Apple releases iOS 16.2

Yesterday, Apple released a pretty major update to the iPhone and iPad: iOS 16.2 and iPadOS 16.2.  Going from 16.1 to 16.2 may not seems like a big increase just based on the number, but there a large number of new features in this early Christmas present from Apple.  I’m sure I’ll be discussing them in much more detail in the future, but here are the highlights:

Built-in Whiteboard

Freeform is a new built-in (and free) whiteboard app.  You have a huge white canvas, and you can write or draw whatever you want. It is easy to add shapes, changes your pens, insert pictures, etc. The tools are all familiar to anyone who has used other Apple apps like Notes, Keynote, etc., except for a neat new drawing tool called Blotch that lets you draw the outline of a shape and then it fills it with color that appears behind text.

Better yet, there are lots of sharing tools.  For example, much like you could previously share Notes with others, you can share a Freeform board with someone else and, if you let them, they can make edits.  Or you can show off the whiteboard to others in a FaceTime call, perhaps as you explain what is going on.

I can envision lots of uses of this for lawyers and others who collaborate on projects.

Karaoke

As I previewed last week, if you subscribe to Apple Music and you have a new enough device, you can now use Apple Music Sing to see improved lyrics on songs and to sing along, even turning down the vocal track as you do so.  It’s an interesting feature that my daughter instantly started using as soon as I showed it to her last night … and then I had to hear her complain that her iPhone SE isn’t new enough to use this feature.

Better encryption on iCloud

Another new feature that I discussed last week is Apple’s new Advanced Data Protection.  Once you turn this on, your information on Apple’s servers—such as the iCloud backup of your iPhone and iPad—can be encrypted in a way that not even Apple can access your data.

New options on the iPhone 14 Pro Lock Screen

If you use the always-on display on the new iPhone 14 Pro, iOS 16.2 adds new options such as new widgets you can use. Also, there is a new option to not display the wallpaper when the screen dims; only the time (plus widgets if you have them enabled) against a black background.  This is a neat look, and I may consider turning this mode on while I’m sleeping.

AirDrop privacy

The change to AirDrop in iOS 16.2 is either a feature or a restriction, depending upon your perspective. Before iOS 16.2, you could enable AirDrop for only folks in your Contacts or you could enable it for Everyone.  The Everyone function made it very easy for someone else to send you a file, which is useful when you want to use AirDrop.  However, it also meant that a stranger could try to send you a file, which you could reject.  

Now, when you turn the Everyone function on, it only stays on for 10 minutes.  This is good for your privacy.  However, if you liked the way it worked before, it is more cumbersome to have to turn on Everyone so that someone you know can send you a file.  I may just switch to the Contacts selection since most folks who AirDrop files to me are in my Contacts. 

I talked about this more extensively a few weeks ago at the end of Episode 78 of the In the News podcast.

Etc.

There are also many smaller improvements and bug fixes in iOS 16.2.  For example, once you update to iOS 16.2 and your iPhone finishes indexing your Messages app, you can search for photos that you sent or received in Messages based on the content of the photos, such as photos showing dogs.  I can see this being useful when you know that a friend sent you a picture but you cannot remember when and you didn’t save the picture to your photo roll.  Also, the crash detection feature for the new iPhone 14 models was once again improved.

With a brand new app, several big new features, and some nice small new features, this is a packed update for the iPhone and iPad.

       

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[Sponsor] SaneBox -- vastly improve your email Inbox

Thank you to SaneBox for sponsoring iPhone J.D. again this month.  I started using the service about two months ago, and it has completely transformed my Inbox.  When I check my iPhone J.D. email, I now typically see only one or two messages, and they are almost always real messages from real people that I want to read.  This has been a radical transformation from the past, where I would find dozens of messages in my Inbox, almost all of them messages that I would consider junk.  It got to be so bad that sometimes I would miss the good emails that I wanted to see because of the unwanted messages around them.  SaneBox has completely changed this for me.  As a result, I am far more efficient and productive with my email, plus I know approach my inbox with a smile instead of dread.  If you haven't tried SaneBox, you should definitely check it out.

