Tag: Apple iOS

Google not allowing Amazon to provide a native client tor the popular YouTube service on the Echo Show highlights how much control they have over the user-generated video market

Over the last many years, YouTube established a name for itself regarding the delivery of user-generated video content through our computers. This included video created by ordinary householders ranging from the many puppy and kitten videos through to personal video travelogues. But a lot of professional video creators have used it to run showreels or simply host their regular content such as corporate videos and film trailers, with some TV channels even hosting shows for a long time on it.

After Google took over YouTube, there have been concerns about its availability across platforms other than the Web. One of the first instances that occurred was for Apple to be told to drop their native YouTube client from iOS with users having to install a Google-developed native client for this service on their iOS devices.

Recently, Google pulled YouTube from Amazon’s Echo Show device ostensibly due to it not having a good-enough user interface. But it is really down to Google wanting to integrate YouTube playback in to their Google Home and Chromecast platforms with the idea of running it as a feature exclusive to those voice-driven home assistant platforms.

Could the Web be the only surefire place to see Keyboard Cat?

These instances can affect whether you will be able to view YouTube videos on your Smart TV, set-top box, games console, screen-equipped smart speaker or similar device. It will also affect whether a company who designs one of these devices can integrate YouTube functionality in to these devices in a native form or improve on this functionality through the device’s lifecycle. The concern will become stronger if the device or platform is intended to directly compete with something Google offers.

There are some video services like Vimeo and Dailymotion that offer support for user-generated and other video content. But these are services that are focused towards businesses or professionals who want to host video content and convey a level of uninterrupted concentration. This can be a limitation for small-time operators such as bloggers and community organisations who want to get their feet wet with video.

Facebook is starting to provide some form of competition in the form of their Watch service but this will require users to have presence on the Facebook social network, something that may not be desirable amongst some people. Amazon have opened up their Prime streaming-video platform to all sorts of video publishers and creators, positioning it as Amazon Video Direct. But this will require users to be part of the Amazon Prime platform.

But for people who publish to consumer-focused video services like YouTube, competition will require them to put content on all the services. For small-time video publishers who are focusing on video content, this will involve uploading to different platforms for a wider reach. On the other hand, one may have to use a video-distribution platform which allows for “upload once, deliver many” operation.

Competition could open up multiple options for publishers, equipment / platform designers, and end-users. For example, it could open up monetisation options for publishers’ works, simplify proper dealing with copyrighted works used within videos, open up native-client access for more platforms, amongst other things.

But there has to be enough competition to keep the market sustainable and each of the platforms must be able to support the ability to view a video without the user being required to create an account beforehand. The market should also support the existence of niche providers so as to cater to particular publishers’ and viewers needs.

In conclusion, competition could make it harder for YouTube to effectively “own” the user-generated consumer video market and control how this market operates including what devices the content appears on.

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iTunes losing its ability to install software to iOS devices from version 12.7 onwards

Apple Releases New iTunes 12.7, What You Should Know | AppleToolbox.com

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An issue that will face iOS device users who make use of the iTunes desktop media-management applications is that starting from iTunes 12.7 onwards, they won’t be able to upload iOS apps from their regular computer to their iOS mobile device in a tethered manner using this software. This is in addition to omitting the iOS App Store from the iTunes Store shopfront integrated in iTunes. It is also part of a direction that Apple is enforcing with iOS where you manage your iPhone or iPad from its screen and update its software “over the air”.

Apple could still provide desktop management of their iOS devices through separately downloadable software

Tethering is where you connect a computing device that can normally function alone to another computing device, typically a regular computer, by a wired connection. This is typically to allow a smartphone to be a modem for a regular computer or to transfer data stored on one device to the other device. In this case, it is to transfer iOS apps stored on your regular computer running macOS or Windows to your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch that you have connected to the computer.

But there are people who use a Mac or Windows regular computer to deploy iOS software to iPhones and iPads. For example, in your business or household, you may want to deploy the same app to multiple iOS devices and want to save bandwidth by caching the app to your regular computer’s hard disk then deploying the same app by tethering each iOS device to your regular computer. As well, some of us may use this as a way to get around a dodgy Internet connection by downloading to a laptop used at a location with known-to-be-good Internet service then deploying where it’s more convenient.

Apple offered a make-do update for iTunes by offering the iTunes 12.6.3 software. This has the feature set associated with iTunes 12.6 including access to the iOS App Store and tethered app deployment for iOS devices. But it has under-hood improvements which allow it to work with iOS devices that are running iOS 11 or newer versions. This is alongside iTunes 12.7 which is focused as a media-management tool and iTunes media storefront.

