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Safari 14 Translation Rolls Out to Brazil and Germany

Andrew Orr ·

Filipe Espósito shares news that 9To5Mac readers in Brazil and Germany report they can use Safari 14’s built-in translation feature.

For some unknown reason, the Safari translator wasn’t available in all countries supported by the Translate app. Luckily this might have changed today, as multiple users from different countries reported that the Safari translator is now enabled for them.

Some 9to5Mac readers from countries like Brazil and Germany told us that the translating option is now working in Safari, which is something that has definitely changed today. I was able to confirm that the Safari translator is now working on my devices with the system region set to Brazil.

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Here’s How to Disinfect Your Apple Card

Andrew Orr ·

Brittney Myers wrote a guide on how to disinfect your Apple Card and other credit cards. I think it’s useful in situations where you’re unable to pay contactless with Apple Pay. We’ve heard for years that our smartphones are dirty, with some saying they can be dirtier than a toilet. I expect that credit and debit cards will have a similar level of uncleanliness.

According to Harvard Health, the coronavirus can live on plastic and stainless steel for up to three days, and the CDC advises that frequently touched objects and surfaces should be cleaned and sanitized at least once a day. In addition to copious handwashing, cleaning your frequently used items can help keep your home germ-free.

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Michigan Prop 2 Passes; Police Need a Warrant to Search Your Devices

Andrew Orr ·

Voters in Michigan overwhelmingly passed Proposition 2 which adds “electronic data and electronic communications” to the state’s search and seizure laws.

The person, houses, papers, possessions, and electronic data and electronic communications of every person shall be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures. No warrant to search any place or to seize any person or things or to access electronic data or electronic communications shall issue without describing them, nor without probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation.

Translation: Michigan police need a warrant to search your electronic devices. And as a Michigander myself I definitely voted in favor of this.

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Mattel Revealed it Suffered a Data Breach on June 28

Andrew Orr ·

Toy company Mattel suffered ransomware attack on June 28, 2020. It revealed this in a 10-Q form filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

On July 28, 2020, Mattel discovered that it was the victim of a ransomware attack on its information technology systems that caused data on a number of systems to be encrypted. Promptly upon detection of the attack, Mattel began enacting its response protocols and taking a series of measures to stop the attack and restore impacted systems. Mattel contained the attack and, although some business functions were temporarily impacted, Mattel restored its operations.

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Why The 'Vintage' iPhone 5c Lives on

Charlotte Henry ·

The iPhone 5c is now officially vintage, meaning support is “subject to availability of inventory.” However, as Cult of Mac points out, the colorful, budget-friendly, device has had a lasting impact on the iPhone range.

The iPhone 5c was one half of the first bifurcation of an iPhone launch. Up until that point, Apple released just one iPhone each year, the only variations being color and storage capacity. In 2013, with iPhone sales still rocketing upward with no sign of an end in sight, Apple released two different handsets for the first time. There was the premium iPhone 5s, which came with the all-new Touch ID. Then there was the cheaper, primary-colored, “unapologetically plastic” iPhone 5c. Despite being cast as a failure by many, Apple doubled down on the iPhone 5c concept in the years following. For one thing, Apple never again had a year in which it launched just one iPhone. This year, it offers five models: The iPhone 12, iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 12 Pro Max and iPhone SE.

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Bookshop.Org Unites Indie Sellers to Battle Amazon

Andrew Orr ·

Apparently this launched earlier this year but I haven’t heard of it until now. Bookshop.org is a virtual bookshop that partners with indie book sellers as a rival to Amazon.

Hunter believes the reason for Bookshop’s quick success is readers’ fondness for their local booksellers. “Bookstores have been in trouble for a while because of Amazon’s growth, but this pandemic has really accelerated it. Amazon has gotten much more powerful, while there are 100-year-old stores that are hanging on for survival,” he said. “I think we were so successful because enough people were conscious of that, and wanted to rally around around their beloved bookstores, because they care about the world that we emerge from this pandemic into.”

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Ignore Instagram. TODAY is Election Day in the US

Andrew Orr ·

Certain Instagram users found out on Tuesday that when they opened the app, they saw a banner that said, “Tomorrow is Election Day.” Ignore that because as you’ll see everywhere else in the news, TODAY is Election Day. Also, check out Charlotte’s article if you want to stay informed of the results.

“While we turned off the ‘Tomorrow is Election Day’ notice last night, it was cached for a small group of people if their app hadn’t been restarted,” Instagram wrote on Twitter on Tuesday, responding to a number of users who had received the message. “It’s resolving itself as people restart.”

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Wallpapers Inspired by Apple’s ‘One More Thing’ Event

Andrew Orr ·

Apple announced a new event on November 10 called “One More Thing” and designers have created a couple of iPhone wallpapers for the occasion.

