FIDO Alliance’s draft specifications – Credential Exchange Protocol (CXP) and Credential Exchange Format (CXF) – define a standard format for transferring credentials in a credential manager including passwords, passkeys and more to another provide in a manner that ensures transfer are not made in the clear and are secure by default.
Once standardized, these specifications will be open and available for credential providers to implement so their users can have a secure and easy experience when and if they choose to change providers.
Currently, there’s no easy way to move your passkeys from one password manager to another. So if you generate a passkey in Apple’s Passwords app, for example, it can’t easily be moved to 1Password—or vice versa. In fact, the only way to currently share a passkey at all from Apple’s Passwords app (aside from via a Shared Password group) is via AirDrop. And because these are large cryptographic keys, it’s not as if you can simply memorize them and enter them somewhere else.
Passwords, by comparison, are easily shareable, but that same ability makes them easier to compromise, because they’re generally just exported as plaintext. The standards proposed for passkeys, by comparison, would allow for secure exchange between applications.
These standards are in draft format, meaning it will be some time before they are approved and then eventually implemented in various programs. Apple has not specifically commented on whether it will adopt the standards for its own app—notably, the contributors to the standard includes reps from 1Password, Dashlane, Bitwarden, NordPass, and Google—but the company is a member of the FIDO Alliance.
If you had a square on your bingo card for a new iPad mini during an October Apple event, well, partial credit: the company today unveiled the seventh-generation of the diminutive tablet, adding the A17 Pro processor and support for the Apple Pencil Pro.
In addition to those headline features, the new mini also gets Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, and starts at 128GB of storage (twice as much as the previous generation’s 64GB), with upgrades available to 256GB and 512GB. Its size and weight remains unchanged from the previous model, as does its 8.3-inch Liquid Retina display, 12MP cameras on front and back, and button-based Touch ID. The cellular model also no longer supports a Nano-SIM, going eSIM-only, like most of the rest of Apple’s tablets and phones.
The new mini is also available in four finishes, including the same Space Gray and Starlight as its predecessor. There’s also a new blue finish that replaces a previous pink, and a different purple that appears much paler than the sixth-generation’s purple. There’s also a new $59 Smart Folio in charcoal gray, light violet, denim, and sage.
The addition of the A17 Pro processor, which debuted in last year’s iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, allows for the new mini to support Apple Intelligence—presumably that also means 8GB of RAM under the hood, though Apple isn’t advertising that fact.
The new iPad mini is available for pre-order today, starting at $499 for the 128GB Wi-Fi configuration, with upgrades to 256GB and 512GB costing $599 and $799 respectively. Adding cellular will cost another $150 on top. They’ll be available in stores starting October 23.
This announcements comes only a couple weeks before a rumored Apple event introducing a slew of new Macs based on the M4 processor; it seems likely that Apple didn’t want to spend stage time talking about a very minor update to one of its less popular products. But it is also possible that Apple will choose to eschew an event in favor of press release announcements sometime in the next couple weeks.
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]
What AirPods Adaptive mode is for, Apple’s first immersive narrative film, tricky executive retention efforts, the Vision products roadmap, Apple TV+ goes to Amazon channels, and the trouble with iPhone 16 Camera Control.
Welcome to 2015, merchants! You are not going to like the next 9 years.
It’s possible that these companies weren’t so much holdouts as they just made bad technology bets back in the day and were stuck with them.
Of course, it’s also possible that there is some retailer in a cave on an island somewhere still demanding customers use CurrentC, but rest assured that we will rout out these pockets of resistance and bring peace to a divided nation at last.
Here we are now, entertain us
You ever have that dream where you’re drowning? No? Would you like to? It’ll only cost you $3,500.
This week Apple released “Submerged”, a bespoke submarine nightmare for Vision Pro owners. Don’t say they never did anything for you. The reaction has been pretty favorable, so maybe Apple can make some other immersive nightmare fuel, since they don’t film in Sensurround anymore.
If you don’t have a Vision Pro, do you at least have Amazon Prime? Because starting later this month you will be able to enjoy Apple TV+ through Prime Video. Apple is seemingly looking to increase the number of viewers of its streaming service if not at any cost then at least at an additional $9.99 on top of your Prime subscription.
Getting TV+ through Prime is all well and good, but if you really want to get the premium brand experience, you’ll log in via a Chromecast device or Xbox plugged into the back of a Roku TV. Like the pros do.
