Apple strongly protects data stored on an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple Watch, and macOS (with FileVault enabled or a T2 Security Chip, or both). However, there’s an exception for mobile devices that can be useful in extremis, such as if you’ve forgotten your passcode (say, for an older device), you’re helping someone who has forgotten it (possibly due to dementia or an accident), or you need to recover data that you’ve inherited or are working on on behalf of a family.
iOS and iPadOS backups aren’t nearly as secure as the data stored on devices. This means you may be able to retrieve a backup with all the data—even including stored passwords and other personal information—to another device under your control.
You might have missed this during Apple’s “Hi, Speed” event last week about the iPhone 12, because the Macalope isn’t sure if the company mentioned it or not, but at long last you can buy an iPhone and enjoy the blazing speeds delivered by 5G.
Right?
Right?
Hang on, the Macalope’s intern is staring at him.
What is it, Carl? It’s always something with this kid, swear to God.
Oh. Huh. The Macalope is being informed that may not be the case for, uh, well, most everyone.
Yes, turns out a funny thing happened on the way to the colosseum, which Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg insisted during Apple’s event we’ll all be back in soon so you’d better get those high-speed phones now.
Apple Watch Series 3 owners: Apple has released an update for you. With watchOS 7.0.3, Apple says the update has bug fixes, include one that addresses an issue where the watch will unexpectedly restart.
A watchOS 7.0.3 update for owners of other Apple Watch models has not been released. The current version for those watches is watchOS 7.0.2.
How to install watchOS 7.0.3Before you install the update, you must place your Apple Watch on its charger. Also, the watch needs to be within range of your iPhone connected to Wi-Fi. Then follow these steps:
On your iPhone, launch the Watch app.
Tap General.
A modern smartphone uses navigational satellites—sometimes drawing from multiple orbital systems—as well as cellular towers, Bluetooth hints, and Wi-Fi router locations to produce an awfully precise location. My family’s iPhones are often tracked not just at our house but—when looking in the Find My app—to each of our nearly exactly locations in our home within a few feet.
That might be too much when you’re giving a third-party app your location even once, but especially whenever the app is in the foreground, or, for rare apps, continuously in the background. In iOS 14 and iPadOS 14, Apple added a switch to let you choose to offer either precision or “fuzzed” locations to apps—and by extension to any third parties that the apps might work with, who receive location information as well.
There was big news out of Cupertino last Tuesday—big news! Apple announced a new, smaller version of one of its products at a cheaper price point, potentially opening it up to a whole new class of customers.
I speak, of course, of the HomePod mini.
Yes, yes, there were iPhones as well, but I found myself more drawn to the new, smaller, and 100-percent more globular smart speaker. Part of that may have been intrigue, yes, but a more substantial reason is that I'm trying to figure out exactly what Apple's strategy for this product line is. Which, coincidentally, is exactly what Apple seems to be doing.