How SaneBox works

SaneBox works with any email service that provides IMAP, EWS - OWA, or Active Sync, such as Yahoo Mail, Gmail, AOL, iCloud, MS Exchange, Microsoft 365, Fastmail, Amazon WorkMail, and others.  I'm currently using it with my iPhone J.D. email account, which is just a normal IMAP account associated with a domain that I own.  You may have an email account exactly like this one.  My inbox receives a lot of emails from lots of different sources: people reaching out to me with questions or suggestions, companies that offer valuable and relevant services, newsletters that I signed up for, but also a lot of unwanted and/or junk email that is not caught by my spam filter.

SaneBox works by analyzing the headers of your emails.  That means that SaneBox sees things like the subject line, date, and who the email is from.  Your emails stay on your current email server; SaneBox never transfers your emails to its own server.  And importantly, SaneBox never looks at the content of your email messages.  Thus, any confidential information that is in your email never gets analyzed or acted upon by SaneBox.  The only way that a SaneBox computer would see something confidential in an email message is if the confidential information was put in the subject line of the email, and even then, SaneBox only reads that information for the purpose of deciding whether and how to sort that email message.

You need to give SaneBox your email address and your email password so that it can see the headers.  But the security of SaneBox has been audited by numerous security firms.  The service has been around since 2010, a long track record that attests to its trustworthiness.

What SaneBox does

The main thing that SaneBox does is analyze the information in the headers of your emails and then filter messages based on that analysis.  For any message that SaneBox thinks is likely a normal email that you would want, SaneBox leaves the email in your Inbox.  For messages that SaneBox considers less useful, such as messages that may be junk, SaneBox moves those emails to a folder called @SaneLater.  Messages that seem to be mailing lists are moved to a folder called @SaneNews.  Messages that SaneBox knows that you don't want to see because you already told SaneBox (more on that below) are moved to @SaneBlackHole.  And so on.  I have more information on these specific folders below, but the end result is something like this: instead of going to your Inbox and seeing 17 new messages when only 3 of them are actually important, you see 5 new messages, including the 3 that are most important. 

Thanks to SaneBox, I am much more efficient when I check email. I check my iPhone J.D. inbox from time to time during the day.  Without SaneBox, if I pause what I am working on and see that I have over a dozen or more new messages, going through those emails becomes a chore.  I need to take the time to separate the important emails from the others, and the whole process wastes time.  With SaneBox, I instead glance at my Inbox and just see a few emails that are important.  Based upon that, I can quickly decide if I need to read or act upon any of them or if I can get back to whatever else I was working on.  Later on, when I know that I have more time to devote to email, I can pay attention to the emails that were moved into another folder such as @SaneLater.   This vastly improves email efficiency.

It also saves you time.  If you receive an alert every time an email comes in, the time that you waste looking at a new email only to discover that it is something unimportant and then trying to get your mind back to the task you were working on before can really add up.  Every week, SaneBox tells you how much time you potentially saved by avoiding these distractions in the prior week.  My most recent report tells me that I saved 1.5 hours last week by avoiding the distractions.  Whether that number is 100% accurate or not, the point remains that I did save time last week, as I do every week, because of SaneBox.

Here is a deeper dive on the main SaneBox folders and other features.  Note that you get to determine which of these folders and features you turn on and off, and you can typically adjust settings on each feature to fine-tune it.  So for example, if you want to keep all newsletters in your Inbox instead of having them automatically moved to @SaneNews, just don't turn on the @SaneLater feature in your SaneBox dashboard.

@SaneBlackHole

My favorite SaneBox folder is @SaneBlackHole.  When I get an email from someone who I don't want to get email from—maybe it is a spam message, maybe it is a marketing company that is of no interest to me, maybe it is a political candidate who I don't want to see literature from, etc.—I simply move it from my Inbox to the folder called @SaneBlackHole.  This trains the folder.  Future emails from that same person or company will automatically move to the @SaneBlackHole folder, stay in that folder for a week, and then get deleted.

