Apple.

Privacy, Part 2.

With the Apple privacy discussions taking place on the Internet, undoubtedly led by those referred to as the “screeching minority”, I’ve had a couple of people tell me I’m crazy because of my stance of digital rights and privacy. I’m used to being called crazy; one of my greatest fears of all my life is folks discovering how crazy I really am and throwing me into some sort of group home or mental ward because of this discovery. But that’s for another blog entry.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, Apple is going to start scanning photos destined for their iCloud Photo service. This scanning will take place directly on the device that you, the consumer, purchased from Apple. They’re not looking at the contents of these photos, they’re looking at the “digital fingerprint” of these photos and comparing it to a third-party list of “digital fingerprints” to identify illegal photos of children. It’s a noble cause, but with the scanning taking place on your personal property, it feels like guilty before innocent to me. In these discussions of “I have nothing to hide” being propagated by those that want to remain in Apple’s good graces for PR purposes, they claim what difference does it make if Apple does these scans on your device or after they arrive at their destination. When I liken the practice to old-style books of photos and Apple coming into your house to flip through the pages of your photo albums in person, I get downvoted on Reddit, told I’m hysterical, and that I might have something to hide.

I have nothing to hide. I live my life pretty out loud, and while there are many aspects of my life I haven’t outright shared, there’s plenty I have shared. However, no one was rifled through my closet looking for things to share. It’s been my choice.

Look, if I ever cross an international border again and a border agent asks me for my phone, two things are going to happen. I’m going to refuse to unlock my phone for the official and either I’m going to erase the thing with the panic switch or I’m going to hurl the phone at the ground so hard it’ll smash and be useless for all involved. Or both. There is no reason for anyone to go through my phone. Ever. With the constant push from big tech to move our wallet and our photos and our passports and our IDs and our correspondence and our family history and our health information and god knows what else into these maddening little devices, it’ll be a cold day in hell when someone scans my phone potentially carrying all this information. I don’t know why anyone would do that. Would a woman hand over her purse? Would a man hand over his wallet? Would you unload all the cartons of photos in the moving van so the border agents can take a look? I certainly hope not. Your smartphone is no different.

I don’t care what you do with your data. I don’t care who you share your data with. But your cavalier, irresponsible attitude should not set the precedent for those of us that still care about privacy and believe that as a human being we are entitled to privacy. I don’t care if it’s convenient for you to run around with your credit cards attached to your phone and you’re glued to your little screen 23 hours a day. You do you, I’ll do me, and those of us in the “screeching minority” will continue to screech about the importance of privacy, all the while you give it away to corporations that’s couldn’t care less about you.

9 August 2021 by Apple. 1

Privacy.

This is a long entry because I’m passionate about digital rights. Please take a moment to read. Thank you.

Imagine this: you run errands and come across a “magic” nightstand at your local department store. We’ll call said department store “Bigmart”. The magic part of the nightstand is that it transports a copy of whatever you put in that nightstand to a warehouse owned by Bigmart. The popular store chain is up front about how it works in that they own the warehouse, you don’t. The warehouse is secure and they claim they can’t see the contents of the warehouse, but they can unlock something if you lose your original copy and want to retrieve the latest copy of whatever was manually transported to the warehouse. They also let you know that because this warehouse can be used by thousands or millions of people, some of whom may not be the most morally grounded folks around, they’ll scan the contents from time to time to make sure you’re not doing anything illegal or shady with the contents you’re storing in their warehouse. They’re up front about all of this and you decide whether you want to put contents in the magic nightstand, knowing that whatever is transported to the warehouse plays by these rules.

Now, imagine Bigmart decides to change the rules. They have decided that in addition to scanning the copies that are magically transported to the warehouse, they’re also going to stop by your house every few hours and go looking through your nightstand. Now, they promise they’ll only look straight ahead when they enter your private dwelling and they will not look at anything other than the contents of the nightstand. They want to see what you have put in your nightstand for magic transport before it’s been actually transported to the warehouse.

