This data is from approximately 7:25PM Central Time on 10/23/2015. There have been no changes to availability from last night's post.

This data is from approximately 5:35PM Central Time on 10/22/2015. There have been some changes to availability from last night's post.

There has only been one Change.

AT&T

• 64GB Space Gray iPhone 6s Plus has improved from 4 to 5 weeks to 1 to 2 weeks.

This data is from approximately 6:50PM Central Time on 10/21/2015. There have been some changes to availability from last night's post.

There have been a significant number of changes. Once again there seems to be major improvements to Apple's supplies.

Apple

• All iPhone 6s Plus models have improved to 1-2 weeks.

AT&T

• 16GB Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 16GB Space Gray iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 64GB Silver iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 64GB Space Gray iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 64GB Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 128GB Silver iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 128GB Space Gray iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 128GB Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".

Sprint

• 16GB Silver iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 16GB Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 16GB Space Gray iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 64GB Silver iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 64GB Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 128GB Silver iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 128GB Space Gray iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".

T-Mobile

• 16GB Silver iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 16GB Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 16GB Space Gray iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 64GB Silver iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 64GB Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 64GB Space Gray iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 128GB Silver iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 128GB Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 128GB Space Gray iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".

Verizon

• 16GB Silver iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 16GB Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 16GB Space Gray iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 64GB Space Gray iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".
• 128GB Silver iPhone 6s has improved from 1 day to "In Stock".

Carrier Sites

AT&T

• 16GB Silver iPhone 6s has improved from 1 week to 3 to 5 days.
• 16GB Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 1 week to 3 to 5 days.
• 16GB Space Gray iPhone 6s has improved from 1 week to 3 to 5 days.
• 16GB Rose Gold iPhone 6s has improve from 2 to 3 weeks to 3 to 5 days.
• 64GB Silver iPhone 6s has improved from 1 week to 3 to 5 days.
• 64GB Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 1 week to 3 to 5 days.
• 64GB Space Gray iPhone 6s has improved from 1 week to 3 to 5 days.
• 64GB Rose Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 4 to 5 weeks to 3 to 5 days.
• 128GB Silver iPhone 6s has improved from 1 week to 3 to 5 days.
• 128GB Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 3 to 5 days to available.
• 128GB Space Gray iPhone 6s has improved from 3 to 5 days to available.
• 128GB Rose Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 1 to 2 weeks to 3 to 5 days.
• 16GB Gold iPhone 6s Plus has improved three weeks to 2 to 4 weeks.
• 16GB Space Gray iPhone 6s Plus has improved four weeks to 1 to 2 weeks.
• 64GB Silver iPhone 6s Plus has improved three weeks to 1 to 2 weeks.
• 128GB Gold iPhone 6s Plus has improved three weeks to 1 to 2 weeks.
• 128GB Space Gray iPhone 6s Plus has improved 5 to 6 weeks to 3 to 5 days.

T-Mobile

• 16GB Silver iPhone 6s Plus has gone from 7 to 10 days to available.
• 16GB Space Gray iPhone 6s Plus has gone from 7 to 10 days to available.
• 16GB Gold iPhone 6s Plus has gone from 7 to 10 days to available.
• 64GB Silver iPhone 6s Plus has gone from 7 to 10 days to available.
• 64GB Space Gray iPhone 6s Plus has gone from 7 to 10 days to available.
• 64GB Rose Gold iPhone 6s Plus has gone from 7 to 10 days to available.
• 128GB Rose Gold iPhone 6s Plus has gone from 7 to 10 days to available.

Verizon

• 64GB Silver iPhone 6s is now available.

I was working on an application for my own usage, and I was using my iMac as a webserver to test some APIs. Now I had originally built this application as an iOS 8 application, but I wanted to update it to iOS 9 and possibly add some 3D Touch shortcuts.

The issues began with the first compile and attempt to run on my iPhone 6s Plus. As expected the application compiled, installed and ran, except when it did run, I got an error stating "Cannot connect to server". Since I built the application from scratch, I knew that this was a custom message for when the server is down, or if you put the wrong server name in for the settings. As with any issue, I took a look at the Xcode debug window and noticed what the error said.

NSURLSession/NSURLConnection HTTP load failed (kCFStreamErrorDomainSSL, -9824).

Now, I thought about this and realized that this was likely due to iOS 9's new feature App Transport Security (ATS). App Transport Security is the new feature that does not allow, by default, in-secure connections. Well, I knew I have a valid SSL Certificate, so I knew that was not the issue. After doing some searching, I began thinking about what the issue could be. On a whim, I opted to check my server against SSLLabs' site. This is what I received as a result:

To verify that my hunch was correct, I used an Apple provided application, nscurl, to get Application Transport Security information. The syntax for this application go to terminal and perform the following:

Where URL is the URL you want to check.

