I just don’t think that it is anything new. These thorny issues have existed and will continue to exist, regardless of Apple’s new features. I don’t consider this a reason for Apple to avoid doing something good about CSAM while implementing it in a way that respects privacy.
Additionally, providing information to NCMEC is nothing new. As the NCMEC website explains, electronic service providers in the United States — companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google — are not required by federal law to search for CSAM, but if they become aware of it on their systems, they are required to report it to NCMEC. See 18 USC § 2258A. Over 1,400 companies are currently registered with NCMEC to make these reports. According to NCMEC (PDF report), in the year 2020, Facebook made 20,307,216 of these reports, Google made 546,704, and Apple made only 265. I’m sure that Apple made so few because it hasn’t tried to find them in the past, so those 265 cases are probably cases in which U.S. law enforcement first reached out to Apple during an investigation. Facebook, on the other hand, is providing a huge number of images to NCMEC, and unlike Apple, they haven’t done so in a way that images are analyzed on your own device instead of their server to protect the privacy of images that do not match a NCMEC hash.
Moreover, by implementing this system now, Apple will have a way in the future to expand the encryption of information stored on its servers without people being able to complain that Apple’s encryption makes it impossible to tell if Apple is hosting CSAM. With this system, Apple has a way to check images before they are uploaded without Apple itself actually looking at the content in any of your images. Yes, it does mean that we have to trust Apple not to fall down a slippery slope, but that is nothing new. Any time you decide to involve another person, organization, or company in your life, you are making a decision based upon how much you trust them.
These are not easy issues. Apple and other technology companies are bound to make mistakes, and hopefully they will learn from those mistakes and evolve over time. As they do so, they will face criticism from folks saying they have gone too far and from folks saying they have not gone far enough. Every customer can decide whether they can live with the decisions that Apple and others have made — and if not, they can take their business elsewhere. Hopefully, this post helps you to make your own decisions when these features are implemented in a few months.
Episode 13 of the In the News podcast is now available. After a quick discussion of some Steve Jobs news, we then focus on some of the new features coming out this Fall when Apple updates the operating system for the iPhone, iPad, etc. One of those is the new Quick Notes feature on the iPad (and Mac), which will make it even easier to use the iPad as a tool for research. We also discuss significant improvements to the Find My app on the iPhone/iPad, which make will make it much easier to locate friends/family and items such as a lost iPhone or AirPods. We then discuss improvements to the AirPods Pro software that will be useful to folks who can use some assistance with hearing. We also briefly discuss a profile of Brian Mueller (the developer of CARROT Weather) and iPhone video tips.
Finally, in our In the Know segment, Brett offers recommendations for using the Live Photos features on the iPhone. I offer tips for getting more out of the built-in Notes app on the iPhone and iPad, including lots of ideas for information that you might want to store in Notes. (If any of you have other good ideas for categories of information that work great when stored in the Notes app, let me know!)
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%.