Putting the cart M4 the horse
In an almost (but not quite) unprecedented turn of events, a Russian YouTube channel posted video this week of what appears to be the upcoming M4-based MacBook Pro. Apparently the base model with a non-Pro or Max processor, the laptop sports 16 GB of memory, implying that Apple will be doubling the RAM on the entry level.
It’s not 100 percent clear if this is real or more like this CNBC video of an Ozempic official—and I must emphasize here that I am not making this up—discussing the dangers of counterfeit drugs while sitting in front of a Dell laptop with an Apple sticker over the Dell logo (hat tip to Reddit via Paul Kafasis). RIP, irony. Also, RIP those stickers.
The laptop has since been offered up for sale (the M4, not the Dell), lending further credence to its claims of validity. I mean, it’s not like someone would offer to sell something over the internet that didn’t actually exist, right?
Don’t bother firing up eBay to look for ill-gotten M4 MacBook Pros, though, because soon enough you’ll be able to buy one the honest way: by paying full price from Apple and way too much for additional RAM and a larger hard drive.
As God intended. (The part of God will be played by Tim Cook.)
Mark Gurman says the company will announce new Macs around the end of October and ship them on November 1st. Which is just in time for my birthday, if you were still wondering what to get me.
Not that you’ve asked.
[John Moltz is a Six Colors contributor. You can find him on Mastodon at Mastodon.social/@moltz and he sells items with references you might get on Cotton Bureau.]
Jason finishes his iPhone review, which is basically a series of short essays about Camera Control, Photographic Styles, and Apple Intelligence; some reactions to the immersive short film “Submerged”; and the Solar System has a new solar system (menu bar script).
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It was a busy summer at the Snell house. Our roof predated our purchase of our house, and we’ve been in this house 25 years, so… yeah. We needed a new roof. Getting a new roof was an opportunity to add a rooftop solar power system and update our HVAC system, so we went all in, and all summer I coordinated with three different companies, all of whom wanted to spend time on my roof, or attaching things to the side of my house, or rewiring things on the inside.
Anyway, it’s all done now. We survived, and our house got a big upgrade! But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I wasn’t also excited to figure out how to integrate my new home tech into my life in a custom way.
The new HVAC system was easy—there’s a Homebridge plug-in, and boom, it’s now integrated with HomeKit. On the solar side, things were trickier. I found a few Homebridge plug-ins, but looking in the Home app to see my solar status didn’t really make sense? I wanted it in my Mac’s menu bar. Just because. Why did we pay for three big solar batteries on the side of our house if I can’t see a battery icon that represents my house? C’mon.
Anyway, what I ended up doing was digging through loads of documentation—most of which involved querying the solar system manufacturer’s API, which is delayed and limited to about one query per hour unless you pay a subscription fee. But I did finally discover, by looking at the code for one of those Homebridge plug-ins, that there’s a local API for my solar system. Yep, it’s true—my solar system, the one inside my house, has its own web server and will respond to properly formatted queries with blobs of JSON.
After a lot of wrangling, I got it to work. So if you’ve got an Enphase Energy solar system of recent vintage (hello, Google searchers!), feel free to check out my Python SwiftBar script, which shows me how much power my house is using, the status of the battery, how much power the solar panels are generating, and what (if ever) we’re taking from or sending to the grid.
And so there it is. My house has a battery, and that battery icon is in my Mac menu bar. It feels… right? Yes, that’s it. It feels right.
I just watched “Submerged,” the new immersive short film directed by “All Quiet on the Western Front” director Edward Berger, on the Apple Vision Pro. It’s the first scripted, narrative-driven piece of immersive video on the platform, and after the failure of Apple’s MLS video highlights, I was curious to see what choices Berger would make in using a medium with a very different grammar than traditional filmmaking.
By the time I was done with “Submerged,” I was convinced that Berger is a very talented director who knows how to adapt his skills to a different format. There are no quick takes in “Submerged”—I’d wager the average length of a shot is multiple times longer than your regular 2024 blockbuster—because quick takes are disorienting in the immersive format. Instead, Berger allows shots to linger, occasionally toggling between one shot and its reverse angle, which allows a perspective shift without a complete loss of the understanding of the scene’s geography.
In a format that can’t really use century-old tricks for focusing a viewer’s attention—like focus shifts and zooms and pans and close-up cuts—Berger tries a few different approaches to focus our attention. I was struck by his use of extreme close-ups, which get us very close to the actors a few times—and make it impossible to look at anything else. There’s also a lot of short depth of field, allowing the out-of-focus background to drop away from our attention—or even to entice us without distracting us.
