Thursday, 18 February 2016

New York Times Removes Passage on China From Story on Apple/FBI Encryption Fight ★

Edward Snowden noted the following passage from this NYT report, but it was subsequently removed from the article:

China is watching the dispute closely. Analysts say the Chinese government does take cues from United States when it comes to encryption regulations, and that it would most likely demand that multinational companies provide accommodations similar to those in United States.

Last year, Beijing backed off several proposals that would have mandated that foreign firms providing encryption keys for devices sold in China after heavy pressure from foreign trade groups. …

“… a push from American law enforcement agencies to unlock iPhones would embolden Beijing to demand the same.”

I have no idea why The Times removed this, because it’s one of the most important but so far least talked about issues in this case. U.S. culture is in many ways insular, making it easy to see this as a “U.S.” issue. But it’s not — it’s a worldwide issue.

I’ve long wondered why China allows companies like Apple to sell devices without back doors for their government. A big part of why they tolerate it seems to be the fact that no government gets this.

Update: Daniel Roberts has posted a screenshot of the entire segment on China that was cut from the article.

Businessweek Profiles Johny Srouji ★

Brad Stone, Adam Satariano, and Gwen Ackerman, profiling Johny Srouji for the Businessweek cover story:

At the center of all this is Srouji, 51, an Israeli who joined Apple after jobs at Intel and IBM. He’s compact, he’s intense, and he speaks Arabic, Hebrew, and French. His English is lightly accented and, when the subject has anything to do with Apple, nonspecific bordering on koanlike. “Hard is good. Easy is a waste of time,” he says when asked about increasingly thin iPhone designs. “The chip architects at Apple are artists, the engineers are wizards,” he answers another question. He’ll elaborate a bit when the topic is general. “When designers say, ‘This is hard,’ ” he says, “my rule of thumb is if it’s not gated by physics, that means it’s hard but doable.”

Update: This bit toward the end of the article has stuck in my craw all day:

It also lags behind Samsung in some areas of chip development, such as adding a modem to the central processor to conserve space and power and transitioning from a 20-nanometer chip design to a more compact 16-nanometer format, which means even more transistors can be crammed into a smaller space. “If I was just arguing hardware and not Apple’s marketing, I would say Samsung has the best processor,” says Mike Demler, a senior mobile chips analyst at the Linley Group, a technology consulting firm in Silicon Valley.

This quote just reeks of false balance — the notion that at the end of an article whose central thesis is that Apple has the industry’s best mobile chip design team, Businessweek needed a quote from someone saying it’s all just marketing hype and that Samsung actually designs better CPUs. That’s nonsense. Nobody who knows what they’re talking about disputes the fact that Apple’s in-house-designed A-series chips lead the industry.

What are the odds that the Linley Group has Samsung as one of its consulting clients?

Bruce Schneier: ‘Why You Should Side With Apple, Not the FBI, in the San Bernardino iPhone Case’ ★

Bruce Schneier, writing for The Washington Post:

Either everyone gets security, or no one does.

No, Apple Has Not Unlocked 70 iPhones for Law Enforcement ★

Matthew Panzarino, writing for TechCrunch:

When it comes to the court order from the FBI to Apple, compelling it to help it crack a passcode, there is one important distinction that I’ve been seeing conflated.

Specifically, I keep seeing reports that Apple has unlocked “70 iPhones” for the government. And those reports argue that Apple is now refusing to do for the FBI what it has done many times before. This meme is completely inaccurate at best, and dangerous at worst.

Jack Dorsey and Twitter ‘Stand With Tim Cook and Apple’ ★

Jack Dorsey:

We stand with @tim_cook and Apple (and thank him for his leadership)! http://www.apple.com/customer-letter/

Short, sweet, and unambiguous. Kudos to Dorsey and Twitter.

Why Apple? ★

Kieran Healy:

As a sidelight to this debate, I want to ask why is it that Apple, of all companies, is the one taking such a strong stand on this issue? It’s clear that Apple wants to resist the court order because of the precedent it would set — essentially requiring firms to break the security on their own products when investigators demand it. But that doesn’t answer my question. Why is Apple, specifically, fighting so hard on this?

I very much agree with Healy on this — Apple is in a unique position on this front.

Om Malik on Instagram Ads ★

Om Malik:

There is no denying that I am obsessed with Instagram. I check the app as often as I drink water, which is a lot. As a wannabe photographer, it is a source of inspiration: I love looking at perfectly curated lives of people, things and places. I ignore the harsh reality that perfection is almost always nothing more than perception. In fact, Instagram is the only social app that has survived the purge of social media on my iPhone; Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter are all gone. (I use Facebook and Twitter mostly from my iPad Pro, which is my computer of choice these days and a replacement for my laptop.)

Over the past few days, though, I have been contemplating if it is time to get Instagram off my home screen as well. Why? Because it has been infesting my feed with too many ads — and not just any ads but terrible ads. Video ads. Ads that make absolutely no sense to me. Ads that have less relevance to my feed and me than dumb follow-me-everywhere banners on the web.

I check Instagram almost every day, and for reasons that I don’t understand, I have never seen an ad. Not one. But yet more and more I see other people complaining about the ads on Instagram.

Update: My best guess, and a few readers have made the same guess, is that I don’t see ads on Instagram because I don’t have a Facebook account.

NYT: ‘Apple Letter on iPhone Security Draws Muted Tech Industry Response’ ★

Nick Wingfield and Mike Isaac, writing for the NYT:

The range of reactions highlights the complicated set of factors influencing tech companies’ responses to government demands for customer data in the era after revelations by Edward J. Snowden, the former intelligence contractor, of widespread government surveillance. Some companies may be keeping their heads low to avoid becoming targets during the raucous presidential campaign, while others may fear that being too vocal will jeopardize government sales and relationships with law enforcement, privacy experts said.

