Even though Apple never attends the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the company still found a way to make news from it.

On Sunday, Samsung announced that its 2019 smart TVs will support Apple’s iTunes and AirPlay 2 software starting this spring. A firmware update will bring those features to Samsung's 2018 TVs as well. Recent Samsung TV owners will be able to rent movies and TV shows from Apple, access their existing purchases, stream videos or music to their TVs from Apple devices, and use Samsung TVs in a multi-room audio setup with other AirPlay 2 gear (such as Apple’s HomePod speaker). iTunes videos will even appear in Samsung's universal TV guide and search engine.

This alone represents a significant departure for Apple, which until now has never allowed other TVs to directly access iTunes content, and has never allowed AirPlay video streaming on non-Apple hardware. But in hearing the news, my mind wandered to what might come next, and whether we're starting to see a profound change in the way Apple does things.

Samsung is the largest TV vendor in the world, but it’s hardly the only one. TCL has jumped into second place among smart TV vendors in the United States on the strength of its Roku-powered TVs, and Roku itself counts 27 million active user accounts across both smart TVs and streaming players. Meanwhile, Amazon has claimed 25 million active users for its Fire TV devices, and there are other smart TV platforms, streaming TV devices, and game consoles with millions of users as well. If Apple’s goal is to get broader support for iTunes and AirPlay, it’s hard to believe Samsung will be its last partner.

It’s also hard to believe that iTunes and AirPlay 2 represent the extent of Apple’s cross-platform efforts. We know, for instance, that Apple is building its own streaming TV service with lots of star-powered original programming. Given that a la carte video rentals and purchases are in decline, might Samsung’s iTunes app eventually become home to video subscriptions as well? And with Apple Music already available through Android, Windows, and (as of last month) Amazon Alexa devices, might it make sense for Samsung TVs to join the list of supported devices?

The backdrop for all of this is Apple's own financial performance. Last week, Apple released its first earnings warning in more than 16 years, meaning the company expects to make less money than expected. Although Apple mostly blamed poor economic conditions in China, there are clearly larger factors at work: Most people who want an iPhone already have one, and those people aren’t upgrading like they used to because current phones are good enough and new ones are much more expensive.

Apple argues that it can weather the storm by selling more services—things like Apple Music subscriptions, iCloud storage, and video subscriptions—but the reality is that users want to access those services on more than just Apple hardware. People are watching video on Roku players and Fire TV devices, listening to music on Amazon Echo and Google Home speakers, and accessing their documents on Windows PCs, Chromebooks, and Android phones. Opening up services like iTunes and AirPlay 2 video to other companies’ hardware might give people people fewer reasons to buy Apple gear in the first place, but maybe that’s a risk Apple is willing to take now as hardware revenues stagnate. All of which makes me think this isn’t the last time we’ll see Apple open up like it’s doing with Samsung now.

Incidentally, another story on Sunday claimed that Apple is "in discussions" to support RCS, a new text messaging standard that aims to bring iMessage-like features (such as larger chat groups and full-resolution images) to non-Apple phones. Why would Apple support this endeavor when iMessage is one of the iPhone's biggest draws? Perhaps the company is realizing that even its own customers would benefit from better text messaging with Android users, even if iMessage becomes less valuable as a result.

The RCS story--which, to be clear, is just a rumor--would have shocked me just a few weeks ago. But if Samsung's announcement teaches us anything, it's that everything we know about Apple could quickly become wrong.
 

Remember the previous issue of Advisorator, when I wrote about apps that secretly collect and sell your location data? Weather apps are some of the worst offenders, including popular ones like The Weather Channel and WeatherBug, so now seems like a fine time to plug Weather.gov. The free website provides detailed forecasts from the National Weather Service, and while it isn’t exactly slick—it's a government service, after all—it is fast and straightforward.

Weather.gov doesn’t have a native mobile app, but like any other website you can save a bookmark to your home screen for quick access. First, head to Weather.gov, enter your zip code in the top-left corner, then hit “Go.” You might have to zoom in, but only for this step, as the next page will bring up a mobile-optimized forecast.

