Macworld’s take on iPhone adding scanning for Child Abuse Materials and Privacy

I have been reading a lot of articles on Apple’s recent move to add CSAM or Child Sexual Abuse Materials in any photos you sync with iCloud (which is all of them if you have iCloud backup on). I really like the depth that Jason Snell at Macworld has taken on the issue, and why it is an issue.

Apple’s approach here calls all of that into question, and I suspect that’s the source of some of the greatest criticism of this announcement. Apple is making decisions that it thinks will enhance privacy. Nobody at Apple is scanning your photos, and nobody at Apple can even look at the potential CSAM images until a threshold has passed that reduces the chance of false positives. Only your device sees your data. Which is great, because our devices are sacred and they belong to us.

Apple’s approach here calls all of that into question, and I suspect that’s the source of some of the greatest criticism of this announcement. Apple is making decisions that it thinks will enhance privacy. Nobody at Apple is scanning your photos, and nobody at Apple can even look at the potential CSAM images until a threshold has passed that reduces the chance of false positives. Only your device sees your data. Which is great, because our devices are sacred and they belong to us.

The risk for Apple here is huge. It has invested an awful lot of time in equating on-device actions with privacy, and it risks poisoning all of that work with the perception that our phones are no longer our castles.

And while it is noble to try and do something about Child Sex Abuse, it also does fly in the face of Apple and them being the arbiter of privacy. And that isn’t even talking about false positives. And then there is where does this lead, because if they are scanning your photos won’t they soon be scanning everything, and where is the privacy there.

Harry McCracken article on the iPad Pro needing Pro Software and my thoughts

 

Harry McCrakken at Fast Company has an article about how the iPad Pro just got way more Pro, but now it needs more Pro Software.

And I wholeheartedly agree. There is no overall user interface, everyone does it differently, and for me at least I don’t see the stability to use it in a work environment. Like Final Cut Pro X apps on iPad are supposed to just save and, but every time I have tried to really use art software on an iPad it crashes and I end up losing not a small amount of work, but most of my work, admittedly the same thing has happened to me with Final Cut pro X and it’s auto save with everything you do, if you are forced to use autodave and on the iPad have no way to backup your save definitively, then it can’t be used in a work environment and feel safe.

Now I hate windows, but I have an old Surface and even though it is far slower and doesn’t have an impressive touch interface, being able to use a full version of Photoshop is far superior to anything on a much more powerful iPad. It is too slow to edit on, but photoshop if far superior.

And while I have tried some editing on the iPad, and it works for simple stuff, it just isn’t pro. Even though an iPad can play back H.265 footage better than any Mac I have ever seen, the software on the iPad is not conducive to the Pro Work that the hardware is capable of. Of course again I kind of feel the same about Final Cut Pro X, it has some amazing high level technology, but it just isn’t put together how it should be or how an experienced editor would want to use it.

And programs just crash on an iPad, there is now way to see the memory used or how it is being taxed. Even the simplest apps like web browser crash and I lose all my tabs all the time.

And since every palm pilot had a way to store the pencil securely within the device, why can’t apple figure this out? The Apple Pencil is only useful if it is charged and attached. Having to keep it safe separately is not ideal.

I love my iPad because of convenience, but I have to say I would rather have a mac equivalent of a Microsoft Surface Book. A laptop with a touchscreen and a graphics card in the keyboard for editing work, but that I can take off and use as a tablet. And now that they both use the same chips this certainly should be possible. That would be ideal, though it would need to add Thunderbolt External GPU support to M1 Macs.

Why is Mac OS Finder iOS Sync so inferior to the previous iTunes Sync

 I have said this before and I am sure I will it again, but why when Apple split up iTunes to make Music, Podcast and TV apps and moving iOS music sync to the finder did they make it so far inferior to the previous sync?

Now I know they want you to pay for Apple Music to get your music there, but they were already getting you to pay for music through them. I think they just don’t want you to sync your own music libraries anymore, they want you to just stream your music.

And why is it worse. Well first off if you plug in your iOS device and go to it in the finder, and try and sync any local music (going to the Music tab and selecting any songs or playlists the sync button switches from blue and and press-able to grey and not press-able).

