Archive for June 3, 2022

Friday, June 3, 2022

WWDC 2022 Wish Lists

Mainly, I want bug fixes and fewer regressions. Some iOS specifics that I’ve discussed before:

macOS:

watchOS:

Sarah Reichelt:

I wish Apple would supply an iMac monitor using the exact same design, but without the computer.

[…]

CloudKit has always looked like a great solution for use in apps. It allows public and private data, it syncs between devices, and it doesn’t have the potential for unexpected and huge data fees like some other options. But like many developers, I’ve tried and failed to get it to work reliably. It appears that the simpler mechanisms work well, but not the more complex options.

[…]

I would love to see Apple open up the extension ecosystem again. For web development, I use Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code. Even though this is a cross-platform Electron-based web app, it is a great tool. It doesn’t look like a native Mac app but it performs well. But it’s major advantage is the huge number and variety of extensions so you can make VSC look and work the way you want. Apple has deliberately closed Xcode off from this sort of community involvement which is great shame.

[…]

I would love it if the App Stores lived up to Apple’s claim as being the safe place to buy apps, but in reality, app buyers are being fooled by purchased reviews, tricked into in-app purchases, and cannot assume that the rules designed to keep them safe have been applied to all apps.

Ralf Ebert:

  • Code completion always working
  • Debugger working without long delays
  • No more “compiler is unable to type-check this expression in reasonable time”
  • No more “Making Apple Watch ready”
  • No new features that could break any of those.

Ana Simion:

I’d like to see Apple increase the base amount of iCloud storage: 5GB is paltry.

Chris Hannah:

Some form of universal messaging support. Whether it is iMessage for Android (which I think is unlikely), or the adoption of RCS as a fallback instead of SMS. It’s clear that communication between iOS and Android devices shouldn’t be via SMS.

[…]

Multiple audio channels. This isn’t something that I’m desperate for, but it’s certainly irritating for me when you go to a website and a video/ad starts playing automatically and your song stops. Imagine going to a website on your Mac and an autoplaying video, stopping the song you’re listening to. Also, you should be able to alter the volume of specific apps/channels.

Adam Engst:

We’d like to see Apple revisit the Time Machine interface and make it so that it’s easier to navigate, shows dated versions of available files at a glance, and clarifies to the extent possible the differences between the current and older versions.

[…]

We’d love to see site-specific browsing capability come to Safari on the Mac. Although there are a variety of site-specific browsers available, they all have various issues[…]

[…]

Preview has no file format of its own, but with relatively little effort, Apple could at least leverage macOS’s longstanding versioning system to provide an easier way to undo changes.

[…]

We’d like to see Apple build a log of “important” changes into its operating systems, with an API for apps to log their own changes. Whenever the user took an action that met the criteria for “important”—turning on File Sharing, giving an app Full Disk Access, configuring Focus, adjusting system-wide text display, restarting the device—that action would be logged.

Nick Heer:

Every year for the past few, my main hope for WWDC is a renewed emphasis on stability and higher standards.

Joe Fabisevich:

Preface: SwiftUI is amazing and I love it. All I want for WWDC are functional List and NavigationView constructs. They’re both so easy to drop in and use but pretty quickly there’ll be some compromise you have to make, often choosing to abandon them outright instead.

Nicolas Magand:

I would like also to see Reading List as a standalone app, maybe an app including a tab showing the newsletters in your inbox, and why not subscribing to RSS feeds inside this app, in a separate tab? Basically the Podcast app, but for web pages.

[…]

Better collaborative features and 3rd-party access to Drive would be a good start for iCloud in June 2022.

Juli Clover:

Control Center API for third-party apps

[…]

Universal notifications - notifications clear from all devices when read on one

[…]

Support for multiple [iPad] users

Ryan Jones:

iMessage fix groups with green bubbles

[…]

Choose default Maps app

[…]

Clipboard history

AppStories:

This week, Federico and John conclude their annual OS wishes series with a look at what they want to see in macOS this year at WWDC.

Joe Fabisevich:

Two iMessage features I hope WWDC brings.

1. Status messages so people can know that I’m not available and why. Bonus: Calendar/focus modes integration.

2. The ability to set a chat to not badge Messages. You can mute alerts but it still bumps the badge count and drives me mad.