“The issue is of monumental importance, not only to the government and Apple but to the other technology giants as well,” said Tom Rubin, a former attorney for Microsoft and the United States Department of Justice, who is now a law lecturer at Harvard University. “Those companies are undoubtedly following the case intently, praying that it creates a good precedent and breathing a sigh of relief that it’s not them in the spotlight.”

Henry Blodget’s reaction:

Smart. Shows awareness of other side — impact of unbreakable encryption on law enforcement and Nat security.

This is not smart. We either all get strong encryption built into our devices — including criminals and enemies — or none of us do. And the smart criminals and enemies will just use third-party encryption software for their communication. This whole debate hinges upon a sheer fantasy, that somehow there can exist secure encryption that the “good guys” can break when they want to.

Reform Government Surveillance Statement Regarding Encryption and Security ★

“Reform Government Surveillance” is a coalition group including AOL, Apple, Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo. Their statement:

Reform Government Surveillance companies believe it is extremely important to deter terrorists and criminals and to help law enforcement by processing legal orders for information in order to keep us all safe. But technology companies should not be required to build in backdoors to the technologies that keep their users’ information secure. RGS companies remain committed to providing law enforcement with the help it needs while protecting the security of their customers and their customers’ information.

Milquetoast.

A link to it was tweeted by Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, and his tweet was retweeted by Satya Nadella, which is the closest Microsoft has come to commenting on Apple’s fight against the FBI.

Apple Apologizes and Updates iOS to Restore iPhones Disabled by Error 53 ★

Matthew Panzarino, writing at TechCrunch:

The update is not for users who update their iPhones over the air (OTA) via iCloud. If you update your phone that way, you should never have encountered Error 53 in the first place. If, however, you update via iTunes or your phone is bricked, you should be able to plug it into iTunes to get the update today, restoring your phone’s functionality.

Apple, in a statement to TechCrunch:

“Some customers’ devices are showing ‘Connect to iTunes’ after attempting an iOS update or a restore from iTunes on a Mac or PC. This reports as an Error 53 in iTunes and appears when a device fails a security test. This test was designed to check whether Touch ID works properly before the device leaves the factory.

Today, Apple released a software update that allows customers who have encountered this error message to successfully restore their device using iTunes on a Mac or PC.

We apologize for any inconvenience, this was designed to be a factory test and was not intended to affect customers. Customers who paid for an out-of-warranty replacement of their device based on this issue should contact AppleCare about a reimbursement.”

Weird that it only affected those who update their phones via iTunes. Maybe I’m forgetting something, but I can’t recall any previous issues that differed between OTA updates and iTunes updates.

Wednesday, 17 February 2016

Apple Fights for Precedent in iPhone Unlocking Case ★

Matthew Panzarino, writing at TechCrunch:

And herein lies the rub. There has been some chatter about whether these kinds of changes would even be possible with Apple’s newer devices. Those devices come equipped with Apple’s proprietary Secure Enclave, a portion of the core processing chip where private encryption keys are stored and used to secure data and to enable features like TouchID. Apple says that the things that the FBI is asking for are also possible on newer devices with the Secure Enclave. The technical solutions to the asks would be different (no specifics were provided) than they are on the iPhone 5c (and other older iPhones,) but not impossible.

If I had to bet, Apple is probably working double time to lock it down even tighter. Its reply to the next order of this type is likely to be two words long. You pick the two.

The point is that the FBI is asking Apple to crack its own safe, it doesn’t matter how good the locks are if you modify them to be weak after installing them. And once the precedent is set then the opportunity is there for similar requests to be made of all billion or so active iOS devices. Hence the importance of this fight for Apple.

So now we know why Apple is drawing the line with this case: it really is a slippery slope that would affect all current devices, not just the ones prior to the A7 CPU and the Secure Enclave.

Sundar Pichai on the Apple/FBI Encryption Fight ★

Sundar Pichai, in a series of tweets:

Important post by @tim_cook. Forcing companies to enable hacking could compromise users’ privacy.

Could?

We know that law enforcement and intelligence agencies face significant challenges in protecting the public against crime and terrorism.

We build secure products to keep your information safe and we give law enforcement access to data based on valid legal orders.

But that’s wholly different than requiring companies to enable hacking of customer devices & data. Could be a troubling precedent.

Could be?

Looking forward to a thoughtful and open discussion on this important issue.

Could Pichai’s response be any more lukewarm? He’s not really taking a stand, and the things he’s posing as questions aren’t actually in question. I’m glad he chimed in at all, and that he seems to be leaning toward Apple’s side, but this could be a lot stronger.

Apple’s iOS Security Guide on Passcodes and the Secure Enclave (PDF) ★

From page 12 of Apple’s most recent iOS security whitepaper:

By setting up a device passcode, the user automatically enables Data Protection. iOS supports six-digit, four-digit, and arbitrary-length alphanumeric passcodes. In addition to unlocking the device, a passcode provides entropy for certain encryption keys. This means an attacker in possession of a device can’t get access to data in specific protection classes without the passcode.

The passcode is entangled with the device’s UID, so brute-force attempts must be performed on the device under attack. A large iteration count is used to make each attempt slower. The iteration count is calibrated so that one attempt takes approximately 80 milliseconds. This means it would take more than 5.5 years to try all combinations of a six-character alphanumeric passcode with lowercase letters and numbers.

The stronger the user passcode is, the stronger the encryption key becomes. Touch ID can be used to enhance this equation by enabling the user to establish a much stronger passcode than would otherwise be practical. This increases the effective amount of entropy protecting the encryption keys used for Data Protection, without adversely affecting the user experience of unlocking an iOS device multiple times throughout the day.

To further discourage brute-force passcode attacks, there are escalating time delays after the entry of an invalid passcode at the Lock screen. If Settings → Touch ID & Passcode → Erase Data is turned on, the device will automatically wipe after 10 consecutive incorrect attempts to enter the passcode. This setting is also available as an administrative policy through mobile device management (MDM) and Exchange ActiveSync, and can be set to a lower threshold.

