Lit Apple Mac, iPhone, iPad User Group

[sultrysandy]

Microsoft is permanently closing its retail stores

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Microsoft on Friday announced it will permanently close its 83 Microsoft Store retail locations. It will instead focus on its online store at Microsoft.com, where customers can go for support, sales, training and more.

Microsoft said its retail team members will help on the website instead of in-store. All the employees will have the opportunity to stay with the company.

"Our sales have grown online as our product portfolio has evolved to largely digital offerings, and our talented team has proven success serving customers beyond any physical location," Microsoft Corporate Vice President David Porter said in a blog post. "We are grateful to our Microsoft Store customers and we look forward to continuing to serve them online and with our retail sales team at Microsoft corporate locations."


In the past decade or so, Microsoft began to expand its retail presence in an effort to create a shopping experience similar to Apple's, where people could go to try new Microsoft software and hardware created by both Microsoft and its partners. Microsoft even built a store on 5th Avenue in New York City, just blocks away from Apple's iconic glass cube store.


The decision seems to be made after Microsoft decided to temporarily close stores in March due to the spread of the coronavirus.

"Microsoft will continue to invest in its digital storefronts on Microsoft.com, and stores in Xbox and Windows, reaching more than 1.2 billion people every month in 190 markets," it said. "The company will also reimagine spaces that serve all customers, including operating Microsoft Experience Centers in London, NYC, Sydney, and Redmond campus locations."






In the Steve Jobs video announcing Apple Stores, he said retail is not easy.

Thanks for that article Sandy. The Apple stores are still unique, refreshing and efficient. Love walking into one. They 'just work'!

Apple didn't invent the PC, MP3 Player, Smartphone, Brick and Mortar Computer Retail Store, among other products and services, but they give their customers an enjoyable experience. IMHO It's not a difficult concept, but it's not easy to do.
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Also see:
Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune.
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[sultrysandy]

Safari will soon support web extensions from other browsers

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In macOS Big Sur, Safari will support more types of web extensions and Apple is also going to make it easier to port existing extensions from other browsers.

Safari already supports extensions, but compared to browsers like Google Chrome or Firefox, there aren't many available. In macOS Big Sur, Apple is introducing additional support for web extensions in Safari.

In a WWDC developer session, Apple announced something called Safari Web Extensions. Essentially, the browser will adopt an extension API similar to those used by Chrome and Firefox.

What that means for Mac users is that Safari will now support a much broader range of extensions.

Previously, Safari only allowed share extensions or content blockers. Going forward, Safari Web Extensions will make it easier for developers to code useful add-ons in technologies like J a v a s c r i p t, HTML and CSS.

Apple is taking a slightly different approach from browsers like Firefox. Safari Web Extensions will be packaged with native apps — though the apps themselves can simply be placeholders to facilitate approval through the App Store.

The company is also shipping tools in Xcode 12 that will make it easier for extension creators to port their existing browser add-ons to Safari.
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[sultrysandy]

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Passwords, bitcoin addresses and anything else in clipboards are free for the taking.

In March, researchers uncovered a troubling privacy grab by more than four dozen iOS apps including TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media and video-sharing phenomenon that has taken the Internet by storm. Despite TikTok vowing to curb the practice, it continues to access some of Apple users’ most sensitive data, which can include passwords, cryptocurrency wallet addresses, account-reset links, and personal messages. Another 53 apps identified in March haven't stopped either.

The privacy invasion is the result of the apps repeatedly reading any text that happens to reside in clipboards, which computers and other devices use to store data that has been cut or copied from things like password managers and email programs. With no clear reason for doing so, researchers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk found, the apps deliberately called an iOS programming interface that retrieves text from users’ clipboards.


Universal snooping

In many cases, the covert reading isn’t limited to data stored on the local device. In the event the iPhone or iPad uses the same Apple ID as other Apple devices and are within roughly 10 feet of each other, all of them share a universal clipboard, meaning contents can be copied from the app of one device and pasted into an app running on a separate device.

That leaves open the possibility that an app on an iPhone will read sensitive data on the clipboards of other connected devices. This could include bitcoin addresses, passwords, or email messages that are temporarily stored on the clipboard of a nearby Mac or iPad. Despite running on a separate device, the iOS apps can easily read the sensitive data stored on the other machines.

“It’s very, very dangerous,” Mysk said in an interview on Friday, referring to the apps’ indiscriminate reading of clipboard data. “These apps are reading clipboards, and there’s no reason to do this. An app that doest have a text field to enter text has no reason to read clipboard text.”


Back in the news

While Haj Bakry and Mysk published their research in March, the invasive apps made headlines again this week with the developer beta release of iOS 14. A novel feature Apple added provides a banner warning every time an app reads clipboard contents. As large numbers of people began testing the beta release, they quickly came to appreciate just how many apps engage in the practice and just how often they do it.


TikTok in the spotlight

Recent headlines have focused particular attention on TikTok, in large part because of its massive base of active users (reported to be 800 million, with an estimated 104 million iOS installs in the first half of 2018 alone, making it the most downloaded app for that period).

TikTok’s continued snooping has gotten extra scrutiny for other reasons. When called out in March, the video-sharing provider told UK publication The Telegraph it would end the practice in the coming weeks. Mysk said that the app never stopped the monitoring. What’s more, a Wednesday Twitter thread revealed that the clipboard reading occurred each time a user entered a punctuation mark or tapped the space bar while composing a comment. That means the clipboard reading can happen every second or so, a much more aggressive pace than documented in the March research, which found monitoring happened when the app was opened or reopened.

Jeremy Burge
✔
@jeremyburge
· Jun 24, 2020
Replying to @jeremyburge

Okay so TikTok is grabbing the contents of my clipboard every 1-3 keystrokes. iOS 14 is snitching on it with the new paste notification
Embedded video

Jeremy Burge
✔
@jeremyburge

To reproduce:
1. Have something on your clipboard. Eg copy some text from Notes or a website
2. Open TikTok and start typing in any text field
3. You learn from iOS 14 beta each time an app “pastes” - but in this instance I didn’t request it, and none of that text appears in UI
676
9:01 PM - Jun 24, 2020
Twitter Ads info and privacy

137 people are talking about this

In a statement, TikTok representatives wrote:

Following the beta release of iOS14 on June 22, users saw notifications while using a number of popular apps. For TikTok, this was triggered by a feature designed to identify repetitive, spammy behavior. We have already submitted an updated version of the app to the App Store removing the anti-spam feature to eliminate any potential confusion.

TikTok is committed to protecting users' privacy and being transparent about how our app works. We look forward to welcoming outside experts to our Transparency Center later this year.

On background, a spokesperson said that TikTok for Android never implemented the anti-spam feature.


Not just TikTok

In all, the researchers found the following iOS apps were reading users’ clipboard data every time the app was opened with no clear reason for doing so:



