Recorded 12th April 2021
This week was a bit of a grab bag of stories: Nick Jim and Simon talk about everything from Chinese engineers upgrading an M1 Mac, to Intel shooting itself in the foot with an ad (again), Epic claiming Apple locks in users with iMessage, while Apple objecst to a water bottle company logo trademark filing. Lot’s of going ons with people terrified that Apple’s ATT is going to destroy their “surveillance capitalism” business models while Apple tell them attempts to circumvent ATT will not be tolerated. Meanwhile we find out about trees that can bleed metal and a really creepy webcam.
GIVEAWAYS & OFFERS
- Glenn Fleishman’s book Take Control of Securing Your Mac can be found at takecontrolbooks.com along with many other titles by him, Joe Kissell, Jeff Carlson and others.
- Steve at Geeks Corner has a podcast which is usually 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:
NICK RILEY
- @spligosh on Twitter very occasionally.
- Sometimes appears on Bart Busschots’ Let’s Talk Apple
- Sutton Park Circuit church worship on YouTube
JAMES ORMISTON
- MacJim in the Slack
- In charge of the Essential Apple Flickr
- Also on Flickr as thesrpspaintshop
- Has videos on Vimeo
APPLE
- M1 Mac RAM and SSD Upgrades Found to Be Possible After Purchase – MacRumors
- The PodSwap – AirPods Battery Replacement Swap – ThePodSwap.com
- COVID-19: NHS coronavirus app update blocked for breaking privacy rules – Sky News
- Apple locks in users by keeping iMessage iOS-only, Epic court filings show – Pocket-lint
- WhatsApp alternatives compared – ProtonMail Blog
- Two-Thirds of iPhone Users Expected to Block Ad Tracking – MacRumors
- Apple says water bottle logo ‘nearly identical’ to its own, objects to trademark – AppleInsider
- MagSafe Finally Returning to MacBook Air – MacRumors
- Apple Details Ways Advertisers Can Measure the Impact of Ads Without Tracking Users Ahead of iOS 14.5 Launch – MacRumors
- ‘The elephant in the room’: Companies persist with fingerprinting as a workaround to Apple’s new privacy rules – Digiday
- Et tu, Procter & Gamble? – Daring Fireball
- Fully Functioning iPhone 11 Pro Max Recovered From Lake After One Year – Wccftech
- Comment: An Apple version of the Roku Streambar would make an ideal high-end Apple TV – 9to5Mac
TECHNOLOGY
- The ‘Iron Man’ body armour many of us may soon be wearing – BBC News
- Apple M1 hardware support merged into Linux 5.13 – Ars Technica
- Intel’s latest anti-Apple ad has an embarrassing mistake – BGR
- These trees bleed metal – and could help power the future – ABC News Australia
- iPhone Users Can Now Try Android on a Galaxy Device Via Samsung’s ‘iTest’ – MacTrast
SECURITY & PRIVACY
- Tool checks phone numbers from Facebook data breach – BBC
- The average smartphone app harbors 6 different trackers – Cult of Mac
- Security researcher earns $100K prize for Safari exploit at Pwn2Own 2021 – AppleInsider
- DuckDuckGo promises to block Google’s latest ad-tracking tech – if Google allows it – The Verge
- DuckDuckGo asks people to block Google’s new tracking method – Business Insider
- DuckDuckGo’s Chrome browser extension can now block Google’s group-based tracking technology – Techspot
WORTH A CHIRP / ESSENTIAL TIPS
- The First ‘Up To Speed’ with Jeff Gamet – MacVoices #21065
- MailTrackerBlocker for Mail on macOS – GitHub
JUST A SNIPPET
For things that are not worth more than a flypast
- Video Calls Get Even Worse With This Realistic Robot Eye Webcam – Gizmodo
NEMO’S HARDWARE STORE (44:59)
- Hubble for iPad 7-in-1 USB-C Hub+Case – Fledging – $115 or $125 US – Amazon US Not currently in the UK store.
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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