Has Apple set the scene for its next small big thing?

October 8, 2021

App Analytics in App Store Connect offers app developers a way to explore important app metrics such as transactions, redownloads, total downloads, pre-orders and updates; developers can drill down for insights into territory, source, device and so on, allowing them to understand and develop key app markets.

That’s great for developers, but what does it mean to enterprise users? For most, it’s an opportunity.

What’s in it for enterprises?

Companies with B2B or B2C apps can dive inside the information made available by users to extend their reach and better understand their customer base — what works, what doesn’t, and where core customers are located.

(You don’t gain access to individual addresses, of course. But the insights Apple provides can help companies determine the key locations in which their app succeeds.)

It’s also possible to measure the impact of marketing campaigns across multiple outlets. You can measure downloads from Smart App Banners in Safari and monitor the impact on sales/engagement of your marketing campaigns.

All of this can help businesses offering iOS apps build a deeper connection and understanding with their mobile customers, but it’s a drop in the ocean in terms of the quantity of data Apple’s devices have on what we do. Your iPhone even knows how many times a day it gets picked up. So, it’s better the information is kept on the device, rather than being shared.

What about the rest of us?

Apple has encountered vats of criticism for its stance on privacy. The decision to provide Do Not Track, Privacy Labels, and App Transparency (which needs improvement) and Ad Tracking controls annoyed surveillance capitalist firms such as every UK student’s chum and now PR at Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, Nick Clegg and the usual motley bedlam of data warehousing firms; it also upset some publishers.

But what Apple is also doing is creating a shadow (but highly visible and publicly stated) counteracting infrastructure that provides app developers (now) and presumably publishers (perhaps via Apple News) with at least some of the information they need to track ads, assess projects and gather all the other data they complained so bitterly that Apple was removing.

The difference is that this information will be transparent.

Services, services, services (soon)

We all anticipate Apple will expand its own ad business. This has been speculated upon for months. It’s also clear that what Apple is telling us with its new App Analytics is that its system is quite capable of gathering at least some of the information advertisers want.

We’ve also heard some chatter that the company will explore some way to make some of this information available to third parties, if only to avoid additional regulatory scrutiny.

At the end of the day, while Facebook may accuse Apple of hypocrisy in terms of aligning privacy to its own business interests, think how much more money Cupertino’s bean counters could be counting on if the company had chosen to turn you into the product?

It would be a lot.

What’s wrong with the notion that Apple may be building up to offer a completely private, yet personalized, ad model capable of serving up ads you want to see without anyone but you and your device knowing it happened?

The worm in the apple

I do see that as a tempting project, but generally side with Benedict Evans, who argues that Apple’s historical failure with iAds and Apple’s own corporate culture may prevent it from fully exploiting the opportunity to build its own ad business.

Still, Apple could quite easily create a platform ad providers could use to target private and secure ads at people on its platform. With an “Opt Out of Advertising” button, of course — after all, people who ignore ads are not the target market, so let them go.

Apple gains traction as enterprise workplaces become hybrid

Jeanette Box

October 7, 2021

Fresh research once again shows the extent to which the move to hybrid working has boosted Apple adoption across the enterprise, proving that employees will opt for systems from the company when they can.

Given choice, most employees use Apple

The research was made available by Kandji, one of a growing number of companies now offering device management of Apple hardware to enterprise clients. The data is based on a global survey of 300 IT decision makers conducted by Dimensional Research and confirms Apple’s grasp on many enterprise hearts and minds.

”When given the choice, most employees choose to use Apple devices at work,” said Adam Pettit, founder and CEO of Kandji. “By April 2020, 70% of the workplace reported that they worked from home — an all-time high. Personal and professional work environments became one in the same, increasing desire for the familiar Apple experience in both settings. Demand for Apple devices at work will continue to escalate, as the remote workplace becomes the standard.”

Among other findings, Kandji’s research shows 70% of companies more than doubled the number of remote or hybrid workers in the past two years, while 76% of respondents reported employee use of Apple devices also increased.

Keep people happy, or lose them

Macs are the biggest beneficiary of this. Earlier this year, we learned Apple’s Mac sales now account for 23% of enterprise PC sales, while last week we heard that employees are prepared to join the Great Resignation and quit their job if they can’t use their choice of platform.

In 2019, IBM also shared its own internal data. Pointing to clear productivity and cost benefits from use of Apple kit, IBM CIO Fletcher Previn said:

“Now, I don’t know if better employees want Macs, or giving Macs to employees makes them better. You got to be careful about cause and effect — but there seems to be a lot of corroborating evidence that says you want to have a choice program. And with that, thank you very much.”

Kandji now claims Mac notebook use across the enterprise climbed 63% with more than half (53%) of IT decision makers surveyed saying requests for Apple devices have increased in the past two years. This increase is far greater for Apple (42%) than any other device (11%).

iPhones use climbed 38%, iPad use was up 35% and Mac desktop deployment also climbed, this time by 22% over the last two years.

Apple seems to be proving its own case, given that 85% of IT pros surveyed say they “would recommend Apple devices for professional use to a colleague or peer.”

Confidence in Apple is increasing

The thing is, while in recent years the trend among enterprise employees to pick Apple devices when they get the chance has become increasingly clear, this rapid proliferation has given employees the best insight yet into how well Macs and other Apple systems perform in business.

The result? Confidence in Apple devices in comparison with other options has increased.

Fifty-four percent of those managing the devices reported they are more confident in the ability to deal with Apple devices than those who manage Windows devices. The feedback says 56% are more confident in the ability to remotely manage Apple devices versus Windows (37% more confident).

When it comes to the platform wars, 48% said Apple devices are advantageous for hybrid workers compared to Windows/Android.

Apple is also winning the TCO argument

There has been a long-running argument around cost. The traditional view is that Apple’s equipment is more expensive to purchase, while the rebuttal is that these investments hold their value longer, last longer and cost much less in terms of tech support.

The latter arguments are quite clearly winning the mind wars: 75% of respondents say that while Apple devices are initially more expensive to buy, they are less expensive to maintain and support in the long run. In addition, 84% said Apple devices are more secure than devices from other vendors.

“The data indicates that Apple devices are a great fit for hybrid work environments,” said Pettit. “If this is any indication of the future growth of Apple in the enterprise, we have much to look forward to in the modern workplace.”

All (100%) of those companies that have moved to support a hybrid workforce say their company benefits from having a hybrid workforce, and 97% agree that hybrid workforce is here to stay.

What are the benefits of a hybrid workforce?

While the biggest benefit across the last couple of years has been the ability to maintain business activity during Covid-19, other benefits include the ability to draw talent from a wider geographic pool, better recruitment and retention, the ability to boost diversity, increased productivity, and reduced costs.

Interestingly, 28% of companies believe online meeting dynamics are more amenable to traditionally disadvantaged workers and 24% believe hybrid improves corporate culture.

The biggest challenges? Many managers struggle with the cultural shift and in finding ways to evaluate employee productivity remotely. (Also read: 3 ways to build stronger remote teams.)

However, the consensus is that the good outweighs the bad — 85% of companies surveyed say it is good for business and in the vast majority of cases believe this new work model is here to stay, as suggested earlier this year in a Dice survey.

You can download your own copy of the Kandji report here.

Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.

What’s in the latest Firefox update? 93 improves SmartBlock, debuts sponsored search suggestions

Jeanette Box

October 7, 2021

Mozilla this week updated Firefox to version 93, which now blocks downloads over insecure connections, improves the browser’s anti-tracking prowess and introduces Firefox Suggest, the newest way the company will try to earn revenue.

The organization’s security engineers also patched seven vulnerabilities, four marked “High,” Firefox’s second-most-serious label. The majority of those vulnerabilities were in the “memory safety bugs” bucket, a category that covers a wide swath of memory corruption and memory leak flaws.

Firefox 93 can be downloaded for Windows, macOS, and Linux from Mozilla’s site. Because Firefox updates in the background, most users need only launch (or relaunch) the browser to install the latest version. To manually update on Windows, pull up the menu under the three horizontal bars at the upper right, then click the help icon (the question mark within a circle). Choose “About Firefox.” (On macOS, “About Firefox” can be found under the “Firefox” menu.) The resulting page or pop-up shows that the browser is already up to date or displays the upgrade process.

Mozilla last upgraded Firefox four weeks ago, on Sept. 7.

Iffy downloads blocked

Starting with Firefox 93, the browser will block, at least temporarily, any download attempts over an insecure connection — one using the now-outdated HTTP protocol — even if those downloads are requested from a page secured with HTTPS. (Downloads are often transmitted from different servers or Internet locations than the page where they’re listed.)

When Firefox recognizes an insecure download starting, it will pause the data transmission and put a message on the screen to alert the user, who can continue the download or delete the file, partial though it might be.

Firefox is playing catch-up here, as Google’s Chrome has had similar protections in place since early 2020, when the browser began automatically blocking the most dangerous file types attempting to download over insecure connections. That blocking was staged over several Chrome versions, but was finalized this year. And unlike Firefox’s new feature, Chrome’s does not allow a user the option to continue such downloads, a safer, if less convenient, approach.

