Lex gets a new phone thanks to T-Mobile and Apple is not making its own network. Or is it? It’s not. Is it?

BREAKING: SMARTPHONE MARKET STAYS IN FLUX.

This wouldn’t be news except a bunch of people said Android’s growth in Europe meant Apple was doomed and here we are. iOS may lose share later. That’s OK. All things are impermanent. Soon we die.

Rich Mogull, Is there anything I need to do?

No, nearly everyone can ignore Thunderstrike 2 entirely.

The the-sky-is-falling Wired report on it Rich links to capitalized “MACs” in the second paragraph. So.

A Nico Gerard designer watch that sells for $112,000 and… includes an Apple Watch Edition. The Edition is on the other side of the band. Seriously.

I guess that’s one way to compete.

(Via @iconmaster and Tom Carmony)

In this week’s episode of the nation’s most livable dadcast, we finally get to the topic you all wanted to hear us talk about: Real estate.

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, writing for Motherboard:

This is the fundamental difference between Android and iPhone. When there’s a bug on iOS, Apple patches it and can push an update to all iPhone users as soon as it’s ready, no questions asked.

When the same thing happens with Android, Google patches and then… god knows when the AT&Ts, Verizons, HTCs, and Sonys of the world will decide it’s important enough that they should care and send you the update with the patch (though to their credit, they’re starting to care, mostly because having an updated OS is now seen as a competitive advantage). Hell, even Google-owned Nexus phones, which the company has full control over, haven’t been patched for Stagefright yet.

There are perfectly fine reasons to prefer Android. Security isn’t one of them.

Android Day continues here at Very Nice Web Site. Tim Bajarin weighs in:

For the Apple Watch to reach its real potential as the game changer Apple wants it to be, it needs to have a broader audience than just iPhone users.

Seems like there’d be some more complicated technical hurdles than there were for the iPod, which just involved shipping a Windows version of iTunes, but I agree it should happen eventually. Mostly because I want economies of scale to bring cheaper strap options.

Trend Micro’s Wish Wu:

We have discovered a vulnerability in Android that can render a phone apparently dead – silent, unable to make calls, with a lifeless screen. This vulnerability is present from Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean) up to the current version, Android 5.1.1 (Lollipop). Combined, these versions account for more than half of Android devices in use today. No patch has been issued in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) code by the Android Engineering Team to fix this vulnerability since we reported it in late May.

This vulnerability can be exploited in two ways: either via a malicious app installed on the device, or through a specially-crafted web site. The first technique can cause long-term effects to the device: an app with an embedded MKV file that registers itself to auto-start whenever the device boots would case the OS to crash every time it is turned on.

In some ways, this vulnerability is similar to the recently discovered Stagefright vulnerability. Both vulnerabilities are triggered when Android handles media files, although the way these files reach the user differs.

Kind of a bad week for Android’s security superiority. You remember all those security experts who were so up in arms about Apple’s ads saying the Mac had less malware? Wonder what they think about Google and its apologists saying all is well.

(Hat tip to Charles Arthur.)

NPR on the Android messaging vulnerability:

In this attack, the target would not need to goof up — open an attachment or download a file that’s corrupt. The malicious code would take over instantly, the moment you receive a text message.

“This happens even before the sound that you’ve received a message has even occurred,” says Joshua Drake, security researcher with Zimperium and co-author of Android Hacker’s Handbook. “That’s what makes it so dangerous. [It] could be absolutely silent. You may not even see anything.”

So, just don’t get any text messages and you’re good.

I haven’t heard anyone talk about open software’s inherent security advantage in a while. That was always a good one.

Lex is back and we talk about Apple Music, T-Mobile and how 4-inch iPhones are the best.