Juli Clover:
Apple today updated its support document on cleaning Apple products with new information that confirms it’s okay to to use a 70 percent isopropyl alcohol wipe or Clorox Disinfecting Wipes for the purpose of cleaning germs from your devices.
Prior to now, Apple’s cleaning guidelines have recommended against all cleaners, warning that the chemicals have the potential to damage the oleophobic coating on iPhone and iPad displays. Apple still warns against aerosol sprays, ammonia, window cleaners, hydrogen peroxide, bleach, compressed air, and abrasives[…]
I’m not sure what to make of this. I followed the link, and it leads to a page that was last updated in September 2019 and still recommends only using water. It also omits the iPhone XR.
Joanna Stern:
Turns out, we’ve been living an iPhone-cleaning lie.
After years of being told we cannot—and should not—clean our phones with disinfecting wipes, Apple now says you can. My extensive testing over the last few days proves the same.
Was Apple just being overly cautious before (or didn’t test with anything else)? Or are the newer oleophobic coatings better?
I also wonder whether it is possible to accurately test this over just a few days.
Previously:
Update (2020-03-09): Tanner Bennett notes that if you add ?mod=article_inline part to the first link, you get the same page but with an extra note in a box:
Is it OK to use a disinfectant on my Apple product?
Using a 70 percent isopropyl alcohol wipe or Clorox Disinfecting Wipes, you may gently wipe the hard, nonporous surfaces of your Apple product, such as the display, keyboard, or other exterior surfaces. Don’t use bleach. Avoid getting moisture in any opening, and don’t submerge your Apple product in any cleaning agents. Don’t use on fabric or leather surfaces.
Update (2020-03-27): Howard Oakley:
If the Coronavirus is going to die when left alone outside the body, why don’t we just leave surfaces alone and wait for that to happen? We can, and in many circumstances will do so, but that entails leaving possibly contaminated objects for several days, best at least a week, before anyone can touch them again. So in most circumstances, you’re going to want to disinfect things like keyboards, trackpads, mice, touchscreens, etc., rather than seal them away with big yellow-and-black warning signs attached.
COVID-19 Display Health iOS iPhone iPhone XR
Josh Centers:
If you’re looking for a new distributed computing project to join (calling Bob Lauterbach), the 20-year-old Folding@home project is still going strong. Folding@home is dedicated to “understanding protein folding, the diseases that result from protein misfolding and aggregation, and novel computational ways to develop new drugs in general.”
In addition to cancer, Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, and Parkinson’s, Folding@home is tackling a disease that has been dominating the headlines: COVID-19. Your contributions could help researchers find a treatment.
Previously:
Update (2020-03-27): Dominik Wagner:
Fun Fact: I’m actually running windows on an iMac to be able to contribute to the #COVID19
@foldingathome
projects, as they are all GPU only right now and no GPU support on macOS currently.
COVID-19 Mac Mac App macOS 10.15 Catalina Science
Benjamin Mayo:
10 years ago today, Samsung made this slide deck detailing 126 things the iPhone OS did better than the original Samsung Galaxy S operating system.
Rene Ritchie:
The Galaxy Note 10 is here. I spoke all about it with Daniel Bader from Android Central, so be sure to check that video out if you haven’t already. Now, I want to talk about the feature from the Note 10 I’d love to see Apple bring to the iPhone […]
Juli Clover:
In our latest YouTube video, we go hands-on with the Note 10+ to check out what Samsung has added to try to compete with the iPhone lineup.
Previously:
History iOS iOS 13 iPhone Samsung Samsung Galaxy Note
The New York Times:
Attorney General William Barr and his British and Australian counterparts are set to push Facebook for a back door to its end-to-end encryption on WhatsApp and other messaging platforms, which would give investigators access to now-secret communication
Matthew Green:
If there’s any surprise in the Barr letter, it’s not the government’s opposition to encryption. Rather, it’s the new reasoning that Barr provides to justify these concern. In past episodes, law enforcement has called for the deployment of “exceptional access” mechanisms that would allow law enforcement access to plaintext data. As that term implies, such systems are designed to treat data access as the exception rather than the rule. They would need to be used only in rare circumstances, such as when a judge issued a warrant.
