mbenz1962

stuke said:

Yep, it hit me.  What a pain in the a$$ it was to "break into" the reset when you have many devices (Macs, iPhones, iPads, etc.) on your Apple ID.  Took about 15 minutes to run around, collect everything and get a password reset in place.  It will takes days before everything else that is linked to the Apple ID gets my attention for "updating your Apple ID" settings.  Personally, I believe it was a forced security update by Apple to make us update our Apple ID passwords.  (Yes, mine has been the same for quite some time.)  It would be better, if my theory holds, that Apple provide a procedure for doing this all at once for all your devices!

It happened to me yesterday when I woke up. This was about 6:30 am CEDT or just after midnight EDT (Friday night to Saturday morning). I woke up with a prompt on my Watch to re-enter my password. This was annoying since this setting seems to override my sleep mode. After trying 3 times to input my password correctly on the keyboard for my Ultra, I gave up without ever actually hitting enter (my confidence that I’d entered it correctly was low) and decided to use the keyboard from my phone to the watch.
When I took it off the charger, it was showing the same prompt. I decided to reenter the password for the account prompt on the iPhone first and immediately after it asked me for my device PIN. After that it gave me a message that said my account was locked (very scary at a blurry eyed 6:40) and I had to create a new password to unlock. After that I had to scurry around the house to every device (3 AppleTVs, iPad, iMac, etc.) to enter this new password.
I told my wife when she got up later that I’d apparently been attacked. She never got any prompts and neither did the kids which reinforced the idea that I’d been targeted. Only this morning did I see this article. I’m much happier now that it seems this was not an attack after all. Thanks for the timely report AI! I should not have skipped a day reading yesterday. 🤣 If this was indeed a purposeful security measure from Apple (password add out, dark web dumps, etc.) more info in the security prompts would have been appreciated.

KTR said:

The EU DOES NOT LIKE AMERICANS, they are using the legal system as a bullying tactic to gain the upper hand to gouge money.  If Steve Jobs was still alive, he would stop all operations in the EU, and every one in the EU will lose out.  They will have to find alternatives.  Shut down the EU App Store.   If it goes to trial.  I hope apple wins…..  there aren’t that many mobile OS’s out there.  With the exception of Linux.

I think you need to broaden your horizons a little bit.  Most of the EU's behavior can best be described by Hanlon's Razor . If you look at many of the laws that the EU has passed in the last 10 years and the [self-created] problems that we have seen in the last few years (Corona, Energy crises, Immigration, Brexit, etc.) the main driver for such action is clear.

The statement that SJ would leave the EU merits no further comment.

jcc said:

slurpy said:

40 BILLION? That's fucking insane. How much money does Apple Pay even make Apple? I think it's almost negligent. It's more of a value added feature for their ecosystem. 

Pure insanity. Meanwhile companies that engage in actual egregious shit get no punishments, or pathetic slaps on the wrist. 

In return for Apple paying $40 billion, we should tell Europe to pay us $4 trillion for NATO or else we let Putin roll his tanks into Paris. 

Equally short sighted and blindly 'Murica First as a bonus.

humbug1873 said:

dolfke said:

So many companies have shameless copied the iPhone, now Apple is accused to setup a system for only themselves ???

Irony, they name is Governments.

Let's face it. Apple Pay is just an implementation of a common standard (Google pay ist Googles implementation of that same standard). So it's not really copying anything from Apple in that case.
In this case it needs to use a piece of iPhone hardware that has been limited by Apple. There is merit in that complaint.

Apple has implemented ApplePay in a way that dictates that NFC payment activity needs to go through it. Banks want to save a few percent by using their own payment systems with Apple's NFC chip. They want this chip to be agnostic. There is likely some merit as @humbug1873 writes.  How much and what changes will have to take place to lower the bar for competitors will have to be decided.  Likely this EU court will err on the side of letting local competition dance on a foreign company's IP, but this is again likely not malicious, just short sighted and poorly executed like many EU laws.

