Tangible Tech

Today's podcast topics deal with history - the history of emoji on iPhones, the FBI's poor opinion of Apple's excellent encryption, and an IPO for a company that Steve Jobs once unsuccessfully tried to buy:

• The designer of some of the first 500 emoji to be used on iPhones provides a ten-year retrospective on her work
• An FBI forensic expert frustrated with Apple's encryption refers to the company as "jerks" and "evil geniuses"
• Dropbox, the file-sharing powerhouse that Steve Jobs once referred to as a "feature, not a product", will be going public later this year

It's Hump Day™! As we reach the middle of this week, there's not a lot of news that we haven't covered elsewhere, but we still have two kinda creepy stories for you.

• Remember the "FruitFly" malware that was infecting Macs last year? The hacker behind the attack has been indicted for not only his malware attacks and stealing data, but for child pornography as well
• A second iPhone fire has occurred, this time in Spain. The uptick in incidents seems to be tied to the increase in iPhone battery replacements taking place due to Apple's discounted replacement plan

In the news today on the podcast -- Apple's ITP is choking online advertising firms, an overheated battery causes an evacuation at a Swiss Apple store, WPA3 is announced and may force Apple AirPort users to go elsewhere for Wi-Fi router equipment, and a tiny USB-C flash drive with a big capacity is displayed at CES:

• "Hundreds of millions of dollars" are being lost by online advertising firms due to Apple's ITP feature in Safari
• A Zurich, Switzerland Apple retail store was evacuated after an iPhone battery overheated and started filling the back of the store with smoke
• WPA3 is announced, and will require hardware certification on new Wi-Fi routers -- most likely meaning that Apple AirPort routers will be left out
• SanDisk shows off a tiny 1TB USB-C flash drive

Happy Monday! We have stories today about a survey showing that smart speaker users don’t use their smartphones as much, a rumor about an iPhone SE 2, and Intel being slapped with three lawsuits so far over the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities.

• Accenture surveyed 2,271 smart speaker owners, and the majority of them say they’re not using their smartphones as much anymore
• An Indian tech site says that an iPhone SE 2 will be released this year, complete with a glass back for wireless charging
• Intel is facing class action lawsuits from three states so far alleging damages due to the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities

The first Friday of 2018 arrives with stories about ugly smart sunglasses, a tiny and fast Thunderbolt 3 SSD, and how Apple's App Store is making a huge amount of money:

• Vuzix will be showing its Blade Augmented Reality Sunglasses at CES, which run Alexa and are...well...butt-ugly
• Plugable announced the new Thunderbolt 3 4b0GB NVMe SSD, which is a perfect accessory for video editors on the move
• Sensor Tower data shows just how large app sales have become for both Apple and Google 

A deal on grocery delivery from Apple and Instacart, a big win for TSMC, and it's been an interesting week for Spotify:

• Pay for your grocery delivery via Instacart with Apple Pay, and Apple will pick up the delivery charges through January 10th
• TSMC will reportedly build all of the A12 processors for this year's iPhones, edging out Samsung on what could be a huge order
• Spotify has announced that it has 70 million paid subscribers, is filing for an IPO to go public, and might have to pay out $1.6 billion in a lawsuit

Augmented Reality isn't proving to be "the next big thing," Apple adds a news podcast feature to Siri in the newest iOS 11.2.5 beta, and Mophie creates a product that can keep a USB-C MacBook running for up to 15 hours over what the internal battery can offer:

• A recent survey from Apptopia shows that developer interest in AR appears to be nearly nonexistent, with AR apps making up only about 0.03% of all apps in the App Store
• Soon, you'll be able to ask Siri to "Give me the news" and get a short news digest podcast in return
• Mophie's new Powerstation AC is going to be very popular with MacBook owners, as it can give the little laptop a total of over a day of battery life

Steve's back from vacation, so we start off the year with news on an Apple acquisition, conflicting Wall Street forecasts for Apple, a long-awaited iPhone X app update, and Google's most popular searches for last year:

• Apple purchases Buddybuild, which makes continuous integration and debugging tools that will be built into Xcode
• One pair of Wall Street analysts is forecasting low production and sales of iPhone X for the first fiscal quarter of 2018, others think the company is on its way to a $200 share price
• DJI updates its drone app for the iPhone X
• Slime, unicorns, memes and acronyms that defined 2017, as brought to you by Google

A website app gets banned from the App Store for just mentioning jailbreaking, iTunes Movies has 4K HDR bundles for Christmas, and a lot of new banks are supporting Apple Pay worldwide:

• AppleInsider's app was updated for iPhone X...and then rejected from the App Store because a headline showed the word "jailbreaking"
• Getting an Apple TV 4K for Christmas? There's a sale on 4K HDR bundles in the iTunes Movie store
• Apple Pay expands to more banks and credit unions in the USA, as well as in China, Finland, France and Ireland

iPhone X availability rises, iPhone 6s devices with old batteries might be slowing down, and Apple raises iPhone prices in India in return for the country raising import taxes:

• The iPhone X is now available same day at most US Apple retail stores, and production is going so well that global supply equilibrium is expected in the next month
• Apple may be reducing the performance of iPhone 6s devices with degraded batteries to prevent shutdowns
• India raised consumer electronics import taxes; Apple raises iPhone prices