Get a free Nomad Lightning cable when you donate to the company’s Carbon Fund fundraising event. The minimum donation is US$5, which the company will use to plant trees. This is a steal because the cable on offer is normally US$24.95.
Every dollar donated plants a tree in Acre, a region of Brazil, that is being devastated by deforestation. We want to try to reverse this. Every ten trees planted captures around one ton of C02. Learn more about the project.
Sir Jony Ive is leaving Apple to start his own design firm. Charlotte looks at his achievement at Apple and the speculation around his exit.
Apple has launched a series of Tody at Apple sessions in London aimed at helping young people avoid being caught up in gangs.
Airo Security uncovered Man-in-Middle Software proxy spyware being distributed to macOS. It came via Comscore subsidiary firm VoiceFive. In a paper released this week, researchers explained the issue, which put sensitive data at risk.
This Comscore spyware installs a proxy on ports 8888, 8443 and 8254, where it captures all machine’s SSL/TLS traffic of the user. The spyware is being installed as a bundled application that is offered along with the installation flow of other software products. It installs a local system certificate which any application then automatically trusts. If that’s not enough, it imposes a severe security breach by not generating a unique certificate for each machine on which it is installed but rather installs the exact same root certificate for all machines. This is a known bad practice, to say the least, and was in the heart of the infamous “Lenovo Superfish” case of 2015 issued at the time by the US Department of Homeland Security.
Health insurance company Anthem has poached employees from Apple’s health division, as well as a couple of machine learning experts.
The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) announced a partnership with Amazon which will see Alexa supply NHS-verified health information.
Nintendo unveiled its Nintendo Switch Lite today, coming in September and costing US$199.
Nintendo Switch Lite has integrated controls and is smaller than the flagship version of Nintendo Switch. It has no kickstand and, as a dedicated handheld gaming device, does not support video output to a TV. Therefore, it does not come with a dock or HDMI cable.
I love my Switch and its great to see a more affordable option.
Not content with music and podcasts, Spotify could be getting into game shows and reality TV.. Music Business Worldwide reported on an intriguing job advert for a Reality Formats Lead it unearthed.
MBW has spotted a job ad for a Los Angeles-based Reality Formats Lead at Spotify, who will oversee the company’s exclusive content strategy within the ‘Reality’ category… One of the most interesting parts of the job description, however, is this: The Reality Formats Lead’s remit will include “shopping fully realized IP to television networks while leveraging existing and new relationships with talent and premium networks.” This suggests that not only does Spotify want to create and publish original audio content in this category, it wants to create original entertainment content for television.
Speculation is rife about what Sir Jony Ive will work on after he has officially left Apple. On ComputerWorld, analyst Rob Enderle speculates that Sir Jony could end up designing a Microsoft Surface device. I think this is highly unlikely, for a number of reasons, but it is certainly an intriguing idea.
if I were to put something like this together, I’d co-brand it with Jony’s name so that buyers knew that if they wanted a product designed by Jony Ive, this was it. Regardless of whether you believe Cook’s position or not (I clearly do not), the fact is that with Jony gone from Apple and opening his own shop that future Jony Ive products are going to come from, his new customers won’t be his old employer. So, I’m anticipating a line of products from someone with name recognition. And since I’m suggesting that line be the Microsoft Surface, a “by Ive” name would be the most powerful way to achieve it. At the very least, an Apple customer would see a “Surface by Ive” name and at least consider it, where they might not even look twice at any other PC.
Friends is leaving Netflix at the end of 2020 and will instead be available via WarnerMedia’s newly-name streaming service HBO Max.
