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Jet lag and bad passwords
Jason’s back and recovering from his big trip, but we’ve got time to discuss Shortcuts and the Action Button, the defenestration of Masimo’s founder, and some very bad passwords (and worse password policies). [More Colors and Backstage members get an extra 20 minutes about Meta’s announcements this week.]
My thanks to 1Password for sponsoring Six Colors this week.
1Password wants you to understand the details about how laws like GDPR can affect your business. The EU enacted GDPR in 2018, and the days of betting that you’re too big or too small to be noticed by GDPR are over.
You need to comply, and it’s not the kind of thing you can solve by buying a tool or
scheduling a training session. You need to collect only the data you truly need to function, and secure the data you have. Starting with common breach culprits like compromised passwords might be a good idea—sensible advice from the maker of a fine password manager.
A section devoted to passwords injects a large helping of badly needed common sense practices that challenge common policies. An example: The new rules bar the requirement that end users periodically change their passwords. This requirement came into being decades ago when password security was poorly understood, and it was common for people to choose common names, dictionary words, and other secrets that were easily guessed.
Thank god. Back when I worked at a large institution that required password changes, the game was trying to figure out how similar you could keep your new password without it rejecting it. It was a bad game.
Other proposed changes: no restriction on which special characters can be used, a minimum required length of 8 with a minimum suggest length of 15, and hints that are not accessible to unauthenticated users.
I maintain hope that passkeys will continue their march to make passwords obsolete, though adoption feels mixed so far: several big providers sites have started using them, though the exact manner of implementation varies widely from company to company, and even within sites and services from the same company.
These updates are in public comment phase for the next couple weeks, but will hopefully be put into place before too long. While they aren’t binding, there are a number of places (including government agencies) that do tend to adhere to them as best practices.
Pour one out for the venerable Apple-focused website iMore, which is ceasing publication:
Dig out your old iPod and fire up your ‘Songs to cry to’ playlist, I come bearing sad news. After more than 15 years covering everything Apple, it’s with a heavy heart I announce that we will no longer be publishing new content on iMore.
iMore was one of the major Apple-focused websites for a long time, especially when led by Rene Ritchie and then later Serenity Caldwell. (Both are now gainfully employed by, er, larger companies.) The parent company, Future media (which also publishes Tom’s Guide, Tech Radar, Android Central, and Windows Central), says the site will remain online as an archive.
This new edition covers the new stuff added by Apple this year, which turned out to be a lot—especially on the iOS and iPadOS side. (I think that the changes are largely good ones, given the difficult line Apple has to walk between utility and discovery.) There’s stuff in this edition about the new Collections views, including People and Pets groups, Recent Days, the upgraded search system, and more. There will also be a free update to this edition later this fall that covers the stuff Apple rolled out with the iPhone 16, as well as any breaking Apple Intelligence features.
Some interesting news regarding Masimo, the company that is locked in disputes with Apple over its patents for blood oxygen sensors that has led to that feature being removed from the Apple Watch in the U.S.: Joe Kiani, the company’s firebrand founder and CEO, has resigned as CEO after losing a shareholder vote and being kicked off the company’s board of directors. Reuters reports:
Masimo said on Wednesday founder Joe Kiani has decided to step down as the medical device maker’s CEO, days after shareholders voted to remove him from the company’s board following a bitter proxy battle with activist hedge fund Politan Capital Management. The company named veteran healthcare executive, Michelle Brennan, as interim chief.
Bloomberg’s excellent financial columnist Matt Levine has some extra analysis about the series of steps that could lead to a founder and board chair to completely lose control—it involves unhappy shareholders and freezing out a board you disagree with.
Hanging in the air is this question: With Kiani gone, will Masimo’s board be more willing to cut a deal with Apple to end its dispute over the Apple Watch? If this whole thing has been a cold-eyed dispute over cash, maybe not. But if personal animosity was involved, maybe this change will shake things up.
Which Apple Watch faces we use, our feelings on Apple tying the new iPhone to AI features, where we get our phone wallpapers, and how we’re using the Action button.
Last year, Apple introduced the Action Button to the iPhone 15 Pro, and leaned hard into its use as a button to take pictures. This year, though, the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro both have a new dedicated Camera Control button. So what’s an Action Button—also now on the iPhone 16!—to do?
While the Action Button can be assigned numerous tasks, including setting a Focus mode and toggling the flashlight on and off, I can see Apple struggling with ways of making the Action Button seem less than an afterthought, overshadowed by the new Camera Control.
For example, Apple has suggested on a few occasions that the Action Button is a bit of a chameleon. It can turn on the flashlight at night, but toggle Do Not Disturb during the day, for example. Or it can turn on the flashlight when your iPhone is held horizontally, but launch an app when held vertically!
This all sounds clever, but unfortunately, Apple hasn’t actually added any functionality that lets users easily assign different tasks based on time or orientation. If you want to know how to do that sort of thing, you’ll need to use Apple’s Shortcuts app to get it done.