App Name — BundleID

News

• ABC News — com.abcnews.ABCNews
  
  
• Al Jazeera English — ajenglishiphone
  
  
• CBC News — ca.cbc.CBCNews
  
  
• CBS News — com.H443NM7F8H.CBSNews
  
  
• CNBC — com.nbcuni.cnbc.cnbcrtipad
  
  
• Fox News — com.foxnews.foxnews
  
  
• News Break — com.particlenews.newsbreak
  
  
• New York Times — com.nytimes.NYTimes
  
  
• NPR — org.npr.nprnews
  
  
• ntv Nachrichten — de.n-tv.n-tvmobil
  
  
• Reuters — com.thomsonreuters.Reuters
  
  
• Russia Today — com.rt.RTNewsEnglish
  
  
• Stern Nachrichten — de.grunerundjahr.sternneu
  
  
• The Economist — com.economist.lamarr
  
  
• The Huffington Post — com.huffingtonpost.HuffingtonPost
  
  
• The Wall Street Journal — com.dowjones.WSJ.ipad
  
  
• Vice News — com.vice.news.VICE-News

Games

• 8 Ball Pool™ — com.miniclip.8ballpoolmult
  
  
• AMAZE!!! — com.amaze.game
  
  
• Bejeweled — com.ea.ios.bejeweledskies
  
  
• Block Puzzle —Game.BlockPuzzle
  
  
• Classic Bejeweled — com.popcap.ios.Bej3
  
  
• Classic Bejeweled HD —com.popcap.ios.Bej3HD
  
  
• FlipTheGun — com.playgendary.flipgun
  
  
• Fruit Ninja — com.halfbrick.FruitNinjaLite
  
  
• Golfmasters — com.playgendary.sportmasterstwo
  
  
• Letter Soup — com.candywriter.apollo7
  
  
• Love Nikki — com.elex.nikki
  
  
• My Emma — com.crazylabs.myemma
  
  
• Plants vs. Zombies™ Heroes — com.ea.ios.pvzheroes
  
  
• Pooking – Billiards City — com.pool.club.billiards.city
  
  
• PUBG Mobile — com.tencent.ig
  
  
• Tomb of the Mask — com.happymagenta.fromcore
  
  
• Tomb of the Mask: Color — com.happymagenta.totm2
  
  
• Total Party Kill — com.adventureislands.totalpartykill
  
  
• Watermarbling — com.hydro.dipping

Social Networking

• TikTok — com.zhiliaoapp.musically
  
  
• ToTalk — totalk.gofeiyu.com
  
  
• Tok — com.SimpleDate.Tok
  
  
• Truecaller — com.truesoftware.TrueCallerOther
  
  
• Viber — com.viber
  
  
• Weibo — com.sina.weibo
  
  
• Zoosk — com.zoosk.Zoosk

Other

• 10% Happier: Meditation —com.changecollective.tenpercenthappier
  
  
• 5-0 Radio Police Scanner — com.smartestapple.50radiofree
  
  
• Accuweather — com.yourcompany.TestWithCustomTabs
  
  
• AliExpress Shopping App — com.alibaba.iAliexpress
  
  
• Bed Bath & Beyond — com.digby.bedbathbeyond
  
  
• Dazn — com.dazn.theApp
  
  
• Hotels.com — com.hotels.HotelsNearMe
  
  
• Hotel Tonight — com.hoteltonight.prod
  
  
• Overstock — com.overstock.app
  
  
• Pigment – Adult Coloring Book — com.pixite.pigment
  
  
• Recolor Coloring Book to Color — com.sumoing.ReColor
  
  
• Sky Ticket — de.sky.skyonline
  
  
• The Weather Network — com.theweathernetwork.weathereyeiphone

Shortly after the report was published, 10% Happier: Meditation and Hotel Tonight promised to stop the behavior and quickly followed through. TikTik also promised to stop but has never done so, Mysk said. Of all the other apps, none has stopped, either, he said.


Clipboard reading done right

In some cases, clipboard reading can make apps much more useful. The UPS iPhone app, for instance, pulls text from the clipboard, and, in the event the text matches the characteristics of a tracking number, the app prompts the user to track the corresponding package. Google Chrome also pulls text and, in the event it’s a URL, will prompt the user to browse to it. The Pixelmator photo editor reads data only if it’s an image. If it is, Pixelmator will prompt the user to open it for editing. In all three cases, the data reading has a clear use case and is transparent.

TikTok and the other offending apps, by contrast, access the clipboard for no clear reason and with no indication they are doing so. For many apps, it’s hard to see any legitimate performance or usability reason for the access. Mysk said that Apple plans to credit his and Haj Bakry’s research as a catalyst for the new clipboard notification put into iOS 14.

The clipboard reading Haj Bakry and Mysk reported raises concerns that likely extend to those using Android and possibly other operating systems. Mysk said that clipboard reading in Android apps is “even worse” than iOS because the OS APIs are so much more lenient. Until version 10, for instance, Android allowed apps running in the background to read the clipboard. iOS apps, by contrast, can read or query clipboards only when active (that is, running in the foreground).

Mysk said that Apple’s notification feature is a good start but, ultimately, Apple and Google should do more. One possibility is to make clipboard access a standard permission, just as access to a mic or camera is now. Another possibility is to require app developers to disclose precisely what clipboard data is accessed and what the app does with it.

For now, users should remain aware that any data stored in the clipboard—despite it being inconspicuous to the naked eye—can be regularly accessed by apps that in many cases aren’t even installed locally on the device. When in doubt, flush the clipboard data by copying a character, word, or other piece of innocuous data.
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[sultrysandy]

Apple Card Adds 3% Cash Back at Exxon and Mobil Gas Stations

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Apple Card holders can now benefit from earning 3% cash back on fuel, car washes and convenience store purchases at over 11,500 Exxon and Mobil gas stations.

The Apple Card is now more rewarding for cardholders who use their card at over 11,500 Exxon and Mobil gas station across the U.S.

Starting today, June 29, Apple Card holders earn 3% Daily Cash (which is essentially cash back, but issued at the end of every day) when you use the Apple Card with Apple Pay at Exxon and Mobil stations.

This new rewards rate is a great way to encourage contactless payments and earn extra cash back on refueling your vehicle during grocery runs or road trips. Plus eligible Exxon and Mobil purchases include more than just gas — car washes and convenience store transactions also earn 3% back.

In order to take advantage of this offer, use your Apple Card with Apple Pay for transactions inside Exxon and Mobile stores or download the Exxon Mobil Rewards+ app and pay at the pump with your Apple Card via Apple Pay.


In addition to a high rewards rate on Exxon and Mobil purchases, Apple Card holders earn 3% Daily Cash when using their Apple Card with Apple Pay at:

• Apple (including Apple retail stores, the Apple online store, the App Store, iTunes, Apple Music and other Apple-owned properties)
  
  
• Uber and UberEats
  
  
• Walgreens and Duane Reade stores, on the Walgreens app and on Walgreens.com
  
  
• T-Mobile stores
  
  
• Nike

Purchases made with Apple Pay at other retailers earn 2% back, while physical card purchases earn 1% back. If you want to earn 3% / 3X or more at gas stations beyond Exxon and Mobil, consider alternative gas rewards cards, such as the Wells Fargo Propel American Express® Card, which offers 3X points on gas.

The Apple Card is also offering a limited-time offer worth $50 at Walgreens: New cardholders who open an account by June 30 can earn $50 after they spend at least $50 at Walgreens in the first 30 days of opening an account.
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[sultrysandy]

New macOS attack vector exploits 'security theater,' developer claims

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A macOS developer has discovered an exploit that can bypass the operating system's file privacy and security protections.

The exploit, created by developer Jeff Johnson, impacts the "Transparency, Consent, and Control" (TCC) framework that was introduced in macOS Mojave. Johnson also tested the exploit in macOS Catalina and the first macOS Big Sur beta.

Essentially, the TCC framework restricts the ability for apps in macOS to access certain protected files or folders. As an example, Johnson writes that an app may not have access to the ~/Library/Safari folder unless it is explicitly granted.

In a blog post disclosing the exploit, Johnson said that there are two fatal flaws to the protections — exceptions are based on a bundle identifier instead of a file path, and the system only "superficially" checks an app's code signature.

"Thus, an attacker can make a copy of an app at a different location on disk, modify the resources of the copy, and the copy of the app with modified resources will still have the same file access as the original app, in this case, Safari," Johnson wrote.

An example of the disk and folder privacy protections that the exploit can bypass.



A proof-of-concept attack created by the developer uses a flaw in Safari to leverage those vulnerabilities. It involves a modified version of Safari which can access protected files and send off private data to a server. The second app is the one that actually downloads and launches the modified Safari — a task that any app downloaded from the web can accomplish.

Because of the exploit, Johnson claims that the Mac's privacy protections are "mainly security theater and only harm legitimate Mac developers allowing apps to bypass them through many existing holes."

The developer first disclosed the bug to the Apple Security Bounty program in December 2019, sparking several months of back-and-forth updates. Although Apple Product Security told Johnson they'd fix the issue in spring 2020, he said that it's still present in the macOS 11 Big Sur beta.


How to avoid or mitigate this vulnerability

Importantly, the exploit only really impacts the privacy protections built into macOS Mojave and later. In other words, it takes macOS security back to High Sierra and earlier.

Because of that, Johnson writes that the level of concern over the vulnerability really depends on "how you feel in general about macOS privacy protections."

The exploit can be leveraged by non-sandboxed malicious apps on a Mac, so the best mitigation strategy would be to exercise caution when downloading any app not from the Mac App Store.





