Incidents 1 & 2, ~June 2025: Missing contacts & then contacts duplication. My father in law purchased a new iPhone, so I inquired about using his old phone (an iPhone 14 Pro) as a testing device. He said absolutely, but that he was keeping it around “because it has some recent contacts that did not… Continue reading Apple contacts management madness
(If you want to skip directly to the fixes, click here. If you want to skip to some genuine praise of Apple, feel free to jump to the next section. There’s a lively discussion on HN here and 9to5mac here.) A couple of weeks ago I noticed my pair of AirPods Pro 2 aggressively switching… Continue reading Apple starts pushing AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods 4 owners into Transparency or Noise Cancellation modes repeatedly, without an easy opt out
[There is very lively discussion on Reddit, where it’s trending at #1 both on r/ios and r/apple. There are a bunch of worthy suggestions there on how to improve the feature even more, but one thing’s clear: iPhone users would love to see this come to more devices.] Apple has recently made bold claims about… Continue reading Apple’s new iOS feature to charge battery up to an “80% Limit” shouldn’t just be for the iPhone 15
As I round the corner on my latest (yet to be announced) game, I’m faced with a harsh reality: needing to publish to the Play & App Store. Why? Unlike my first two games, this upcoming one relies on swiping mechanics, where the player needs to reliably input left/right & up/down gestures. Certain aspects of… Continue reading As a web game dev, one point in favor of an App Store debut (and many against)
Late last year, in a span of under two weeks, I received dozens of political spam texts around Austin’s Prop A ballot measure. I’m sure countless people around the world also get unsolicited garbage texts. Such text campaigns threaten to alter voter turnout and turn people against each other. Because SMS texts lack authentication, users… Continue reading Political spam texts are out of control, and customers have no effective recourse.
With its CSAM scanning tool (soon to be pushed to iPhones with iOS 15 and maybe Macs with Monterey), Apple has created what it promises is a “safe” surveillance experience. It will catch the absolute worst scumbags on the planet. It is launching in just the US. Turn it off by simply discontinuing your usage… Continue reading Apple’s plan for iOS 15 CSAM scanning to somehow constitute “safe” surveillance is impossible without bulletproof security and an explicit moral framework to guide policy decisions. It has neither.
Internet Service Providers selling out customers’ privacy is awful, old news On April 3, 2017, Trump did what no one asked for, except for an army of telco lobbyists: he quietly signed an order from Congress to explicitly allow ISPs to sell users’ browsing history without users’ permission. There was no photo shoot or fanfare:… Continue reading Apple’s Private Relay will thwart ISPs’ gross mishandling of our browsing histories and rock the surveillance establishment in countries where it’s available