Panel:
- Bart Busschots (host) – @bbusschots
- Nick Riley – @spligosh
- Lynda Gousha from the Silicon Valley MUG – @llg4cdg
- Gazmaz from the My Mac Podcast – @gazmaz
The show starts with a few notable numbers and one notable staffing change before moving into the three main stories for March — Apple’s Education event, updates for all Apple’s OSes, and the on-going debate around security and privacy. The show finishes with a quick rundown of some smaller 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!
Notable Numbers
- Study Confirms Apple Watch Can Detect Abnormal Heart Rhythm With 97% Accuracy — www.macrumors.com/…
- Asymco’s Horace Dediu does the maths based on Tim Cook’s statement that there are 1.3Bn active Apple devices from last month’s earnings call to determine that 2 out of every 3 Apple device ever sold is still in use — www.macobserver.com/… & www.asymco.com/…
Apple Personnel Changes
- Jimmy Iovine is stepping back from a day-to-day role in Apple Music, and transitioning to a ‘consulting role’ in August — www.macrumors.com/… & www.imore.com/…
Main Stories
- Apple’s Field Trip Education Event
- New 9.7" iPad with Pencil support starting at $329 ($299 for education, and schools can also get Apple Pencils for $89) — tidbits.com/…, www.macobserver.com/… & www.imore.com/…
- Apple announced the $49 Logitech Crayon, a stylus with all the feature of the Apple Pencil except pressure sensitivity which works on any pencil-capable iPad without pairing (only possible because of the lack of pressure sensitivity) — www.macobserver.com/… & www.imore.com/…
- Apple announced the $99 Logitech Rugged Combo Case (a kid-proof keyboard case for the new iPad) — www.imore.com/…
- Free education iCloud accounts now get 200GB of storage (up from just 5GB), and Apple is continuing to improve it’s Apple School Manager cloud app and matching Classroom app (coming to the Mac for the first time) — www.macobserver.com/…
- iWork apps updated with Pencil support, beta version of new smart annotation feature, and the ability to create iBooks — tidbits.com/…, www.macobserver.com/…, www.imore.com/… & www.imore.com/…
- Apple announced Schoolwork, a cloud teaching app, and the matching ClassKit API to allow apps to integrate with it — www.macobserver.com/…, www.macobserver.com/…, www.imore.com/… & www.imore.com/…
- Apple announced Everyone can Create curriculum/program for educators — www.macobserver.com/…
- Apple + Education Home Page Redesign — www.macobserver.com/…
- Apple Update All their OSes — iOS 11.3, Watch OS 4.3, tvOS 11.3 & MacOS 10.13.4
- iOS 11.3 adds the promised battery health settings page, Health Records feature, and ARKit 1.5 — www.macobserver.com/…, www.imore.com/… & www.imore.com/…
- A software update for the HomePod is included in iOS 11.3, it gets pushed to the device via the Home app similarly to how Apple Watch updates get pushed out via the Watch app on iOS
- WatchOS 4.3 brings the ability to control a HomePod from your wrist — www.macobserver.com/…
- iCloud Business Chat goes live — www.imore.com/…
- HomeKit now has support for software-based authentication, removing the need for a dedicated HomeKit chip to make a device HomeKit-compatible — www.imore.com/…
- The On-Going Security & Privacy Debate
- FBI: we don’t want a backdoor; we just want you to break encryption — nakedsecurity.sophos.com/…
- Justice Dept. Revives Push to Mandate a Way to Unlock Phones — www.nytimes.com/… & Push for legal mandate to unlock phones revived by DOJ — nakedsecurity.sophos.com/…
- GrayKey iPhone unlocker poses serious security concerns — blog.malwarebytes.com/…
- CLOUD Act and Apple: What you need to know — www.imore.com/…
- The CLOUD Act: A Dangerous Expansion of Police Snooping on Cross-Border Data | Electronic Frontier Foundation — www.eff.org/…
- Tim Cook Calls for ‘Well-Crafted’ Regulation Protecting Privacy — www.macobserver.com/…
- Tim Cook says Apple’s customers are not its product, unlike Facebook — arstechnica.com/…
- Big news about Apple, GDPR, and your privacy — www.imore.com/…
Quick Stories
- Apple released its latest annual supplier responsibility report — www.imore.com/…, arstechnica.com/… & www.apple.com/…
- Bloomberg discovered that Apple has a secret plant in Santa Clara that’s working on manufacturing microLED panels — www.macobserver.com/… & arstechnica.com/…
- Apple strikes a deal with IBM to provide an integration between their CoreML AI framework, and IBM’s Watson AI services — www.imore.com/… & www.macobserver.com/…
- Apple has signed an agreement to buy Texture, ‘the Netflix of magazines’ — www.imore.com/… & arstechnica.com/…
- Apple Intros ‘Families’ Webpage with Kid-safe Computing Tips — www.macobserver.com/… & www.apple.com/…
- Apple submits proposal for accessibility emoji to the Unicode Consortium — www.imore.com/…
- Space Gray Mac Accessories are now Available for Purchase — www.macobserver.com/…
- Apple Competitor Watch:
- Amazon dips it’s toe into the wearables market with the $79 Amzfit Bip — www.imore.com/…
- Fitbit OS 2.0 rolling out to Fitbit Ionic with new gestures, Deezer, and more — www.imore.com/…
- Google tries to take on the iPad with its first ever Chrome OS tablet — www.imore.com/…
- President Trump blocked Broadcom’s bid to buy Qualcomm on national security grounds — stratechery.com/…
- Foxconn buys peripheral maker Belkin for $866M — social.techcrunch.com/…
- Save the date: WWDC 2018 will run June 4th to the 8th in San Jose — www.imore.com/… & developer.apple.com/…