Chris Hoffman for How To Geek

Hey Internet, we did it! After a good outpouring of rage and annoyance towards Microsoft, we’ve forced the Windows team to remove the messages “warning” you not to install Firefox or Chrome. They won’t be in the October 2018 Update.

In a comment given to Ed Bott over at ZDNet, a Microsoft spokesman said:

We’ve tested this functionality with Insiders only – The Windows Insider Program enables Microsoft to test different features, functionality and garner feedback before rolling out broadly. Customers remain in control and can choose the browser of their choice.

These warnings have vanished from the current Insider builds of Windows 10. They won’t be in the final version of the October 2018 Update, which will likely be released at some point in the next few weeks.

While this Microsoft spokesman calls this a “feature,” it’s worth nothing exactly what it was : A literal “warning” not to install Chrome or Firefox once you’ve downloaded it, interrupting the installation process. As we pointed out, this would train Windows users to ignore real security warnings.

Of course, the only reason this “test” was unsuccessful is because it enraged Windows 10 users more than usual. If this browser warning was just a feature that generated a normal amount of rage, like automatically installing Candy Crush Saga on Windows 10 Professional, Microsoft wouldn’t have backed off.

But today, let’s celebrate. We all stopped Microsoft from doing something dumb! The battle is won.

Let people use the browser they want to use.

Peter Cao, writing for 9 to 5 Mac:

While Apple made no mention of AirPower during today’s event, it looks like Apple may be launching AirPower later in 2018 than originally anticipated.

Apple has seemingly updated its website today, removing all mentions of AirPower except in one place. Looking at the AirPods product page, Apple mentions the optional wireless charging case, noting that it is currently unavailable. The charging case is placed on what appears to be the AirPower mat, along with the iPhone X.

John Gruber on Adware Doctor:

What a bizarre story this is. Adware Doctor was a $4.99 app in the Mac App Store from a developer supposedly named Yongming Zhang. The app purported to protect your browser from adware by removing browser extensions, cookies, and caches. It was a surprisingly popular app, ranking first in the Utilities category and fourth overall among paid apps, alongside stalwarts like Logic Pro X and Final Cut Pro X.

Turns out, among other things, Adware Doctor was collecting your web browser history from Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, and uploading them to a server in China. Whatever the intention of this was, it’s a privacy debacle, obviously. This behavior was first discovered by someone who goes by the Twitter handle Privacy 1st, and reported to Apple on August 12. Early today, security researcher Patrick Wardle published a detailed technical analysis of the app. Wired, TechCrunch, and other publications jumped on the story, and by 9 am PT, Apple had pulled the app from the App Store.

Contrary to some reports, Adware Doctor didn’t find some sort of hole in the sandbox that prevents apps downloaded from the Mac App Store from being able to access the entire file system. The app asked permission from the user, which is the only way utilities like this can work. Any user who believed in the stated purpose of Adware Doctor would grant this permission though. (MacOS 10.14 Mojave has additional protections for particularly sensitive files, like your browser history and email database — this shouldn’t work on Mojave even if you grant an app permission to access your home folder.)

Also, make sure you read Patrick Wardle’s post on Objective-See:

You probably trust applications in the Official Mac App Store. And why wouldn’t you?

However, it’s questionable whether these statements actually hold true, as one of the top grossing applications in the Mac App Store surreptitiously exfiltrates highly sensitive user information to a (Chinese?) developer. Though Apple was contacted a month ago, and promised to investigate, the application remains available in Mac App Store even today.

Jason Snell, on what to expect with tomorrow’s iPhone event

It’s almost here. Apple’s annual iPhone event, this coming Wednesday (Sept. 12), is perhaps the biggest single event on the technology calendar. Apple always uses the event to launch other products — we’ll probably see a new Apple Watch and possibly even new iPads or Macs this year — but the center of attention is, quite rightly, Apple’s biggest product: the iPhone.

[…]

If the rumors are true, this year’s iPhone event will feature three new iPhones: an update to the iPhone X, a larger 6.5-inch version of the iPhone X, and a new 6.1-inch phone that looks a lot like an iPhone X, but with a lower-cost LCD screen.

