5 changes to know about in Apple’s latest iOS, macOS, and iPadOS betas
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Dru Nemeton
Smack-Fu Master, in training
I really like that Apple's not in any rush whatsoever to jump on the A.I. bandwagon. It's a refreshing change of pace to have advanced features locked behind hardware requirements, and those features are just never released.
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They were in a rush, they've just failed at the execution of it.
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Certainly. Let's use Fred Intelligence (FI) to summarise the Arsticle.
1 Charging limits for MacBooks
2 End-to-end encryption (and other improvements) for non-Apple texting
3 The return of the “Compact” Safari tab bar
4 On-by-default Stolen Device Protection
5 Rosetta’s end approaches
6 Apple-shaped products
If I can be of further assistance, don't hesitate.
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Removal of Rosetta 2 looks to be an issue for tax preparation software— both TurboTax and H&R Block use Rosetta 2 and neither appears to be in a hurry to remedy the situation. My guess is that this will be how tax preparation on a Mac moves entirely to the cloud, despite what customers may prefer.
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I desperately want an option on Safari on iPad to disable that shit where it compacts its top bar whenever scrolling down. I get the logic on iPhone, but on a goddamn iPad (especially a 13 inch model) this is just stupid and annoying because the space savings of doing this are almost irrelevant.
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Only around 10% of tax filers itemize. If not itemizing and your taxes are straightforward, filling out a PDF 1040 takes maybe 15 minutes.
Kick those rent-seeking bastards (TurboTax and H&R Block) to the curb.
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I think if you just turn it off once after the update you’ll be fine. It seems to me like this blocks a somewhat specific edge case as far as theft protection goes. I had it off on my iPad and I just turned it off on my phone, because I’m struggling to imagine a scenario where it helps me. Cops will just hold the phone up to my face, and thieves won’t know my password.
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In today's world, wouldn't it be nice to have a simple way to turn off biometrics to unlock the device and put it temporarily into lockdown mode.
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After having a bunch of accounting firms as clients, I've had to work with Intuit products for 8-10 years. I'm fully convinced nobody at Intuit understands their codebases any more, so every change is done tentatively and timidly. I've seen them introduce bugs that remain for months or years; there's still a glitch in their professional tax software that has been there for years now.
Not to mention it's obvious to me many of the decisions are made to make the programmers lives easier, and not the end users. For instance, you can't set a file location for the returns- you have to set one for each tax year individually. I would have made a root folder and then auto-create year sub folders, but this is beyond Intuit's ability.
I could go on and on- but Intuit being unable to recompile their Mac apps with the Arm options checked seems completely par for the course for that company.
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One setting where I want biometrics off is when going through an airport on an international trip, because CBP needs a warrant before they can force you to unlock your phone or pad with a passcode, but as you note they can just hold your phone/pad up to your face or touch your thumb to the fingerprint button in order to open it against your will. That's why I want biometrics on my devices to be simple to turn on and off.
I don't mind the feature, as I can see cases where it's useful, I'd just like Stolen Device Protection to be something the user has to opt into rather than opt out of, and I want biometrics to be easy to turn on and off as needed (especially in the current environment!).
Edited to add: I just hopped onto the Apple website and checked out their new iPad Mini. Maybe this is Apple's way of telling me it's time to upgrade to a Mini that supports FaceID before my next international trip in August. I still want an easy and QUICK way to turn Biometrics on and off, though!
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I bet you’re more water efficient than the current frontier models too! Go FI !
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There’s already a setting for this. Apps > Safari > Hide top bar on scroll (disable it)
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Five quick presses of the power button will disable biometrics until you unlock with a pin. So will powering off the device. I know it’s not a complete solution but it’s better than nothing.
(You probably already know that, but just in case someone doesn’t, there you go.)
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Still have 2ish years if it's not actually being removed until macos28.
Finally upgraded from my 2018ish imac recently and was pleasantly surprised to find so far I've only noticed two programs that haven't been updated yet. Might be a couple more that I don't run often, but I'm not worried about any issues.
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Too bad you don’t have a radar account so you could make an actual informed comment.
I’ve seen several issues fixed in the past cycle.
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As I said above, you can do five quick presses of the power button to kill biometrics until your next unlock. You probably already know that, and it’s not a complete solution, but it’s better than nothing. You can always just go into settings and disable Face ID for unlock before you get to the airport, though that will be complicated if you haven’t already turned stolen device protection off.
As for a mini with Face ID, I’m not saying I’d replace my current mini just for that (I just bought it a few months ago) but it is still a bit jarring to have to put my finger on the sensor. Still, I don’t think we’ll see one before August.
