Looking back at my short list of Apple wishes from April

Yours truly about the classic Apple charging cable material, back in April, while listing what I wanted the company to adopt:

I don’t know who likes this white rubbery material, but I find it outdated, not durable, and it seems to pick up way too much dust. Apple certainly can do better in this department, they proved it by including a very nice braided cable in the Mac Pro box.

In this article I wished for three things: better cable material, a subscription bundle, and two-factor authentification.1

Tim Hardwick, writing last week at MacRumors:

Rumors suggest Apple’s upcoming iPhone 12 models will ship with a new Lightning to USB-C cable that includes a braided fabric design.

About damn time.

If the cable rumours turn out to be true, then the first two items on my April list would be old news before the end of the year. Indeed, Apple just announced new Apple One subscription plans.

The third item on the list however, two-factor authentification, should not have been mentioned, because I was mistaken: It turns out Sign in with Apple already includes 2FA, just not in the format I am used to.2 On Apple website:

Security is built in to Sign in with Apple with two-factor authentication. If you use an Apple device, you can sign in and re-authenticate with Face ID or Touch ID anytime.

This means that all my wishes could be fully granted after only six months of waiting. That’s a pretty good outcome isn’t it?

  1. Like I said in the article, “my wish list of course doesn’t end here,” but these were the three main things.↩︎

  2. I am used to pasting the one-time passwords — or OTP — in a separate field after logging in. What Apple does is just asking you to authenticate using FaceID or TouchID, which feels much more natural, especially on the iPhone where FaceID is completely effortless (if you don’t wear a mask that is): you just keep looking at your screen, which you’re already doing anyway, and you’re good to go.↩︎