Jim Dalrymple:

I only want to see one thing from WWDC. Fix Siri. Take a “Snow Leopard” break from everything else and please fix Siri.

Daniel Steinberg:

For SwiftUI, I would like to see best practices for navigation and architecture. We’ve clearly made great strides in the past few years with the disappearance of the Info.plist and the App Delegate - what are the best ways to structure an app.

[…]

Every session that shows code on the screen should provide us with the code sample it came from and that code should be available on the day that the video is posted. There have been sessions where they showed us code that depended on code they didn’t show us and never showed us so we couldn’t recreate how something was done.

See also: Joe Cieplinski.

Previously:

Update (2022-06-06): Becky Hansmeyer:

I still don’t regret the decision to write YarnBuddy entirely in SwiftUI; however, it would be nice to be able to start phasing out some of the weird hacks and workarounds I’ve had to come up with to make the app look and work the way it does. For example, there’s still no true collection view equivalent. Navigation could use a re-think, or at the very least, some official guidance. Core Data integration is okay-ish, but it’s needlessly difficult to make it possible for users to sort and filter a fetch request. Any and all improvements are welcome, so I’m excited to see what the team has been working on this year (though I, like others, think SwiftUI needs to be decoupled from the annual OS upgrade cycle).

[…]

Flat design is just…well, over. It’s been on the way out for awhile, but it’s time for us to save the good bits and jettison the rest of it straight into the sun. In other words: here’s hoping Apple puts the final nail in the coffin on that weird chapter of mobile app design. I just want my apps to have personality again, you know? Not in a garish way, but a beautiful, fun way.

Dave B:

This WWDC is particularly close to my heart, because I’ve been on a bit of crusade for years, trying to get Apple to improve the sub-par Apple Music app. The last time the app got a major update was six years ago with iOS 10, and even from the moment of release, that update was never great. Since then, it has shown its age more and more, with all sorts of problems - big and small - in everything ranging from the UI design to the poor performance the frequent bugs and of course, to the lack of all sorts of key features that we’ve all wanted for years.

Timothy Perfitt:

Things we all agree would be good but very slim chance at WWDC:

  1. Native Smart Card readers support for iOS.
  2. Log into your Mac with 3rd party cloud password without weird iCloud/AppleID tie in
  3. 3rd party CTK drivers for M1 Macs for file vault unlock on start up
  4. Netboot.

Basic Apple Guy:

Presenting my WWDC22 Bingo Board, a list of some of my predictions and hopes I wish to see manifest at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference.

David Kopec:

My wish for today.

Jeff Johnson:

Separate SDK and Xcode downloads

See also: Matthew Bischoff.

WWDC 2022 Preview

Juli Clover:

Apple is continuing to prepare for the Worldwide Developers Conference that is set to begin on Monday, and the company today launched its YouTube live stream where viewers can sign up to get a reminder when the event begins. The keynote event is set to take place on Monday, June 6 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time.

Apple:

You can now register for Digital Lounges to automatically gain access to activities you’re interested in attending — choose from topics like Design, SwiftUI, Developer Tools, Machine Learning, and more. To provide the best experience for everyone, space is limited for each topic, and registering early is the best way to guarantee access to your preferred topics and activities.

Tom Harrington:

It’s just over a month to WWDC and the unofficial WWDC Slack is back for another year!

John Gruber:

The Talk Show Live during WWDC 2022 is happening. It’s going to be good — I think! — and I’m going to put it on YouTube. So no one is going to miss it. We are going to record it inside the Apple Developer Center on Tuesday, June 7. Seating will be, to say the least, limited.

Donny Wals (tweet):

I figured I’d put together a little guide to making the most out of WWDC without being completely overwhelmed and intimidated by the sheer volume of content that Apple is about to unleash on us all.

Jordan Morgan:

Here’s how I consume W.W.D.C. to come out with a clear mind and a focused direction.

Curtis Herbert:

CONATH:

Types of WWDC Announcement

Ryan Jones:

🎲 It’s WWDC Bingo!

Jordan Morgan:

Dub dub beckons, which means that the eighth annual edition of the Swiftjective-C WWDC Pregame Quiz is here!

