Welcome to the AppleInsider Daily for Tuesday, January 24, 2023

The first detailed breakdowns of the new M2 Pro and M2 Max MacBook Pro models have shown today that these latest Macs are significantly faster at writing data to their SSD storage.

While it reads data at roughly the same rate as before, Tom's Guide says that the newsa 14-inch M2 Pro model writes at 6168 megabits per second, compared to 5337 megabits per second for last year's M1 model.

Are you writing this down? 

In the same test, the M2 Max version of the 14-inch MacBook Pro wrote at 6402 megabits per second.

Your mileage will vary depending on other factors such as the total SSD capacity available in the machine, but overall it means the new models are significantly faster.

Not everyone loves Apple making progress, however. Today the Interactive Advertising Bureau began its annual conference on Marco Island, Florida, with its CEO David Cohen accusing Apple of "cynicism and hypocrisy."

It's to do with how third-party apps are required to ask iPhone users to allow advertisers to track them -- and the key word is track. According to Cohen, the very same tracking is done by Apple, but in its case, Apple asks whether users would like to "personalize" their apps.

Cohen says the ad industry "is not the enemy," and that his organisation implored Apple not to implement App Tracking Transparency in the way it did.

He hopes that Apple will return to the negotiation table for discussions with advertisers.

Apple in its turn had been hoping for a second year of Oscar success, but it's not going to get it. Last year Apple TV+ became the first streamer to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards for "CODA", and this year it had hopes for both "Emancipation" and "Causeway."

"Causeway" did get a best supporting actor nomination for Brian Tyree Henry, and there was also a Best Animated Short Film nod for "The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and the Horse", made by Apple and the BBC.

But Emancipation was shut out, and it's possible that's because of star and co-producer Will Smith's controversial slapping of host Chris Rock at last year's Oscars.

Voting for the Oscars is of course private, and today is Data Privacy Day, which Apple has marked by launching both a new Today at Apple workshop -- and a video starring Ted Lasso's Nick Mohammed.

Called "A Day in the Life of an Average Person's Data", the six-minute video shows Mohammed going about his day, constantly interrupted by commentary from an Apple specialist, and constantly coming close to having his data harvested.

That data is of course potentially personal information such as passwords, and account numbers, chiefly anything that can be typed. But a new Apple patent, revealed today, says that in future, devices won't need typing or even spoken commands.

Instead, a future HomePod could at least recognise when you've left the room, and turn off the music. Or presenters could wave an arm to have a Keynote slide change by itself.

Or it's just possible that monitoring the room means a HomePod could detect dad-dancing and start playing some Frank Sinatra music.

That may be coming in the far future, the new MacBook Pro models could be in your near future, and advertisers have little chance of seeing Apple drop its app tracking transparency.

You can hear more news from AppleInsider on the weekly AppleInsider podcast every Friday. There's also our HomeKit Insider Podcast for smart home users, that's out every Monday. Links for both shows are in the notes for this one. 

Thanks for listening, I'm William Gallagher and this has been the AppleInsider Daily for January 24, 2023.