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The Original Storyboard for Apple's 1984 Super Bowl Commercial

Charlotte Henry ·

As ever the morning after the Super Bowl, there is as much chatter about the adverts as there is about the football. Aside from the Game of Thrones/Bud Light tie-up, the ad spots during Super Bowl LIII were as uninspiring as large parts of the low-scoring match. Time to reflect then on the most iconic Super Bowl commercial of all time then – Apple’s 1984 clip. Business Insider posted the original storyboard and ideas behind the commercial.

Before the ad was even filmed, Apple’s ad agency needed buy-in from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and then-CEO John Sculley. The tech executives were shown a storyboard, or a series of pictures that describe what the ad would look like when it was actually filmed. The ad men were nervous – especially when Jay Chiat, an executive at Apple’s ad agency, was tearing up every idea before they were finished. But it turns out that Jobs loved the idea when they showed it to him.»

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Your Health Data is Turned Into a Risk Score and Sold

Andrew Orr ·

Yet another reason why we need privacy laws. Companies collect your health data and turn it into a «risk score» which gets sold to doctors, insurers, and hospitals.

Over the past year, powerful companies such as LexisNexis have begun hoovering up the data from insurance claims, digital health records, housing records, and even information about a patient’s friends, family and roommates, without telling the patient they are accessing the information, and creating risk scores for health care providers and insurers.

There is no law against collecting and using this data.

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3 Things Apple Does That Keep Annoying Us

John Martellaro ·

Dan Moren at Macworld reminds us that there are some Apple practices that continue to greatly annoy customers. In this case it’s all about revenue, and the argument is that Apple could please us greatly for not much loss of income. But at least we have a choice: buy or not buy.

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5 Mistakes Everyone Makes When Buying New Tech

Andrew Orr ·

David Nield wrote about five mistakes we all make when we buy new tech. It’s a good list to reflect upon when you’re in the market for new gadgets.

Prying open the packaging of your new gadget should fill you with excitement, not second thoughts. To avoid the sinking feeling that you have, once again, spent $80 on a device you don’t need, take note of these common pitfalls before you buy.

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How to Watch Super Bowl LIII on iOS or tvOS

Andrew Orr ·

Roger Fingas shares some ways to watch Super Bowl LIII on your iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV.

The Super Bowl kicks off Sunday, Feb. 3, at 6:30 p.m. Eastern, 3:30 p.m. Pacific. The game will be played from the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.

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iOS 12.1.4 Delayed Until Next Week, Apple Apologizes

Andrew Orr ·

Apple issued an apology to MacRumors, saying that a software update to fix the Group FaceTime bug won’t arrive until next week.

We have fixed the Group FaceTime security bug on Apple’s servers and we will issue a software update to re-enable the feature for users next week. We thank the Thompson family for reporting the bug. We sincerely apologize to our customers who were affected and all who were concerned about this security issue. We appreciate everyone’s patience as we complete this process.

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Should Apple Have its own Debit Card?

Andrew Orr ·

John Detrixhe argues that Apple should release its own debit card to prepare for the wave of contactless cards.

But consumers typically avoid moving their financial accounts and tend to be faithful, even when they dislike the service. An Apple debit card is a chance for the Silicon Valley-based company to give customers what they want—for God’s sake—before someone else does.

I’m not sure I’m sold on this idea. For a debit card maybe Apple could work with the bank it uses for device financing. I think what would be nice though is for Apple Pay Cash to work more like its own bank.

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Amazon's Super Bowl LIII Ad Won't Trigger Alexa

Charlotte Henry ·

The adverts are likely to be as big a talking point from this weekend’s Super Bowl as the football. Techcrunch reported on  how  Amazon stops those ads waking millions of Alexa’s across the country. The procedure is relatively simple if Amazon is producing the advert itself. If it isn’t, but «the audio of a request matches that of requests from at least two other customers, we identify it as a media event,» the company explained.  So, come Super Bowl Sunday there should be no incidents like that South Park one.

With its own ads, the company adds a fingerprint of the audio, which is stored on-device. Given the Echo’s storage limitations, additional fingerprints are stored in the cloud, where the assistant can cross-check things before waking. The system generally works pretty well, though complications can occur in, say, a noisy environment (what Super Bowl party has ever been noisy, though?) in which case a longer clip is required to do its job.