Link

Loving AirPods Max After Using Them For a Year

Charlotte Henry ·

The AirPods Max headphones were met with quite a lot of skepticism when they were first released, thanks largely to the US$549.00 price point. Over on iMore, Joe Wituschek explains why he loves his, a year after getting them.

After using AirPods Max for about a year now, I can say that the experience of these headphones is phenomenal. If you love good audio and are in the Apple ecosystem, it’s tough to find a better pair of over-the-ear headphones. Not only are they integrated with Find My and Apple’s quick pairing and switching between devices features, but they sound incredible. Now, sound quality can be subjective in a lot of ways – everyone has a different preference of what they want to hear. More bass, more treble, more detail, and a host of other preferences can make some headphones better for certain people. However, it is easy to recognize for most when you are wearing a pair of quality headphones. You can hear the difference. You hear more at higher volumes with more clarity and less distortion. And these headphones nail all of those things. You truly get immersed in what you are listening to.

Link

Some Essential Siri Commands For The Apple Music Voice Plan

Charlotte Henry ·

The release of iOS 15.2 and watchOS 8.3 brought with it the Apple Music Voice Plan. While I’m still skeptical about why the plan exists, Apple Must has a good list of useful Siri commands if you’re using it.

To start the trial? Just use Siri and say “Hey Siri, start my Apple Music Voice trial,” though you can also sign up through the Apple Music app. So, what can it do? You can Play, pause, skip forward and skip back on tracks. You can raise and lower volume. One good trick is to ask Siri how loud it is now, and then reduce it in percentages, such as “Play Music at 35% volume”. Apple Music Voice Plan also lets you access Apple Music’s entire lineup of playlists, including Today’s Hits, R&B Now, danceXL, The Agenda and others. You should be able to check through what’s available in the Apple Music app, though you won’t be able to play anything unless you use Siri.

‘Dashlane’ Password Manager Updates With New Menu, Quick Actions
Cool Stuff Found

'Dashlane' Password Manager Updates With New Menu, Quick Actions

Andrew Orr ·

Dashlane has updated its iOS app to help users save time. The way the Dashlane iOS app was structured, items in your vault, like passwords, personal and payment info, Secure Notes, and IDs, all required two taps to get to. Now, those key items are just a tap away thanks to the new horizontal menu sitting at the top of the main screen.  Dashlane has added something they call “quick actions” to items. By tapping the three dots on the right hand side of each item listed in the user’s vault, it will bring up a mini-menu that will allow users to copy different parts of their credentials or personal data, share or delete the item, or open the corresponding website. Dashlane has moved the notifications to the bottom menu of the app, right next to the home button. Now, users can’t miss security alerts, sharing invites, or product updates.

Link

Apple Releases macOS Monterey 12.2 Developer Beta One Without Universal Control

Charlotte Henry ·

Apple seeded the fist developer beta of macOS Monterey 12.2 on Thursday. MacRumors reported on the, rather limited, details that were available. One thing missing was Universal Control.

Registered developers can download the beta through the Apple Developer Center and after the appropriate profile is installed, betas will be available through the Software Update mechanism in System Preferences. We don’t yet know what’s included in ‌macOS Monterey‌ 12.2, but Apple has yet to implement a major feature — Universal Control. Universal Control is designed to allow a single mouse and trackpad to be used with multiple Macs and iPads, and Apple has said it will be launching this spring.

Link

Sennheiser Leak Exposed 55GB of Data for Thousands of Customers

Andrew Orr ·

Led by Noam Rotem and Ran Locar, vpnMentor’s research team recently discovered a cache of data from audio company Sennheiser. It appears to be from an old cloud account that’s been dormant since 2018. Over 28,000 Sennheiser customers were exposed, with sensitive private data leaked.

While it’s unclear how all this data was collected, it appears to be from customers and businesses requesting samples of Sennheiser products.

Examples of entries: Full names, Email addresses, Phone numbers, Home addresses, Names of companies requesting samples, Number of the requesting company’s employees

Link

Here's What Coinbase and Intel Think About the 'Metaverse'

Andrew Orr ·

“The Metaverse” has been hyped in the news recently by companies such as Facebook/Meta. Brian Armstrong, CEO and cofounder of crypto exchange Coinbase, as well as Raja Koduri, Senior vice president and General manager of the Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group at Intel, both recently shared their thoughts.

From Mr. Koduri: “Truly persistent and immersive computing, at scale and accessible by billions of humans in real time, will require even more: a 1,000-times increase in computational efficiency from today’s state of the art.”

From Mr. Armstrong: “The Metaverse is the distant evolution of Web3. In its most complete form, it will be a series of decentralized, interconnected virtual worlds with a fully functioning economy where people can do just about anything they can do in the physical world.”

‘Pixelmator Photo’ Launches for iPhone With 50% Off Introductory Deal
Cool Stuff Found

'Pixelmator Photo' Launches for iPhone With 50% Off Introductory Deal

Andrew Orr ·

Previously only available for iPad, Pixelmator has released the Pixelmator Photo app on iPhone. It features over 30 desktop-class color adjustments, support for over 600 RAW image formats, including Apple ProRAW, deep integration with the Photos app and iCloud Photos, tools powered by groundbreaking machine learning technologies, and much more. It even includes the company’s ML Super Resolution tool, a way to scale up your images using AI. So far I haven’t seen any actions for Pixelmator Photo within Shortcuts. The price says that the deal is US$3.99, but it downloaded for free on my iPhone because I already had Pixelmator.

Link

US Logistics Company 'D.W. Morgan' Leaks Data Through Amazon S3

Andrew Orr ·

A report from Website Planet reveals D.W Morgan left an Amazon S3 bucket unprotected, resulting in the exposure of over 2.5 million files.

An Amazon S3 bucket owned by D.W. Morgan was left accessible without authorization controls in place, exposing sensitive data relating to shipments and the company’s clients.

As a market leader, D.W. Morgan provides services to some of the biggest companies in the world and there are major Fortune 500 organizations with data exposed on the open bucket.

Link

Google's Project Zero Deep Dives into NSO Group 'FORCEDENTRY' Exploit

Andrew Orr ·

Google’s Project Zero security team published a deep dive into FORCEDENTRY, a zero-click exploit in iMessage used by NSO Group. Apple’s Security Engineering and Architecture (SEAR) group collaborated on the analysis.

Based on our research and findings, we assess this to be one of the most technically sophisticated exploits we’ve ever seen, further demonstrating that the capabilities NSO provides rival those previously thought to be accessible to only a handful of nation states.

The vulnerability discussed in this blog post was fixed on September 13, 2021 in iOS 14.8 as CVE-2021-30860.