If that’s all true, this will be the biggest iPhone introduction ever, with Apple introducing two never-before-seen models in addition to updating an existing phone. (Last year Apple rolled out three new models, but two of them — the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus — were updated versions of Apple’s previous models.)

Such a massive launch makes sense. The iPhone is roughly two-thirds of Apple’s overall business, and unlike Android phone makers, Apple is the sole purveyor of iPhones. The more models and variations, the better. If Apple is to continue growing the iPhone market, it needs to find shapes, sizes, and price points that reach people who simply won’t consider the iPhone today.

Last year’s iPhone X was a great step forward for fans of Apple’s smaller phone designs. Though it was a tiny bit larger than the iPhone 8, it offered a much larger screen and (for the first time in a smaller model) two rear-facing cameras. I know a lot of fans of the iPhone Plus line who embraced the iPhone X.

But fans of big phones can’t have their desires quenched by a single phone model. They’re always going to long for more… and the new 6.5-inch iPhone (said to be called the iPhone XS Max) promises to provide everything the iPhone X did, but with a huge screen. Fans of big phones — and the world is full of them — will be thrilled that the new, larger iPhone exists.

But given the $999 starting price tag of the iPhone X, it’s likely that the 6.5-inch OLED phone is going to be quite expensive. What about all the people in the world who like big phones, but not big price tags? This seems to be the target for the other rumored phone, a lower-cost device that still integrates the front-facing sensor block and edge-to-edge display of the iPhone X, but does it with a much cheaper LCD-based screen (and presumably other components that aren’t quite a match for the top-of-the-line products). This handset may be called the iPhone 9.

Meanwhile, there will presumably be an iPhone X successor, reportedly dubbed the iPhone XS, with an updated processor and a few other upgraded specs. This will be the least exciting phones of the three Apple introduces, but it might be the bestseller.

Keep in mind that most people in the market for an iPhone this fall aren’t people who bought the iPhone X last fall — they’re people who are still using an iPhone 6, 6S, or 7. The update to the iPhone X will be much more similar in size to what they’re used to than the two larger models.

[…]

Those are iPhone predictions. Apple is pretty consistent when it comes to a lot of its pricing decisions, but it’s also shown the ability to make huge changes, just as it did when it introduced both the iPhone 8 and iPhone X last year, and presumably as it will do this year in introducing the 6.5- and 6.1-inch iPhone models.

Even when you think you know everything about what’s coming from an Apple event, though, the company finds some way to surprise us. We’ll have to wait until Wednesday to see what it is this time around.

Google has sent out invites for an October 9th event that will almost certainly be the official announcement of the thoroughly leaked Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL smartphones. There’s not much to go by from the invite in terms of clues — just a simple “I <3 NY” phrase, which subtly hints at the Pixel 3 with the numeral in the heart emojicon, but given the leaked devices already out there, Google probably doesn’t need to do much more to promote the announcement.

The Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL are the third generation of the Google-branded Pixel line that was first introduced in 2016. In the past few weeks, hardware units of both devices have made their way into the world, giving us a very good idea of what to expect from the announcement. Both devices are expected to get some design tweaks, including a somewhat controversial large notch on the Pixel 3 XL and a glass back for wireless charging on both devices. Each of the Pixel devices will also have dual front-facing cameras and a single rear camera.

Nilay Patel on why it’s time to break up Facebook:

Tim Wu thinks it’s time to break up Facebook. Best known for coining the phrase “net neutrality” and his book The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, Wu has a new book coming out in November called The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age. In it, he argues compellingly for a return to aggressive antitrust enforcement in the style of Teddy Roosevelt, saying that Google, Facebook, Amazon, and other huge tech companies are a threat to democracy as they get bigger and bigger.

“We live in America, which has a strong and proud tradition of breaking up companies that are too big for inefficient reasons,” Wu told me on this week’s Vergecast. “We need to reverse this idea that it’s not an American tradition. We’ve broken up dozens of companies.”

