Essential Apple Podcast 204: Happy New Year!

Recorded 3rd January 2021

Happy New Year – and let’s all hope it brings us better times! This week we are joined once again by Andrius Gailiunas of Pixelmator to hear how they got though last year, the launch of several new products and the release of Pixelmator 2.0… Plus our usual look at stories that caught our eye over the last few days.

GIVEAWAYS & OFFERS

Glenn Fleishman’s Working From Home book is completely FREE and can be downloaded here and now he has also released Take Control of Zoom Essentials free as well.
Steve at Geeks Corner has restarted his podcast which is a 5-15 min show of his thoughts on tech. Also keep an eye on his site or follow him on Twitter @GeekCorner_uk to watch for regular giveaways.

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

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

On this week’s show

ANDRIUS GAILIUNAS

CEO of Pixelmator
@Pixelmator is the Pixelmator Team Twitter
Pixelmator Tutorials
Create an Illustration Tutorial

NICK RILEY

@spligosh on Twitter very occasionally.
Sometimes appears on Bart Busschots’ Let’s Talk Apple
Sutton Park Circuit church worship on YouTube

APPLE

Apple starts shipping out special iPhones to security researchers – Cult of Mac
The new M1 Mac mini is now available as a hosted server with MacStadium — 9to5Mac
Record App Store spend during holidays thanks to pandemic – 9to5Mac
Serious Warning Issued For Apple AirPods Max Users – Forbes
This Underrated HomePod Mini Feature Will Make Your TV Room Sound Like A Movie Theater — Elite Daily
Apple will let Amphetamine app stay in the App Store after wrongly telling developer it violated App Store rules — The Verge
Apple removes Vybe Together app that promoted pandemic parties — Dazed
Five iOS bugs and annoyances Apple needs to fix in 2021 — ZDNet
Apple’s New Patent Will Revolutionize the Keyboard — Interesting Engineering
Corellium notches partial victory in Apple iOS copyright case — Ars Technica
Apple Could Be Willing to Back Down on Disputed Pear Logo Battle — iDrop News

TECHNOLOGY

Amazon buys Wondery, setting itself up to compete against Spotify for podcast domination — The Verge
Adobe Officially Ends Flash Support, Recommends Uninstalling Immediately — MacRumors

SECURITY & PRIVACY

Signal’s famous encryption may have been cracked – Tech Radar
Brave’s privacy-focused browser rolls out a version for Apple’s M1 Macs — Engadget

JUST A SNIPPET

For things that are not worth more than a flypast

Happy 40th Birthday (Tomorrow) to the Most Important Rule in the History of Apple — Inc.

Essential Apple Recommended Services:

Pixel Privacy – a fabulous resource full of excellent articles and advice on how to protect yourself online.
Doug.ee Blog for Andy J’s security tips.
Ghostery – protect yourself from trackers, scripts and ads while browsing.
Simple Login – Email anonymisation and disposable emails for login/registering with
33mail.com – Never give out your real email address online again.
AnonAddy – Disposable email addresses
Sudo – get up to 9 “avatars” with email addresses, phone numbers and more to mask your online identity. Free for the first year and priced from $0.99 US / £2.50 UK per month thereafter… You get to keep 2 free avatars though.
ProtonMail – end to end encrypted, open source, based in Switzerland. Prices start from FREE… what more can you ask?
ProtonVPN – a VPN to go with it perhaps? Prices also starting from nothing!
Comparitech DNS Leak Test – simple to use and understand VPN leak test.
Fake Name Generator – so much more than names! Create whole identities (for free) with all the information you could ever need.
Wire – free for personal use, open source and end to end encryted messenger and VoIP.
Pinecast – a fabulous podcast hosting service with costs that start from nothing.

Essential Apple is not affiliated with or paid to promote any of these services… We recommend services that we use ourselves and feel are either unique or outstanding in their field, or in some cases are just the best value for money in our opinion.

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