Feature Request: Give us the option of switching off password blobs

Quite a lot of tech features are designed to protect us from ourselves, and most of the time I’m fully in favor of this. I like it, for example, that my iOS devices ask me if I’m sure I want to delete a photo. I like it that my Macs ask me if I really want to empty the wastebasket. I love that Time Machine performs hourly backups and offers me an easy way to recover an earlier version of documents – and so on.

But there’s one aspect of iOS designed to protect me from myself that I find irritating, and I’d love a way to switch it off. My iOS devices don’t trust me to ensure there’s no-one watching when I type in passwords …

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Apple patent describes using the front-facing camera, light & proximity sensors for health measurements

An Apple patent granted today describes how the front-facing camera, light sensor and proximity sensor found in existing iPhones could be used for health measurements.

The electronic device uses one or more of the camera and the proximity sensor to emit light into a body part of a user touching a surface of the electronic device and one or more of the camera, the ambient light sensor, and the proximity sensor to receive at least part of the emitted light reflected by the body part of the user. The electronic device computes health data of the user based upon sensor data regarding the received light.

It also considers using additional sensors mounted in the same area for further health measurements …

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Apple TV tvOS simulator hacked to render at 4K resolution

Prolific Apple developer and hacker Steve Troughton-Smith has messed around with the tvOS Simulator and coerced it into running at twice the standard HD resolution, 3840×2160, more commonly referred to as 4K. A new hardware box has been rumored for later this year, with 4K as a headline addition.

tvOS seems fit and ready to run at this currently-unsupported resolution with text, app icons and other system assets scaling cleanly to the higher-res. We have a couple full-res screenshots after the jump …

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