At our 25th August meeting we looked at privacy features across Apple products and services, and talked about Apple news. Members discussed several other topics.
Apple Privacy
Robert talked about some of the privacy features across Apple Products and services which are handily summarised on this page.
Some of the key features were:
- Safari privacy settings and Privacy Report.
- Photos locking hidden and recently deleted albums and the option not to include location data when sharing.
- Options to disable Siri suggestions in Spotlight and to opt into sharing your audio to improve Siri recognition (found in Settings/Privacy & Security/Analytics & Improvements).
- App privacy labels.
Apple also have a page about controlling what you share.
Apple News
- The 25th anniversary of the original iMac.
- We talked about the history of the iMac, the Wikipedia article has this nice summary graphic.
- DaveK mentioned this interesting thread about the design of the infamous Apple bottom-charging mice that can’t be used while charging.
- Apple wins another stay on changing App Store anti-steering rules.
- Apple to invest in ARM as it floats on the Nasdaq in September.
- We also discussed the interesting history of ARM.
- Apple Music gains a new personalised “Discovery Station“.
- Apple asks developers to justify using some APIs to improve privacy.
Member topics
- Ann-Kay mentioned scanning with Apple’s macOS Image Capture app.
- DavidB showed us some “upside down” photos taken in an upside down house.
- DavidB mentioned reports of SanDisk SSD failures as reported by ArsTechnica. He recommended Steve Gibson’s discussion of the problem on this Security Now podcast episode (about 16 minutes in).
- Ben warned of the risk of purchasing fake memory cards.
- Robert mentioned the IBM “DeathStar” hard drive failures in the early 2000’s.