Crippled pages restored by SmartBlock

Firefox 93 also features an enhanced SmartBlock, the tracker-blocking-page-fixing technology that debuted in March (with Firefox 87). Pegged as SmartBlock 3.0, the revision improved support for replacing Google Analytics scripts, Mozilla said, and added support for other bits, including Amazon TAM (Transparent Ad Marketplace).

Because SmartBlock replaces page components that have been identified as trackers with “local, privacy-preserving alternatives” so that the page continues to function — page breakage is the most common side effect of blocking trackers — the more potential or actual blockers it supports, the less likelihood that the page won’t load or operate correctly.

SmartBlock 3.0, like its predecessor, is enabled when the user opens a Private Browsing window or has set Enhanced Tracking Protection to the Strict level.

Mozilla also closed a loophole that some sites exploited to conspire with trackers to avoid privacy protections Firefox established in version 87 that trimmed referring URLs so revealing information couldn’t be sent to the destination site. According to Mozilla, the loophole “remains a major privacy issue.”

Mozilla’s on another money-making expedition

Firefox 93 also debuted a feature Mozilla labeled as “Firefox Suggest,” which was enabled “for a limited number of users in the U.S. only,” according to the company.

Firefox Suggest adds additional links to the suggestions provided by search engines when the user starts typing in the browser’s address bar. Although many of the suggestion categories are standard stuff — gleaned from bookmarks and open tabs, for instance — others will raise eyebrows, including contextual suggestions provided, at least in part, by Mozilla partners. (The partners, so far, include Wikipedia and an outfit called adMarketplace.) Some of those suggestions — Mozilla didn’t say what percentage exactly, or even generally — will be “sponsored,” in that clicking on them will generate money for Mozilla.

(Mozilla’s revenue is derived almost entirely from contracts it makes with search engine makers, notably Google, which pay Mozilla for putting their engine as the Firefox default. For years the company has struggled to diversify how it generates revenue, typically unsuccessfully.)

It’s unclear how much revenue Mozilla will make from these suggestions or what criteria Mozilla and/or the adMarketplace partner will use to select a sponsored suggestion. (Some additional information on Firefox Suggest is available here.) Users can, however, disable the sponsored suggestions, as well as the entire contextual suggestion category, from the Settings pane.

The next version, Firefox 94, will be released Nov 2.

The Pixel 6’s most important feature might be invisible

Jeanette Box

October 7, 2021

Twelve days and counting.

It’s hard to believe, with as long as we’ve been talking about this topic, but Google’s much anticipated Pixel 6 phone and its plus-sized sibling, the Pixel 6 Pro, are finally set to make themselves official. The new devices will emerge from Google’s metaphorical womb a week from Tuesday — on October 19th, as Proud Mama Googleschmoop announced this week.

We’ve been thinking about the Pixel 6 phones for so long now that it almost feels like we know everything about ’em. But the phones’ most significant advancement may be something we haven’t yet encountered — and may never actually see, at least in any literal sense. In fact, the full scope and value of its presence might not become clear for some time yet, even after the Pixel 6 makes its way into our curiously moist person-paws.

Let me do a real quick rewind, and I’ll explain what I mean.

The Pixel 6 processor story

Back when we first heard rumblings about the idea of Google building its own custom processor for the Pixel 6 — way back in the year 2020, approximately 47 years ago — we talked about how having a Google-made chip inside the phone could matter for us regular ol’ Android-adorin’ animals in a few key ways.

One is that it’d give Google total power to decide how long the processor — and thus the phone around it — is supported. While nothing’s official on that front just yet, leaks suggest the Pixel 6 could receive a whopping five years of operating system updates, which would certainly put that point into action.

Another is that having a self-created processor could grant Google a newfound ability to cut back on costs and potentially pass those savings on to us. Plain and simple, avoiding the markup associated with paying someone else for a part can lead to significant savings in a phone’s core cost — especially when said component is the nucleus-like processor that powers the entire schlebang (and isn’t exactly inexpensive). Again, we don’t have any official answers on this one yet, but recent leaks make it look like the Pixel 6 could be almost shockingly affordable.

And then there’s the third factor, and that’s the one I want to focus on today. That factor is that creating the processor inside the Pixel 6 would give Google complete control over what, exactly, is included in the phone’s virtual brain. Processors may seem like things of concern mostly for engineers, supernerds (hiya!), and people named Ned, but the truth is that the chip within a device determines an awful lot about what sorts of functions the gadget can and can’t support.

As I put it back in November — with the emphasis being freshly added now:

Processors are what provide foundational support for standards like 5G, for instance (meaningless as that specific example may be at the moment). They provide the framework for tons of different camera functions, biometric authentication systems, fast-charging capabilities, and even artificial-intelligence-related features to operate.

As it stands now, Google is dependent upon companies like Qualcomm for giving it that framework and determining much of what it can do with its Pixel products. And for a company that’s laser-focused on areas like machine learning and an always-listening Assistant service, that creates some serious limitations with the types of experiences it’s able to provide.

And that brings us to today — and some eeeeeeeeeenteresting new context I want to share about what Google’s main motivation with its self-made Pixel processor might actually be and why it could ultimately be so important for the future of the company’s computing vision.

Pixel 6 and the Google A.I. advantage

Before we dive in too deep, we need to make one thing clear — an oft-overlooked reality: The Pixel 6 isn’t the first time that Google’s created its own custom processor. The company’s been doing it for years, in fact, just mostly within computers in its own internal data centers up ’til now.

Now, stay with me here, ’cause this is gonna get a little techie for a minute. But I promise it’s leading us somewhere that’s super-relevant for everyone (even those of us not named Ned).

So here we go: Back in 2017, right as the Pixel program was getting going, a team of Google researchers released a sprawling study that analyzed the performance of the company’s custom processors in those data center devices. Notably, the paper refers to the chips as Tensor Processing Units — a name Google came up with to describe the processors’ primary purpose of enhancing the level of machine learning and artificial intelligence processing the associated systems could perform. Notably, it’s a name that also carries over into the Pixel 6 processor, which is officially branded as the Google Tensor chip.

In 2017, the study compared the performance of Google’s then-internal-use-only Tensor Processing Units with other third-party processor options in the area of A.I.-related tasks.

And — well:

The TPU is on average about 15X – 30X faster than its contemporary GPU or CPU, with TOPS/Watt about 30X – 80X higher. Moreover, using the GPU’s GDDR5 memory in the TPU would triple achieved TOPS and raise TOPS/Watt to nearly 70X the GPU and 200X the CPU.

Gooblede-gobblede, porgas schmorgas borgas — right? I know. But allow me to translate this into normal-human speak:

Google’s homemade Tensor processor was a hell of a lot faster than the best-available third-party alternatives — by an almost ridiculously high margin.

For extra perspective, I chatted with an industry veteran who spent decades working in the semiconductor field and has close professional connections to the authors of the paper. (He opted to remain unnamed, since he has no direct involvement with this specific research or the work on the current Google processor.)

His take?

“Those are scary good numbers. I believe that because of this, a lot of [the] little delays or failures you see when you try to talk to your phone or do translations or do anything that requires Google to do its computing in the cloud will suddenly blaze — because the phone will not have to ship a lot of the computation off the phone to the mothership.”

And what’s more: “There is no way the standard processors offered by Qualcomm or whoever will come within an order of magnitude of this kind of performance and power consumption for a long time to come.”

Yuuuuuup.

The bigger Pixel 6 picture

To finish filling in this picture, let’s zoom back even further for a second: For years now, we’ve been talking about how we’ve entered what I like to call the Post-OS Era — a time when which virtual assistant you’re using is more consequential to a company like Google than which operating system or type of device you prefer. Assistant, ultimately, is more meaningful to the future of Google’s core business than any other variable. And so getting people as invested as possible in Assistant’s ecosystem and in the habit of using it as often as possible is arguably Google’s biggest motivator at this point and the underlying thread that connects most of its moves together.

As that 2017 study illustrates, the main variable holding back Google’s A.I.-oriented efforts and keeping them from reaching their full potential has been processing power and the fact that even the best commercial processors aren’t optimized for the kinds of computing Google wants to do. The Pixel 6’s self-made processor is the key to changing that — or at least the first step on what’ll likely be a long, multifaceted journey.

Google itself has alluded to as much. In its initial public acknowledgment of the Pixel 6 Tensor chip earlier this year, Google hardware chief Rick Osterloh put it thusly:

A.I. is the future of our innovation work, but the problem is we’ve run into computing limitations that prevented us from fully pursuing our mission. So we set about building a technology platform built for mobile that enabled us to bring our most innovative A.I. and machine learning to our Pixel users. …

Tensor was built for how people use their phones today and how people will use them in the future. As more and more features are powered by A.I. and ML, it’s not simply about adding more computing resources. It’s about using that ML to unlock specific experiences for our Pixel users.

