Wednesday Morning News

Originally published at: https://appletalk.com.au/2018/10/wednesday-morning-news171018/

Apple has apologised for having a small number of Apple IDs in China compromised due to a phishing scam, which led to a number of fraudulent transactions. While no specifics have been offered regarding the number of compromised accounts or the total amount stolen, one source says Apple will be refunding customers the stolen amount, which seems like a nice move. For the rest of us, it’s a reminder to enable two-factor authentication on your Apple ID, if you haven’t already.

With the move to subscription-based apps, scammers are now taking advantage of subscriptions by tricking users into signing up for expensive recurring subscriptions. By intentionally confusing users with convoluted user experiences when performing an in-app subscriptions, some apps are hitting the top grossing charts by charging weekly fees, although generally App Store reviews are quick to point this out. TechCrunch has examples of the dark patterns used to scam people into costly subs.

A new partnership between joint replacement development house Zimmer Biomet and Apple looks to improve the overall patient experience using the Apple Watch and iPhone post-knee and hip replacement. The app is designed to provide another avenue of communication between patients and their doctors, with up to 10,000 people enrolled in post-op care combining patient feedback with activity data.

Just when you thought Beats would have no new hardware this year, Apple has debuted a special Mickey Mouse edition of the Beats Solo 3 wireless headphones, to celebrate the Mickey’s 90th anniversary. The Mickey’s 90th Anniversary Edition Beats Solo 3 Wireless comes with matching felt carry case, collectible pin, and decal, but there’s also new colour options available for regular Beats Solo 3s, if an animated mouse isn’t you speed or style.

For whatever reason, Siri still isn’t capable of recognising individual voices. A new Apple patent hopes to change that, with their patent for device access using voice authentication capable of recognising voices independent of the actual spoken words, using a bunch of vocal terms I don’t quite understand.

I don’t use Launchpad enough because Spotlight is good enough for the several apps I use, but 9to5Mac has tips on making Apple’s Mac app launcher more useful, either by making it easier to activate, organising it to show apps in a specific order in the grid, and using folders to break that down even more.

One third-party Apple Watch band vendor has posted a note saying that their metal bands only fit the Apple Watch Series 3 or below. To be clear, this isn’t a problem with copies of Apple’s original band designs, instead the issue only affects third-party Apple Watch bands that have completely different designs. There’s also some contention regarding Series 4 lugs being slightly different than those that go with any previous series, to match the new curves on the Apple Watch Series 4, which is probably related to the original problem above.

Developers have been coming up with all kinds of crazy ideas for third-party Apple Watch faces, and although none have managed to integrate any of the existing complications into their SpriteKit-based watch faces, that hasn’t stopped them from including their own basic ones for date and battery status.

If you want to have a play with these third-party watch faces that are technically apps that are always visible whenever you activate your Apple Watch, then there’s an unofficial guide on setting up Xcode and getting the app running on your own device and pushed to your Apple Watch that might help if you’re not sure where to get started. It’s a little complicated getting everything set up, but the good news is it’s just a one-time process, after which you can customise your custom faces to your heart’s content.

Setting an app-specific time limit in Screen Time in iOS 12 is a little hidden for some reason, with the main app limits option taking you to a screen to set limits for categories of apps. But setting a limit for a specific app is definitely possible, and 9to5Mac shows you how.

Some of those watch faces are awesome. Can’t wait for this to become possible.

YouTube was down this morning for about 45minutes. I wonder how many redundancies have to fail for possibly the largest most data hungry site on the internet to go down.

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