I wondered if “Submerged” would be a series of static shots or if the director would find a way to be a little more dynamic, and Berger seems to have figured out that pushing in or pulling back (on a smooth track) is not as likely to trigger motion sickness as a completely handheld shakycam would. (I will admit to feeling a little bit of vertigo during one shot, which was a very fast-paced pull-back down a corridor.)
Still, most of the shots are more static, and seeing actors performing in those shots reminded me much more of a live theater performance than a film. This is not a bad thing, but it sure felt different. It was all on the performer, in those moments, and on me as the viewer to observe their performance. Similarly, the sets in “Submerged” are intricate and beautiful—and because of the immersive nature of the project, I think that was a necessity. It felt like looking at an amusement park experience, with detail in every corner you look.
The film also makes excellent use of Spatial Audio to further immerse you in the scene of a submarine during World War II. It’s got a score, which I didn’t expect but which didn’t feel unwelcome, even though I was watching immersive scenes—mentally, I knew I was watching a movie, just one playing by some very different rules.
Obviously, the film was short—there’s really just a prologue for us to meet some key characters, one long action set piece, and a brief denouement—but it worked for me. It also left me wanting more. I’m not sure the world is ready for an immersive feature film, but I could absolutely imagine what a feature-length version of a taut submarine thriller would look like, and it would be extremely fun.
Apple’s got a making-of video on YouTube, and in a press release it touts some forthcoming Immersive content, including highlights from the 2024 NBA All-Star weekend (which took place eight months ago!), an intimate concert with English singer Raye that is destined to make me just as uncomfortable as Alicia Keyes did, an immersive story about a free diver who is swimming under ice (just in case “Submerged” wasn’t enough underwater for you), a spotlight on a free solo climber, and a travelogue soaring over Maine.
I’ll watch it all. But “Submerged” has made me really interested in the next immersive narrative film, whatever it might appear.
We’re getting closer to the end, presumably, of the most static design era in the iPhone’s history. While Apple continues to iterate on the specs of its most important product, the iPhone 16 product line is visually part of a generation that dates back four years to the iPhone 12.
On the one hand, it’s a fact that reveals just how the pace of smartphone design innovation has slowed. This is the longest time Apple has been stuck on a design generation in the history of the iPhone. On the other hand, Apple largely stopped redesigning its laptops in 2010, and nobody seems to mind too much. There’s something there about a device slowly iterating toward its ideal form, and I do wonder if Apple thinks that the iPhone 5-esque stylings of the iPhone 12/13/14/15/16 are the equivalent of the classic MacBook Air/MacBook Pro design.
The problem is this: History suggests that every time Apple does a physical redesign of the iPhone, there’s a surge in iPhone sales. That’s quite a motivator, given the iPhone’s place as the generator of more than half of Apple’s corporate revenue.
So what do you do if you’re Apple? You (again, presumably) try to work on new technological breakthroughs that will let you change things up more dramatically—the introduction of Face ID in the iPhone X let the home button go away, for instance—while you keep pushing forward with the specs and internals in the meantime. It’s not exciting, but neither is it a moral failing.
I’d sure rather be using an iPhone 16 Pro than an iPhone 12 Pro, because the newer model is better in almost every way. That’s what years of iteration will do. Since most iPhone buyers do not upgrade once a year, those individual iterations only really matter in the cumulative sense. So before I dig into this year’s collections of choices and iterations, it’s worth considering the grand sweep of time (iPhone Pro edition):
iPhone 14 Pro: Dynamic Island, Crash Detection, SOS via satellite, 48MP camera, always-on display, brighter display, Action Mode, chip improvements
iPhone 15 Pro: Action Button, USB-C port, 24MP fusion image, chip improvements, titanium exterior, and (in hindsight) Apple Intelligence support
This year, that list grows to include larger displays, a new 48MP camera, 4K120 video support, 48MP ultrawide camera, new Photographic Styles workflow, surround audio, 5× telephoto lens (which arrived last year on the Pro Max model only), and (of course) chip improvements courtesy of the new A18 Pro chip.
Would it be fun if Apple unveiled an entirely new, never-before-seen iPhone design? Yes, it would. Maybe next year. But the company needs to sell phones in the meantime, and as ever, it has taken the last year to add a bunch of improvements that will provide a solid set of upgraded features that, when added to those from previous years, make for a solid update.
Later this month, Apple TV+ will be available via Prime Video in the U.S. as an add-on subscription for $9.99 per month. Prime members who subscribe to Apple TV+ via Prime Video will have access to premium entertainment including Severance, Slow Horses,The Morning Show, Presumed Innocent, Shrinking, Hijack, Loot, Palm Royale, as well as global hit films such as Wolfs, The Instigators and more, plus Major League Soccer and Major League Baseball sporting events.
