iOS

ProtonMail has announced the official launch of their mobile apps for iOS and Android today. ProtonMail brings seamless PGP end-to-end encryption to emailing, making it significantly more secure for those looking for an extra layer of privacy.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook has gotten his first solo appearance on the cover of TIME magazine today, with the publication printing a lengthy interview with Cook about Apple’s fight with the FBI over iPhone encryption backdoors. The full transcript of the interview is available on TIME’s website.

Cook says he is uncomfortable fighting the government, but Apple is fighting willingly for what it believes are civil liberties. Although interesting, the piece largely repeats the same arguments Apple has been touting for the last few weeks on the right to privacy, freedom of speech in iOS code and more.

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Non-jailbroken iPhones are usually close to immune from malware thanks to Apple vetting every app before it’s made available in the App Store. So far, malware has relied on abusing enterprise certificates designed to allow companies to distribute apps to their own phones. But security company Palo Alto Networks has discovered a new piece of malware that can infect iPhones by exploiting a vulnerability in Apple’s DRM mechanism.

AceDeceiver is the first iOS malware we’ve seen that abuses certain design flaws in Apple’s DRM protection mechanism — namely FairPlay — to install malicious apps on iOS devices regardless of whether they are jailbroken.

AceDeceiver currently uses a geotag so that it is only activated when a user is located in China, but a simple switch could allow it to infect iPhones elsewhere …

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Ahead of Apple’s media press event on Monday, Apple has added a new Apple Events app for the fourth-generation Apple TV. The Apple Events channel lets Apple TV users watch the livestream of Apple’s announcements from their television. Unlike previous generations of Apple TV, the Apple Events app does not appear automatically on the Home Screen. Instead, users must find the app in the tvOS App Store and download it to their device.

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Apple has launched yet another iPhone 6s advert, this time featuring a special celebrity guest: the Cookie Monster. In the ad, named Timer, the blue monster uses hands-free Siri on his iPhone 6s to time (you guessed it) the baking of his cookies.

Although hands-free Siri exists on all iPhones, the ability to say ‘Hey Siri’ out loud without having the phone being plugged in to power is exclusive to Apple’s latest handsets: the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. Watch the minute-long commercial after the break …

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Uber is beginning to test a new feature that will make it easier for family and other close-knit groups to share an Uber account. That means that your family could use a single credit card for Uber across several devices, making it easy for parents to pay for their kids or other family members, for example.

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Security-minded individuals looking to simplify their two-factor authentication logins may want to take a look at LastPass’s new app today, LastPass Authenticator. The iOS App Store currently has a few different apps that can already handle two-factor authentication logins, like Google Authenticator and 1Password. Most of them come with the minor annoyance that once the app is launched, a user has to find the site’s login, and then type the OTP into the site before it expires. LastPass Authenticator looks to improve that experience by allowing users to quickly approve the new login requests directly from their devices.

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The man responsible for leaking explicit photos of dozens of celebrities back in 2014 has been formally charged today. According to a post on the Department of Justice website, a man from Pennsylvania has been charged with felony computer hacking after obtaining access to Gmail and iCloud accounts of more than 100 different people, the majority of whom were celebrities.

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Apple is finally rolling out its Apple News Format to all publishers, after an initial announcement at WWDC 2015. The format lets anyone, big or small, create rich multimedia stories within the Apple News app, featuring panoramas, videos, animations and more.

Until today, Apple News Format was limited to exclusive launch partners (like Wired) whilst everyone else had to resort to basic RSS import. Publishers interested in using the format should check out the documentation on Apple’s website.

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There’s a new display and brightness feature in iOS 9.3 called Night Shift which “automatically shifts the colors of your display to the warm end of the color spectrum after dark.” Apple even says that Night Shift “may help you get a better night’s sleep” which is mainly why I’ve been using (and enjoying) the feature during the iOS 9.3 betas. Who doesn’t want a better night’s sleep, right?

But Night Shift has me thinking about other ways iOS could be optimized to make our iPhones and iPads less distracting at night. The foundation for what I have in mind is already there: Do Not Disturb and VIP. But both of these features are currently short of where I’d like them to be to work best for me. Here’s what I’d love to see DND and VIP offer:

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I’ve recently been testing the brand new Synology DS-216+ NAS ($299), a network-attached-storage product meant for consumers. Although Synology products include a variety of features, I will be focusing on two primary functions that I consider most essential and most useful to people today: Mac backup and home media management (TV shows and movies).

With Apple no longer shipping optical drives in most of their products, I think now is a great time to convert your home movie collection of DVDs and Blu-rays to digital files, which a NAS is great for storing. The Apple TV 4 was another big factor: with an app, I can now view all the TV shows and movies, stored on my NAS, from my TV.

Before I owned a NAS, I was worried about two things: whether the features would be useful and how much hassle would be necessary to get everything up and running. Hence, my review starts with an explanation of the setup steps involved …

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Update: Games airing on CBS are not available for streaming on Apple TV as of right now. The company’s reasoning for this is unclear, but we’re looking into it and will update further if we’re able to get to the bottom of it. CBS games are streaming via iOS devices and the web, so you can AirPlay to the Apple TV.

Furthermore, TruTV, TNT, and TBS games require a cable login for streaming on Apple TV.

@SportsLabsAMP Live CBS games won't be on Apple TV, Roku, or Amazon Fire TV for 2016. Try AirPlay or Chromecast!

— Fan Support (@MMLive_Help) March 17, 2016

Original Post:

Every basketball fan’s favorite time of year kicks off later today with the play-in round of the NCCA March Madness tournament. After tonight, we’re looking at non-stop basketball for the rest of the month and it really doesn’t get much better than that.

Earlier this month, the NCAA announced that it would be live streaming all of the 2016 March Madness games on various platforms, and even teased an exclusive feature for Apple TV users. With games commencing this evening, it’s time to make sure you have everything setup so you’ll never run the chance of missing a game this year…

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Apple originally launched its own News app for iOS last June and now the company looks to be expanding the ad offerings of which publishers can take advantage. According to a support document updated recently, Apple will soon start allowing ads that resemble normal articles in the Apple News app (via BI).

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Complaints that Apple’s App Store algorithms are broken, often returning nonsensical results for highlighted categories like ‘New’ and ‘Hot,’ have finally caught the company’s attention. Phil Schiller yesterday responded to tweeted complaints by Mozilla’s Lisa Brewster and Screenshot++ developer Wesley Dyson.

App Store editors, you had one job https://t.co/uLLOuXTDvb

— Lisa Brewster (@Adora) March 12, 2016

Both drew attention to the fact that highlighted app categories in Canada and other countries (though seemingly not the U.S.) were filled with a whole range of similarly-named apps, and that apps whose names put them at the top of alphanumeric sorting remain in the ‘New’ category forever …

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The Apple/FBI iPhone encryption backdoor debate continues to ramp up, with an FBI filing late last week causing Apple SVP Bruce Sewell to describe the case as a smear campaign against the company. Apple and the FBI take the battle to the courts officially on March 22nd, the day after Apple’s spring media event.

Although the topic at hand is clearly important, where the government is asking Apple to make software to undermine the security of iPhones, the bureaucracy of court proceedings can make the (continuing) story pretty stale and laborious. In a Last Week Tonight segment, comedian Jon Oliver humorously presents the opposing arguments without losing the underlying factual basis.

Watch the video after the break …

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