Previously:

PimEyes

Kashmir Hill:

For $29.99 a month, a website called PimEyes offers a potentially dangerous superpower from the world of science fiction: the ability to search for a face, finding obscure photos that would otherwise have been as safe as the proverbial needle in the vast digital haystack of the internet.

A search takes mere seconds. You upload a photo of a face, check a box agreeing to the terms of service and then get a grid of photos of faces deemed similar, with links to where they appear on the internet.

[…]

PimEyes found photos of every person, some that the journalists had never seen before, even when they were wearing sunglasses or a mask, or their face was turned away from the camera, in the image used to conduct the search.

[…]

PimEyes has tens of thousands of subscribers, Mr. Gobronidze said, with most visitors to the site coming from the United States and Europe. It makes the bulk of its money from subscribers to its PROtect service, which includes help from PimEyes support staff in getting photos taken down from external sites.

PimEyes has a free “opt-out” as well, for people to have data about themselves removed from the site, including the search images of their faces.

Nick Heer:

You do not even need to pay the $30 per month fee. You can test PimEyes’ abilities for free.

[…]

PimEyes shares the problem found with any of these people finding tools, no matter their source material: they do not seem dangerous in isolation, but it is their ability to coalesce and correlate different data points to create a complete profile. Take a picture of anyone, then dump it into PimEyes to find their name and, perhaps, a username or email address correlated with the image. Use a different people-based search engine to find profiles across the web that share the same online handle, or accounts registered with that email address. Each of those searches will undoubtedly lead to greater pools of information, and all of this is perfectly legal. The only way to avoid being a subject is to submit an opt-out request to services that offer it.

[…]

Gobronidze has to know that not everybody using its service is searching for pictures of themselves or those who have consented.

Previously:

Removing Personally Identifiable Info From Google Searches

Brian Krebs (Hacker News):

Google said this week it is expanding the types of data people can ask to have removed from search results, to include personal contact information like your phone number, email address or physical address. The move comes just months after Google rolled out a new policy enabling people under the age of 18 (or a parent/guardian) to request removal of their images from Google search results.

[…]

While Google’s removal of a search result from its index will do nothing to remove the offending content from the site that is hosting it, getting a link decoupled from Google search results is going to make the content at that link far less visible. According to recent estimates, Google enjoys somewhere near 90 percent market share in search engine usage.

WaitWaitWha:

It took me about 10 minutes to figure out that the link provided from the Google article really just leads to a workflow where i have to answer just the right questions to get to the actual form. And, then go through a second workflow, which puts you to... the first workflow.

I have yet to reach a page where I can submit the URLs to be removed. I consider myself a neophyte technologist, since I just started a few decades ago with punch cards. I doubt most of the general public will figure out how to perform this process.

Danny Sullivan:

This is the page that explains in more detail and where people should begin the removal process.

The removal process will lead you to a troubleshooter. That’s designed to help people more quickly get things resolved. For example, if a web page no longer exists on the web, or the site owner removed info, there are faster options you can use rather than going down the formal removal request option.

But let’s say you want something removed that has PII from a page that’s live on the web and where you for whatever reason don’t want to contact the site owner. The troubleshooter from that page I mentioned will lead you here.

Say No to contacting the site owner, select Personal Info from the next option, pick the type of info and you’ll get to the form (such as here if it involves contact info).

Previously:

Apple Silicon “Augury” DMP Vulnerability

Francisco Pires:

A team of researchers with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Tel Aviv University, and the University of Washington have demonstrated a world-first Data Memory-Dependent Prefetcher (DMP) vulnerability, dubbed “Augury,” that’s exclusive to Apple Silicon. If exploited, the vulnerability could allow attackers to siphon off “at rest” data, meaning the data doesn’t even need to be accessed by the processing cores to be exposed.

Augury takes advantage of Apple Silicon’s DMP feature. This prefetcher aims to improve system performance by being aware of the entire memory content, which allows it to improve system performance by pre-fetching data before it’s needed. Usually, memory access is limited and compartmentalized in order to increase system security, but Apple’s DMP prefetch can overshoot the set of memory pointers, allowing it to access and attempt a prefetch of unrelated memory addresses up to its prefetch depth.

See also:

Previously:

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