AppleInsider wrote about Samsung and Apple’s Q3 mobile profits.

That means Samsung is now earning about one third of Apple’s profits while still shipping over twice as many phones.

Take a moment to let that sink in.

I’m sure most consumers didn’t notice it, but the Apple SIM is probably one of the most important improvements to come with the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3.

The Apple SIM allows the consumers to switch carriers without having to switch SIM cards. Not everybody is on board yet, but it currently supports AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and EE in the US and UK. Verizon is noticeably missing from the list.

iPad plans aren’t always tied to contracts, but this paves the way for future iPhones (and iPads) to possibly discard the notion of a removable SIM card entirely. I’ve been traveling recently and it always frustrated me that I needed to physically swap a SIM card, which functions to identify my account, when switching networks. Ideally all I’d need was a username/password sign on process to tell the phone that I’m on a different network. Of course, carriers would totally be against the idea because it reduces the lock-in, but it makes total sense from a consumer standpoint.

This really feels like one of those things that only Apple can do. Telecommunication companies are well known for avoiding change, but Apple has somehow managed to get them to relax some of their archaic processes, definitely thanks to the millions of iPhones sold.

Will we someday be able to buy an iPhone that doesn’t require a removable SIM card? I sure hope so.

David Sparks wrote about the point of audio messages in iMessages.

Now that we’ve all been using iOS 8 awhile how big of a thing is the ability to send a recording of your voice via iMessages? I’ve done it once for the sole purpose of demonstrating how it works. I thought it may be a generational thing but my kids report they aren’t using it either.

For some languages, it is easier and faster to send audio messages than to have to type the messages by hand. Audio messages would also be useful for people who can speak a language but doesn’t know it well enough to be able to type it out.

John Gruber wrote about the iPad Air 2.

I’ve seen criticism that Apple now offers too many iPad models to choose from. The array of iPads for sale — three generations, two sizes, four storage tiers (16/32/64/128), and cellular-vs.Wi-Fi-only — is certainly not simple. But I don’t think it’s that tough for a would-be iPad buyer to decide. I’d say there are only four questions:

What size — Mini or Air? What color? Cellular? How much more money do you want to spend?

If you answer yes to question 3, you have to answer another question: Which carrier? But with Apple SIM, that’s no longer a long-term commitment unless you choose Verizon.

Question 4 is the tricky one, because you have to evaluate multiple factors, all of which cost additional money: performance, Touch ID, thinness/weight, and of course storage capacity.

Compare this with the Samsung insanity.

Ken Gude wrote on WIRED about Apple’s encryption of data on iOS 8.

Apple’s new operating system, iOS 8, makes two changes to the encryption of data on the device that dramatically increases the security of those data. First, it now encrypts and passcode protects virtually all data on the device—such as text messages, photos, contacts, and notes—unlike previous versions of iOS. Secondly, and most importantly, it virtually eliminates the possibility that the encrypted data can be unlocked without the passcode. Earlier operating systems allowed Apple to unlock any device with a key that it controlled. But in iOS 8, Apple has essentially thrown away the key so it can’t access the data anymore. Hackers, cyber criminals, and thieves can’t access it. And governments, foreign and domestic, can’t access it either.

The only key you can’t steal is one that doesn’t exist. Having a golden key that certain authorised parties can use means that the key can be stolen.

The elimination of the key is the crucial element of Apple’s improved security systems and the crux of Comey’s criticism. The existence of the key allowed Apple to unlock individual devices and gain full access to the data on the device, sometimes in response to a request from the government, but far more often from device owners who had either lost it or had it stolen. Since it is impossible to create a back door into an operating system that eliminates the possibility that other unauthorized access will occur, the key also created a vulnerability that could be exploited by hackers, cyber criminals, or foreign intelligence services. This vulnerability could have opened the door to a much larger data breach than those at Target or JP Morgan, affecting tens of millions of Americans and hundreds of millions more worldwide.

Comey wants us to believe that the elimination of the key could allow violent criminals to “go dark”—thus evading detection and arrest. It is possible to construct a hypothetical scenario in which the only evidence of criminal activity is stored on a suspect’s personal device, consists only of data not backed up in cloud storage, and is not in the possession of third parties like telecommunications carriers or app developers. But none of the criminal cases cited by Comey meet that hypothetical because in real life those instances would be extremely rare and far outweighed by the clear public benefit of preventing the very real threat of a large-scale data breach that could affect millions of Americans.

This sums up the situation pretty well. Are we going to make millions of phones vulnerable based on the hypothesis of being able to catch a few criminals?

ApppleInsider reported on the performance of the iPad Air 2 compared to its competitors.

New Geekbench processor benchmarks show Apple’s triple core, 64-bit A8X Application Processor is dramatically faster than the latest Android tablets, despite their additional cores and faster clock rates.

Apple is outperforming the competition in the phones segment as well.