Category: Jeff Lanza’s Blog

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/apple-glasses

Apple Glasses are coming. The rumor creek is turning into a noisy river and we are now expecting the AR glasses during the first half of 2020.

The evidence has been piling up steadily, as Apple has been leaving a trail of AR-related purchases, from Akonia Holographics — a Colorado-based startup dedicated to AR displays — to the one that started it all: Metaio, a German company that developed an Augmented Reality SDK that seems to be the basis for ARKit, the Apple Augmented Reality developer API that debuted in iOS 11 in 2017. We also know that Tim Cook is a big fan of augmented reality, which he considers social and inclusive while disparaging virtual reality as isolating tech.

It’s not the first time that Kuo has said the Apple Glasses will come in 2020, but now he claims that Apple will begin production of the device before the end of 2019, with Chinese company Changying Precision making the chassis for the device. According to him, the Cupertino company is aiming to launch the device in the second quarter of 2020.

Apple Glasses price

There’s no price announced for the Apple Glasses yet, but we can make some assumptions. The most important is that they will probably not be as expensive of competing augmented reality headsets like Microsoft Hololens 2.

Hololens 2 has a price tag of $3,500 but a big part of of its cost comes from having all the electronics needed to run the AR experience built into the headset.

According to Kuo, the Apple Glasses will offload all the processing to the iPhone, so it will have significantly less parts and complexity than Hololens. Therefore, the price of the Apple Glasses will predictably be lower.

That’s not to say that Apple Glasses will be inexpensive. For example, the Vuzix Blade smart glasses, which have a built-in camera and Alexa integration, start at $799. We would expect Apple’s glasses to cost at least that much if not more.

Apple Glasses design

We are completely in the dark when it comes to design. We can expect one thing, though: these things will be much lighter than competitive headsets because the Apple Glasses will be an iPhone accessory, not a standalone device like Microsoft’s AR headset. This has been confirmed not only by Kuo but also by the Apple developer who analyzed the code in iOS 13. Apple Glasses could also work with the iPad and Macs.

Hololens 2, for example, has all the electronics built in: it includes a dedicated central processing unit, graphics processor, its own memory, storage, high resolution image projectors, Wi-Fi connectivity, USB-C port, cameras and some rather large batteries to keep everything running for about 3 hours. In total, the Hololens is quite a hefty headset at 566 grams — more than half a kilogram or 1.25 pounds.

But Kuo points out that Apple Glasses will not have CPU, GPU, processing memory, storage or any other electronics except the projectors that throw the light into your eyes, the cameras used to capture the scene around you, and the wireless connectivity that will link it to your iPhone. Therefore, it will also have smaller batteries, according to Kuo, which will also reduce the price as well as the weight.

Being an accessory to the iPhone will definitely have implications on its form factor, too. They will not be as light as your Ray-Ban aviators, no, but they could be light enough to just be glasses and use them without a headpiece.

Apple Glasses specs

There’s no known specs about the Apple Glasses yet, but we can speculate based on what we know about the current tech.

They will at least have the same field of view as the Hololens 2: 52 degrees. Anything less will be perceived as inferior by the market.

If Apple is aiming at making its glasses a true augmented reality solution — as opposed to a heads-up display that shows 2D floating notifications or maps, like Google Glass — it’s reasonable to expect the Apple Glasses to connect directly to the iPhone on a dedicated Wi-Fi connection.

If the iPhone has to process all the video captured by the glasses’ cameras and send back the 3D imagery to the glasses at a very high frame per second rate (a bare minimum of 60Hz, with a 120Hz refresh being optimal, again like the Hololens 2), it will require a much higher bandwidth than what Bluetooth can provide. And going through a Wi-Fi router may introduce latency issues that may break the AR illusion.

Which brings us to the subject of resolution: the Hololens 2 uses two 2K displays, providing 47 pixels per degree. Anything else will make the projected images look too crude for Apple standards.

As for battery life, we can also expect a minimum of three hours if Apple wants to be competitive although we can assume that people will be more forgiving about this — especially if Apple provides with some kind of wireless charging glasses case that can extend its operative time through the day like with the Apple AirPods.

Glasses that look like glasses: We would like some natural looking glasses, like the ones in the concepts that you see on this page. I’m sure that Apple wants the same thing. No one wants AR glasses that look like geekwear.

AR in full 3D: Some people would like just a heads-up display, but the true power of AR comes from full 3D integration. For Apple Glasses to be successful, you should be able to run any iOS AR app that currently works on the iPhone through the wearable device.

At least 8 hours of battery life: Assuming you’re not running 3D AR apps all of the time and are periodically looking at notifications and 2D apps in between, Apple should be able to find a way to make Apple Glasses last through an average workday, though it may not happen in the first generation.

The technology may not be there yet, though, which is precisely why there were doubts about the immediate future of the project. But Kuo assures that Apple Glasses coming — so we will just have to wait and see.

We will keep updating this page as more Apple Glasses rumors and leaks come out. Make sure to bookmark and come back.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2019/09/22/microsoft-windows-10-warning-optional-updates-upgrade-windows-10/#793212cf6676

Windows 10 has a quality control problem. While Microsoft has made improvements, updates remain a minefield and this month alone just one broke Search, the Start Menu and caused USB and audio problems for good measure. Now Microsoft is making changes every one of its 800M Windows 10 users needs to know about.

Picked up by BleepingComputer, Microsoft has confirmed it is changing the Windows 10 update experience so users will now be warned which updates they do not need to install. Given that in the last month alone, the aforementioned problems along with screen discolouration and spiking CPU usage were all caused by updates users didn’t need to install, this should make a big difference not just to Windows 10 stability but users’ peace of mind overall.