Now, how exactly that’ll manifest itself in real-world terms is something we’ll have to wait to see — and something that may not come fully into focus for some time yet. So far, Google has hinted at improvements with on-device photo processing, speech recognition, and on-the-fly language translation. But odds are, that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

As the semiconductor expert I spoke with put it:

“You often think of all of the publicity about processors as essentially irrelevant inside baseball. This is not that. This is a very meaningful change, if what I’m saying is correct — and I’m confident it is.”

The bottom line is this: The Pixel 6 is bound to draw lots of attention for its unusual new design, its newly enhanced camera capabilities, and other surface-level qualities. And by all means, all of that stuff matters.

But in the bigger picture, the part of the latest Pixel that matters the most may be something we can’t truly see — and the scope of whose impact won’t become entirely apparent for months or maybe even years to come.

Now let’s see if Google can accomplish what it’s rarely been able to do and make the phone-buying masses aware of its advancements and what practical advantages they’ll offer in our day-to-day lives.

Don’t let yourself miss an ounce of Pixel magic. Sign up for my new Pixel Academy e-course to discover tons of hidden features and time-saving tricks for your favorite Pixel phone.

What the iPhone 13 says about Apple’s 2021 MacBook Pro

Jeanette Box

October 6, 2021

Apple frustrated most of us with mealy-mouthed comparisons and opaque speed benchmarks when it unveiled the iPhone 13 and its A15 Bionic chip. It seems the company could have made big claims, and the fact it didn’t may be a Mac story.

A spark in the dark

Think back to the announcement and you may recall Apple chose not to give us solid comparison data against the A14 Bionic chip, instead offering comparisons against a previous model of the device. So we had to try to guesstimate what the real performance improvements might be.

I have no idea why it chose to do so, given the strategic important of its processor designs. As is customary with an information gap of this kind, Apple’s critics quickly began sharing weird stories claiming the silicon design teams are suffering a brain drain.

Perhaps they are. Perhaps they aren’t.

But Apple has many engineers, so staff churn is to be expected. Misinformation grows in darkness, so it’s business as usual to my eyes.

What we’ve learned

Apple at launch called the A15 Bionic up to 50% faster than its competition. The four-core GPU in the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini (five GPU cores on both Pro models) offers 40% (50% on Pro) better graphics performance, it said.

This wasn’t true. In fact, the truth is more impressive.

Fresh benchmarks from AnandTech show the A15 Bionic to be 62% faster than competing chips. While its processors seem to need more power, they are more energy efficient, with 32MB cache on the chip. This makes the processors more efficient again by keeping much of the routine operations on the processor, rather than driving these through memory.

The report also identified a 50% improvement in the L2 cache on the performance cores, and notes that the 12MB L2 cache on the chip matches that of the M1 processor on Macs.

What about Macs?

Given that Apple’s A-series processors are siblings to its M-series Mac chips, what’s good for one is good for both. And this suggests some of the iterative improvements we’re about to see appear in the M1X-powered MacBook Pro’s we expect Apple to introduce soon.

(While the potential introduction of these new pro Macs has been an intermittent rumor all year, soothsayers seem solidly behind the idea these will appear this month.)

Of course, translating the performance gains we’ve seen in Apple’s iPhone 13 chip into relative potential gains for the M-series Macs is deeply speculative, uncertain and cannot be relied upon. So, with that caveat, let’s speculate:

If Apple has been able to unleash a 60% improvement in comparison to competing mobile processors, it should be able to tweak additional performance on the Mac variant thanks to the larger heat sink.
Noting that the focus in this chip seems to be on energy efficiency, AnandTech observes a 17% power efficiency gain in the A15 compared to A14 chip. This should translate into a significant battery life gains on the new Macs.

The report also claims the A15 delivers a 28% performance uplift. Given the performance seen with the M1 Macs — best epitomized by Adobe Photoshop which runs at 1.5x the speed on them — it’s reasonable to anticipate similar gains on M1X Macs. This matters because Macs are used to get stuff done, and a 28% boost on the 50% (1.5x) increase Photoshop sees on an M1 means we can speculate (and this really is speculation) that Apple’s pro M1X Macs will deliver much, much greater performance than you get from the Intel systems they replace.

Announcing the M1 Macs, Apple claimed:

3D titles render 6.6x faster in Final Cut Pro.
Project building is 3.6x faster in Xcode.
Machine learning is 15x faster.

I suspect key Apple partners will already be working with these new Macs in their labs. We know Adobe was able to work closely with Apple to optimize Photoshop for the M1 chip. That work also bleeds into iPads, which already share the Mac chip.

AnandTech also says: “In the GPU side, Apple’s peak performance improvements are off the charts, with a combination of a new larger GPU, new architecture, and the larger system cache that helps both performance as well as efficiency.”

Mac users in pro markets will be curious to see whether this kind of graphics performance gain also comes to the next-generation M-series chips. If so, this translates into real productivity gains and opens the window to further creative opportunity.

Given the current M1 Macs provide 17-hours of battery life, the possibilities for mobile work are boundless. Perhaps we’re looking at a Mac you can use for days without a power supply.

Given Apple’s silicon teams are already designing processors to put into products in 2025, all of this bodes well for Apple’s platforms. “When we design our chips, which are like three or four years ahead of time, Craig and I are sitting in the same room defining what we want to deliver, and then we work hand in hand,” Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president for hardware technologies, told Om Malik.

Now, I don’t know the extent to which any of these speculations will be met, but with a Mac event anticipated later this month, we won’t have long to find out.

NB: We’ve all gotten into the habit of calling the next-generation M-series chips “M1X,” but don’t be surprised if Apple calls them something else — M1+, for example.

Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.

Apple’s Siri needs to become a ‘bicycle for the mind’

Jeanette Box

October 5, 2021

It’s time for a Siri redesign. I’m not talking about new search domains or new voices, but a fundamental revision of what the Apple voice assistant does and who it is for.

What could be

Apple users need their products to do things. Designers, architects, entrepreneurs, videographers, statisticians, doctors, students, all kinds of creatives and knowledge workers, these people use their devices to get things done. Siri needs to help them with that.

I read all the criticisms made against Siri. Some seem overblown, but not all of them. The one thing that rings true is the notion that Siri attempts to deliver too much for too many people. There’s the home automation Siri, the smart conversation Siri, the alternative UI Siri, the Siri that plays the wrong track and the Siri that never quite understands what you want it to do.

But what about the Siri that helps you get things done? That’s where I think a redesign needs to take place.

What I want

Personally, I want Siri to actively help me get things done. I want that on-device intelligence to help me find and manage research materials, I want it to automate filing, saving, and tagging of items with a few simple training commands. I want it to be able to seek things out over time. I might say, “Hey Siri, I’d like you to find all the articles online containing an original quote by Steve Jobs and present them to me at 5 p.m.”

And when it comes to that presentation, I’d like the assistant to be smart enough to identify the top 10 most repeated Steve Jobs quotes it finds, grab some royalty-free images, gather all of this together in a PDF report, and tweet it out to my followers as a small mark of the huge respect I still feel 10 years since the great man left us.

I want Siri to become a truly useful intelligent search agent, augmenting the work I do. But I want it to do even more than that.

Siri as a PA

Apple’s Neural Engine can analyze heaps of data privately on the device. Think how this kind of on-board intelligence should make you more productive.

It might support your working needs by predicting what you’ll do, grabbing documents you need before you need them, pulling together the assets you need for your next meeting, or automatically reminding others to join you for a meeting. Siri should already be writing minutes and action points during meetings.

[Also read: 10+ Siri tips to help you work at home]

Apple’s intelligent assistant needs to become more focused on actual assisting. “Hey Siri, support my work for today,” should be a command everyone gives to invoke support from their digital twin.

That’s not to say developing this stuff is easy. We all know it’s hard each time we ask to hear some half-remembered 90’s club classic — only to end up with something Zane Lowe was raving about on Beats the other week; or when we ask for a reminder to be “set for 5” and Siri asks us “which Clive” we want called. (You can improve this, by the way).

Siri wanted to be a signpost

But you can make hard stuff easier with a little focus, and I think this is what Siri is lacking. In part this may reflect what from the outside seem to be frequent leadership and mission statement changes for the technology.

In part, it reflects what seemed to be a decline in ambition for the voice assistant after Jobs’ death. But what I think this lack of focus really reflects is that what seemed simple — a voice-based assistant that let you do some cool stuff — turned out to be something far more profound.

Apple’s competitors swiftly snapped Siri’s heels, inventing, and developing consumer-focused interfaces that seemed to be better. (Even though Siri is the only voice assistant the non-English speaking world can use extensively.)

Apple has so far failed to dilute the essence of Siri into the core of the company’s corporate strength: that vital space between technology and the liberal arts. We see signs that this may happen in Siri Recommendations and Siri Shortcuts, but if there’s one area in which Apple can tackle voice automation and make a big and unique difference it is this: It needs to focus Siri to become a truly automated assistant to reinforce and amplify why we use Apple’s products in the first place.

Siri tried to be a signpost, but became a weathervane, buffeted by a changing climate and hammered by more focused competitors until the poor thing no longer understood the difference between “Hey Susie” and “Hey Siri.”

