The more I think of it, the more I realize that Apple has identified the most common holes in macOS functionality and has systematically eliminated those holes for the broadest section of its Mac customers. Tools that once filled gaps are now just nice-to-have upgrades from the base Apple functionality.
[...]
So that’s my advice for people getting new Macs who don’t carry that legacy with them: Start with what’s there and then explore when you find where the built-in tools can’t meet your needs.
In a conventional rescue setting, Goldsworthy explains, it could take an hour or more just for someone to find cell service and call for help after witnessing an accident. Once they’re able to connect with law enforcement, the SAR team still has to respond, which takes even more time. The ability to summon help by smartphone via satellite cuts out the middleman, drastically improving emergency response times.
“The GPS position is coming right off of the phone, so it’s extremely accurate,” said Goldsworthy. This allows first responders to identify exactly where the victim is, and to arrange a response team based off of the details the device provides.
In a letter to the Department of Justice, Senator Ron Wyden said foreign officials were demanding the data from Alphabet's Google and Apple. Although details were sparse, the letter lays out yet another path by which governments can track smartphones.
[...]
Earlier this year French developer David Libeau said users and developers were often unaware of how their apps emitted data to the U.S. tech giants via push notifications, calling them "a privacy nightmare."
Apple has since confirmed in a statement provided to Ars that the US federal government "prohibited" the company "from sharing any information," but now that Wyden has outed the feds, Apple has updated its transparency reporting and will "detail these kinds of requests" in a separate section on push notifications in its next report. Ars verified that Apple's law enforcement guidelines now notes that push notification records "may be obtained with a subpoena or greater legal process."
Apple advises its developers to encrypt any sensitive data sent through a push notification, but does not require this practice. An Apple spokesperson told Motherboard that the company was “committed to transparency” and had “long been a supporter of efforts to ensure that providers are able to disclose as much information as possible to their users.” The spokesperson said that Apple had updated its law enforcement guidelines and would begin to break out the requests for push notifications that it had received in its next transparency report.
Apple Inc.’s iMessage service looks set to win a carve out from new European Union antitrust rules to rein in Big Tech platforms after watchdogs tentatively concluded that it isn’t popular enough with business users to warrant being hit by the regulation.
European Commission officials are leaning toward the reprieve for Apple as part of a five-month market investigation which concludes in February, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The elephant in the room with this particular issue is that the interoperability demands of the DMA between E2EE messaging platforms make no technical sense whatsoever. It’s all just hand-waving on the part of the EU bureaucrats who are demanding it. They have no idea what E2EE really means. They just want to demand that a WhatsApp user should be able to send a message to someone on iMessage or Facebook Messenger. Just make it happen.
The iPad Air, which is the company’s mid-tier tablet, currently comes with a 10.9-inch screen. For next year’s release, the company will add a version that’s about 12.9 inches, matching the size of what’s currently the biggest iPad Pro.
[...]
The new Pro models are currently scheduled to be announced at the same time as the iPad Air. The OLED screens show a wider range of colors and will give the company’s tablets the same display technology used in the iPhone since 2017. The high-end tablet will get the M3 chip that was introduced with the MacBook Pro in October.
A big iPad Air is interesting, and I suspect will prove popular. No word, alas, on a new iPad Mini though. (I wish Apple would drop the “Mini” brand and just make the iPad Air in three sizes: mini, regular, and large, with identical specs.)
With its user-friendly interface, it effortlessly blends with the impressive features of the iPhone 15 Pro Max, providing a wide range of manual controls that take your photography skills to a whole new level. The app boasts an impressive user-friendly design, catering to beginners and experienced photographers alike. Its interface feels natural to navigate, providing easy access to a wide range of powerful tools without overwhelming the user.
After downloading and opening the latest version of Google Drive for Windows or macOS, Google says to run the app’s recovery tool. To do this, click the Drive icon in the menu bar or system tray. From there, press and hold Shift, click Settings, and select “Recover from backups.” If all goes well, you’ll receive a notice that says “Recovery has started.” Google will put all the recovered files into a new folder named “Google Drive recovery” once the process is complete.
Apple, which many had considered very conservative in its approach to AI, quietly released frameworks and model libraries designed to run on its chips and maybe bring generative AI apps to MacBooks.
The company’s machine learning research team released MLX, a machine learning framework where developers can build models that run efficiently on Apple Silicon and deep learning model library MLX Data. Both are accessible through open-source repositories like GitHub and PyPI.
I think Google’s dependence on support forums is a huge part of this problem. The company has notoriously poor service. Only people who pay for a support plan are able to get help from a real person, and not by phone or even live chat. For most people, Google’s primary suggestion is to post on its forum. Google even frames it as an instruction to “contact us via our forum” — but you are not really contacting Google, are you? You are contacting some person named Alex who lives in Springfield and has no idea what is going on, either, but says you should try restarting your computer.
You know what, I've always filed in the back of my mind that someday I will try out a clipboard manager on my Mac. Especially since I do do quite a bit of copy-and-paste every day. (Do you think I type out all these words here?)
But, I've never pulled the trigger. And I've never added this to-do item in my to-do app, even in my someday-maybe list.
I do have a scratch.txt textfile that is always opened in BBEdit. Maybe that's the reason why I never felt frustrated enough to try out a 'real' clipboard manager.
Someday, maybe.
~
Thanks for reading.