Really, I just loved the first line of this piece by Josh Constine at TechCrunch, enough so I needed to make a nice graphic for it. It’s all about how Facebook leaked a bunch of app data meant for app owners (bad enough IMO) to app testers. Oops. It’s cool, though, bro, because Facebook fixed it. TechCrunch has the details.

Set the “days without a Facebook privacy problem” counter to zero. This week, an alarmed developer contacted TechCrunch, informing us that their Facebook App Analytics weekly summary email had been delivered to someone outside their company. It contains sensitive business information, including weekly average users, page views and new users.

This is far from a comprehensive list of the best tech ads in the last 35 years, but it’s a quick trip back in time to some of the best. Writing for TechCrunch, Sarah Wells offers thoughts and the videos for several Apple spots; the annoying (but definitely successful) “Dude, you’re getting a Dell” spot; Sprint’s “Can You Hear Me Now?” spot; and a compelling Google spot.

With stunning visuals (most of which were not CGI) and captivating choreography, Jonze breathes life into a product that got mixed reviews after its release in February. This made us think, what other tech commercials have grabbed our attention in the last 35 years and transformed how we think about technology?

Back in April, we learned that Amazon is working on a family robot. Now, LoupVentures  has gone into considerable detail in its analysis of this project. In part: “Amazon’s robot could open up new market opportunities. According to The Information, Amazon has considered offering home insurance. By having real-time monitoring of homes, the Amazon robot could monitor and notify a human in instances of theft, fire, or in-home hazards (i.e. an infant wondering near stairs), thereby mitigating the cost of a claim and lowering premiums. Lastly, Amazon has highlighted they want to deliver packages to your home when you are not there. We feel consumers would be more comfortable letting couriers into their homes if a robot could monitor the drop-off.” Are you ready?

Redditor u/cozygodal shared a story of using the MacBook Touch Bar. A lot Apple customers (including the press) don’t like the Touch Bar and think it’s a gimmick. But u/cozygodal found it helpful for their dyslexia.

I would love to spotlight a specific use-case for the Touch Bar that maybe not a lot of people notice. I have dyslexia and a really hard time to spell words correctly. Taking notes in class is hard because I write so slow and it is a a lot harder to discuss my notes with classmates because nobody can read a dame word.

And a that point the MacBook Pro came in. You can see the words while typing and that is a godsend. I’m so much faster it is unbelievable like a switch in my brain is turned on. If you are telling me a word I cannot spell it in my head I had to memorized every single word I know like a foreign language and I can recall my memory so much faster with the pictorial representation of words in the touch bar.

Thank you Apple for making my life a lot easier 🙂

Over on Quora, a website where you can ask questions, someone asked: “What is Apple’s strategy with their health platform?” User Mills Baker gave an interesting answer, saying that the Apple health platform aims to fill a void that other tech companies are unable to fill.

For various reasons from fragmentation to consumer concern about data collection and privacy, Samsung, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and so on (including most Android hardware companies) cannot develop advanced health-related features and incorporate them into their products. Nowhere does a tightly-controlled, individual-user-oriented, “device-restricted” product ecosystem make more sense than with sensitive health records and holistic measurement / presentation / usage. Apple will probably remain most-trusted, most-reliable, and most usable in this area for a long time.

Apple’s ongoing legal fight with Qualcomm over patent royalty payments iPhone parts suppliers must pay now includes the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Apple filed petitions to invalidate the four patents in question claiming they don’t cover new ideas, according to Bloomberg. The patents cover devices that are phones and PDAs, autofocus for digital cameras, circuit memory, and touch sensitive displays. It could take a year to get a final ruling, assuming the USPTO agrees to move forward with the filing. For now, Apple and Qualcomm will keep moving forward with their other lawsuits in the U.S. and abroad.

The massively popular battle royale shooter game Fortnite has already brought in US$100 million from iPhone and iPad players in the three months it’s been available on the iOS platform. Sensor Tower reports that’s three times as much as Arena of Valor brought in during its first 90 days on iOS. The game itself is free but offers in-app purchases that players are clearly happy to buy. You can download Fortnite for free at Apple’s App Store and join in on what’s currently the most popular game on any platform.

We know that Internet TV is booming. And yet the interesting fact is that conventional TV viewing isn’t dropping in proportion. It’s dropping only a little. That means that the sum of the two, in daily viewing hours, is increasing. It also explains why cord-cutting is often pooh-poohed as minor. Something’s keeping those cable TV subscriptions fairly attractive. No data caps? Local news and sports? DVR capability? The chart doesn’t explain; it just shows the data. Very interesting indeed.