In the end the fine likely won't be so large and Apple will agree to make some minor adjustments in the next 5 years. See the Apple involved Ireland v Commission from just a few years ago.

pscooter63 said:

I’m with Macgui on this.  I’ve had many credit cards over my lifetime, but my Apple card is the easiest to manage ever.
I’ve lodged two disputes, one major and one relatively trivial, and both were handled expeditiously and with aplomb.  (Neither had anything to do with fraudulent charges, in fact I’ve never seen one of those.)

I second the vote for the ease of use.  The Wallet app is great for managing this card.  

flipkal said:

Being an Apple fan since day one, I thought the GS Apple Card would reflect the quality of the products I have used for so many years. Wrong! Each time I called for service wondering why my transaction was denied, or why I had 3 'phantom' charges applied to my account, I was served by reps who didn't have a clue what was happening. I complained to Apple, but nothing happened. Consequently, I stopped using it; my Chase Sapphire Preferred Visa is my card of choice. 

Like @flipkal ;, I will say that the customer service the one time I needed it wasn't good. Especially when compared with my AMEX. In June last year my bill was made available shortly after the month's end and then for no explicable reason, they drafted my bank for the full balance due on July 6th without me electing for this in the Wallet app.  I had set up to pay the full amount close to the due date, not immediately.  Even after the erroneous payment cleared the scheduled payment was still scheduled.  I called customer service, the Apple rep said it is a GS issue and transferred me. The GS rep said this must have been a bug in the app and transferred me back. The Apple rep then said that that was not possible and that all payments go through an checking process at GS that it was their issue. Ping-Pong. 

GS escalated the issue to their level 2.  The lady I got said that the system for payment processing has a two factor match to ensure this sort of thing doesn't happen, but in my case the system processed the draft even though the "match factor" that comes from the app when you authenticate (with FaceID or TouchID) was not logged in the system for the early payment and it was for the later payment. They specialist said that they would escalate to the "back office".  I told her though, that I only wanted an explanation and did not want the payment reversed since the amount wasn't large and I would just cancel the scheduled payment to prevent a duplicate payment.  I didn't want the payment to be reversed and then still be waiting on the money by the time the due date rolled around for an eventual second payment.  No further contact from GS and then 3 days later I see in the app that my payment was reversed and a reason listed as "declined - dispute rejected".  I then called GS back and they said that their system showed that I had claimed a payment was made in error and they just reversed the payment end of story and so I had to reschedule my payment.  I asked if they agreed to reverse the payment why does it say on my app "dispute rejected".  She had no explanation for that. Needless to say, I was not to happy with that whole mess. 

I probably would have stopped using the card after that if it weren't such a hassle to switch my auto-billing over for multiple accounts.  But, since this case didn't actually cause me any hardship in the end and I really like the Wallet app for managing the card, I kept using it for my couple of auto billing accounts and Apple purchases.  Happily, it seems that it was "only" a one time issue and I've had nothing similar since. I could imagine though, many customers would have cancelled the card after an experience like that just out of principle.

I just updated.  The Thermo now appears as a sleepy endpoint.  This device is a good distance from the thread router, but it connected here over the Apple TV (bluetooth connection) that is closer. I hope that the connection will be a little faster.  When I open the Home app it sometimes would take about 20 seconds to report the status and temperature.

This is really a shame.  I saw the notice this morning when I opened the game to play a few levels.  Dr. Mario was always one of my favorite games going all the way back to the NES. I used to play the original with my brother every day as a kid.  I even purchased Dr. Mario as a downloadable game for the Wii back when that was a thing.  I liked this version too, though I didn't like how pushy Nintendo was with the in-App purchases, but many, many games on the App store have a similar model.  I was able to always advance and enjoy playing with out spending any money, but a flat purchase price like they did for Super Mario Run would have been better to me personally.  I would have gladly ponied up $10 and them maybe 99 cents for each new world after the first 5 or 10 (currently 31).