iCloud

Modern computers are designed to go to sleep when you’re not using them. When you put your Mac to sleep, the display turns off and most of the computer’s activity ceases. This standby mode is designed to save power. However, your Mac is a light sleeper; a lot goes on when your Mac is not awake.

In this article, I will explain what happens when a Mac goes to sleep, what different types of sleep modes exist, and how you can find out precisely what is happening on your Mac when it isn’t awake. Then we’ll take a look at some security implications to keep in mind regarding sleeping Macs.

Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.

One of the cleverest things Apple did when it released the Apple Watch in 2015 was to develop a system that allows users to quickly change watch bands (or straps, in the UK). Changing normal watch bands, using little spring bars, is difficult and delicate, so most people rarely change them unless they’re worn out. With the Apple Watch, you can change your band in seconds, so you can use a different band according to your mood or activity, or to match your outfit. This is especially useful if you want a waterproof band for swimming or working out, and a leather band for when you go out on the town.

To date, Apple has released more than 640 bands in more than a dozen different styles. Here’s a complete guide to all the Apple Watch bands that are currently available.

Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.

Data is encrypted on your iPhone or iPad, and on your Mac, assuming you’ve enabled File Vault. iCloud data is encrypted when it is sent to and from Apple’s servers, and at rest on Apple’s servers, but the company still has encryption keys, and can access some of your data when requested by law enforcement.

End-to-end encryption, however, removes any possibility of a third party accessing your data: you have the only keys to the data on your devices. Apple’s Advanced Data Protection enables this level of security, but there are some limitations to the way it works.

In this article, I’ll explain what Advanced Data Protection is, how to enable it, and whether you should turn this feature on.

Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.

In Apple’s educational event yesterday, the company said that students would get 200 GB iCloud storage for free. I own – let’s see… – seven iOS devices and Macs, and I only get 5 GB.

Only students whose accounts are set up via schools will get this expanded storage, but it really is a kick in the teeth to all those users who have multiple devices and have to pay for extra storage just to back them up. Apple constantly touts how great the cloud is, but what would it cost them to increase the free tier to, say, 50 GB? And how much easier would it be for users? Lots of people don’t back up their devices rather than deal with the hassle of paying for extra storage. (I know, it’s only a buck a month, but still, this is friction for many people.)

And 200 GB is a lot of data. The only way students will use that much is if they may scads of videos. You couldn’t fill up 200 GB with photos very easily; that would be about 40,000 raw images at 50 MB each, or nearly one million images shot with an iPhone in HEIC format.

I’ve written about this countless times. That 5 GB was huge when it was first introduced back in 2011, but we stored much less data in the cloud back then, and bandwidth was such that retrieving it – at least on mobile devices – was expensive. But now that people have years of photos, and many people have multiple devices – say, a Mac, an iPhone, and an iPad – it just makes Apple look stingy.