Due to a last minute scheduling conflict, this was the first Apple announcement in six yeas that I wasn’t able to watch live. However, it wasn’t a terrible one to miss—most of the upgrades this year were rather modest. Even still, I was fairly impressed by a few things they announced.

Apple Arcade:

I originally thought this service was destined to fail, but I’m a little more hopeful now. The games they demoed weren’t very exciting but with 100+ games, there are likely to be a few good ones, and $5 is cheaper than I think anyone expected, and cheap enough to get people to try it.

Apple TV+:

Apple TV+ is another service I was unsure about, but I think the way they’re choosing to roll it out will help them gain a lot of traction. $5 is way cheaper than anyone expected, and you get. a whole year free if you buy a new Apple device. Combine that with the star studded casts of their shows, and they’re definitely going to get people watching.

iPad:

This was a modest update, but its always nice to see the entry level iPad getting some love. $329 is just an incredibly accessible price point.

Apple Watch Series 5:

A few things to note here:

• There are very few new features. The always on display is nice, but I honestly didn’t realize that it didn’t already have a compass. That’s hardly a tentpole feature, but its being dressed up as one.

• There were rumors of sleep tracking capabilities, but those were apparently just rumors. Too bad.

• The new Edition models are cool. I’ve been saying that a titanium case would be nice, but I was disappointed to see that it’s kinda dull and ugly. (UPDATE: 9/30/19, 20:30; after seeing one of the titanium watches in person, they’re actually pretty sleek. The photos don’t do it justice.)

• I’m glad they’re finally letting you pair any watch case with any band.

• There are finally some good improvements with the bands. There are now at least a few options of nice bands with black hardware, rather than all silver like in the past. The leather loops and Milanese loops now only cost $99, which is much more reasonable. Year after year, we’ve seen the bands get cheaper: first the link bracelets, then the modern buckles, and now the leather loops and Milanese loops. Hopefully next year the prices for the sport bands will drop by ten or twenty bucks — I think they’d sell a lot more of them if they were just a little bit cheaper.

All in all, the best watch to buy right now would be a series 4 on clearance, if you can find one.

iPhone 11:

People often ask me for advice on which new phone they should get, and the iPhone 11 is the perfect upgrade for almost anyone. It has all the nice features from the iPhone XR, and it’s $50 less expensive. The only people for whom this phone isn’t the ideal choice are those who are already on an annual upgrade plan (like Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Program), or those who are willing to pay a couple hundred extra bucks to stay on the absolute cutting edge of technology.

The Face ID improvements are great, and the new chip seems to be blazing fast. The improved water resistance is nice. The UWB location technology will be an absolute game changer, I just hope they’ve done their due diligence to keep it from being abused by apps like Facebook.

The new camera features are awesome. Night Mode looks spectacular.

iPhone 11 Pro:

The biggest news here was the new midnight green color. It’s rare that Apple is actually able to keep a secret like that, but it was a delightful surprise. The triple-camera setup on the back isn’t the most aesthetically pleasing design, but I appreciate their commitment to solid camera improvements, year after year. The 18w fast charger in the box is a nice touch, as is the further improved water resistance.

There’s actually some bad news here, though, and that is that they’re ditching 3D Touch, one of the tentpole features introduced with the iPhone 6s, in favor of Haptic Touch. I was a big fan of 3D Touch, and I thought it had a lot of potential, but it was poorly implemented so people didn’t generally know when or exactly how to invoke it. getting rid of it means that some features will take slightly longer to access, like adding a song to your up next due or previewing links. The only way I was going to be okay with this change was if removing a component of the display allowed the display to be noticeably thinner, thereby making the device thinner and lighter. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. The iPhone 11 Pro is 6% heavier and 5% thicker than the iPhone XS. If you’re looking for more than just my preliminary thoughts, check out my review of the iPhone 11 Pro.

All in all, this keynote was a mixed bag. A couple of disappointments for power users, but a solid step forward for those who are due for upgrades but don’t necessarily care about being on the cutting edge.

Relationships don’t tend to last when the fights and arguments begin this early.

Ps. Apple, you deserve better, anyway.

On this episode of “Rare Occasions When Trump Actually Deserves Credit For Doing Something Positive,” we see him taking a stand to combat a serious public health issue (and nuisance). Most people should recognize this as a good move, with the two exceptions being hardcore libertarians and companies like Juul.

