A Procrastinator’s Guide to Ransomware

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It’s affecting our banks. It’s hurting our healthcare organizations. It’s in our pipelines! Let's break it down for those of you who keep meaning to Google the specifics, but to be honest it's all you can do to remember to look up what a "yeet" is.

RansomwareWhat Is Ransomware?

Ransom malware (ransomware) prevents users from accessing their system or files and demands ransom payment in order to regain access. In some cases, the attackers will also threaten to release or leak the data if the ransom is not paid. 

When Did This Become A Thing?

In 1989. This is an interesting story, but to be brief: floppy disks were mailed to 20,000 AIDS researchers in 90 countries under the guise of an AIDS risk survey from biologist Dr. Joseph Popp. Upon loading the disk, researchers’ computers were infected with a trojan horse virus (a type of malware that works exactly how it sounds - you think you’re downloading a fancy wooden horse, but really it’s a fancy wooden horse PLUS some malware). Poetically, the virus laid dormant until the 90th boot, when an angry red page replaced the users’ screen demanding payment of $189 (paid via snail mail) to unlock their files. Popp’s program was relatively rudimentary - it simply changed the users’ filenames and extensions. Once the encryption tables were known, the files could be restored. Popp was arrested, and while he claimed the profits from his crime were intended for AIDS research, no one believed him, and that’s still a crime. He was declared mentally unfit for trial - something about curlers in his beard and condoms on his nose. I think he sounds fun.

What Does Ransomware Look Like?

Scareware

The mildest of the bunch, scareware is named as such because it feeds on your fears. Anyone who has seen the flashing “Warning! This computer is infected!” pop-up has witnessed scareware. Usually it provides a phone number for “tech support,” where you can pay some criminals $80 to put additional malware on your computer. In this case, your data has likely been untouched, provided that you do not click anything or call anyone and give them your private data. If presented with scareware, ctrl-alt-delete yourself back to safety and run an anti-virus scan from your trusted AV.

Screen lockers

Slightly more worrisome than scareware is lock-screen ransomware. In this scenario, you might start up your computer to see a full-sized window accompanied by an FBI or US Department of Justice seal stating that criminal activity has been detected on your device and you must pay a fine. It probably doesn’t need to be said, but this is not how the FBI or the Department of Justice would contact you if they suspected you of illegal activity. While annoying, screen lockers can be bypassed without paying the attackers, provided you have a bit of technical experience.

Encrypting ransomware

Now you're in a pickle. In this type of attack, your locally stored files - and sometimes cloud backups, too - are taken hostage and encrypted. Payment, usually in the ballpark of a few hundred, but sometimes thousands (or, for larger companies, millions) of dollars is demanded in return for decryption and return. Crypto-ransomware uses the same sophisticated technology that encrypts our conversations, banking transactions, and military communication, so unscrambling isn’t possible without paying the ransom. Even worse, there’s no guarantee the criminals will hold up their end of the deal in the event you do pay. 

How do I get it?

Most of the time, it comes as an attachment or link in a carefully crafted phishing email. It can also be spread through "drive-by downloading," which can happen through no fault of your own. You may visit a legitimate site that has been compromised by malicious code. The malicious code hopes to identify software weaknesses on machines and web browsers to determine which systems are vulnerable.

How Do I Keep My Stuff Safe?

  • Most importantly, maintain offline backups. Many ransomware programs will look for connected backups, so this “offline” bit is important. This way if they take your data, you can restore from your backup. Test your backups periodically to be sure everything is working.
  • Keep your programs and operating system up to do date. Those patches are there for a reason - often that reason is security vulnerabilities.
  • Be suspicious of your emails. Even if the alias looks like it’s from someone you know, check the actual email address - is it correct?
  • Use an ad-blocker. Drive-by download attacks often use advertisements to upload infections. An ad blocker can help limit your exposure.
  • Use a reputable antivirus. Bitdefender is good (even if we hate them right now), but our favorite is Malwarebytes OneView.

Lastly, Some Good News

If you’re feeling down about all this crime, or that you didn’t get into the cybercriminal game because it’s great money and you love a hoodie, here’s some good news: In 2013, a man turned himself in to the police after being deceived by “FBI” ransomware claiming to know of illegal activity on his computer. It turned out there was in fact child pornography on the man’s computer, and the man was arrested. Silver linings! The world is an A-OK place, guys. 

If you have concerns about how to accomplish any of the above recommended actions, please reach out to your friendly specialists at Patient Computer Help, Inc. to set up a consultation.

Patient Computer Help, Inc. assists people with their Macs and PCs in the Chagrin Falls and Ohio City areas.

Apple Celebrates 4/20 with “Spring Loaded” Event

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You may have been too high to notice, but on 4/20 Apple took to the Internet to stream its “Spring Loaded” event. Pundits had been unable to figure out a theme based on the name, and they probably felt foolish when the true meaning was revealed: the event was taking place in the spring, and it was loaded with announcements.

With Apple CEO Tim Cook stepping out of his impressively hotboxed car to bookend the presentation—and doing a cameo as a sneaky thief at 37:26 into the presentation—the company announced an M1-based 24-inch iMac, M1-based iPad Pro models, the long-rumored AirTag item tracker, and an enhanced Apple TV 4K with a redesigned Siri Remote. All these items can be ordered on Friday, April 30th, but some won’t ship until the second half of May.

More on these shortly, but briefly, Apple also unveiled the new Apple Card Family program, which allows two people to co-own an Apple Card and share it with their children, complete with spending limits. And for those still looking for a colorful iPhone 12 or iPhone 12 mini, it now comes in purple! He added a pirouette and some jazz hands with that last announcement.