Before any changes it has a sync that you could hit, but not if you make any changes.

This makes the whole iOS thing seem broken, but there is still a way to sync, but you have to get through the whole syncing process once, which can take a very long time. And all it shows for status bars, is a little circle in the sidebar and a syncing thing on the bottom, but both are extremely slow.

The sidebar shows the whole process.

And this is just showing the backup stage, but no indication of how much of the synching this is.

Of Course in some steps you get this wheel, which is pretty much as unhelpful as you can get.

And this process can easily take 30+ minutes.

One it has done a full backup and finished. You can then go into music and select what music you sync and hit sync (it will not be grayed out this time) and only then will your local music sync. And it has to do a whole other sync to get your music over.
Honestly What the Absolute Fuck??!?!?
And even worse sometimes it doesn’t work after 1 sync and you have to do another sync before you are able to move your music over. Really?!?!??!? FUCK YOU APPLE!!!
iTunes never did this.

And with iTunes I could use Wifi Sync. Now I am sure you are saying that you can use Wifi sync with Music, and yes you can, but you can’t stop it.

With iTunes if you had to stop any iOS sync you could force quit iTunes. Sure not an ideal solution, but it worked, and say you could restart or shutdown your computer.

With Music if you have WIFI sync on, you can’t restart or even quit the finder to get it to stop. The only way to get it to stop is to hard reset the computer, which is beyond not ideal.

You can least stop the cable based sync by unplugging the iOS device!

And don’t even get me started with Apple Music. If you sync your library with Apple Music you can get into tons of trouble. There are more forum posts about what this can do to your library than you can read in a lifetime. It has been known to overwrite all your music, replace it with lower quality music, or even different music. And without syncing Apple Music, you can never save any of their music, other than marking it as liked.

Honestly you should be able to keep your streaming music separate from your local library and not be forced to commingle them. And if they do commingle there should be no way that Apple can mess up your local library (which is why they should be kept permanently separate). 

The best solution would be able to have local music and streaming music apps that are separate. So nothing can screw each other up. I want to keep my music that I have ripped higher quality and not have anyone touch it or screw it up!

And Apple could now care less about people who have their own music all they care about is people who buy or rent music (yes paying for streaming music is renting music).

MacRumors is reporting that Apple is delaying it’s anti-tracking feature from iOS 14

 

MacRumors is reporting that Apple is basically bowing to pressure from major developers and delaying it’s Ad Anti-Tracking feature from iOS 14. 

I have to say I think this totally sucks. If I am going to have to deal with Apple stopping things like Game Streaming on my iPhone, then I should at least have the privacy bonuses that they push so much in their adds.

I don’t want any app to be able to track what I do at all. In fact I think Safari should have containers on iOS to keep things like Facebook locked away from anything else.

Delaying this feature does not help it’s customers, it helps the big money making companies to continue to bilk apple customers.

Apple needs to fix Catalina’s iOS Finder Sync

I was scared when I heard apple was breaking up iTunes and everything has been proved right. The sync is terrible.

To get any syncing working I have to let it sync once, and then click out of the iPhone in the finder make changes and sync if the sync button isn’t greyed out.

iTunes folders are showed in some completely random order in the finder.

In iTunes
In Catalina Finder Sync the same folder

What the hell is this? And the old iTunes applescripts to remove playlists from Folders no longer work.

And there seems to be no way to get custom Ringtones into your phone anymore, only payed ones. WTF!

And if you start a sync their is no way to stop it if say you need to restart your computer. In iTunes you could at least Force quit iTunes, but you can’t force quit iOS finder sync, even restarting the finder just keeps it going. I have turned off all automatic syncing and WIFI sync so that I don’t have to deal with this issue.

OMG iOS sync on Catalina is f***ing garbage!!!

OK so I been having problems with the iTunes replacement Music in Catalina since upgrading, but the worst part seems to be the finder iOS sync! Not only are anything in folders shown in the finder in completely random order, but the sync itself barely every works! if you select any music to sync the sync button gets grayed out! Sometimes if you let it do an initial full sync but make the changes in itunes after a sync you can hit the sync button and it will work, but it is far from assured that this will work.