Both Apple and Amazon have made efforts to resell other services within their own apps, which can simplify billing and user interface. This step suggests that Apple, which has struggled to broaden the appeal of TV+, has decided that it’s more important to get TV+ in front of more potential viewers than it is to use it as an inducement to get more people to use Apple’s own TV app.
How we prepare our tech for emergencies, the headphones we like best, our file organization systems, and outfitting our home theaters for spooky season.
Apple’s Messages app may have lost the global messaging wars, but in many countries—including the U.S.—it’s still an incredibly popular way of communicating. That’s why Apple keeps upgrading it.
This fall’s Messages updates are some of the biggest ever, with the addition of RCS messaging, true emoji and sticker tapbacks, styled and animated text, Send Later, and support for texts via satellite.
But as the people in my Messages group chats all upgraded to iOS 18 and started taking advantage of some of these new features, it all became too much for me. All these new features are good, yes, but they can also be spectacularly distracting. This is why Apple’s next big step in Messages needs to be to give users the power to control when and how we’re interrupted in ways far beyond what’s available today.
We discusss how Apple is so influential that even its simplest moves can make or break companies and industries. Also: Apple plans a big Halloween week, and there’s an immersive thriller coming to Vision Pro.
But don’t worry, our dystopian future is still on track.
While HoloLens 2 is being discontinued, Microsoft tells UploadVR it remains “fully committed” to the militarized HoloLens IVAS.
Uh, cooool? So, Microsoft makes militarized goggles and has a nuclear reactor to fuel its AI aspirations? Has anyone checked to see if they also bought property under an extinct volcano?
In more great goggle news, some students have taken Meta’s Ray Ban smart glasses and made them suuuper creepy.
Back in April, YouTube emailed Selig and said that Juno was violating the YouTube Terms of Service and the YouTube API by modifying the native YouTube.com web user interface, and used YouTube trademarks and iconography that could be confusing to customers.
Please do not confuse people by giving them a convenient way to use our service. Very rude.
Well, that’s it for “What’s New in Goggles?” Please tune in next week when I pretend this supposedly ongoing feature never existed.
[Modem sounds]
The iPhone 16 is so last month. It literally came out last month. How much more last month can you get? Sure, we’ve all enjoyed the Camera Control button and, you know, the other stuff. But it’s October now! Now about something new, Apple? How about something fresh?
Well, Apple fan who’s just like Prince’s mother, (she’s never satisfied) you’ll be happy to know that new MacBook Pros, iMacs, and all-new Mac minis—all with M4 processors—are still on schedule to ship this year. A new iPad mini may “potentially” ship by the end of 2024 as well, according to Mark Gurman, who has dialed back the confidence on that a bit.
If those devices don’t float your boat, then first learn something about buoyancy, and second, check out what Apple has in store for early next year.
And are you the kind of weirdo who cares who makes the modem in your phone? Well, you’re in luck, because the next SE will reportedly feature the debut of Apple’s own, long-awaited 5G modem. We didn’t get a car, but by gum they’re gonna ship that damn modem!
One more thing…
If after that you were thinking, “Well, my dance card is now full! I shan’t need any further amusements, thank you very much!” then you may be an early 20th century debutant. Also, don’t look now because:
Yes, according to Sigmund Judge of MacStories, pre-production on a new season of the beloved Apple TV+ show will begin in January. Apple has not confirmed this nor explained how a new season would play out, with Ted having returned to his home planet at the end of season 3. Still, I believe they’ll figure something out. They’re not just going to leave good money sitting on the table like that.
[John Moltz is a Six Colors contributor. You can find him on Mastodon at Mastodon.social/@moltz and he sells items with references you might get on Cotton Bureau.]
Nick Heer comments on a spectacularly weird New York Times story titled “Did Apple Just Kill Social Apps?,” which is actually about how Apple has ratcheted up contacts-sharing security in iOS 18:
What I do not understand is granting Bier’s objections the imprimatur of a New York Times story when one can see the full picture of Bier’s track record. On the merits, I am unsympathetic to his complaints. Users can still submit their full contact list if they so choose, but now they have the option of permitting only some access to an app I have not even decided I trust.
I didn’t originally link to the NYT story because I thought it wasn’t worth the kick. (It’s rare that a story is worse than its provocative headline, but this one manages it.) I’m glad, though, that Heer was willing to write the takedown. The more I think about it, the more off-balance the entire story seems. Apple increases user choice and privacy, and we’re worried about the startup bro?