Would you let the big company into your home and allow them to look at the contents of the nightstand? I can’t answer for you, but I will say that I would not allow this. I have no guarantee that Bigmart is looking at only the contents of the nightstand because I can’t see what they’re doing. I have to trust them, even after they’ve changed the rules of the transaction, because they use magic to transport and to get in and outside my house. I’m not allowed to see what they’re doing while they’re doing it.

Now, I know Bigmart is doing this for a good reason. They’re looking for nefarious material that could be harmful to other people, particularly children. They want to make sure I’m not using the magic nightstand to do illegal things. Instead of checking when these things arrive at the warehouse, they want to check before they get to the warehouse. And they don’t even have a list of what’s illegal, they’re just comparing the “fingerprint” of these things to a list of fingerprints. There’s one in a trillion chance the item’s fingerprint could wrongly match something on the list. They don’t even own the list. They’re just one of several companies that uses this third party list to check fingerprints.

I would still not allow Bigmart to come into my home and rifle through my nightstand, regardless of their intent. As an American, that feels a little too much like guilty before proven innocent to me, and while of course I don’t want anything illegal transported through my magic nightstand, they always said they would scan my stuff when it arrived at the warehouse, not come into my home and go through the nightstand first.

Apple announced they would start scanning photos destined for iCloud Photos (their cloud-based storage service) on each user’s iDevice (iPhone, iPad, etc) before it is uploaded to iCloud. This practice will begin in a future update. They’re doing this in the name of privacy and they’re doing this to save the children.

I’m all for saving children. This is a fact that is absolute, without question, and without hesitation. But I’m also really big on privacy. And scanning my files, even if they’re in a special bucket headed for iCloud, before they’ve actually arrived on the iCloud servers feels very creepy to this paranoid geek. Because Apple uses “closed source” software, meaning we can’t see how it works or when it’s doing these things, we the users have no idea as to what’s really happening. How do we know a cranky regime somewhere in the world isn’t going to add to the third party list of bad photos? Imagine if a dictator decided he or she (or they) wanted to know who has photos of adult, consenting, homosexual content on their phones? What if the FBI or CIA decided they didn’t want to limit the scanning of this nature to only photographs destined to be stored in iCloud? What if they wanted to see the contents of text messages or any other files on the user’s phone? What if someone hacks into your phone and puts something bad on it? The list can go on and on and on.

On the surface, Apple’s plans ding a person’s privacy quite a bit but when shrouded with the “but the children!” argument, users may not have a problem with the practice. I get that. But it’s a slippery slope. It’s a very slippery slope. And for years Apple has been selling their devices on the promise of them being the most privacy conscious company in tech.

It’s like they did a 180 overnight.

When we give up a little bit of privacy, we have the potential of giving up all of our privacy. We need to keep our children safe, no question.

But we need to keep our privacy safe as well.

6 August 2021 by Apple. Digital Rights Tinfoil Hat Crowd. 0

Lunch.

I’m sitting in the gazebo today for lunch. It’s 93ºF at the moment and while it’s hot, it’s not entirely unpleasant. I’m happy to be out of the sun. My Irish skin is just not built for a lot of sun exposure.

I just finished watching the Apple Keynote event at WWDC21 (their annual Developer’s conference) and I have to admit that while it was interesting, my eyes glazed over a couple of times. I don’t know what any technology company could do for “revolutionary” impact in the space these days, but like previous years, today’s announcements seem more evolutionary than revolutionary. I really like Apple’s leaning on privacy and the importance of not sharing your data with every tech company that comes along. That is really important to me and the primary driver for my using Apple products. It used to be I enjoyed the “fit and finish” of Apple devices, and while I believe they’re still the best the space has to offer, I don’t believe they’re the premium experience they once were. The privacy angle is still quite premium though, and that’s good enough for me.