Why not just click the unsubscribe button in the unwanted email?  That's fine if you trust the company sending you the email that you don't want.  But sometimes when you click an unsubscribe button, you are confirming to the sender that your email is an active one, and they will turn around and sell your email address to other companies, which results in even more unwanted email.  When you move an email to the @SaneBlackHole folder, the person or company is not alerted that you did so.

What if you make a mistake?  If you put something in the @SaneBlackHole folder by accident, simply move it back into your Inbox.  SaneBox will see that you did that and learn that you don't want future emails from that sender to go into the @SaneBlackHole folder.

Is the @SaneBlackHole folder the same thing as a Spam folder or a Junk folder from your email provider?  Not really.  The end result is similar, but how it gets there is very different.  Your own email provider provides a Spam folder feature that analyzes not only the sender and subject line but also the content of your email to determine if something is spam, phishing, a virus, etc.  Spam folders are not perfect, but when they do work, they perform an important job by moving an unwanted email out of your Inbox.  Even with SaneBox, you should continue to use the Spam folder feature provided by your own email provider.  But as we all know, there are many messages not caught by a Spam folder even though you might want them to be. Perhaps your emial service cannot determine whether it is truly junk because for some types of messages, one person might want the message and another person may not.  While you can often train the Spam folder provided by your email service provider, and you should do so, Spam folders are not always as smart as you want them to be.  Thus, @SaneBlackHole works in a different way, along with your normal Spam or Junk feature, to provide a more customized filter.  If you never want to hear from X again, just move one email from X into the @SaneBlackHole folder.  And then you are done.

SaneBox describes the difference between a Spam folder and the @SaneBlackHole folder this way:  "Keep in mind that @SaneBlackHole is not for SPAM.  It is meant to be used for legitimate email from people or services that you don’t want to see or hear from anymore.  Spammers go out of their way to make each email be sufficiently different so trainings like these don’t work."

For me, the @SaneBlackHole folder has worked extremely well.  Every once in a while, I'll take a look at what is in that folder and see a huge number of emails that used to be going straight to my Inbox.  I'm so thrilled to see that they went there instead and didn't waste my time.

@SaneNews

When SaneBox detects that you are receiving something that looks like a newsletter, it moves the message from your Inbox to the @SaneNews folder.  This is nice because I receive many newsletters that I signed up for and want to receive, but I don't always want them to interrupt my workflow during the day by piling up in my Inbox.  Whenever I'm ready to look at them, such as while I'm having lunch or at the end of the day, they are waiting for me in this folder.

Sometimes, I'll see something show up in @SaneNews that I did not sign up for and that I don't want to receive.  I simply move that email into the @SaneBlackHole folder to train SaneBox to put similar emails there in the future.

On the other hand, sometimes I'll see something that is a newsletter but it is important to me so I'd rather keep it in my Inbox.  For example, perhaps you love reading the free iPhone J.D. email that goes out whenever there is a new post.  (You are not receiving the iPhone J.D. newsletter?  Just click here or scan the QR code to the right to sign up.)  Simply move the email with the newsletter out of @SaneNews and into your Inbox to teach SaneBox that it should keep that particular newsletter in your Inbox so that you will notice it more quickly.

It is nice that @SaneNews, like all SaneBox folders, is simply another folder in your email.  This means that the fact that SaneBox has filtered the email doesn't mean that you don't have easy access to it.  It's not like you need to go to the SaneBox website to view it or anything like that.  Your current mail client, including the Mail app on your iPhone or iPad, just sees @SaneNews as another folder.  Your iPhone, iPad, computer, etc. doesn't need to know that it was the intelligence of SaneBox that moved the message into the @SaneNews folder or any other SaneBox folder, nor does your iPhone need to know that by moving a message from one folder to another folder, you are training the SaneBox service.