Android vs. iOS in the enterprise: IT now has a real choice

Jeanette Box

October 4, 2021

Ever since Apple introduced its mobile device management (MDM) protocol for managing devices in 2010, the iPhone has been the de facto standard in smartphones for businesses across every industry. The company held on to that position for a decade by providing a plethora of management capabilities, numerous ways to secure corporate conversations and data, the ability to separate personal and business content, and a way to monitor to ensure that every Apple device being used for business is in compliance with corporate requirements.

Meanwhile, Android devices were pretty much treated as pariahs in many organizations. Over the past decade, there has been good reason for that, but it’s time for a reassessment. For example, now there’s the Android Enterprise initiative, which offers APIs and other tools for developers to integrate support for Android into their enterprise mobility management (EMM) systems.

Let’s look at how the Android platform has been catching up to iOS and how the two stack up overall.

Fragmentation: Not the Achilles’ heel it used to be for Android

For consumers, one advantage of Android is that they have hundreds of devices to choose from at every price point. The array of features varies to a remarkable degree, and Android devices can be customized in a multitude of ways.

My first week with an iPhone 13 mini

Jeanette Box

October 4, 2021

I’ve been using a Product (Red) iPhone 13 mini for the past week. It manages to be small, highly portable, and pretty much uncompromised compared to larger models. Almost anything you can do with a larger iPhone, you can do with this device.

Who is it for?

There’s this trend among many writers to remain fixated on the high-end, but the majority of Apple’s tens of millions of new smartphone purchasers don’t look at devices like that. Yes, sales breakdowns favor the Pro devices (which provide the very best cameras), but there’s a healthy market for all the company’s devices.

Last year’s alleged slow sales of the iPhone 12 mini followed the release of the iPhone SE, which scooped up lots of purchasers who might well have chosen the mini if they’d known it was coming.

So, who is the iPhone 13 mini for? At its simplest, it’s for anyone using a smaller iPhone who doesn’t want to carry a larger device.

The people who want a mini this time around will likely be those upgrading from a 4.7-in. iPhone 6S, 7, or 8, who want the power of an Apple smartphone but not a larger size. There will also be a smattering of upgrades from iPhone X and 11 series devices. Most consumers now using an iPhone 11 or 12 won’t want to upgrade, unless they’ve developed a pressing need for 5G connectivity or a hard-to-handle Apple product purchasing addiction. (Hi Ken!). [Editor’s note: Fact check, true.]

While enterprise users might veer toward the Pro range, many people simply need an iPhone for communication and a little collaboration; the mini is good for both.

What do you get?

You can look at the benchmarks, compare raw stats and easily see that anyone upgrading from any of those older devices will notice immediate improvements in the iPhone 13 mini. For more on the exact specs, you can read about them right here, though I will cherrypick a few today.

You get a much brighter, clearer, and larger display on a smartphone that’s easy to pocket. You get significant improvements in battery life. You get FaceID, which means more display in less space. You will possess a camera DxoMark calls No. 1 in the premium market. And you get a processor that delivers the best performance on the market in a phone of this size.

Productivity, connectivity and games

Those that play games on smartphones will see immediate improvements, but the power of this processor also means the iPhone mini will happily handle any mobile productivity apps you use. The crisp, bright, high-resolution Super Retina XDR display delivers clear text, excellent video, and sharp graphics, while the camera has 2x optical and 5x digital zoom. You get Cinematic Mode, which most users will probably learn to use. (Those cute pet memes are about to look lots better).

You’ll be equipped for 5G, which will become more important as the standard is rolled out and next-generation services appear, particularly in enterprise/SD-WAN and so on. You don’t get a 120Hz screen or the advanced camera array of iPhone 13 Pro, but you do get a 20% smaller notch at the top of the screen than included in previous Face ID phones.

Better video meetings

If you are upgrading from an older model and you use your iPhone to participate in FaceTime, Zoom, WebEx, or other video collaboration meetings, you gain a 12MP FaceTime camera, up from the 7MP (or lower) camera on iPhone 8 and before.

If you use an iPhone 11 or later, this is not an improvement; you already have the higher-res camera. But with so much global communication now being done by video, this will make a big difference to many who upgrade.

A quick word about weight

I wanted to note something about the weight. Think about the phones I’ve said I believe iPhone 13 mini is most likely to replace:

iPhone 6s: 143g.
iPhone 7: 138g.
iPhone 8: 148g.
iPhone X: 174g.
iPhone 13 mini: 141g.

Apple has clearly decided that devices in this size bracket (with iPhone X a larger device) should weigh around 140g. As a reference point, the first-ever 2007 iPhone weighed 135g.

The iPhone 13 Pro Max provides a better display, a more powerful camera and a 6.7-in. screen, but in a device that weighs 238-grams. You can feel that difference.

An observation: the 5.4-in. display in the mini is marginally smaller than the 5.5-in. iPhone 7 Plus was when it was introduced as the biggest Apple smartphone display yet.

The iPhone 7 Plus weighed 188 grams and its dimensions were 158.2mm x 77.9mm x 7.3mm: In other words, you’re getting almost as much display in a smaller device if you upgrade from an iPhone 7 Plus to an iPhone 13 mini – mainly thanks to the use of FaceID.

What’s it like to use?

I’ve used every iPhone since the original device. I’ve been spoiled in recent years during which I’ve made use of an iPhone Pro Max as my primary device and I have gotten over the weight and fallen for the large display in that configuration.

Returning to a smaller iPhone still makes me do a double-take when I reach for it. It feels so small. But in comparison to my memories of smaller Apple phones across the last decade I’ve been consistently impressed.

Response to touch feels immediate and the clarity and brightness of the display means Apple continues to deliver a great user experience.

The design remains consistent, which means it feels like a premium product. (I also like the iOS 15 feature that lets you increase the size of text on a per-app basis as doing so makes text pop out on the display.)

When it comes to getting work done, I think most of us will choose one of the larger devices, simply for the additional display space. That said, if you use a smartphone and tablet or a smartphone and a Mac, then I think iPhone 13 mini is ample for all your Personal Hotspot and communication needs.

If your job involves using the device to capture video, you’ll get more features from the Pro range, though you’ll still capture 1080p HD video on this.

If you’re upgrading from an 11-series, you’ll enjoy the battery life and 5G most. If you’re coming from an iPhone 12, then I suggest your hunger for the new means you should probably go for a Pro unless you really want the smallest iPhone money can buy – other than 5G in a mini and the A15 Bionic chip, you won’t experience much incremental benefit on a single-version leap.

iPhone 13 mini data

Here’s a rundown of the essential data:

Cameras: 12MP ultra-wide, 12MP wide, 12MP Face ID camera.

Processor: Apple A15 bionic.

Display: 5.4-in. OLED, 2340-x-1080 pixels, 476ppi.

Storage: From 128GB to 512GB.

Battery: Up to 17 hours video playback.

Dimensions: 131.5mm x 64.2mm x 7.65mm.

Weight: 141g.

Price: $699 (128GB); $799 (256GB); $999 (512GB).

Criticisms and buying advice

Some of the criticisms I’ve seen of this model seem quite weak: Some say lack of USB-C is a bad thing, but given that I’ve spent years invested in the Apple garden, I like the existing connection because I’ve been able to provision charging in every room and don’t want to invest in leads. I see lack of USB-C as a strength.

Another criticism is the lack of a 120Hz display, though once again I don’t believe most users upgrading to this device will feel especially constrained by that.

For those upgrading from older small Apple devices (and most making the transition from the majority of Android mobiles), you’ll see significant improvements, unless you are a high-end user, in which case you’ll probably opt for a Pro anyway.

Finally, I’ve seen criticism that the design hasn’t been upgraded. I often wonder about that as a critique, given most every smartphone looks like an iPhone. A more significant redesign is currently anticipated for next year.

For me at least, the biggest criticism is the device’s rude insistence that I set it up for Apple Pay. I use Apple Pay for everything, but I resent being presented with a red warning on my Settings icon that masquerades as a software update and pesters me to set the payment system up. I’d like Apple to stop doing that. I know that if you begin and then abandon setup the alert disappears, but I really don’t like that kind of intrusion.

As for buying advice: This is Apple’s smallest iPhone and if you are in the market for that, you will not be disappointed. Mobile professionals will love the battery life improvements, and while I think those using their device extensively to get work done — such as cabin crew, field service engineers, mobile sales and more — should probably opt for a larger screen, the mini is a great combination of power and portability for anyone on the move.

This may be Apple’s cheapest iPhone 13 series device, but it delivers a premium user experience. I like it a lot and think most people will be happy if they go iSmall.

Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.

The Chrome shortcut sidebar you didn’t know you needed

Jeanette Box

September 30, 2021

I’ll admit it: I’ve found myself tempted to switch browsers more than a few times lately.

