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.
A privacy bill introduced by Utah lawmaker Rep. Craig Hall could bar warrantless searches of cloud data uploaded to apps and other services.
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.
The GCHQ wants Apple to secretly add the agency to iMessage chats and FaceTime calls, effectively creating a backdoor into encryption.
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.
Apple announced that February is Heart Month, and during the month there will be Activity Challenges on Apple Watch.
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.
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.
Dr. Mario World will hit iOS devices this summer, Nintendo announced. It will work on the project with mobile services firm LINE.
Apple scored its second legal victory against Qualcomm this month when a German court threw out 4 cases brought by the chip maker.
