NC #656 Chapter Markers x 3, Apple Store Phone Scam, Craig Federighi Answers Steve, Hazel to Yoink, Regex Tools, CardHop

In this action-packed show I tell you the story of adding chapter markers to the NosillaCast in a three part continuation series (hopefully you can see them now?) interspersed with two reviews from Bart. He tells us about how he’s using Hazel now to send things to Yoink and he explains why CardHop makes Contacts useful again. Steve wrote to Craig Federighi and actually got a response and 30 seconds of fame on Apple sites. And we’ve got a PSA about a phone scam using an Apple Store’s real phone number.

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Hi, this is Allison Sheridan of the NosillaCast Apple Podcast, hosted at Podfeet.com, a technology geek podcast with an EVER so slight Apple bias. Today is Sunday, December 3, 2017, and this is show number 656. This week show is going to be super fun. Two weeks ago we started on the quest for chapter markers. Then last week I did a follow up. This week I have three follow ups but because I love to tell you a good story, I’m going to tell it in three separate pieces. In between each chapter of the chapter story, you’ll hear a review from Bart of some fun applications he’s excited about. He recorded these before Thanksgiving but I held them over till this week because there was so much content last week. Anyway, sit back and enjoy your chapter marks in this episode as you listen along.

Chit Chat Across the Pond

This week’s Chit Chat Across the Pond was SO much fun. I had Kaylee from Japan of the Zettai Geek Dayo podcast on the show. She is a girl geek through and through. I knew that the only problem I’d have interviewing her would be to narrow down what subject we covered. She loves ALL geek things from iPhones and iPads to JavaScript to home automation and even talking about cell phone plans. The interview is in the Chit Chat Across the Pond Lite feed and in the full Chit Chat Across the Pond feed in your podcatcher of choice.

PSA on Apple Store Phone Scam

Yesterday afternoon, our Caller ID showed a call from Apple. We have the NoMoRobo service on our phone line and before we could answer, NoMoRobo had stopped the call as it does with known scammer numbers. +Steve Sheridan googled the number, and it was our local Apple Store. We figured NoMoRobo had made a mistake. I do enough business with that store that I figure they have me on speed dial, right?

I called the store directly. Here’s a link to the audio recording I made of what I heard upon connecting to the Apple Store.

These spoofers are getting really creative. I’m sure they see people who’d talk to Apple as a lucrative business segment.

I’m really glad we have the free NoMoRobo service on our phone line. If you’re interested in Nomorobo and want to learn more, Steve did a post on the land line version and Terry Austin did one on the mobile phone version. You can find Nomorobo at nomorobo.com.

Steve’s Letter from Craig Federighi

This week Steve wrote a letter to Craig Federighi of Apple. Here’s what he wrote:

Craig,
My wife and I each recently purchased an iPhone X. We both love the phone and the swipe up for home gesture. We also are quite impressed with the performance of Face ID – it is very fast and accurate. Because of Face ID’s accuracy and convenience, we have set up long/complex passwords for each of our iPhones.

However, Face ID has removed a significant feature we enjoyed with Touch ID. My wife and I trust each other implicitly, as I’m sure many spouses and partners do, so we entered a Touch ID fingerprint on each other’s previous iPhones allowing us to access each other’s phone. As you know, this is currently not possible with Face ID. There are several use cases where being able to quickly access each other’s phone is important to us. Example: I am driving and my wife, as a passenger, wants to access or I want her to access something on my phone. I should not/do not access my phone while driving but I would like my wife to be able to do so. With Face ID, the only way for her to access my phone is to tell her my long/complex iPhone password and have her enter it. This is not only inconvenient but a security risk if someone else is in the car with us. I feel we’ve taken quite a step backwards in security and convenience, something I am not used to dealing with for Apple products. In talking with friends and family, I believe there are many other spouses/partners/significant others who also shared Touch ID fingerprints for similar reasons and have lost that capability with iPhone X.

Can you please tell me if Face ID that will support two users on a single iPhone is in Apple’s roadmap? Help me, Craig Federighi. You’re my only hope.

Sincerely,
Steve Sheridan
33-year Apple Fan

Get this, Craig (we call him Craig now) wrote back in SEVEN MINUTES:

Hi Steve (and Allison),

Thanks for the note.

Currently we’re focussing Face ID on single user authentication. (Even TouchID’s multi-finger support was really intended to enable a single iPhone owner to unlock the device with a finger and thumb on both hands, not to enable multi-user authentication).

We’ll certainly keep your feedback in mind as we consider our plans to evolve Face ID in the future.

Thanks!

– craig

Steve was disappointed in the actual answer, but of course pleased that Craig had answered the question. Steve is a big Redditer, with really high karma so he posted Craig’s response to his letter in Reddit. As you can imagine, it did quite well on Reddit. But then an amazing thing happened, Mac Rumors picked it up and wrote an article highlighting Steve’s letter and Craig’s response.. Mac Rumors even contacted Steve and asked him for the header info from Craig’s response to prove it was really from him. I liked to see that journalistic integrity.

It caught on fire after that (no one else asking Steve to prove his source). It was picked up by 9 to 5 Mac, Cult of Mac, BGR, iPhone Firmware, iPhone Hacks, Aivanet and someone on YouTube!

Blog Posts

I Have Made Fire – I Coded in Perl with Regex!

Bart on using Hazel to send screenshots to Yoink

Automatically Adding Screenshots to Yoink with Hazel (Take 1) : Bart Busschots
and Automatically adding Screenshots to Yoink with Hazel (Improved) : Bart Busschots

Patreon

Before we hear part 2 (or is it part 4) of the chapter mark story, I want to take a moment to make a special thank you to all of you who help support the production of the NosillaCast and Chit Chat Across the Pond through Patreon. I’d also like to thank our two newest patrons of the arts, Chris B and Tim G. Both of these fine gentleman went to podfeet.com/patreon and simply signed up to have a small but recurring fee show the value they get out of these two shows. To quote Randy Quaid in Chevy Chase’s Christmas Vacation, “It’s the gift that keeps on giving.”

If you’d rather make a one time contribution, you could do like Craig P this week and push the PayPal button under Support the show.

If you can’t afford to support the show financially, please don’t stretch yourself to do it. I’ll quote Chris Ashley of the SMR Podcast here, “just grab a friend in a head lock and make them subscribe to the podcast”. Ok, maybe just suggest it gently around the holiday table this year.

In any case, thank you to all of you for listening each week.

Expressions, Patterns & Regex101 Make Writing Regular Expressions Easy and Fun

Bart on CardHop

Bart didn’t do a blog post for this one, but you can find CardHop at flexibits.com/…

Chapter Marks – the Final Chapter

That’s going to wind this up for this week. Don’t forget to send in your Dumb Questions, comments and suggestions by emailing me at [email protected], follow me on twitter @podfeet. Remember, everything good starts with podfeet.com/. podfeet.com/patreon, podfeet.com/facebook, podfeet.com/googleplus, podfeet.com/amazon! And if you want to join in the fun of the live show, head on over to podfeet.com/live on Sunday nights at 5pm Pacific Time and join the friendly and enthusiastic NosillaCastaways. Thanks for listening, and stay subscribed.