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Volume up, volume down, tap the power button and swipe. This will shut the phone off completely.
five taps is a little easier in some circumstances.
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I recall there being incidents where the password/code was shoulder-surfed. It's been a problem since like forever.
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Most users of tax prep software have already moved to the cloud. I despise the reflexive cloud-ification of all kinds of software that would be better run as an installed program, but even I can't see a reason not to do tax filing in a cloud app.
I also despise the TurboTax mafia and their lobbyists for keeping tax prep unnecessarily complicated and making free filing options so hard to access, but that's a rant for another day.
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Well then, how do you control the location of your financial data? But… whatever…
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Five taps is something you can do quietly in a pocket or in a panic.
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Unpopular take - current iPhone lineup doesn’t have sufficient RAM for a decent on device LLM. I am speaking from my personal experience running llama models locally to give short summaries of text. It just didn’t capture any of the nuance of the text in the same way Apple news summaries didn’t. No wonder it isn’t reaching desired levels of quality.
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Thank you to those who reminded me of the 5 quick taps of the Power button to turn Biometrics off until the device is unlocked with a passcode! That will work perfectly for my next trip! Now if I can figure out how to get the sensor on my Mini to reliably recognize my fingerprint, I'll be happy. (I'll be happier once I can replace it with a Mini that does Face ID, though.)
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You can also spin up a Windows11 for ARM VM on you mac and run your Tax software there. The UI will be pretty much the same, and likely your SW license can be ported.
Edit: Besides, MacOS 26 (with Rosetta2) will be supported until (boreal) autum 2028, so no inminent danger.
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Yeah, to be honest, I feel like there are upsides to keeping Face ID enabled until you find yourself in a situation where it needs to be disabled. But that requires a certain amount of sustained situational awareness.
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Not sure why negative comments about LG keep getting down-voted. LG is a step backwards for usability.
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jonbob_newcastle
Ars Praetorian
Have they restored the option to change the order of Spotlight search results and remove categories that aren’t wanted? I never need to search my contacts on my MacBook. Or apps, that’s what launchpad is for.
By the way, can someone explain what Safari is supposed to be doing when I hover over the left side of the page? Whenever I do it Safari brings up a blank white sidebar. I’ve no idea why.
By the way, can someone explain what Safari is supposed to be doing when I hover over the left side of the page? Whenever I do it Safari brings up a blank white sidebar. I’ve no idea why.
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If you press and hold the power button and volume up button so it brings up the shut down/emergency call screen it requires the pin to unlock again.
Tax software in the US is the ultimate, must buy it again every year situation anyway, so they've got a couple versions before it becomes an issue. Might be a problem if you needed to open a past return for an audit or something but you can and should print out a hard copy anyway. They might use it as an excuse to force online versions or might just get around to it eventually. These types of it's going to stop working soon popups are probably being added to apply some pressure to these types of stragglers.
It shouldn't impact your normal usage of the tablet. This is for relatively specific scenarios and only kicks in for certain things. In particular it's to combat people who shoulder surf your pin and then snatch your device. It used to be that they could then do all sorts of things like add their own touchid/faceid, reset your Apple account password, even reset the device and turn off find my device all just using the PIN they stole before stealing the device. Ultimately they could end up making a bunch of charger using your phone and then completely reset it so it could be resold without it being locked to your apple account.
The Stolen Device protection says if you are doing one of these things and the device isn't someplace we recognize as someplace you frequent we throw additional steps and/or delays into the process but those are all things you aren't doing in your normal day to day use of the device. I've had this enabled on multiple devices for a while and have never run into problems with it.
For the airport scenario you'd only run into this if you wanted to permanently turn off touchid/faceId vs just putting it into the you must enter your PIN first to enable it mode. The you must enter the pin first to enable it should be plenty for airport type situation and there are multiple ways to quickly get the device into that mode. You don't need to disable it permanently in those situations.
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Two reasons that I keep doing mine on the downloaded software:
1. I don't have full confidence that it will be accessible in 2035, which is what the recommendation is in the US for how long you should keep it; and,
2. I have more confidence in the IRS not being hacked than Intuit and if you imagine how bad it is to lose your SSN, then imagine how much worse it would be if all the data to duplicate your financial identity would be.
Sure, it means the onus is on me to ensure that my tax file is backed up, but I can use my choice of provider(s) and cold storage(s) to ensure that it's kept available.
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I think when MacOS reduces Rosetta 2 in MacOS 27, I will stick with 26.
Very annoying.
Very annoying.
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