Josh and Kirk discuss 5G: what it is, how it works, and how fast it is. Is it worth getting a new iPhone 12 for 5G? Also, we look at another case of Apple notarizing malware, and a new RAT that started out on Windows and is now threatening the Mac.
Subscribe to The Intego Mac Podcast, which I co-host with Josh Long. We talk about Macs and iOS devices, and how to keep them secure.
While phones supporting the new 5G cellular standard have been available since early 2019, Apple’s recent announcement of the new iPhone 12, which supports 5G, is the biggest step yet toward developing this standard. With any new data protocol, there’s a chicken and egg situation: there needs to be both infrastructure and devices capable of supporting the standard, and the iPhone 12 will accelerate the installation of new compatible hardware.
But what exactly is 5G? Is it much better than 4G? How does it work? And is it really as fast as Apple suggests?
Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.
Every new iPhone has a marquee feature that Apple focuses on in its new product announcement. In recent years, Apple has repeatedly highlighted improvements to the camera system, spending the majority of time in their new product presentation showing the beautiful photos that the phone can take. While the camera in the iPhone 12 gets a bump, this year‘s marquee feature is a new mobile technology that most people won’t be able to benefit from: 5G.
The iPhone 12 also sports a new design, with narrower bezels, and a new, more robust type of glass, as well as being “the fastest iPhone ever,” which is the case every year. Apple also announced the HomePod mini, which is more of a smart speaker with Siri features than an audio device, like its older sibling.
Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.
You probably know how important it is to back up your data, and there are a number of different backup options for Mac.
But it’s also important to back up your iPhone or iPad. While you may not have a lot of documents on these devices that aren’t stored on a cloud server—which you can easily retrieve if necessary—you are likely to have photos and videos which, if you haven’t backed up, could be lost. Additionally, it can take a long time to re-create the setup of your iOS device; re-downloading all your apps, entering your user information, and organizing them on home screens can be a tedious process.
If you have a problem and need to restore your iOS device, it’s easy to do from an existing backup. But if you haven’t backed up your iOS device yet and want to prepare ahead of time, you might be wondering: should you back up your iOS device to iCloud or to your computer? If you use a Mac, since macOS Catalina, you back up your iOS device in the Finder. If you use Windows, or are running a version of macOS prior to Catalina, you back it up in iTunes. While these are different apps, the backup interface is the same.
Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.
It was a different type of presentation at this year’s WWDC. Gone was the venue packed with thousands of developers and journalists, cheering at the announcements of new features, now relegated to memories for this year because of the coronavirus. Instead, Apple presented a very fast-paced pre-recorded keynote outlining where the company is going with this year’s operating systems. At the same time, Apple announced a big change to macOS, and the biggest change to the Mac in 15 years.
Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.
Shooting video with an iPhone is easy, but you may not know all the many options available on your device. You can choose the resolution and frame rate of your videos, shoot slow motion or time-lapse videos, and you can zoom and use the different lenses on your iPhone, if your model has multiple cameras.
But you can also take stills while you’re shooting video, and with third-party video apps, you have tight control over focus and exposure, making the iPhone good enough to shoot a feature film. (And it’s been done.)
In this article, I’m going to explain the many options available on an iPhone for shooting video. (And note that most of what I describe also applies to the iPad.)
Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.
Your iPhone or iPad comes with 36 default apps, including Mail, Safari, and Messages. You may want to use other apps for email, for browsing, and for messaging, in part to enhance your security and privacy. While you can’t set other apps to replace the defaults, as you can on macOS, you can switch. We explain how.
Check out the latest episode of The Intego Mac Podcast, which I co-host with Josh Long. We talk about Macs and iOS devices, and how to keep them secure.
As outlined in a recent newsletter posted on the European Parliament’s website, the 2014 Radio Equipment Directive called for a common charger to be developed that would fit all mobile phones, tablets, e-book readers and other portable devices.
