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The Launch-Season Edition Monday, October 19, 2020

Apple Prepares Safe iPhone Launch Season With Express Pickup Locations And Store Reopenings, by Michael Steeber, 9to5Mac

Apple is significantly expanding its new Express Storefront pickup service to help safely serve customers in regions where full in-store service cannot resume due to COVID-19 conditions. The new accommodations arrive as Apple prepares to enter its busiest product launch season of the year. The iPhone 12, 12 Pro, 12 mini, new iPad Air, MagSafe accessories, and HomePod mini will all be available by mid-November.

Repairing The iPhone 12’s Ceramic-protected OLED Display Costs $279, by Jon Porter, The Verge

For the iPhone 12 Pro, the $279 screen repair price is unchanged compared to the iPhone 11 Pro last year, despite using new ceramic-hardened glass. However the $279 cost of repairing the base iPhone 12’s display has increased by $80 compared to the iPhone 11.

iPhone 12 Models In Dual SIM Mode May Not Run At 5G Speeds, At Least Initially, by Tim Hardwick, MacRumors

An image of a training document from Apple’s Sales Web resources called “What you need to know about 5G on iPhone” and posted to Reddit suggests the ‌iPhone 12‌ will not support 5G on either line when Dual SIM mode is active.

Apple Perplexing Verizon Promotion, by Jean-Louis Gassée, Monday Note

Instead of a payoff, this might have been a payback against other carriers who failed to invest enough in their 5G network updates. Failure to invest in 5G networking would negatively impact the sales of new 5G iPhones. In this scenario, Apple would compensate for the underinvestment of carrier X or Y by heavily promoting Verizon and its better 5G network.

Private Family

Apple Blocks Widow From Honouring Husband's Dying Wish, by Rosa Marchitelli, CBC

Carol Anne Noble of Toronto wants access to an Apple account she and her husband shared — but was under his name — so she can fulfil a promise she made to him before he died.

But instead of giving her the password she's forgotten, the tech giant is demanding she jump through complicated and expensive legal hoops to satisfy what experts say is an outdated American law.

Alexa, Siri... Elsa? Children Drive Boom In Smart Speakers, by James Tapper, The Guardian

“The home is becoming less and less private and we need to think about what data is being shared,” said Carolyn Bunting, the chief executive of Internet Matters. “We need to make sure we’re not sleepwalking into a world where we’re just giving away all of this information without thinking about where it’s going, who’s holding it or how it’s being used.”

[...]

Since parents play a vital role in children’s acquisition of language, there are unanswered questions about how hearing a mother or father giving orders to voice assistants might affect their development.

Stuff

Apple Watch Series 6, by Nishant Padhiar, Stuff

What I do appreciate is the faster charging time of 90mins from 0-100% which has a big impact on the charging window during the day. It’s easier to find pockets of downtime and keep the Watch juiced up even to track your sleep if you need to, which by the way is also one of the new additions to WatchOS 7.

Reeder 5 RSS App Now Available For Mac And iOS With Home Screen Widgets, iCloud Syncing, More, by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

Reeder 5 also includes a new built-in feeds service to keep things in sync across all of your devices.

Microsoft Rolls Out The New Outlook For Mac, by Bogdan Popa, Softpedia

Announced in September, the new Outlook for Mac features a more modern look, and Microsoft says it has used Fluent icons mixed with design cues that are specific to Apple’s operating system.

Best Password Manager To Use For 2020: 1Password, LastPass And More Compared, by Clifford Colby, CNET

For many of us, working from home has become the new normal -- and that means securing your online accounts with strong passwords is more important than ever. But memorizing dozens and dozens of passwords can be a challenge, and using the same old password over and over is dangerous.

If you find yourself consistently getting locked out of one online account or another because you're drawing a blank when you try to log in, it's time to consider a password manager to help you seamlessly oversee and handle all your login credentials.

Notes

Epic Games Has Lost Credibility In Its Apple Lawsuit, And It Has To Do With Tart Tycoon, by Adam Adler, The Escapist

One of the most striking aspects of the court’s decision is how it reflects a significant lack of trust in Epic Games and in Epic’s attorneys. There were several instances throughout the decision where the court accused Epic of hiding the ball, lying, or presenting a disingenuous argument.

Drivers To Be Banned From Picking Up Mobile Phones, by BBC

The Department for Transport wants to update laws so that phone calls and texts are not the only things banned for drivers using their device.

Computer Scientists Break The 'Traveling Salesperson' Record, by Erica Klarreich, Quanta Magazine

The traveling salesperson problem is one of a handful of foundational problems that theoretical computer scientists turn to again and again to test the limits of efficient computation. The new result “is the first step towards showing that the frontiers of efficient computation are in fact better than what we thought,” Williamson said.

Bottom of the Page

I wish there is a button somewhere in (probably) the Settings app on my iPhone that, when pressed, will immediate delete all the local files and photos and videos that already exist in iCloud, so that storage will be freed up, so that I don't get that storage-full dialog box when I try to download a large audiobook.

I mean, what's the point of asking me whether I want to optimize storage, when the storage is not optimized when I need it to be optimized?

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Someday, the iPhone mini will become iPhone SE. Meanwhile, my iPhone X is heavy.

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Thanks for reading.