Because the company sent press invitations for the event titled “One more thing” to be held on November 10th last night. The predictions are that we will meet the first ARM-powered MacBook and AirTag at the event.

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Pandora HomePod Mini Support is Here

Andrew Orr ·

Pandora now supports the HomePod mini ahead of its launch on November 6. Juli Clover tells us the details.

According to Pandora, ‌HomePod‌ integration requires the latest version of the Pandora app. Once it’s installed, open the Pandora app on an iPhone or an iPad, and then select ProfileSettingsConnect With ‌HomePod‌Use in Home to get it working. Music can be requested from Pandora by adding “on Pandora” to any ‌Siri‌ request for a song.

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iFixit Shares iPhone 12/12 Pro Internal Wallpapers

Andrew Orr ·

iFixit is back this year to provide iPhone 12 internal wallpapers to let you see what the devices look like beneath the display.

Need a zoom party icebreaker? Take some folk on a phone tour, tell everyone Apple has pressed pause on unique battery shapes. And let us know how that goes because we’re running out of Kahoot topics…

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Apple’s 85/15 Subscription Split Doesn’t Help Developers Much

Andrew Orr ·

Unlike Apple’s 70/30 split for in-app purchases, it offers an 85/15 split for subscriptions from customers that stay subscribed for at least a year. But Jacob Eiting writes how that doesn’t really help developers because of subscriber churn.

No matter how great an app is, subscribers are going to churn. Sometimes it’s because of a credit card expiring or some other billing issue. And sometimes it’s more of a pause, and the user comes back after a few months. But the majority of churn comes from subscribers who, for whatever reason, decide that the app just isn’t worth paying for anymore. If a subscriber churns before the 1-year mark, the developer never sees that 85% split. And even if the user resubscribes, Apple and Google reset the clock if a subscription has lapsed for more than 60 days.

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MagSafe Fast Charging Won’t Damage Your iPhone 12 Battery

Andrew Orr ·

With the right charging brick, Apple’s MagSafe charging pad can quickly charge your iPhone 12 at an estimated 50% battery in 30 minutes. Although it was written last year, Clifford Colby’s article is a helpful investigation into fast charging. The short answer is that fast charging won’t damage your iPhone’s battery.

Damage is rare if everything’s well-managed inside. A battery’s management system closely monitors the two charge phases and drops the charging speed during the second phase to give the battery time to absorb the charge and avoid issues, which is why it can take 10 minutes to get those last few percentage points.

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NSA Avoids Discussing Back Doors in Commercial Products

Andrew Orr ·

The U.S. National Security agency is dodging questions about back doors in commercial products and whether it’s continuing this practice. The article mentions Dual EC, a type of encryption algorithm the NSA tried to get ratified as a global standard. Why? Because they could easily crack it.

Juniper Networks got into hot water over Dual EC two years later. At the end of 2015, the maker of internet switches disclosed that it had detected malicious code in some firewall products. Researchers later determined that hackers had turned the firewalls into their own spy tool here by altering Juniper’s version of Dual EC.

And that’s the reason we oppose these kinds of back doors or “weaknesses on purpose” on Security Friday. If one group can easily crack it, so eventually will other groups.

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Researchers Extract Intel CPU Encryption Key

Andrew Orr ·

Security researchers have successfully extracted the Intel CPU encryption key used to secure updates to the chip.

The key makes it possible to decrypt the microcode updates Intel provides to fix security vulnerabilities and other types of bugs. Having a decrypted copy of an update may allow hackers to reverse engineer it and learn precisely how to exploit the hole it’s patching. The key may also allow parties other than Intel—say a malicious hacker or a hobbyist—to update chips with their own microcode, although that customized version wouldn’t survive a reboot.

Of course, it’s the “other parties” to worry about. The key can be extracted from any chip that uses Intel’s Goldmont architecture. This is used for low-power chips like the Atom, Celeron, and Pentium brands.

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Hints of an Apple Search Engine Resurface

Andrew Orr ·

A report in the Financial Times (which is paywalled so I’m linking to TechCrunch) claims that Apple could be creating an Apple search engine. Or, maybe the company is instead improving search for Siri or Spotlight.

Apple is now showing its own search results and linking directly to websites when users type queries from its home screen in iOS 14. For context, this is a behavior that has been known for a while as people have seen the feature pop up in beta versions of iOS. And the search volume being up on Apple’s crawler is something that Jon Henshaw of Coywolf had noted back in August.

I’m going with the “improving Siri and Spotlight” take. Apple isn’t known for creating products outside its ecosystem (Music on Android and Apple TV on other devices notwithstanding).

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Instagram’s “Unlink Account” Feature is Deceiving

Andrew Orr ·

Instagram’s Unlink Account feature is deceiving, at least when it comes to Facebook. Since Instagram is a Facebook company your two accounts will forever be connected.