The results you receive will indicate whether or not the server passes. If the server does not pass, it will show you why it does not pass.

Configuring TLS exceptions for 
---
TLSv1.2
2015-10-18 19:33:17.400 nscurl[2053:84062] CFNetwork SSLHandshake failed (-9824)
2015-10-18 19:33:17.401 nscurl[2053:84062] NSURLSession/NSURLConnection HTTP load failed (kCFStreamErrorDomainSSL, -9824)
Result : FAIL
---
TLSv1.1
2015-10-18 19:33:17.410 nscurl[2053:84062] CFNetwork SSLHandshake failed (-9824)
2015-10-18 19:33:17.411 nscurl[2053:84062] NSURLSession/NSURLConnection HTTP load failed (kCFStreamErrorDomainSSL, -9824)
Result : FAIL
---
TLSv1.0
2015-10-18 19:33:17.425 nscurl[2053:84062] CFNetwork SSLHandshake failed (-9824)
2015-10-18 19:33:17.426 nscurl[2053:84062] NSURLSession/NSURLConnection HTTP load failed (kCFStreamErrorDomainSSL, -9824)
Result : FAIL
---

This is the result I get for my test server. This exact error message means that Perfect Forward Secrecy is not enabled. Hence, my test server is not capable of being able to do any development without modifying the application. As a side note, this is the exact same result for Apple.com as well.

As mentioned above, there is a fix that developers have to add to their Application's info.plist file. The exact information is below. In the code below, replace "example.com" with your server.

NSAppTransportSecurity

  NSExceptionDomains
  
    example.com
    
      NSExceptionRequiresForwardSecrecy
      
    
  

What bothers me about this result is that developers cannot use the latest security best practices by default. I briefly looked into how to enable perfect forward secrecy on Apache, the underlying web server on OS X Server. But, I quickly learned that even if I wanted to modify the Apache configuration, it would be futile. In order to support perfect forward secrecy, you need to have at least OpenSSL 1.0.1c. The version of OpenSSL that is installed with OS X 10.11 El Capitan, which is also utilized by Server, is 0.9.8zg. As of this article, the latest version is OpenSSL 1.0.2d, and 1.0.1p.

I get the fact that Apple would not expect a majority of their developers to utilize OS X as the basis for testing. Many would instead be using services like Amazon S3, a virtual private server, or some other test server. However, that does not mean that some users would not want to use their Mac as a test server.

Yes, Apple does provide the ability to opt out of Application Transport Security, but if a developer is building an application for a small business who runs some of their web services on a Mac running OS X Server, it is not feasible to force developers to reduce security when running Apple's own products.

Unfortunately, until Apple updates OpenSSL to be 1.0.1c, or later, applications cannot be hosted by OS X 10.11 El Capitan without developers adding exclusions.

I do realize that it is entirely possible to do an OpenSSL upgrade using either brew or compiling it myself, however this is not always feasible and can ultimately cause system instability. It would be much preferred for Apple to upgrade the bundled version with OS X. Ultimately this would provide everyone with the best security.

I really hope Apple fixes this. I know OpenSSL is used to perform a number of different actions within OS X, but I do not understand how Apple could not accommodate developers who want to use their Apple's own platform for testing applications. It just seems counter-productive. In addition to perfect forward secrecy, TLS 1.2 is not supported either. This was also introduced in 1.0.1c.

This data is from approximately 6:25PM Central Time on 10/20/2015. There have been some changes to availability from last night's post.

There have been a significant number of changes; There are major improvements to Apple's supplies.

Apple

• 16GB Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 3 to 5 days to 1 day.
• 16GB Space Gray iPhone 6s has improved from 3 to 5 days to 1 day.
• 16GB Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 3 to 5 days to 1 day.
• 64GB Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 3 to 5 days to 1 day.
• 64GB Space Gray iPhone 6s has improved from 3 to 5 days to 1 day.
• 64B Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 3 to 5 days to 1 day.
• 128GB Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 3 to 5 days to 1 day.
• 128GB Space Gray iPhone 6s has improved from 3 to 5 days to 1 day.
• 128GB Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 3 to 5 days to 1 day.