?... exercise caution when downloading any app not from the Mac App Store." - yeah, just because an app is downloaded form the Mac App store it is safe. Even in this thread posted about hundreds of apps that do not adhere to Apple's guidelines, but yet appeared aren't reviewed or tested, but instead approved and are available to be downloaded from Apple.
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[sultrysandy]

New 'EvilQuest' ransomware is actively targeting macOS users in the wild

A new piece of Mac ransomware distributed via pirated software, dubbed "EvilQuest," is actively targeting macOS users in the wild.

Although ransomware specifically aimed at Mac users are particularly rare, new instances of malicious software that encrypt user files and demands a ransom to unlock them do surface from time to time.

On Tuesday, several security researchers published analysis and reports of the newly discovered "OSX.EvilQuest" ransomware. First spotted by independent malware researcher Dinesh Devadoss, EvilQuest is said to have been circulating in the wild since the start of June 2020, ZDNet reported.

EvilQuest has a few nefarious additions that make it unique among ransomware examples. In addition to maliciously encrypting a user's files and charging money to unlock them, EvilQuest also installs a keylogger and a reverse shell on a system, along with code that steals cryptocurrency wallet files.

The EvilQuest ransom note. Credit: Patrick Wardle



According to former NSA hacker and Jamf macOS security researcher Patrick Wardle, those capabilities could allow attackers "full control over an infected host."

As with previous pieces of Mac ransomware, it appears that EvilQuest is distributed via pirated software. Researchers have found it bundled in a package called Google Software Update, while others have seen it hidden in pirated versions of DJ app Mixed In Key.

According to Malwarebytes Mac & Mobile chief Thomas Reed, the ransomware also attempts to modify files in Google Chrome's update mechanism in an effort to gain persistence on an infected machine.

This the third instance of a piece of ransomware surfacing that specifically targets macOS users, following the discovery of Patcher in 2017 and KeRanger in 2016.


How to avoid or mitigate the EvilQuest ransomware

At this point, it appears that EvilQuest is solely being distributed through torrenting websites and pirated software. So if you stick to the Mac App Store or third-party developers that you trust, you should be able to avoid getting it.

There are also two apps that can mitigate the risks of EvilQuest for users.

Wardle's free and open-source RansomWhere? app can generically detect and stop ransomware on macOS. The latest version of Malwarebytes can also detect and mitigate EvilQuest before it does any damage.
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[sultrysandy]

Google-backed groups criticize Apple's new warnings on user tracking

https://i.imgur.com/YsfDXYq.jpg

A group of European digital advertising associations on Friday criticized Apple Inc’s plans to require apps to seek additional permission from users before tracking them across other apps and websites.

Apple last week disclosed features in its forthcoming operating system for iPhones and iPads that will require apps to show a pop-up screen before they enable a form of tracking commonly needed to show personalized ads.

Sixteen marketing associations, some of which are backed by Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google, faulted Apple for not adhering to an ad-industry system for seeking user consent under European privacy rules. Apps will now need to ask for permission twice, increasing the risk users will refuse, the associations argued.

Facebook and Google are the largest among thousands of companies that track online consumers to pick up on their habits and interests and serve them relevant ads.

Apple said the new feature was aimed at giving users greater transparency over how their information is being used. In training sessions at a developer conference last week, Apple showed that developers can present any number of additional screens beforehand to explain why permission is needed before triggering its pop-up.

The pop-up says an app “would like permission to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies” and gives the app developer several lines below the main text to explain why the permission is sought. It is not required until an app seeks access to a numeric identifier that can be used for tracking, and apps only need to secure permission once.

The group of European marketing firms said the pop-up warning and the limited ability to customize it still carries “a high risk of user refusal.”

Apple engineers also said last week the company will bolster a free Apple-made tool that uses anonymous, aggregated data to measure whether advertising campaigns are working and that will not trigger the pop-up.

“Because it’s engineered to not track users, there’s no need to request permission to track,” Brandon Van Ryswyk, an Apple privacy engineer, said in a video session explaining the measurement tool to developers.
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[sultrysandy]

New Mac ransomware is even more sinister than it appears

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ThiefQuest or EvilQuest can grab passwords and credit card numbers.

The threat of ransomware may seem ubiquitous, but there haven't been too many strains tailored specifically to infect Apple's Mac computers since the first full-fledged Mac ransomware surfaced only four years ago. So when Dinesh Devadoss, a malware researcher at the firm K7 Lab, published findings on Tuesday about a new example of Mac ransomware, that fact alone was significant. It turns out, though, that the malware, which researchers are now calling ThiefQuest, gets more interesting from there. (Researchers originally dubbed it EvilQuest until they discovered the Steam game series of the same name.)

In addition to ransomware, ThiefQuest has a whole other set of spyware capabilities that allow it to exfiltrate files from an infected computer, search the system for passwords and cryptocurrency wallet data, and run a robust keylogger to grab passwords, credit card numbers, or other financial information as a user types it in. The spyware component also lurks persistently as a backdoor on infected devices, meaning it sticks around even after a computer reboots, and could be used as a launchpad for additional, or "second stage," attacks. Given that ransomware is so rare on Macs to begin with, this one-two punch is especially noteworthy.

"Looking at the code, if you split the ransomware logic from all the other backdoor logic the two pieces completely make sense as individual malware. But compiling them together you're kind of like what?" says Patrick Wardle, principal security researcher at the Mac management firm Jamf. "My current gut feeling about all of this is that someone basically was designing a piece of Mac malware that would give them the ability to completely remotely control an infected system. And then they also added some ransomware capability as a way to make extra money."

Though ThiefQuest is packed with menacing features, it's unlikely to infect your Mac anytime soon unless you download pirated, unvetted software. Thomas Reed, director of Mac and mobile platforms at the security firm Malwarebytes, found that ThiefQuest is being distributed on torrent sites bundled with name-brand software, like the security application Little Snitch, DJ software Mixed In Key, and music production platform Ableton. K7's Devadoss notes that the malware itself is designed to look like a "Google Software Update program." So far, though, the researchers say that it doesn't seem to have a significant number of downloads, and no one has paid a ransom to the bitcoin address the attackers provide.

For your Mac to become infected, you would need to torrent a compromised installer and then dismiss a series of warnings from Apple in order to run it. It's a good reminder to get your software from trustworthy sources, like developers whose code is "signed" by Apple to prove its legitimacy, or from Apple's App Store itself. But if you're someone who already torrents programs and is used to ignoring Apple's flags, ThiefQuest illustrates the risks of that approach.


What does it want?

Though ThiefQuest has an extensive suite of capabilities in fusing ransomware with spyware, it's unclear for what ends, particularly because the ransomware component seems incomplete. The malware shows a ransom note that demands payment, but it only lists a static bitcoin address where victims can send money. Given bitcoin's anonymity features, attackers who intended to decrypt a victim's systems upon receiving payment would have no way to tell who had paid already and who hadn't. Additionally, the note doesn't list an email address that victims can use to correspond with the attackers about receiving a decryption key—another sign that the malware may not actually be intended as ransomware. Jamf's Wardle also found in his analysis that, while the malware has all the components it would need to decrypt the files, they don't seem to be set up to actually function in the wild.

The researchers also emphasize that attackers looking to conduct clandestine reconnaissance with spyware usually want to be as discrete and inconspicuous as possible. Adding ransomware into the mix simply announces the malware's presence and would likely change a user's behavior on the device, because all of their files are being encrypted and they're seeing a dramatic ransom note on their screen. It's not a situation where you would be likely to do some casual online shopping or log into your bank account. By the same token, ransomware doesn't usually need to establish persistence on a device and endure through reboots, because it simply needs to initiate the encryption process. When a program announces itself as malware and then persists, it simply makes it more likely that the security community will flag and analyze the software to block it in the future.

"I would think if your main goal was data exfiltration you would want to stay in the background, do that as silently as possible, and have the best chance of going undetected," Malwarebytes' Reed says. "So I don't really understand the point of this very noisy ransomware. When I installed it for testing, every 30 seconds the computer was screaming at me, beeping at me all the time. It's really noisy in both the literal and digital sense."


