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.

Stop mail spy pixel tracking on Mac Desktop in Apple Mail with this Plug In

 

This awesome little plug in for Apple Mail, MailTrackerBlocker hosted at Github is a must install. If you don’t know, companies install something called a tracker pixel into the html of an e-mail they send you, and when it loads the image off their server they can track your location and often more information. These spy pixels should be illegal, but they aren’t so do what you can to stop them!

Honestly I would think Apple would do something about them, and especially on the iPhone and iPad. They are so into not letting companies track, then they should stop this insidious behavior. At least you can do something about it on the desktop.

It is scary how many e-mails have these built in trackers, which you can see once you install this app. Basically every e-mail with html formatting has one. 

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.

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!

Catalina Finder IOS Sync doesn’t tell you what stage of syncing

So I did make the move to Catalina after SoftRaid upgraded to 4.8 with Catalina support, and overall I am OK with the split Music, Podcasts and TV apps that replace iTunes. In fact the TV app is superior because it now will play back 4K movies on my iMac Pro.

My biggest complaint so far is with the Finder Sync for iOS. It seems mostly the same, save for a few things I don’t like. First off your apply and Sync Buttons are greyed out while the phone is syncing. So if I connect the iPhone or iPad it starts syncing, then I can make any changes I want, but can’t apply them until the current sync is finished. In iTunes I could apply as soon as I made the changes I want to.

And the problem with having to wait is not knowing when it will end. At least iTunes had text based feedback of what was going, and would tell me that it was in the backup portion which always took forever. Now all you get is a little spinning ball next to the device in the finder which gives no indication of how long the sync is going to take!

And then after that it does give a little indicator to give you some idea of how long it will take, but not text information of what is syncing at that point. You can see the white filling up means how much time it is going to take.

So what did the first spinning thing mean? I am going to have to assume that is the backup. If so it went much faster at least the first time.

And I always sync playlists, and every time you open the program it reverts to Albums. How hard would it be to remember where you were? Really?

iOS 13.1 on iPhone is messing up badly on playlist artwork for playlists I have synced from my computer

So I have noticed a really frustrating issue on my iPhone X on iOS 13.1 with the music app. I have all of my music organized into playlists by albums and I sync them by playlist, but on iOS 13.1 the album artwork is wrong and consistently changing on many of my playlists.

Here is an example.

The Playlist for Brittany Howard’s album Jaime shows as Tim Michin, but I click on the playlist it shows the proper artwork.

Even weirder is if click on <library the artwork has changed.

And it is again correct once I go into the playlist, but then it changes again when I come back out.

This behavior is incorrect and obviously not supposed to be happening.

I have posted about this at Apple Forums as well, and tried submitting a bug report, but it doesn’t allow pictures an this one you really need to see the pictures to see what the heck is going on.

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.

—-

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

My iPhone X doesn’t charge unless I unlock it when connected with any cable

I have been seeing reports all over of the new iPhones not charging unless the screen is turned on, and in fact that is what the iOS 12.0.1 update purported to fix, but my iPhone X has not charged unless I unlock it since I got it. It will charge wireless while the screen is off, but if I plug it in, I need to unlock it or I don’t get any charge. And yes I have tried 6 different cables and I have the issue with any cable and different chargers or my MacPro 5,1.

This is super frustrating and in fact I have had quite a few days where I go to use my phone and it is almost dead though was plugged in all night.

Color Correction Test with DJI OSMO+, Canon 60D and iPhone 6S and Visual Effects of Gun Shots

I shot some test footage with 3 of my cameras, my DJI OSMO+ my Canon 60D and my iPhone 6S. I color corrected the footage using DaVinci Resolve 12.5 and did the Visual Effects in Adobe After Effects.

The visual effects include adding the gun shots, light flashes, and color correcting the orange tip of my gun so it is gray.

I was trying to show my ability to color match the footage from such different 3 cameras, as well as add the visual effects to make an interesting little sequence.

Let me know what you think!