Originally published at: https://appletalk.com.au/2018/11/friday-morning-news161118/
A security vulnerability found in iOS 12.1 was exploited by a pair of hackers at this year’s Mobile Pwn2Own contest to retrieve a recently deleted photo. Hackers used a malicious Wi-Fi access point and leveraged an exploit found in Mobile Safari’s JIT compiler to remotely retrieve a photo that had been sent to the “recently deleted” album — something that users have access to do themselves.
Apple SVP of Retail Angela Ahrendts accepted the Thompson Reuters Foundation’s Stop Slavery award at this year’s Trust Conference, with Apple receiving the award for its efforts in supplier responsibility, particularly regarding forced labour. Apple CEO Tim Cook is also set to accept the Anti-Defamation League’s Courage Against Hate award on December 3, for being led by a strong moral compass and demonstrating that businesses aren’t exempt from attempting to make the world a better place for everyone.
An update to some of Apple’s pro apps now includes support for third-party extensions. Final Cut Pro X now includes a number of third-party extensions from well-known video editing websites and services, and provides access to more via the Mac App Store. Motion now has the same colour-grading tools as Final Cut does, and Compressor now uses a 64-bit encoding engine for improved performance as well as SRT support for subtitles.
The third developer betas of iOS 12.1.1, watchOS 5.1.2, tvOS 12.1.1, and macOS 10.14.2 are now available, although there aren’t many immediately visible changes. More Apple complications are expected to be added in the watchOS release, while iOS 12.1.1 fixes the camera-switching UI and allows Live Photos to be taken during FaceTime calls.
Mike Krahulik from Penny Arcade has written about his experiences with drawing on the iPad Pro, first wondering whether he could use it as his travel device, then eventually exclusively drawing on it. The new iPad Pros, he says, make the previous generation look like a rough draft in comparison, praising the incredible thinness and lightness, as well as the improvements to the Apple Pencil that make it that much nicer to use.
Over at Macworld, Jason Snell speculates that the new MacBook Air might spell the end of configurable Macs, citing limited customisation options and Apple’s approach to iOS devices as the potential reasons. 9to5Mac seems to agree, saying that if Apple were to switch to ARM-powered Macs, we might not see the kind of CPU options that we do now. Given that our computing devices are more or less appliances anyway, is that such a big deal?
FTP client Transmit is back on the Mac App Store, following Panic announcing it would make a return at WWDC earlier this year. The only catch is, it’s now a subscription app with a free 7 day trial period. If that isn’t your deal, then you can still purchase it separately from Panic directly.
Reports claim that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg ordered Facebook execs to only use Android devices after comments from Tim Cook regarding Facebook’s invasive data collection and ongoing privacy concerns. Facebook has since denied the reports, saying that it has always encouraged the use of Android devices due to its larger worldwide market share.
MacStories gives us a look back at the original iPad mini. It seems strange that we’re already looking back at a device as recent as the iPad mini, but remember this thing was released in October 2012, with most of the parts that made the original iPad as successful as it was, just in a smaller form factor.
There’s a Kickstarter for an English translation of the Steves manga (the story of the “two Steves” that started Apple) that was only released in Japanese, in Japan, back in 2014. While you can read the first volume (in English) for free right now, the original creators are looking for almost AU $40,000 to fully translate the other five volumes. I’m still on the fence about backing, mostly because I’m disappointed that there will only be digital copies.