Geek

With the upcoming changes in Administration (basically, everything) coming up in the next couple of months, I’ve accordingly kicked my online paranoia ways up a notch. I’d like to share the additional security measures I’m taking to make sure my online presence is safe.

A couple of weeks ago I received word that my credit card number had been stolen again. This was disheartening because I take many measures to make sure I keep my financial safe. I use Apple Pay whenever possible, as Apple Pay uses a “bogus” credit card number during the transaction, never revealing my real number. I keep my cards safe in my wallet, I never write down the number and I always make sure I have a secure connection when I’m entering my transactional data for online purchases.  Since my credit/debit card is the one used for our family’s monthly recurring payments (online music, iTunes, etc), it’s out there much more than the other cards in the family. Nevertheless, my card number was stolen and I was issued another card earlier this month. I am keeping track of every site where I enter my card number.

I have added a couple extra layers of security for my online presence:

1. I now use a VPN, or Virtual Private Network, service whenever I’m away from the house. My service of choice is PrivateTunnel (https://www.privatetunnel.com). There are free options available if you want to try them out.  Basically, a VPN encrypts your network traffic from Point A to Point Z. This makes it more difficult for others to sniff and log your network traffic when you’re on a public access point. My first and foremost rule, regardless of where I am (home, cell service, whatever), is that I am using PrivateTunnel whenever I am entering financial data online. There is a yearly subscription model that’s pretty affordable.
2. I now use Boxcryptor for my “sensitive” Dropbox activity. If you’re not familiar with Dropbox, it’s a service that maintains copies of your files in your Dropbox folder in the cloud and seamlessly syncs them with all of your devices.  If I put ReadMe.txt in my Dropbox folder in my Mac, I can access it from any other computer (using a web browser) or grab it from my iPhone, iPad or any other computer I have registered with the service (Mac, Windows, Linux).  So I had a Linux computer, the contents of my Dropbox folder would be the same on all three computers with little effort from me. The issue is, the security is a little weak for my tastes.  Boxcryptor is a service the encrypts the data in specified folders within the Dropbox (or similar iCloud Drive) environment. Dropbox is storing encrypted data, not regular data, which makes it nearly impossible for others to access without your password. Like PrivateTunnel, Boxcryptor (https://boxcryptor.com) is available with a pretty reasonably subscription model.
3. I have instituted stronger, dissimilar passwords for all my accounts. They all use special, upper case and numeric characters, and all are at least 15 characters in length. My password for my Boxcryptor vault is 26 characters long! Remembering these passwords can be a bit of pain so I use 1Password (https://1password.com/) from AgileBits. Earl uses the same program. My passwords are synced amongst my devices and the software makes it wicked easy to remember my passwords, use them when necessary and keep them secure. My only struggle with the software is to remember putting my passwords in the app and/or letting the app recommend passwords for me. After 35 years of having to remember passwords, it’s difficult for me to not remember them and rely on a software product. I highly recommend some sort of password management system for everyone so that we all use stronger passwords that are difficult to crack.
4. Last, but not least, I am evaluating a new email service called ProtonMail (https://protonmail.com). ProtonMail uses encryption to store your email (similar to Boxcryptor explained above, but applied to the actual mailbox on the server) and if you exchange email with another ProtonMail user it’s automatically encrypted end to end. I’m still exploring this service but so far I’m encouraged by what I’ve seen.

I’ll admit that I’m completely paranoid when it comes to being safe and secure online. The idea of people sharing accounts or email addresses or whatever completely boggles my mind and makes me a bit crazy. I believe in preaching about computer security and sharing my knowledge when I can. 

Stay safe, be secure and happy surfing!

Like millions of other iPhone and iPad users, I recently upgraded to iOS 10 on my various devices. For the most part I’m happy with the upgrade; both my iPhone (6s Plus) and iPad (Pro) feel snappier, though my older iPad Mini 2 that I use solely for airplane use seems to be slower than it used to be.  I actually upgraded my iPhone when the third beta of iOS 10 came out because I like to see how these things are developing and give feedback to Apple as they’re making their final tweaks to their software.

There has been one thing that has been driving me crazy about iOS 10 and that’s the way emails are ordered in the Mail app. I have two accounts for Mail, one through iCloud and the other through the host that supports jpnearl.com.  Mail has worked the same for several generations of iOS; when you have an email chain going with several responses, the latest response is on top.