Hiding

The malware does include some obfuscation features to help it hide out. The malware won't run if it detects certain security tools like Norton Antivirus. It also lays low if it's being opened in a digital environment that's often used for security testing, like a sandbox or virtual machine. And when analyzing the code itself, the researchers say that some components were carefully obscured so it would be difficult to understand what they do. Strangely, though, others were left out in the open for anyone to see.

Wardle theorizes that the malware may have been intended to quietly run its spyware module first, collect valuable data, and only launch the noisy ransomware as a last-ditch effort to gather some funds from a victim before moving on. In testing, some researchers found it harder than others to induce the malware to start encrypting files as part of its ransomware functionality, which may support Wardle's theory. But the malware is buggy, and for now it's unclear what the developers' true intent is.

Given that the malware is being distributed through torrents, seems to focus on stealing money, and still has some kinks, the researchers say it was likely created by criminal hackers rather than nation-state spies looking to conduct espionage. It's not entirely uncommon in the realm of Windows malware to don a ransomware guise as a distraction or false flag. The NotPetya malware, which caused the most impactful and costly cyberattack in history, pretended to be ransomware, after all. Still, given how rare Mac ransomware is, it's surprising to see ThiefQuest take such a murky approach.

Perhaps the malware is using ransomware's hallmark file encryption as a destructive tool in an attempt to permanently lock users out of their computers. Or maybe ThiefQuest is just looking to get as much money out of victims as possible. The real question with Mac ransomware, as always, is what will come next?
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[sultrysandy]

LinkedIn blames bug for clipboard snooping discovered by iOS 14

LinkedIn claims that clipboard snooping behavior, recently revealed in the firm's iOS app by a new iOS 14 data privacy feature, is caused by a software bug.

On Thursday, a portfolio portal developer testing Apple's iOS 14 beta release discovered that the LinkedIn app was copying the contents of their clipboard after every keystroke. When ZDNet reached out to LinkedIn, the company said the issue was tied to a bug in its software.

A day later, LinkedIn product engineering head Erran Berger added more detail about the issue on Twitter, writing that the company had traced the bug to a "code path that only does an equality check clipboard contents and the currently typed content in a text box."

"We don't store or transmit the clipboard contents," Berger wrote, adding that a fix for the issue is on the way.

With iOS 14, Apple will introduce a simple mechanism that notifies users when an app reads contents from their system clipboard. The feature was introduced at WWDC just three months after a pair of developers revealed that the practice was rampant among popular apps.

The LinkedIn controversy comes a week after TikTok, one of the most popular apps in the world, said it would stop snooping on user clipboards after iOS 14 revealed that it was doing just that. TikTok said that the snooping was an anti-spam measure.

Although the iOS 14 feature is raising awareness of clipboard snooping, many apps still carry on with the practice. On Sunday, 54 out of 56 top apps that were found to read the contents of a user's clipboard were still snooping.
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[sultrysandy]

This Stock Now Makes Up 43% of Buffett's Portfolio

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More than $91 billion of Berkshire Hathaway's $214 billion portfolio is invested in this very well-known company.


Few investors are as revered on Wall Street and among the investing community as Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett. Although Buffett has actually underperformed the benchmark S&P 500 on a trailing 10-year basis, his track record over the really long-tem (55 years) speaks for itself.

According to Berkshire Hathaway's annually released shareholder letter, the S&P 500 has gained 19,784% over the past 55 years, inclusive of dividend payments. However, Berkshire Hathaway's per-share market value has increased 2,744,062% over the same period. This more than 2,700,000% whooping Buffett has put on the S&P 500 is the result of his stock-picking prowess and his patience to see his investment thesis play out over time.

The Oracle of Omaha has never been big on diversification

But one thing Buffett is not is an investor that necessarily believes in diversification. In the Oracle of Omaha's words, "diversification is protection against ignorance." In other words, if you know what you're doing as an investor, there's no need to diversify your portfolio beyond a few core businesses.

It's not been uncommon in recent years to find instances where Berkshire Hathaway has had more than 80% of its invested assets in three sectors, or where close to two-thirds of the company's invested assets are tied up in four or five companies. But given the unprecedented volatility that's occurred in 2020 due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, these concentrations have really been thrown out of whack.

Right now, one stock -- Apple -- comprises a whopping 43% of Warren Buffett's portfolio. As of this past week, Berkshire Hathaway's position in Apple had grown to $91.3 billion, which compares to $213.6 billion for the company's entire 46-security investment portfolio. Put in another context, Apple's influence on Buffett's investment portfolio is greater than every other equity stake, combined, with the exception of Berkshire's No. 2 holding, Bank of America.

How has Apple grown into such a huge component of Buffett's investment world? Part of the answer lies with the Oracle of Omaha's investment strategy, while the other component can be tied to Apple itself.

Buffett's investment strategy has vaulted Apple to Berkshire's core holding

The thing you need to understand about Buffett is that he loves companies with sustainable competitive advantages, sound branding, and a strong management team. Apple brings all three to the table.

Look outside any Apple store prior to the release of a new iPhone, and you'll understand the power of its brand. Apple is a dominant player in the U.S. smartphone market, with GlobalStats' data for June 2020 showing that the company controlled better than 58% of mobile vendor market share. No matter what products Apple puts out, there's an almost cult-like following of consumers that'll be in line to buy it. Its brand has lasting power, and that's what initially attracted Buffett to Apple in 2016.

As noted, there's also the Tim Cook factor. Apple's CEO has masterfully managed the company in the nearly nine years since Steve Jobs suddenly resigned his post due to health reasons. Over that time frame, and inclusive of dividends paid, Apple's stock has appreciated by a cool 688%. I doubt much that any of the company's shareholders are complaining.

And don't forget about Apple's shareholder return program. Apple has been willing to borrow money at exceptionally low rates in order to repurchase its own stock, which is a strategy that Buffett fully endorses.

Apple has run circles around the broader market, too

But this isn't a story about Buffett simply buying-and-holding a great company. It's also just as much about Apple completely running circles around the S&P 500 and a broad swath of other publicly traded tech stocks.

One reason Apple has been such a stud is Tim Cook's leadership in helping to push Apple away from its historic reliance on product revenue. While smartphones, Macs, and tablets still comprise the lion's share of Apple's revenue, we've witnessed faster growth rates from Apple's services and wearables segments. These high-margin operations, which have been delivering double-digit growth, are the future for Apple, and will help the company experience less lumpiness in its quarter-to-quarter sales.

Another reason Apple's market cap continues to defy gravity is the company's innovation. Beyond just being dominant in the smartphone arena, Apple has been on the leading edge of a number of once-hot or still-hot technologies, including tablets and smartwatches. Even if not all of Apple's innovations prove successful or profitable, they serve a purpose of attracting new consumers to the brand. And as noted earlier, few companies have the branding lure that Apple offers. Once these consumers are within Apple's ecosystem of products and services, they're liable to stay there for a long time to come.

Yes, it might be a bit surprising to see Apple represent such a large piece of Warren Buffett's investment portfolio, but that's merely a function of Apple's outperformance in recent years and Buffett's willingness to never sell great businesses.
.

 

[Stillrandy]

Thanks Sandy, I had not known that Apple was such a big part of the Buffett world. Two smart guys: Cook and Buffett!

 

[sultrysandy]

Some iPhone Users Report Significant Battery Drain Due to Music App Background Activi

A significant minority of iPhone users have taken to Apple's Support Communities and Reddit to report battery drain issues largely related to the Music app and high levels of background activity.

Hundreds of users, many running iOS 13.5.1 on devices both new and old, are experiencing rapid battery drain when the Music app is not in use. In some cases, the background activity occurs over several hours each day, even if the app has not been used for weeks or even at all.

User: Mojo06
I just purchased a new iPhone 11 a few days ago, and my battery is crashing so fast. I haven't even used the Apple Music App yet and it says that it has been running in the background for over 18 hours and has used 95% of my battery. My phone is also getting very hot from this. I am concerned this will kill my battery on my new phone.

User: Brianwpi
Phone is burning up. Switched off background app refresh. Restarted phone. Battery health 91%. *iPhone* X running iOS 13.5.1. Had to recharge several times during the day just to keep up. Help?

