Data Transfer Project:
Beginning today, Apple and Google are expanding on their direct data transfer offerings to allow users of Google Photos to transfer their collections directly to iCloud Photos. This complements and completes the existing transfers that were first made possible from iCloud Photos to Google Photos and fulfills a core Data Transfer Initiative (DTI) principle of reciprocity.
Joe Rossignol:
More details can be found in the Google and Apple support documents for each tool[…]
Chance Miller:
Apple says that the service will be available in over 240 countries and regions around the world. The service isn’t available for child accounts or Managed Apple ID accounts. You also can’t import photo and video data to iCloud while Advanced Data Protection is enabled.
Nick Heer:
While Google has long permitted users’ retrieval of data it holds, it has not been the most enthusiastic supporter of direct transfers away from its services. This distinction becomes increasingly important as users store more data with cloud-based services instead of keeping local copies — they may not have space to download all their pictures if they trust the cloud provider’s hosting.
Previously:
Google Photos iCloud iCloud Photo Library iOS iOS 17 Mac macOS 14 Sonoma Photography Photos.app
Zac Hall:
We knew the retro game emulator app Delta was popular, but over 10 million users on iPhone alone? That’s the stat that the team behind Delta shared today alongside the latest news about availability on iPad.
[…]
Delta for iPad comes with features exclusive to iPadOS, including support for Handoff from iPhone, opening multiple Delta windows, and even playing Delta in Stage Manager or in Split View. That’s in addition to each console skin being optimized for the iPad and full-screen game support.
Riley Testut:
lol Apple rejected it
John Voorhees (Mastodon):
I’ve had a chance to try the new Delta 1.6 iPad features and they’re great, so it was disappointing to see that the app has been rejected by App Review. According to the AltStore Mastodon account, the reason was that the app included a link to the developers’ Patreon page, even though that link appeared in prior versions of the app. The Patreon link has been removed and the app resubmitted, so hopefully the update will be available worldwide soon.
Riley Testut:
Some positive news! App Review just called — tl;dr we are allowed to include Patreon benefits (e.g. alternate app icons), there are just some changes we need to make first
Rather than delay 1.6 any more though, we’ve removed all Patreon functionality for now and resubmitted. Plan is to add it back in an update soon once we get 1.6 out the door (hopefully soon)🤞
It was also rejected for “4.3.0: Design Spam.”
Stuart McHattie:
it’s their get out clause for “actually we just don’t want to approve your app any more”. See the review guidelines and in particular (b). So I guess what they’re saying is that they wanted emulators, but they’ve had their fill.
Which is a dumb reason for an update. I could understand this reason for rejection on a brand new app.
Craig Grannell:
Rejecting Delta – DELTA! – for “spam” is, even by Apple standards, taking the piss. Then again, this is one of those opaque rules that often just means Apple doesn’t want the app. MAME4iOS has been tangled in this net for some time now (although I suspect will now fall foul of Apple gradually deciding to punt emulators that aren’t specifically for game consoles, despite having approved a bunch for home micros; still, arcade boards were an unknown).
Craig Grannell:
Emulation state of play on iOS:
- A few stars (eg Delta & PPSSPP)
- A cut-back RetroArch (and no front-ends)
- The odd fun curio (eg ZX81)
- Loads of crap (me-too NES; terrible C64)
- Presumably intentionally opaque Apple rules that would be simple to clarify, but Apple doesn’t want to because it never wanted emulators on the store and appeared to only approve Delta to blunt AltStore, and this also means many good devs won’t bother and Android remains way better for emulation
[…]
So three months in and, as predicted by me and others, emulation on iOS is an incoherent mess. Which probably suits Apple just fine but it further dents the platform’s credibility with a very noisy contingent of gamers and makes it look inferior compared to Android. And Apple’s ridiculous review stance means a lot of great devs won’t bother. Why would they? Why spend months polishing an emulator only for Apple to arbitrarily decide to reject it?
Joe Rosensteel:
We need some people who can manage from the bottom up. Who can talk to developers directly about App Store issues. Whose responsibilities are the interrelated aspects of customer experience, not just the UX of a single product.
