Apple’s biggest scandal of 2022 is already happening – TechCrunch

Hello friends, and welcome back Review week!!

I’ve been relaxing for the past few weeks and seeing that the 2022 hot take is as hot as possible, or at least as foresighted as possible. This week we’ll talk about what we’re confident of being one of Apple’s biggest scandals in the last decade: the tiny AirTag.

It can be picked up in your inbox every Saturday morning. Newsletter page, And follow my tweet @lucasmtny.

Big thing

AirTags is Apple’s very useful product that works as advertised.

Unfortunately, that’s the problem.

About how Apple recently deployed these, and how they can be easily exploited to stalk someone, even though they are great devices for tracking keys. There was considerable controversy. Again, this is not a purely theoretical problem, it has already happened.

This is not a particularly unique scenario where technology can be used for both good and bad purposes. Think about decades of conversations about encryption. This is a scenario that Apple loses and is more embarrassing than any recent memory failure.

Over the past few years, Apple has spent much of its wearable product marketing coordinating how devices work in edge use cases. The last few generations of the Apple Watch have focused on health tracking features that help identify rare conditions and assist users in life-threatening situations. TV commercials record the individual stories of users who find the Apple Watch a life-saving tool.

Using AirTags can have the same benefits, but it also has many more disadvantages. Next year, we’ll definitely see examples of AirTag being used in a malicious way and acting as an antithesis for one of these Apple Watch commercials. It can be a product defined by its significant drawbacks.

Image Credit: Created for Mars Screen Grab

Since its launch, Apple has taken its own steps to enhance the way it detects AirTags that don’t belong to a particular user, but these notifications are buggy and take a long time to alert users. Often too much. Add the fact that Apple seems to treat Android integration as a retrofit and is not a necessary partnership to ship such devices. Apple’s incompetence looks a little more serious.

I strongly suspect that Apple will be able to design a way out of this problem. No matter what you ship to iOS to backtrack the problem, Android’s destroyed ecosystem means that safeguards won’t reach so many potential targets. ..

For early product categories with such potential responsibilities, it’s hard to understand how Apple justifies continuing to sell AirTag. This is Apple’s own mistake in that Apple fulfilled its original promise exactly, but did not consider the full range of direct consequences of the original promise.

(Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)

Others

Here are some stories of the week I think you should look better:

Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of 4 out of 11 counts
Finally, the trial of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has reached a resolution. Now we are waiting for a verdict and further guidance on whether Holmes will be retried for some counts where the jury failed to reach the verdict. “Holmes was convicted of not only plotting to deceive investors, but also fraudulent Devos investors, hedge fund manager Brian Grossman, and former real estate and trust lawyer Dan Moseley. She wasn’t guilty of a crime related to the patient’s fraud, “my colleague Amanda reported.

Google violates Sonostech, Trade Court rules
This week, Google’s smart speakers, which infringed a major patent held by US regulator Sonos, will no longer be allowed to import infringing products manufactured in China. Google has already begun rolling out design changes and hopes to hinder the sale of smart speaker devices. Sonos has witnessed the early leads of the smart speaker war disappearing, with tech giants wielding its weight, but smaller hardware companies haven’t shrunk.

Small and quiet CES
Omicron’s wave stopped the TechCrunch team from going to Las Vegas to check out the latest gadgets at the Consumer Electronics Show, but we’re enthusiastically attending the show and watching countless live streams. I did. It was certainly a more modest year, but there were still many wild gadgets this year. Here are some of the best we’ve seen.

Image credit: Jasmine Meldan (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images

What was added

Some of my favorites read from us TechCrunch + This Week’s Subscription Service:

How startups prevent a pile of technical debt
“… If a company has a backup plan to provide well-designed code that simplifies future iterations and innovations, then supporting a short-term plan to get faster time-to-market options is Not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s hard for startups to start over because deadlines and lack of resources prevent developers from writing clean and perfect code. Startups prioritize short-term planning and reach milestones. Focus on adding features, registering marquee customers, or raising funds for. Shuffling and ignoring the long-term view of this roadmap causes technical debt … “

Five Growth Marketing Forecasts for 2022
“… This year was a crazy year in growth marketing. TikTok’s soaring, iOS’s radical changes in privacy, and Astonishing $ 240 billion poured into U.S. startups As of September 30th. All of this new funding means more investment in growth marketing throughout 2021. Investment increased at uncertain times, as startups struggled to measure iOS conversions and find a way to unlock TikTok as a new channel …“”

Three things founders need to know about M & A
“… M & A is especially beneficial for startups struggling to expand their operations because they basically buy cash flow, revenue, and third-party traffic. That is, startups gain a larger share of the market. It’s also a good way for startups to find, integrate, and experiment with value propositions, but the problem is that most founders don’t know how to start an M & A and put themselves in the shadow of a bigger player. But the merger is accessible and advantageous for companies of all sizes … “

Thanks for reading, and you can also get this in your inbox every Saturday morning Newsletter page, And follow my tweet @lucasmtny.

Have a nice week!