On devices with an A7 or later A-series processor, the delays are enforced by the Secure Enclave. If the device is restarted during a timed delay, the delay is still enforced, with the timer starting over for the current period.

The question of the day is whether the code on the Secure Enclave that enforces these brute force countermeasures can be flash-updated (by Apple) to circumvent them. With the iPhone 5C in the current debate, the FBI wants Apple to update iOS itself to circumvent the brute force countermeasures. With an iPhone 5S or any of the 6-series iPhones, iOS is not involved. But if Apple can technically update the code that executes on the Secure Enclave, then the point is moot. The same kind of court order that requires Apple to provide the FBI with a custom (insecure) version of iOS could compel them to provide the FBI with a custom (insecure) ROM for the Secure Enclave.

Update: Rich Mogull, on Twitter, responding to my question here:

@gruber It is my understanding, from background sources, that all devices are vulnerable.

And Farhad Manjoo:

By the way according to Apple it is not true that an iOS rewrite of the sort the FBI is asking for here wouldn’t work on newer iPhones.

In other words, a flash update to the Secure Enclave could make new iPhones more susceptible to brute force passcode cracking.

Edward Snowden on Google’s Silence ★

Edward Snowden, responding to a call for Google to publicly side with Apple:

This is the most important tech case in a decade. Silence means @google picked a side, but it’s not the public’s.

Update: Sundar Pichai has chimed in.

Apple Court Order Heats Up Encryption Battle on Capitol Hill ★

Hamza Shaban, reporting for BuzzFeed

“Apple chose to protect a dead ISIS terrorist’s privacy over the security of the American people,” Sen. Tom Cotton says, while Sen. Dianne Feinstein vows to introduce a bill to force Apple to comply with a court order giving the FBI access to the San Bernardino shooters’ phone.

Expect this sort of rhetoric to heat up. The emotional component of the San Bernardino attack is explosive.

As for Feinstein, I think any such bill would make for a terrible law — but I’d rather see an actual law passed than see the All Writs Act of 1789 abused by the FBI in this way. The more I think about it, though, the more I think that this is actually the FBI’s goal here — to create a political controversy driven by fear of terrorism committed by Muslims, and get egregious new anti-encryption legislation passed. I think the FBI knew Apple would fight this, and that the laws currently on the books are on Apple’s side. They want to get a new law on the books.

Apple Versus the FBI ★

Ben Thompson:

This is why I’m just a tiny bit worried about Tim Cook drawing such a stark line in the sand with this case: the PR optics could not possibly be worse for Apple. It’s a case of domestic terrorism with a clear cut bad guy and a warrant that no one could object to, and Apple is capable of fulfilling the request. Would it perhaps be better to cooperate in this case secure in the knowledge that the loophole the FBI is exploiting (the software-based security measures) has already been closed, and then save the rhetorical gun powder for the inevitable request to insert the sort of narrow backdoor into the disk encryption itself I just described?

Then again, I can see the other side: a backdoor is a backdoor, and it is absolutely the case that the FBI is demanding Apple deliberately weaken security. Perhaps there is a slippery slope argument here, and I can respect the idea that government intrusion on security must be fought at every step. I just hope that this San Bernardino case doesn’t become a rallying cry for (helping to) break into not only an iPhone 5C but, in the long run, all iPhones.

I am convinced that Apple is doing the morally correct thing here, by fighting the court order. I’ll bet most of you reading this agree. But like Thompson, I’m not sure at all Apple is doing the right thing politically. The FBI chose this case carefully, because the San Bernardino attack is incendiary. Do not be mistaken: Apple is sticking its neck out, politically, and they risk alienating potential customers who believe — as many national political figures do — that Apple should comply with this order and do whatever the FBI wants.

By fighting this, Apple is doing something risky and difficult. It would be easier, and far less risky, if they just quietly complied with the FBI. That’s what makes their very public stance on this so commendable.

WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum Supports Apple and Tim Cook in Encryption Fight ★

WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum:

I have always admired Tim Cook for his stance on privacy and Apple’s efforts to protect user data and couldn’t agree more with everything said in their Customer Letter today. We must not allow this dangerous precedent to be set. Today our freedom and our liberty is at stake.

Good for him. Where are the leaders of other tech companies on this? I hear crickets chirping in Mountain View and Redmond.

Uber’s Atomic Meltdown ★

Eli Schiff on Uber’s incoherent new branding:

The team admitted that it took them eighteen grueling months to come up with the brand’s core values. That should have been a warning sign. But for Kalanick, the time flew by. Kalanick reminisced about the experience, “This change didn’t happen overnight, but it sure feels like it did.” One can be sure that Uber’s Design Director, Shalin Amin, and the team would disagree with Kalanick on that. Indeed, Amin explained that he “basically gave up understanding what your [Kalanick’s] personal preference was.”

It remains unclear why Uber allowed Wired to publish this statement, but it is telling: “Truth be told, Amin and Kalanick didn’t fully understand what they were trying to do.”

In general, it is not a great idea to put the brand of a company valued in the tens of billions of dollars in the hands of people who readily admit they don’t know what their own intentions are.

ACLU Comment on FBI Effort to Force Apple to Unlock iPhone ★

Alex Abdo, staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project:

This is an unprecedented, unwise, and unlawful move by the government. The Constitution does not permit the government to force companies to hack into their customers’ devices. Apple is free to offer a phone that stores information securely, and it must remain so if consumers are to retain any control over their private data.

The government’s request also risks setting a dangerous precedent. If the FBI can force Apple to hack into its customers’ devices, then so too can every repressive regime in the rest of the world. Apple deserves praise for standing up for its right to offer secure devices to all of its customers.