M1-Based 24-inch iMac Comes in Spring Colors

Apple has continued replacing Macs at the lower end of the product line with new models featuring the company’s homegrown M1 chip. While the first Macs to get the M1—the MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini—didn’t receive any design changes, Apple radically overhauled things for the new M1-based 24-inch iMac.

At 11.5 mm thick, the 24-inch iMac is thinner than the original iPhone! It comes in seven colors: green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, blue, and silver. The back of the iMac—which is often visible, such as on a receptionist’s desk—is a bold, vibrant color, whereas the front uses a muted version of the color and a light gray bezel. Just look at these bad boys!

It looks like a 24-inch iPad clipped to an aluminum stand. It’s so thin that there’s no room for a standard power jack, so it comes with an external power adapter that includes an optional Ethernet jack.

Behind the iMac’s “chin” is the guts of the computer, most notably the same M1 chip as in other M1-based Macs. Overall performance will be stellar thanks to the M1’s 8-core CPU and 8-core GPU, but you can tweak the price/performance curve slightly by choosing a 7-core GPU instead and by picking either 8 GB or 16 GB of unified memory.

The screen, which actually measures 23.5 inches diagonally, offers 4480-by-2520 resolution, making it a 4.5K Retina display, between the 4K display on the now-discontinued 21.5-inch iMac and the 5K display on the 27-inch iMac. It’s topped by a 1080p FaceTime HD camera that, with help from the M1 chip’s image signal processor—and advanced microphones and speakers—should offer excellent out-of-the-box videoconferencing quality.

Apple introduced three new color-matched versions of the Magic Keyboard as well. One adds dedicated keys for Spotlight, Dictation, Do Not Disturb, Lock, and Emoji; the second trades the Lock key for the first Touch ID sensor on a standalone keyboard; and the third includes both Touch ID and a numeric keypad. They come with color-matched models of the Magic Mouse, or you can upgrade to a color-matched Magic Trackpad instead.

Two models of the 24-inch iMac are available:

  • $1299 gets you that 7-core GPU, two Thunderbolt ports, 256 GB of storage that’s upgradable to 1 TB, optional Gigabit Ethernet, and a standard Magic Keyboard. It’s available in only blue, green, pink, and silver.
  • $1499 gets you the 8-core GPU, 256 GB of storage upgradeable to 2 TB, two Thunderbolt ports and two USB 3 ports, standard Gigabit Ethernet, and a Magic Keyboard with Touch ID. And you can pick from all seven colors.

Our take is that the new 24-inch iMac is a fabulous Mac for a family, student, or front-office worker where everyone will appreciate its striking color and design. It may not offer everything a pro wants, but the Intel-based 27-inch iMac remains available, and Apple will be releasing even more powerful Macs based on Apple silicon for professionals, likely later this year.

M1-based iPad Pro Gains Thunderbolt and Liquid Retina XDR Display

Unlike the 24-inch iMac, there are no major industrial design changes in either iPad Pro model, but Apple has made significant upgrades under the hood, most notably switching from the previous A12Z Bionic chip to the M1 chip that now powers an increasing number of Macs. The M1 chip offers roughly 50% greater performance, significantly differentiating the 11-inch iPad Pro from the highly capable fourth-generation iPad Air introduced late last year.

Apple also updated the iPad Pro’s port from USB-C to Thunderbolt/USB 4, allowing users to take advantage of higher-performance hardware, such as external storage devices and high-resolution external displays. You can even connect Apple’s Pro Display XDR at its full 6K resolution. As welcome as Thunderbolt is, iPadOS could use enhancements to enable users to take full advantage of it.

For those who need constant connectivity while out and about, the cellular models of the iPad Pro now support 5G wireless networking, including the millimeter-wave version that offers the greatest throughput. Although 5G coverage is still extremely spotty, it’s only getting better, and supporting it will help future-proof these iPad Pro models.

Both iPad Pro models also receive a new 12-megapixel Ultra Wide TrueDepth camera on the front. Along with help from the M1 chip’s machine-learning capabilities, it enables a new feature called Center Stage that recognizes you in video calls and pans and zooms to keep you in the frame as you move around! It will work with FaceTime, of course, and Apple says third-party services will also be able to support it.

Last but far from least is a new display for just the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. Based on the technology behind Apple’s $5000 Pro Display XDR, the 12.9-inch iPad Pro’s Liquid Retina Display XDR is lit by more than 10,000 miniature LEDs, combined into nearly 2600 dimming zones. (The previous model’s screen had 72 LEDs.) The result is a display that’s brighter and offers more contrast than before, making it ideal for photo or video editing. If you think screen quality is the deciding factor between the 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pros, I’d encourage you to compare them in person with the same images or videos.

Pricing has changed a little for the iPad Pros. The 11-inch model continues to start at $799 with 128 GB of storage. However, the 12.9-inch model is $100 more expensive than previously, thanks to the Liquid Retina XDR display, starting at $1099 for 128 GB. Both are upgradeable to 256 GB ($100), 512 GB ($300), 1 TB ($700), or 2 TB ($1100), and note that the models with 512 GB and less come with 8 GB of unified memory, whereas the 1 TB and 2 TB models have 16 GB of memory. Adding 5G cellular now costs $200, up $50, although special deals with AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon may reduce or erase that cost.