@SaneLater

The @SaneLater folder is a place where SaneBox puts emails that it considers likely to be less important, including messages that may be junk.  If there is a type of email that you want to receive but typically don't want to act upon right away, move it from your Inbox to the @SaneLater folder to train SaneBox to move similar messages there in the future.  You can always manually move a message from @SaneLater to your Inbox to train SaneBox that this is an important type of email that deserves to stay in your Inbox.

A lot of the emails that show up in my @SaneLater email are emails that I would consider spam or junk emails and that were not caught by my Spam filter.  So I will often select a bunch of them and move them into the @SaneBlackHole folder so that in the future they will go straight there instead of in my @SaneLater folder.  That system isn't perfect—the spammer may change up the "from" email address slightly to try to confuse SaneBox—but when I move a message into the @SaneBlackHole folder, at least I am trying to do something.

@SaneCC

If a message is sent to someone else but also sent to you as CC, you can have that message automatically go to a @SaneCC folder instead of your Inbox.  I understand the idea here—since the email was not sent directly to you, it is potentially less important than other emails in your Inbox.  I don't have this SaneBox folder turned on because so many of the emails that I receive as a cc are just as important as the ones for which I am in the "to" field.  Nevertheless, I can understand how this may be valuable for many folks.

@SaneNoReplies

Have you ever sent someone an email asking for a response, but then they don't reply, and then you forget that you were waiting for a reply, and then you get annoyed at yourself for not following up sooner?  The @SaneNoReplies folder is an optional folder aimed at addressing this situation.

Here's how it works.  You send an email to someone.  Just like always, your sent email goes into your Sent folder.  But additionally, within a few minutes, SaneBox puts a copy of your sent email into the @SaneNoReplies folder.  When someone replies to your email, the email that you sent is deleted from the @SaneNoReplies folder because it is no longer an email without a reply.  The idea is that you can glance at your @SaneNoReplies folder from time to time to see the message to which there was no reply, and that can remind you to follow up and request a reply.  If you see something in there that doesn't belong—perhaps you never expected a reply, or perhaps the other person replied in some other way like a phone call or a different email—just delete it from that folder and SaneBox will stop waiting for a reply.

Note that the @SaneNoReplies folder only acts upon emails where you sent the first email.  If you are replying to an email chain, nothing that you send will go into this folder. 

SaneReminders

What if you want to make sure that you get a reply within a specific time period, like three days?  When you compose your email, add a bcc or a cc to 3days@sanebox.com.  If three days have passed and you haven't yet received a response, then SaneBox will put a reminder email at the top of your Inbox.  What if you want to get that reminder in three days regardless of whether you get a reply?  Simply add the word "keep" such as keep.3days@sanebox.com.

Pretty much anything that you can think of will work for those SaneBox reminder addresses.  There is a big list of them on this page.  Examples include sunday@sanebox.com, november21@sanebox.com, dec.21.2pm@sanebox.com, etc.

SaneReminders works when you are sending a message and you use that special email as a cc or bcc.  It also works if you receive an email and you want to deal with it at a later date: simply forward the email to a SaneBox reminder address such as friday@sanebox.com.  On Friday, at the top of your inbox, you will see an email reminding you to act upon that email.  (You can configure in the SaneBox settings what time of day those emails show up.)  This is a good way to move an email out of your Inbox so that it doesn't bother you right now, but then have it come back when you will be ready to deal with it.

...and more

This post would get too long if I described every feature of SaneBox.  There are lots of them.  As I noted above, this service has been around for over a decade, so SaneBox has come up with lots of different features over those years.  For example, you can schedule Do Not Disturb periods for your Inbox.  You can create custom folders like @SaneReceipts or @SaneFamily and teach SaneBox how to move things into those folder for you.  And you can do so much more.