The EFF on the Legality of Using the All Writs Act of 1789 to Compel Apple to Engineer a Back Door ★

Andrew Crocker, writing for the EFF blog back in October:

Reengineering iOS and breaking any number of Apple’s promises to its customers is the definition of an unreasonable burden. As the Ninth Circuit put it in a case interpreting technical assistance in a different context, private companies’ obligations to assist the government have “not extended to circumstances in which there is a complete disruption of a service they offer to a customer as part of their business.” What’s more, such an order would be unconstitutional. Code is speech, and forcing Apple to push backdoored updates would constitute “compelled speech” in violation of the First Amendment. It would raise Fourth and Fifth Amendment issues as well. Most important, Apple’s choice to offer device encryption controlled entirely by the user is both entirely legal and in line with the expert consensus on security best practices. It would be extremely wrong-headed for Congress to require third-party access to encrypted devices, but unless it does, Apple can’t be forced to do so under the All Writs Act.

Unsurprisingly, the EFF today announced it is supporting Apple.

Apple Can Comply With the FBI Court Order ★

Dan Guido has a good piece on the technical aspects of what the FBI wants Apple to do:

Again in plain English, the FBI wants Apple to create a special version of iOS that only works on the one iPhone they have recovered. This customized version of iOS (*ahem* FBiOS) will ignore passcode entry delays, will not erase the device after any number of incorrect attempts, and will allow the FBI to hook up an external device to facilitate guessing the passcode. The FBI will send Apple the recovered iPhone so that this customized version of iOS never physically leaves the Apple campus.

As many jailbreakers are familiar, firmware can be loaded via Device Firmware Upgrade (DFU) Mode. Once an iPhone enters DFU mode, it will accept a new firmware image over a USB cable. Before any firmware image is loaded by an iPhone, the device first checks whether the firmware has a valid signature from Apple. This signature check is why the FBI cannot load new software onto an iPhone on their own — the FBI does not have the secret keys that Apple uses to sign firmware.

Guido thinks the situation would be very different if the iPhone were newer than a 5C:

At this point it is very important to mention that the recovered iPhone is a 5C. The 5C model iPhone lacks TouchID and, therefore, lacks the single most important security feature produced by Apple: the Secure Enclave.

If the San Bernardino gunmen had used an iPhone with the Secure Enclave, then there is little to nothing that Apple or the FBI could have done to guess the passcode. However, since the iPhone 5C lacks a Secure Enclave, nearly all of the passcode protections are implemented in software by the iOS operating system and, therefore, replaceable by a firmware update.

Why the FBI’s Request to Apple Will Affect Civil Rights for a Generation ★

Rich Mogull, writing at Macworld:

Make no mistake: This is unprecedented, and the situation was deliberately engineered by the FBI and Department of Justice to force a showdown that could define limits our civil rights for generations to come. This is an issue with far-reaching implications well beyond a single phone, a single case, or even Apple itself.

As a career security professional, this case has chilling implications. […]

Apple does not have the existing capability to assist the FBI. The FBI engineered a case where the perpetrators are already dead, but emotions are charged. And the law cited is under active legal debate within the federal courts.

The crux of the issue is should companies be required to build security circumvention technologies to expose their own customers? Not “assist law enforcement with existing tools,” but “build new tools.”

Really good take on just how high the stakes are in this case. It is not about one single iPhone 5C.

Vox Hires Choire Sicha to Oversee Partnerships With Facebook, Snapchat ★

Lukas Alpert, reporting for the WSJ:

Vox Media has long counted its own content platform as a key to its success. But now it says the future lies in platforms run by others, so it’s bringing in a digital media stalwart to help strengthen those ties.

The company has hired veteran Choire Sicha, co-founder of the Awl Network and a well-known figure in digital media, to become its director of partner platforms.

Not sure what this means for The Awl, but it seems like a clear win for Vox.

The Entire First Episode of ‘Making a Murderer’ ★

Jason Kottke:

If you don’t have Netflix but want a taste of what everyone has been talking about for the past two months, the entire first episode of Making a Murderer is up on YouTube.

(I do wonder how many DF readers don’t have Netflix.)

Apple Posts Open Letter to Customers on Encryption ★

Blockbuster letter, signed by Tim Cook:

We have great respect for the professionals at the FBI, and we believe their intentions are good. Up to this point, we have done everything that is both within our power and within the law to help them. But now the U.S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create. They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone.

Specifically, the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation. In the wrong hands, this software — which does not exist today — would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession.

The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor. And while the government may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guarantee such control.

Monday, 15 February 2016

Google ‘Retires’ Picasa ★

Anil Sabharwal, head of Google Photos, writing on the Picasa blog:

Since the launch of Google Photos, we’ve had a lot of questions around what this means for the future of Picasa. After much thought and consideration, we’ve decided to retire Picasa over the coming months in order to focus entirely on a single photo service in Google Photos. We believe we can create a much better experience by focusing on one service that provides more functionality and works across mobile and desktop, rather than divide our efforts across two different products

Given that the previous entry on the Picasa blog was from December 2011, I think the writing has been on the wall on this one.

Alexa, Unlock the Internet ★

MG Siegler:

Admittedly, I’m less than a week into using the device. And honestly, I’m still not 100 percent sure how we’ll use the thing day-to-day. But I now believe in the power of Alexa, Echo’s female voice, as a platform.

In fact, I think Echo makes it very clear that Apple (and to a lesser extent, Google) dropped a ball here. This is exactly how Siri should exist in your home. And this is what that orb thing Google made a few years back should have been.

Apple’s Elephant in the Room ★

Alexandra Mintsopoulos on the argument that Apple’s software quality is declining:

If the biggest example that can be pointed to is iTunes or its back-end (which seem to generate the most criticism) then there isn’t any validity to the idea that Apple’s software quality is declining. iTunes has been the target of complaints for as long as anyone can remember and it seems clear that it will be reworked much like Photos, iWork, or Final Cut have been (and likely receive the same backlash for missing functionality). The reason it hasn’t been done sooner is obvious: it has hundreds of millions of users and transacts billions of dollars in sales, revamping it from the ground up is akin to fixing an airplane while it’s in flight and won’t be done lightly.