Ever feel like you’re always seeing posts from the same people on Facebook? That isn’t an accident. Your opinions are being quarantined for profit—it really is digital Gerrymandering, and it’s the reason that elections and politics are getting uglier and uglier; the electorate is becoming increasingly polarized as a result of having their beliefs affirmed by algorithms that skew their newsfeeds to lean whichever way they lean.

#deletefacebook

Frida Ghitis, in an opinion piece for CNN:

The wall is a fantasy conjured by Trump to get elected. While Trump has imbued the wall with near-mythical powers, many experts say it will do little to stop the current flow of migrants from Central America, who typically turn themselves over to authorities to seek asylum, rather than trying to sneak in undetected. In the horror story Trump told voters in 2016, America was being invaded by rapists, drug dealers and other criminals who "threatened" the country. […]

In his speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016, Trump spoke of a dystopian America with a broken political system and broken borders, before taking on the mantle of the superhero by declaring, "I alone can fix it."

It’s hard to quantify the amount of hubris it takes to make such a claim. Talk about a god complex.

The Trump administration is taking $3.6 billion from approved military construction projects to pay for part of the wall. […]

Altogether, 23 states and three US territories are losing $1.8 billion in funds, and another $1.8 billion will come from construction overseas. Among the projects losing money, according to the Pentagon, are military bases devastated by hurricanes in Florida, North Carolina and Puerto Rico, funding for the US Military Academy at West Point, cyber operations facilities, schools for the children of service members, upgrades to facilities storing hazardous waste and Navy ship repairs.

I’ve written about this a few times before; it’s a subject that really gets under my skin, as it should for any true patriot.

It is absolutely shameful that the greatest military in the world has a Commander in Chief who has proven himself, time and time again, to be completely unconcerned with the successful execution of their day to day operations. It’s too bad he had those bone spurs in 1968 that prevented him from serving in the Vietnam war (see: “draft dodger”), if it weren’t for that, he may have developed some respect for the brave men and women who make sacrifices every day for our freedom. Alas, he seems to have no appreciation for their commitments, as he frequently uses them as political props to fire up his base, which unfortunately, is too ignorant to realize (or, after 2016, too prideful to admit) that such actions represent values opposite of those they have traditionally held dear.

I mean really, who would’ve guessed that vaping causes fatal lung diseases? I suppose I was the only one who had that yearly demonstration in elementary school of what a healthy lung looks like compared to a smoker’s lung. I mean for god’s sake, people don’t use their noodles. How gullible do you have to be to believe that inhaling vaporized nicotine and other chemicals won’t have ANY negative health consequences?

Corporations have been trying to make smoking cool for hundreds of years, and vaping is just the 21st century version of that same corporate goal. Companies like Juul should be treated (and regulated) the same as companies like Marlboro; they exist because they rely on a predatory business model of marketing their inarguably harmful products in a way that makes them seem cool, so that they can swindle money from those who are either too weak to resist the addiction, or are too uneducated to see how it could be bad for them.

Ps. Even without the astonishingly obvious health consequences, vaping is still nasty. Nobody wants to walk through a big cloud of warm, cotton candy-scented smoke that just came out of your mouth. It’s gross.

Brian Feldman, writing for New York:

It’s a seemingly useful service that also acts as a Trojan horse for the company’s existing interests.

Seeing as I am one of the single-est people I know and also one of the only people I know who doesn’t have a Facebook account, I really hope this doesn’t catch on. Facebook has no interest in helping people find love; they have an interest in collecting and monetizing user data, and this is just another iteration of those efforts.

Easily the most ironic part of this is that they’re marketing it as a safe and private option. They say that Facebook Dating won’t collect personal information to be used for advertising purposes, so that’s great (assuming they’re not lying, but that’s far from a safe assumption). However, you can’t JUST use the dating service—for the sake of “authenticity,” they’re requiring that users who want to use Facebook Dating also maintain an active Facebook profile in order to use Facebook Dating. So while the Facebook Dating service will allegedly respect your privacy, the primary Facebook service makes no such promises, and they’re mandating that you use it.

#deletefacebook

Zach Whittaker, writing for TechCrunch:

The exposed server contained more than 419 million records over several databases on users across geographies, including 133 million records on U.S.-based Facebook users

Is anyone surprised? These records included names, phone numbers, gender, and more.

How anyone still trusts Facebook is beyond me. Let’s not forget the shadow profiles or the flagrant abuses of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

#deletefacebook

I really enjoyed this fun little article by Duncan Riach on Medium. It strikes a nice balance between being thought provoking yet not taking itself too seriously.

Ps. ⚠️ Spoiler Warning, men aren’t trash, we’re very “kewl” as the kids say.