In the Safari browser on iPhone, hit the Share button in the middle of the bottom menu bar, then scroll through the bottom icon list until you see "Add to Home Screen." Select this, choose a name for the bookmark (like "My Weather"), then hit “Add.”

Using Android? In the Chrome browser, hit the three dots on the right side of the menu bar, then select “Add to Home Screen.” Choose a name for the bookmark, then hit “Add.”
 

The Facebook eavesdropping conspiracy: Perhaps you’ve heard this story before: You’re having an in-person discussion with a friend, when some new product or service comes up. Although you've never heard of it before, within a day or two you begin seeing ads for it on Facebook.

The popular theory is that Facebook is secretly recording your conversations and using them to target ads. And while Facebook has always denied doing this, the company doesn’t have much credibility right now (see: Advisorator Issue #12). That may explain why the topic has recently come up again in tech circles.

As Vox’s Kaitlyn Tiffany explains, the eavesdropping theory is unlikely for a variety of reasons: Constantly recording people’s conversations and translating them in real-time would put a significant drain on battery life, and it would also be a huge data hog if Facebook was uploading the audio to its servers. Besides, both iOS and Android require you to grant explicit permission when an app wants to use the microphone, and the iPhone even shows a red dialog box when an app is recording in the background. For recording to happen, Facebook would have to be secretly (and brazenly) circumventing the rules.

That’s not to say the alternative theories are much more comforting. It could be that Facebook simply knows so much about you that it’s easy to predict what you might be interested in, and that noticing an ad for something you’d discussed or seen offline is just confirmation bias at work. Another plausible theory is that Facebook knows when you’re hanging out with a Facebook friend through location tracking, and therefore knows to serve ads based on that user’s interests.

The reality is that Facebook doesn’t need to record you to serve ads based on your offline activity. The company has plenty of other ways to achieve the same level of creepiness.

Bendy iPads: Late last year, reports started popping up about Apple’s latest iPad Pro tablets bending out of shape. At the time, Apple said a slight bend in the iPad’s aluminum frame was a typical result of the manufacturing process.

Now, Apple has published an official support document on the issue, reiterating that there’s nothing to see here. Apple says anything less than 400 microns of deviation between opposite edges of the tablet—or about four stacked sheets of paper—is normal and not eligible for warranty coverage. (Of course, you can still return an iPad for any reason within 14 days of purchase at no cost.) Apple also insists that the curvature won’t get worse over time.

I’m guessing most non-nerds won’t care about this issue, but that Apple will nonetheless try to eliminate it with its next generation of iPads Pro. It might even be the kind of thing you wouldn’t notice unless someone pointed it out—in which case I’m sorry for having done so.

A word about WinAmp: I don’t believe I’ve ever mentioned this in Advisorator before, but a few years ago I gave up subscription streaming music services and rededicated myself to owning the music outright. You can read the whole story here, but the short version is that buying music—either on CD or as a download—helped ensure that I'd spend more time with each album, and made me less likely to ignore music that wasn’t available through streaming services.

I was excited, then, to hear about a new version of WinAmp, the venerable MP3 player that was a fixture of my high school and college years. This isn’t an official release, but the work of community members who’d rather not wait for WinAmp owner Radionomy to release new software of its own. (That in itself is a long story.)

Anyway, I’ve always enjoyed WinAmp’s customization features and its focus on creating playlists on the fly. The new version loads faster, is better at handling certain visual skins, and has some bug fixes as well. Check it out.
 

If you're fortunate enough to live near a MicroCenter, you can save $20 on Apple's AirPods, bringing the price down to $140. (Some folks on SlickDeals say they've had luck getting their local Best Buy stores to price match, but it sounds like hit or miss.)

This deal from B&H on a two-pack of TP-Link smart Wi-Fi light switches also caught my eye. Normally $70 for the pair, the price drops to $40 when you "clip" the 42% off coupon on the product page. With TP-Link's switches, you can control a room's lighting with your smart phone, set up automatic lighting routines, and control the lights by voice with either Alexa or Google Assistant. Smart light switches are generally better to have than smart bulbs (see Issue #6: Smart lights demystified), but installation requires some electrical rewiring and is not for the faint of heart.