There is a massive disconnect between enthusiasts and Apple’s broader customer base on the perception of Apple’s software quality. That is a PR problem for Apple to solve, not a software one.

Logo for Paris’s 2024 Olympics Bid ★

They should get the Olympics simply on the basis of the quality of the logo. It’s been a while since a city put forth an Olympics logo that wasn’t shit — this, on the other hand, is a very nice mark.

Craig Mod on the Leica Q ★

Craig Mod, after six months with the Leica Q:

If the iPhone is the perfect everyperson’s mirrorless, then the Q is some specialist miracle. It should not exist. It is one of those unicorn-like consumer products that so nails nearly every aspect of its being — from industrial to software design, from interface to output — that you can’t help but wonder how it clawed its way from the R&D lab. Out of the meetings. Away from the committees. How did it manage to maintain such clarity in its point of view?

Beautifully illustrated with photos taken with the Q, and wonderfully written and considered. My only complaint about this review is that it might wind up costing me $4000, because this camera is right up my alley.

Friday, 12 February 2016

Squarespace ★

My thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. I’m sure you’ve already heard of Squarespace — it’s an all-in-one website builder that covers everything from design and layout to domain name registration and the actual hosting of the site.

Squarespace keeps evolving though, so if you haven’t checked them out recently, you should. Needs vary. That’s why Squarespace recently launched three website products, each catered to the needs of different creative people. Cover Pages are single-page websites that are perfect for when your idea is just starting out. Have products to sell? Squarespace Commerce is robust enough to be both online storefront and business manager. For something in between, Squarespace Websites provide beautiful, versatile templates that help you create the exact site you’ve always wanted. Learn which product is right for you. Start today with a free trial and use offer code DARING for 10 percent off.

Why a Die-Hard Mechanical Watch Lover Can’t Get the Apple Watch Off His Wrist ★

Jack Forster, who has covered the mechanical watch industry professionally for two decades, writing for Hodinkee:

I think the Apple Watch is winning the smartwatch wars right now for several reasons: better UI is one (I struggle to find Android Wear compelling, in any form, at least so far) and its ability to keep your phone in your pocket, and your head up, is another. One of its biggest secrets, though, is this: it shows every indication of having been made by people who love and understand watches, and who know that for any kind of wearable to succeed, it has to be love at first sight. And that’s why it’s not only a threat to other smartwatches, but to mechanical watchmaking. It’s a truism in watchmaking that the face sells the watch, but that truism is based on something bigger, which is that for something you’re going to have on your skin all day, you decide in microseconds, and with your heart, not your head, whether it’s for you. I used the word “seduced” several times in writing about Apple Watch, because its ability to be instantly seductive is the reason you give everything else about it a chance. The Apple Watch is seductive; Google Glass was not, and the rest is history.

Ad Age Retracts Claim That Google Will Favor AMP Pages in Search Results ★

Important correction from Ad Age, regarding the claim earlier this week that Google would favor AMP page in search results. The story now reads:

And, crucially, Google favors faster* sites over others with the same search score in the results it shows consumers, said Richard Gingras, senior director, news and social products at Google.

“Clearly, AMP takes speed to a point of extreme,” Mr. Gingras said. “So, obviously we look to leverage that. Again, it is only one signal. AMP doesn’t mean adopt AMP and get a massive boost in search ranking. That is not the case. All of the other signals need to be satisfied as well. But without question speed matters. If we had two articles that from a signaling perspective scored the same in all other characteristics but for speed, then yes we will give an emphasis to the one with speed because that is what users find compelling.”

The footnote on “faster” reads:

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said Google would favor AMP sites in search results over others with otherwise identical scores. Google will simply favor faster sites. We regret the error.

Good to know.

Apple’s App Problem

Wednesday, 3 February 2016

Following up on Walt Mossberg’s column regarding the quality of Apple’s first-party apps, Jim Dalrymple writes:

I understand that Apple has a lot of balls in the air, but they have clearly taken their eye off some of them. There is absolutely no doubt that Apple Music is getting better with each update to the app, but what we have now is more of a 1.0 version than what we received last year.

Personally, I don’t care much about all the celebrities that Apple can parade around — I care about a music service that works. That’s it.

If Apple Music (or any of the other software that has problems) was the iPhone, it would never have been released in the state it was.

Software and hardware are profoundly different disciplines, so it’s hard to compare them directly. But it seems obvious to me that Apple, institutionally, has higher standards for hardware design and quality than it does for software.

Maybe this is the natural result of the fact hardware standards must be high, because they can’t issue “hardware updates” over the air like they can with software. But the perception is now widespread that the balance between Apple’s hardware and software quality has shifted in recent years. I see a lot of people nodding their heads in agreement with Mossberg and Dalrymple’s pieces today.

We went over this same ground a year ago in the wake of Marco Arment’s “Apple Has Lost the Functional High Ground”, culminating in a really interesting (to me at least) discussion with Phil Schiller at my “Live From WWDC” episode of The Talk Show. That we’re still talking about it a year later — and that the consensus reaction is one of agreement — suggests that Apple probably does have a software problem, and they definitely have a perception problem.

I’ll offer a small personal anecdote. Overall I’ve had great success with iCloud Photo Library. I’ve got over 18,000 photos and almost 400 videos. And I’ve got a slew of devices — iPhones, iPads, and Macs — all using the same iCloud account. And those photos are available from all those devices. Except, a few weeks ago, I noticed that on my primary Mac, in Photos, at the bottom of the main “Photos” view, where it tells you exactly how many photos and videos you have, it said “Unable to Upload 5 Items”. Restarting didn’t fix it. Waiting didn’t fix it. And clicking on it didn’t do anything — I wanted to know which five items couldn’t be uploaded, and why. It seems to me that anybody in this situation would want to know those two things. But damned if Photos would tell me.

