Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway (which owns nearly 6% of all of Apple's stock) provided an interesting observation on what makes Apple special. When explaining to CNBC why Apple's is its largest holding, he said: “If you’re an Apple user and somebody offers you $10,000, but the only proviso is they’ll take away your iPhone and you’ll never be able to buy another, you’re not going to take it. If they tell you if you buy another Ford car—they’ll give you $10,000 not to do that—you’ll take the $10,000 and you’ll buy a Chevy instead.” As John Gruber of Daring Fireball noted: "He’s right: Apple’s moat is customer loyalty, and that loyalty is earned through user experiences that other companies can’t match." If someone offered you $10,000 but you had to forever give up using an iPhone, would you do it? I know my answer. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- Two months ago, there was an alarming story in the Wall Street Journal about how crooks were watching people enter an iPhone passcode and then stealing the iPhone. When someone has both your iPhone and the passcode, they can make your life miserable. In a follow-up article by Nicole Nguyen and Joanna Stern, they share stories from many folks who were victims and who pleaded with Apple to restore access to their data but Apple could not do so because of the way that iPhone's handle privacy and security. This simply underscores how critical it is that you keep your iPhone password confidential.
- Note that the Wall Street Journal article emphasizes that people were trying to prove their identity to Apple, as if Apple did not trust that the person was the real original owner of the stolen iPhone. But as Adam Engst points out in TidBITS: "Once that recovery key is set, the company can do nothing to help—it no longer controls the necessary encryption keys. That’s why I say that users may be locked out of their accounts permanently. When the Wall Street Journal article talks about how victims attempt to prove ownership of their accounts with various forms of identification, it’s missing the point—identification is not in question; the data is simply inaccessible because it’s encrypted with a key that Apple doesn’t control."
- Christopher Mims of the Wall Street Journal writes that one of the reasons that the iPhone platform is so popular is that older iPhones remain useful for a very long time.
- If you monitor your blood glucose, John Gruber of Daring Fireball says that the new app called Glucomate for the iPhone and Apple Watch is worth checking out.
- If you use an Apple Card credit card, you earn Daily Cash for each of your purchases. It builds up over time and can be used on whatever you want. I recently purchased a new home computer (Mac mini) and it helped that had built up $700 in Apple Cash to put towards the new purchase. But as Jason Cross of Macworld explains, Apple debuted a new feature this week: instead of just earning Daily Cash, you can have that Daily Cash deposited into a free savings account that earns a very respectable 4.15% interest. I see no reason not to turn on this feature if you use an Apple Card, Why not earn interest on your Daily Cash as you save up for something special?
- I should have linked to this post when it went up in January, but better late than never. In a post on Six Colors, Shelly Brisbin notes that you can change the text size on your iPhone (I knew that) but do so on an app-by-app basis (I did not know that).
- In a new post on Six Colors, Jason Snell explains that this trick is especially useful if you want to adjust the font size with the new iOS app for The Athletic.
- If you are interested in buying an external keyboard to use with your iPad, Cliff Joseph of Macworld does a good job of identifying the best options.
- If you own a smart smoke detector, like the Google Nest Protect that I use throughout my house, your smoke detector can give you an iPhone notification when the alarm goes out. But what if you have a traditional simple smoke detector? Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac explains that there is a new HomePod feature that you can optionally enable. Once you do so, if your HomePod hears a smoke detector alarm, the HomePod will notify you.
- Justin Meyers of Gadget Hacks has an interesting list of built-in iPhone features that you might not know about such as an Apple TV Remote and a Code Scanner.
- Apple opened up a new Apple Store in New Delhi, India, this week and shared some pictures of the opening on its website.
- When I started to become interested in technology in the 1980s, I used to love to read computer magazines, and I subscribed to many of them. As the Internet grew, starting in the late 1990s, I found myself reading and subscribing to fewer magazines, and then eventually no magazines. Harry McCracken of Technologizer writes that the last two computer magazines (Maximum PC and MacLife) have now stop publishing print magazines, marking the end of computer magazines in America. Hopefully the end of tech websites in America is nowhere near because I have no plans to give up iPhone J.D. any time soon.
- And finally, do you want to know what it was like to unbox an original iPhone, the one first released in 2007? Marques Browlee paid $40,000 to purchase one at an auction run by Sotheby's and then opened it up in a YouTube video. Along the way, he shares lots of details about the original iPhone that I have long forgot. For example, it came with a charging stand. I really enjoyed watching this video, and perhaps you will as well:
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