Let me offer up a little context on my near-transgressions: I’ve relied on Chrome for longer than I can remember at this point. Standard story, I know, right? But it’s true: By and large, Chrome gives me everything I want in a browser and then some. We’re very much in the comfortable marriage phase of our relationship: Sure, the initial thrill of the courtship might be gone, but we know each other inside and out now. And we’ve gained a level of trust, familiarity, and comfort that’s tough to replicate.

Even so, every now and then, some alluring new thang comes along and flashes its fancy features in my direction. Maybe it’s Microsoft Edge, with its enticingly unusual approach to putting tabs on the side of the screen instead of at the top. Maybe it’s the appropriately named Sidekick — no, not the early T-Mobile phone that acted as a kind of future-predicting ancestor to Android, but the Chrome-competing desktop browser that tries to reimagine the browser window as a web-based work operating system of sorts. It arranges your tabs as apps in a persistent vertical sidebar, collects your notifications in a single streamlined place right alongside your web window, and adds in a smart search system that acts as a universal finder tool for all of your online stuff.

I’ve spent plenty of time flirting with comely young creatures like these, and — I’ll admit it — I’ve even had the occasional dalliance when I’ve switched over to ’em for a short while. But in the end, I always end up coming back to Chrome. Getting accustomed to an entire new browser environment, giving up all the useful forms of cross-device syncing and Google service integration I’ve learned to rely on, and letting go of my many mastered shortcuts and time-savers from the Chrome environment is always just too high of a price to pay for some new feature or interface idea.

Well, I’ve got good news: If you’re similarly committed to Chrome but intrigued by some of these newer productivity-promising browser concepts, there’s now a way for you to have your cake and eat it, too. And its name — rather ironically, for something that’ll keep you from having to switch browsers — is Switch.

Allow me to introduce you, won’t ya?

Meet Switch: The Chrome-Sidekick hybrid

Let’s start from the beginning: Switch is an extension for Chrome. You keep your existing browser framework and environment and simply add onto it via the Switch Workstation Chrome extension.

And there’s a reason I mentioned both Edge and Sidekick a second ago: Switch essentially brings the same efficiency-enhancing sidebar concepts those browsers created into the Chrome universe. In fact, its core features are almost eerily reminiscent of what Edge and especially Sidekick offer, only brought into the Chrome domain instead of requiring you to move into an entirely new browsing home.

Once you install the Switch extension into Chrome, you’ll see a thin new sidebar along the left edge of the browser. It’ll show a list of all your actively open tabs, with tabs from the same app or site grouped together within a single icon.

Hovering over any of those icons will cause a menu to appear with all the associated site instances. That’s especially useful if you keep, say, multiple inboxes open for different Gmail accounts or lots of Docs documents open at once, as it really makes those scattered tabs feel like part of the same cohesive application. On that note, you’ll also see badges representing any notifications tied to your various open sites, and you’ll sometimes see extra shortcuts, too — like the option to start a new email, open Google Calendar, or open Google Drive alongside any Gmail inbox.

Beyond that, Switch gives you a space for something it called Spaces — basically saved clusters of tabs you tend to open together. You can think of ’em kind of like workspaces for different purposes. So you might have one that holds tabs for Docs, Drive, Notion, and your company website that you’d pull up whenever you’re working on a new work-related report. Or you might have one that holds QuickBooks, Google Sheets, your company’s expense-tracking software, and a specific document with accounting instructions for whenever you’re doing your monthly expense filing.

Whatever the purpose may be, all you’ve gotta do is set up the Space you want once, and then you’ll always be able to pull up that specific collection of sites in a new window with one click at the top of your Switch sidebar. You can even share a Space with someone else, too, which could be useful in plenty of professional (or maybe even not-so-professional) situations.

In addition to Spaces, Switch has a spot for Favorites — which are sites you open frequently and want to pin to the top of your sidebar for easy access. You can also open all of your favorites in one fell swoop with a button in that area.

My favorite Switch feature, though, has to be the software’s intelligent search system. It really has the potential to push up your efficiency and save you time: You just hit Ctrl (or Cmd, if you must) and the backslash key () together from anywhere in your browser, and bam: You get a box that’ll let you find and jump to any current or past page, document, email, or almost anything else imaginable in a snap.

You can filter the results by app, too, so if you want to find a specific email in your inbox, a particular event in your Google Calendar, or a certain document in your Google Docs storage, one quick click on the matching icon within that search box is all it takes.

And if you want to search the web itself, you can simply hit Enter after typing in whatever term you want, and Switch will pull up the matching Google Search results in a new tab. Doesn’t get much easier than that.

You can even ask Switch to take over the Chrome New Tab page, too, and put that same streamlined search interface front and center every time you open up a new blank tab.

Oh, and think you might sometimes need a break from the Switch sidebar? No problem: You can simply hit Ctrl (or Cmd) and the forward-slash key (/) to toggle it on or off on demand.

Switch is free in its base form, which limits you to two saved spaces and two favorites and also limits the search function to showing only your currently open tabs. For three bucks a month or $30 a year, you can upgrade to a Pro version of the service that eliminates those restrictions and adds in some extra shortcuts and other bells and whistles.

Switch isn’t available on the Android front yet, which is a bummer, but it’s still early days for the service. Its creators say they’re planning on building a companion mobile app that’ll let you tap into your saved sites and workspaces and access ’em on the go. And they’re aiming to expand Switch to work with Firefox and other desktop browsers over time as well.

For now, if you like Chrome but find yourself tempted by the creative concepts some of its younger competitors are creating, Switch is a spectacular way to get many of those same efficiency-oriented interface improvements without having to give up your existing environment and all of the advantages that come with it.

It’s a win-win, I’d say — and if you’re at all interested in improving your productivity whilst working on the web from a computer, it’s a promising new option that’s well worth your while to investigate.

Sign up for my weekly newsletter to get tasty Googley tips in your inbox. Three things to know and three things to try every Friday!

Despite ‘do not track,’ iOS apps collect data; Android makes its own privacy move

Jeanette Box

September 30, 2021

Computerworld | Sep 30, 2021

Despite app-tracking transparency, iPhone apps continue to track users, according to the Washington Post. It found that the type of data gathered about a user’s device could be used to ID individual iPhones — even after users explicitly asked apps not to do so. Meanwhile, in Android 11, app permissions automatically reset for unused, older apps. Computerworld Executive Editor Ken Mingis and Macworld Executive Editor Michael Simon join Juliet to discuss iPhone versus Android privacy measures and how fingerprinting affects users.

Apple’s latest right-to-repair trick is delightfully evil

Jeanette Box

September 29, 2021

The right-to-repair is a crucial enterprise IT issue, as it always has been. Whether that means using a large IT operation’s team or one of the third-party repair providers that have been contracted to help, the demand that enterprises exclusively use one vendor to fix anything is abhorrent. And one can’t mention abhorrent without mentioning Apple’s repair history.

I’ve always been impressed by how clever (evil?) Apple can get when trying to protect its repair revenue. With that ind mind, a new report from MacRumors doesn’t disappoint. (The site picked up on a YouTube video from Phone Repair Guru detailing what’s going on.)

What’s impressive about this particular Apple maneuver is how intricate it is. Somehow, the company has coded the screens on its new iPhone 13 models to identify the original screen. When it’s replaced — even with another Apple authorized screen purchased from Apple — Face ID still won’t work.

I’ll let the original story tell a little more of the tale.

“If a customer gets their ‌iPhone 13‌ display replaced by a third-party repair store or provider, such as those not licensed or affiliated with Apple through its Independent Repair Program, Face ID on the iPhone will no longer be usable,” MacRumors reported. “Despite this, if an ‌iPhone 13‌ display is replaced with a ‘non-genuine’ or even a genuine, original ‌iPhone 13‌ display, Face ID stops working, despite there seemingly being no hardware within the display itself needed for Face ID to function.”

In testing, the media outlet found that this apparently wasn’t a glitch. “The repair provider swapped two original ‌iPhone 13‌ screens and, in both cases, Face ID was inoperative after the new screens were installed. It seems to be the case that if the original screen is put back with the original ‌iPhone 13‌, Face ID returns, ruling out the possibility of an improper installation.”

To me, the most interesting/baffling part is that this lack of FaceID — a critical element of Apple’s authentication efforts — still kicks in, even when the replacement screen is authorized by Apple and/or directly from Apple. If it’s the exact same screen, how can the phone know?

Presumably, the screens either have identity embedded in them, whereby they will only work with the original phone. But given that Apple itself can replace the screen without issues, that suggests that there is a secret trick (perhaps a string of characters entered into the phone by the authorized repair person?) to installing the screen.

That would mean if Right To Repair efforts are coded into law worldwide, Apple would either have to remove that process or tell everyone what it is. I’m betting Apple would simply remove it. That way, if it’s careful, it would never have to admit that it concocted this whole scheme.

If Apple stopped spending time trying to find ways to screw customers and focused more on coming up with better features and functionality and true security, the company could actually reap even more money.

Then again, there are those who argue that Apple has pretty much hit the ceiling of its likely market share against Android. If that’s true, adding more features might not materially boost sales. Therefore, their efforts to retain all repair revenue makes sense.