I know Shortcuts is intimidating to a lot of people, so here’s a very simple guide to creating a basic Action Button shortcut with behavior that varies based on some specific parameters. (For more, much more on this concept, check out Federico Viticci’s MultiButton project.)
The new phones are here! And they’re… good? Battery life is up, even as Apple’s relationship with the EU continues to go down.
Squeaky Tim
The reviews are in and the new Apple products are…
Sorry, who had “pretty good” in the pool? Stan? OK, Stan, pick up your free six pack of Pumpkin Spice Double Stuffed Oreo Coke Zero at the cafeteria counter.
Also get out, you’re fired. “Pretty good.” What kind of a guess is that? Who cares if you were right? Ridiculous.
The Verge loves, loves, loves the AirPods 4 and thinks the black Apple Watch Ultra 2 is, and I quote, “sick as hell”. (Context: “Sick” is a good thing. The kids these days use “sick” to mean cool or exceptionally good. It sounds backwards, but this is the custom.)
Meanwhile the reviews for the iPhone 16 are very positive, with Tom’s Guide saying owners will have “no more Pro envy”. The iPhone 16 Pros, on the other hand, are called “iterative” upgrades by The Verge’s Nilay Patel who says he’s “not at all convinced that it’s worth upgrading to”. Oddly a commenter named “Cim Took” said “I think you’re wrong, Nilay! I think they’re very much worth upgrading to!” in tags that apparently indicated it should be read in a high, squeaky voice? Not sure what that’s about.
We’re already being treated to reports suggesting the sales for the Pro devices are down while sales for the entry level iPhones are up, but not enough to make up for the drop in the Pro line.
Clearly all this is evidence the company should have made an iPhone 16 mini. Not to hear Cim Took talk about it, though.
Feel the power
You have your new phone. So when can you start complaining about its battery life? Well, here’s a handy guide for you.
You will not be surprised to learn that these are The Best Batteries Apple’s Ever Made™, thus capacities are up across the board. They think these new capacities will Surprise And Delight You™. I dunno, I didn’t really ask them that, but it’s not much of a stretch, really.
If you are upgrading from an iPhone 15, you should see at least a 6 percent bump in battery life. If you are upgrading from an iPhone 13 mini—hey, that’s me!—it’ll probably be more. If you’re upgrading from a rotary phone, your new phone will have infinitely more battery life. They ask that you please do not try to calculate the increase, however, as it may collapse the quantum state of our universe.
This additional battery life is good because Apple as Apple giveth, it also taketh away. The company will now charge (no pun intended) you 20 percent more to replace the battery on an out of warranty iPhone 16 than on the previous models.
6 percent more life, 20 percent more cost. Surprised? No. Delighted. Eh?
And nothing else happened
Well, that’s it for this week! We’ll be back next week and-
UGH, FINE, WE’LL TALK ABOUT THE EU. At least I avoided talking about AI this week.
Under the scope of the Digital Markets Act, the EU commission today announced proceedings to compel Apple to improve support for third-party connected devices like smartwatches, headphones, VR headsets with iPhone and iPad.
It’s gettin’ so’s a guy can’t have a moat anymore! What am I supposed to put around dis castle?! Ehhh!
You might have noticed I’m working on some new characters. We’ve got Tim Cook’s sockpuppet account, Cim Took, and then Apple as a medieval lord looking to protect its castle who has, like, a Brooklyn accent or something.
I’m just workshopping some stuff. I haven’t settled on anything yet.
The EU continues to push the company in new ways to rightly benefit consumers in its member nations but some ways that make you wonder where it will all end. I don’t think it’ll go so far as Apple having to design better products for companies who just can’t figure out how, but sometimes I wonder.
[John Moltz is a Six Colors contributor. You can find him on Mastodon at Mastodon.social/@moltz and he sells items with references you might get on Cotton Bureau.]
It’s new iPhone day, but Jason’s on assignment, so Dan is joined by Lex Friedman to discuss Apple’s latest smartphone, our upgrading processes, and Six Colors’s tenth anniversary!
My thanks to StopTheMadness Pro for sponsoring Six Colors this week. (Big week!) StopTheMadnessPro is a major upgrade to the beloved Safari extension StopTheMadness that stops website annoyances and privacy violations. When websites try to block your copy and paste, block your contextual menu, block your keyboard shortcuts, play videos without your permission, or track your link clicks, it’s time to stop the madness!
Made by indie developer Jeff Johnson, StopTheMadness Pro is a one-of-a-kind Safari extension with a huge number of unique features, too many to list them all! Here are a few more:
Show Safari’s native video controls, including Picture-in-Picture.
Set video speed on websites.
Set video quality and subtitles on YouTube.
Redirect URLs to alternative websites. In macOS Safari, redirect URLs to alternative web browsers.
