Originally published at: https://appletalk.com.au/2018/10/monday-morning-news221018/
Just when you thought the story of Bloomberg claiming compromised supply chains and nigh-undetectable hardware-based hacks of servers used by many large tech companies was dying down, Buzzfeed has an interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook about Bloomberg’s incredible story. It’s the first time Cook, and Apple itself, has issued a public statement calling for a retraction of any story from any outlet, saying they turned the company upside down in an attempt to verify Bloomberg’s claims, only to find no truth to any of it, and no evidence that any hacking as described by Bloomberg ever happened.
Motherboard reports that new content filtering settings in iOS 12 seem to be a little… off. Turning on the filters to limit adult websites blocks legitimate sex education websites, while allowing plenty of questionable content through. Although Apple’s content filtering algorithms aren’t perfect, I wonder if it would be possible for any content filtering to get it perfectly right by everyone’s standards, given how subjective content filtering is.
The changes Apple made to the keyboards in the MacBook Pros don’t seem to have made improvements to overall keyboard reliability. Whether the silicon membrane Apple added to all of the individual keys was designed to make the keyboards more silent or to stop dust and debris from affecting the butterfly mechanism, it doesn’t seem to have made a positive impact on key reliability. It’s unfortunate, because many were hoping that Apple’s mostly-disliked re-redesign would at least be reliable, even if the keyboard itself wasn’t likeable.
Apple has come up with a deal to lease 300,000 square feet of industrial space in Santa Clara County, California. There’s currently a warehouse sitting on at least part of the land, with Apple said to have signed a 10-year lease for the building, seen as a positive move given the limited options for companies in the area.
Forget the iPhone XR (which still seems to be available next week, if you haven’t pre-ordered), Apple’s latest product is an Apple Watch charging puck. But not just any Apple Watch charging puck, one that comes with USB-C on the other end. The Apple Watch magnetic charging cable with USB-C is the shorter 30cm kind rather than the 1m or 2m you get with your Apple Watch or what you can purchase separately, but depending on which side of the fence you sit on, is either representative of Apple’s move to USB-C for everything, or just another cable they can sell you.
Apple is calling on developers to get their software notarised. New in macOS Mojave, Notarisation seems to be an extra step that you can do after your app is signed using your developer ID certificate, showing a more streamlined Gatekeeper dialog when someone opens your app on their Mac for the first time. Apple says that an upcoming release of macOS will require developer-signed apps to be notarised, too.
Over at Macworld, Jason Snell says Photoshop on iPad is a huge win for the iPad Pro. While there are many alternatives currently available on the iPad that let you do many of the same things as Photoshop, many people are prevented from using the iPad as a serious tool because of the lack of Photoshop, and lack the time, energy, or both needed to really learn an alternative app to the same level that they know Photoshop.
Meanwhile, the developers behind pro-level iPad image editors say they aren’t worried about Photoshop coming to the iPad. The companies behind Affinity and Procreate say Adobe coming to the iPad validates what they’ve been doing for years now, with both apps also being available as a one-time purchase seen as a major plus over Adobe’s ongoing subscription pricing.
Tweetbot for iOS now offers an in-app purchase “tip” that unlocks a number of cool themes, including darker themes that aren’t as black as the new dark theme. The designer that likely behind many of the new colour schemes is also offering his automotive enthusiast iMessage sticker pack for free, with Stickershift coming with 98 car and tool stickers for you to use in your conversations.
Apple has two new videos showing off the iPhone XR, with one giving you the highlights of this year’s only LCD iPhone, and the other highlighting the cool new colours it comes in.