I was hoping for more in the way of the iPadOS 15 developments; Apple is now selling their iPad Pro with the same processor as their latest Macs, the Apple M1 chip. With the iPad Pro running with a lot of horsepower under the hood I was hoping we would see some of the Mac-only “Pro” apps like Final Cut Pro or Logic Pro (video editing, audio creation, respectively) come to the iPad Pro. But apparently not yet.

All in all I was interested in the offerings but not blown away. I don’t know what “the next big thing” could be, outside of an Apple Car or some Apple Glasses or something, but I feel like as a world in the midst of the 21st century we’re do for “the next big thing”.

We didn’t hear about that today.

I’ll just enjoy the dry heat and catch up on some reading.

7 June 2021 by Apple. Ponderings and Musings 0

Continuance.

The saga with my newest HomePod Mini continues. After spending over an hour on the phone with Apple Support, and resetting every device within nearly a half mile of my home office, my HomePod Mini still will not complete its setup.

The Apple support technician promised someone from the next tier up would give me a call, but they missed their appointment time and I am having a hard time regaining interest in the endeavor.

There are many things that Apple does well. I maintain that Apple devices are still the safest and most reliable computing devices available to the average consumer. Unfortunately their prices are above average but what’s even more disappointing is there’s too many things that Apple has let slide to the wayside. Home Automation, or “HomeKit” is one of them.

When my HomePod Mini is stuck on “Configuring…” for hours, after taking nearly a dozen attempts to get the thing connected at all, and the HomePod team can’t figure out the problem, the world’s largest technology company needs to step back and take a look at what the heck their doing.

Luckily, we mostly rely on Alexa for home automation. I’m not super comfortable with this scenario, but at this point I want something that works. And while Alexa may be snooping on us, at least she’s doing it with much more reliability.

Anyone want to buy a HomePod Mini?

20 May 2021 by Apple. 0

M1 Mac mini.

So I’ve been plugging along at work on my new Mac mini and it is amazing. As a software developer, a Unix systems administrator, and a guy that needs to attend several meetings a day via various video conferencing platforms, I have to say I’m blown away by this new M1 Mac mini. Blown away.

This new machine never gets warm. Ever. While doing to same workload on my 2015 maxed out MacBook Pro, I’d hear all sorts of fan noises, wheezes, and gasps from that computer. Beach balls would spin everywhere. But this Mac mini, with 8GB RAM, is plugging right along cool as a cucumber. I have run into zero difficulties with software compatibility. The only “workaround” I needed to do was set one of my terminal programs to “run in Rosetta mode”. The Rosetta mode is the compatibility layer to run software not designed for Apple’s new M1 chip. Other than toggling a setting in the applications window, the Rosetta layer has been absolutely transparent. Everything just works.

Hard drive performance in quick, network connectivity has been flawless, and I’ve had zero issues getting my day to day chores done on this new computer.

At $699 it is well worth the money for a desktop computer. I highly recommend this new Mac.

21 April 2021 by Apple. 0

Spring Loaded.

Apple had their “Spring Loaded” event today and as a dutiful Apple Fanboy, I watched with great interest. Like the other Apple events over the past year, this was a virtually attended event with slick video and impressive editing. I’m assuming the entire production was created using Apple products. I say this because one time a Windows event was produced with Apple products and that was somewhat smirk worthy.

I was pleased to see everything that was announced today. The highlights of the event for me included the new AirTags and the new iPad Pro.

AirTags are small devices that attaches to various things you have a habit of misplacing. Luggage. Car keys. Your spouse. AirTags work with the existing Apple “Find My” ecosystem, so you can locate these tagged items using your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. With Apple’s focus on privacy and security, all of this location data is anonymized and encrypted but still available to your iDevices with pinpoint accuracy. You’ll never lose your car keys again. Totally useable in our household.

The new iPad Pro, especially the 12.9″ model (I currently have the 2018 version) is especially impressive. The new iPad Pros will have the same chip as the newest iteration of Macs, the Apple Silicon M1 chip. Up until last year, Macs used the same chip, and “industry standard” Intel chip, to power their Macs. These were the same chips you’d find in any Windows computer on the street. They tend to run hot, require a lot of power, and have other limitations, so Apple designed their own chip. I bought an M1 Mac mini for my work setup last week and it has been fantastic (more on that later this week). Moving to the M1 in the iPad Pro ramps up the already very capable device. I’m certain my next “laptop” will be this iteration of iPad Pro. Someone tell my husband to prime the credit card later this year.

