Let’s Talk Apple – Ep. 43 (March 2017) 2

This entry was posted in Let's Talk Apple and tagged Podcast Episode on by
Let's Talk Apple Logo

Panel:

The show starts with some quick followups to stories from last few months, before moving on to look at a few notable numbers, Apple-related legal stories, and some notable employees joining and leaving Apple that made the news in March. The four main stories are Apple’s new products announced in a press release along with an update to every Apple OS, Apple’s acquisition of WorkFlow, Apple’s unprecedented sit-down with select Tech reporters to talk about their plans for the next MacPro, and finally, the bizarre story of the Turkish Crime Family’s attempt to extort Apple. The show finishes with a quick rundown of some other shorter Apple-related stories that made the news in March.

You’ll find detailed show notes below the fold, and if you enjoy this free show, please consider clicking on the donate button at the top of the left side bar – the show is free for you to listen to, but not for Bart to Produce!

MP3 DownloadRSS FeediTunes

Followups
  • JP Morgan Chase buys CurrentC's technology (FinTech) for its Chase Pay project – www.macobserver.com/…
  • Samsung plans to sell refurbished Galaxy Note 7s with lower capacity batteries – www.macobserver.com/…
  • Developer replies to App Store reviews go live – www.macobserver.com/…
  • Apple has opened the Indian App Accelerator it announced last year – www.imore.com/…
  • FitBit have released an update for Pebble watches that removes their reliance on the servers that are soon to be powered down, saving them from immediate death – www.macobserver.com/…
Notable Numbers
  • Apple tops Laptop Mag's customer service ratings (again). Apple topped the table with a score of 93 (out of a possible 100), with Acer in second place with 88 – www.macobserver.com/…
  • Which magazine tests laptop battery claims – Apple's numbers prove accurate, other brands found to over-state battery life significantly – www.which.co.uk/…
Legal Latest
  • Apple's Russian subsidiary (and only its Russian subsidiary) have been found guilty of price fixing. No penalties have been decided yet, but the law allows for a penalty as high as 15% of sales (not profit, sales) – arstechnica.com/…
  • "Error 53" comes back to haunt Apple as Australia's consumer watchdog sues Apple over it – www.reuters.com/…
Comings & Goings
  • Well respected security researcher Jonathan Zdziarski joins Apple – www.imore.com/…
  • Terry Blanchard, head of Apple's Mail app moves to Readdle to work on their Spark email app – www.macobserver.com/…
  • Long-time Apple designer (21 years) Christopher Stringer is leaving the company – www.imore.com/…
Main Stories
  1. Apple's March releases (no media event, but plenty of new software and hardware released) – www.imore.com/…
    • Apple replaces the iPad Air 2 with a new 9.7" iPad. Lower price, updated system on a chip, but a return to an older industrial design – www.imore.com/…, tidbits.com/… & www.imore.com/…
    • Apple releases Product Red versions of the iPhone 7 & iPhone 7 Plus – www.apple.com/…
    • Apple updates the iPhone SE by doubling the storage but keeping the price the same (now 32GB & 128GB) – www.imore.com/…
    • Apple releases new watch bands, and begins to sell Nike Sport bands separately – www.macobserver.com/…
    • Apple announces a new app, Clips for editing photos and videos into clips for sharing – www.cnet.com/…
    • Apple release updates to all their OSes and many of their apps
      • iOS 10.3 brings APFS to iOS devices and adds Find My AirPods feature – www.imore.com/… & www.imore.com/…
        • Apple have since released iOS 10.3.1 which includes a critical security fix – support.apple.com/…
        • Apple have also warned that a small number of users were affected by a bug in iOS 10.3 that silently enabled some iCloud features behind people's backs. Emails have been sent to affected users asking them to check their iCloud settings and disable any features they do not want – tidbits.com/…
      • watchOS 3.2 add Theater Mode and support for SiriKit, allowing third party developers to integrate with Siri on Apple Watches – www.macobserver.com/… & www.imore.com/…
      • macOS 10.12.4 brings Night Shift to the Mac – www.imore.com/…
      • tvOS 10.2 brings just minor tweaks and fixes – www.imore.com/…
      • iTunes 12.6 lets you watch rented movies across devices – www.imore.com/…
      • The Apple TV Remote app is updated to work on iPads – www.imore.com/…
      • The iWork apps get updated with support for password-protected documents, touch ID, and equation editing in MathML and LaTeX notation (Nice!) – www.imore.com/…
  2. Apple acquires Workflow (the people and the product) – www.imore.com/… & www.macobserver.com/…
  3. Apple briefed select members of the tech press on the future of the MacPro: daringfireball.net/…
    • Admit the trashcan design has not been a success
    • Are working on an all new modular design that will support upgrading things like GPUs. No exact date was promised, but they did say the new design would not be out in 2017, which the tech press are interpreting as meaning it will be out in 2018, but Apple did not explicitly say that.
    • Apple are also working on a new high-end Apple display to go with the new MacPro
    • In the mean time, the existing model gets a spec bump, and, a $1,000 price drop – tidbits.com/…
  4. A cyber crime gang calling themselves the Turkish Crime Family is trying to extort Apple with a threat that it will wipe 300M iCloud accounts if Apple do not pay them $75,000 in crypto currency, or $100,000 in iTunes vouchers. It seems clear that the group have at least some usernames and passwords, but they probably come from passwords re-use and/or phishing rather than any kind of breach at Apple. Definitely no harm to reset your password though, and consider enabling 2FA:
Quick Stories
  • Apple Pay comes to Ireland, initially just with two banks, but more are expected to follow – www.mactrast.com/…
  • Apple have released their latest Supplier Responsibility Report, and it shows continuing progress in cracking down on abuses in the supply chain – www.imore.com/… & www.apple.com/…
  • Alexa added to the Amazon iOS app – venturebeat.com/…
  • Swatch working on its own smart watch OS which it expects to be using on watches shipping in late 2018 – daringfireball.net/… & mondaynote.com/…
  • Samsung have unveiled their latest flag-ship phone, the Galaxy S8, which features a large almost edge-to-edge screen with curved edges – www.imore.com/…
    • The unlock with facial recognition feature has already been shown to be utterly insecure, fooled by simply showing the phone another phone with a photo of the person on the screen – nakedsecurity.sophos.com/…
  • Apple secure a deal with Samsung for the deliver of at least 70M bendable OLED displays over the next two years, realistically this means only Samsung and Apple will have access to these panels in the near term, since Samsung can only make so many – www.macobserver.com/…
  • Apple will announce their Q2 2017 earnings on May 2 – www.imore.com/…

Leave a Reply

2 thoughts on “Let’s Talk Apple – Ep. 43 (March 2017)”