Price

SaneBox has lots of different pricing tiers so that you can just pay for what you need, and you can try before you buy to get the service working and find out if it makes sense for you.  It only takes minutes to set it up, and if you don't like the service, simply unsubscribe.  And while you can pay month-to-month if you want, you can save substantially if you sign up for one year or two years.

If you only want to use two SaneBox features, you can choose the "Snack" tier which is $7/month or $59/year or $99 for two years.  The most popular tier is the "Lunch" tier which can work with two email accounts and lets you choose six features for $12/month or $99/year or $169 for two years.  (That's the tier that I paid for.)  You can also get the "Dinner" tier which works with four email accounts and includes every feature for $36/month or $299 a year or $499 for two years.  There are discounts for educational, non-profit, and governmental agencies.

Click here to sign up.  That link includes an affiliate code that provides a small affiliate fee to iPhone J.D. if you decide to pay for a plan. 

Conclusion

SaneBox is a fantastic service that makes your email better.  I recommend that you check out the free trial to see for yourself how it works and the wonders that it can do for your Inbox.

Click here to try SaneBox.

       

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Review: Take Control of Photos, 3rd Edition, by Jason Snell

The iPhone does a great job of taking pictures, but taking pictures is only the beginning.  Once your pictures and video are in Photos, there is so much you can do to edit, organize, search, and share your photos and videos.  There is no "help" button in the Photos app, but you can learn everything that you need to know about Photos in the new-and-improved third edition of Take Control of Photos by Jason Snell.  I was provided a free review copy of this ebook, and I'm impressed.  If you want to get more out of the Photos app yourself, or if you want a great present idea for someone else who loves to take pictures with an iPhone, this $14.99 ebook is a great resource.  It comes in three formats—PDF, EPUB, and Mobipocket (Kindle)—so it can be read on nearly any device.  I read my copy in a PDF app (PDF Expert) on my iPad, and that worked great.

The Photos app can be used on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.  This book covers all three platforms.  Most features can be used on all three devices, but when a feature is only available on one platform or works differently on that platform, Jason explains the differences, such as in the section of the book discussing Portrait Mode Photos:

This book is full of pictures that make it very easy to see what Jason is describing.  That means that you see a lot of pictures of Jason's family and friends in this book, and it also means that what he showing off in the book is very similar to what you will see as you work with your own photo library because his example photos seem typical of a real photo library.

This book covers the basics including the Photos interface, the ways in which you can organize your library, tips for using search, and lots of advice for editing photos, such as an explanation of what all of the different light adjustments can do.

There are detailed sections on sharing photos.  Relatively new additions to the Photos app covered in this book include shared photo libraries, live search in Photos, and duplicate detection.

Jason Snell has been writing a "Take Control" book about Photos since 2015, when he first wrote a book about using Photos on the Mac.  In 2018, he released the first edition of the current version of this book, which covers the Mac, iPhone, and iPad, and that first version was about 150 pages.  The second edition was almost 175 pages, and this edition is just over 200 pages.  Page count is only a crude metric; more relevant is the number of years that Jason has been writing these books.  The latest version of this book reveals his deep understanding of how the Photos app works, and he is able to explain everything in a way that is easy for anyone to understand.

If you consider yourself a more advanced user of the Photos app, then I don't think that this book is for you.  There are other resources that provide detailed editing tips on certain types of pictures, such as getting the best looking picture at sunset or in the snow or making the most of HDR photography, and this book doesn't go deep on topics like that.  Also, this book only discusses using Photos in conjunction with Shortcuts app once, when Jason describes (and shares) a shortcut for resizing photos to make them easier to share.  But to be fair, Photos itself is a basic app.  Once you start getting into more sophisticated projects, you are more likely to use specialized apps like Photoshop or Pixelmator, not Photos.

On the other hand, for any beginning or intermediate level owner of an iPhone, iPad, and/or Mac who has an interest in doing more with Photos, this is an excellent resource.  You already know if that describes you, and that is also why I can see this being a nice gift for Christmas or another occasion if you know of someone who has an interest in doing more with the Photos app and would appreciate a well-written guide that has lots of information in one place.