Apple also announced a completely redesigned iMac and, surprise!, they come in an assortment of colors with matching keyboard, mouse, and/or trackpad. The new iMac is incredibly thin and is now powered by the aforementioned M1 chip. This will make the machine absolutely silent, something I really enjoy about any computer.

Side note, today I moved the NAS, or hard drive storage device, out of my office and into another room of the house because it was making too much noise and distracting me from work. While there are times I enjoy some music playing, most the time I try to work in complete silence. And when I want it silent, I want it silent. This was another reason for purchasing the M1 Mac mini last week; my older mid-2015 MacBook Pro fires up the fans a lot, especially during video calls.

Apple also announced a new Apple TV 4K and more importantly, a completely redesigned remote. Bonus feature, the newly designed remote will work with existing Apple TVs. While we already have an Apple TV 4K (the current version), we are both ready for a better designed remote. We’ve had too many instances where we couldn’t figure out which way was up when holding the remote, or hitting the wrong button because we were lost in the navigation, and mistakenly backing completely out of a show we were watching. The new design of the Apple TV remote looks promising and I’m anxious to add one to our collection of iDevices.

Overall I enjoyed the event very much and I just added another notch to the inevitable status as an Apple Fanboy. There are a lot of choices out there these days, I simply believe Apple does consumer tech in the best way available. They’re far from perfect, but when compared with other platforms, it just works.

20 April 2021 by Apple. 0

Mac Tip: Keyboard Editing Commands.

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been Mac and iPad focused with my technological endeavors. I’m trying to get away from editing code with editors designed in the 1970s but I love being able to navigate without using a mouse.

I found a list of the Mac navigation and editing keyboard commands. I hope you find these helpful as well. I am sharing these tips from the results of a Google search, where I landed on Amsys, an Apple Authorised Service Provider in London.

Note: these also work on an iPad with an external keyboard.

General 

ctrl + d  – forward delete
ctrl + k  – deletes everything to the right of the insertion point to the next new line.
command + delete – like ctrl+k, but reverse.
command + ctrl + d – look up the word under the mouse position in the dictionary.
command-f – Find dialog
command-t – Font dialog
command-g – Go to dialog
command-e – Align Center
command-j – Align Justified
command-l – Align Left
command-r – Align Right

Text Selection

Shift + option (alt) + ⬅ – Select up to beginning of word the insertion-point currently is
Shift + command + ⬅ – Select up to beginning of line the insertion-point currently is
Shift + option (alt) + ➡ – Select up to end of word the insertion-point currently is
Shift + command + ➡ – Select up to end of line the insertion-point currently is
Shift + command + ⬆ – Select up to beginning of document from insertion-point currently is
Shift + command + ⬇ – Select up to end of document from insertion-point currently is
option (alt) – changes the cursor to a + , and you can now select columns of text!

Navigation

ctrl + a – Go to the beginning of the line the insertion-point is on.
ctrl + e – Go to the end of the line the insertion-point is on.
option (alt) + ⬅ – Go to beginning of word
option (alt) + ➡ – Go to end of word
command + ⬅ – Go to beginning of the line
command + ➡ – Go to end of the line
command + ⬆ – Go to beginning of document
command + ⬇ – Go to end of document

20 April 2021 by Apple. 0

Mac.

I took the opportunity to use a portion of the proceeds from the sale of our condo to purchase a Mac mini. The computer arrived today.

I’ve had a few of these machines over the years and I’ve always been pleased with them. I’ve nothing but glowing reviews of the latest incarnation, which is based on Apple’s new M1 chip. The new chip was designed by Apple specifically for Apple products, as opposed to the outsourced Intel chips that have been in Macs for the past decade or so.