Personally, I think Google’s “Don’t be Evil” tagline arose because it knew Apple better deserved the “Be Evil” title.

Chrome, Edge kick off faster release cadence; enterprises can skip versions

Jeanette Box

September 28, 2021

Google’s Chrome and Microsoft’s Edge began their every-four-weeks release cadence with the launch last week of version 94 of each browser.

Google released Chrome 94 on Sept. 21, while Microsoft issued Edge 94 three days later, on Sept. 24.

From those dates, Chrome and Edge will upgrade every four weeks. Chrome 95 and Edge 95, for example, will debut Oct. 19 and Oct. 21, respectively. There will be exceptions to that pace for holidays, however. For instance, Chrome 96, the final version of 2021, will release Nov. 16, and be followed by Chrome 97 on Jan. 4, 2022, a seven-week interval.

Google announced the then-upcoming change to a more frequent release schedule in early March; Microsoft quickly followed with news of its own several days later.

(Microsoft cannot divorce Edge’s release schedule from Chrome’s because both are powered by Chromium, the open-source project dominated by Google engineers.)

The new release tempo for Chrome and Edge mimics that of Mozilla’s Firefox, which switched to the same four-week schedule in September 2019.

Concurrent with the release of Chrome 94 and Edge 94, Google and Microsoft each also debuted an enterprise-specific release cadence named “Extended Stable,” which is upgraded every eight weeks rather than four. The additional time between releases is meant to give IT admins “a longer timeline to test and validate new browser versions.”

Extended Stable releases are issued for Chrome and Edge on their even-numbered versions. Thus, organizations that adopt the Extended Stable model with Chrome/Edge 94 will receive Chrome/Edge 96 in November but will skip October’s v. 95.

IT administrators can set users’ copies of Chrome to the Extended Stable release through Windows’ group policies, specifically the Target Channel override option, as outlined in the online support document. (Instructions for setting Chrome to Extended Stable on macOS can be found here.) These policies can be set on-premises by admins or alternately, using Chrome Browser Cloud Management.

For Edge, the same Target Channel override policy can be invoked to shift that browser to Extended Stable’s eight-week release tempo. (To stick to its own lingo, Microsoft calls this the Extended Stable Channel.) Admins can also trigger the longer release schedule using Configuration Manager or Intune.

Security updates that contain only patches for newly-reported vulnerabilities will continue to be received by Extended Stable builds at the same time they’re issued for the generic Stable versions of Chrome and Edge.

On app tracking, both Android and iOS have to do better

Jeanette Box

September 28, 2021

Mobile app use continues to climb in enterprises worldwide, and it won’t be long before almost all employee/contractor communications take place over mobile devices. That’s why it’s such a threat to security and compliance that mobile apps have extensive access to everything on a device — and few limitations on what those apps can share.

Apple argues that it’s already doing something about this in iOS with its app tracking transparency push. But a report in The Washington Post last week undermines the company’s promises. Why? Because Apple has been trusting app vendors to actually do what they agree to do. (No one could have foreseen that blowing up.)

Before we dig into the latest Apple app-data-sharing developments, there’s a bit of potentially good news coming for Google Android users. In a blog post this month, Android pledged to roll out new rules starting in December that would, by default, lock out any permissions for apps that haven’t been used in a while.

This would basically protect users from old apps they’ve forgotten, making sure that app access to sensitive device information is limited. This differs from Apple’s tack in that it doesn’t appear to rely on vendor cooperation.

“In order to work, apps often need to request certain permissions, but with dozens of apps on any given device, it can be tough to keep up with the permissions you’ve previously granted – especially if you haven’t used an app for an extended period of time,” the blog post said. “In Android 11, we introduced the permission auto-reset feature. This feature helps protect user privacy by automatically resetting an app’s runtime permissions – which are permissions that display a prompt to the user when requested – if the app isn’t used for a few months.

“Starting in December 2021, we are expanding this to billions more devices,” the post continued. “This feature will automatically be enabled on devices with Google Play services that are running Android 6.0 (API level 23) or higher. The feature will be enabled by default for apps targeting Android 11 (API level 30) or higher. However, users can enable permission auto-reset manually for apps targeting API levels 23 to 29.”

The blog also went into a bit more detail on timing.

In December, “the permission auto-reset feature will begin a gradual rollout across devices powered by Google Play Services that run a version between Android 6.0 and Android 10. On these devices, users can now go to the auto-reset settings page and enable/disable auto-reset for specific apps. The system will start to automatically reset the permissions of unused apps a few weeks after the feature launches on a device.”

By sometime in the first quarter of 2022, “the permission auto-reset feature will reach all devices running a version between Android 6.0 and Android 10.”

The bad news: Android is offering no protection right away, which means app developers are rushing to download as much personal data as they can before the crackdown.

In this context, “personal data” is sort of a misnomer. Don’t get me wrong: those apps are absolutely grabbing lots of personal data. But from an IT perspective, it’s important to focus on the fact that the apps are also potentially accessing pallets of sensitive enterprise data as well. And as long as your employees/contractors continue to communicate with clients and partners and others with unencrypted communication methods, you have problems both with cybersecurity and with compliance.

Still, mobile security advocate Ilia Kolochenko, founder of ImmuniWeb, argued that the Android move really is a positive step.

“This is a game-changer for many unwitting Android users who erroneously granted excessive permissions to mobile apps that don’t need them or even to malware,” Kolochenko said. “Many millions of non-technical users are tricked to grant dangerous permissions to adware apps or even installing malicious applications and then grant all existing permissions that may lead to a full compromise of the device.”

The first line of defense for any mobile apps should be the OS vendor checking for problems. Of course, neither Google nor Apple have been willing to spend the money needed for the staff necessary to do that. Both companies believe a lack of app security is not a deal-killer for its customers, meaning they won’t lose a lot of sales by doing the bare minimum.

They may be right. And as long as iOS and Android overwhelmingly control the mobile space, there are pragmatically no options for enterprises other than to support one or both.

Now, let’s look at the latest in the Apple world of app protection, courtesy of The Washington Post. The headline nicely sums things up: “When you ‘Ask app not to track,’ some iPhone apps keep snooping anyway.”

Here’s how the Post explains what’s going on: “…Something curious happens after you ask not to be tracked, according to an investigation by researchers at privacy software maker Lockdown and The Washington Post. Subway Surfers starts sending an outside ad company called Chartboost 29 very specific data points about your iPhone, including your Internet address, your free storage, your current volume level (to 3 decimal points) and even your battery level (to 15 decimal points. It’s the kind of unique data that could be used by advertisers to identify your iPhone, possibly letting them know what other apps you use or how to target you. In other words, it’s sidestepping your request to be left alone. You can’t stop it.”

This is phone fingerprinting, which can be alarmingly effective. It enables vendors to recognize your device when it appears on their radar. What happens when your CEO is conducting supposedly secret negotiations with a potential takeover target, or if someone is testing a device that has yet to be released?

Apple seems to fully appreciate and demand privacy for its product launches, and very much talks up its devotion to privacy. And yet it’s deeply cavalier about any other company’s secrets.

Apple told the Post it would look into the issue and work with app developers to make sure everything’s on the up and up. But after several weeks, nothing changed.

Apple, 1Password, and Cloudflare all move to protect email

Jeanette Box

September 28, 2021

Apple’s new Hide My Email feature, designed to protect users against phishing attacks and unwanted marketing spam, has swiftly become but one of a variety of options now available.

The river becomes a flood

For a very long time, the daily ritual of checking email accounts has been one in which many of us must first delete the majority of messages received because our addresses have been sold all over the place. Spam filters help, but in my experience plenty gets through — and you can’t easily tell who shared your address(es) in the first place.

Everyone is at it. Capturing and selling email addresses and data about people is a big business. Not only that, but most privacy and security breaches begin with phishing emails carrying suspect links and fraudulent requests for personal information.

It’s a scourge the deeper impacts of which became crystal clear during the pandemic, when phishing incidents climbed 220%, according to F5 Labs. There was even a wave of such attacks posing as official emails from Apple.

Now people in the industry are doing something about it.

Apple’s Hide My Email

Apple introduced Sign In With Apple at WWDC 2019. This let you sign up for services and accounts privately, protecting your email address. That service still exists, but has been augmented with the new Hide My Email feature.

The latter lets you create single-use email addresses for use with assigned websites. Messages sent to that address are automatically made available in your main email in-box, but you can switch off those single-use addresses at will, which also means you can stem the flow of spam. Combined with Apple’s newly introduced support for private domains within iCloud, this becomes a useful feature for anyone with an iPhone, particularly families and small businesses.

Masked Email from 1Password

But Apple isn’t alone. Just today we learned that 1Password is working with Fastmail to introduce Masked Email, a service which – like Sign In With Apple/Hide My Email – creates unique email addresses for logins from inside the 1Password app.

Just like Hide My Email, users can control all the different addresses they create in the sense of enabling and disabling them. That means that if a site or service decides to share someone’s email address without permission, or if a database gets hacked or leaked, they can just disable that fake address to stem spam’s flow.