Decades ago, Apple changed its relationship with the community with Apple Evangelists. Maybe it’s time to do so again with a team of Apple Ombudspeople?
[…]
Apple famously isn’t aligned around product lines, which is part of the whole “secret sauce” of Apple product development. Except it sometimes seems that nobody is asking the big questions about how Apple’s products interoperate.
[…]
It’s not the job of the security boffins to worry about balancing security with user experience. They’re thinking about making sure the user is safe, and that’s a fine role. But it has to be counterbalanced by larger considerations, and it’s hard to imagine that anyone is empowered to do that right now.
I like the general idea. But two of his examples are Epic and emulators, and I think those are cases where the people at the top were well in the loop. If they had wanted these submissions to go smoothly they would have. Ombudspeople can be great at surfacing issues, but I don’t see how they get leadership to fundamentally change its mind about major issues.
Previously:
Update (2024-07-15): AltStore:
Just in time for the weekend — Delta 1.6 has been approved and is now available in the App Store!
Craig Grannell:
Good grief, Apple. Glad you got to the right result but why does it so often require devs to fight against bullshit rules and then hope someone might call and that said person can provide clear advice? (Because that doesn’t always happen.)
Tim Hardwick:
With iPad support in v1.6, users can now take full advantage of the device’s larger display and play in fullscreen. There are new controller skins designed specifically for iPad, and the app supports multiple windows in Stage Manager and Split View, with games able to optionally pause when switching windows. The iPad version also supports external game controllers, and the developer Riley Testut says emulated games “hand off” seamlessly between iPhone and iPad, allowing gamers to continue playing where they left off.
Testut says the need for BIOS files has now been eliminated, streamlining the setup process. Users should also notice a considerable improvement in the performance of DS games.
AltStore App Store App Store Rejection Delta Emulator Emulator iOS iOS 17 iPadOS iPadOS 17 Patreon
httpareacodes (via Mark Christian):
Things that are three digits?
- HTTP response headers.
- Area codes.
[…]
301: Moved Permanently: Western Maryland
Fun Hack HTTP Web
Zack Whittaker ( Hacker News):
U.S. phone giant AT&T confirmed Friday it will begin notifying millions of consumers about a fresh data breach that allowed cybercriminals to steal the phone records of “nearly all” of its customers, a company spokesperson told TechCrunch.
In a statement, AT&T said that the stolen data contains phone numbers of both cellular and landline customers, as well as AT&T records of calls and text messages — such as who contacted who by phone or text — during a six-month period between May 1, 2022 and October 31, 2022.
[…]
AT&T’s Huguely told TechCrunch that the most recent compromise of customer records were stolen from the cloud data giant Snowflake during a recent spate of data thefts targeting Snowflake’s customers.
Brian Krebs:
In a written statement shared with KrebsOnSecurity, the FBI confirmed that it asked AT&T to delay notifying affected customers.
[…]
Earlier this year, malicious hackers figured out that many major companies have uploaded massive amounts of valuable and sensitive customer data to Snowflake servers, all the while protecting those Snowflake accounts with little more than a username and password.
[…]
Other companies with millions of customer records stolen from Snowflake servers include Advance Auto Parts, Allstate, Anheuser-Busch, Los Angeles Unified, Mitsubishi, Neiman Marcus, Progressive, Pure Storage, Santander Bank, State Farm, and Ticketmaster.
Brian Krebs:
AT&T’s SEC filing says some cellular site tower information is also among the data accessed by the intruders, which could be used to determine the approximate location of where a call was made or text message sent.
This raises an important question: Was the AT&T customer data stolen from a law enforcement portal set up by AT&T? Sure seems like it.
Joseph Cox:
I’ve also seen a section of the hacked AT&T data. It is incredibly sensitive. The numbers dialed by targets can include apparent family members, businesses, and other places that build a detailed picture of someone’s life. Staggering data breach.
Update (2024-07-15): Matthew Green:
If you want to avoid disasters like the AT&T breach, there are basically only three solutions:
- Don’t store data
- Don’t store unencrypted data
- Have security practices like Google
AT&T Breach Carrir Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Privacy Web