Find Your Keys, Purse, or Backpack with an AirTag

The long-rumored AirTag has finally appeared, promising to help us all stop misplacing our keys, purses, cats, and vape pens. An AirTag is a small disc that you put inside or attach to something you might need help finding. Should that item go missing, you use the Find My app on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad, or in iCloud to locate the associated AirTag, just as you can use Find My to locate missing Apple devices or find family members. The Find My network leverages nearly 1 billion Apple devices to relay the location of lost items back to you, all without compromising anyone’s privacy. Plus, Apple has built in alerts if someone tries to track you with an AirTag.

AirTags are 1.26 inches in diameter and .31 inches high—roughly the size of four half-dollar coins—and run on a standard user-replaceable CR2032 battery. They communicate with nearby Apple devices via Bluetooth and Ultra Wideband, the latter of which works with an iPhone 11 or iPhone 12 to provide Precision Finding that directs you to the exact location of the AirTag. All that geocaching will finally pay off!

To make it easier to attach an AirTag to your keys or backpack, Apple offers a variety of key rings and loops, including some pricey Hermès versions. We anticipate third-party manufacturers will offer numerous alternatives.

A single AirTag costs $29, or you can buy a four-pack for $99. Apple offers free engraving, although the company limits the emoji available to prevent pictographic rudeness. What are we, children? I’m looking forward to giving an AirTag a try, so I can stop buying a new cat every time I can’t find the one I want.

Apple TV 4K Offers Enhanced Video and Redesigned Siri Remote

After four years, Apple has finally updated the hardware inside the Apple TV 4K, giving its second-generation model a faster A12 Bionic processor, HDMI 2.1, and 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 wireless networking. The speedier processor enables playback of HDR and Dolby Vision video at 60 frames per second, and the other hardware changes could enable new capabilities in the future, like 4K video at 120 fps.

In software, Apple added a new color calibration feature that lets you use any Face ID-enabled iPhone running iOS 14.5 or later to calibrate the colors on your TV; it will also be available to the Apple TV HD and first-generation Apple TV 4K. Also new is support for Thread, a cross-platform mesh networking protocol for home automation devices, which could play a role in the future of HomeKit.

But the big news is that Apple redesigned the much-reviled Siri Remote, adding more buttons and reducing the emphasis on the touchpad surface. The new Siri Remote features a circular clickpad controller with five-way navigation, a touch-sensitive surface for swiping in the middle, and a touch-sensitive outer ring that works as a jog control for navigating within a video. It also features dedicated power and mute—at last!—buttons for your TV. Finally, there’s a new side button for invoking Siri so you don’t accidentally press it in the dark. It has a rechargeable battery that should last for months. The only thing lacking? The necessary hardware so you can use the Find My app to ferret it out from inside the couch.

Apple is bundling the new Siri Remote with the new Apple TV 4K ($179 for 32 GB or $199 for 64 GB) and the old Apple TV HD ($149), and if you already have an Apple TV HD or 4K, you can buy the new Siri Remote by itself for $59.

(Featured image by Apple)

New Back Tap Feature in iOS 14 Provides Two Customizable Shortcuts

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We all have things we do regularly on our iPhones, whether it’s checking the weather, searching Google, or calling our congressperson to voice our displeasure. With iOS 14, Apple has opened up a new and customizable way of triggering such actions: Back Tap.

Back Tap is technically an accessibility feature for those who have trouble interacting with the iPhone physically. But just as curb cuts help both those in wheelchairs and those working on their sick ollies, the Back Tap feature is a boon for everyone.

With a double or triple tap on the back of any iPhone 8 or newer running iOS 14, you can invoke any one of a variety of actions, including custom Shortcuts. Unfortunately, Back Tap isn’t available in iPadOS 14.

Go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap (it’s way down at the bottom), where you can attach actions to both double tap and a triple tap.

Apple provides a broad set of actions, but most of them are focused on helping people who can’t use other iPhone gestures. So yes, you could make a double tap open Spotlight for searching, but unless that’s somehow a lot easier than swiping down on the Home screen, it’s not worth one of your two triggers. Actions fall into four categories:

  • System: Most of the System choices mimic easy Home screen gestures or button presses. Most interesting are Mute, which toggles the ringer volume without forcing you to press the Volume Down button repeatedly, and Screenshot, which takes a picture of your screen without requiring you to press two buttons at once.
  • Accessibility: For those who need these Accessibility options, having them easily accessible via Back Tap will be welcome. The most compelling actions for the general public are Magnifier, Speak Screen, and Voice Control. (Voice Control provides much more capable dictation than Siri.)
  • Scroll Gestures: These options scroll a vertically oriented page or screen. Sadly, they don’t work for horizontally driven page flipping in book reading apps like Libby.
  • Shortcuts: Here’s where Back Tap becomes ultimately useful, at least if you can find or build the necessary shortcuts. Anything Shortcuts can do, you can invoke with a double or triple tap.

First you’re hearing of Shortcuts? How embarrassing! Read on. It’s an automation app that Apple includes with every iPhone. With it, you can chain together multiple actions derived from iOS capabilities or provided by your apps to create custom shortcuts. Other systems call similar collections of commands macros or automations or workflows.

Explaining how to build your own shortcuts is a topic for another day, but you can also download sample shortcuts from Apple’s gallery, both to see how it’s done and to use them. For instance, if you tap the Gallery button in Shortcuts ➊, tap Starter Shortcuts ➋, tap Take a Break ➌, and tap Add Shortcut ➍, you’ll copy the Take a Break shortcut to My Shortcuts. Then you can assign a double tap in Back Tap to invoke Take a Break, which sets an alarm for a specified number of minutes and turns on Do Not Disturb until the alarm goes off.

