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Apple Announces iPad Air 2, iPad mini 3, OS X Yosemite and More
Many outlets are reporting on Apple's iPad event today. Highlights include:
- Apple pay will launch Monday.
- WatchKit -- a way for developers to make apps for the Apple Watch will launch next month.
- iOS 8.1
- Messages, iTunes, and iWork updated and many more new features in OS X Yosemite.
- You can send and receive calls on your Mac if you have an iPhone with iOS 8 that's signed into the same FaceTime account.
- iPad Air 2: New camera, 10 hour battery life, 12x faster than the original iPad.
- iPad mini 3.
- iMac with Retina display.
- And a Mac mini update: Faster processors, Intel Iris graphics, and two Thunderbolt 2 ports.
I spent $1,200 on my Black MacBook and got eight years of use ($150 per year). Prior to that, I spent $1,200 on a Dell laptop that gave me three years of use ($400 per year). Do the math.
your understanding is incorrect. Apple has explicitly stated that the transaction is 100% between The Merchant, Your Bank, and you. Apple does not receive a copy of the transaction, they don't know who you've shopped with, and that they don't know that any specific transaction has happened.
The only thing Apple does is act as the facilitator to getting the device-specific account number in to the phone. So Apple could know which credit cards you have setup in your device and that's about it.
How doesn't it? My understanding is that instead of paying by your credit card, your Apple Account gets hit for the charge and Apple pays the vendor and then Apple charges your linked credit card, just like for existing in-app purchases. Since it's your Apple Account doing the purchasing, Apple is in the loop and sees every transaction that you make.
Except that's not how it works. There's a special chip in the new iPhone that talks to an NFC payment terminal and presents itself as a virtual credit card. The terminal sends that information for example to Visa. Visa works together with Apple and figures out that this virtual credit card actually matches your real debit or credit card, and everything is done as if you had used your normal credit or debit card. The chip is locked away from the OS, even Apple couldn't read what's inside it.
The advantages are a minor bit of convenience (you pay by putting a finger on the fingerprint reader on the iPhone), but a big advantage in security because nobody knows your credit card number and therefore cannot lose it to hackers, and crooked employees cannot read it either.