Cloudflare also offers protection

Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare has also stepped into the game. It has introduced Cloudflare Email Routing and Email Security DNS Wizard, a pair of email safety and security tools it hopes will help protect us all against phishing and spoofing.

These tools work with existing mail hosting services, including Gmail, Office 365, Exchange, Yahoo, and AOL and are completely free to use.

Cloudflare may also be working with Apple on Safari’s new Private Relay service, which encrypts and masks your browsing activity. Apple has conceded it is working with partners on this but has not said who. An association between the two firms has been discussed in the past.

[Also read: 12 security tips for the ‘work from home’ enterprise]

Cloudflare Email Routing means emails pass through Cloudflare before they reach the “official” email host. This also makes it possible for individuals and organizations to manage an entire custom email domain from a single email account, similar (but I think a little better) to Apple’s private domain feature in iCloud+.

This may well come in useful for SMBs seeking to combine multiple email addresses into one inbox without the burden of learning a new system.

Email Security DNS Wizard is a more sophisticated tool that attempts to mitigate email spoofing with DNS records to prevent others from sending malicious emails that appear to come from your domain. This is the kind of solution that should radically reduce the number of genuine-seeming phishing emails.

What next?

How to choose the best desktop-as-a-service solution

Jeanette Box

September 27, 2021

Thanks to the pandemic, working from home no longer languishes as a rare option for a few workers. It’s mainstream business practice. Just ask Google, Facebook, Netflix, or the U.S. government: They’re all either delaying office reopenings or shifting to remote or hybrid work.

With this work transformation, the desktop is also changing. Decades ago, we used dumb terminals attached to mainframes for corporate work. Then, 40 years ago, we moved to the PC. We still have PCs on our desks, but increasingly, we’ve been moving back to the centralized model.

Today’s Windows PCs are far more likely to run software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings such as Microsoft 365/Office 365 or Google Workspace than they are old-style office suites such as Office 2019, WordPerfect Office, or LibreOffice. Indeed, by Statista’s latest count of office productivity software market share, office software that’s hosted on-premises barely counts. Microsoft 365/Office 365 has 47.5% of the market, followed by Google’s application family, with 44.56%.

The natural next step in IT evolution is to move not just productivity software, but also the desktop itself, to the cloud.

Why? Because just as cloud-based SaaS made better financial sense for companies than the old models, the same is true of DaaS. Or, as your CFO might say, DaaS trades capex license spending for opex subscription costs.

For example, to run Windows 11, most users will need brand-new PCs. But if you elect to go with Windows 365 Cloud PC — Microsoft’s new, easy-to-use DaaS Windows service — you can run it on your existing hardware.

Furthermore, the DaaS approach cuts down on system maintenance charges, such as backups, software updates, and security. All of that’s taken care of by your DaaS provider. Again, with a remote workforce, these advantages count even more.

Scalability has long been the cloud’s biggest selling point. The same is true for DaaS. With most DaaS offerings, it doesn’t matter what hardware your home workers are using. For example, while you wouldn’t want to run Windows 365 off iPhones, iPads, or Android smartphones, you could.

This points out yet another reason why DaaS makes perfect sense for a remote workforce. Unlike with a standard office PC setup, if a PC gets fried by a lightning bolt, all the user needs is another working computer of some kind to get back to work. Disaster recovery is built right in.

How to choose a Windows DaaS

What business software you’re already using should be your guide for your cloud-based desktop. While an array of big-name and smaller vendors offer Windows DaaS, most Windows-centric offices will find one of the following three options to be their best bet:

Citrix Workspace

Citrix has been providing remote MS-DOS and Windows desktops since 1992. With decades of working hand-in-glove with Microsoft, Workspace works very well. Of course, then, as now, to run it well you really must run Windows PCs as clients.

One of its major advantages is that you can maintain security on remote systems with end-to-end contextual security. This is a zero-trust approach. It protects users, user groups, and the client platform. From a user viewpoint, its defenses are transparent. As a big believer in making security as easy as possible for users, I find this an excellent approach.

To connect your desktop efficiently with its virtual server counterpart, Citrix uses its proprietary HDX and ICA protocols. This optimizes your network traffic so that the most network-hungry applications, such as dedicated real-time Zoom calls, get the lion’s share of the bandwidth.

For all of this, Workspace users frequently complain that its most common problems are network-related. In particular, people find that poor latency can often cause application faults and even complete desktop disconnects. Slow desktop session launches, an annoyance first encountered in the ‘80s, is still present today.

Still, if you want a tried and true remote desktop solution for your company, Workspace deserves your consideration.

To use Citrix Workspace, you must license at least 25 users. While you can start at a mere $2 per user per month, practically speaking you’ll probably want the Workspace Premium option, which costs $18 per user per month. Pricing, as you’ll see with all DaaS offerings, varies wildly depending on your number of licenses and the level of service you want from your provider.

Azure Virtual Desktop

Microsoft has long had its own DaaS offerings, starting with Terminal Server (which was based on Citrix’s WinFrame). The latest take on this is Azure Virtual Desktop.

This is a comprehensive, Azure-cloud-based desktop and SaaS. It offers simplified management and multisession Windows 10 desktops, and it’s optimized for Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise (formerly Office 365 ProPlus). You can use it on many operating systems including Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android.

To manage it, you call the shots from the Azure Portal. From here, you can deploy new apps, change network settings, and adjust security settings. But it’s difficult to set up and manage Azure Virtual Desktop. If you’re going to run this, your company will need expert Windows system administrators. And even then you’re going to face a difficult learning curve.

So, why would you do it? Because Azure Virtual Desktop gives you excellent security and, once you’ve mastered its management, great control over your desktops.

That said, another reason to be wary of this Windows DaaS is that its pricing is complex. True, if you have Microsoft 365 or Windows Enterprise, you have access to Windows Virtual Desktop at no additional charge per user, but that’s only the start. You must also have Azure Active Directory, VMs, cloud storage, and networking. That’s a lot of components, and none of them are cheap.

What will it end up costing you? Start by looking at the Azure Virtual Desktop pricing details and then move on to the Azure pricing calculator. Fair warning: This is going to take a lot of work. You may well want to turn to a Azure Virtual Desktop-savvy managed service provider (MSP) for help.

Still, if you have in-house Windows DaaS expertise and you want iron control over your remote desktops, Azure Virtual Desktop is worth your time and money.

Windows 365 Cloud PC

But what if you don’t have a certified Azure Virtual Desktop Specialist on staff? Microsoft finally has a solution for you, too: Windows 365 Cloud PC.

Here, Microsoft sets up Windows 365 for you. You control how to scale your Windows 365 instances and monitor Cloud PC’s performance, but you don’t need to be an Azure Solutions Architect Expert to create and manage your new virtual Cloud PCs. The critical difference between the two Microsoft DaaS offerings is that Azure Virtual Desktop is optimized for flexibility, while Windows 365 is set up for ease of use.

Windows 365 pricing is also much simpler, while at the same time being very flexible. You can change the configuration at any time. Thus, you can add or remove resources as needed while changing your monthly subscription price.

You can use Windows 365 in a browser on pretty much any operating system you care to name. Your best experience, though, will come with Microsoft’s Remote Desktop client, which you can download from a separate page on the Windows 365 dashboard. There are apps available for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android.

Windows 365 Cloud PC isn’t for everyone. Microsoft’s guidelines for sizing Cloud PCs recommend at least 2 vCPUs and 8GB of RAM for virtual PCs in a work-from-home scenario. At about $41 per month, a small business might find that not worth the cash. Larger businesses faced with buying, shipping, and supporting multiple managed corporate PCs might find net savings.

Of the Windows DaaS options, if all I wanted was vanilla Windows desktops for office workers, Windows 365 Cloud PC looks like the best option.

Other options

While Citrix Workspace, Azure Virtual Desktop, and Windows 365 Cloud PC are your main choices, there are other options. These include Amazon WorkSpaces and VMware Horizon Cloud service.

Amazon WorkSpaces is a proprietary cloud desktop service. It runs on top of an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). On this platform, you can run either Windows or Linux desktops on a wide variety of virtual hardware and storage configurations. You connect your devices to it using Teradici PC-over-IP (PCoIP) streaming protocol by default, or the new Amazon WorkSpaces Streaming Protocol (WSP).

You can run your virtual desktops from Windows, macOS, or Ubuntu Linux computers; Chromebooks; iPads; Amazon Fire tablets; Android tablets; and supported web browsers. Your users’ applications and data remain persistent, so they can easily switch between devices without losing their work.

Amazon WorkSpaces desktops come in seven different default bundles and pricing levels — Value, Standard, Performance, Power, PowerPro, Graphics, and GraphicsPro. Windows 10 desktop prices start at $7.25/month + $0.22/hour (or a flat fee of $25/month) with WorkSpace supplying a Windows 10 Enterprise license, or $7.25/month + $0.17/hour (or $21/month) if you provide your own license. (Linux desktop prices start at $7.25/month + $0.17/hour or $21/month.)