If you want to learn more about Shortcuts right away, check out Take Control of Shortcuts, a 122-page ebook by Rosemary Orchard.

Give it a try! Back Tap might turn out to be the iOS 14 feature you use more frequently than any other.

Our Four Favorite Features of iOS 14

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It’s decorative gourd season, friends! We all know what that means – new releases from Apple. Don your flannel shirt and your tattered overalls and get ready to enjoy the technological harvest that has been released upon us. Apple has deemed iOS 14 (along with iPadOS 14, watchOS 7, and tvOS 14) ready for picking. Although the betas have been pretty stable and no major problems have appeared in the first few days, we still recommend waiting at least a few weeks before installing via Settings > General > Software Update. In large part, that’s because many developers were taken by surprise by Apple’s release, so they’re working to release updates that work properly with iOS 14 and take advantage of its new features.

When you decide to take the leap and install—be sure to make a backup first, just in case—here are four features we recommend you check out right away.

App Library

If you’re like us, your first Home screen or two are well-organized, and after that…where did all those apps come from? We find ourselves searching for little-used apps (swipe down on a Home screen from the middle), but wish we could see a list of all installed apps. With iOS 14’s new App Library, we can.

A new screen to the right of your last Home screen, the App Library collects all your apps into folders. At the top, Suggestions includes four suggested apps based on time, location, or activity, and Recently Added shows the apps you’ve downloaded lately. The rest of the folders, which, unfortunately, you can’t rename or rearrange, organize apps by category. In a folder grid, tapping a large icon opens that app, while tapping the group of four small icons in the lower-right corner opens the folder. To see an alphabetical list of every app, tap the search field at the top. You can type to narrow the list.

The App Library is tremendously useful because it contains every app and is always in the same place. That enables you to more easily find apps that you’ve removed from your Home screen. It also works well if you choose to hide entire Home screens, another new iOS 14 feature. Note that you can copy apps from the App Library to a Home screen, which can aid in creating your own organizational scheme.

You might even find that you like having just a couple of Home screens and leaving everything else in the App Library.

Home Screen Widgets

Nothing prevents you from whittling your set of Home screens down to just one, but another new iOS 14 feature might encourage you to have a few more. For some years now, apps have had widgets. Widgets are little summary interfaces accessible in Today View, which you access by swiping right on the first Home screen. In iOS 14, you can now place some of those widgets directly on a Home screen.

Widgets come in three sizes: a small square that occupies the space of four normal app icons, a horizontal rectangle that’s the size of two rows of apps, and a large square that takes up the space of four rows of apps.

To add a widget, touch and hold any empty spot on a Home screen, tap the + button in the upper-right corner, and drag the desired widget out to the Home screen, where you can continue to drag it to your desired position. When viewing the widget collection, tap a widget to see all its available sizes.

Right now, most widgets are from Apple apps, but we anticipate many developers adding widgets for their apps in the coming months. You can have as many widgets on a Home screen as will fit, and there’s no problem mixing widgets and apps within the available space. Think about what information you like to get from your iPhone, and then go nuts creating custom Home screens that show what you want at a glance.

Shrunken Siri and Phone Call Interfaces

In previous versions of iOS, when you invoked Siri, the interface completely took over the iPhone screen. It turns out there was no need for that, so in iOS 14, Apple shrunk the Siri interface so it appears at the bottom of the screen, on top of whatever app you’re using. If Siri’s response requires giving you feedback, that appears on top of the current app as well.

Plus, when you receive a phone call, instead of the call taking over the entire screen, you see a dark banner at the top of the screen with red Decline and green Accept buttons. Tap either of those buttons, or tap or swipe down the banner to reveal the full-screen call interface, where you can also tap to answer. Want to delay? Swipe up on the banner to shrink it to a button in the top-left corner of the screen.

These small changes make using Siri or answering phone calls feel much more fluid than the approach of taking over the entire screen.

Pinned Messages Conversations

This last item is so simple and so useful we can’t believe it wasn’t there all along. We all have individuals and groups that we converse with regularly in Messages. It’s frustrating to hunt through the list of conversations to find them, so iOS 14 adds the concept of “pinned” conversations. Touch and hold on any conversation in the list to bring up a preview of the last few messages and some commands. Then tap Pin to add the conversation to the top of the Messages screen as a circular icon. From then on, tap that icon to enter the conversation quickly.

iOS 14 sports many other features as well, and we’ll be sharing more about them in future articles. Remember, it’s worth waiting a bit to install, and note that iOS 14 is compatible with the iPhone 6s or later, including the first-generation iPhone SE, and the current seventh-generation iPod touch.

Apple Significantly Enhances the 27-inch iMac AND ELIMINATES MECHANICAL DRIVES!

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Apple’s workhorse desktop Mac, the 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display, hasn’t seen an update since March 2019—nearly a year and a half ago. Happily, the company has finally released a new version of the popular iMac, outfitting it with 10th-generation Intel processors, increasing its RAM and storage capacities, and improving its audio and video capabilities. Prices haven’t changed, with the low-end model starting at $1799, the mid-range model at $1999, and the high-end configuration at $2299.