If you are still not sure if this book is right for you, fortunately, you don't have to guess.  The publisher provides this link where you can download sample pages from across the entire book, and it is a generous sample: 49 pages, including the full index.  Flipping through those dozens of pages will give you a good sense of whether this book is right for you.

Click here to get Take Control of Photos by Jason Snell ($14.99)

       

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Podcast episode 79: ‘Tis the Season for Encryption and Karaoke

Brett and I recorded a fun episode of the In the News podcast on Saturday morning.  We start by discussing Apple's new Advanced Data Protection option, which I expect to be available in iOS 16.2 in just a few days.  I'm looking forward to the extra protection, but it does come with additional risks for you to consider.  Next, we discuss Apple Music Sings, the Karaoke feature also coming in iOS 16.2.  We also explain why you are going to see so many new types of prices for apps and in-app purchases very soon.  We also discuss AirTag stocking stuffers, GoodNotes on Windows, Apple Fitness tips, iPhone tips, and the first reported incident of someone being saved by using Apple's new Emergency SOS via Satellite feature.

In our In the Know segment, Brett shares a tip for customizing the alerts that you get when you receive a new text message.  I discuss different ways to share photos with others using the iCloud link option and related options.

Click here to listen to the audio podcast, or just use your podcast player of choice.  You can also watch the episode on YouTube:

       

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In the News

This week, Apple announced an upcoming new service for folks who subscribe to Apple Music called Apple Music Sing.  I suspect that most people will call it Apple Karaoke.  You activate this feature in the Apple Music app by turning on lyrics and then tapping the icon with a microphone and stars.  What makes Apple Music Sing different from just viewing the lyrics is that you can adjust the volume level of the vocal track so that you can replace the original artist's voice with your own or sing along with the artist. Also, the lyrics will dance to the rhythm of each syllable of the vocals.  Background vocals can animate independently, in a smaller font, from the main vocals.  And a Duet view mode will show different lyrics on each side of the screen.  Sami Fathi of MacRumors lists all of the devices that it will work with.  Although this seems like a natural feature for the Apple TV, he says that it will only work with the newest Apple TV 4K that was introduced in 2022, which is a shame because that excludes a lot of folks.  (Perhaps you can use AirPlay to stream to an older Apple TV model from a supported iPad or iPhone.)  The feature also works with the iPad Pro models introduced in 2021 or later, the iPad Air introduced in 2020 or later, the entry-level iPad introduced in 2021 or later, or the iPad mini introduced in 2021 or later.  On the iPhone, there is better support if you have a model without the button: any model without a button introduced in 2019 (iPhone 11) or later will work.  Or you can use the iPhone SE, but only the model introduced in 2022.  Why are only newer devices supported?  As Sarah Perez of TechCrunch reports, Apple isn't removing vocals from music, and instead your device uses "an on-device machine learning algorithm that processes the music in real time" to remove the vocals from songs selected by Apple (80% of the most-played songs). Apple says that Apple Music Sing will be available this month, and I expect it to be a part of iOS 16.2, which could launch as soon as next week.  So get ready to listen to a lot of poor singing voices with great background music this holiday season—especially if you spend any time near me as I check out the feature.  And now, the rest of the news of note from the past week:

