Linked List: September 16, 2017

Saturday, 16 September 2017

Squarespace Personalized Templates ★

My thanks to Squarespace for once again sponsoring the DF RSS feed. Squarespace lets you create a truly personalized website: their platform enables developers and designers to “make it yours” with their easy to use, but personalized templates. Start with an award-winning template, or build your site from scratch.

Best of all, you can try Squarespace for free. When you’re ready to subscribe, get 10 percent off at squarespace.com with offer code DARING17.

Matthew Panzarino Interviews Craig Federighi About Face ID ★

Great complement to my interview with Federighi on the same topic yesterday, including some privacy-related points I didn’t think to ask about:

When it comes to customers — users — Apple gathers absolutely nothing itself. Federighi was very explicit on this point.

“We do not gather customer data when you enroll in Face ID, it stays on your device, we do not send it to the cloud for training data,” he notes.

There is an adaptive feature of Face ID that allows it to continue to recognize your changing face as you change hair styles, grow a beard or have plastic surgery. This adaptation is done completely on device by applying re-training and deep learning in the redesigned Secure Enclave. None of that training or re-training is done in Apple’s cloud. And Apple has stated that it will not give access to that data to anyone, for any price.

Terrific interview.

Advertising Trade Groups Object to Safari’s New Intelligent Tracking Protection ★

Marty Swant, writing for Adweek (headline: “Every Major Advertising Group Is Blasting Apple for Blocking Cookies in the Safari Browser”):

The biggest advertising organizations say Apple will “sabotage” the current economic model of the internet with plans to integrate cookie-blocking technology into the new version of Safari.

Six trade groups — the Interactive Advertising Bureau, American Advertising Federation, the Association of National Advertisers, the 4A’s and two others — say they’re “deeply concerned” with Apple’s plans to release a version of the internet browser that overrides and replaces user cookie preferences with a set of Apple-controlled standards. The feature, which is called “Intelligent Tracking Prevention,” limits how advertisers and websites can track users across the internet by putting in place a 24-hour limit on ad retargeting.

This is like a group of peeping Toms objecting to the invention of window shades. What ad trackers do is abhorrent, and what Safari’s new Intelligent Tracking Protection does is indisputably in the interests of users.

Steven Sinofsky (formerly president of the Windows division at Microsoft):

Stand strong Apple [rhetorical]. Had these groups come after us trying to offer browsing safety. MS backed down.

Pretty sure Apple is standing strong on this. Here’s a response I received from an Apple spokesperson:

“Apple believes that people have a right to privacy — Safari was the first browser to block third party cookies by default and Intelligent Tracking Prevention is a more advanced method for protecting user privacy.

Ad tracking technology has become so pervasive that it is possible for ad tracking companies to recreate the majority of a person’s web browsing history. This information is collected without permission and is used for ad re-targeting, which is how ads follow people around the Internet. The new Intelligent Tracking Prevention feature detects and eliminates cookies and other data used for this cross-site tracking, which means it helps keep a person’s browsing private. The feature does not block ads or interfere with legitimate tracking on the sites that people actually click on and visit. Cookies for sites that you interact with function as designed, and ads placed by web publishers will appear normally.”

The Original iPhone Superimposed on the iPhone X, Pixel-for-Pixel ★

David Barnard:

The entire home screen of the original iPhone (320 × 480 pixels) is about the size of 2 icons on the iPhone X home screen (1125 × 2436 pixels).

Linking to Barnard’s tweet, Joshua J. Arnold nails it:

This is what a decade’s worth of sustaining innovation looks like.