Separately, although Apple didn’t update either the 21.5-inch iMac or the iMac Pro, it tweaked both of their configurations. The company FINALLY stopped selling the small, inexpensive 21.5-inch iMac with a performance-robbing hard drive. (There is no justification for selling a modern Mac with a mechanical hard drive. It’s bought only by people who unfortunately don’t know the pain that will cause…so I’m thrilled to not have clients complaining about their slow “But-I-just-bought-this,-it’s-brand-new!” Macs.) It now comes with SSDs (solid state drives, i.e., drives with no moving parts, just like in your iPhone.) standard across the line, with a 1 TB Fusion Drive as an alternative. For the iMac Pro, Apple dropped the 8-core Intel Xeon W processor configuration, making the base model a 10-core processor configuration.

There are no industrial design changes this time around, unsurprisingly, but the rest of the enhancements will be extremely welcome to anyone who has been holding out for a new iMac.

Faster Processors

For those who are concerned about performance but don’t want to spend thousands more on an iMac Pro or Mac Pro, Apple increased the 27-inch iMac’s specs in noteworthy ways. You have choices of four of the latest 10th-generation Intel Core processors: a 3.1 GHz 6-core i5, a 3.3 GHz 6-core i5, a 3.8 GHz 8-core i7, and a 3.6 GHz 10-core i9. Performance and cost both rise through that list.

Higher Performance Graphics Chips

Apple also moved to the next-generation AMD Radeon Pro graphics chips, with the Radeon Pro 5300 with 4 GB of memory in the low-end and mid-range models. The high-end model starts with a Radeon Pro 5500 XT with 8 GB of memory, and you can upgrade to a Radeon Pro 5700 with 8 GB for $300 or a Radeon Pro 5700 XT with 16 GB for $500. The more expensive options would be useful for graphics-intensive workflows, complex video editing, or developing 3D content.

Higher RAM Ceiling

All configurations of the 27-inch iMac start with 8 GB, but you can expand that to 16 GB ($200), 32 GB ($600), 64 GB ($1000) or, for the first time in the iMac line, 128 GB ($2600). Unlike on most other Macs, RAM is user-accessible through a panel on the back, so you’d be smart to buy RAM separately, where it will be far cheaper—perhaps as much as two-thirds less.

Increased SSD Storage

Storage is locked at 256 GB for the low-end model, whereas the mid-range model starts at 512 GB and lets you upgrade to 1 TB ($200) or 2 TB ($600). The high-end model also starts at 512 GB, offering the same 1 TB and 2 TB upgrades and adding 4 TB ($1200) and 8 TB ($2400) options. The Fusion Drive is no longer an option for the 27-inch iMac.

Stronger Security and Processing with the T2 Security Chip

New to the 27-inch iMac is Apple’s T2 security chip. Along with encrypting all data on the SSD and ensuring that macOS hasn’t been tampered with at boot, the T2 chip includes custom processors that provide computational improvements for both audio and video. On the downside, the T2 chip’s added security makes certain kinds of troubleshooting and hardware repair difficult or impossible, so it’s extra important to have reliable backups.

Improved Glare and Ambient Light Handling

For those who have problems with screen glare, the 27-inch iMac now offers a $500 option for “nano-texture glass,” which Apple says provides “better viewing under various lighting conditions, such as a bright room or indirect sunlight.” Previously, nano-texture glass was available only for Apple’s Pro Display XDR screen. The iMac’s Retina display also now supports True Tone, enabling it to adjust its color temperature automatically for ambient light conditions.

Better Video and Audio for Videoconferencing

Those who spend their days on video calls will appreciate the new 1080p FaceTime HD camera, a notable improvement on the previous 720p camera. Apple also says the 27-inch iMac now features higher-fidelity speakers and a studio-quality three-mic array for better audio output and input.

Faster Networking

Finally, if you need the ultimate networking performance, a $100 option gets you 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

Overall, if you need a powerful desktop Mac with a gorgeous display, you can’t go wrong with the new 27-inch iMac. It’s significantly cheaper than the iMac Pro and more powerful than both the Mac mini and the 21.5-inch iMac. Just remember that some of the options are available only if you start with the high-end configuration.

What We Can Expect from macOS 11.0 Big Sur, iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and watchOS 7

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Every year at its Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple lays out its roadmap for the next releases of each of its operating systems. The COVID-19 pandemic forced Apple to record its keynote presentation ahead of time rather than having it live, but the company doesn’t seem to have tempered its ambitions for macOS 11.0 Big Sur, iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and watchOS 7.

Apple never promises ship dates this early in the process, but it’s a good bet that we’ll see these operating system updates in September or October, given past release dates.

Here’s what to look forward to:

macOS 11.0 Big Sur

Yes, you read that right—the macOS version number finally goes to 11, and it’s named after the Big Sur region of California. Its changes fall into three main categories: design, updates to essential apps, and support for Apple silicon (see our other article about that).

Apple says that macOS 11.0 Big Sur embodies the biggest change in design since the release of Mac OS X in 2001. It still looks familiar but changes nearly every aspect of the visual interface. Window frames are gone, title bars have shrunk and been joined by icon-focused toolbars, and visual complexity has been reduced. Windows and icons are both more rounded than before, and the Dock now sits slightly above the bottom of the screen, much like in iPadOS.

Big Sur also gains a Control Center along the lines of the one in iOS and watchOS, with the twist that you can pin your most-used controls to the top of the menu bar. Apple also revamped Notification Center with features from iOS, making notifications more interactive, grouping them by thread or app, and letting you do more with widgets.

Apple rewrote all its apps to ensure that they’d run natively on Macs with Apple silicon, but some received more substantial changes as well. Messages allows threading in group conversations, lets you @mention people like in Slack or Twitter, and allows you to pin conversations to the top of your list.