It usually takes me multiple restarts, and connect and disconnects to get the damn sync to do anything, and I am running a fairly new iMac Pro! WTF!

Apple doesn’t give a shit about you syncing your own music anymore, they just want you to use their cloud music and Apple Music, so they have relegated syncing to the dumpster fire of Catalina Finder sync! WTF!

iOS 13.2 memory bug makes multitasking impossible

So iOS 13.2 seems to have way too aggressive memory controls in place, so apps that are in the background are almost always restarted when switching back.

This can be super frustrating. Here is an example, when I am using google maps for navigation and I switch to Podcasts to start a different podcast, often google maps will have to restart, meaning my navigation is lost. This is dangerous when driving, and means you would need to pull over to enter your destination again (an impossibility on the freeway).

It is also duper frustrating on mail on the ipad which is constantly reverting to 3 column view whrn in landscape mode!

Apple needs to fix this quick!

A Huge Problem with Mac OS 10.15 Catalina Finder iOS Sync!

OK so I was always worried about them getting rid of iTunes. I have been using it for too many years. Making it 3 apps does not make it any more efficient than one app, in fact I would say it makes it less efficient.

And they have already been changing features, trying to replace Star ratings with heart or no heart after I have been rating songs for years with stars does not work for me.

Catalina though broke up iTunes and moved iOS sync to the finder. Now it still has the same features as the old iTunes sync everyone said, but there is one big one that no one has mentioned that is really messed up!

Now first off I have already said that the new Sync does not give a text description of what is syncing, and while it does eventually show you a progress wheel, it does not show one at first (I can only assume this is the backup stage which always took forever with no indication of how long it takes).

Here my iPad and iPhone are both in that nefarious stage when you have no idea how long the sync will take.

Here you can see my iphone is at least int he progress bar stage, though still less info than old iTunes which told you what it was doing.

Anyway now here is the major problem with having the finder do the sync. If you are syncing an iOS device you cannot restart the computer because it will tell you that that the finder is not done completing the sync! Now with previous versions of Mac OS this still occurred, but you could just force quit iTunes and your computer would restart. You can’t do this with the finder! You can relaunch the finder with a right click in the dock, but the sync continues through this, and I even tried with Activity Monitor and the sync just continues not allowing you to restart. Now maybe there is a process that I don’t know what it is called that I could quit to allow this. Or if I turn off WIFI sync and disconnect the device, maybe it will stop and I can restart, but this is a problem! I am a video editor and there are just times I need to restart, so at the very least their should be a cancel button on iOS sync in the FINDER!!!

I have posted about this at Apple’s Discussions and MacRumors.

Camranger mini as a director’s monitor a short review

I picked up a camranger mini for my wife for christmas to use a a director’s monitor for a dslr.

The Device is mainly used to control a dslr for still photography, but also works for video, though at a very low frame rate. It is works by connecting a small device to your dslr via a USB cable and then connecting your iOS or Android device via wifi. And you can nominally control the camera from the device.

As a director’s monitor it works from framing, but not performances as the frame rate is just too low.

Still cool to be able to see without an attached monitor, especially if the camera is in motion, but a higher frame rate would be welcome.

Maybe the announced Camranger 2 which comes out this year will do better.

Siri suggestions for music instead of music previosly playing showing up on IOS 12.1 iPhone X lock screen

So my iPhone X has recently developed a new problem. I use my 256 GB iPhone X as my music player, and up until IOS 12.1 when I showed the lock screen it would show whatever music I was previously playing, and let me hit play to continue playing, but with iOS 12 it is now showing a siri suggestion for music to play instead of what I have been playing!

Here is a screenshot of my lock screen showing a Siri Suggestion for Age of Man by Greta Van Fleet instead of what I have been listening to.

And the best part is that I have Siri Suggestions turned off. AS you can see in the following Screenshot.

If I have suggestions in Lock Screen turned off, why am I seeing this Suggestion instead of what music I have been playing?

Anyone who has any suggestions would be appreciated.

I have already posted on Apple Forums to see if anyone has seen this.

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Well not response from anyone on Apple Communities in a week. And the problem persists.