The Barr letter appears to call for something much more agressive.
Rather than focusing on the need for exceptional access to plaintext, Barr focuses instead on the need for routine, automated scanning systems that can detect child sexual abuse imagery (or CSAI).
John Gruber:
They don’t use the word “backdoor” but that’s what they’re asking for. End-to-end encryption doesn’t allow for backdoors. So what they’re really asking is for Facebook not to use end-to-end encryption. And the only truly secure, truly private encryption for personal communication is end-to-end encryption. So, when you boil it all down and ignore the emotional pleas that would have you believe this is all about protecting children, what they’re really asking is for Facebook not to safeguard the security and privacy of the messaging of billions of people around the world.
Bruce Schneier:
In an extraordinary essay, the former FBI general counsel Jim Baker makes the case for strong encryption over government-mandated backdoors[…] Basically, he argues that the security value of strong encryption greatly outweighs the security value of encryption that can be bypassed.
Pete Williams (MacRumors):
The FBI is asking Apple Inc. to help unlock two iPhones that investigators think were owned by Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, the man believed to have carried out the shooting attack that killed three people last month at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida.
Nick Heer:
As with the San Bernardino case, Apple says that it is cooperating with authorities. But, unlike that case, the FBI hasn’t yet tried to legally compel Apple into, for example, creating a special version of iOS that has no restrictions on passcode attempts. As with that case, it would set a troubling precedent that encryption should be weakened. So far, there is simply no practical or realistic way of doing so without breaking every user’s security.
John Gruber:
Honestly, I don’t think this has anything to do with the Pensacola shooter. I think this is part of a campaign to drum up public support for making true encryption illegal. And if it really is about the Pensacola shooter, the FBI’s leadership doesn’t understand how encryption works, which is disgraceful.
Nick Heer:
Twice now, the U.S. Department of Justice has pushed Apple to help decrypt iPhones involved in high-profile crimes. Twice, Apple has pushed back. And, twice, the popular press has framed these cases in terms that do not help their general-audience readers understand why Apple is refusing demands to cooperate; instead, using language that implicitly helps those who believe that our rights should be compromised to a lowest common denominator.
Juli Clover:
United States President Donald Trump this afternoon weighed in on a disagreement between Apple and the FBI, calling on Apple to “step up to the plate” and “help our great country” by unlocking the iPhones used by Florida shooter Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani.
Trump said that the U.S. is “helping Apple all of the time” but Apple refuses to “unlock” smartphones used by “killers, drug dealers and other violent criminal elements.”
Rene Ritchie:
So, what’s critical is to step back and really look at what’s being asked for here. No more secrets. The ability to get into not just a single criminal’s phone, but everybody’s phone. Yours and mine. And the ability for not just the FBI to get into it, but everybody. Foreign agencies and criminals.
John Gruber:
The big question remains unclear in all this coverage: did Apple refuse the DOJ’s request, or are they unable — technically — to fulfill the request? The DOJ continues to talk as though this is something Apple could do but refuses to.
Nick Heer:
To be clear, my iPhone still prompted for its passcode when the update had finished its installation process. This did not magically unlock my iPhone. It also doesn’t prove that passcode preferences could be changed without first entering the existing valid passcode.
But it did prove the existence of one channel where an iPhone could be forced to update to a compromised version of iOS. One that would be catastrophic in its implications for iPhones today, into the future, and for encrypted data in its entirety. It is possible; it is terrible.
David Sparks:
Apple sells into a lot of countries. Any one of them could require they install a back door as a condition of access to the market. Apple’s principals are on a collision course with a massive loss of income. Is it just a question of time before governmental regulation and market pressures make this period of time, where all citizens have relatively secured data and communications, only a temporary phase? I sure hope not.
Nick Heer:
Sparks is right: there will come a time that Apple will need to choose whether it will stand behind strong privacy and security, or if the monetary cost of doing so is simply too high.
