Essential Apple Podcast 159: Merry Christmas Everyone!

Donny is (mostly) recovered from the ‘flu, MacJim braves another appearance and Suffolk Pete pitches in so we can have a “proper show”. Unsurprisingly news is thin on the ground on the whole with the blogs and such being full of “year in review” and “best of the decade” stuff. However we found a few stories to talk about including a “secret Apple satellite team”, more info on the Blue membrane, a Cobalt free EV battery and Zuck wanting to make a Facebook OS…

GIVEAWAYS & OFFERS

Listeners of this show can claim $10 off purchases of Luminar and/or Aurora HD 2019 use the coupon code EssentialApple at checkout for your extra discount!
Get Donny Yankellow’s 2FunDads iMessage stickers for FREE

Why not come and join the Slack community? You can now just click on this Slackroom Link to sign up and join in the chatter!

Slacker @MacJim has a family friendly Flickr group for listeners to share photos because the Darkroom channel in the Slack has become so popular – if you’re interested head over to to the Essential Apple Flickr and request an invitation.

Recorded 22nd December 2019

Listen to the show:

This and other episodes are available at:

On this week’s show:

DONNY YANKELLOW

New book – Kindergarten Zoo
AarcadeReviews.com (http://aarcadereviews.com/) for apple arcade reviews and more
@rtteachr (https://twitter.com/rtteachr) on Twitter
Find his work at hedgehogalley.com (http://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
Skrbly Store
Skrbly Studio (Anyone can Draw) – App Store
Kiddims on Graphite Comics
Life is Random on Graphite Comics
2FunDads
Search for Yankellow on the App Store/Books for Stickers and other work

MAC JIM

@MacJim in the Slack room.
Owner of the Essential Apple Flickr group.

SUFFOLK PETE

On the Twitters as @Hermboy occasionally, mostly in respect of beer or footie)

APPLE

Apple Has Secret Team Working on Satellites to Beam Data to Devices — Bloomberg
Apple opens public bug bounty program, publishes official rules — ZDNet
Apple Platform Security Manual – Apple
Phil Schiller Talks About the Development of the Original iPad in New Interview – MacRumors

TECHNOLOGY

Online bulletin board inventor Randy Suess dies at 74 — Engadget
DriveDx – the most advanced drive health diagnostics and monitoring utility – Binary Fruit
Apple, Google and Amazon decide to ‘play nice’ over smart home tech – BBC News
IBM’s cobalt-free EV battery uses materials extracted from seawater – Engadget
Electric oceans: membrane creates energy from seawater — BBC Science Focus Magazine
Facebook wants to take on Google by creating its own Android alternative – Android Central

SECURITY & PRIVACYT

New “uncrackable” security system may make your VPN obsolete – TechRadar
Protect your online privacy easily with Winston – Geeky Gadgets
- Indiegogo

WORTH A CHIRP / ESSENTIAL TIPS

TOP TIP from @zkarj in the Slack –
- Did you know the Recovery partition can restore several OS’s:
  - Cmd-R: Reinstall the latest macOS that was installed on your Mac
  - Cmd-Alt-R: Upgrade to the latest macOS that is compatible with your Mac
  - Cmd-Shift-Alt-R: Reinstall the macOS that came with your Mac, or the closest version still available
https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1902/en_US/apple-platform-security-guide.pdf

Essential Apple Recommended Services:

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.

Social Media and Slack

You can follow us on:

Twitter / Slack / EssentialApple.com / Spotify / Soundcloud / YouTube / Facebook / Pinecast

Also a big SHOUT OUT to the members of the Slack room without whom we wouldn’t have half the stories we actually do – we thank you all for your contributions and engagement.
You can always help us out with a few pennies by using our Amazon Affiliate Link so we get a tiny kickback on anything you buy after using it.
If you really like the show that much and would like to make a regular donation then please consider joining our Patreon or using the Pinecast Tips Jar (which accepts one off or regular donations)
And a HUGE thank you to the patrons who already do.