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The Who-They-Are Edition Thursday, November 9, 2023

Upcoming Contact Key Verification Feature Promises Secure Identity Verification For iMessage, by Glenn Fleishman, TidBITS

The feature is called Contact Key Verification, and its name does just what it says: it lets you add a manual verification step in an iMessage conversation to confirm that the other person is who their device says they are. (SMS conversations lack any reliable method for verification—sorry, green-bubble friends.) Instead of relying on Apple to verify the other person’s identity using information stored securely on Apple’s servers, you and the other party read a short verification code to each other, either in person or on a phone call. Once you’ve validated the conversation, your devices maintain a chain of trust in which neither you nor the other person has given any private encryption information to each other or Apple. If anything changes in the encryption keys each of you verified, the Messages app will notice and provide an alert or warning.

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Permissions Requests, by Jason Snell, Six Colors

What’s happening here is that Migration Assistant has migrated all my apps, and has automatically launched any of them that are listed in Login Items or are set to automatically launch in the background. They all launch, all at once, and every single one of them then prompts me for permission to do all the things they already had permission to do on my previous Mac.

Apple Says It 'Expects To Make' App Store Policy Changes Due To EU DMA, by Manish Singh, Natasha Lomas, TechCrunch

The iPhone-maker has updated the language pertaining to its risk factors in the fiscal year 2023 Form 10-K filing, with the revised text presenting a shift from the company’s previous position, indicating a more definitive stance on potential modifications to the App Store policies.

Apple said that future changes could also affect how the company charges developers for access to its platforms; how it manages distribution of apps outside of the App Store; and “how, and to what extent, it allows developers to communicate with consumers inside the App Store regarding alternative purchasing mechanisms.”

Stuff

The iMac Has Become A Computer In Search Of A Purpose, by Dan Seifert, The Verge

The iMac started its life as a simple computer to help get people on the internet. Twenty-five years later, it’s back to its roots more than ever. But I just don’t know that a simple all-in-one desktop computer is something most people want or need at this point.

WhatsApp Now Lets Users Hide Their Location During Calls, by Sergiu Gatlan, BleepingComputer

As the company's engineering team explained today, the users' location is hidden from other call participants by switching from the standard peer-to-peer direct connection between callers using the company's servers to obfuscate IP address metadata that could contain information on the users' internet service provider or broad geographical location.

However, while the calls are proxied through WhatsApp's servers to make it harder to infer location information, it says that it cannot listen in as all calls are end-to-end encrypted. The company says in a separate support document that group calls are always relayed through its servers by default.

ChronoSync 11 And ChronoAgent 11, by Agen Schmitz, TidBITS

Econ Technologies has dialed its ChronoSync and ChronoAgent synchronization and backup tools up to (version) 11, bringing full compatibility with macOS 14 Sonoma, improved management of cloud-stored files, and more.

Adonit Note+ 2 Review: An iPad Stylus That’s A Stroke Of Excellence, by Rael Hornby, Laptop Magazine

A stylish, simple, svelte, and surprisingly-priced stylus that gives the Apple Pencil a run for its money. Interchangeable tips, broad device compatibility, and an impressive feature set make this pointer an easy recommendation for aspiring iPad artists.

Develop

Apple To Launch Next Swift Student Challenge In February 2024, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Apple today announced that it plans to hold its next Swift Student Challenge in February 2024, marking the first time the company has provided advanced notice to give students time to prepare. The Swift Student Challenge tasks students with creating an innovative coding project using the Swift Playgrounds app.

Notes

Apple Is Not Passing On Costs Of Climate Goals To Consumers, Exec Says, by Jeffrey Dastin and Kenneth Li and Ross Kerber, Reuters

Apple, with a roughly $2.8 trillion market capitalization, which makes it the world's most valuable publicly traded company, wants to show a way forward that can apply to other businesses, Jackson said. Apple CEO Tim Cook has set the tone, according to Jackson.

"I want to do it in a way that other businesses can say this isn't because they’re Apple," said Jackson, referring to Cook's direction. "It's because they understand how to make clean energy and (recyclable) materials work in the manufacturing chains and drive emissions down."

Apple Wants A Bigger Slice Of The $183 Billion Gaming Market, by Daniel Howley, Yahoo Finance

Sure, Apple has touted its Mac gaming credentials in the past, but it’s always been more of an aside, an ancillary feature rather than its raison d'etre. And yes, Microsoft’s Windows still dominates the computer gaming market. But Apple, it seems, is making a concerted effort to push into the space, even dedicating a portion of its latest live product unveiling to highlight the Macs’ gaming chops.

[...]

But Apple has an uphill battle ahead if it expects to steal a chunk of the computer gaming market from Microsoft. And that includes convincing both gamers and developers that it’s fully dedicated to becoming a major player in the space.

Taylor Swift Is Apple Music’s 2023 Artist Of The Year, by Paul Grein, Billboard

It’s hardly a surprise, but it’s still a significant achievement: Taylor Swift is Apple Music’s Artist of the Year for 2023. She’s the No. 1 most-streamed female artist in Apple Music history and is also the female artist with the most songs to reach Apple Music’s Global Daily Top 100.

“I am so honored to be Apple Music’s Artist of the Year,” Swift said in a statement. “Thank you to every single one of you for making this year the most incredible, joyful, celebratory year ever. From streaming the music nonstop to screaming it together in real life at the shows, dancing chaotically in movie theaters, none of this would have been possible without you. Thank you so much.”

Gimlet On The Rocks, by Piers Gelly, n+1

It’s a very American story, which is to say that you can tell it two different ways at once: as one man’s visionary quest to turn a bright idea into, at the New York Times’s estimate, a personal payout of over $20 million dollars; or as a case study in the infinite fungibility of capital, which creates and dissolves podcasts along with literary careers according to its inexorable logic, and the stubborn fact of labor, of the human bodies and heads, which also have ears, that generate the surplus keeping the sluices flowing. The last word belongs to the Parcast and Gimlet unions, who issued a joint statement on June 5, the day of Spotify’s 200-person layoff.

“Gimlet was a pioneer in the podcast industry,” the statement reads, having produced many shows that “turned people into podcast listeners.” Indeed, “Spotify acquired Gimlet because it saw something special in the studio. But instead of building on that legacy, the company undermined it, and four years later Gimlet is no more.”

Bottom of the Page

There are too many people measuring success using quantity rather than quality.

And that's all I have to say. Not that there is much quality in that one sentence either.

:-)

~

Thanks for reading.