2019 Prime Day will be held July 15-16, and Safe Smart Living put together some tips to help you stay safe when you shop online.
50 Million Americans are queuing up for Amazon Prime Day 2019. That’s a lot of credit cards swiped, personal data collected and online transactions, resulting in a huge potential threat for identity theft.
Apple’s Powerbeats Pro headphones are now available to pre-order in an extended range of countries, including Spain, Japan, and Singapore.
The iOS URL Scheme is a way for apps to work around the sandbox limitations of the OS. But it can also be taken advantage of.
A report from Digitimes has been making the rounds, claiming that Apple killed its AR glasses project. Jesus Diaz thinks that it speaks to Apple’s “product design troubles.”
The report came yesterday from Digitimes, which has a mixed track record through its sources in component and manufacturing companies. It contradicts Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst who in March claimed that supply sources confirmed that Apple may start producing AR glasses as soon as the end of 2019.
I want Apple Glasses to succeed, so I hope the report isn’t true. If Apple can pull off AR glasses that actually look like glasses, it would definitely be, to quote Steve Jobs, magical. I don’t think Apple is killing the headset entirely, but they might be setting it aside for now, like they did with the HomePod.
CNet had an enlightening interview with YouTube’s chief product officer Neal Mohan. Mr. Mohan, the de facto deputy to CEO Susan Wojcicki, discussed moving the platform beyond its recent scandals. He also disputed that it is a media company.
Mohan still thinks his job, “first and foremost,” is building out YouTube’s services. That includes developing new features for products like YouTube Music, a Spotify competitor, and YouTube TV, a cable cord-cutter service. But he acknowledges his role must go beyond that. Mohan says part of managing YouTube is “finding a balance” between the site’s open platform — anyone can post a video on the site — and its community guidelines that ban hate speech and abuse, a mission set forth by Wojcicki. “I view [dealing with the scandals] as part of focusing on the products,” he says. “Susan’s laid out this vision for YouTube. And my job — taking that direction and executing on that — consists not just of all this product innovation, but addressing what I feel like we should be on the hook for as part of our responsibility as this global platform. And I think they go hand in hand.”
It’s Friday so you know what that means? Get yourself some free McDonald’s fries when you use Apple Pay.
Speaking of Minecraft, registration for Minecraft Earth is now open for those who have iOS 10 or later.
Alas, since it’s a closed Beta, registering doesn’t guarantee you access — but in its FAQ about the Beta, the team notes that they’re planning to open it up to “hundreds of thousands of players” eventually, so your odds of getting in probably aren’t too bad. You’ll need to be over the age of 18, have a device running iOS 10/Android 7 or newer, and a Microsoft or Xbox Live account to get registered.
It turns out all those hours you spent on Micecraft just might be good for you. New research, reported by Computing, revealed that playing the game can help boost creativity.
The study compared the effect of playing Minecraft, both with and without instruction, to watching a TV show or playing a more frenetic racing-based video game. “Those given the freedom to play Minecraft without instruction were most creative,” the researchers concluded. “It’s not just that Minecraft can help induce creativity. There seems to be something about choosing to do it that also matters,” added Douglas Gentile, a professor of psychology. The research involved a total of 352 participants, with the Minecraft cohort split into two groups, one of which received instruction and was told to be as creative as possible.
Apple is s reportedly spending $15 million per episode on forthcoming show See, similar to what Disney is spending on a Star Wars spinoff.
Earlier this week, the UK’s National Health Service announced a partnership with Amazon to provide health information via Alexa-enabled devices. While such a move clearly has some benefits, unsurprisingly, it brought up privacy concerns too. Privacy International laid out some of the issues in a recent blog post.
