Today’s Quick Tip is about Safari on the Mac and how you can use and adjust keyboard shortcuts to get to the sites you love. So if The Mac Observer is your favorite place (of course it is, right?), you can jump right here!
Apple is Better Placed than Most to Ride Out a Tech Downturn
Despite the events of this week, in which Apple offered a revenue warning and saw its share price take a hit, the company is better placed than most other tech firms to ride out an economic storm. That’s the view of Tim Culpan, who ran the numbers for Bloomberg News. While we’ve heard warnings about the tech bubble bursting for years now, the piece certainly helps give some useful context to recent events.
When I first ran the numbers on a selection of nine companies — a mix of branded electronics, product assemblers and chipmakers — I concluded that the decade-long tech party looked headed for a nasty hangover. I’ve now added September-quarter figures to the same analysis, which includes inventory levels, turnover and cash conversion cycles. The situation is even uglier than four months ago. Apple’s warning this week that it won’t meet revenue guidance proves the initial concerns to be true, but it’s only a small part of the industry’s woes.
Marriott Admits 5 Million Unencrypted Passport Numbers in Stolen Data
Marriott International revealed that 5.25 million unencrypted passport numbers were stolen from its Starwood unit’s customer database.
Apple Back to School Offers Available in Australia, Brazil, South Korea and Brazil
Apple is offering Back to School promotions in Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, and South Korea, including free Beats headphones.
Weather Channel Accused of Mining User Data
The Los Angeles city attorney has filed a lawsuit saying that the Weather Channel collects user data for commercial purposes, not just to provide local forecasts.
The government said the Weather Company, the business behind the app, unfairly manipulated users into turning on location tracking by implying that the information would be used only to localize weather reports. Yet the company, which is owned by IBM, also used the data for unrelated commercial purposes, like targeted marketing and analysis for hedge funds, according to the lawsuit.
The New York Times uses the word “covert” in its headline. It’s not that covert though. The Weather Channel has a How is My Data Used page. I’m not defending them but people really need to start reading privacy policies and service terms. Although using dark patterns to obfuscate this is wrong.
Face ID Hack Talk at Black Hat Asia Canceled
A security researcher canceled a talk at Black Hat Asia on how to hack Face ID after his employer branded the research “incomplete.”
This Scary EU Piracy List Could Break the Internet
The list of websites that should be banned for copyright infringement is kind of funny. And also scary because politicians don’t understand technology.
Human War Follows a Universal Mathematical Law
Here’s something you don’t read every day. A new study of human war over the past 600 years that it appears to follow power law distribution.
The thinking goes like this. Society is a complex web of social, political, and economic forces that depend on the network of links between individuals and the countries they represent. These links are constantly rearranging, sometimes because of violence and death. When the level of rearrangement and associated violence rises above a threshold level, we describe the resulting pattern as war.
The second step is building a machine learning system that can predict when the next large-scale conflict is likely to occur. Or maybe we’ll have dystopian war AIs that will use this information against us.
Charter Spectrum App Rolls Out to Apple TV
After missing the 2018 deadline the Charter Spectrum app is finally available on Apple TV with zero sign-on support.
Apple Services are Where the Growth is Now
After some rough financial news, Tim Cook is reassuring investors that Apple isn’t done growing by highlighting Apple services.
Step back from the gyrations of the moment, and there’s an emerging strategy for Apple: Sell fewer iPhones and assorted devices such as Macs and iWatches at a higher price than mass-market rivals, and then flood those millions of users–who have more than average disposable income because they were able to afford those devices in the first place–with apps and content that they will pay for.
I expect big improvements in Apple services in the future. Better iCloud storage, an Apple News content subscription (which I will happily pay for if it means no longer needing to visit ad tracking-riddled websites), an Apple video subscription, and more.
