Over on the TenFourFox blog, Spectre’s impact on the G3, G4 and G5 families of processors has been documented.
Spoiler alert: The G3 and early G4s are resistant to the exploit.
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Disk Copies 30 Years in the Making⇢
CardioBot⇢
Your Apple Watch measures your heart rate every 4 minutes during the day. With CardioBot, you can easily understand the data captured by the Apple Watch so you can improve your lifestyle and discover notable patterns.
My thanks to CardioBot for sponsoring 512 Pixels this week. Go check it out in the App Store; I’m a big fan.
There’s an iMac for Everyone
When the original iMac went on sale, it was undoubtedly a consumer product. Some professional Mac users mocked the colorful design and lack of legacy ports, unaware that their beloved Power Mac would soon follow in the iMac’s USB-shaped footsteps.
The iMac G4 was also a consumer machine, but it creeped into the workplace slowly, thanks to its incredible design.
The iMac G5 brought the mighty PowerPC G5 CPU to Apple’s all-in-one, which now sported the design we recognize today, with the computer tucked behind the screen. This machine, and the plastic-clad Intel iMacs that followed it got more powerful and more capable over time.
On Facebook, Twitter and Responsibility⇢
Joel Spolsky, on Facebook and Twitter:
Both Twitter and Facebook’s selfish algorithms, optimized solely for increasing the number of hours I spend on their services, are kind of destroying civil society at the same time. Researchers also discovered that the algorithms served to divide up the world into partisan groups. So even though I was following hundreds of people on social networks, I noticed that the political pieces which I saw were nevertheless directionally aligned with my own political beliefs. But to be honest they were much… shriller. Every day the Twitter told me about something that The Other Side did that was Outrageous and Awful (or, at least, this was reported), and everyone was screeching in sync and self-organizing in a lynch mob, and I would have to click LIKE or RETWEET just to feel like I had done something about it, but I hadn’t actually done anything about it. I had just slacktivated.
On Removing the Facebook iOS App⇢
Miriam Kramer at Mashable uninstalled the Facebook app from her iPhone:
The initial desire to delete started with Facebook vacuuming up so much space and battery life on my (admittedly old) iPhone 6. But it quickly became clear that my actual, non-battery, capital-L Life was also better off not having Facebook a thumbtap away.
I don’t miss it. I don’t miss the weird sensation of unnecessary updates from ex-boyfriends and other assorted once-familiars. I don’t miss having my train time hijacked by being caught up in the political fights (or the rage-inducing comments that followed them).
Dropbox Files for IPO⇢
Alex Barinka at Bloomberg is reporting that Dropbox has filed confidentially for IPO. Unlike other tech companies that have filed in the recent past — ahem, Snap — Dropbox has sales over $1 billion a year. It will be interesting to watch this one.
Why I Bought an iMac Pro⇢
Over on iMore, I walked through my decision to buy an iMac Pro, and why the 2017 i7 iMac wasn’t the right machine for me.
High Sierra Found to Have Yet Another Password Bug⇢
A bug report submitted on Open Radar this week reveals a major security vulnerability in the current version of macOS High Sierra that allows the App Store menu in System Preferences to be unlocked with any password.
Something seems pretty broken with High Sierra’s authentication system as well as Apple’s QA work on the OS.
Kbase Article of the Week: About the External Features and Ports on Your iMac and iMac Pro⇢
The iMac Pro really is just an impressively-powerful iMac, isn’t it?
Connected #175: The Devil on my Shoulder⇢
2018 is here, and so is Stephen’s new computer and our predictions for the next year. Also, CES is a thing.
My thanks to our sponsors for this week’s episode:
- Linode: High performance SSD Linux servers for all of your infrastructure needs. Get a $20 credit with promo code ‘connected2018’
- Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code WORLD at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
- MissionU: An education for the 21st century
Apple Releases macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 Supplemental Update, iOS 11.2.2 to Address Spectre
Time to check for updates on your Mac and iOS devices. If you are running Sierra or El Capitan, there’s a Safari update ready for you to help protect against this vulnerability.