Personally, I would like to see Apple approach this situation in a better manner for both the Mac OS and Windows operating systems. This would be in the form of a separately-installable “iOS-desktop-manager” program that provides add-on functionality to either the Mac OS operating system for Macintosh computers or to the iTunes Windows port. It would at least provide desktop access to the iOS App Store along with tethered app deployment for iOS devices.

As well, the “iOS-desktop-manager” program could provide device backup and management abilities so you could do things like backup an iPhone or reset a faltering iPod Touch. This is more so where the Wi-Fi or wireless-broadband modem in an iOS device or its network connection can be a point of failure and it isn’t realistic to restore from an iCloud backup if the iOS device’s Wi-Fi is so slow or intermittent.  Similarly, using something like your local backup infrastructure such as your NAS or a USB external hard disk of your own means that you aren’t necessarily ceding control of your mobile-created data to others, something that can be of importance when it comes to privacy.

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Use Night Shift Mode And Low Power Mode On iOS At The Same Time With Siri’s Help | Lifehacker

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Apple introduced in to iOS 9.3 the “Night Shift” mode which tints the iPhone’s or iPad’s display to a yellow colour to allow you to sleep better at night. But you can’t invoke this function on your iOS device if you are running it in Low Power mode to “spin out” your battery runtime or facilitate quick charging.

But the video accompanying the article has shown that there is a way to have both these functions working together. This is through telling Siri, Apple’s voice-driven personal assistant for the iOS platform, to “turn on Night Shift”. Once you tell Siri to do this even though your iOS device is in Low Power mode, it will switch the display to Night Shift mode. You can regret this change by telling Siri to “turn off Night Shift”.

Personally, I would improve on this through a point upgrade by allowing both functions to work together and, perhaps, using Night Shift as a “master command” to optimise your iOS device for evening and night-time use such as reducing sound output or invoking Low Power as a way to run your iOS device on reduced power overnight.

I would see it lead to Apple offering a selection of situation-specific operating modes that affect display, sound and other operational parameters with the ability for users to vary the parameters themselves. Users could at least invoke these modes through an app or the Settings function. But this could be taken further by them asking Siri to invoke these modes or the modes coming in to play under certain conditions like time periods.

Apple is now seeing the reality with how the iPad is being used

Apple have released iOS 9.3 which has as part of its Education feature package the ability to allow multiple users to use the same iPad.

This is a feature that the iPad is sorely missing because of a common reality that I have noticed with this tablet where many household members are using the same device. It happens more so with the 10” standard iPad rather than the iPad Mini which is used more as a “personal” device. For example, I have seen one iPad being passed around four different household members in our household for email, video-content viewing, gaming as in Plants vs Zombies, and information lookup. Another iPad that I have seen in action is one that became the common Internet (or should I say at times Facebook) terminal in a “family house“. Similarly, businesses have used the iPad as a mobile computing device ranging from a communal image-viewing device through a POS terminal to a kiosk device.

It is in contrast to Steve Jobs vision for this device where he sees it as a personal companion device i.e. as a large-screen companion to the iPhone that each of us use. This is why Apple refused to integrate multiple-user support in to the iPad variants of the iOS platform. It is in contrast to how Google integrated multi-user functionality in to Android Honeycomb to benefit tablet users and Microsoft carried through the multi-user abilities of the Windows regular-computer operating system to tablets that ran that operating system.

iPad users had to be very scrupulous that they log out of email, Facebook and similar services if the tablet was being used as a communal device and they wanted to keep their data private and unadulterated. There wasn’t the ability to have a distinct operating environment for individual users like a different wallpaper or exclusive access to personal email and other accounts. Businesses would even have to run extra third-party apps to achieve a multi-user login setup which became very important through the lifespan of the tablet.

But Apple woke up by offering multi-user abilities for iOS 9.3, but only as part of an “Education” feature set which is an extension of Apple’s strong efforts for courting the education market since the Apple II era. This was because schools, especially primary schools (elementary schools in North America), would buy fewer iPads and pass them around a class, yet they want to be able to track progress through various courseware apps that are written for this platform.

When iOS users and the computer press heard about this, they thought that Apple would answer these needs “across the board” but at the moment, it is only being targeted to the education market. There is a hope being expressed that when Apple issues a subsequent major iOS update like iOS 10, they will provide proper multi-user support for this platform. But it may require a rewrite of the iOS operating system in order to make sure that the extra functionality doesn’t weigh the iPad’s performance down.