Eventually, I found this support thread which suggested a solution: you can create a Smart Group in Photos using “Unable to upload to iCloud Photo Library” as the matching condition. Bingo: five items showed up. (Two of them were videos for which the original files couldn’t be found; three of them were duplicates of photos that were already in my library.)

My little iCloud Photo Library syncing hiccup was not a huge deal — I was even lucky insofar as the two videos that couldn’t be found were meaningless. And I managed to find a solution. But it feels emblematic of the sort of nagging software problems people are struggling with in Apple’s apps. Not even the bug itself that led to these five items being unable to upload, but rather the fact that Photos knew about the problem but wouldn’t tell me the details I needed to fix it without my resorting to the very much non-obvious trick of creating a Smart Group to identify them. For me at least, “silent failure” is a big part of the problem — almost everything related to the whole discoveryd/mDNSresponder fiasco last year was about things that just silently stopped working.

Maybe we expect too much from Apple’s software. But Apple’s hardware doesn’t have little problems like this. ★

Why Apple Assembles in China

Wednesday, 20 January 2016

Arik Hesseldahl, writing for Recode on Donald Trump’s “we’re gonna get Apple to start building their damn computers and things in this country, instead of in other countries” campaign promise:

Any honest presidential candidate regardless of party should say clearly and indeed proudly that America doesn’t want these jobs to come back. Final assembly jobs are low-skilled, low-paying occupations; no American would wish to support a family on what the jobs would pay. Workers at China’s Foxconn, which manufacturers the iPhone, make about $402 per month after three months of on-the-job probation. Even at the lowest minimum wage in the U.S. — $5.15 an hour in Wyoming — American workers can’t beat that.

It’s not that simple. These jobs are certainly menial, but they’re not low-skill. As Tim Cook said on 60 Minutes:

Charlie Rose: So if it’s not wages, what is it?

Tim Cook: It’s skill. […]

Charlie Rose: They have more skills than American workers? They have more skills than —

Tim Cook: Now — now, hold on.

Charlie Rose: — German workers?

Tim Cook: Yeah, let me — let me — let me clear, China put an enormous focus on manufacturing. In what we would call, you and I would call vocational kind of skills. The U.S., over time, began to stop having as many vocational kind of skills. I mean, you can take every tool and die maker in the United States and probably put them in a room that we’re currently sitting in. In China, you would have to have multiple football fields.

Charlie Rose: Because they’ve taught those skills in their schools?

Tim Cook: It’s because it was a focus of them — it’s a focus of their educational system. And so that is the reality.

Wages are a huge factor, but for the sake of argument, let’s say Apple was willing to dip into its massive cash reserves and pay assembly line workers in the U.S. a good wage. Where would these U.S.-made iPhone be assembled? A year ago Apple sold 75 million iPhones in the fourth quarter of calendar 2014. There is no facility in the U.S. that can do that. There might not be anywhere in the world other than China that can operate at that sort of scale. That’s almost one million iPhones per day. 10 iPhones per second. Think about that.

You can say, well, Apple could dig even deeper into its coffers and build such facilities. And train tens of thousands of employees. But why would they? Part of the marvel of Apple’s operations is that they can assemble and sell an unfathomable number of devices but they’re not on the hook for the assembly plants and facilities. When iPhones go the way of the iPod in 10 or 15 or 20 years, Apple doesn’t have any factories to close or convert for other uses. Foxconn does.

The U.S. can’t compete with China on wages. It can’t compete on the size of the labor force. China has had a decades-long push in its education system to train these workers; the U.S. has not. And the U.S. doesn’t have the facilities or the proximity to the Asian component manufacturers.

The only way Apple could ever switch to U.S. assembly and manufacturing would be if they automated the entire process — to build machines that build the machines. That, in fact, is what NeXT did while they were in the hardware business. But NeXT only ever sold about 50,000 computers total. Apple needed to assemble 35,000 iPhones per hour last year.

So long as assembling these devices remains labor intensive, it has to happen in China. And if someday it becomes automated — if the machines are built by machines — by definition it’s not going to create manufacturing jobs.¹ ★

I do wonder about the purported Apple car. Would that be assembled in China, too? The U.S. does have automobile manufacturing expertise. And a car is so utterly unlike any product Apple has ever made that I feel like anything is possible. ↩︎

The Curious Case of the Curious Case

Friday, 11 December 2015

Joanna Stern tested Apple’s new Smart Battery Case for five days, and likes it a lot:

Let’s get this out of the way: The bar for battery-case design is extremely low. Most are chunky and made of black matte plastic, requiring you to attach two pieces to your phone. You choose a battery case for utility, not fashion.

Apple’s Smart Battery Case, though still fairly unsightly, is ahead of those. Bend back the top and slide in your phone. It feels just like Apple’s smooth, soft-touch wraparound silicone case, except… with a protruding, awkward battery on the back. The battery juts out as if your phone will soon give birth to a rectangular alien.

Still, I’ll take it over all the ugly messes sold by Mophie, Anker and others, especially since it provides better protection for the phone. A lip curves just above the screen to prevent the glass from hitting a hard surface and an interior lining provides better shock absorption than hard plastic. Plus, the grippy material is much easier to hold and doesn’t feel like it will slip from my hands.

The Verge’s Lauren Goode disagrees:

Apple’s smart battery case is fine, then, if you want a softer case or a “passive” battery charging experience, with zero control over or understanding of how the case actually charges your phone. Maybe that’s what Apple is hoping: that buyers of this thing will slip it on and never take it off, charging their iPhones entirely through the case’s Lightning port going forward, forgetting about its big ol’ bump in the back. They will be pleased, finally, with their iPhone 6’s or 6S’s battery life, and the memory of spending an extra $99 for it, rather than having it just work that way in the first place, will eventually fade away.

It’s fine if you don’t want exterior indicator lights, or a even a case that gives you a 0 to 100 percent charge. After all, this one was designed for the iPhone, by the same company that made your iPhone. For some people, that’s a big draw.

