S1E174 - Essential Apple Podcast 174: A mixed bag of news and Jim's new mic

Recorded 3rd May 2020

This week I am joined again by MacJim and Mark to talk about Jim’s new microphone, the iOS 13.5 beta, Apple bugs, Apple’s earnings report, the NHS contact tracing app, and more.

GIVEAWAYS & OFFERS

Glenn Fleishman’s Working From Home book is completely FREE and can be downloaded here
You can get Ghostery Midnight free for 3 months with the coupon code ‘w* Steve at Geeks Corner will be having more giveaways including Luminar 4 and Affinity softwares in the near future. Keep an eye on the site or follow him on Twitter @GeekCorner_uk

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:

MARK CHAPPELL

@oceanspeed on Twitter
Puts Essential Apple related stuff on YouTube
Co-host of the The Watching Men Podcast with Karl Madden

JAMES ORMISTON

MacJim in the Slack
In charge of the Essential Apple Flickr
Also on Flickr as thesrpspaintshop

APPLE

Apple 13.4.5 Beta… becomes 13.5 – Forbes
‘Psychic Paper’, an Extraordinarily Powerful But Easily Understood iOS Exploit – Daring Fireball
- Luckily it seems this bug wasn’t widely known and is patched in 13.5 currently in Beta – but is/was a hell of a security miss!
macOS bug fills your MacBook storage with blank files – Laptop Mag
- macOS JPG File -Truncation- Bug More Pervasive Than Originally Thought — One News Page
Valve’s SteamVR ends support for macOS after being introduced at WWDC 2017 – 9to5 Mac
Apple is Making Face ID Unlock Easier While Wearing a Mask– iPhone Canada
Total Revenue Grows, Services Revenue Reaches New All-Time High of $13.3 Billion – Apple
- Apple CEO Tim Cook says company saw an ‘uptick across the board’ in late April thanks to stimulus and work from home – CNBC
- Apple Q2 2020 Results – $58.3 Billion Revenue – Mac Stories

TECHNOLOGY

NHS rejects Apple-Google coronavirus app plan – BBC News
- Disappointing to say the least – but unfortunately (in my view) unsurprising as the British government seem to have a dangerously high desire to know what and who we all interact with.
Contact tracing app trial on Isle of Wight – BBC
Cliqz closes areas for browser and search technologies – Hubert Burda Media

SECURITY & PRIVACY

Europe’s GDPR legislation is proving worryingly toothless — Input Mag

WORTH A CHIRP / ESSENTIAL TIPS

Darkroom 4.6 Adds Video to Its Excellent Photo Editing Workflow – MacStories
Google Meet will soon be free for anyone with a Gmail account – Engadget
Apple MagSafe 1 to MagSafe 2 adapter £9 GBP on Amazon
New Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera with interchangeable lens launches from $50 – Geeky Gadgets

NEMO’S HARDWARE STORE

Nemo’s daughter Sheba reports on her new iPhone SE 2020.

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.
33mail.com – Never give out your real email address online again.
Sudo – get up to 9 “avatars” with email addresses, phone numbers and more to mask your online identity. Free for the first year and priced from $0.99 US / £2.50 UK per month thereafter… 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.

Social Media and Slack

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