That’s because the wealth of data that Facebook collects through its multiple services is more than enough to properly identify users’ various accounts and link them to one another. Even in cases where a different name, email address, or device was used to create each account—be it a throwaway WhatsApp profile, stalker Instagram account, or joke Facebook profile—Facebook often is able to suss out who is actually behind the account and whether they have accounts on other Facebook-owned apps.

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Zoom Rolls Out End-to-End Encryption for Video Calls

Andrew Orr ·

Starting next week, video conferencing app Zoom is finally adding end-to-end encryption to its platform.

Zoom’s E2EE offering uses public key cryptography. In short, the keys for each Zoom meeting are generated by participants’ machines, not by Zoom’s servers. Encrypted data relayed through Zoom’s servers is indecipherable by Zoom, since Zoom’s servers do not have the necessary decryption key. This key management strategy is similar to that used by most end-to-end encrypted messaging platforms today.

Good to see Zoom doing this; they’ve certainly had misses in the past. Update: The new version is now available for most users.

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Link Previews in Chat Apps Could Leak Your IP Address

Andrew Orr ·

Security researchers found that link previews in chat apps could expose data like IP addresses if not implemented properly. Or they could be downloading as much as gigabytes of data in the background. They tested a variety of different messaging apps, and iPhone users will be relieved to know that iMessage didn’t experience any of these security leaks.

We think there’s one big takeaway here for developers: Whenever you’re building a new feature, always keep in mind what sort of privacy and security implications it may have, especially if this feature is going to be used by thousands or even millions of people around the world.

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Changing its Tune, Spotify Lets You Transfer Songs Again

Andrew Orr ·

Two weeks ago SongShift wrote that Spotify wouldn’t let the app’s users transfer music out of Spotify anymore; they could only bring music into Spotify from other platforms. But now Spotify has changed its mind and it’s good to see.

With the release of SongShift v5.1.3, you will again be able to transfer playlists from Spotify to another service. The only caveat is, you have to have created the playlist yourself, or the playlist must be collaborative and followed by you.

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Amazon Apple Card Option is Disappearing

Andrew Orr ·

People are starting to notice that their Amazon Apple Card payment option has disappeared.

Another person was told that the ‌Apple Card‌ is “not allowed on your account,” which is curious as the ‌Apple Card‌ is a Mastercard that should be accepted where Mastercard is accepted. A third person was told that the issue was on Apple’s end, so it appears that Amazon’s support staff has no insight what’s going on at this time.

Update: In a statement to MacRumors, an Amazon spokesperson said the following: “We are aware of this technical issue and are actively working to resolve it as soon as possible.”

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Recreation Time From NextDNS Mimics Apple’s Screen Time

Andrew Orr ·

I’ve written about NextDNS before; it’s my personal DNS service of choice. The company recently added a feature called Recreation Time.

Introducing Recreation Time — only allow some websites, apps and games during a specific time period each day of the week.

E.g., only allow Facebook, YouTube, Twitch and Fortnite on Wednesdays and Fridays between 6:30pm and 8pm, and on Saturdays and Sundays between 1pm and 8pm.

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Examining the Feud Between Apple and Facebook

Andrew Orr ·

James Titcomb has a op-ed in The Sydney Morning Herald where he pieces together the Apple-Facebook feud.

Over the past six months Facebook has become Apple’s chief antagonist, airing its gripes with investors, the media, its own employees and even the regulators writing the rules that will govern digital services for the next decade.

That is despite the companies not being traditional rivals: Apple sells hardware and runs subscription services; Facebook gets 98 per cent of its income through advertising.

I think the fundamental difference is that Facebook is doing everything in its power to become a mediator for reality. But so far it’s a mediator on platforms that it can’t control, and Apple is chipping away at some of the tools Facebook relies on, like targeted advertising.

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Thousands of Law Enforcement Agencies Use Phone Cracking Tools

Andrew Orr ·

Upturn, a non-profit focused on the use of technology by police, used over 110 public records filed with law enforcement departments across the country to figure out how many of them use phone cracking tools, or mobile device forensic tools (MDFTs).

Based on 110 public records requests to state and local law enforcement agencies across the country, our research documents more than 2,000 agencies that have purchased these tools, in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. We found that state and local law enforcement agencies have performed hundreds of thousands of cellphone extractions since 2015, often without a warrant.

Kelly and I will definitely share our thoughts in this week’s Security Friday.

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Xfinity Mobile Expands its 5G Network Across the Nation

Andrew Orr ·

Xfinity Mobile has expanded its 5G network nationwide, and offers 5G data plans. One is a By-the-Gig shared data starting at 1GB for US$15, 3GB for US$30 and 10GB for US$60, or Unlimited for US$45 per month per line.

Xfinity Mobile customers already have access to the fastest Internet at home with Xfinity Internet, and now they can access a fast nationwide 5G network when they are on the go.