• A quick programming note: this week's episode of the In the News podcast will come out tomorrow instead of today due to Brett's travel schedule.
• 'Tis the season to replace AirTag batteries for many folks.  California attorney David Sparks offers advice for doing so, and recommends an Apple TV remote case that holds an AirTag to help you find the remote.
• Starting this week, App Store developers have a lot more choices on what they charge for apps and in-app purchases.  Prices can now start as low as $0.29, with price points every ten cents up to $10 and every 50 cents up to $50.  Prices can go all the way up to $10,000, although the highest prices need to first be approved by Apple.  Chance Miller of 9to5Mac has more details on the new price points.
• If you want to get yourself or someone else an iPhone 14 Pro by this Christmas, your options are very limited, but Jason Cross of Macworld has some suggestions.
• Frank Bajak of the Washington Post reports on Apple's new Advanced Data Protection feature, which I discussed yesterday.  The article notes that the FBI says that it “continues to be deeply concerned with the threat end-to-end and user-only-access encryption pose, but also notes that "cybersecurity experts have long argued, however, that attempts by law enforcement to weaken encryption with backdoors are ill-advised because they would inherently make the internet less reliable and hurt vulnerable populations including ethnic minorities."
• For a while now, the GoodNotes app that you can use to take handwritten notes on an iPad has also worked on a Mac, and I sometimes find it useful to read through my notes when I am working on my iMac.  In a tweet this week, GoodNotes revealed it is working on a similar product for Windows, which will be very useful for folks like me who need to use a Windows computer at work.
• This week, Apple CEO Tim Cook visited the upcoming TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) factory in Arizona along with President Biden.  Cook confirmed that Apple will use chips made at the plant in its products, including the iPhone.  The plant should open in 2024.  I'm curious how much more it will cost Apple to purchase chips made in the USA, although obviously there are some advantages that come along with that.  Don Clark and Kellen Browning of the New York Times have more details on the announcement and its significance.
• Apple’s VP of Fitness Technologies Jay Blahnik shares workout tips in an article written by Sean Keach of The Sun.
• Tim Hardwick of MacRumors put together a good list of iPhone tips.  Check it out to see if there is one that you didn't already know about.
• If you have an iPhone 14 Pro and want to see live sports scores in the Dynamic Island, Stephen Hackett of 512 Pixels recommends the Sports Alerts app.
• You knew that this report was coming soon.  We now have the first report of a person being saved by using Apple's iPhone 14 Emergency SOS via Satellite feature.  Juli Clover of MacRumors reports that a man stranded in a rural part of Alaska while traveling by snow machine was rescued. 
• And finally, Apple released a trailer to preview a few shows currently streaming on Apple TV+ and many more that are coming in 2023 including Ted Lasso, CODA, Spirited, Causeway, Masters of the Air, Shrinking, Tetris, Sharper, Wool, Hello Tomorrow!, and more.  Wait, Tetris?  No, it is not a movie about fitting shapes into spaces, but instead is based on a true story about the high-stakes legal battle to secure the intellectual property rights to Tetris.

       

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Apple announces Advanced Data Protection to provide greater protection for your encrypted data on iCloud

Most people have a desire to keep certain information private, but that concern is heightened for lawyers and other professionals with a legally-imposed duty of maintaining confidentiality.  Most folks keep information on their iPhones, iPads, etc. that would be considered confidential—either because it is a personal photograph or because it is a document subject to a confidentiality agreement.  But if you backup your device to Apple using iCloud, are you maintaining the confidentiality of the information?  The confidentiality of cloud storage has been discussed countless times by legal ethics authorities over the years (for example, see here and here), but the key is always to be reasonable in protecting the confidentiality of information.  For example, putting confidential documents on an open website that doesn't have a password is unwise, but storing those same documents on encrypted and password-protected servers in the cloud is typically fine.

Up until now, iCloud backups have been encrypted in transit—meaning the information is encrypted as it travels from your iPhone to Apple's iCloud server.  But once on that server, Apple has a key that it could, in theory, use to unlock the data and look at it.  For example, if a criminal suspect backs up his iPhone to iCloud and the police obtain an appropriate warrant, the police can often obtain from Apple a copy of the backed-up data without having to access the iPhone itself.  (As Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal reports, last year, Apple responded to thousands of such requests in the United States.)  Or, if Apple was hacked, a hacker could potentially gain access to your data on iCloud—although Apple says that this hasn't happened in the past.