Safari exposes more of its privacy-protecting features, allowing you to view a privacy report that shows trackers blocked in the last 30 days, warns you if your account passwords may have been compromised in a data breach, and can translate pages from a number of languages.

Maps provides cycling directions, can include charging stations when routing electric car owners, and provides Apple Guides with travel suggestions. Many other apps, including Photos, Music, Podcasts, Reminders, and Voice Memos receive smaller enhancements.

Remember that new Macs with Apple silicon will require Big Sur, both to support the new Apple processors and for its Rosetta 2 translation environment that makes it possible to run existing Intel-based apps on Macs that lack Intel processors.

macOS 11.0 Big Sur officially supports the following Macs. A few Catalina-capable models from 2012 and 2013 have been dropped.

  • MacBook (early 2015 and later)
  • MacBook Air (mid 2013 and later)
  • MacBook Pro (mid 2013 and later)
  • Mac mini (2014 and later)
  • iMac (2014 and later)
  • iMac Pro (2017 and later)
  • Mac Pro (2013 and later)

iOS 14

Just as macOS Big Sur is the most significant design refresh since Mac OS X, iOS 14 brings a huge change to the look and feel of iOS, thanks to a revamped Home screen. Apple has finally acknowledged that most people know what’s on the first Home screen page and maybe the second, and everything after that is a jumbled mess.

To address that problem, iOS 14 introduces the App Library, which is the rightmost Home screen page. It collects all your apps (below left). It groups apps by Suggestions, Recently Added, and curated categories like Creativity, Entertainment, and Social. Inside each group, all your apps appear alphabetically for easy access. With the App Library, it’s easy to add apps to the Home screen and remove Home screen pages you don’t need anymore.

Even more radical is how iOS 14 lets you break widgets out of Today view and embed them on the Home screen in a variety of sizes (above right). No more opening a weather app just to see the temperature—a widget can give you a quick overview of the conditions and forecast. Or a stock widget can show you just how much AAPL has gone up since the announcement.

You’ll also notice instantly that Siri no longer takes over the entire screen, instead showing you an icon that indicates it’s listening and putting the results in panels on top of whatever app you’re using (below left). Similarly, call notifications will be presented as a standard notification banner rather than obscuring the app you were using (below right). Voice dictation now happens on the device, which should improve responsiveness and privacy. Siri can do translations now, and a new Translate app makes it possible to have a conversation with someone in an unfamiliar language.

Needless to say, there are many other smaller changes. Both Messages and Maps gain the features mentioned previously for macOS. New “App Clips” let you use a tiny bit of an app without installing the whole thing, which is ideal for renting a scooter without having its app, for instance. For those who watch video on an iPhone, iOS 14 now supports picture-in-picture. And for some people, the most welcome change will be the option to specify your own default Web and email apps.

iOS 14 works with the iPhone 6s and first-generation iPhone SE and later, and with the seventh-generation iPod touch.

iPadOS 14

As you’d expect, iPadOS 14 gains all the iOS 14 changes, including the App Library, widgets on the Home screen, and so on. But Apple has also spent some time making iPadOS work more like macOS, redesigning and adding sidebars to many apps, putting toolbars at the top of the screen, and adding pull-down menus to apps like Files. Apple also overhauled the iPadOS search experience, trading the previous full screen look for a simple gray bar that—you guessed it—looks a lot like the macOS Spotlight search interface.

The other massive change for iPadOS is Scribble, Apple’s marketing name for its new handwriting recognition feature. Anywhere you can enter text, you’ll be able to write with your Apple Pencil and have your writing converted to typed text (in English or Chinese, at least). All transcription happens on the device for performance and privacy reasons. You can also select handwritten words by circling them, scratch words to delete them, touch and hold between words to add a space, and more.

In Notes and other apps that support handwriting, you’ll be able to select words or sentences with double and triple taps. A shortcut palette lets you perform common actions without using the onscreen keyboard, including Copy As Text, which lets you copy handwritten text and paste as typed text. Other Apple Pencil gestures include dragging to select and adding or deleting space between sentences or paragraphs. Finally, shape recognition lets you sketch a rough shape and have it automatically converted to a perfectly drawn version.

iPadOS 14 works with the fifth-generation iPad and later, the iPad Air 2 and later, the iPad mini 4 and later, and all models of the iPad Pro.

watchOS 7

Unsurprisingly, watchOS 7 doesn’t deliver as major changes as in Apple’s other operating systems—there simply isn’t room to do as much. Nonetheless, it offers some nice enhancements, starting with new watch faces. For instance, Chronograph Pro has a tachymeter with room for customization, and X‑Large lets you show a single rich complication. You can also add multiple complications from the same app to a face. Once you’ve created the perfect face, you can share it with friends by texting it, emailing it, or posting a link online.

The most notable change in watchOS 7, though, is sleep tracking. Wear your Apple Watch while you sleep, and it will automatically go into sleep mode, turning on Do Not Disturb and preventing the screen from lighting up (but a tap shows a dim time display). watchOS 7 then uses the Apple Watch’s accelerometer to detect sleep states and reports on them when it wakes you up in the morning, either with gentle sounds or taps on your wrist. It will even ask you to charge your Apple Watch before bed if it needs more juice to get through the night, and prompts you to put it on the charger when you wake up so it can get through the day.

The most timely addition to watchOS is handwashing detection and encouragement. When the Apple Watch’s motion sensors and microphone detect that you’re washing your hands, it starts a 20-second timer and encourages you to keep washing through to the end. Plus, when you arrive home after being out, the Apple Watch reminds you to wash your hands. Stay safe out there!

