Apple confirmed to me that it has been scanning outgoing and incoming iCloud Mail for CSAM attachments since 2019. Email is not encrypted, so scanning attachments as mail passes through Apple servers would be a trivial task.
Apple also indicated that it was doing some limited scanning of other data, but would not tell me what that was, except to suggest that it was on a tiny scale. It did tell me that the “other data” does not include iCloud backups.
For the sake of argument, let's give Apple a pass on all of its claims -- perhaps the biggest of the tech giants can resist legislative pressure and the system remains fixated only on CSAM within the United States. However, this will take eternal vigilance from Apple and privacy advocates to ensure it follows through on this.
The bigger problem is the rest of the industry. The slippery slope does exist, and Apple has taken the first step down. Maybe it has boots with ice grips and has tied itself to a tree to make sure it cannot descend any further, but few others do.
Apple is making a donation to the National Park Foundation for Apple Pay purchases made in U.S. Apple Stores and the Apple website, until August 29.
Parallels has released version 17.0 of its Parallels Desktop for Mac virtualization software with support for macOS 12 Monterey and Windows 11. It also boasts optimized performance on M1-based Macs—starting up to 33% faster and providing up to 20% faster disk performance for Windows 10 and 11.
In the latest publication of his Power On newsletter, Gurman writes that a new high-end Mac mini, which has previously been reported to feature a new design with additional ports, can be expected to replace the current Intel Mac mini in “the next several months.” This presumably means the new Mac mini may launch alongside the redesigned 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pros this fall.
As elegant as the design of the iPhone is, at the end of the day it’s a box that sits in your pocket or that you hold in your hand, and there remains something fundamentally clunky about bestowing all this significance to an oblong solid of glass and steel. And, if there’s one thing that Apple just can’t seem to resist, it’s trying to push our technological devices to become even more elegant.
Oh boy, were the trains crowded today.
(And I am definitely forgetting how trains were so much even more crowded pre-2020.)
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Thanks for reading.