It should also be familiar. For those with short memories, this is exactly how Windows 7 operates: Microsoft sorted updates into ‘Important’ and ‘Optional’ categories so users could better judge what they wanted to be installed on their computers. The fact this was scrapped in Windows 10 in favour of lumping all updates together and that it has subsequently taken Microsoft over four years to bring it back is mind-boggling.

That said, Windows 10 users still won’t have quite the same level of control over their updates as Windows 7. This is because Windows 7 frequently classed drivers, NET framework, quality updates and more as optional, while drivers – a frequent source of problems – will still update automatically in Windows 10 by default.

Tip: if you want to disable automatic driver updates you have control to do that in the ‘Device installation settings’ screen.

When will Windows 10 users get this new optional update control? Not until Spring 2020 when Microsoft releases the Windows 10 20H1 upgrade. Windows Insiders can grab an early build now but preview releases by definition contain more bugs, so that may prove counterproductive.

No, this change alone is not a magic bullet for Windows 10 update problems (Microsoft will see to that) but it is a massive step in the right direction. It’s also one that should have been taken years ago.

WIRED CONNECTION

One advantage of Apple’s updated migration feature is that you can also use a cable to transfer the data. If you’ve got especially slow Wi-Fi, a wired connection may make the transfer faster, although ironically, during my test, it increased the download time from a little under six minutes (using the wireless method) to nine minutes and 40 seconds. However, if you’re having any trouble with the wireless transfer, this could be a good alternative.

For a wired connection, you’ll need a Lightning to USB 3 camera adapter and a Lightning to USB cable.

• As with the wireless method, start up your new phone and go through the initial questions until you get the invite to transfer data from another phone.
• As before, put your old phone near your new one and make sure both phones are plugged in.
• Connect the Lightning to USB 3 camera adapter to your old phone. Connect the Lightning to USB cable to your new phone. Join the two cables together using the adapter. Power the adaptor through its Lightning port.
• After that, follow the same directions as above, including using the camera to find the pattern, and answering all the setup questions.
• You’ll know that the phones are using the wired setup because once the transfer starts, there will be a small “cable” between the two phone icons on the screen.

Whichever method you choose, enjoy your new iPhone.

https://www.wired.com/story/power-grid-cyberattack-facebook-phone-numbers-security-news/

This week saw some aftershocks from recent revelations about a large-scale iOS hacking campaign. Brokers of so-called zero day exploits—the kind that companies haven’t yet patched—have started charging more for Android hacks than iOS for the first time. And Apple finally released a statement that both criticized Google’s characterization of the attacks and downplayed the significance of the targeted surveillance of at least thousands of iPhone owners.

We took a look at a bug in Supermicro hardware that could let hackers pull off a USB attack virtually. Google open-sourced its differential privacy tool, to help any company that crunches big data sets invade your privacy less in the process. And speaking of privacy, we detailed the 11 settings you need to check on Windows 10 to preserve yours.

And while it feels like forever ago that Jack Dorsey’s Twitter account got hacked, it’s worth revisiting exactly how it happened. (Twitter this week closed the texting loophole at the heart of it.) We also took a look at Jeremy Renner’s content moderation woes. Bet you weren’t expecting to see that sentence in your lifetime.

And there’s more! Every Saturday we round up the security and privacy stories that we didn’t break or report on in-depth but which we think you should know about nonetheless. Click on the headlines to read them, and stay safe out there.

Hackers Hit the US Power Grid With a Cyberattack

Let’s not overplay this: There was no blackout, and it’s not even clear that it was a specifically targeted attack. But hackers did use firewall vulnerabilities to cause periodic “blind spots” for grid operators in the western US for about 10 hours on March 5. It’s the first known time a cyberattack has that kind of disruption—which, again, did not affect the actual flow of electricity—at a US power grid company. The incident was originally referenced in a Department of Energy report in April, but only in vague terms. A new North American Electric Reliability Corporation document described it in more detail, including the type of vulnerabilities that let hackers compromise the web portals in question. No need to panic about this incident specifically, but given the extent to which Russia and others continue to probe the power grid, it’s an unsettling reminder that weaknesses are out there.

A security researcher found a database containing 419 million or so phone numbers associated with Facebook accounts, yet another in a long string of Facebook losing control of the sensitive data with which you entrust it. Facebook told TechCrunch that the data set is “old,” which isn’t especially useful, for the obvious reason that most people don’t change their phone numbers very often.

Through public records requests, Motherboard has determined that when you give your name and address to the DMV, some of those agencies will sell it to private investigators. Several DMVs told Motherboard that at least they don’t also sell user photos and Social Security numbers, which, thanks? But they do sell records for as little as a penny. And all of this is somehow legal! Something else to fume about the next time you’re in line for a registration renewal.

According to court documents uncovered at Forbes, federal investigators have requested that Apple and Google turn over information about people who downloaded a gun scope app Obsidian 4. That’s at least 10,000 on the Google Play Store alone. It’s part of a broader look into potential breaches of weapons export regulations, but privacy advocates have raised understandable concerns over the many thousands of totally innocent people who would be caught up in such a sweeping request.

Beloved internet comic XKCD had its fan forums breached recently; 560,000 usernames, email addresses, and IP addresses were taken. That makes it a relatively small hack in the grand scheme of things, but still disappointing that someone chose that as a target. XKCD is great, leave it alone!