Until iOS 10. Now the latest response is either at the bottom or buried somewhere in the middle of the message. I don’t know if others have experienced this fun and frivolity but the OCD in me has been getting irked by this.  So I went poking around in Settings and found this new entry

Once I turned on “Most Recent Message On Top”, sanity seemed to be restored in my little email universe.

Whew!

I have no idea why Apple made this change as it seems to run counterintuitive to every email program I’ve used since the year 1996 or so but nevertheless, they rethought something and luckily gave us an out for us curmudgeons that aren’t used to change.

As a software developer I spend a lot of time typing of computer keyboards. Because of this I am rather picky about the keyboard that I use as my daily driver. Modern PC keyboards of the 2000s tend to be quite mushy and breakdown over time. The latest trend in keyboards has been those low-profile, nearly zero-travel chicklet type keys. This is a result of many PC manufacturers trying to follow the lead that Apple started with this trend. I guess most people forget that the old Atari home computers in the 1980s had similar chicklet keys. I didn’t like them then and I don’t like them now.

My full-sized, wired (the horror!) Apple keyboard start showing signs of a slow death last week so I was in the market for a new keyboard for my home office setup. I have a couple of Apple wireless Bluetooth keyboards lying around, but since I have a pretty robust setup for my home office, I’d like to use a full-sized keyboard for my full-sized needs.

Back in the day I loved the old IBM “Model M” keyboards. These are the ones that are really loud and clicky. The keycaps and the arrangement of the alphabetic keys are reminiscent of the old IBM Selectric Typewriters. The feel, the pressure, the response are all typewriter like. Those old Model M keyboards were fantastic to type on and I was always able to fly along at a rapid pace when placed in front of those keyboards. One of the best things my Mom ever did was allow me to type on her typewriter growing up, but with very strong encouragement to use the correct fingerings for typing. 40 years later I am still able to type over 100 words per minute.

Before buying a new keyboard I went into my technological boneyard and found a full-sized Apple keyboard from the early 2000s. This was from one of our old white cased iMacs. They keys are white and the whole keyboard has that translucent Apple feel to it. Typing on it is alright but it’s nothing to write home about. I can fly along pretty well but the response was mushy.

Still dreaming about the IBM Model M keyboards from days of past, I went searching on the Internet and found that Unicomp makes a variant of the old IBM Model M keyboard, including a model made specifically for Mac! I know, the horror, but having an IBM designed keyboard with an Apple layout would be quite cool and in my eyes would be the best of both worlds. The keyboards are fairly pricey, but they’re built like a tank and the keyboard should theoretically last me a long time. So I ordered one.

Today my Unicomp Mac Buckling Spring keyboard arrived. I was ecstatic!

Typing on the keyboard is a dream. I tested my typing skills on it this afternoon and I was able type at 109 WPM on it. Not too shabby. I have to admit there were a couple of issues when it arrived. The left corner Control key had popped off and the A key’s response was intermittent at best. I took the underlying key cap mechanism from F15 and swapped it with the A and I haven’t had an issue since. Still, for a keyboard clocking in at over $100, this is a bit disappointing. So much for “it just works”, but that’s why I usually buy Apple products.

Other than the two small hiccups, I am very pleased with the keyboard and I was able to fly through some coding I had to do this afternoon. The clickity click click of the keys allowed me to get lost in the moment and find my coding zen.

I guess I’m just easy to please.

One of the the things that I always enjoyed about the Steve Jobs era of Apple v2.0 was that Apple always seemed to have a sense of how their newest innovations were going to be used. Steve had a way of knowing what a user wanted before the user actually wanted it. Sure, he might not have been first with an innovation, for example, I think it was Xerox that first came up with the concept of the GUI, but Steve added that extra human touch that made using technology more comfortable.

This has crossed my mind for a couple of reasons over the past couple of days. As a proud Apple Geek and Fanboy, I wear my Apple Watch every day without fail. It’s always on me when I’m not in the water and I have found it to be very useful in my day-to-day life. Having the ability to pay for transactions at places like Subway, the local convenience store, the grocery store, etc, just by tapping my watch is amazing. I am less concerned about credit card fraud and the idea of swiping my card or, worse yet, giving my card to someone so that they can take it to a back room computer to swipe it (and possibly duplicate it or write down the credit card number, as has happened to me on a couple of occasions) seems downright medieval. I was at Best Buy not too long ago and upon paying the transaction with my watch, the clerk was surprised that the Apple Watch had that capability, even though he worked at Best Buy and he owned an Apple Watch. It was somewhat disheartening. Yes, there have been other companies ahead of the Apple curve with tap-to-pay and the like, but Apple has made it seamless and more importantly, frictionless.

