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ExtraBITS for 15 June 2015

In ExtraBITS this week, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber talks to Apple’s Phil Schiller, while Mashable’s Christina Warren talks to Apple CEO Tim Cook. We revisit After Dark’s flying toasters, warn you of a scary iOS security vulnerability, and alert you to this year’s Apple Design Award winners.

Apple’s Phil Schiller Talks to John Gruber — On a special live version of The Talk Show podcast, Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller sat down for an interview with Daring Fireball’s John Gruber. Gruber quizzed Schiller on Apple’s software quality, the capitalization of watchOS, iOS 9, OS X 10.11 El Capitan, and sports.

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Revisit the Flying Toasters via CSS — Remember the After Dark screensaver, and its famous flying toasters? If so, you’ve just dated yourself (via screenochronology, natch), but you can re-energize those neurons for a few moments with Bryan Braun’s recreation of the core After Dark screensaver modules in CSS. Be sure to say hello to the fish as well.

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iOS Bug Could Lead to Stolen iCloud Passwords — A bug in iOS 8.3 prevents the Mail app from stripping risky code from email messages. In a proof-of-concept attack, security researchers inserted code into email messages that displayed a fake iCloud login prompt. While this hasn’t yet appeared in the wild, there’s an easy way to tell if an Apple login dialog is real: press the Home button. A real login dialog is modal, which means that pressing the Home button will do nothing until the dialog has been addressed.

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Apple Announces 2015 Design Award Winners — Apple recognized ten apps at this year’s Apple Design Awards, plus two student efforts. The winners include three apps we’ve reviewed in TidBITS: Fantastical, Robinhood, and Workflow. Also honored were the games Crossy Road, Does Not Commute, Metamorphabet, Shadowmatic, and Vainglory; Mac illustration app Affinity Designer; music mixing app Pacemaker; and student entries Elementary Minute and jump-O. Congratulations to all the winners!

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Tim Cook Takes the Blame for Apple’s Lack of Diversity — Apple CEO Tim Cook sat down with Mashable’s Christina Warren to discuss Apple’s diversity, or lack thereof. Apple’s first diversity report from last year showed that Apple’s workforce is 70 percent male. “I think it’s our fault — ‘our’ meaning the whole tech community. I think in general we haven’t done enough to reach out and show young women that it’s cool to do it and how much fun it can be,” Cook said. Cook hopes to increase Apple’s diversity by reaching out to female students and historically black
colleges. Apple has also extended WWDC scholarships to STEM organizations in order to bring in more diverse attendees.

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