Yesterday, Apple announced that when iOS 16.2 comes out later this month, it will include a new feature called Advanced Data Protection.  It will work in the United States immediately, and will roll out to the entire world in 2023.  When you turn this on—it is turned off by default—Apple will store your iCloud data in a way that is encrypted such that even Apple cannot read the data.  And this doesn't just work with iCloud; Apple says it works with 22 other categories of information such as Photos, Reminders, Notes, iMessages, and Voice Memos.

What's the catch?  With Advanced Data Protection turned on, only you have the key to your secure data, such as the password that you use to unlock your iPhone.  If you forget your password, Apple cannot help you because it has no way to unlock your encrypted information.  However, Apple offers two ways that you can get help unlocking your encrypted backup even if you forget your password.

First, you can designate a recovery contact, such as a family member or a close friend, somehow who can verify your identity and help you regain access to your account and all of your data if you ever get locked out. 

Second, you can create a recovery key, a randomly generated 28-character code that you should store someplace very secure such as a lock box.

Advanced Data Protection sounds like a fantastic idea for attorneys and others who want extra protection for their data on Apple's cloud servers.  However, with the extra security comes extra responsibility, so think long and hard about how you will use the recovery contact and/or recovery key feature.

Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal conducted a fantastic, short interview with Craig Federighi of Apple to discuss the new Advanced Data Protection feature.  If you have any interest in turning this on once it becomes available later this month, I strongly recommend that you watch this video:

       

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Apple reportedly prevented most recent software of Coinbase release for NFTs in wallets

Coinbase Global Inc. bought a piece of news for iOS users. It stated that customers using Apple Inc.’s iOS would no longer be able to send non-fungible tokens (NFTs) via the cryptocurrency exchange’s wallet.

Coinbase Wallet said in a tweet, “Apple’s claim is that the gas fees required to send NFTs need to be paid through their In-App Purchase system so that they can collect 30% of the gas fee.”

Even if it tried, Coinbase claimed it would be unable to meet the need because the iPhone maker’s exclusive in-app purchasing system does not enable cryptocurrency.

According to Coinbase, “Apple has introduced new policies to protect their profits at the expense of consumer investment in NFTs and developer innovation across the crypto ecosystem.” The company added that the policy was comparable to Apple trying to charge a fee for each email sent using open internet protocols.

Apple did not immediately answer an inquiry for comment on the subject from a news panel.

Apple’s issues with Coinbase can affect the cryptocurrency exchange 

The 30% fees have been a source of contention between the most valuable corporation in the world and other app developers. The apps included Epic Games, the creator of “Fortnite,” and Spotify, who have both accused the former of abusing its “monopoly.”

Apple’s problem with Coinbase comes at a bad time for the cryptocurrency exchange, whose shares have fallen by around 80% this year. As investors’ interest in cryptocurrencies wanes, the corporation has likewise eliminated positions in order to control costs.

NFTs, which are blockchain-based digital assets with distinctive digital signatures, gained enormous popularity in 2021, and demand has been severely hampered in recent months by the crypto winter.

Higher interest rates and concerns about an economic slowdown are causing investors to sell riskier assets, and the recent collapse of rival exchange FTX is adding to the pressure on the cryptocurrency market.

“Apple’s claim is that the gas fees required to send NFTs need to be paid through their In-App Purchase system so that they can collect 30% of the gas fee,” Coinbase said. “For anyone who understands how NFTs and blockchains work, this is clearly not possible. Furthermore, apple’s proprietary In-App Purchase system does not support crypto, so we couldn’t comply even if we tried.”

However, the block prevents customers who have crypto and NFTs in their personal Coinbase Wallets on iOS from transferring their NFTs while it is in effect. Additionally, it poses a risk to sending NFTs or cryptocurrencies through any iOS app or exchanging one cryptocurrency for another, at least when gas costs are involved. It also makes it difficult for businesses to innovate in the field when people are putting the brakes on innovation by looking for ways for Apple to profit from their apps.

The post Apple reportedly prevented most recent software of Coinbase release for NFTs in wallets appeared first on TechStory.

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