User: svphies
I'm having this exact same problem with my *iPhone 11*, recently updated to IOS 13.5.1. I never had Background App Refresh turned on and I haven't found any downloading song in the Music app. I might try to backup my phone to iTunes and do a reset later. I hope Apple fixes this issue soon.

While reports of the Music app draining battery in the background go back to April, there has been a rapid uptick in reports over the last week, suggesting Apple may have recently changed something on the server side which is causing the problem.

Below are some of the steps that users have taken to try to resolve the issue, but which appear to have a low rate of success.

• Force quit the Music app.
  
  
• Restart / Restore *iPhone*.
  
  
• Delete Music app then reinstall it.
  
  
• Turn off Automatic Downloads (Settings -> Music -> Automatic Downloads).
  
  
• Disable background app refresh (Settings -> General -> Background App Refresh -> Disable Music).
  
  
• Turn off Mobile Data (Settings -> Music -> Mobile Data).
  
  
• Cancel all downloads in the Music Library.

Some users have resorted to deleting the Music app on their device, which brings the battery usage to an end. For those with *Apple Music* subscriptions, however, this isn't even a short-term solution
.

 

[sultrysandy]

13 years of iPhone: Why Apple's first smartphone was far from a guaranteed success

.
This was meant to be post Monday, June 29, but once again I failed.

Apple may never have been under as much pressure as it was in the months between unveiling the iPhone and shipping it to customers on June 29, 2007, exactly 13 years ago today.

"This is a day I've been looking forward to for two and a half years," said Steve Jobs at the unveiling of the iPhone on January 9, 2007. We had to then spend almost a full six more months waiting to get our hands on one, but finally the iPhone shipped on June 29, 2007 and for once, Apple's claims were meekly understated compared to what actually happened.

That first iPhone was the embodiment of why people like Apple — and why others do not. If you like computing and if you like devices, you could look at the technical specifications for this phone and call it a failure. Plenty of people did.

Even compared to other phones of its day, the iPhone was technically anemic. It lacked the physical keyboard every other phone had, and while that criticism now seems quaintly prehistoric, others are still with us to this day. The iPhone cost too much and it was slow. Even today, you get criticized if you're not somehow both fast and cheap.


Development at a cost

Except most people do not focus on lists of specifications, they look at what the device can do for them. And in that respect, there simply was no comparison with the other phones of its day.

Apple knew that, Apple was banking on it, and Apple reportedly spent $150 million putting their money where its mouth was. Yet nobody could be certain the iPhone would sell and nobody could imagine how enormous it would become.

So in the build up to that January unveiling, the iPhone was an enormous gamble.

"None of this could really have happened without Steve Jobs," author Fred Vogelstein told CNN. "In order to build the iPhone, you essentially had to bet the company. He essentially had to shut down all product development on everything else and suck all his most talented engineers into this one project."

"So if the iPhone had failed," he continued, "there were no other products in the pipeline that Apple could've fallen back on."

All of this contributed to just how tense the iPhone team was as Jobs unveiled their creation. What made that moment worse was that his keynote presentation was the first time that the iPhone demo had worked all the way through.

If you watch the launch video, any time Jobs is behind a plinth demonstrating a feature on the iPhone, you can see spare iPhones ready to be picked up if anything goes wrong with the first one.

What you can't see is the row of Apple engineers passing a bottle of whisky between themselves as each risky element of the demo worked without a hitch.

It must have felt great to be part of the iPhone team that day. Maybe you were a bit the worse for wear from the whisky, surely you were all exhausted from the two or more years of development, but the reaction in that room was everything Apple could've hoped for.

The reaction outside was not. Everyone was talking about the iPhone, and they were talking so much that it was like a gift of millions of dollars of free advertising. And plenty of people were excited, but we wouldn't hear from them until June 29 when they could demonstrate their excitement by buying the device.

In the months leading up to that, those people who we did hear from, who had a platform from which to speak, they were not excited. They may have been fearful, and they certainly saw some valid flaws, but they were certain Apple had blown it.


Waiting time

The iPhone was announced in January chiefly because regulations meant its existence was going to be known soon anyway. Apple was making a telecommunications device and that has to go through approvals process. Apple just got ahead of the process being announced.

In the five months and 20 days between then and the iPhone actually shipping, Apple had to make the phone work. They got away with what they called a 'golden path' demo, where it worked so long as you did precisely the specified things in the right order. You couldn't ship that to customers.

Steve Jobs with the original iPhone



And as they worked, the world waited — and the world did not wait patiently. Throughout the half year between unveiling and release, the iPhone faced increasing criticism.

Famously, Microsoft's then CEO Steve Ballmer mocked it.

"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share," he told USA Today. "No chance. Would I trade 96% of the market for 4% of the market? I want to have products that appeal to everybody."

"It's a $500 subsidized item," he continued. "They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get."

That was not an instant reaction, though. It was not a competitor's knee-jerk response, because Ballmer said it in April 2007, nearly four months after the unveiling.

In hindsight Ballmer was wrong, and even he has said so since, but it wasn't a casual first-thought analysis, it was after consideration.

Not everyone considered the iPhone in this wait, not for very long anyway. Mike Lazaridis, then co-CEO of Blackberry, was impressed by the phone.

"These guys are really, really good," he is reported to have said about Apple's iPhone.

"It's okay," his co-CEO Jim Balsillie apparently replied, "we'll be fine."

So the heads of technology firms thought Apple had blown it. Much or maybe even most of the media did too.

Steve Jobs jokes about an rotary-dial iPhone, not mentioning that Apple actually considered something like it



AdAge predicted "Why the iPhone Will Fail" in a June 18, 2007 article. Just days before the phone shipped, the magazine concluded that it would be "a major disappointment."

TechCrunch went further and said the iPhone "will bomb."

"That virtual keyboard will be about as useful for tapping out emails and text messages as a rotary phone," it said. "Don't be surprised if a sizable contingent of iPhone buyers express some remorse at ditching their BlackBerry when they spend an extra hour each day pumping out emails on the road."

Even closer to launch day, Walt Mossberg, then of All Things D, identified genuine issues such as the lack of copy-and-paste, but also predicted success.

"The iPhone is simply beautiful," he wrote. "Expectations for the iPhone have been so high that it can't possibly meet them all. It isn't for the average person who just wants a cheap, small phone for calling and texting. But, despite its network limitations, the iPhone is a whole new experience and a pleasure to use."

After the launch, David Pogue of The New York Times, criticized its sealed battery and how it was on a slow network.

"As it turns out, much of the hype and some of the criticisms are justified," he wrote in the New York Times. "The iPhone is revolutionary; it's flawed. It's substance; it's style. It does things no phone has ever done before; it lacks features found even on the most basic phones."

Yet still, he also produced a musical tribute to it.

We'd waited half the year for the iPhone and then it was available. During the remaining half of the year, Apple sold 1.39 million iPhones (according to Statista). In comparison, the iPhone would peak at 231.22 million sold in 2015.

We expected a successful product, we expected millions of people to use them," iPhone senior manager Andy Grignon told CNN on the phone's tenth anniversary in 2017.

"Honestly, I don't know that I expected a billion people to use it," he continued. "It's how you find jobs, it's how you communicate, it's how you do all these things, we had no idea that this was the product we were trying to create."
.

 

[sultrysandy]

Apple iOS 14: iPhone changes coming in fall 2020

.
iPhone users can now get a first look at the biggest changes coming to their phones this fall

Apple CEO Tim Cook delivers the keynote address during the 2020 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) at Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California, June 22, 2020.



Apple on Thursday released the first public beta version of iOS 14, the latest version of the iPhone operating system.

The software allows anyone with an iPhone that came out in 2015 or later to try out the software that will launch with iPhone models in the fall. It’s not the final, fully polished version of iOS 14 — that’s usually released in September.

The public beta enables users who want to see what changes Apple has made this year and access new features, such as a redesigned home screen with automatically updating widgets, automatically organizing apps, and a new Siri interface. Interested users can sign up for the public beta here.

This version of iOS isn’t for everyone — as beta software, it’s got bugs in it, and many users report these bugs to Apple so it can fix them before the official launch later this year. If you prize stability on your phone, you most likely want to wait until the fall release.

