Sometimes apps are hard to ‘get’ because you don’t know you have the problem they intend solve until you try them. Airfoil by Rogue Amoeba was like that for me. Airfoil acts as a hub, routing audio from your Mac to anything connected to your local network. Between technologies like AirPlay and Bluetooth, I initially wondered what purpose Airfoil served. It wasn’t until I got eight devices streaming at once in perfect sync that I started to see some of the interesting possibilities.
Airfoil Extends and Enhances Audio Streaming
Apple Files Motion to Vacate FBI Order→
Apple filed a motion in court on Thursday asking a judge to remove an order demanding the company help crack the iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino terrorists — arguing the order is not authorized under current law and, in any event, is unconstitutional.
“This is not a case about one isolated iPhone. Rather, this case is about the Department of Justice and the FBI seeking through the courts a dangerous power that Congress and the American people have withheld,” the motion begins.
You can read the document in its entirety here. Here’s a section that stood out to me:
And if it succeeds here against Apple, there is no reason why the government could not deploy its new authority to compel other innocent and unrelated third-parties to do its bidding in the name of law enforcement. For example, under the same legal theories advocated by the government here, the government could argue that it should be permitted to force citizens to do all manner of things “necessary” to assist it in enforcing the laws, like compelling a pharmaceutical company against its will to produce drugs needed to carry out a lethal injection in furtherance of a lawfully issued death warrant, or requiring a journalist to plant a false story in order to help lure out a fugitive, or forcing a software company to insert malicious code in its auto-update process that makes it easier for the government to conduct court-ordered surveillance. Indeed, under the government’s formulation, any party whose assistance is deemed “necessary” by the government falls within the ambit of the All Writs Act and can be compelled to do anything the government needs to effectuate a lawful court order. While these sweeping powers might be nice to have from the government’s perspective, they simply are not authorized by law and would violate the Constitution.
Canvas, Episode 4: Photo Editing→
In this show, Fraser and Federico look at four major applications for iOS: Photos itself, Pixelmator, Adobe Lightroom Mobile and Snapseed. All of these are very powerful applications for serious photo editing on iOS, each with their own particular strengths.
We also look at apps which provide Photo Editing Extensions. These are small bundles of features that can be accessed directly inside the editing view of the Photos app itself.
In episode 4 of Canvas, Fraser and I continued our Photos series with photo editing feature and apps. You can listen here and check out the links below.
Featured Standalone Editing Apps
- Photos for iOS
- Pixelmator
- Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for iPad
- Snapseed
Featured Apps with Photo Editing Extensions
- Afterlight
- Scanner Pro
- Quick
- iMask
- iMovie (for video editing)
Connected: We Didn’t Stream Live and There Was No Showbot→
The whole gang is back this week to discuss Stephen’s semi-smart watch, Federico’s annual iPad checkup and more.
Don’t let the seemingly sad title of the latest Connected fool you: in the latest episode, we’ve talked about changes in the iOS 9.3 beta, Apple and the FBI, and the backstory of my iPad article from earlier this week. You can listen here.
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- PDFpen, from Smile: The Swiss Army Knife for working with PDFs.
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Watch WWDC Sessions and Tech Talks Videos on Apple TV→
Following yesterday’s release of the Apple TV Tech Talks videos, I came across this project by Aaron Stephenson that lets you watch WWDC sessions and Tech Talks on the Apple TV itself. You’ll need Xcode to install it, but, if you’re a developer, it’s a good way to watch videos on the big screen and take notes/try code on a Mac – WWDC sessions go back to 2011 and you can mark videos as favorites, too.
Spark Launches on iPad
Since my original review in May 2015, Readdle has been steadily improving their email client for iPhone, Spark, with changes that addressed many of my initial complaints. Over the past 10 months, Spark has received support for HTML signatures, the ability to select multiple messages and send multiple attachments; it’s even been updated with customizable swipe gestures and better handling of attachments from cloud services. And in the aftermath of Mailbox’s demise, Readdle (cleverly) rushed to update Spark with full-featured snooze options reminiscent of Dropbox’s email client.
What Spark hasn’t gained over the past year is a clear business model and an iPad version. The good news is that at least one of these omissions is being rectified today with the launch of Spark for iPad, an expansion to the bigger screen that I’ve been testing on my iPad for the past month.
The Apple Case Will Grope Its Way Into Your Future→
Farhad Manjoo, writing for The New York Times:
Consider all the technologies we think we want — not just better and more useful phones, but cars that drive themselves, smart assistants you control through voice or household appliances that you can monitor and manage from afar. Many will have cameras, microphones and sensors gathering more data, and an ever more sophisticated mining effort to make sense of it all. Everyday devices will be recording and analyzing your every utterance and action.
This gets to why tech companies, not to mention we users, should fear the repercussions of the Apple case. Law enforcement officials and their supporters argue that when armed with a valid court order, the cops should never be locked out of any device that might be important in an investigation.
But if Apple is forced to break its own security to get inside a phone that it had promised users was inviolable, the supposed safety of the always-watching future starts to fall apart. If every device can monitor you, and if they can all be tapped by law enforcement officials under court order, can anyone ever have a truly private conversation? Are we building a world in which there’s no longer any room for keeping secrets?
ABC News Interviews Tim Cook on FBI iPhone Case→
Candid interview with Tim Cook by David Muir on the iPhone encryption case and the FBI’s requests. Easily Tim Cook’s most important interview to date, and I believe he did a good job at presenting Apple’s argument.
Don’t read the transcripts – go ahead and watch the whole video. Even Apple is featuring it on the front page of the Apple TV App Store.
Apple Posts Apple TV Tech Talks Videos→
Apple:
Over the past few months, developers around the world learned how to design and develop apps and games for Apple TV directly from Apple experts. Now you can share in the experience by watching all the session videos from the Apple TV Tech Talks.
Good starting point for developers who are considering tvOS apps, and useful for
those who have already launched TV apps, too. You can watch the videos here.