But as Dan Moren pointed out to me on the Six Colors podcast earlier today, the one thing the article does point out is that Apple’s scale is so enormous these days that any move the company has potentially huge ramifications. They are a Godzilla, and you don’t want them to step on you.
That said, if Apple feels it’s beneficial for its customers if it occasionally steps on creepy tech bros who want to violate our privacy in order to build their next business, I might be okay with the crunching.
Sometimes there are bugs that happen and hit wide swaths of devices causing serious problems for users, and other times a teeny tiny thing breaks and it only affects a handful of people. It doesn’t really matter, though. Bugs are still frustrating.
On October 1st my friend Ry went on a hike. He completed his hike, and I sent him the usual, terrible, canned fitness response that we send one another ironically. “Way to take a hike. 🌳” He said thanks, and then the Messages app in iOS said Ry was only available via satellite. I thought he was being a fancy lad on a hike using satellite messaging, but he was no longer on a hike, and was on 5G cellular.
He tried force-quitting Messages, and restarting his iPhone, and reseting his network settings, but no matter what he did, my iPhone insisted Ry was only reachable via satellite. So then I restarted my iPhone, and I tried turning off and on all the various connection methods at my disposal.
That’s when I found out that everyone else having a one-on-one conversation with Ry from an iOS 18 device was also experiencing what I was experiencing. Anyone on 17.4, or using macOS Sonoma1 just had messages pop through with the usual iMessage tag.
What gives? How could only conversations with him be stuck in satellite mode and only on iOS 18 devices? This is a very annoying problem, because every time you send a message “via satellite” it bugs you about it, and you can’t do things like send images or media. Naturally, if he was really on satellite, you wouldn’t want to do that.
I did what everyone else does in this scenario and went to bed with the expectation that the passage of time would reset something.
October 2nd was the same deal. Ry was still stranded over Earth like a modern-day balloon boy.
I opened his contact info and messaged the email address tied to his Apple ID, instead of the phone number. It went through as a regular iMessage. I tried switching back to the phone number and it went back to satellite. Another friend tried the same trick, but stayed on the email address only to have it switch to satellite a few seconds after he messaged.
I was on to something, though, right? Maybe the problem was on the receiving end (our iOS 18 iPhones) instead of the sending end (Ry’s iOS 18 iPhone).
Drastic times call for drastic measures, and so I turned iMessage off and on again. Hold onto your butts.
Fortunately, no raptors were released, but the conversation thread with Ry split into two. One thread had some messages and was stuck in satellite mode. The other thread had some other messages and was in normal iMessage mode. I force-quit Messages for the zillionth time in two days, and when I relaunched it, the conversations had merged back together and the satellite mode was gone.
It was all iMessage, baby.
I relayed this information to the other friends, and they did the same thing. Messaging Ry returned to normal… but I hadn’t noticed one side effect, reported by another friend.
On the lock screen of the iPhone, and only the lock screen of the iPhone, notifications from Ry were now labeled “Maybe: Ry Amidon To You & Ry Amidon”. As if Ry and I were in a group text with Ry.
For crying out loud. The Watch notifications, Mac notifications, and even the display name in iOS were all singular Ry. That’s when I remembered the email address tied to the Apple ID that I had messaged earlier.
I blew away the email address and then the “Maybe” went away. Everything was normal.
I typically don’t open Feedbacks when I can’t reproduce something (and I absolutely can’t reproduce whatever this is) but I put together one with system logs and screenshots and fired it into the void2.
If I had to guess (and it’s probably better if I don’t) it seems like Ry’s phone pushed some status to Apple’s iMessage servers which was pushed to our iOS 18 devices… and stuck. I can’t think of another reason why the satellite messaging state was preserved until we each toggled off iMessage support on our individual devices. There’s no toggle to disable sending and receiving satellite messages in Settings. In fact, if you search Settings for “satellite” it doesn’t return any results at all.
Having satellite messaging is definitely a boon to people that have experienced real emergencies and have been otherwise disconnected from the world. Ry, however, wasn’t experiencing any such issues—so we all just got some puzzling inconvenience.
I can’t even say for certain that I fixed anything, because in the grand tradition of internet problem-solving, all I can report is that it “works for me!”
If anyone does eventually run across this weirdness (hello, Google searchers!), I hope you can at least learn from what I tried. If you’ve got an easier fix, or you happen to work at Apple and can just toggle this stuff from the heavens, then drop me a line.
I’m not upgrading to a .0 OS release. I have real work to do. This policy has never lead me astray. ↩