But if you’re curious or a tech enthusiast, it’s a good way to get ahead of some big changes coming to iPhones this fall. Here’s what’s new:


Redesigned home screen with widgets

The most prominent change: Apple has redesigned the phone’s home screen. Now, in addition to the grid of apps that hasn’t changed since the iPhone was first released in 2007, you can add “widgets,” or small little software programs with live-updating information about maps, photos, news, or anything a software developer decides to build.


App Library

There’s also a new panel when you swipe left at the home screen called App Library, which automatically organizes and sorts your apps for you, as well as provides a list in alphabetical order.


Picture-in-picture

You can now watch a video or videoconference while you use another app. The picture-in-picture window can be moved and resized.


Less intrusive notifications for phone calls

In previous versions of iOS, when a phone call came in, it would take over the entire screen, even if you were doing something else. In iOS 14, it appears as a banner, like other notifications. The new notification also applies to FaceTime calls and third-party apps like Skype.


New Siri interface

Similarly, Siri no longer takes over the entire screen on an iPhone when you ask it a question. Instead, in iOS 14, Siri pops up from the bottom of the screen, and provides your answer as a banner notification.


Translate app

iOS 14 will have a new built-in app, Translate, that’s able to translate conversations in real time when placed between two people speaking different languages. It’s similar to translation apps made by companies like Baidu, Google and Microsoft, but built right into the phone.


Web page translation in mobile Safari

Desktop browsers have offered automated web page translation for years, for when a user needs to get the gist of a foreign website. Now the features is available on mobile Safari.


New Memoji avatars

There are a lot of new customization options for Apple’s Memoji, its cartoon avatar program built into the iPhone, including a way to add a face mask (a very 2020 touch).


iMessage improvements

Apple has made a lot of tweaks to the text messaging interface on iOS 14. Users can now pin important conversations to the top of the feed, mention contacts inside group messages, and thread messages inside group messages.

Several of these features have been available on competing messaging apps like WhatsApp, and will help users control what they see in their messaging inbox.


Emoji search

The iPhone keyboard now has a search field just for emoji — instead of scrolling through hundreds of emoji for the specific smiley face you want, you can simply search.


Under the hood

There are lots of other changes to iOS 14 that are largely out of consumer sight, including new privacy features in Safari, better Siri suggestions and automation, and international features like redesigned keyboards for specific languages like Japanese.






Notes:

Besides iOS 14 for iPhone, the Beta Software Program also includes iPadOS 14 and tvOS 14.


Public beta versions for macOS Big Sur and watchOS 7 have not currently been released, but Apple says they are coming soon. macOS Big Sur is a major update that will lay the groundwork for the shift over to Apple Silicon. watchOS 7 introduces new features such as sleep tracking, new watch faces and additional workout options.


Apple strongly recommends users don't install the betas on to "mission-critical" or primary devices, as there is the remote possibility of data loss or other issues. Instead, testers should install betas onto secondary or non-essential devices, and to make sure there are sufficient backups of important data before updating.
.

 

[sultrysandy]

OS 14 public beta: how to install

.
Your iPhone is getting tons of fun new features this fall, but you can try them now — here’s how

Widgets in iOS 14 - Apple



Apple released the public beta for iOS 14 on Thursday, and anyone can install it on their iPhone, so long as it’s an iPhone 6s or newer.

It’s a test version of the full software that will roll out to all iPhones this fall, and it includes a lot of fun new features.

There are widgets on the home screen, for example, so you can see little windows that show the weather, photos, music controls and more. And it automatically organizes all of your apps for you. Plus, Siri has a new look and doesn’t take over the whole screen.

I’ve been running the early beta on my iPhone for the past few weeks and it works pretty well. I haven’t run into many problems. If you’re OK with some relatively minor bugs — sometimes the weather widget doesn’t load for me — or just have an old iPhone lying around and want to test out the new features to see what they’re like, it’s really easy to run the public beta of iOS 14.

Here’s how to try the iOS 14 public beta.



How to install the iOS 14 public beta on your iPhone

• Visit Apple’s beta software program website from your iPhone.
  
  
• Click “Sign up.”
  
  
• Enter in the email and password associated with your Apple account.
  
  
• Accept the agreement terms (Apple recommends you don’t use this on a primary device, so keep that in mind.)
  
  
• Click the iOS 14 option.
  
  
• Choose “enroll your device.”
  
  
• Install the beta profile.
  
  
• Open Settings > General > Software update.
  
  
• Your device will download and install iOS 14.

That’s it! Now you have the iOS 14 beta installed. Apple typically updates it with changes, including new features and bug fixes, every few weeks until the final version launches in the fall. So be sure to keep updating your device until then.
.

 

[sultrysandy]

Apple iOS 14 privacy improvements: visual notifications

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Apple’s next iPhone update adds new privacy protections — and you won’t be able to miss them



The next version of iOS for iPhones will give new visual notifications when apps are accessing the device’s microphone, camera, clipboard, or other sensitive data.

The moves this year are in character for Apple, which has prioritized privacy engineering on a product level and privacy more generally as a key selling point for its products.

In the past, many new iOS security features have forced companies to react or change their apps. For example, last year, Facebook issued a blog post explaining their policy ahead of an Apple change that informed users when apps were collecting background location data. That could happen again as iOS 14 gets nearer to release this fall.

Right now, it’s in a public beta release so Apple can fix bugs before it officially comes out.


Here are the big new privacy features in iOS 14:


A green light will show up whenever an app is using the phone’s camera.

When an app is using the camera, a small green light will be turned on automatically in iOS 14.



An orange light will turn on whenever an app is using the phone’s microphone.
(Although it’s hard to tell from these screenshots, these little lights are part of the software and show up on the main display -- they’re not little LED lights built into new phones.)

Whenever an app, like Voice Memos in this photo, is using the iPhone’s microphone, a orange indicator light will automatically turn on.



For years, people have alleged that social apps like Facebook use the iPhone’s microphone to listen into conversations surreptitiously and target ads, claiming that they saw an ad for a company or product right after they were talking about it. Facebook has consistently denied it.

But if that were happening, iPhones would begin warning users with iOS 14. In a brief Facebook session on iOS 14, the microphone indicator didn’t turn on unless I was recording video.


A notification banner when an app has accessed the phone’s clipboard.

The banner at the top of the screen says this app has accessed the iPhone’s universal clipboard.



The clipboard is a software feature that stores text you’ve copied, such as text from an email or a URL from a web site, so you can paste it into other places. Apps that can access this information can learn a lot about a user’s activity on their phone. According to research from Naked Security, a security firm, 54 top apps have been found to use clipboard access.


You don’t have to give an app access to your entire camera roll.

Apps that don’t need access to all your photos can be limited to just what they need.



In iOS 14, you can choose to give an app only access to specific photos or albums. Before, it was an all-or-nothing proposition.


Mandatory labels next to a listing on Apple’s App Store describe which type of data the app collects. Apple compares them to “nutrition labels” on food.

The new privacy focused labels aren’t on the App Store yet. “We’re going to require each developer to self-report their practices,” Apple privacy engineer Eric Neuenschwander said when the feature was announced. The labels will likely launch alongside the official software in the fall.


Apps will need permission to track you for advertising purposes

Until now, advertisers could use a device ID number called the IDFA to better target ads and estimate how effective they are. In iOS 14, each app that wants to use these identifiers will ask users to opt-in to tracking when it is the app is first launched: People can choose “Allow Tracking,” or “Ask App Not to Track.” So if users want to provide more data for advertisers to serve you better ads, they need to explicitly opt-in.

There is also a new system-wide setting, “Allow Apps to Request To Track,” that lets you opt out of all advertising identifier tracking entirely. If you select it, apps won’t even ask you the question -- they just won’t be able to track you. This toggle replaces an old setting in the Settings app called “Limit Ad Tracking.”
.

 

[Stillrandy]

Almost seems like it's getting too complicated? So many more features, bells, and whistles ...

 

[sultrysandy]

Almost seems like it's getting too complicated? So many more features, bells, and whistles ...

If you're able, play using an Apple II for a little suing command line.


ProDOS 8 v2.0.3

VisiCalc

And today it's as evident just by looking how a program's size progressively grows.

And it's just as big and complex behind the scenes.
.