I recently made a time consuming (and kinda boring) decision. Last week, I elected to delete ALL of the apps on my iPhone (except for the built in ones). This wasn’t a permanent decision, but I told myself that I wouldn’t download another app without first reading the privacy policy of the company that built it. It’s time to start actually understanding all the legal jargon we’re hastily clicking through and agreeing to.

This whole process has been enlightening in a few ways. About a week later, I still only have nine apps on my phone; I’m learning that most of the 70+ apps on my phone were just taking up space, because I’m doing just fine without most of them. I do intend to keep downloading more as I read their privacy policies, but I’m not in a hurry.

A lot of the privacy policies I’ve read so far have surprised me; some companies were way more protective of their users than I expected, and some were worse than I had dared to imagine. Check out the whole list of privacy policies I’ve read, and make your own decisions about which companies you’re comfortable giving your information to.

I’m a Vol for life, don’t get me wrong. But what an incredible metaphor for our supremely shitty football program; a LITERAL ship on fire, right outside Neyland stadium, on the first game day of the season. And we ended up losing horribly to an unknown team. Poetic. Prescient. Tragic. Go Vols.

Queer Eye’s Antoni Porowski, in an opinion article for The Washington Post:

This bigotry is unacceptable. Historically, Poland has survived hundreds of years of oppression and violent occupation from neighboring countries, from the invasion by the Soviet Union to the Katyn massacre to World War II. We have managed to keep our faith, language and identity through it all. It baffles me that we would choose to persecute our own because of who we love and how we identify in terms of gender. We must stop attacking our own.

Honestly, he’s hitting the nail on the head here. It’s pretty bold for the runt of Europe to be persecuting anyone, much less their own people.

John Gruber has a great, succinct take over on Daring Fireball on this story about marketing firms using purchased location data to map out where fried chicken fans eat on Sundays when they can’t get Chick-fil-a.

It’s time to get scared. The sale of consumer location data between companies should be illegal. It’s a Pandora’s box; even if you only share your location once, you’ll never be able to track down all the companies that have access to the data you shared, much less know how they’re exploiting it. We need to call on our legislators to put an end to this.

#deletefacebook

Ugh. I waited a long time before writing anything about this, hoping my opinions would lighten up a bit, but they haven’t and I don’t think they will.

The Apple Card is one of the most un-Apple-y things Apple has ever done. I’m not one of those Steve Jobs idolizers who thinks that the company is circling the drain without him, and I’m not one of those people who, every time Apple does something new or different, starts shouting about how “STEVE WOULD’VE NEVER…” But I seriously can’t imagine Steve letting this out the door.

My only hope for the Apple Card was that Apple is good at disrupting industries, and the credit card industry is truly an industry that needs to be disrupted because all those companies are very predatory and generally bad news for consumers. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like Apple is actually doing anything different. Sure, the digital-first approach is neat, and the titanium card looks cool. Also, its nice that it doesn’t carry any fees and it encourages you to pay your balance off every month, and I’ll even say that the daily cash reward system is nice. But at the end of the day, what kills consumers in the credit card industry is the interest rates, and Apple hasn't done anything revolutionary here, despite having claimed to. The lowest APR offered, 12.99%, is not low. And the high end, 23.99%, is absurd. Also, Goldman Sachs: Is that the best they could do? Partnering with a company that asks if curing disease is a sustainable business model? Gross.

If Apple truly wanted to disrupt a financial industry, they would’ve set their sights on the checking account. They could’ve rolled it up nicely with Apple Pay Cash and given out a nice titanium card. They could’ve chosen to get rid of the absurd overdraft fees (taking $37 from someone who literally has no money is wrong and borderline criminal, even if they agreed to it in the fine print), and instead monetize it with a simple, flat, monthly account fee; I’d happily pay ten bucks a month for an Apple checking account with a cool titanium card. Best of all, it would’ve been something that they could’ve offered to all of their customers. Of course, they didn’t do this because it would’ve been more difficult to monetize than a credit card with ridiculous interest rates, and the Apple Card only exists because Apple is trying to expand their revenue from services.

The Apple Card feels extremely corporate and greedy. It’s elitist, and it’s the first Apple product that isn’t available to everyone for a price. Some people simply cannot have one, especially younger folks like myself who haven’t had a ton of time to establish a fantastic credit score. Apple products are supposed to feel premium but not elitist; there’s a line there, and Apple Card falls decisively on the wrong side. I am not a fan.