Tim Hardwick (9to5Mac, Hacker News):
New questions have been raised about the FBI’s latest request that Apple break its iPhone encryption, after Forbes uncovered a search warrant strongly indicating that federal agents already have tools that can access data on Apple’s latest iPhone models.
William Gallagher:
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is behind a draft bipartisan bill called the ‘Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act of 2019’ or EARN IT. Its stated aims are to “develop recommended best practices… regarding the prevention of online child exploitation.” However, the methods Graham proposes would effectively ban all end-to-end encryption.
Joe Rossignol:
FBI officials have still not managed to unlock a passcode-protected iPhone that investigators believe was owned by Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, the perpetrator of a mass shooting at a Naval Air Station in Florida in December.
The disclosure was made by FBI director Christopher Wray at a House Judiciary Committee hearing today, according to Bloomberg. Wray told Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) that the FBI is “currently engaged with Apple hoping to see if we can get better help from them so we can get access to that phone,” the report claims.
Tim Hardwick:
The director general of Britain’s Security Service is arguing for “exceptional access” to encrypted messages, in the ongoing battle between authorities and technology companies, reports The Guardian.
Matthew Green:
Yesterday a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators introduced a new bill called the EARN IT act. On its face, the bill seems like a bit of inside baseball having to do with legal liability for information service providers. In reality, it represents a sophisticated and direct governmental attack on the right of Americans to communicate privately.
I can’t stress how dangerous this bill is, though others have tried. In this post I’m going to try to do my best to explain why it scares me.
Previously:
Update (2020-03-27): Bruce Schneier:
Prepare for another attack on encryption in the U.S. The EARN-IT Act purports to be about protecting children from predation, but it's really about forcing the tech companies to break their encryption schemes[…]
Department of Justice (DOJ) Facebook Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) iOS iOS 13 iPhone iPhone 11 Law Enforcement Legal Privacy Security WhatsApp
Benjamin Mayo (MacRumors, Hacker News):
Apple is set to pay up to $500 million to settle a United States lawsuit over the iPhone battery performance throttling debacle of 2018.
Via Reuters, Apple agreed to a preliminary settlement in legal documents filed on Friday. The company denied wrongdoing but said it settled to avoid lengthy court proceedings. The monetary suit is equivalent to $25 per impacted iPhone.
If you unnecessarily spent hundreds of dollars to get new phone—because of a design flaw that made the battery not last very long and a lack of communication that obscured the reason your old phone was slow—you get less than the temporarily discounted cost of a new battery.
Jon Brodkin:
The judge in the case still has to decide whether the settlement is fair, reasonable, and adequate. A hearing is scheduled for April 3.
[…]
To identify people who are eligible for payments, the settlement says that “Apple will provide the Settlement Administrator with the email address of record on the Apple ID account of the members of the Settlement Class, as well as names, mailing addresses, and relevant iPhone serial numbers.” The settlement administrator would then contact those people via email or paper mail. Additionally, “A copy of the Class Notice, together with the Claim Form and various Court orders and other filings, will be posted and available for download on the Settlement Website. Finally, the Parties may jointly agree to provide additional notice with approval from the Court.”
Samuel Gibbs (Hacker News):
Apple and Samsung are being fined €10m and €5m respectively in Italy for the “planned obsolescence” of their smartphones.
An investigation launched in January by the nation’s competition authority found that certain smartphone software updates had a negative effect on the performance of the devices.
Believed to be the first ruling of its kind against smartphone manufacturers, the investigation followed accusations operating system updates for older phones slowed them down, thereby encouraging the purchase of new phones.
Previously:
Update (2022-12-02): Juli Clover (in November 2020):
The investigation has now concluded, and Apple has opted to pay $113 million to settle the matter, reports The Washington Post. Apple has also agreed to be more transparent about similar changes to iOS devices in the future, providing more detail about battery health and power management.
See also: NPR, Hacker News.
Apple Battery Life iOS iOS 11 Italy Lawsuit Legal Samsung
