MyAppleMenu

The Losing-Protection Edition Saturday, July 8, 2023

Apple Music Trademark Denied, After Tactical Error By Company, by Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac

With the benefit of hindsight, Apple should probably have dropped the live music category from the application as soon as this was challenged. It could then have continued the application process without that, and would almost certainly have been awarded the Apple Music trademark for everything else.

As it is, the company has lost any trademark protection at all.

My AirPods Keep Telling Me They're Lost ... Through My AirPods, by Zac Hall, 9to5Mac

There’s a new level of false positives that has occurred more recently. Several times a week, Siri will tell me that my AirPods are no longer with me through the AirPods it claims are lost.

Admittedly, this is slightly less annoying than when they’re in your bag. At least you don’t need to actually check. Still, it’s enough to make me crack a smile every time. I, for one, look forward to Vision Pro lost alerts appearing on Vision Pro while you wear it.

The Future Of Photography Is Unedited, by Ritchie Roesch, Fuji X Weekly

There’s a new photography trend on the iPhone. Instead of using the front-facing camera to take selfies, people are taking screen shots of the preview from the selfie camera. Why? What’s the difference? The pipeline for the image preview and the actual photographs are different on the iPhone. Most notably, Apple applies an HDR processing to the exposure (but not the preview), which creates a less-contrasty picture. If you are going to apply a filter to the photo and edit it, having a flatter starting point makes sense; however, if you are not editing, one might prefer the more-contrasty image preview. Aside from that, it can be frustrating that the preview doesn’t match the photograph.

On Security

French Bill To Allow Police To Commandeer Phones, by Michael Tsai

I hope that Tim Cook will have a statement about whether this is possible with Apple devices. Has Apple has been asked to assist or has it been done via exploits?

On Social

A Eulogy For Twitter: The Place Us Journalists Loved, For Better Or Worse, by Lois Beckett, Johana Bhuiyan, Abené Clayton and Kari Paul, The Guardian

For journalists, who moved onto Twitter early and helped define it as the premier digital location for news to be made and broken, the death of Twitter would be big – the end of an era. That’s especially true of journalists like us, who entered the profession after Twitter’s 2006 launch and built our careers at digital outlets, where Twitter defined the stories we covered and the rhythm of our days.

[...]

Now, Twitter is handing us another assignment: how to write a eulogy for a platform that generated so much hope and harm.

Apple Was Right Not To Run A Social Network, by Jonny Evans, Computerworld

Steve Jobs got it right when he (presumably) declined to create an Apple social media service. Perhaps he had a premonition that when you run the world’s town square, you end up needing to find some way to balance all the opinions on the planet, including those for which humans have killed each other since the dawn of time.

If we can’t figure out how to have polite disagreements IRL., how would we ever strike such balance online? How do you create a balance between government and free speech? And when does free speech become a cover for misogyny, elitism, or homophobia?

Stuff

How Tough Is The Apple Watch Ultra? I Stress-tested It For 9 Months, by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, ZDNet

I'm impressed there isn't more damage to the case. The titanium does an exceptional job of resisting being scratched, and the fact that there isn't a single deep gouge in it is a testament to its strength.

As for the sapphire crystal, having owned watches with sapphire crystals before, I expected this material to shrug off all but the most determined of efforts to damage it, so it's good to see that it's lived up to expectation.

These Apple Music Widgets Will Improve Your Listening Experience, by Bryan M. Wolfe, Stuff

Did you know Apple Music is the second most popular streaming service after Spotify? Well, they are, at least when it comes to subscribers. If you’re an Apple Music listener, you want to amp up your listening experience on your iPhone. You can do just that, by checking out the growing list of Apple Music widgets.

Chronicling: A Flexible Event Tracker With Modern Features And A Top-Notch Design, by John Voorhees, MacStories

Chronicling is a brand-new event tracking app for iOS and iPadOS by Rebecca Owen. The App Store is full of apps for tracking everything from the very specific, like caffeine consumption, to apps like Chronicling that can be used to track nearly anything. What makes Owen’s app unique, though, is it’s one of the best examples of modern SwiftUI design that I’ve seen that incorporates the still relatively new Swift Charts and other recent Apple technologies to deliver a great user experience.

Peak Packs Themes And Widgets Into A Personal Fitness Dashboard For iPhone, by Zac Hall, 9to5Mac

We can all use a little encouragement in our lives to stay active, and that’s what the new Peak app strives to do. The new app by indie developer Harshil Shah provides a new approach to tracking your fitness goals and progress.

At a glance, Peak will look very familiar to the data you can see in the Health and Fitness apps on iPhone. Where things start to diverge is with the ability to really personalize how and where Peak appears.

Capture One's New iPhone App Is Good For 'Pro' Users But Not For Casual Shooters, by Dan Bracaglia, DPReview

In the greater Capture One ecosystem, this iPhone-specific app makes a lot of sense. Users already dedicated to the Pro version get a handy new tool that can potentially speed up workflows, impress clients and increase collaboration. After all, image ratings/labels and edits made in the mobile app all transfer to desktop (and iPad).

But for non-Capture One Pro folks, the app is a tough sell, especially if you’re a casual user.

Notes

The Inside Story Of How Congress Failed To Rein In Big Tech, by Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post

Love the products, hate the companies — that’s the way many Americans think about Big Tech. Which is why it looked like a good bet when Congress convened in 2021 that Washington might finally rein in the companies that many believe have grown too big, too rich and too powerful — even as their products and services have become ever more indispensable to our lives. Here, it seemed, was the rare issue on which both Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, could agree.

In the end, however, Congress failed to act. And in that failure is a case study of how Congress has lost its ability to address the most pressing problems facing the country.

Apple’s Irish Escrow Fund Loses Further €259m As ECJ Ruling Awaited, by Cantillon, The Irish Times

The effects of pervasive negative rates on European bonds and Apple being allowed to take out some money to pay taxes in other jurisdictions nibbled away at the original amount in the account between 2018 and 2021.

The Department of Finance said on Wednesday that a further €259 million was knocked off the fund’s value last year, to bring it down to less than €13.4 billion.

Apple Purges Predatory Lending Apps In India Following Scrutiny, by Manish Singh, TechCrunch

Apple removed several predatory lending apps from the App Store in India this week, days after users and media questioned the legitimacy of those services.

Bottom of the Page

Some days, I thought that I understand trademark laws. Today, I find that I don't.

~

Thanks for reading.