Essential Apple Podcast 164: Back from the dead

After two weeks “down and out” due to my MacBook Pro charger unexpectedly failing on me literally a couple of hours before the recording time on the 9th (and the replacement I ordered failing to show in time for the following week) the show is back from the dead. Lessons to be learned there I think… ) All the usual crew are otherwise engaged’, so it’s just me mulling over a few things that caught my attention over the last couple of weeks.

GIVEAWAYS & OFFERS

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Eric Rogers and Steven Welton
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Recorded 23rd February 2020

Listen to the show:

This and other episodes are available at:

On this week’s show:

APPLE

Larry Tesler: Computer scientist behind cut, copy and paste dies aged 74 – BBC
Apple adds ability for developers to sell Mac and iOS apps as a single purchase – 9to5 Mac
Apple’s ‘CarKey’ might let you unlock your car with your iPhone – The Verge
Big macOS leak hints at future switch to AMD chips – Cult of Mac
Apple Just Made A Striking New Security Move That Could Impact All Users – Forbes

TECHNOLOGY

Bill Gates orders £500m hydrogen-powered superyacht – Mashable
- EXCEPT it wasn’t true! – BBC
IBM picks Slack over Microsoft Teams for its 350,000 employees – The Verge
Android cofounder’s phone startup Essential shuts down after launching one product – Mashable

SECURITY & PRIVACY

Popular iOS and Mac email apps scrape inboxes to profit from personal data, report finds – 9to5Mac
Another little security gem! Comparitech DNS Leak Test
‘Lockdown’ open source firewall app leaps from iOS to Mac, blocks app and website trackers for free – 9to5 Mac
AZORult spreads as a fake ProtonVPN installer – Securelist

WORTH A CHIRP / ESSENTIAL TIPS

The doqo case turns your iPad Pro into a MacBook… with a trackpad and multiple ports! – Yanko Design
Bring back your Mac’s startup chime with this simple terminal command — 9to5 Mac
- sudo nvram StartupMute=%00 turns it on and sudo nvram StartupMute=%01 turns it off again
  - I didn’t have any luck with this FWIW!

NEMO’S HARDWARE STORE

Nemo will be back soon

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.

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