The Commission ultimately “encouraged” the industry to adopt change but that hands-off approach has not yet produced the desired results.
The truth is, most decent Android phones have already switched to a unified standard in USB-C. The few remaining stragglers that still use something like micro-USB largely do so for cost-cutting measures. But should such legislation pass, the company with the most at stake would be Apple as its line of iPhones continue to utilize the proprietary Lightning connector.
This is an interesting story. For years, the European Union has been bothered by the issue of multiple cables and chargers needed for different portable devices. For the most part, portable devices, other than those from Apple, depend on micro-USB, that little unevenly-shaped plug you see for portable devices such as Android phones, Kindles, etc. (The most common is a Micro-B plug.) Apple is the exception, with their proprietary lightning connector, which has made Apple a lot of money.
But the EU document discusses “chargers,” not “charging cables.” Is this simply an error on their part? I don’t think they want to normalize the amperage of chargers; I think they are concerned about the cables that get wasted, but also the fact that chargers are provided with most new portable phones and tablets (except those at the low end).
There are a few issues here. First, the lightning connector offers some additional features, so you can, for example, put an iPhone in a dock, or use digital headphones, transfer data using a variety of adapters, etc. And, of course, this is a proprietary Apple technology, so they get licensing fees from any company that makes accessories.
Lately, it’s been clear that Apple is planning to move to USB-C, which has a number of advantages, such as higher data throughput and higher power. Recent iPad Pro models have a USB-C connector. So Apple should welcome this change, but what if the EU wants to standardize on micro-USB? They probably don’t want to, but even if the lightning connector is ditched, I don’t think we’ll see USB-C on all devices. My guess is that it’s a bit more expensive than a micro-USB jack, because of circuitry needed behind it.
Also, USB-C is quite perilous. Different USB-C cables have different capabilities, such as power or data throughput, and it can be quite difficult to know which one you need. And if you have the wrong one, you can actually damage a device.
I have a lot of devices in my home that use micro-USB: my Kindles, batteries for security cameras, chargers for camera batteries (though my Fujifilm X-T3 has a USB jack), and other devices. The fact that I can charge them all using the same cables is practical. Having both micro-USB and USB-C won’t be a problem, and I assume that the EU is only looking at devices like phones.
But the broader question of chargers is probably one that should be addressed. Do we really need to get a charger with each new device? I have lots of Apple chargers in my house, but for people who don’t have extras, should they have to pay another, say, $10 or so when they buy a new phone?
Source: The European Union wants all mobile devices on a universal charging standard – TechSpot
Now that you sync your iOS devices (if you ever sync them) in the Finder in macOS Catalina, you may have noticed that you no longer see your device’s phone number and serial number at the top of the sync window. In the Finder, you see very little information about your device:
However, there is plenty of information available if you know where to look for it. If you click the line where it says the model of your device, and its storage, you see more information:
Click again, then again, to see all three information sections:
If you right-click on any of these lines, you can choose Copy to copy all of the information each line displays to the clipboard, in case you need to provide any of this data to your carrier, or to Apple support.
Last year, I got on Apple‘s iPhone upgrade program to be able to change my phone every year without having the hassle of selling an old one on eBay. Given that I was spreading the cost out over monthly payments, at 0% interest, I decided to go for the best model: the iPhone XS Max. As I wrote on this blog, it was a wonderful phone, but at a high price. And even though I paid for that iPhone monthly, rather than in one lump sum, the payments were still pretty high. So this year, I opted to go for the iPhone 11, which really is the iPhone for everyone.
The iPhone 11 is sleek and slim, and its glass back means that it is quite grippy most of the time when held with bare hands. But its matte edges are a bit slippery, and, as much as I would love to go caseless with my iPhone, I just can’t take the chance. While I have never broken an iPhone screen, and this iPhone is covered with AppleCare+ as part of the iPhone upgrade program, I just know that once I start using an iPhone without a case, I’ll drop it.
Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.