I was a guest on The Icon Garden podcast today, talking about the newly announced SwiftUI, how it co-exists with other tools like React Native, and what it means for the future of native apps and cross-platform hybrid apps.
So Zoom runs a web server on your Mac (even after you uninstall the app), and that web server can launch Zoom calls via URLs, and those Zoom calls can default to having your camera open. Which apparently makes it very easy to embed something into a web page (or an ad) in an attempt to trick people into unwittingly opening a video chat.
Remote video exploits are one of the worst case scenarios of security vulnerability, and this is it. It looks like Zoom took over two months to start responding to it from the timeline, and if that’s true, it’s irresponsible security practice.
If you have Zoom installed on your Mac, check the “Patch Yourself” section of the article to block the functionality that allows this.
Owen Williams:
Microsoft, it seems, has removed all of the barriers to remaining in your ‘flow.’ Surface is designed to adapt to the mode you want to be in, and just let you do it well. Getting shit done doesn’t require switching device or changing mode, you can just pull off the keyboard, or grab your pen and the very same machine adapts to you.
It took years to get here, but Microsoft has nailed it. By comparison, the competition is flailing around arguing about whether or not touchscreens have a place on laptops. The answer? Just let people choose.
This coherency is what I had come to expect from Apple, but iPad and MacBook look messier than ever. Sure, you can get an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, but you can’t use either of them in a meaningful way in tandem with your desktop workflow. It requires switching modes entirely, to a completely different operating system and interaction model, then back again.
The Surface lineup is super compelling now, and Windows continues to get better and better through minor feature updates every few months. Microsoft under its new CEO is cleaning up its act and actually conveying and executing a vision for how the personal computer fits into a modern lifestyle in 2018. At a time when Apple is struggling to remember that it’s creator audience exists, Microsoft is capitalizing on it and giving people what they want.
That said, it’s really silly that the Surface Studio 2, their iMac equivalent, is using a 7th generation CPU when Intel’s 8th generation has been out for months, and some of these are missing USB-C and Thunderbolt 3. There is definitely more work to do to bring these machines to peak performance.
Apple’s quarterly results showed the Mac down 13% year-over-year. Everything was out of date; the new MacBook Pros didn’t ship until Q3 in July, so that certainly didn’t help. John Voorhees also has some handy charts over at MacStories.
I really hope Apple starts to get the Mac back in shape soon. They showed a relatively strong offering of Mac software at WWDC, probably the most exciting since the reveal of the trash can Mac Pro in 2013.
2011 is coming to a close, so I’d like to take a moment to highlight a few apps and games on Mac and iPhone that have been invaluable to me. I broke this out into four categories, each with two apps. I have purposely omitted iPad, because frankly, I rarely use my iPad (and I prefer the TouchPad over the iPad), and don’t feel I’ve played with enough iPad apps to really give it a fair shake. So I’ve left that off to focus on iPhone and Mac apps and games. I hope you’ll check out all of these great apps.
Technical details of the upcoming Flash Player for Mac, wherein the Adobe team is switching to using Core Animation to do faster rendering of non-video Flash files. It’s worth noting that the performance will only initially be seen in Safari on Mac OS X 10.6, as the plugin is fully Cocoa-ized now.
Also interesting to note is that Flash is still using the ancient QuickDraw APIs which have been deprecated for years.
We’ve all got our thoughts on what the Jesus Tablet will be, so here are my guesses. I fully expect to be completely wrong on all of this, as many of these answers are completely blind shots and that Apple will blow my expectations out of the water.
Beyond impressive. This is more than some governments have contributed so far.