 

[sultrysandy]

Apple Updates iWork Apps for macIS and iOS

.
Apple Updates iWork Apps for Mac for iBooks Author Transition, YouTube and Vimeo Embeds

Apple Thursday updated its iWork apps for the Mac to version 10.1, introducing new features for Pages, Keynote, and Numbers.

The Pages app now supports importing books from iBooks Author, which Apple discontinued and removed from the App Store on July 1. The update app also allows videos from YouTube and Vimeo to be played right in documents, with release notes below.

- Play YouTube and Vimeo videos right in your documents.
- Easily add captions and titles to images, videos, shapes, and other objects.
- Create more flexible formulas using new functions.
- Import an *iBooks* Author book to work on it in Pages.

Numbers also supports playing YouTube and Vimeo videos in spreadsheets, plus it has new functions that include XLOOKUP, XMATCH, and REGEX for matching patterns, manipulating text, and creating flexible formulas.

- Play YouTube and Vimeo videos right in your spreadsheets.
- Easily add captions and titles to images, videos, shapes, and other objects.
- New functions, including XLOOKUP, XMATCH, and REGEX, let you match patterns, manipulate text, and create flexible formulas.

Keynote has a new "Play Slideshow in Window" option that lets you access other applications when presenting slides locally or through video conferencing, along with some other new features outlined in the release notes.

- Use the new "Play Slideshow in Window" option to have access to other applications while presenting locally or via video conferencing.
- Movies can now play through slide transitions. Add the same movie to multiple slides to play from one slide to the next.
- Use the Align to Path option to have objects stay pointed in the correct direction while following a motion path.
- Easily add captions and titles to images, videos, shapes, and other objects.

Keynote, Pages, and Numbers for Mac and iOS are all free downloads that can be accessed in the Mac App Store.

• Pages for iOS [Direct Link]
  
  
• Keynote for iOS [Direct Link]
  
  
• Numbers for iOS [Direct Link]
  
  
• Pages for macOS [Direct Link]
  
  
• Keynote for macOS [Direct Link]
  
  
• Numbers for macOS [Direct Link]

.

 

[Stillrandy]

If you're able, play using an Apple II for a little suing command line.
ProDOS 8 v2.0.3

VisiCalc

And today it's as evident just by looking how a program's size progressively grows.
And it's just as big and complex behind the scenes.
.

A nice touche' Sandy! I do remember using Visicalc on some machine or other back in the 80's. Then Lotus 123 came along and we all switched to that. But, Excel now has so many features and capabilities it is a study in itself. I have been retired since 1996, so a lot of those features are not useful to me now, although I have many (fairly simple) spreadsheet workbooks in which I keep tax info, medicare alternatives. So, yes, the capabilities are welcome.

 

[sultrysandy]

LinkedIn sued over allegation it secretly reads Apple users' clipboard content

.
Microsoft Corp’s LinkedIn was sued by a New York-based iPhone user on Friday for allegedly reading and diverting users’ sensitive content from Apple Inc’s Universal Clipboard application.



According to Apple’s website, Universal Clipboard allows users to copy text, images, photos, and videos on one Apple device and then paste the content onto another Apple device.

According to the lawsuit filed in San Francisco federal court by Adam Bauer, LinkedIn reads the Clipboard information without notifying the user.

LinkedIn did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment.

According to media reports from last week, 53 apps including TikTok and LinkedIn were reported to be reading users’ Universal Clipboard content, after Apple’s latest privacy feature started alerting users whenever the clipboard was accessed with a banner saying “pasted from Messages.”

“These “reads” are interpreted by Apple’s Universal Clipboard as a “paste” command,” Bauer’s lawsuit alleged.

A LinkedIn executive had said on Twitter last week that the company released a new version of its app to end this practice.

Developers and testers of Apple’s operating system iOS 14 found that LinkedIn’s application on iPhones and iPads “secretly” read users’ clipboard “a lot,” according to the complaint.

The lawsuit seeks to certify the complaint as class action based on alleged violation of the law or social norms, under California laws.

According to the complaint, LinkedIn has not only been spying on its users, it has been spying on their nearby computers and other devices, and it has been circumventing Apple’s Universal Clipboard timeout.

The Bill of Rights contains our freedom of speech, denies the government the authority to infringe on our right to bear arms, but it does not mention our right to privacy. And we do not have it, especially on the web.


The adage goes, "If you're not paying for a service, you're the product, not the customer,"

Well what in the hell so you expect? Microsoft is compensated making Windows free by recording then phoning home with user's info, and so called free web sites do the same thing.
.

 

[sultrysandy]

iPhone Users Who Experienced 'Batterygate' Can File to Receive Around $25 Settlement

.
iPhone Users Who Experienced 'Batterygate' Can Now File to Receive Around $25 Settlement From Apple


Earlier this year, Apple agreed to settle a U.S. class action lawsuit that accused the company of "secretly throttling" older iPhone models. Now, eligible iPhone owners are beginning to be notified about their legal rights and options.

Under the proposed settlement, Apple will provide a cash payment of approximately $25 to each eligible iPhone owner who submits a claim, with its total payout to fall between $310 million and $500 million. The exact amount that each iPhone owner receives could vary slightly based on the number of claims submitted.

The class includes any U.S. resident who owns or previously owned an iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, and/or iPhone SE that ran iOS 10.2.1 or later, and/or an iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus that ran iOS 11.2 or later, before December 21, 2017. Class members also must have experienced "diminished performance" on their devices.

A website has been set up where eligible class members can submit a claim or review their other options, including excluding themselves from the lawsuit to retain the ability to sue Apple individually over the matter. All claims must be submitted online or received by letter mail by October 6, 2020, or else payment is forfeited.

Apple has denied all allegations and is entering into this settlement to "avoid burdensome and costly litigation." The settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing by Apple, according to the U.S. District Court for Northern California.

The class action lawsuit was filed in December 2017, shortly after Apple revealed that it throttles the maximum performance of some older iPhone models with chemically aged batteries when necessary in order to prevent the devices from unexpectedly shutting down. The complaint described the move as "one of the largest consumer frauds in history."

Apple introduced this battery/performance management system in iOS 10.2.1, but it did not initially mention the change in the update's release notes. Likewise, in a statement issued a month later, Apple still only mentioned vague "improvements" resulting in a significant reduction in unexpected *iPhone* shutdowns.

Apple only revealed exactly what the so-called "improvements" were after Primate Labs founder John Poole visualized that some *iPhone* 6s and *iPhone* 7 devices suddenly had lower benchmark scores starting with iOS 10.2.1 and iOS 11.2 respectively, despite operating at maximum performance on previous versions.

Apple apologized for its lack of communication in December 2017, and reduced the price of battery replacements to $29 for *iPhone* 6 and newer through the end of 2018 to appease customers. Apple then released iOS 11.3 with a new feature that enables users to track their *iPhone* battery's health and performance status.

The performance management system has also been disabled by default since iOS 11.3, and it is only enabled if an *iPhone* suffers an unexpected shutdown. The performance management can be manually disabled by users as well.
.

 

[sultrysandy]

Tim Cook's Apple Silicon transition follows Steve Jobs' Intel shift script

Apple's Tim Cook and Steve Jobs brought different presentation styles to their Apple Silicon and Intel Mac transition announcements using the same playbook, and both had to achieve exactly the same results.

Watching the WWDC 2020 keynote is a good idea, both because it's an excellent roundup of what's happening — and because it was just so very well done. However, there is one section that is likely to get viewed over and over again, and long after 2020 is behind us.

It's the final segment of the show, starting at one hour and 26 minutes in to the presentation. This is where Tim Cook sells us all on the move away from Intel. It's as deftly done as the rest of the presentation, and it easily replaced the phrase "ARM Mac" with "Apple Silicon."


By the numbers

Steve Jobs was presenting WWDC 2005, on June 6, at the Moscone Center, San Francisco. "Now, let's go to a big topic," he said, after detailing Mac OS X Tiger.

"Let's talk about transitions," he continued. "The Mac in its history has had two major transitions so far, right? The first one: 68k to PowerPC. And that transition happened about ten years ago in the mid 90s. I wasn't there then, but the team did a great job from everything I hear."

It was the last item in the presentation, and Jobs took us through the news of the transition, plus specifics of its timetable, in about 40 minutes. That included bringing four guest presenters on stage, including ones from Microsoft and Adobe.