To acknowledge the level that people use the Apple Watch for fitness, Apple has renamed the Activity app to Fitness and added additional workouts for core training, functional strength training, and dance. Plus, you can now use Maps to get on-wrist cycling directions. Siri can translate into ten languages, and watchOS 7 now does on-device dictation for faster and more reliable requests.

watchOS 7 requires at least an iPhone 6s running iOS 14 and an Apple Watch Series 3 or later.

(Featured image by Apple)

 

The Threat Landscape for Apple Devices in 2020

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Mac Threat Landscape 2020

Security company Malwarebytes saw a significant rise in the overall prevalence of threats on computers running macOS in 2019, with an increase of over 400 percent from 2018. However, since you could argue—validly—that part of this was due to a corresponding increase in the total number of macOS devices running Malwarebytes software, it’s more interesting to look at the change in the number of detections per endpoint. Mac detections per endpoint increased from 4.8 in 2018 to a whopping 11.0 in 2019, a figure that is nearly double the same statistic for Windows.

This means that the average number of threats detected on a Mac is not only on the rise, but has surpassed Windows—by a great deal. This is likely because, with increasing market share in 2019, Macs became more attractive targets to cybercriminals. In addition, macOS’ built-in security systems have not cracked down on adware and PUPs to the same degree that they have malware, leaving the door open for these borderline programs to infiltrate.

Further, for the first time ever, Mac threats appeared at the top of Malwarebytes’ overall threat detections. Two Mac threats—NewTab and PCVARK—showed up in second and third place in our list of the most prevalent detections across all platforms.

This is why Patient Computer Help, Inc. recommends installing Malwarebytes for Mac and our associated Apple device management system from Addigy. Together, threats are blocked and your computer is monitored for issues that could hurt your productivity or your data.

Note: If you’re wondering about your iPhone or iPad, malware exists, but there’s no way to scan for it. Most iOS malware is nation-state malware, spread via targeted attacks through iOS vulnerabilities, such as NSO’s Pegasus spyware. China has used this against the Uyfgur people.

 

Why Does Your Wi-Fi Suddenly Cut Out?

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Think back to the last time you had to go without the Internet. Maybe you rolled with the punches, did some laundry, played some Scrabble with your family – good for you. The rest of us were in total chaos, churning butter by hand and spinning yarn into waistcoats (what do we use the Internet for again?). Regardless of your coping abilities, it can be a real headache to lose your connection in the middle of a movie, or during a Super Bowl party, or when you’re up against a work deadline. Many of us know that a quick power-cycling of our modem and router can often do the trick, but why does that even need to happen? Is it too much to ask for things to work perfectly all the time? A little bit of understanding can go a long way to ease frustrations, so let’s delve into what may be going on behind the scenes with your router.

Just like a desktop computer, routers have their own operating system, central processing unit, and memory, among other components. These elements help it manage data traffic to your various devices. Unfortunately, just like a desktop computer, these components can get overloaded. Similar to how your computer can freeze up when you have Word, a few instances of Excel, and 38 Chrome tabs open, pushing tons of data through your router to many devices in your household can also slow it down – sometimes to a complete stop.

Additionally, most home Internet connections use what are called dynamic IP addresses. You can think of IP addresses as street addresses, identifying a given device on a network. Internet service providers will assign a public IP address to each of their routers for only a certain period of time. Once this time expires, your Internet service provider will give the router a new one (this is the dynamic part of the term). In cases where the router is very busy, it might not properly connect to the new IP address, resulting in the router continuing to use the old one. This is sort of like attempting to receive mail that was sent to a previous address.

Yet another issue that can arise is with the private IP addresses within the home network. Private IP addresses are known only to a router and its home network. The router has a pool of these IP addresses that it doles out to the various devices on the network. This assignment process operates dynamically, as well. It uses a network protocol called DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol). A computer might be assigned one private IP address for a period of time, removing that IP address from the available pool. Once the computer disconnects from the router, the IP address is thrown back into the pool. Should two devices ever be assigned the same private IP address, the network interface on both of them will get disabled, causing each device to lose connectivity until the conflict is resolved. Why might this happen if the router is supposed to be keeping an eye on this IP address pool? It’s possible, for instance, to unwittingly have more than one similarly configured DHCP server distributing overlapping addresses, a situation that could arise if you have multiple wireless access points or other devices with an embedded DHCP server. For this reason, it’s mandatory to allow only one DHCP server to run at a time. Too many DHCP servers spoil the broth, as they say.

Restarting your modem and router can help to reset the above listed issues and give the devices a little bit of a breather, allowing them to start again fresh with corrected IP addresses and less congestion.

If you have concerns about your Internet connection, please reach out to your friendly specialists at Patient Computer Help for Grown Ups to set up a consultation.

Patient Computer Help for Grown Ups assists people with their Macs and PCs in the Chagrin Falls and Ohio City areas.

Do You Really Have to “Properly Eject” a USB Drive?

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It’s a situation with which you may be familiar…You’re at work and you just finished transferring a presentation from a coworker’s computer to a thumb drive. You decide to show off a little and just pull that USB right out. You know you’re supposed to eject it first, but you see yourself as a bit of a John Wayne type and you want your coworkers to know it. You strut away as the office looks on, impressed.

