Let’s talk about the Twitter hack, ’batterygate’ claims, and more rumors

Somehow, it seemed like the entire internet was a fail this week in more ways than one, but here we are.

Congrats to everyone — we've made it through another week, and boy, what a doozie it was.

First, in case you missed the whole Twitter security fiasco, it's been wild. For those wondering, our iMore Twitter account has had trouble sending out tweets for the past few days, and it's because of the Twitter Bitcoin hack.

A hacker was able to access several high profile accounts, including Apple, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Vice President Joe Biden, President Barack Obama, and more, and send out a tweet from these accounts about sending back double the amount of Bitcoin sent to them. Eventually, since all of these breached accounts were high profile and verified accounts, Twitter decided to disable new tweets from all verified accounts, including iMore and several of our own writers (including yours truly). The hackers made out with over $100k worth of Bitcoin, and now even the FBI is getting involved. It's been one crazy story, and pretty much the craziest story in the past week. It seems that, as an additional security measure, Twitter has disabled tweets for verified accounts that have changed passwords recently. This is probably the reason why our Twitter seems broken. Don't worry though — we'll be back in due time!

Oh, and don't forget when half the internet went down on Friday due to some issues with Cloudflare. Fun, right?

Circling back to the Apple-sphere, the public betas for iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and tvOS 14 were released recently, though we have yet to see the macOS Big Sur and watchOS 7 public betas. If you're curious about how iPadOS 14 is shaping up to be, don't miss our iPadOS 14 preview written by Joe Keller. He goes in-depth with the new features that are most exciting, including Scribble, Widgets, Shortcuts, and more. iPadOS 14 is a substantial update, and so is his preview.

Do you remember "batterygate," you know, that whole debacle about how Apple was "slowing down older iPhones?" Well, Apple settled the lawsuit for $500 million, and if you had a qualifying U.S. iPhone device (iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, 7, 7 Plus, or iPhone SE) that ran iOS 10.2.1 or later (or iOS 11.2 for the 7/7 Plus) before December 21, 2017, then you can get in on some cash. As long as the device experienced diminished performance, and if you can fetch the serial number of said device, at least.

I'm a little bummed — I've tried searching my email for old receipts of my previous iPhone purchases (I've had every iPhone since the original), but I can't find them. And I only have up to an iPhone 8 Plus box around the house. Guess that means no $25 for me, at least. Hopefully you all have done a better job than I have when it comes to hoarding old receipts and boxes!

Another new rumor that popped up over the week is that Apple may (or may not) be including a braided USB-C-to-Lightning cable with the iPhone 12. This would be contrary to the whole "iPhone losing Lightning" rumor that's also going around, though having no more Lightning may still be in the cards for a future iPhone release, just not with the iPhone 12.

Going back to the braided Lightning cable, I would be happy to see this addition to an iPhone 12 purchase, because let's face it — Apple's current Lightning cables suck. They wear out in a few weeks or months, and end up fraying at the ends. In fact, I don't even use Apple's own cables at home or in my car — I rely on braided cables from other manufacturers all the time. If Apple is making a braided cable, I'd be eager to see how they hold up over time, though when compared to the original Lightning cable, it's not a very high bar.

A lot of you are working from home this year (though some of us have been doing this for much longer), and Apple has released a new "Apple at Work" ad that revolves around WFH that's pretty entertaining. If you have been working from home, then you should not miss out on these seven relatable minutes — it's well worth a watch!

Anyways, that's it for this week, folks. Until next time.

- Christine Romero-Chan