Essential Apple Podcast 137: Strange Days?

This week I am joined by the semi regular co-hosts Nick (@spligosh) Riley and Donny (@rtteachr) Yankellow, to take a look at the stories of the last week or so. Of course, after the week light on news when I recorded with John Chidgey there has been a veritable deluge of news over the last 7-10 days. Including a new MacBook Pro, the WWDC19 “invitations”, the whole Huawei “blacklisting” affair, an odd little gaming device from Panic and a depressingly long list of security stories.

GIVEAWAYS & OFFERS

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Recorded 26th May 2019

Listen to the show:

This and other episodes are available at:

On this week’s show:

NICK RILEY

@spligosh on Twitter very occasionally.
Sometimes appears on Bart Busschots’ Let’s Talk Apple

DONNY YANKELLOW

@rtteachr on Twitter
Find his work at hedgehogalley.com
Find his stuff in iBooks, a load of sticker packs in the App Store under Donny Yankellow and DesignBundles.net as Skrbly
Skrbly Studio on YouTube
New store on 2FunDads.com
2FunDads FREE iOS stickers
Skrbly Store

APPLE

Apple announces more powerful 8-core MacBook Pro – 9to5 Mac
- Apple offers free keyboard replacement program for MacBook, MacBook Pro – Zdnet
Apple announces its Worldwide Developers Conference 2019 to be held June 3-7 in San Jose, CA – Macworld
- Reusing the “mind blowing” theme from the Showtime event with Monkey, Robot, Skull, Alien and Unicorn is interesting and not something I believe I have seen before
Pegatron moving iPad and MacBook manufacturing out of China – Cult of Mac
71% Of Higher Education Students Would Prefer To Use A Mac, Says New Research – Redmond Pie
Apple facing class action lawsuit over alleged iTunes & Apple Music data sale – Apple Insider
Former Apple retail chief Ahrendts says ‘mission accomplished,’ denies reported criticisms – Apple Insider

TECHNOLOGY

Huawei’s European Customers Are Put on Hold by U.S. Ban – New York Times
Adobe Warns Customers of Potential Legal Action for Using Older Versions of Creative Cloud Apps – Mac Rumors
Panic announces Playdate gaming device: “It’s yellow. It fits in your pocket. It’s got a beautiful black and white screen. It’s not super cheap, but not super expensive. It includes brand new games from some amazing creators. Plus it has a crank.” – Playdate
Check for issues before installing a Windows 10 update – CNet

SECURITY & PRIVACY

WhatsApp discovers ‘targeted’ surveillance attack – BBC News
Snapchat employees spied on users by misusing internal tools – 9to5 Mac
San Francisco is first US city to ban facial recognition – BBC News
- California’s Senate may ban facial recognition tech in police body cameras – Engadget
Google recalls its Bluetooth Titan Security Keys because of a security bug – Tech Crunch
33 Linksys router models leak full historic record of every device ever connected – Ars Technica
Bug-hunter reveals another ‘make me admin’ Windows 10 zero-day – and vows: ‘There’s more where that came from’ – The Register
The Internet Security Apocalypse You Probably Missed (OpEd) – The New York Times

WORTH A CHIRP / ESSENTIAL TIPS

This macOS tool automatically opens all Apple News links in Safari – 9to5 Mac
- StopTheNews direct download link
BeLight Software’s Amadine vector drawing app leaves beta £20 in the Mac App Store, $20 US Direct… free trial on the Amadine page
iOS Game Oddmar

Nemo’s Hardware Store (33:57)

Catalyst Waterproof 20L Backpack $120 US – Amazon £99 UK / $120 US

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Ghostery – protect yourself from trackers, scripts and ads while browsing.
33mail.com – Never give out your real email address online again.
Sudo – Get up to 9 “avatars” with email addresses, phone numbers and more to mask your online identity. Free for the first year and priced from $0.99 US / £2.50 UK per month thereafter…
ProtonMail – End to end encrypted, open source, based in Switzerland. Prices start from FREE… what more can you ask?
ProtonVPN – a VPN to go with it perhaps? Prices also starting from nothing!
Fake Name Generator – So much more than names! Create whole identities (for free) with all the information you could ever need.
Wire – Free for personal use, open source and end to end encryted messenger and VoIP.
Pinecast – a fabulous podcast hosting service with costs that start from nothing.

Essential Apple is not affiliated with or paid to promote any of these services… We recommend services that we use ourselves and feel are either unique or outstanding in their field, or in some cases are just the best value for money in our opinion.

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