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The Essentially-Private Edition Thursday, May 14, 2020

Be Careful When Scheduling Events Using Siri, by Adam Engst, TidBITS

It all makes sense, and I can see why programmers working in large companies like Apple and Google would assume that everyone would want event invitations—their days undoubtedly involve a continual flurry of invitations accepted and rejected. And the Google Calendar team probably thought they were doing everyone a favor by providing single-click access to a video call right within the invitation. At least they provided an option to disable it.

If you’re like me, however, and see your calendar as essentially private, all I can suggest is that you either avoid using Siri to create events, which would be a loss, or train yourself never to mention a contact’s name when creating an event. That’s what I’ll be doing from now on. Live and learn!

Apple Stores In Italy Will Begin Reopening On May 19, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

Apple today indicated that its retail store at the Nave de Vero shopping mall in the Venice area will reopen on Tuesday, May 19, with reduced operating hours of 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. local time and other health and safety measures in place.

Stuff

Beats Powerbeats Review: Apple's Cheaper Bluetooth Fitness Earbuds, by Samuel Gibbs, The Guardian

They sound great, with a forward, energetic tone that’s perfectly suited to motivational tunes as you pound the pavement or heave those weights. But they also sound good enough for general usage, particularly if you mainly listen to pop.

The ear hooks are the best in the business - light, comfortable, adjustable and rock-solid when twisted into place. They won’t come off regardless of how hard you go at it and with IPX4 sweat resistance, they should survive everything but a dip in the pool.

Watchsmith Review: Personalize Your Apple Watch With Custom Complications, by J.R. Bookwalter, Macworld

Apple Watch lovers must rely on an extensive battery of complications to populate favorite watch faces with data relevant to each person. For those looking to go beyond this limitation, there’s now an ingenious app designed to automatically display a wide range of complications on a given schedule throughout the day. It’s the closest we’ll likely come to custom Apple Watch faces.

Noto 2.0 Review: iPad Pointer Support, Easy Note Importing, CloudKit Syncing, And More, by Ryan Christoffel, MacStories

Just over half a year since its launch, Noto has grown into one of the most compelling note-taking apps on Apple devices. Though there are certainly more features that could be added in the future, the app feels surprisingly feature-rich already and thoroughly modern. And since it’s so young, I expect Noto’s future is bright.

Notes

Bloomberg Publishes Clickbait In Break From Rivals, by John Gruber, Daring Fireball

This first phase doesn’t just “include” those who can’t work remotely or are having trouble working from home — it entirely consists of those people. That’s what the first phase is: people who can’t do their job from home, or can’t do all of it from home, or who are otherwise having problems working from home. That’s it.

That’s surely no different at all from what is going on at Amazon/Google/Facebook/Twitter. It would be news if any company were not making arrangements for employees who need to be on site to do their job.

iPhone Research Tool Sued By Apple Says It’s Just Like A PlayStation Emulator, by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, Motherboard

Corellium made the argument that its product is just like the infamous PlayStation emulator Virtual Game Station, made by Connectix, which allowed people to run PlayStation games on their PCs. Sony sued the company and lost the suit. Corellium also said the case of Google Books winning a lawsuit against authors that claimed the product was infringing their copyrights should be considered a favorable precedent. In both cases, according to Corellium, judges found that these products were a transformative use of the original works, and thus did not infringe on copyright.

“Like Connectix, Corellium has created an entirely new product through which iOS can be studied and tested in an entirely new environment,” the company argued. “Corellium has not created a clone of an Apple device; it has transformed the field of security research for mobile operating systems entirely.”

Bottom of the Page

I have never asked Siri to do anything important. Not even to remind me. Not even to set a timer.

~

Thanks for reading.