Jonathan Zdziarski at Apple

Jonathan Zdziarski is a well respected security and privacy expert. Now he works for Apple. Jonathan’s explanation of why he took the gig pushes all my buttons.

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“This decision marks the conclusion of what I feel has been a matter of conscience for me over time. Privacy is sacred; our digital lives can reveal so much about us – our interests, our deepest thoughts, and even who we love. I am thrilled to be working with such an exceptional group of people who share a passion to protect that.”
— Jonathan Zdziarski

I think Apple is serious when they talk about protecting user privacy and hiring people like Jonathan. I don’t know if this priority gives Apple much market advantage in the world today where most consumers are pretty cavalier about their privacy but it sure makes me happy to be using Apple products.

Latest Apple Park Video

I remember the first time I visited Infinite Loop, where I expected to see something like the Wonka Chocolate Factory but instead got a series of business offices, not so unlike my own. “This is it?” I thought. 

Well that was a long time ago and now it looks as if The Apple Chocolate Factory is getting ready to open for business after all. (And it will be just secretive as its fictional equivalent.)

Sponsor: MailButler for Business




This week MacSparky is sponsored by MailButler. MailButler has just added a new Business subscription plan that includes several features to ensure complete control over email flow for your team. This includes several new features including:

Advanced Tracking

MailButler adds links to your emails so you can seen all the details about your email recipients opening your email messages. Learn when, where, how often, with what kind of device, and in which email client your messages have been viewed. Now you’ll know if your customer has actually opened the email with their invoice or if your colleague received the email with the new spreadsheet.

CRM Support

Customer relationship managers are an essential tool for business but wrangling your email into them has never been easy. MailButler now lets you connect with your CRM tool you automatically get  copies of your outgoing emails in the system through a blind carbon copy.

Correspondent Insight

MailButler Business Plan users also get additional insight on their email correspondents with detailed information, such as social media profiles and company information. 

Custom Signature Templates

MailButler Business Plan members don’t only get the cool MailButler template designer to create their own custom email signature, they can also make a unique corporate signature design and share it with their team members. Give your team a unified, professional looking email signature.

Team Features

Best of all, these team member features are easy to manage using the MailButler Business Plan Dashboard where managers can assign roles and tasks to the team members, watch their activity and usage statistics, as well as share custom signature or message templates.

MailButler’s new Business Plan is a great idea. Take control of email for your team with MailButler for Business.

iPhone 8 Speculation

Later this year we’re going to get the next iPhone. There’s been a lot of rumors about this new one with talk of an edge-to-edge (possibly OLED) screen, embedded touch IT, and even maybe wireless charging. Chance Miller at 9to5 Mac did a nice job pulling together the current rumors. Personally, I’d be surprised if the next iPhone has all of the rumored features. The iPhone is nearly the whole story when it comes to Apple revenue and for every new iPhone they have to build millions of the things reliably and quickly. Too many big changes in one generation increases the possibility of delays for specific parts or, worse yet, defects in the phone. If I had to pick just one feature I’d like in a new iPhone, it would be that edge-to-edge screen. It looks pretty great in 9to5 Mac’s mock up photos in the above linked article.

Home Screens – Bill Wilkins


I love meeting new and interesting geeks. One such person is my friend Bill Willkins. Bill Started out a “farm boy” in from Durham North Carolina but eventually found his way to England and now Switzerland. Bill’s now 75 but still works as a European Outdoor Industry Consultant. I can only hope I’m as much a geek at 75 as Bill is.

So Bill, show us your home screen.


What are some of your favorite apps?

I still find Apple’s native contacts app as the most useful. No other contacts app comes close. I have Fantastical on every device and MacBook. Excellent.

While I’m using 1Password, I’m also testing out other password managers. Apple Notes & Reminders are run as a team on the home screen of my iPhone & iPad.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

My iPhone is my app resource. I have at least 200 apps archived on my iPhone. I review them monthly. I have to start deleting some. I emphasize I don’t use them all but review them monthly.

What app makes you most productive? 

OmniFocus without doubt.

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

Most likely, OmniFocus.

What is the app you are still missing?

I am not missing anything. The problem is the reverse. Too many.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

It is the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night.

My iPhone is my most used Apple device. I can see the day coming when I move to a large iPad. This is mainly due to the ease of updates.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

I can use them everywhere. I also like the ease of updates and the relative economy and/or price of apps. (The other side is I buy too many.)

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

I would not take the job even if it were offered.

There was a famous saying. You can please some of the people part of the people some of the time and a few of the people all of the time but you cannot please all of the people all of the time. 

What’s your wallpaper and why?

My wall paper is a plain black background. I do not want any distractions.

Thanks Bill!

 

Wikileaks and CIA iOS Exploits

Yesterday Wikileaks barfed up another pile of alleged confidential data, this time from the CIA. Setting aside the separate conversation about exactly who Wikileaks works for these days, I do believe the CIA, NSA, and intelligence agencies of every other country in the world has an interest in hacking iOS devices. Both hackers and governments have significant motivations to read private data. The question is what our hardware and software vendors are doing to protect us.

Apple released a statement on this point yesterday:

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“Apple is deeply committed to safeguarding our customers’ privacy and security. The technology built into today’s iPhone represents the best data security available to consumers, and we’re constantly working to keep it that way. Our products and software are designed to quickly get security updates into the hands of our customers, with nearly 80 percent of users running the latest version of our operating system. While our initial analysis indicates that many of the issues leaked today were already patched in the latest iOS, we will continue work to rapidly address any identified vulnerabilities. We always urge customers to download the latest iOS to make sure they have the most recent security updates.”
— Apple on alleged CIA iOS hacks

The battle to retain our privacy will never end. Apple will continue to build walls and governments and hackers will continue to batter them. I do believe Apple is committed to this fight but the continued protection of our private data is by no means a certainty at this point.

Sponsor – Conquer Your Email with SaneBox



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This week MacSparky is sponsored by SaneBox, the email service that can can change your life … today. For a lot of folks, email is that thorn in your side that you can’t quite ever escape. It doesn’t have to be that way. With SaneBox at your back, you add a powerful set of email tools that can work in just about any email client. With SaneBox you can:

  • Wake up everyday to find the SaneBox robots have automatically sorted your incoming email for you so you can address the important and ignore the irrelevant. 
  • Defer email for hours, days, or weeks so it is out of your life until a more appropriate time.
  • Set secret reminders so if someone doesn’t reply to an important email SaneBox gives you a nudge to follow up.
  • Automatically save attachments to the cloud (like Dropbox).
  • Use their SaneForward service to automatically send appropriate emails to services like Evernote, Expensify, and Kayak.
  • Move unwanted email to the SaneBlackHole and never see anything from that person again.

The list goes on. Why not straighten out your email by getting a SaneBox account and bringing a gun to a knife fight. I’ve been a SaneBox subscriber since 2012 and just signed up for another year. If you sign up with this link, you even get a discount off your subscription.

Richard Stallman’s Uber List

Richard Stallman has created a list of Uber’s sins. There’s a lot of them. I still can’t get over the idea that one of their executives wanted to spend $1M trashing journalists that wrote negatively about Uber. I know I’m late to this and I’m sure I’ll probably hear from some readers explaining how Lyft is more expensive but at this point I’ve come to the conclusion I don’t want any of my money heading toward Uber ever again.