VMware’s Horizon Cloud DaaS offers Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktops. You can run these on the VMware Cloud on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, or another VMware partner cloud. VMware is not, however, a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP). That means VMware doesn’t resell Windows licensing.

You can run these virtual Windows desktops on a variety of end-user platforms. These include Windows PCs, Macs, tablets, and smartphones.

What’s different about VMware’s approach is that it decouples desktop and application components and manages them independently. Horizon then reincorporates them on demand to deliver a personalized user workspace.

When the user logs in, a virtual desktop can assemble itself on the fly by combining an instant clone of a golden virtual machine (VM) image with a user environment profile and one or more containerized applications that attach themselves to, but are not installed in, the VM. From a user’s viewpoint, these look like persistent desktops, but the desktop itself is destroyed on logout. When they log back in, the desktops are automatically recreated.

VMware offers Horizon on a one-time license basis. It starts with VMware Horizon Standard for 10 users for $3,116. There are also 100 user packages.

According to IDC’s market share numbers for 2020, for the first time, Chrome OS grew to become the second-most popular desktop operating system worldwide, at 10.8% — 3.3% ahead of macOS. Because macOS’s share also grew, ChromeOS’ growth is clearly at the expense of Windows — which slipped to a 75% share in Q1.

While DaaS has been around for decades, it was only when Google introduced the Chromebook more than a decade ago that the concept went from being a business-only approach to one that anyone, anywhere could use.

Chromebooks represent the cheapest way to deploy a complete software/hardware DaaS corporate solution. Chromebooks have also been converting people to DaaS approaches. For example, we all know now that if your corporate Chromebook gets run over by a truck, you can just grab Junior’s school Chromebook and be back in business in a minute. Just try that with any Windows laptop.

By offering free versions of most of its services, Google also has a ready-made user community for its corporate Google Workspace offerings. If your people already know how to use Google Docs and Gmail, they’re ready to be Workspace users. You can argue until the cows come home whether Workspace’s features are better than those of Microsoft 365, but no one questions that they’re comparable.

You can, of course, use Google Workspace on any web-enabled device. It works best with the Chrome web browser, but now that almost every browser is based on Chromium, that’s not much of a requirement. True, Workspace works even better with Chromebooks, but Google — by buying Neverware and its Chrome OS clone CloudReady — has made it possible to convert any old PC you or your employees have lying around into a Chrome OS workstation.

Workspace pricing, unlike that of the Windows family, is very straightforward. It starts at $6 a month per user and runs up to $18 month per user. There are even higher tiers if you want your users to have unlimited storage.

Linux desktops with Shells

Who uses desktop Linux? Well, its market share never seems to grow beyond 2%, but desktop Linux — in the form of Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, and the rest — has its niche among software developers and wild-eyed enthusiasts around the world. Shells, a DaaS startup launched last year, makes hosting Linux desktops in the cloud a snap.

You’ve always been able to run Linux remotely. It’s in its Unix DNA. But if you want to run Linux (or Windows, for that matter) VMs without managing the server side, Shells offers you an alternative that’s easy to deploy, manage, and use.

Shells relies on web browsers for its interface. Thus, you can run desktops from any internet-capable device. You can even use a smart TV with a keyboard and mouse.

The company offers multiple Linux distributions, including the popular distros Debian, Mint, and Ubuntu. The company does not, at this time, support the Red Hat desktop distro family, such as Fedora Workstation. Shells also offers Windows 10 Pro.

Users on a budget may find Shells attractive because of its pricing. The most inexpensive annual subscription, Shells Basic, costs only $9 a month. This cloud desktop comes with only a single CPU, with 40GB of storage and 2GB of memory. While that’s pathetically low-powered for Windows, it’s more than enough for a line-of-business Linux desktop.

For developers and power users, the annual Shells Pro plan at $25 a month gives you a virtual desktop with four CPU cores, 160GB of storage, and 8GB of memory. That’s more than enough resources for desktop Linux users to get serious work done.

Finally, Shells offers free daily backups covering up to seven days. It’s a nice little feature, and on many other DaaS platforms, it would cost an additional fee.

For Linux users, Shells is well worth the money. It’s also worth checking out if your shop needs only a few Windows virtual desktops.

Making the best call

There are still situations where a DaaS is not an appropriate choice. If your office or employees still subsist on sub-10 Mbps DSL internet connections, for example, DaaS will not be your friend.

But with so many remote workers, and with security threats looming larger by the minute, DaaS makes a good deal of sense for many businesses. Certainly some users will always need full-powered PCs on their desktops — think video and audio producers, graphic designers, and the like. But ordinary office workers? For them, DaaS makes perfect sense.

Which DaaS depends on your current stack. Microsoft-oriented offices should check out, in this order, Windows 365 Cloud PC, Citrix Workspace, and Azure Virtual Desktop — and, if those don’t suit, one of the alternative options. For Google or Microsoft users looking for a less expensive option, Chrome OS and Google Workspace demand your attention. Finally, if you want to try something affordable and super secure, look to Shell’s cloud-based Linux desktops.

Apple puts a Map to the future on iPhone

Jeanette Box

September 27, 2021

Apple has begun rolling out its long-in-the-making augmented reality (AR) city guides, which use the camera and your iPhone’s display to show you where you are going. It also shows part of the future Apple sees for active uses of AR.

Through the looking glass, we see clearly

The new AR guide is available in London, Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco. Now, I’m not terribly convinced that most people will feel particularly comfortable wriggling their $1,000+ iPhones in the air while they weave their way through tourist spots. Though I’m sure there are some people out there who really hope they do (and they don’t all work at Apple).

But many will give it a try. What does it do?

Apple announced its plan to introduce step-by-step walking guidance in AR when it announced iOS 15 at WWDC in June. The idea is powerful, and works like this:

Grab your iPhone.
Point it at buildings that surround you.
The iPhone will analyze the images you provide to recognize where you are.
Maps will then generate a highly accurate position to deliver detailed directions.

To illustrate this in the UK, Apple highlights an image showing Bond Street Station with a big arrow pointing right along Oxford Street. Words beneath this picture let you know that Marble Arch station is just 700 meters away.

This is all useful stuff. Like so much of what Apple does, it makes use of a range of Apple’s smaller innovations, particularly (but not entirely) the Neural Engine in the A-series Apple iPhone processors. To recognize what the camera sees and provide accurate directions, Neural Engine must be making use of a host of machine learning tools Apple has developed. These include image classification and alignment APIs, Trajectory Detection APIs, and possibly text recognition, detection, and horizon detection APIs. That’s the pure image analysis part.

This is coupled with Apple’s on-device location detection, mapping data and (I suspect) its existing database of street scenes to provide the user with near perfectly accurate directions to a chosen destination.

This is a great illustration of the kinds of things you can already achieve with machine learning on Apple’s platforms — Cinematic Mode and Live Text are two more excellent recent examples. Of course, it’s not hard to imagine pointing your phone at a street sign while using AR directions in this way to receive an instant translation of the text.

John Giannandrea, Apple’s senior vice president for machine learning, in 2020 spoke to its importance when he told Ars Technica: “There’s a whole bunch of new experiences that are powered by machine learning. And these are things like language translation, or on-device dictation, or our new features around health, like sleep and hand washing, and stuff we’ve released in the past around heart health and things like this. I think there are increasingly fewer and fewer places in iOS where we’re not using machine learning.”

Apple’s array of camera technologies speak to this. That you can edit images in Portrait or Cinematic mode even after the event also illustrates this. All these technologies will work together to deliver those Apple Glass experiences we expect the company will begin to bring to market next year.

But that’s just the tip of what’s possible, as Apple continues to expand the number of available machine learning APIs it offers developers. Existing APIs include the following, all of which may be augmented by CoreML-compatible AI models:

Image classification, saliency, alignment, and similarity APIs.
Object detection and tracking.
Trajectory and contour detection.
Text detection and recognition.
Face detection, tracking, landmarks, and capture quality.
Human body detection, body pose, and hand pose.
Animal recognition (cat and dog).
Barcode, rectangle, horizon detection.
Optical flow to analyze object motion between video frames.
Person segmentation.
Document detection.
Seven natural language APIs, including sentiment analysis and language identification.
Speech recognition and sound classification.

Apple grows this list regularly, but there are plenty of tools developers can already use to augment app experiences. This short collection of apps shows some ideas. Delta Airlines, which recently deployed 12,000 iPhones across in-flight staffers, also makes an AR app to help cabin staff.

Steppingstones to innovation

We all think Apple will introduce AR glasses of some kind next year.

When it does, Apple’s newly introduced Maps features surely shows part of its vision for these things. That it also gives the company an opportunity to use private on-device analysis to compare its own existing collections of images of geographical locations against imagery gathered by users can only help it develop increasingly complex ML/image interactions.

We all know that the larger the sample size the more likely it is that AI can deliver good, rather than garbage, results. If that is the intent, then Apple must surely hope to convince its billion users to use whatever it introduces to improve the accuracy of the machine learning systems it uses in Maps. It likes to build its next steppingstone on the back of the one it made before, after all.

Who knows what’s coming down that road?

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