In either case this will probably sell like hot cakes. It fits nicely in holiday stockings. ’Tis the season. Just know that from a pure performance and even a design perspective, Apple’s effort is not the best you can get.

(I can almost see her eyes rolling as she typed those italicized words in the second quoted paragraph.)

Lewis Hilsenteger of Unbox Therapy best captured what most of us thought when we first saw it: “These things look weird.”

That was certainly my first impression when I got mine Tuesday morning. The looks-like-it’s-pregnant-with-an-iPod-Touch design is certainly curious. I think to understand why it looks like this we have to ask why it even exists:

People who use their phones heavily — power users, if you will — struggle to get through a day on a single charge with the iPhone 6/6S.
The Plus models offer so much more battery life that getting through the day on a single charge isn’t a problem, even for power users who are on their phones all day long. But most people don’t want an iPhone that large.
Apple has long sold third-party battery cases in its stores, so they know how popular they are.
Existing battery cases all suffer from similar design problems, as outlined by Joanna Stern above. They make the entire device look and feel chunky, and most of them are built from materials that don’t feel good. None of them integrate in any way with the software on the iPhone, and most of them use micro USB instead of Lightning for charging the case.
Lastly, Apple claims the Smart Battery Case tackles a problem I wasn’t aware existed: that existing battery cases adversely affect cellular reception because they’re putting a battery between the phone’s antenna and the exterior of the case.

So I think Apple’s priorities for the Smart Battery Case were as follows — and the order matters:

Provides effective battery life equivalent to the iPhone 6S Plus.
Feels good in your hand.
Makes it easy and elegant to insert and remove the phone.
Works as a durable protective case.
Prevents the case’s battery from affecting cellular reception.
Looks good.

That “looks good” is last on the list is unusual for an Apple product, to say the least. Looking good isn’t always first on Apple’s list of priorities, but it’s seldom far from the top. But in this case it makes sense: Apple sells great-looking silicone and leather cases for people who aren’t looking for a battery case, and all existing third-party battery cases are clunky in some way.

Ungainly though the case’s hump is, I can’t help but suspect one reason for it might be, counterintuitively, a certain vanity on the part of its designers. Not for the sake of the case itself, but for the iPhone. Third-party “thick from top to bottom” battery cases make it impossible to tell whether the enclosed phone is itself thick or thin. Apple’s Smart Battery Case makes it obvious that it’s a thin iPhone in a case which has a thick battery on the back. And I’ll say this for Apple: they are owning that hump. The hero photo of the case on the packaging is a face-on view of the back of the case.

But I think the main reasons for this design are practical. The battery doesn’t extend to the top in order to accommodate the hinge design for inserting and removing the phone. Why it doesn’t extend to the bottom is a little less obvious. I suspect one reason is that that’s where the “passively coupling antenna” is.¹ Extending the battery to cover it would defeat the purpose. Also, there’s a hand feel aspect to it — normally I rest the bottom of my iPhone on my pinky finger. With this case, I can rest the bottom ridge of the hump on my pinky, and it’s kind of nice. I also like putting my index finger atop the hump.

So the Smart Battery Case looks weird. Typical battery cases look fat. Whether you prefer the weird look of the Smart Battery Case to the fat look of a typical case is subjective. Me, I don’t like the way any of them look. But after using the Smart Battery Case for three days, and having previously spent time using the thinnest available cases from Mophie, I feel confident saying Apple’s Smart Battery Case feels better when you’re holding it than any other battery case, both because of the material and its shape. It’s not even a close call. It also feels sturdier — this is the most protective iPhone case Apple has ever made, with rigid reinforced sides and a slightly higher lip rising above the touchscreen. The Smart Battery Case also clearly looks better from your own face-on perspective when using the phone. (Mophie’s cases look better than most, but they emboss an obnoxious “mophie” logotype on the front-facing chin. If Apple doesn’t print anything on the front face of the iPhone, why in the world would a case maker?)

Patents, by the way, are a non-issue regarding the Smart Battery Case’s design. A well-placed little birdie who is perched in a position to know told me that Nilay Patel’s speculation that the unusual design was the byproduct of Apple trying to steer clear of patents held by Mophie (or any other company for that matter) are “absolute nonsense”. This birdie was unequivocal on the matter. Whether you like it, hate it, or are ambivalent about it, this is the battery case Apple wanted to make.

My take is that the Smart Battery Case is an inelegant design, but it is solving a problem for which, to date, no one has created an elegant solution. Apple has simply chosen to make different severe trade-offs than the existing competition. In that sense, it is a very Apple-like product — like the hockey-puck mouse or the iMac G4.

On Capacity, Simplicity, and the Intended Use Case

Most battery cases have an on/off toggle switch, controlling when the case is actually charging the phone. The reason for this is that you can squeeze more from a battery case if you only charge the phone when it’s mostly depleted. Here’s a passage from Mophie’s FAQ page:

When should I turn on my mophie case?

To get the most charge out of your case, turn it on around 10%-20% and keep the case charging without using it until your iPhone hits 80% battery life. From there, you can either wait until it gets low again or top it off when the battery is less than 80%. Apple’s batteries fast-charge to 80%, then switch to trickle charging for the last 20%.

Simplicity is a higher priority for Apple than fiddly control. If a peripheral can get by without an on/off switch, Apple is going to omit the switch. (Exhibit B: Apple Pencil.) The whole point of the Smart Battery Case is that you charge it up and put your iPhone in it and that’s it. Complaining about the lack of an on/off toggle or external charge capacity indicator lights on the Smart Battery Case reminds me of the complaints about the original iPhone omitting the then-ubiquitous green/red hardware buttons for starting and ending phone calls. Sure, there was a purpose to them, but in the end the simplification was worth it. If your iPhone is in the case, it’s charging. That’s it.