Flashforward 15 years and Tim Cook was on video at WWDC 2020, on June 22, recorded at an empty Steve Jobs Theater in Apple Park. "Today is going to be a truly historic day for the Mac," he began. "Today we're going to tell you about some really big changes, how we're going to take the Mac to a whole new level."

Cook took us through the news of the transition, the unveiling of the name Apple Silicon, and on through some broad timetable details, in about 22 minutes. That included bringing three other presenters in, though they were all from Apple.

They did also tell us, though, about how Microsoft and Adobe had already made the transition.


The big sell

It's curious how Cook used more hyperbole than Jobs, using phrases like "historic" and "whole new level," where the 2005 presentation was actually a bit lower-key. In 2005, the showman Jobs wanted to show that this was a necessary move, and that Apple was going to easily take it in its stride.

Jobs explained how move was essential for the future of the Mac, then he did the trick of revealing that the Mac he'd been using throughout the presentation was an Intel one. Finally, he demonstrated the Rosetta software that would mean people could use their older apps, and extolled developers to get to work with the new Developer Transition Kit.

Back in 2005, two years before the iPhone launched, the Mac was more important to Apple than it is now. Jobs wanted people to be excited by the move, he wanted to attract users back to the Mac, but overall he wanted this to be seen as close to being business as usual as he could. Apple was doing this because it was necessary, and because it would bring us clear benefits.
The reasons it will get rewatched are the same as the ones for why Steve Jobs's 2005 announcement about moving to Intel are.

Both Cook and Jobs had to convey a technically quite complex issue — compare a processor transition to the launch of new emoji — and one that is crucial to the company. It's a transition that will see hardware sales drop for a time, but it is also one that could potentially see developers abandoning the Mac.

These presentations have to sell us on the transition, they have to make us think it's essential, that it's for our benefit — and that it will be easy.

In one corner, Steve Jobs with his famous on-stage presence, his salesman skill that has had books written about it. And in the other corner, Tim Cook, highly respected but not especially known for that same kind of attention-grabbing presentation. It's not as if he's Steve Balmer, but he's not Steve Jobs either.

In 2020, Cook sounded more like he needed to drum up excitement. Apple can now afford to take a hit in its hardware sales if people stop buying while they wait for the new Macs. But he wants them waiting, he wants them waiting and then eagerly buying. He doesn't want people to drift off to the PC.

So he did make more of a drumroll about it. Although, just the fact that the coronavirus lockdown means that this was all on video instead of on stage did give it an extra urgency, and extra push.

What Cook ultimately had to achieve, though, was precisely — precisely — what Jobs had needed do to do.

Cook covered exactly the same ground, talking about the performance benefits, conveying how a major change like this was just business as usual for Apple. He covered why moving to Apple Silicon was essential and he extolled developers to get the new Developer Transition Kit.

And this time it was Craig Federighi who got to pull the stunt of revealing that the Mac we'd seen used for demos earlier in the keynote was an Apple Silicon one.


It worked

Apple's move from PowerPC to Intel worked. That's undeniable on any level from technological to straight marketing. Apple made that giant move — which Microsoft has never managed — and made it so smoothly that we think it was easy.

We can't know yet whether Tim Cook, or the Apple of 2020, can make the ARM move so successfully. But crucial to both transitions was the need to get developers and customers on board.

In 2005, Jobs did that by laying out the plan, the road map, and sticking to it. Apple actually completed its transition far faster than expected, but faster is fine, slower is not. Apple was clear and Apple delivered.

Right now, we can only know that Apple was clear. We might wish that Cook had told us which Mac was going to get Apple Silicon first, but Jobs didn't tell us that with Intel either.

And just look at that name. No one leaked it, no one expected it, but now everyone uses the phrase "Apple Silicon." Tim Cook announced it and we've all instantly embraced it.

Apple has made the transition sound necessary, and obvious, and even painless. We'll find out just how painless it is eventually, but both Cook and Jobs needed to sell this idea.

And the two very different CEOs did it in remarkably similar ways.
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[sultrysandy]

Apple Shares Humorous 'Working-From-Home Thing' Video

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Apple today shared a funny video focused on the problems that people working from home have to deal with, including noisy children, chaotic schedules, communication issues, and more.

The whole working-from-home thing — Apple
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_pru8U2RmM&feature=youtu.be



The video focuses on showing off Apple products and their capabilities that can be useful when working from home, such as the ability to scan a document with an iPhone, mark up a PDF, Siri Reminders, and more.

The Underdogs are back, navigating their new normal with lots of unknowns but one reliable constant: Apple helps unleash their creativity and productivity even when they're working from home.

It's still a world of deadlines, meetings, group chats, conference calls, coworkers, and bosses. But it's also a world of kids, a dog, and a hairless cat. And it's a world where collaboration never misses a beat, whether the team uses iPad, *iPhone*, iMac, MacBook, or all of the above. Working from home (or working from anywhere) isn't new, but what you can make happen together is.

The seven minute video follows a group of colleagues attempting to work through an important project while overcoming all the problems that come with working remotely, and it comes after a similar "Apple at Work" video that Apple published last year featuring the same actors.

Other highlighted products and features in the video include Memoji, writing with Apple Pencil, Group FaceTime, AirPods, the iPad Pro's measure app, and the sleep tracking feature on the Apple Watch.
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[sultrysandy]

Congress Asks Apple, Google to Clamp Down On Foreign Apps

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For the past week, House lawmakers have taken a brief pause from, say, probing into Silicon Valley’s potential antitrust issues, and deciding just how we should all feel about the FBI’s practice of warrantless wiretapping, in the name of rallying around a common enemy: foreign tech companies.

Over the past seven days, we’ve seen the Trump administration consider a full-on ban of any apps owned by China-based companies. The White House prepped a new round of sanctions set to smack down any business dealings with Huawei and other Chinese telcos, and TikTok is under unprecedented scrutiny for its own Chinese origins. And now, the Congressional Committee on Oversight and Reform has sent two formal letters to Apple and Google’s respective CEOs asking them to use their power to probe where their third-party app developers are storing their data.

In both letters, Stephen Lynch, Chairman of the National Security Subcommittee noted his concerns over mobile apps that are owned or operated by foreign developers—or even those that simply store any American’s data overseas—could potentially leave the door open for some sort of spyware to sneak onto a citizen’s device.

“At a minimum,” he wrote, the two companies “should take steps to ensure that users are aware of the potential privacy and national security risks of sharing sensitive information with applications that store data in countries adversarial to the United States, or whose developers are subsidiaries of overseas companies.”

He’s right. For the past year, in particular, we’ve seen a good handful of hacking attempts—successful or otherwise—stemming from hacker groups in China, Russia, and the Middle East. If Apple and Google had a mandate requiring a given app developer to disclose which countries might be storing the data from their apps, it could, ostensibly, help your average app-downloader judge whether a certain note-taking app is worth downloading, or whether it might be offshoring data with the likes of a company like Israel’s vaguely-terrifying NSO group.

In the letter, Lynch pointed out that since he last floated the idea to Apple and Google back in January, neither company could name any “statutory or regulatory limitations” that would keep either of them from requiring devs to name countries where their data will be stored. He closed both of these letters by asking each of them whether they’d commit to this sort of mandate for their devs and whether they’d make this information available for the people browsing and downloading off their respective platforms, and gave each of them until the month’s end to respond. Gizmodo reached out to both companies for comment but did not receive an immediate reply.

Considering all of the domestic surveillance that’s been largely proven to be inescapable for any American with a decent cell phone connection, it can feel like a bit of a misdirection on congress’s part to paint “adversarial countries” as the problem, rather than the data collection industry writ large. If Apple and Google do take these new mandates into account, it might be worth asking them how we can get some insight into the invasions of privacy that happen closer to home.







So Congress wants Apple and Google to police foreign apps and the app makers. But it's acceptable for companies (i.e. Apps, websites, ISP's er cetera) in the U.S. to harvest people's data.

And at the same time politicians and law enforcement want back-doors for them to access users devices and activity. (really, they'll get a court order/warrant, and have legitimate reason)


Trust us, we're American bureaucrats, I mean politicians, representing you.
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