And breaking up Facebook isn’t a new idea. Ever since Mark Zuckerberg bought Instagram and WhatsApp, the idea of undoing those deals has been present at the periphery of the conversation about regulating tech companies. Both were serious burgeoning competitors to the social network, and both acquisitions sailed through without serious government oversight, which was a mistake. Instead of facing competition, Facebook was able to swallow its rivals and consolidate the market.

“I think if you took a hard look at the acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram, the argument that the effects of those acquisitions have been anticompetitive would be easy to prove for a number of reasons,” says Wu. And breaking up the company wouldn’t be hard, he says.

“What would be the harm? You’ll have three competitors. It’s not ‘Oh my god, if you get rid of WhatsApp and Instagram, well then the whole world’s going to fall apart.’ It would be like ‘Okay, now you have some companies actually trying to offer you an alternative to Facebook.’”

Breaking up Facebook (and other huge tech companies like Google and Amazon) could be simple under the current law, suggests Wu. But it could also lead to a major rethinking of how antitrust law should work in a world where the giant platform companies give their products away for free, and the ability for the government to restrict corporate power seems to be diminishing by the day. And it demands that we all think seriously about the conditions that create innovation.

“I think everyone’s steering way away from the monopolies, and I think it’s hurting innovation in the tech sector,” says Wu.

They do have some points, when is a company too large? Especially in Facebook’s case where it makes up several large scale social networks under one company’s control.

Ingrid Lunden, writing for TechCrunch

Evernote, the productivity app with 225 million users that lets people take notes and organise other files from their working and non-work life, has been on a mission to reset its image as the go-to service for those seeking tools to help themselves be more efficient, years after losing its place as one of the most popular apps in the app store. But those changes have not come without their own challenges.

TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that in the last month, Evernote  lost several of its most senior executives, including its CTO Anirban Kundu, CFO Vincent Toolan, CPO Erik Wrobel and head of HR Michelle Wagner beyond the usual attrition of engineers and designers.

The departures are coming at a key time: we have also heard that Evernote is fundraising, potentially in a down-round from its most recent (but now several years-old) valuation of $1.2 billion.

The company would not comment on the funding but confirmed the staff departures. It has not provided an over-arching reason for these latest personnel changes, but notably, rather than re-hiring from outside for the vacated roles, Evernote is shifting existing, in some cases recently joined employees to take on different responsibilities.

Ranjit Prabhu, who joined the company in May 2018 as SVP of engineering, will partner with Andrew Malcolm — who had been the CMO but as of August has taken on a new title as SVP of product, growth and marketing — to work on how tech and product will fit together (he’s not taking a formal CTO title, though). Susan Stick, another recent hire (June 2018) who is the company’s general counsel — a role that appeared to be vacant for two years before she joined — is expanding her role to include people operations as well. Lastly, Francie Strong, who had been VP of communications, is taking on an expanded role as SVP of brand and communications.

This is the second major revamp of the startup’s leadership team in a little over two years. In March 2016, the company lost its founding CTO and made a number of other appointments amid a wave of departures and other big changes.

Chris O’Neill, who joined as CEO after long-time leader Phil Libin stepped away from the role, had already shuttered a number of unprofitable operations that Evernote had launched in an attempt to grow the company, including the closure of its accessories business, and several other app efforts such as some versions of Skitch and its Food app.

(Today, it has three smartphone apps, its flagship Evernote app, Skitch and Scannable for digitising business cards, receipts and other paper-based items; plus handwriting recognition app Penultimate for tablets.)
In the years since then, Evernote has been somewhat quiet, but there have been other significant changes and divestments. In June, Evernote announced that it would spin out its Chinese operations and become a minority shareholder. Yinxiang Biji, as it’s called, accounted for 10 percent of Evernote’s revenues. And some of the company’s movement has been problematic: a controversial change in the company’s privacy policy, which would have made it possible for employees in the company to read a user’s notes in the app, got quickly reassessed and altered as people publicly slammed the company.

Evernote has certainly witnessed a lot of shifts in its business over the years.

Lots of shifting around over at Evernote….