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.

MPU 367 – Getting Productive with Michael Hyatt

This week we’re joined by New York Times best-selling author Michael Hyatt to share ideas about technology and productivity.

Sponsors include:

  • Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code MPU at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
  • TextExpander from Smile Type more with less effort! Expand short abbreviations into longer bits of text, even fill-ins, with TextExpander from Smile.
  • 1Password Have you ever forgotten a password? Now you don’t have to worry about that anymore. 
  • Pixelmator Powerful image editing that gives you everything you need to create, edit and enhance your images, now on iPad and Mac.

Home Screens – Bob “Dr. Mac” Levitus


This week’s home screen features Bob “Dr. Mac” Levitus. (Twitter) (Website) Bob is a prolific technology writer and one of my favorite members of the old Macworld Allstar Band. Bob has recently written his very first self published book, Working Smarter for Mac Users. I’m so pleased to see Bob doing his own thing. So Bob, show us your home screen.


What are some of your favorite apps?

Ulysses , Final Cut Pro , Logic Pro , Words with Friends

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Real Racing 3 (with nearly 200 hours of guilt).

What app makes you most productive?

A Pomodoro timer.

What app do you know you’re underutilizing?

Photoshop.

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

Too many to count.

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

Dark Sky (hyper local weather), Workflow (shortcuts and macros), Launcher (shortcuts)

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

Voice control and Siri (especially with Apple Music)

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

Go back to selling Macs with user-upgradeable RAM and storage.


Do you have an Apple Watch? Show us your watch face tell us about it.

Yes, and I use the Simple face for its retro good looks and subtle elegance.

What’s your wallpaper and why?

“Welcome to Macintosh.” The “why” should be obvious: I like retro.

Anything else you’d like to share?

My mission is to show you how to use your Mac better, faster, and more elegantly; how to banish procrastination forever; and how to do more work in less time so you have more time for things you love.

My first self-published book—Working Smarter for Mac Users—ships on March 3 and I invite you to check it out or sign up for my weekly newsletter packed with productivity tips right here .

Thanks Bob.

Sponsor – Stay on Top with Daylite




This week MacSparky is sponsored by Daylite. 

For small companies, staying on top of clients, leads, and projects can feel chaotic. Daylite helps you streamline your workflow so you can win more business and get more done.

Daylite is a business productivity app for the Mac, iPhone & iPad. It’s like having a CRM, Project Management, and Lead Management app all rolled into one. It integrates with Apple Mail, and you can share it with your team to keep everyone in the loop.

Whether you’re in real estate, sales, design, or the legal industry, Daylite can help you track leads, stay on top of clients, and deliver projects on time. 

Daylite also integrates with the iPhone and iPad so you can leverage features like Multitasking, Caller ID, Siri, and more.

Visit marketcircle.com/Daylite to try Daylite free for 30 days!

∞

OmniOutliner Essentials

This week Ken Case of the Omni Group announced the upcoming OmniOutliner Essentials. It is a focused version of OmniOutliner that doesn’t have quite all the bells and whistles you get from OmniOutliner Pro but still a wicked useful outlining application. The best part is that they are going to sell this for just $9.99. There is also a price reduction on OmniOutliner Pro. As they work towards the release of OmniOutliner 5, OmniOutliner Essentials is available for public test.

The first version of OmniOutliner I purchased was in a box at a computer store. Those stores are all gone but OmniOutliner continues to evolve.

The 10.5 inch iPad

Today the rumor sites are abuzz with the “delay” of the new iPads. I always find it funny how the press reports something is “delayed” which has never been publicly announced.

Nevertheless, Apple finds itself in that place once again with the rumored 10.5 inch iPad Pro. I’ve not written anything about this new iPad yet but there are many rumors at this point that it’s probably a real thing. This hypothetical iPad gets rid of the bezel and manages to get a 10.5 inch edge-to-edge screen on a 9.7 inch iPad-sized device. I think it’s a great idea.

An edge-to-edge screen makes the standard size iPad all that much more useful for making things in addition to consuming things. It may offer users the best of both worlds with a large screen and portability.

I’ve currently got both sizes of the iPad Pro and find myself using the larger screen for very particular projects–like reading sheet music, editing PDFs, or working on a detailed document in Microsoft Word–while I use the smaller iPad for most of the day-to-day tasks–like managing OmniFocus, answering email, and the like. I’d be curious to see if a 10.5 inch screen is good enough for everything. Either way, if the rumors are right, were not going to hear about this until May or June.