“WhatsApp accessed your camera.”
Well, this was quite a boring week in the tech realm. More than boring, there was not a lot of action. Just a couple of cheeky updates here and there. Let’s dive right into them!
Apparently, Google takes health seriously. Google is threatening to fire unvaccinated employees to prevent the spread of COVID-19. An internal memo states that employees have time until the 13th of January 2022 to comply, after which they will be placed on a 30 day paid administrative leave. And if they don’t comply within those 30 days, they would be placed on a 6-month non-paid leave followed by termination. Well, this is great in my opinion and so cool! This should be implemented globally! It would be great if Google took our online health more seriously by not selling our data :)
When it comes to digital privacy, numerous apps have end-to-end encryption. This means all your conversations will be encrypted using quantum cryptography, so absolutely no one can listen to them. A lot of popular video calling apps such as Zoom have had this feature for a long time. Microsoft Teams is in direct competition with Zoom, and it didn’t have the feature until a week ago. Microsoft Teams just rolled out this feature for one-to-one video calls. So, now your calls are super secure. No invasion of privacy! Other than brown parents eavesdropping.
Now to the almost $3 trillion-dollar company, Apple. Apple launched iOS 15.2 this week, and it is a stellar update. I mean, you would like really want to check it out. Apple now allows you to check which apps used what sensor on your iPhone and how frequently. For that matter, you can even track the app update network activity and most contacted domains. All you have to do is update your iPhone, open settings, read over to privacy and scroll all the way down to privacy report! Simple, sweet, and sound! You can even learn when a sensor was last used and by which app. This is not it from Apple this week. Apple’s AirTags have been controversial and can be used to track people. Well, your iPhone can protect you from that by informing you if there is a nearby AirTag that isn’t owned by you and is tracking you. But Androids lack this feature, making people vulnerable to tracking. To avoid this, Apple launched an app for Android users that manually allows them to scan for AirTags that might be tracking them. Yes, this is cool and considerate of Apple but I believe a manual search would be redundant and would not be performed often. Why would anyone, randomly open the app and check for AirTags around? This still leaves users vulnerable. Apple should switch to an automated system for Android phones too! I agree that they are a business before a social organisation, but this is an ethical issue!
Now that I am done making controversial remarks. Check this out, Minecraft crossed 1 trillion views on YouTube! The community has over 35k creators and over 1 trillion views. How cool is that? That game was an absolute classic! I loved it, man. Oh also, Adobe added two crucial features to the iPad’s Photoshop app. The sponge and smudge tools are here! Yeah, I am aware that this does not make a difference to most of my readers but, yes, some of us have been waiting for this feature to come to the iPad all along! I can’t wait for the iPad to become a desktop replacement! That’d be so cool.
Well, time to wrap up this issue, the same way my dad dismissed my plans to wrap the iPhone 13 as a Christmas present for me. This week was subtle, not many changes in the tech realm, but I have massive change coming your way. Stay tuned for that! Until then, make sure to update your devices and keep on refreshing your inboxes because I am going to drop something staggering shortly!