Technology tips

I hate to be a wet blanket, but your party trick may actually cause more harm than admiration. The warning to properly remove flash drives is there for a reason – a proper ejection prevents your data from becoming corrupted in the event that your system is busy writing something to the drive. Think of the data transfer between your computer and your external drive like moving people across a bridge. If you eject the drive mid-data transfer, it’s a bit like removing a bridge while there are still people on it.

Even if your computer shows that the data has already been transferred, it is not yet safe to remove because of something called write caching. Your computer uses write caching for removable devices as a way to improve speed. Any data you are attempting to transfer to an external drive is held in a cache in the computer’s system memory. Rather than forcing your program to focus on a data transfer at the very moment you ask it to, the computer puts the data in the cache and waits until the most opportune time to complete the task. Properly ejecting the drive commands the computer to go ahead and finish the transfer.

If you have a Windows computer, you can disable write caching (File Explorer -> right-click on your external drive -> Properties -> Policies -> select Quick Removal) with negligible performance loss, however this is not a fail-safe. There is still a small likelihood of data loss. On a Mac, you’re better off not messing with the write caching and knowing that it is automatically enabled.

How to Properly Eject a USB Drive

On a Windows device, open My Computer and find the USB device you’d like to disconnect. Right-click on it and select Eject. The computer will notify you when it is safe to pull it out.

If you’re a Mac user, locate the external device (likely either on your desktop or in the left-hand panel of Finder), left-click on it and drag it to the trash (bottom right of the screen). If done correctly, the trash icon should change to an eject icon (a triangle with a horizontal line below it). As soon as the eject icon disappears, you can remove it. Alternatively, you can hover over the device in the left-hand panel of Finder and click the little eject button that appears after the name.

Patient Computer Help for Grown Ups assists people with their Macs and PCs in the Chagrin Falls and Ohio City areas.

A Critical Look at Your Cyber Security Hygiene

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Many years in the future, when today’s 30-somethings are old and gray, taking a break from virtual reality deep sea diving in their space retirement homes, they’ll tell visiting great-great-great-great grandchildren about how they are the last generation to remember life before the ubiquity of the Internet. Maybe they’ll recall humorously how naive and adorable we all were in the early 2000s, generally trusting the email in our inboxes, reusing passwords across multiple accounts, believing the videos that we saw on the internet were real. At this point in time, we’re mostly still learning this stuff. We’re still wrapping our heads around the fact that the Internet IS the real world, and our digital lives require as much protection as our physical ones.

Let’s spend a moment critically evaluating what we are doing to protect ourselves, and how we can potentially do better.

1. Keep Everything Up to Date

When possible, keep your operating software up to date with the latest release (provided you’ve waited a couple of weeks to let the guinea pigs report back with any issues and solutions). Using outdated operating systems leaves you vulnerable to malicious attacks. Along the same vein, make sure your antivirus software and browsers are kept up to date as well.

2. Encrypt Your Data 

On a Mac, go to the Apple Menu -> System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> FileVault. Turn this on. This encrypts the startup disk, keeping your files safe if a thief were to steal your device. As you will be warned when you go to turn it on, be sure to remember the password to your device and/or the recovery key it asks you to set up – otherwise your data could be lost.

On Windows, BitLocker is a program that can accomplish something similar. To enable it, go to the Control Panel, locate the BitLocker Drive Encryption system preferences, and click the link to Turn On BitLocker.

3. Store File Backups Offsite in a Secure Location

In recent years, ransomware has grown to be one of the biggest threats on the web. It’s a type of malware wherein cyber criminals encrypt a victim’s data and charge a ransom for its release. One of the best protections against this is having an offsite backup of your data. Carbonite is a good one we recommend, but do your research (or let us help you) to decide what’s best for you.

4. Create Strong, Unique Passwords

As we’ve recently discussed, the password situation is becoming dire for some. A great solution is to use a trusted password manager. Use it to keep all of your passwords, change them regularly, and enable TFA (two-factor authentication) when possible.

5. Monitor Your Online Presence

Check to see what non-friends/followers can see of your social media accounts. If your birthday, address, and mother’s name are all linked to your profile and easily found by a stranger, it’s time to consider changing your privacy settings. It’s also not a bad idea to Google yourself every so often to see what comes up. Create a Google Alert to automatically let you know as soon as your name appears online.

6. Stay Off Public WiFi

Unless absolutely necessary, we recommend never connecting to public WiFi. Public WiFi is inherently less secure than your private network because you don’t know who else is connecting to it. A better option is to use your phone as a hotspot and connect to the internet that way.

7. Watch for Phishing Attempts

Cyber criminals have gotten quite sophisticated in posing as reputable companies that you might otherwise trust. If you receive an email or a phone call from someone claiming to be from a company you have an account with, be very cautious of giving them any information. If they do need something from you (and they are who they say they are), they’ll be okay with you navigating to their webpage yourself and signing in that way.

8. Get an Annual Checkup

By law, you are allowed a free copy of your credit report from each of the three major credit reporting companies per year. Take advantage of that and ensure that the information on your credit reports is correct and up to date.
Additionally, we recommend you face the music and get a dark web scan report on your email address or domain name. An annual or twice yearly scan can alert you to any major personal data compromises before they get any worse. Give us a call and we can send you your report.

As mentioned, cyber security is still a relatively new concept for a lot of people. Unfortunately, its necessity is only growing and it won’t be going away anytime soon. With the adoption of a comprehensive cyber security approach incorporating some small, manageable habits, it is very much possible to keep yourself safe. If anything mentioned in the list above was unfamiliar to you, please reach out to your friendly Patient Computer Help team to set up a consultation.