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The City-Walk Edition Saturday, December 19, 2020

Flash Invaders: Another Game For A World On Pause, by Zoey Poll, New York Times

Flash Invaders, a free phone game popularized in France, seems today like a perfect lockdown pastime: The objective is to walk around one’s city and snap photos of street art. It’s a distinctly outdoor activity and one with a devoted coterie of players whose interactions are largely limited to the virtual realm.

But when lockdowns first began early this year, its developers weren’t so sure. It wasn’t clear yet how the coronavirus could be spread, and encouraging people to explore their surroundings seemed like a bad idea in the midst of widespread lockdowns. “Should we take it down?” Adrien Chey, a software developer at the company, recalled wondering in March.

Apple Shares Manual On How To Lock Down Devices When Personal Safety Is At Risk, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Apple recently shared a manual that outlines the steps that one should take to protect their devices and their data when personal safety is at risk. This is designed for people who need to protect themselves from being tracked by a former loved one, a stalker, or another malicious person.

Apple To Temporarily Close LA Stores As Virus Cases Jump, by Mark Gurman, Bloomberg

Apple Inc. is temporarily closing its Los Angeles-area stores as Covid-19 cases jump in the region. The move marks the first time in many months that Apple has shut retail locations in one of the country’s most populous areas.

Attack Against Our Privacy

Facebook’s Laughable Campaign Against Apple Is Really Against Users And Small Businesses, by Andrés Arrieta, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Facebook has recently launched a campaign touting itself as the protector of small businesses. This is a laughable attempt from Facebook to distract you from its poor track record of anticompetitive behavior and privacy issues as it tries to derail pro-privacy changes from Apple that are bad for Facebook’s business.

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Make no mistake: this latest campaign from Facebook is one more direct attack against our privacy and, despite its slick packaging, it’s also an attack against other businesses, both large and small.

Facebook: Free As In Bullshit, by John Gruber, Daring Fireball

This whole ad reads more like an ad for Apple’s privacy initiatives than against them. Apple’s response to this campaign is simply to show the very simple easily-understood opt-in dialog box that Facebook is objecting to.

Stuff

I Bought Apple Silicon, by Honza Javorek

Given the little chance Intel or anyone else is going to keep up with this new level of performance, I believe this new laptop could be with me perhaps even longer, unless everyone else in the world buys it and developers start to create 10x bloated apps compared to today.

Some Big Sur Users Are Unable To Update macOS Due To An MDM Bug, by Jim Salter, Ars Technica

Earlier this week, various macOS sysadmins began reporting that some Apple devices were failing to upgrade to Big Sur version 11.1. Affected users may briefly see the 11.1 upgrade, but then it disappears from the update UI and from the command line softwareupdate tool despite not having been installed.

Marvis Pro Is A Gorgeous Apple Music App, by Oliver Haslam, iMore

Featuring a "minimalistic yet highly customizable UI," Marvis Pro looks the part from the get-go, but there are plenty of settings and options to be tweaked by those who want to be able to tailor everything to their liking.

Notes

Apple Puts Contract Partner Wistron On Probation After Violence At India Plant, by Manish Singh, TechCrunch

Apple has placed its contract manufacturing partner Wistron on probation and won’t give the Taiwanese firm any new business until it takes “complete corrective actions” following lapses at its southern India plant earlier this month.

Coalition Of Activist Groups Pens Open Letter To Tim Cook Over Human Rights, by Stephen Warwick, iMore

The letter, published today, was written by 154 groups representing Tibetan, Uyghur, Southern Mongolian, Hongkonger, Taiwanese, and Chinese people, in response to Apple's "continued failure to protect freedom of information and expression" despite a new human rights policy it introduced in August.

Bottom of the Page

Still no HomePods nor HomePods mini for sale at where I live. My wallet thanks you.

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Thanks for reading.