Anyone with eyes can see that iMessage is superior to SMS texting in just about every way imaginable. From an encryption/privacy standpoint alone, if you don’t use iMessage, I’m probably just not going to text you.

Samsung’s latest shitty marketing ploy is remarkably, well, shitty. Honestly, it’s pitiful, and it doesn’t even make any sense. If you’re an Android user considering using one of these GIFs, just go ahead and save some time by sending this one instead.

Well, this article from Tiffany FitzHenry is really something. There’s a lot of information to process here, and while FitzHenry does offer a lot more evidence to support her claims that Ellen is in cahoots with the C.I.A. than I would’ve believed possible, I’m still left with more questions than answers.

Maybe I’m the only one who wasn’t paying attention back in 2013 when this news first broke, but the fact that the C.I.A. has a $600 million contract with Amazon is terrifying. It’s allegedly for cloud services via Amazon Web Services, but still, Amazon seems quite eager to appease the C.I.A., and as FitzHenry suggests, we would be foolish to believe that the C.I.A. has no interest in the massive amount of data Amazon posses about their customers. I’ve long been skeptical of Amazon’s Alexa products, and my position remains firm: only a fool would put an Alexa device in their home.

Sad news broke today that Sony has decided to drag the Spider-Man character back under their sole control, as they’ve declined new contracts with Disney that would allow allow Marvel Studios to continue their run with the character.

This seems like very bad news for the goofy, young Spider-Man we’ve grown to love, Tom Holland. Each of the three modern live action Spider-Man series have had their strengths and weaknesses, but I think people tend to agree that the most recent iteration was the strongest, and a lot of that strength came from the already established Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Aaron Tilley, writing for The Information:

In an email to Apple CEO Tim Cook last Friday, the leaders of seven app developers outlined their concerns about the company’s new restrictions on location-tracking apps in a forthcoming version of the iOS operating system, according to a copy of the email reviewed by The Information. They accuse Apple of having a “double standard” for how apps can use location data in its new operating system.

This isn’t anticompetitive, it’s anti-abusive. Very few companies truly need access to your location all the time, and we should be extremely judicious when deciding whether or not to grant such permissions.

And of course, Life360, one my most despised apps on the App Store, is one of the seven companies complaining about this change.

Also on the list: Tile (this one has a reasonable argument for always wanting location access, but that still doesn’t make this move anticompetitive), Happn (a dating app with a unique approach but tiny user base), Arity (an insurance company who is in bed with the Life360 folks), Zenly (Snap’s location sharing app), Zendrive (a company that makes driver assessment apps) and Twenty (a social network for finding friends nearby).

Oopsie daisies.

This is the second time this has happened in just a few months. I’m not too many “accidents” away from deleting my personal Twitter account.

Netflix’s ”The Great Hack” is one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen. It explains what happened with the whole Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal, and makes it easy to understand for those with little prior knowledge. They take a largely nonpartisan look at how these companies were able to influence the 2016 U.S. General Election, the Brexit Referendum in the U.K., and dozens of other elections in smaller countries.

It has never been clearer that the technology we all take for granted has been taking advantage of us; it is evident that data aggregated by Facebook and exploited by Cambridge Analytica has been used to effectively brainwash the public, and the tactics they’ve used were even more efficient and dangerous than the ones utilized by the propagandists of the Third Reich. Nearly all of the blame for the explosively divisive nature of those elections belongs at the feet of Alexander Nix and Mark Zuckerberg.

“The Great Hack” very well may be the most important film of the decade, and I urge everyone to watch it. Make a concerted effort to be open minded, and don’t immediately rule out the possibility that these companies may have pulled one over on you—it’s easy to dismiss their alleged wrongdoings on the basis of “well if anyone had convinced me to think one way or the other, I think I would know.” The problem is that many people do dismiss it on those grounds, but by the very nature of what they’ve done, nobody could know until it’s too late. These are companies with billions of dollars at their disposal and a team of scientists who possess deep knowledge of how the human brain works—there is no shame in admitting they may have duped you. They certainly got me. What’s most important is what we do now that we know what they’ve done.

I’ve been pounding the #deletefacebook drum since well before the scandal broke, and there has never been a better time to get out of their corrosive network: delete your Facebook account. However, even that isn’t enough at this point.

The safety and integrity of every democracy on earth depends on everyone understanding what these companies did and calling upon our representatives to finally limit the boundless power that big tech companies have over our data. If those things don’t happen, the world will never see another free and fair election.

#deletefacebook

See also: “The Social Dilemma”