This week, what to think about the Ashley Madison affair, the story of a visit to an Apple Retail Store, and a look at the two new smartphones from Samsung, the Note 5 and the S6 Edge Plus.

Ashley Madison hack

The home page for Ashley Madison still claims that it’s nearly 40 million members are anonymous. They might want to think about updating that.

If you don’t know, the site claims to be “the world’s leading married dating service for discreet encounters”. Its tagline: “Life is short. Have an affair.”

In July, a hacker group calling itself Impact Team assumed responsibility for hacking into the servers of Avid Media, the Toronto company that runs Ashley Madison. Impact Team allegedly stole data on users (some believe that the information was actually snagged from within the company by an employee) to force the site’s closure.

The big complaint by Impact Team was that Ashley Madison, which offered to delete user information from servers for the cost of $19, wasn’t actually deleting the information even after collecting the fee. That fact appears to have been validated.

Last week, information on the company’s users was “dumped” online, and in just a few days a number of online search engines have sprung up to allow anyone to search the database. Certainly there are names and email addresses in the data; less clear is whether financial information such as credit card numbers are tied to specific accounts.

But the impact is undeniable. While there have been ever growing breaches of privacy come to light in recent years, the one swirling around infidelity and sex is what has people all worked up. Enough, say Toronto Police Department, that they have related reports of extortion and suicide.

Avid Life has offered a Cdn$500,000 reward for information that “leads to the identification, arrest, and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the theft of proprietary data”.

And the lawsuits have started to pile up. A number of filings have been made in Canada and the U.S., all seeking to make this into a class action lawsuit.

There’s some great analysis of Ashley Madison’s data by Gizmodo’s Annalee Newitz, who discovered that of the 5.5 million women in the data leak (compare that to 31 million men) only 12,000 were likely real people. And of those 5.5 million female accounts, there was almost no activity from those accounts.

Newitz’s analysis indicates that Ashley Madison made money from males who were chasing a fantasy that was never going to be real. It’s a great business to be in, because what male is going to complain publicly that they weren’t getting what they expected?

Regardless, what the data leak is about, really, is privacy. And our personal commitment to respect privacy. Yes, those names and emails are out there, easily available, if you want to look.

But you don’t have to.

A satisfying, productive visit to an Apple Retail Store

My wife is a university professor, and we realized last week that the laptop she uses is nearly seven years old.

That’s an eternity in the world of computers. It was quite simply time to get a new laptop.

The last time she got a computer, I convinced her to get a Macbook. It’s what I’ve used for years, and I knew she’d appreciate the ease of use.

So we visited the Apple Store in Pacific Centre. We weren’t there to get me a computer, so I stayed in the background and wrangled our two kids (not too difficult in the Apple Store) while she spoke with an Apple staff member named Jamie.

They chatted for about 20 minutes. As I eavesdropped, I picked up that Jamie was asking my wife what she used her computer for, what she wanted to be able to do with a new computer, and what she thought she needed.

We had brought her old computer with us, and Jamie looked at that, too, to find out how much hard drive space she had used up and what programs were running on the machine.

And while I would have picked for my wife a Macbook Air 13”, she chose the Macbook Air 11”. She opted for the machine that was smaller and lighter, without compromising on keyboard or functionality, and with only a slightly smaller display. It was a decision she made on Jamie’s recommendation.

Later, Jamie mentioned that he often has to talk customers into buying less computer. People think they need all kinds of memory and storage, but after he finds out what they’ll be using their computer for, he moves them into something more appropriate to their needs.

My wife also opted to pay $99 for One to One. That gives her a full year of personal training on Apple products and services and also meant that the staff at Pacific Centre would transfer everything from the old laptop to the new one. That migration is completed within two days.

Because my wife is an educator, she got a discount on her new computer. And with Apple’s annual back to school promotion, she walked out with a pair of Beats Solo2 headphones.

I’ve never had a bad experience at an Apple Store. The staff are knowledgeable, friendly, and best of all, helpful.

New Samsung phones

Samsung’s two new smartphones have a great new video feature, and it’s being overshadowed by a design flaw

Samsung released two new mobile devices on Friday. The Samsung S6 Edge Plus and the Samsung Note 5 are both now available at your preferred wireless provider for something around $950 to $1050 without a plan.

One of the coolest new features that Samsung has introduced to these devices is that you can live broadcast video to anyone in your contact list. Live video leverages YouTube, so you and the people you invite to watch must have YouTube accounts, but the video is not streamed on YouTube.

You can invite up to 20 people to watch, and they can watch on any device that gives them access to YouTube. And your video is recorded to YouTube, so you can edit and share it later, too.

Unfortunately for Samsung, the easy video live streaming is going to be overlooked by the fact that the Note 5 can be easily broken.

The Note devices have always come with a stylus, called the S Pen, which can be used for writing on the screen. A new design on the Note 5 has the home for the stylus in the device itself, sort of how Nintendo has always housed the DS stylus inside the unit.

The trouble with the Note 5 is that the S Pen can be inserted into its housing just as easily regardless of which end goes first.

If you insert the writing tip first, you’ll be fine. But if you mistakenly insert the other end, you break the feature of the smartphone that senses when the stylus has been removed or inserted.

That feature was so that when you removed the stylus, the Note 5 would automatically turn the screen into a memo pad.

And if you push the stylus in too far, it becomes jammed.

It’s a serious design flaw and I’m amazed that this wasn’t detected long before the device went into manufacturing and distribution.

Samsung’s response thus far is to “read the manual” which clearly states that there is only one way to insert the stylus, and that inserting it the wrong way can “damage the pen and your phone”.

Most people are going to be fine. But it’s so easy to make this mistake if you’re not paying attention. Or if your kids get their hands on it.

And it would have been so easy to taper the stylus so it couldn’t go in the wrong way,

Needless to say, I’m not recommending the Note 5.

But if you’re looking for a high-end Android device, the latest version of the Samsung S6 Edge Plus is slick. It’s got the same guts as the Note 5, and comes in 32 GB and 64 GB configurations (the Note 5 is only available with 32 GB).

The S6 Edge Plus has a curved screen on both sides of the device, and you can enable the edge display on either side.

The 5.1-inch Super AMOLED display is delightful. And the functions and information available for the edge display have improved, too.

It has wireless charging built in, and you can pick up wireless chargers for only $59. You can charge to full in 120 minutes. If you plug into the fast charging battery pack ($79), you can charge your S6 Edge Plus to full in 90 minutes.

At $950 and $1050 for the 32 and 64 GB versions, the S6 Edge Plus is not a cheap smartphone. But it’s got the features you’ll expect from a premium Android device.

Cross-posted at the Georgia Straight