Every Mac OS Welcome Video
TechieFreddie (via Dave Mark):
macos used to have intro videos, here’s their history!
These are the videos that would play during installation, from Mac OS 8 through Snow Leopard.
Previously:
Archive for January 7, 2022
A Guide to NSButton Styles, 2022
Kuba Suder (tweet):
It was hard to figure out the purpose and intended use of each kind of button, and there were hardly any clues inside Xcode itself. So I decided to do some research to find some tips about what each button is for. I put together information I found in the old-style Apple docs and the Human Interface Guidelines, I also looked through Apple’s system apps to see which buttons are used in what contexts, and I even peeked inside some apps using Interface Inspector.
[…]
In this second edition, I’ve replaced all old screenshots with new ones in Retina quality (I even installed a Mavericks VM in VirtualBox to get 2x pictures from there!), and I added a new set for Big Sur and Monterey. In some cases there are even separate versions for Yosemite and Catalina, because I’ve noticed that a few things were tweaked during that macOS era. I also added new content about new kinds of buttons and features introduced in recent years, clarified and expanded a lot of descriptions, and added some additional examples. I also went through Apple’s own apps and looked inside some of them again, this time using Xcode view debugger with SIP turned off (thanks to Tim Oliver for the tip!).
Previously:
Facebook App Reads Accelerometer Data
Zak Doffman (via John Wilander):
Facebook goes even further, using the accelerometer on your iPhone to track a constant stream of your movements, which can easily be used to monitor your activities or behaviors at times of day, in particular places, or when interacting with its apps and services. Alarmingly, this data can even match you with people near you—whether you know them or not.
Just like the photo location data, the most serious issue here is that there is absolutely no transparency. You are not warned that this data is being tracked, there is no setting to enable or disable the tracking; in fact, there doesn’t seem to be any way to turn off the feature and stop Facebook (literally) in its tracks.
Researchers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk warn that “Facebook reads accelerometer data all the time. If you don’t allow Facebook access to your location, the app can still infer your exact location only by grouping you with users matching the same vibration pattern that your phone accelerometer records.”
Fraud detection stuff. Hard to fake a realistic accelerometer and similar signals if you’re sending in bogus ad clicks that never happened but were just generated on a server somewhere.
Previously:
Key M1 Mac Engineer Departs Apple for Intel
Apple’s former Director of Mac System Architecture Jeff Wilcox this week announced that he has left Apple to take on a new role at Intel. As noted on LinkedIn (via Tom’s Hardware), Wilcox was part of Apple’s M1 team and he had a key role in the transition from Intel chips to Apple silicon.
Wilcox’s profile says that he “led the transition” for all Macs to Apple silicon, and prior to that, he developed the SoC and system architecture for the T2 coprocessor used in Intel Macs.
Previously:
Update (2022-01-13): Juli Clover:
Microsoft has hired Mike Filippo, a semiconductor designer who formerly worked at Apple as a chip architect, reports Bloomberg. Microsoft is aiming to further expand on chip designs for the servers that power its cloud computing services, and at Microsoft, Filippo will be working on processors for Azure servers.
Cydia Lawsuit Against Apple Dismissed
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers today granted Apple’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed against the company by Jay Freeman, creator of an alternative App Store known as Cydia for “jailbroken” iPhones and iPads.
Previously:
Update (2022-05-31): Tim Hardwick:
Apple in January 2022 had its motion to dismiss the lawsuit granted by U.S. district judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who agreed with the company that the claims in the first lawsuit were outside the statute of limitations. However, the judge allowed Freeman to bring a new complaint, which has now been accepted, according to Reuters.
Freeman’s lawyers argued in the amended lawsuit that Apple’s technology updates between 2018 and 2021 were “overt” acts that harmed iOS app distributors such as Cydia. The changes that Apple implemented in iOS are described as “more aggressive” and designed to prevent Cydia and other alternative app stores from providing “useable” apps for iPhones.
