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Apple Security Tool Unveiled at RSA Conference 2019

Andrew Orr ·

The RSA Conference is a series of computer security conferences. This year, security researcher Patrick Wardle announced a new tool for Macs called GamePlan.

…GamePlan, a tool that watches for potentially suspicious events on Macs and flags them for humans to investigate. The general concept sounds similar to other defense platforms, and it hooks into detection mechanisms—has a USB stick been inserted into a machine? has someone generated a screen capture? is a program accessing a webcam?—Apple already offers in macOS. But GamePlan, cleverly written with Apple’s GameplayKit framework, collects all of this data in a centralized stream and uses the videogame logic engine to process it.

I use a couple of Mr. Wardle’s security tools. I look forward to downloading GamePlan.

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Laurene Powell Jobs on the Future of Media and Democracy

Charlotte Henry ·

Laurene Powell Jobs is amongst a number of wealthy Americans increasingly investing in media. For example, in November 2018 her Emerson Collective purchased the company behind the Sunday Magazine and Pop-Up Magazine. She also bought a major stake in the Atlantic in 2017. The widow of late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs discussed her vision of the future of media with Re/Code‘s Kara Swisher.

Our issue areas are those that we think are the most calcified and the most important that reflect the American values and that are important to democracy. So we work in education, we work in immigration, we work in environment. And outside of that, it started to become really obvious to us that the cultural narrative, that the kind of in-depth journalism that exposes the injustices in these fields was under attack from both a business model point of view …

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Female British Siri Voice Given an Upgrade

Charlotte Henry ·

LONDON – Apple customers in the UK might be feeling that Siri is just that little bit more human. It is reported that the digital assistant’s British female voice has been given an upgrade. Cult of Mac noticed a number of users commenting on the improvement to the voice on iPhone, iPad, and HomePod. The male voice was improved earlier in 2019.

Apple launched a mission to make Siri sound less robotic in 2017. The release of iOS 11 that fall brought big improvements to Siri’s voice in a number of markets, and the improvements have slowly but surely continued since then. Apple is thought to be using machine learning techniques to make its assistant sound more natural. It hasn’t changed the voice artists behind Siri — at least not for the British accents — but they now sound more human.

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How to Determine Which Version of iPad (or iPhone) You Have

John Martellaro ·

Apple doesn’t make it easy, for some crazy reason, to go into iOS Settings and look up the version and generation of an iPad or iPhone. For example, is that an iPad mini 3 or mini 4 on your desk? Apple’s update cycles can be so long, we sometimes forget!  iPhone Life writes:

“The first piece of information you’ll need to help discover which iPad version you own is to find your iPad’s model number. Once you’ve found the model number on your iPad, you can learn which type and generation of iPad you own…” [by going to the handy tables provided.]

The tables in this article are very handy, worthy of a bookmark.

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Give Robocallers the Boot with the AI-Based Tool that's Blocked Over 1 Billion Calls: $19.99

Bryan Chaffin ·

We have a deal on a subscription to Call Control Premium. This AI-based service lets you block calls based on your own criteria and a community-driven database, and it provides blacklists, reverse-lookup tools, and a variety of other tools that let you take greater control over your calls. A one year subscription is $19.99 through us. You can find all the details in the deal listing.

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Swift Playgrounds 3.0 Beta 1 is Out

Andrew Orr ·

If you use Apple’s TestFlight app and signed up to beta test Swift Playgrounds app, you’ll be pleased to know that Swift Playground 3.0 beta 1 is out.

The full extent of what’s new in Swift Playgrounds 3.0 isn’t clear as of yet, but Apple’s release notes for the beta update provide a bit of detail. The new version of the app allows Playground Books to contain directories of Swift code and resources that can be imported for use by any page in the book.