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The Just-Leave-Them-All-On Edition Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Solving Connectivity Problems Caused By Interlocking Apple Privacy Settings, by Adam Engst, TidBITS

Realistically, however, what’s important is that if you’re having problems, you can turn off iCloud Private Relay first, and if that doesn’t resolve the issue, turn off Limit IP Address Tracking. If even that’s not enough, turn off Hide IP Address for Safari or Mail.

Otherwise, just leave them all on and enjoy whatever level of additional privacy they provide.

Apple's Feedback Mechanism Is Broken, by Casey Liss

Unfortunately, Feedback Assistant and Radar are tools for Apple, and their needs serve Apple and only Apple. They are a complete waste of time for outside developers. I maintain that they are a black hole into which I pour time, effort, sample code, and (often useless) sysdiagnoses. I get nothing in return.

Stuff

Today I Learned You Can Identify Plants And Flowers Using Just Your iPhone Camera, by James Vincent, The Verge

It works very simply. Just open up a photo or screenshot in the Photos app and look for the blue “i” icon underneath. If it has a little sparkly ring around it, then iOS has found something in the photo it can identify using machine learning. Tap the icon, then click “Look Up” and it’ll try and dredge up some useful information.

Ulysses 27 Now Supports Creating And Publishing Tables On iPhone, iPad, And Mac, by José Adorno, 9to5Mac

Ulysses 27 has just been released with a powerful new feature that users of the writing editor app will very much appreciate – the ability to add Tables on the iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

Notes

Former Apple Engineer Details Why The First iPhone Didn't Have Copy And Paste, by Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac

The engineer explains that he came up with the “magnifying text loupe” idea to let users know where exactly they were pointing the text cursor, which was crucial to having copy and paste. However, even with that classic virtual magnifying glass, the cursor ended up moving between characters after the user lifted their finger off the screen due to natural flickering.

Kocienda had to develop a “touch history log” just for text editing. This way, after taking the finger off the screen, the system automatically detected the position of the user’s finger milliseconds after the last touch, so that the cursor remained where the user really wanted it.

Biden Says He Is Proud Of Apple Workers Who Voted To Join A Union, by Nandita Bose and Kanishka Singh, Reuters

"I am proud of them," Biden told reporters on Monday. "Workers have a right to determine under what condition they are going to work or not work."

[...]

"I am proud of them," Biden told reporters on Monday. "Workers have a right to determine under what condition they are going to work or not work."

Bottom of the Page

This afternoon, Safari on my Mac suddenly couldn't reach DuckDuckGo nor Google websites. I switch to Firefox, and all's well. I switch to Edge, and all's well too.

Okay, so something went wrong with Private Relay (still in beta), I guess?

So I launch System Preference, and was about to stop Private Relay, when I was suddenly alerted that one of my work website was returning HTTP 500 error.

Oh dear. Coincidence?

Long story short, it turned out the common theme is likely because Cloudflare, a popular CDN service, is having problem. And both the website and Private Relay were both affected.

But while Cloudflare was still saying they are investigating the issue, Apple's Private Relay is back up and running.

So, what did I learn today? Apple's Private Relay is probably using Cloudflare. And Apple probably has multiple different CDN services that it can swap in and out on a moment's notice. And I am older by another day.

~

Thanks for reading.