Force links to open in the same tab, or force links to open in new tabs.
Customize fonts on websites.
Add your own CSS and JavaScript to websites.
In addition to Safari on iOS and macOS, StopTheMadness Pro supports Firefox and Google Chrome on macOS.
StopTheMadness Pro is a one-time universal purchase for iOS and macOS in the App Store. Previous purchasers of StopTheMadness can get a discounted upgrade to StopTheMadness Pro. For more details, see the StopTheMadness Pro website.
As I’m writing this, I’m sitting in the green room at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, getting ready to start this year’s 12-hour podcast telethon in support of St. Jude’s mission to stop childhood cancer and other devastating childhood diseases. I’m one of five co-hosts along with Myke Hurley, Stephen Hackett, Kathy Campbell, and fresh-faced newcomer Casey Liss.
We’ve got a lot of silly fun and nonsense planned, along with some looks into the mission of St. Jude. It’s Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, this is an incredibly worthy cause, and I hope you’ll consider giving to St. Jude as a part of the Relay podcast network’s campaign.
Over the past year of international travel I’ve been takingnotes on the apps and services I use to get around and how they’ve changed over time. Dan and Jason have done the same. While we—as a species—have come a long way from being completely lost when we’re dropped into a new place, in my estimation we still have a ways to go.
Apple seems less convinced: the only major update to Maps in iOS 18 was the addition of US-only hiking directions. I mean, it also added thick strokes and drop-shadows to its tiny, visually busy icons, so I guess that counts for something. Google is a little ahead of Apple in a few places internationally, but not leaps and bounds. So while you might not get lost while traveling abroad, the experience is certainly rockier than it could be.
Look, I’m not ungrateful. But the truth remains that nothing stokes the imagination of what Apple could do with its products more than the release of its latest hardware and software. As iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and all the other latest OSes arrive, we not only end up picking through all of the new features and capabilities to see what’s new but also coming to grips with what’s not there and the limitations of what is.
That’s no different this time around. Even though I’ve been using iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia for several months throughout the beta process, there are things that I’d like to see improved or expanded upon in future releases. Because nothing whets the appetite like seeing what’s possible. So here are just three places where Apple seems poised to build on this year’s features to do more in the coming years.
Today, the European Commission has started two specification proceedings to assist Apple in complying with its interoperability obligations under the Digital Markets Act (‘DMA’). Under the DMA, Apple must provide free and effective interoperability to third party developers and businesses with hardware and software features controlled by Apple’s operating systems iOS and iPadOS, designated under the DMA.
In general I’ve been supportive of the EC’s attempt to level the playing field. This proceeding, however, definitely made me raise an eyebrow, if for no other reason than it feels extremely vague. Here’s how the EC details it:
The first proceeding focuses on several iOS connectivity features and functionalities, predominantly used for and by connected devices. Connected devices are a varied, large and commercially important group of products, including smartwatches, headphones and virtual reality headsets. Companies offering these products depend on effective interoperability with smartphones and their operating systems, such as iOS. The Commission intends to specify how Apple will provide effective interoperability with functionalities such as notifications, device pairing and connectivity.
The upshot seems to be to allow third-party accessories to have the same benefits as Apple’s own accessories, like the Apple Watch and AirPods. Some of this is work Apple’s already done with iOS 18’s new accessory pairing feature, which it’s now incumbent upon third-party developers to embrace. Ultimately, the experience for third-party accessories should be much closer to that of AirPods.
But at the end of the day, a lot of what makes AirPods better is the fact that it’s using Apple designed hardware, like the H-series chips instead of standard Bluetooth. I have difficulty imaging that the EC would require Apple to make that hardware available to third parties. (Or that other companies would choose to use it, even if they did, given the relative expense.) It seems like eventually that’s a brick wall that this legislation would run into.
All of this depends precisely on how you slice it: it’s one thing to afford all third-party developers the same opportunities, but there’s a fine line between that and forcing Apple to do additional work for those competitors or degrade its own experience.
On the other hand, the iOS 18 changes may be enough to meet the DMA requirements. We’ll have to see if the EC can walk that line.
The second part of the proceeding is a little more straightforward, mandating “transparent, timely, and fair” communication with third parties over interoperability requests, which seems perfectly reasonable to me—we could all hope for as much.
This is the Apple Watch Batman would buy. Never mind that it’s a mini brick on my wrists. Sliding it on for a photoshoot, I feel something wash over me. No longer am I a sleep-deprived tech reviewer hunched over an overpriced coffee. I’m a leather-clad vampire assassin calmly sipping espresso on a cobblestone street.
If the only difference is the color, you go deep on the color. Great read.
Our view on Instagram’s new “Teen Accounts” and their direction, thoughts on Qi2, charging speeds, and MagSafe, our favorite new feature in Apple’s latest platform updates, and the update we like least or will need time to adapt to.