AT&T

• 16GB Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 1 week to 3 to 5 days.
• 16GB Space Gray iPhone 6s has improved from 1 week to 3 to 5 days.
• 16GB Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 1 week to 3 to 5 days.
• 16GB Rose Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 2-3 weeks to 3 to 5 days.
• 64GB Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 1 week to 3 to 5 days.
• 64GB Space Gray iPhone 6s has improved from 1 week to 3 to 5 days.
• 64B Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 1 week to 3 to 5 days.
• 64GB Rose Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 4-5 weeks to 3 to 5 days.
• 128GB Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 1 week to 3 to 5 days.
• 128GB Space Gray iPhone 6s has improved from 1 week to 3 to 5 days.
• 128GB Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 1 week to 3 to 5 days.
• 128GB Rose Gold iPhone 6s has improved from 1-2 weeks to 3 to 5 days.
• 64GB Rose Gold iPhone 6s Plus has improved from 7-8 weeks to 1 to 2 weeks.
• 128GB Silver iPhone 6s Plus has improved from 4-5 weeks to 1 to 2 weeks.
• 128GB Rose Gold iPhone 6s Plus has improved from 7-8 weeks to 1 to 2 weeks.

Sprint

• 16GB Rose Gold iPhone 6s has gone from 1 to 2 weeks to available.
• 16GB Silver iPhone 6s Plus has gone from 1-2 weeks to available.
• 16GB Space Gray iPhone 6s Plus has gone from 1-2 weeks to available.
• 16GB Gold iPhone 6s Plus has gone from 1-2 weeks to available.
• 16GB Rose Gold iPhone 6s Plus has improved a week to 1-2 weeks.
• 64GB Silver iPhone 6s Plus has gone from 1-2 weeks to available.
• 64GB Gold iPhone 6s Plus has improved a week to 1-2 weeks.
• 64GB Rose Gold iPhone 6s Plus has improved a week to 1-2 weeks.

T-Mobile

• 64GB Silver iPhone 6s Plus has improved from 2 to 4 weeks to 7 to 10 days.
• 64GB Space Gray iPhone 6s Plus has improved from 2 to 4 weeks to 7 to 10 days.
• 64GB Gold iPhone 6s Plus has gone from 2-4 weeks to available.
• 128GB Gold iPhone 6s Plus has gone from 7-10 days to available.
• 128GB Rose Gold iPhone 6s Plus has improved from 2-4 weeks to 7-10 days.

Verizon

• 64GB Silver iPhone 6s is now available.

This data is from approximately 6:05PM Central Time on 10/19/2015. There have been some changes to availability from last night's post.

Sprint

• 128GB Gold iPhone 6s Plus has improved a week to 1-2 weeks.
• 128GB Rose Gold iPhone 6s Plus has slipped a week to 3-4 weeks.

T-Mobile

• 64GB Gold iPhone 6s Plus has improved from 2-4 weeks to 7 to 10 days.
• 128 GB Gold iPhone 6s Plus has improved from 2-4 weeks to 7 to 10 days.
• 128 GB Rose Gold iPhone 6s Plus has improved from 2-4 weeks to 7 to 10 days.

Verizon

• 16GB Rose Gold iPhone 6s is now available.
• 16GB Silver iPhone 6s Plus is now available.

There are many different things that users complain about regarding their iPhones. The biggest complaint that many users have had in that their iOS devices seem to be losing a significant amount of battery, even when using a brand new phone. This has lead to users complaining to Apple. One of the things that Apple has done with multi-tasking is to pause applications when they are in the background. There are certain situations where this does not occur. These include background app-refreshing, background audio, Voice over iP (VoIP), or GPS.

Sometimes, it is so bad that some users purposefully force quit applications in order to preserve battery. Users do this despite there being no practical reason to do so. However, maybe users who do this may not be too far off the mark.

Last week it was uncovered that Facebook's iOS application was using a significant amount of battery even when users were not actively using the application.

Bruce Geerdes on Twitter has this tweet:

https://twitter.com/bgeerdes/status/651098925990940672

Within the image, 13% of all battery usage for the last week was due to audio. Now, why is Facebook's app even using background audio? It is not a streaming any audio what-so-ever.

As Federico Viticci states in his piece on MacStories.net:

My guess is that Facebook is hijacking audio sessions on iOS by keeping silent audio in the background whenever a video plays in the app. And because, by default, videos on Facebook auto-play on both Wi-Fi and Cellular and few people ever bother to turn it off, that means there's a high chance the Facebook app will always find a way to play a video, keep audio in the background, and consume energy to perform background tasks.

I think Federico is spot on with this presumption. Facebook is the world's largest social network, and how do you make sure that your users are "always up to date", play silent audio in the background so the application can auto-refresh without consequence, that's how.