While we welcome Amazon’s use of a trusted source of information for medical queries, we are however extremely concerned about the nature and the implications of this partnership. Amazon is a company with a worrying track record when it comes to the way they handle their users’ data, as we have seen from the recent scandal that revealed how they had contracted thousands of employees to listen in on users’ interactions with their Alexa device. Despite public outrage and campaigning, Amazon chose to ignore the concerns of their customers and maintain their default privacy settings that fail to protect their users. Our medical information is often the most sensitive data there is about us and a lot can be inferred from the questions we ask and the searches we make when we have health concerns.
Highly rated, Orbitrack, from Southern Stars, lets you explore the universe of spacecraft in orbit around our home planet and is available in the Apple App Store now for US$4.99 (free on 7/20) and for Android in the second half of 2019.
We have a deal on iMazing 2, the Mac and Windows app that lets you manage your iPhone and iPad data and files. You can browse and manage your backups, extract and print your text messages, drag and drop songs to your iPhone—all without jailbreaking your device. We love iMazing at TMO, and I am pleased to be able to offer this deal. You can get your iMazing 2 universal license for Mac and Windows for $19.99 through our deal.
Octopus confirms that Hong Kong Apple Pay is coming later this year to iPhone and Apple Watch.
After a report found a Google contractor accessed and leaked Google Home recordings, the company says it will investigate.
I’ve been playing around with a variety of screen capture tools recently and discovered Capto. The Mac App does everything I need, and probably more. It provides a number of options for capturing images, webpages, and video, whilst being pretty straight forward to use. I also like how easy it is to organize images you have captured within the app itself. They don’t just disappear somewhere on a hard drive. It also offers a variety of tools to edit and annotate those screen captures. All-in-all, Capto is a pretty complete package. Capto costs $29.99 and is also available within Setapp.
John Martellaro and Andrew Orr join host Kelly Guimont to talk about the state of updates from Apple, and the latest in blocking robocalls.
On July 15 T-Mobile will be hosting an online ‘Scam Block Party’ to raise awareness about its Scam Block tool and share robocall prevention tips.
The UK Government announced plans to introduce a new Digital Services Tax which will likely be applied to Apple.
Jamf launched a series of new tools ahead of the forthcoming school year. Bradley Chambers, who manages Apple devices for a private school, looked at the update for 9to5 Mac and found much to be positive about.
Ad-hoc classrooms will allow teachers to create a classroom easily and immediately to take control of their classroom iPads…Teachers and parents can now use the Jamf Teacher and Jamf Parent apps to block categories of apps, such as games or social media, ensuring students stay on tasked during the school day and when doing homework. Jamf has been a great partner for my school, and I am excited to see the enhancements.
Bank of England Governor Mark Carney issued a strong warning to Facebook over its forthcoming Libra cryptocurrency.
Kazuki Ota, founder and CEO of data aggregator Arm Treasure Data, said that although Sign in With Apple will limit some tracking, it won’t eliminate it completely.
Treasure Data’s ID Unification feature can take attributes of multiple IDs and combine them into one profile across data sources. “Eighty to 90% of the work of creating this type of clean profile is actually having a lot of clean-up process of the data and also having a higher quality data,” Ota said. “It won’t be perfect, to be honest, because 100% clean data is almost an imaginary situation.”
I look forward to seeing the impact Sign in With Apple will have.
Apple has disabled the Walkie Talkie app on Apple Watch because of a vulnerability that could let someone secretly eavesdrop on your iPhone.
AirPods don’t come cheap, so it’s quite painful if you lose one. CultofMac reported on one users’ innovative way of saving their headphone, having dropped it on the subway.
[Ashley] Mayer says she is proud of herself for not “lunging after it and becoming the first ever AirPod-related subway death.” But she wasn’t willing to just give up on the missing bud. Mayer asked subway staff if the AirPod could be rescued, but the process would take two hours — and she would have to be present for the whole thing, she explains. So, a more inventive solution was required. Mayer took a trip to a local store and picked up a broom and some duct tape. The duct tape was applied to the handle to make it sticky.
IKEA has expanded its range of HomeKit compatible light bulbs and released its Floait line of smart light fixtures in the U.S.
