Apps, hackers, tech summits and Apple Pay all make an appearance in today’s Apple World Today News Update Podcast:
- TapTapTap releases Camera+ 9, turning the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus into amazing photographic tools
- Yahoo! You’ve been hacked!
- President-elect Donald Trump held his tech summit today, and asked Tim Cook and Elon Musk to stay after class…
- You can now fly the friendly skies and more with Apple Pay.
The text version of the podcast can be viewed below. To listen to the podcast here, click the play button on the player below.
Text Version
Hi, this is Steve Sande for Apple World Today, and this is the AWT News Update for December 14, 2016.
I’ve been a fan of TapTapTap’s Camera+ app since it first came out, and today the company introduced Camera+ 9 with some big changes. First of all, the app provides dual lens support for the iPhone 7 Plus — TapTapTap notes that not every photo taken with that handy 2X button in the Apple Camera app is really taken with the telephoto lens, so they’ve implemented Camera+ 9 to be consistent with Apple’s Camera behavior…except you CAN select which lens you really want to use. The app also supports RAW shooting, which means that your iPhone 7 Plus is even more like a DSLR than you imagined. Not only can you shoot in RAW, but they’ve added editing tools that they call the RAW Lab. Camera+ 9 also supports what’s called P3 Wide Color for the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, which have a display that supports a wider range of color. Finally, they’ve added haptic feedback for those of us, yes, who are fortunate enough to have an iPhone 7 or 7 Plus. If you don’t already have the app, it’s only $2.99 and well worth the price.
Have you ever had an account on Yahoo? The company today announced that it thinks that more than 1 billion Yahoo user accounts were compromised in a third-party attack in August of 2013. The information that is believed to have been gathered by the hackers includes names, email addresses, phone numbers, birthdates, hashed passwords, and encrypted and unencrypted security questions and answers. No bank account or credit/debit card information was believed to be compromised, nor were clear text passwords. On a personal note, is there any reason anyone is still using Yahoo?
Guess who was at Trump Tower in Manhattan today? Well, President-elect Donald Trump of course, but also Apple CEO Tim Cook, who was seated right down the table from Trump with only Trump supporter and Facebook board member Peter Thiel in-between. Others who attended included Larry Page and Eric Schmidt of Alphabet, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Satya Nadella from Microsoft, Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook, Ginni Rometty of Apple partner IBM, and Tesla’s Elon Musk. Trump reportedly told those in attendance at today’s tech summit that he’d make fair trade deals and “make it a lot easier for you to trade across borders” by loosening restrictive regulation. Cook and Elon Musk were reportedly meeting with Trump after the main summit; Musk is a member of Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum, while Trump probably just wants to ask Cook if Apple is ever going to update the Mac Pro – just kidding.
When it comes to Apple Pay support, some big names just got added to the list of companies that will support the touchless pay system. United Airlines has added Apple Pay to its iOS app, using the system to pay for single and multi-point trips and flight upgrades. Hosting and domain name registrar GoDaddy is now offering Apple Pay to merchants that operate online stores, but those merchants must enable mobile credit card payments through Stripe first. That’s actually the way Apple World Today handles Team AWT payments with Apple Pay, in case you’re wondering! Also, Causemo is a service that allows people to make donations to organizations like Boys & Girls Clubs of America, and it today activated web-based Apple Pay. When donors visit a website that uses Causemo for payments using a device running Safari, Apple Pay appears as the default payment option and actually lets the donors skip entering billing or contact information.
That’s all for today; I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon with another edition of the AWT News Update.