Now if we could just stop our bank from merging with another bank every year so that we didn’t have to keep getting new debit cards we’d be golden.

The other reason I’ve been thinking about Steve Jobs and all things Apple is because I have been running the beta versions of iOS 10 on my iPhone 6 Plus. In previous years, I’ve jumped on the beta bandwagon early, which ended up in an exercise of frustration because Apple’s early betas are really unstable. Beta really means beta in the world of Apple. I jumped on board at Public Beta 3 and have been mostly happy with the improvements I’ve seen with the OS upgrade on my iPhone.  However, there is one thing that I am really having a hard time adjusting to and that’s the removal of the “Swipe to Unlock” function.  In iOS 10, swiping to the right brings up the enhanced “Today” view instead of giving me the opportunity to enter my PIN.

One of the big things that Steve Jobs proudly demonstrated with the very first iPhone announcement was the Swipe to Unlock feature. It became a very natural gesture and something that I have probably done thousands of times on the various iDevices I’ve had over the years. Not having the ability to swipe to unlock my iPhone now is really weird. I find the change irritating. It makes my iPhone feel a little more foreign in my hands.

Using technology should never a foreign experience.

Now, I understand why Apple has decided to make these changes in their latest iteration of iOS. They are trying to compete with all the gadgets and widgets and Google Nows and the like in Android so they’re basically bringing iOS, in my opinion, down a notch to appeal the the lower denominators in the societal equations of the 20-teens. 

I find this unfortunate. 

At the very least, there should be an option in iOS 10 allowing me to decide if I want to keep the Swipe to Unlock feature. Apple should consider how society wants to use their device. If swipe to unlock has been made a “handheld smartphone standard”, then that standard should be honored.

As a software developer, regardless of the project I’m working on, I firmly believe that software should be an extension of the natural thought processes, habits and mannerisms of the user. A piece of technology should be intuitive, feel personal and never impede on the intended experience with wasted thought to gestures and the like. Software should always make a user more productive and the experience should always delight the user. The “system” should never dictate the circumstance.

I’m hoping for the day that Apple gets headed back into that arena with that line of thinking. Delight the user by keeping the experience personal and natural. Bring quality, not chaos, to society.
Quick aside, props to anyone that can tell me why that screen cap of Joan Van Ark was selected.

One of the frustrating things about the current age of technology is the number of devices we have. When I travel I carry my iPhone, my iPad and my laptop, though lately I have been trying to leave the laptop at home and work solely off my iPad. This arrange works rather well but not in what I would call an “awesome” way. To use my iPad as my primary computer while on the road requires a lot of fidgeting, finagling and pre-planning. I often feel limited, mainly because of Apple’s restrictions on what can and can not be done on the iPad. Apple wants me to bring along multiple devices because, of course, Apple sells hardware. Lots of hardware.

In an ideal world I would like to carry only a phone that is capable of doing everything. Let’s face it, the computing power is already there. I could sit down at a coffee shop and dock it with a mouse and keyboard if I so desired. If I wanted to take a phone call I could just talk on some sort of Bluetooth gadget in my ear. We should be able to do standard, everyday computing off of one device.

Enter the Kickstarter campaign for the Superbook. The Superbook is a shell of a standard laptop: decent sized display, a full-sized keyboard and a multi-touch touchpad, that plugs into your Android phone, using the computing power of your phone to run the “laptop”.  All the data, all the apps, everyone on your Android device is compatible with the attached laptop-like accessory. And best yet, the laptop-like attachment charges your phone while you’re working on it.

This is the type of arrangement that comes close to what I would like to have! The problem is, and I assume it’s due to the walled garden that Apple loves to build, the Superbook works only with Android devices, there is no iOS compatibility.

I can’t wait to see one of these Superbooks in action. If it impresses me as much as the marketing says it will, I may have to jump ship to the other side and get onboard with an Android phone to power a Superbook.