Some users may find that the login user interface may not cater to the multiple-user scenario but it may have to be about supporting a user list similar to the way Windows works and supporting different user PINs and fingerprints as login credentials. Similarly, Apple may have to realise that there can be multiple Apple IDs associated with the one iPad and factor that in with account management / password vault features and iTunes purchases. This could lead to the ability to provide Windows-8-style cross-device portability where apps, settings and libraries can be carried across multiple devices.

What may have to be looked at is to integrate a full multi-user ability in to the iOS distribution packaged for the iPads, perhaps implementing some of the techniques used in Windows or Android.

Taking control of local data-transfer functionality like AirDrop can help you avoid unwanted surprises

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Cyberflasher Airdrops rude images to victim’s iPhone | Naked Security (Sophos)

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A problem that has started to surface for Apple iOS users is the ability for someone to send gross images to strangers courtesy of the AirDrop feature that newer iterations of this platform have. Situations where this typically happened were when the offender and victim were on public transport or in public areas.

This feature makes it easy to share photos between iOS and MacOS X devices in a local area using Bluetooth and Wi-FI technologies and provides a thumbnail image of incoming photos rather than a dialog box asking if you want to receive the image.

This was feasible with Android and other open-frame mobile operating systems courtesy of Bluetooth Object Push Profile but these platforms. especially Android, hardened themselves against this by making your phone undiscoverable by default and providing a narrow time limit for having your phone discoverable by Bluetooth devices. As well, these platforms required your permission to start receiving the file and you didn’t see one bit of that file until you gave the go-ahead.

Android and Windows improved on this using a passcode that you and your correspondent exchange before a file is transferred and the NFC functionality that is part of recent Android versions requires you to physically touch the backs of the phones as part of instigating the data transfer.

The same situation may also crop up with Wi-Fi Aware as it implements Bluetooth local discovery for ad-hoc Wi-Fi networks created by mobile devices and will require users to be able to take control of what notifications and files they receive on their devices if this technology is for transferring files.

Protecting yourself

A good practice to observe is to turn off the AirDrop feature unless you make regular use of it. Or, at least, set AirDrop’s discoverability settings to “Off” or “Contacts Only” rather than “Everyone” so that every man and his dog can’t discover your phone. You would turn this function on if you are expecting a photo from someone not yet in your Contacts List.

In some situations, you may have to disable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth unless you are actually using these features such as linking to a hotspot or using a Bluetooth headset.

You may find that changing your device’s identity to your initials or something innocuous rather than your first name may work wonders in these situations.

I would also prefer that any local data transfer or similar activity between users takes place in a manner where each participant can see each other. This may be at the same table in a café, restaurant or library, the same seating cluster in a lounge area, the same row of seats in a public-transport vehicle or a similar area of close proximity. As well, such activity should be preceded by relevant conversation.

What must be preserved

If a setup allows for local data transfer between computer devices using a wireless medium, there must be a way of allowing the users to confirm their intent to transfer the data between each other. This means that the sender and receiver know whom the data is coming from and to and must occur before a single bit of the actual data changes hands.

This may be through the sender exchanging a simple passcode to the receiver or requiring the devices to physically be near each other at the start of the data transmission. The latter solution may be in the form of NFC where the users touch the backs of their devices together, or a QR code shown on the sending device’s screen that the receiving device has to scan before transmission takes place.

If a user wants to simplify this process, they could create a “trusted recipients” list which can be their Contacts list or a separately-created list. Personally, I would use all of the “friends” in a social network as this list because that tends to encompass too many people and an account can too easily be compromised.

The same thing must also apply to social networks, online gaming and similar services where one user may want to enrol another user in to their personal lists. This is more important if any of these services facilitate the transfer of files between users or support any form of instant messaging.

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Apple releases iOS 8.4 with new Music app, fix for crashing bug | ARSTechnica

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Apple have just rolled out version 8.4 of the iOS mobile operating system and the main headline feature that this came with is the Apple Music streaming-music service which came about due to their takeover of Beats by Dr. Dre.

But this version of iOS also fixes a bug that placed iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches at risk of crashing if a specially-formed message came in via iMessage or other message services. This was due to problems associated with handling standard ASCII and Unicode character combinations. To get their iOS devices back to life after a crash, they had to do things like ask correspondents to send pictures.

Any iOS user can update their devices either over the air by visiting the Settings screen then selecting “General” before clicking on “Software Update”. Or they could use the USB charge/data cable to plug the iDevice in to a regular computer equipped with iTunes and use that software to deliver the update to the device.