My initial impressions are quite favorable. This little guy is quite snappy, even while it’s downloading my iCloud data and installing apps and the like. While my mid-2015 MacBook Pro would constantly scream with the hum of fans while driving my external monitor, this little Mac mini doesn’t even get warm.

I’ll be putting the new computer through its paces next week, as it’s intended to be my primary work computer. I’ll probably be following up with blog entries once I have a bit more experience with it.

16 April 2021 by Apple. Geek Macboy 0

Comforts.

I’m settling nicely into my new office. I’m even settling into my new work hours. Having a daily “stand up” call at 6:00 AM MST doesn’t kill my productivity one bit. I get up at 5:30 AM, throw on clothes from yesterday, do the stand up call, and then go upstairs and take a shower, change my clothes, etc., eat breakfast, and get back to work. My workday ends anywhere between 3:30 and 5:00 PM. This gives me time to spend with the family, relax, and such before heading to bed and getting up to do it all over again the next day.

As I get my office set up to my standards, I realized the bigger space has a bit more echo than my old home office back in Chicago. This made my mechanical keyboard sound even louder than usual during Zoom/Teams calls with team workers. Since I try to be as paper free as possible, I often take notes by typing them out while the meeting is in progress and the louder keyboard was not helpful in this situation.

Enter a quieter keyboard from Matias Products. Matias makes a beautiful, ten keyless keyboard that looks like it was made by Apple. The touch is great, the sizing is perfect, and the keyboard is quite sturdy. The case is aluminum and uses the same font that was used by Apple up until the latter half of the 2010s.

I’m quite pleased with it.

For my every day keyboards I opt to not have a 10-key keypad on my keyboards. I like having the mouse closer to center so I don’t have to reach far out to maneuver around. The new keyboard matches my Magic Mouse in black quite well.

I’m quite pleased with this new keyboard and it’s surprisingly affordable. I believe I paid $48 plus shipping, though it’s no longer on sale as of right now at $55. Still, it’s much cheaper than Apple’s wireless counterparts.

Highly recommended.

14 April 2021 by Apple. Geek 0

Cyncism.

This morning, CEO Tim Cook tweeted about Apple’s efforts to address climate change.

As far as I’m concerned, anything on social media that contains positive action towards combatting Climate Change is a great thing. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: as I’m most likely in the second half of my life, I’m sure that I’ll be gone before the planet becomes completely uninhabitable. However, it’s going to get really bad before I live out my natural lifespan and honestly I don’t want to have a front row seat as witness to the extinction of life on Earth. It’s just not my jam.

Apple talks about Climate Change quite a bit. The company goes above and beyond others with using clean energy sources, has developed robots to dismantle old tech to recycle as much as possible to build new tech, and is working towards developing sources of needed materials without doing any more mining. Is Apple perfect? Far from it, but they’re bringing awareness to the conversation, pushing progress in the right direction, and are doing a heck of a lot more than many other companies on the planet.

Yet, too many folks on social media, most likely typing with their elbows, screech about the evils of Apple, how much they hate the company, and their suspicions that the only reason Apple is doing this is to make more money.

First of all, the United States economy is based on capitalism. Making money is what corporations do in the United States. Apple is particularly good at making money.

Do I believe this tweet from Tim Cook is first and foremost a PR stunt to bring brighter lights onto the company? I really think that is not the primary driver for this. By several accounts, Tim Cook can demanding, short, and intense. That’s part of being CEO of one of the biggest and richest companies on the planet. But I believe Tim also has a heart and he’s passionate about leaving the world better than the way he found it when he got here. Yes, Apple’s clean energy efforts bring in good PR, but the PR is a result of doing the right thing when it comes to Climate Change.

So, I’ll go on skipping over the cynical “blargh blargh blargity blargh blargh” comments to all things Apple. I just wish I didn’t have to go through the eye roll/mouse scroll effort.

17 March 2021 by Apple. 0

About J.P.

Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.

Weird? Eccentric!

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