Linked List: October 7, 2015

Wednesday, 7 October 2015

NYT: ‘Chinese Hackers Breached LoopPay, Whose Tech Is Central to Samsung Pay’ 

Nicole Perlroth and Mike Isaac, reporting for the NYT:

“Samsung Pay was not impacted and at no point was any personal payment information at risk,” Darlene Cedres, Samsung’s chief privacy officer, said in a statement. “This was an isolated incident that targeted the LoopPay corporate network, which is a physically separate network. The LoopPay corporate network issue was resolved immediately and had nothing to do with Samsung Pay.”

But two people briefed on the investigation, as well as security experts who have been tracking the Codoso hackers as they have targeted hundreds of victims around the world, said it would be premature to say what the hackers did and did not accomplish since they were discovered in August.

Federico Viticci’s Tweetbot 4 Review 

Comprehensive, astute, and well-illustrated review of Tweetbot 4 — and really, what it means to design a great modern iPad Twitter client. It is a long article, but it has to be, given how much is new in Tweetbot 4, and the ways that iOS 9 has raised the bar for iPad app design.

Tweetbot 4 

Speaking of indie developers doing great work, Tapbots is on fire. The new Tweetbot 4 for iOS is now a universal app for both iPhone and iPad, and has a slew of great new features. Long story short, Tweetbot for iOS is my single favorite and most-used iOS app. It is remarkably well-designed and well-crafted. The only other app that comes close to it — both in terms of the amount of time I spend using it and my affection for its design and usability — is Mobile Safari.

The regular price will be $10, but for now, Tweetbot 4 is available for just $5 — including for users of Tweetbot 3 or the old non-universal Tweetbot for iPad. This is the closest Tapbots can get to charging for an upgrade on the App Store, and paid upgrades are the only way developers can afford to keep working on existing apps.

$5 for the fruits of all of this talent, hard work, and craftsmanship. If you don’t see that as an absolute bargain, there is no hope for you.

Fantastical Updates 

One of my favorite indie apps in recent years has been Fantastical. I use it on my Mac and iPhone. I prefer it over Apple’s system Calendar apps in just about every regard. And they’re moving really fast: today they released free updates for the iPad and iPhone versions (including split-screen multitasking support on iPad, and a new Apple Watch companion app for iPhone). Last month they released a solid update to the Mac app.

Snowball: New Rugged Storage Appliance From Amazon for Importing Data to AWS Via Fedex 

Frederic Lardinois, writing for TechCrunch:

Amazon surprised developers today with the launch of Snowball, a new physical appliance that will allow AWS users to ship huge amounts of data for import into AWS by shipping the device back and forth between their offices and the AWS data centers.

The appliance is a bit larger than an old-school desktop case and it can hold up to 50 terabytes of data. It has a Kindle on the side, which functions as an automatic shipping label.

Reminds me of the old Andrew Tanenbaum quote: “Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.”

John Paczkowski, writing for Buzzfeed last week:

In a recent interview with BuzzFeed News, Apple CEO Tim Cook said universal search in Apple TV is not something that the company plans to reserve for key content partners. “At launch we’ll have iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, Showtime, and HBO — so we’ll have five major inputs into universal search initially,” Cook said. “But we’re also opening an API, so that others can join in.”

I figured this would be open to all third-party apps, but it’s good to hear confirmation. (Sounds like it’s similar to Spotlight’s open search APIs on OS X.)

(Another Apple TV-related thought: even though Amazon won’t sell Apple TV hardware, that doesn’t necessarily preclude them from making a Prime app for Apple TV. And if the universal search API is open, Prime video could be included in that, too.)

Waterstones Is Removing Kindles From Stores 

Lisa Campbell, writing for The Bookseller:

Waterstones is removing Amazon’s Kindle devices from many of it stores as sales “continue to be pitiful”.

The company’s m.d James Daunt said there had been no sign of a “bounce” in Kindle sales, so the company was “taking the display space back” to use for physical books instead.

He told The Bookseller: “Sales of Kindles continue to be pitiful so we are taking the display space back in more and more shops. It feels very much like the life of one of those inexplicable bestsellers; one day piles and piles, selling like fury; the next you count your blessings with every sale because it brings you closer to getting it off your shelves forever to make way for something new. Sometimes, of course, they ‘bounce’ but no sign yet of this being the case with Kindles.”

Easiest explanation for this is that Kindle users are Amazon users, and Amazon users buy their Kindles direct from Amazon. I’ve owned a few Kindles over the years, and it never even occurred to me to buy one anywhere else.