Regarding the battery capacity of the case, here’s Lauren Goode, author of the aforelinked review for The Verge, on Twitter:

A quick comparison for you: $99 Apple Battery Case 1877 mAh, $100 Mophie Juice Pack Air 2750 mAh, $50 Incipio Offgrid Express 3000 mAh

Nothing could better encapsulate the wrong way of looking at the Smart Battery Case than this tweet. The intended use of the Smart Battery Case is to allow prolonged, heavy use of an iPhone 6/6S throughout one day. In my testing, and judging by the reviews of others, its 1,877 mAh battery is enough for that. Adding a bigger battery would have just made it even heavier and more ungainly.

And the very name of the Incipio Offgrid Express suggests that it is intended for an entirely different use case: traveling away from power for more than a day.

Which in turn brings me to Tim Cook’s comments to Mashable’s Lance Ulanoff yesterday:

Some also see the introduction of an Apple battery case as an admission that battery life on the iPhone 6 and 6s isn’t all it should be.

Cook, though, said that “if you’re charging your phone every day, you probably don’t need this at all. But if you’re out hiking and you go on overnight trips… it’s kind of nice to have.”

The Smart Battery Case would certainly help with an overnight hiking trip, but I think Cook was off-message here, because that scenario is really not what it was designed for. Big 5,000 mAh (or more) external battery chargers (or the highest capacity, extremely thick battery cases from third parties) are far better suited to that scenario than the Smart Battery Case. But Ulanoff’s preceding paragraph points to the marketing predicament inherent in a first-party Apple battery case: that it implies the built-in battery of the iPhone 6S is insufficient.

The clear lesson is that it’s far better to give a phone more battery life by making the phone itself thicker and including a correspondingly thicker (and thus bigger) internal battery than by using any sort of external battery. After a few days using this case, my thoughts turn not to the Smart Battery Case itself but instead to my personal desire that Apple had made the 6/6S form factor slightly thicker. Not a lot thicker. Just a little — just enough to boost battery life around 15-20 percent or so.² That wouldn’t completely alleviate the need for external batteries. But it would eliminate a lot of my need — my phone dies only a few times a year, but when it does, it almost invariably happens very late at night.

I emphasized the word “personal” in the preceding paragraph because I realize my needs and desires are not representative of the majority. I think the battery life of the iPhone 6S as-is is sufficient for the vast majority of typical users. I suspect Cook went with the overnight hiking scenario specifically to avoid the implication that the built-in battery is insufficient. But the better explanation is that the built-in battery is insufficient for power users who use their iPhones far more than most people do.

My Advice

If you find yourself short on battery with your iPhone every day (or even most days), and you can’t make an adjustment to, say, put a charging dock on your desk or in your car to give your iPhone’s internal battery a periodic snack, then you should probably bite the bullet and switch to a 6S Plus. However bulky the Plus feels in your pocket and hands, it feels less bulky to me than the iPhone 6S with any battery pack. An iPhone 6S Plus, even with a normal case on it, weighs noticeably less than an iPhone 6S with the Smart Battery Case. If you need the extra battery capacity every day, you might as well get the Plus. (If you actually prefer the bigger Plus to the 4.7-inch devices, you’re in luck — you get the screen size you prefer, and a significantly longer-lasting battery. My advice here is for those who prefer the 4.7-inch size, other considerations aside.)

That doesn’t describe me, however. On a typical day, my iPhone 6S seldom drops below 20 percent by the time I go to sleep. But when I’m traveling, I often need a portable battery of some sort. Cellular coverage can be spotty (which drains the battery), and when I’m away from home, I tend to do more (or even the entirety) of my daily computing on the iPhone. Conferences, in particular, can be dreadful on battery life. At WWDC my iPhone can drop to 50 percent by the time the keynote is over Monday morning.

In recent years, rather than use a battery case, I’ve switched to carrying a portable external battery. My favorite for the past year or so is the $80 Mophie Powerstation Plus 2X. It’s relatively small, packs a 3,000 mAh capacity, and has built-in USB and Lightning cables. At conferences or for work travel, it’s easily stashed in my laptop bag, so my pockets aren’t weighed down at all, and my iPhone isn’t saddled with an unnatural case. If I do need to carry it in my pocket, it’s not too bad. It’s also easier to share with friends or family than a battery case. At night, I just plug the Powerstation into an AC adapter, and my iPhone into the Powerstation, and both devices get charged — no need for a separate charger or any additional cables.

The big advantage to using a battery case instead of an external battery pack is that you can easily keep using your phone while it charges. That’s awkward, at best, while your phone is tethered by a cable to a small brick.

If I were going to go back to using a battery case, there’s no question in my mind that I’d go with Apple’s. The only downside to it compared to Mophie’s (and the others — but I think Mophie is clearly the leader of the pack) is that it looks funny from the back. But to my eyes it doesn’t look that funny, and though third-party cases don’t look weird, they don’t look (or feel) good. In every other way, Apple’s Smart Battery Case wins: it’s all Lightning, so any Lightning peripherals you have will work, and there’s no need to pack a grody micro USB cable; it supplies more than enough additional power to get you through an active day; its unibody design makes it much easier to insert and remove the phone; and it feels much better in hand. ★

My understanding of how this “passively assistive antenna” works is that it takes the cellular signal and amplifies it as it passes through the case in a way that makes it easier for the iPhone’s antenna to “hear”. Sort of like the antenna equivalent of cupping your hand around your ear. I have no idea whether this is legit, or some sort of placebo marketing bullshit, but it would be interesting to see someone measure the cellular reception of (a) a naked iPhone 6S, (b) the same iPhone in a, say, Mophie battery case, and (c) the same iPhone in the Smart Battery Case. ↩︎
The iPhone 6 and 6S are actually 0.2mm thinner than their corresponding Plus models. That’s sort of crazy. The difference is barely perceptible, but if anything, the 6 and 6S should be a little thicker, not thinner, than the Plus models. ↩︎︎