When questioned, Facebook stated they were "looking into" the issue, and subsequently Facebook has informed TechCrunch that they are working on a "fix".

This is all well and good, but I think Apple should take a stance and remove the Facebook application from the iOS App store. This gesture would make it abundantly clear that Apple will not tolerate user-hostile actions like this from any developer, including the world's biggest social network. Removing the application would likely have some ramifications on users because they would not be able to download the application, but it would send a very strong signal.

Do I think this will happen? In a word, no. I do not think Apple is willing to remove the largest social network's application from its App Store. However, I think Apple could do a couple of things to make sure that no application is able to do this in the future, not even Facebook.

The first is do some additional testing for any applications. See what usage they have after a set amount of time. I would not expect Apple to disclose this amount of time, so developers cannot work around it. The second is to keep a database of developers whom violate the rules, and scrutinize their application updates for what they had previous violated. This means that developers would not be able to break a user's trust repeating the same action they have in the past.

Ultimately, I think if Apple really wants to have the best experience for users, they should be holding developers accountable for their actions and punishing those developers who violate the rules and provide a significantly negative user experience. One thing that I would not be surprised at is if Mark Zuckerberg gets a phone call from Tim Cook or another Apple executive inquiring as to why this is occurring.

This data is from approximately 6:25PM Central Time on 10/18/2015. There have been some changes to availability from last night's post.

Only a couple of changes.

Sprint

• 128GB Gold iPhone 6s Plus has slipped two weeks to 4 to 5 weeks from 2 to 4 weeks.
• 128GB Rose Gold iPhone 6s Plus has slipped two weeks to 4 to 5 weeks from 2 to 4 weeks.

This data is from approximately 5:30PM Central Time on 10/17/2015. There have been some changes to availability from last night's post.

There have been no changes since yesterday.

One of the improvements that many people have been thinking about is autonomous cars. We know that Google is working on autonomous cars. it has been speculated that Apple is also working on autonomous cars.

Earlier this week I was listening to episode 171 of the 99 Percent Invisible podcast titled "Johnnycab (Automation Paradox, pt. 2)".In that episode they discuss how within 10 to 20 years. As the episode title suggests, they indicate that eventually we will not be manually driving cars and everything will be automated.

One of the ways that this will occur is through small incremental changes. While it is entirely possible that this will occur, I do not think as though this will occur. There are many reasons as to why. This includes people who will prefer to be in full control of their cars. Along with this, I think that one aspect that people overlook. That aspect is how often people buy new cars.

People are very willing to replace their personal technology, like cell phones, computers, and tablets, every two to three years. When they do replace these items, typically these items are not significantly different from the item they are replacing. With phones, computers and tablets, these are generally the same shape and size. The only different aspects may be the speed of the device, storage, as well as some of the capabilities. Users generally understand how these newer devices operate, without much apprehension.

Conversely, one of the things that people do not replace often is their cars. Usually people hold onto cars for many year longer than their personal electronics. According to Kelly Blue Book[footnote]Average length of U.S. vehicle ownership hit an all-time high[/footnote], the average length of ownership of a car is about 57 months, or four year and nine months. Similarly, the average length of ownership of a truck is 129.6 months, or 10.8 years.

When people do buy new vehicles, these are often significant jumps in terms functionality. For instance, in my car, from 2006, there is no bluetooth connectivity, no auxiliary jack, no navigation system, or even remote assistance. Once I buy a new a car, it is very likely that any future car I purchase will have these items. Honestly, all my next car needs is an auxiliary jack and a small spot for a clock.

Now imagine going from a Model-T to a fully loaded 2015 car. One that includes all of the latest technology. For some, this is exactly what the transition from a car that you drive yourself to a fully autonomous car.

It is my opinion that people will eventually warm up to the idea of fully autonomous cars. However, I do think as though it will take longer than 10 to 20 years that was postulated. I think it will likely be closer to 50 years before this occurs. It will likely take the replacement of an entire generation in order to have fully autonomous

While we never truly know what the future holds, it is not likely that everybody will be willing to have fully autonomous cars. There are many reasons. As mentioned above, one of them is that some people will always prefer driving, but even this, as life has always shown, the old way of doing things will always eventually go away. The second is that some will think that autonomous cars should never exist and eschew them entirely.

There are many other aspects that need to be determined before autonomous cars become a reality. One of these aspects is who is liable if an autonomous car gets into an accident and severely injures someone. If autonomous cars are to be a thing, all of these aspects will be figured out, most likely by lawyers.

I do have one last thought, will they the industry call autonomous cars, Autos Squared or Square Autos, or maybe even abbreviate it as Autos²?