Security and IoT

This year there have been so many reports about IoT devices being hacked, being misused, and being subverted. I think we are at a watershed when it comes to Internet of Things Connected devices. There are two major issues, which if not resolved, will crater the industry and drive a large spike of distrust into the industry.

First, most device manufacturers are not in the business to support their devices for the long term. We’ve gotten to a point in society were we have been trained to replace our technology every few years. PC’s are designed to last three years at most, phones are replaced every two years, and many software products are moving to subscription models, as consumers expect a never ending supply of updates and features, which standard upgrade pricing does not support.

Building a product, and the team you need to support it long term, requires planning and long term revenue streams. If we look at these trends, the desire to design hardware devices with long term security in mind, requires a fundamental shift in how those devices are conceived and charged for. The shift to subscription programs for some hardware is a great example of this change. Apple is doing this with their iPhones and Microsoft is doing this with their Surface laptops. Having cell carriers do this is great for carrier lock in, but doesn’t necessarily translate to the full value for the manufacturer.

Second, we need to have more consequential legislation for data privacy and security. If the only individual that is truly harmed by bad security is the end user or company, then the incentives to get it right by manufacturers is pretty much minimal at best. Many of the basic manufacturers continue to just pump out basic IoT devices, with no long term goal to support them. They make their money on the building and selling new devices. They do not have a long term revenue plan for any specific device, their long term plan is make newer devices.

While this manufacturer centric view of devices makes tons of sense as a manufacturer, the privacy and security concerns are only there in building reputation for manufacturing. While this will have long term brand impacts, many manufactures actually build for multiple other companies, and so they pass that band impact on to the company that white labels their devices. This passing the buck, causes even worse security policies, such as default passwords and open ports. The other bad practice that comes about is for some manufactures, to actually take advantage of the bad security to capture data themselves and exploit this data for additional revenue.

Hopefully in 2019, the value of GDPR will be realized as companies start having to deal with a legislation that takes security and privacy a bit more seriously. I don’t think GDPR is perfect, but it is a step in the right direction.

Why the HELL can’t Apple Fix iTunes?

The number of times that the iTunes library file has corrupted on my iMac is insane! I have a very large iTunes library. It consists of all the CDs, LPs, Cassette Tapes, and even some Reel-to-reels that I own, and have converted to digital. The library is about 23,000 songs and well over a thousand albums. With a library of this size, I have to have it stored on an external NAS, because I also have over a 1,000 TVs episodes and movies too. My NAS is a Drobo5N with 18TB of storage on it.

Here’s the issues that come up periodically in iTunes, and everyone of them drives me totally nuts.

  • First, iTunes has never really done a good job of supporting NAS drives (or really any external drive, as I had these same issues when I had an Drobo directly attached to the iMac).
  • Second, every so often, iTunes loses track of where a song is. This is shown by a small (i) symbol next to the item. If I try to play an album with songs with this symbol it will skip those songs. If I go in and double click on the song title, iTunes magically remembers the location and the song will play.
  • Third, duplicate songs. If you ever go in and tell iTunes to consolidate your library, it will kindly duplicate the songs into it’s own file hierarchy, leaving the original there to. This makes sense from a safety perspective (not deleting the originals, BUT it will then (at times) add the duplicates back in. I think this is a legacy issue when you tell iTunes to monitor a directory.
  • Forth, album art. I have spent a TON of time making sure that all of my album art actually matches the Albums I have. So if I converted an LP to iTunes, I take pictures of the LP so that I can match it up. The number of times that I’ve loaded my library only to see the Gray background with the Musical notes in the picture instead of my nice Album art is beyond count. I have used Doug’s wonderful scripts to actually put the album art into the songs, but since iTunes loses track of some of the songs, it doesn’t always work.
  • And finally, Meta Data. I like to sort my albums in a very specific way. To that end, I have changes sort artist, sort album, etc. but it doesn’t seem to stick there either.

I have been using the iTunes Match service (which I love!) so that I can have my music library on all my devices when I travel, so I would really appreciate it if Apple would spend SOME time and actually fix bugs in iTunes, instead of tweaking the UI.

Traveling with the iPad Pro 11 Inch

I have had the iPad Pro 12.9 inch and it was always great for travel, but I would almost always bring my MacBook Pro with me too. On my current trip I am carrying both my iPad Pro 11 Inch along with my MacBook Pro, but so far, I’ve only used the iPad.

<—- Time Passes —->

I started this blog post over a week ago. I was traveling on vacation when I started it. I am now traveling on business. I’ve been using the iPad Pro both times, and so far I’ve not had any reason to open the MacBook Pro. The one thing that I need to address, and I supported a kickstarter to fix this, is all the various chargers I need when traveling. The iPad Pro uses USB-C, the iPhone uses USB-C to Lightening or USB-B-Lightening, the Apple Watch uses USB-A/B to puck, my Bose noise canceling earWorms (as I call them) use Micro USB. Way too many different connectors.

So far I am okay on this trip, and I discovered that Apple has released a new USB-C to Puck charger for the Apple Watch. So I should be good there soon.

Two days with iPad Pro 11inch

If you follow my blog at all, you know that three years ago I got the original iPad Pro 12.9inch. It really changed how I used my iPad, as I could now really do significant work while on the go. I recently upgraded it to the new iPad Pro 11inch, which seems so small now, but I think I am going to be OK with the new size. I’ve been getting used to the new keyboard, and in two days the number of mistypes have been going down quickly. The new Pencil is amazing. I have used the old pencil to capture notes in customer meetings (much more acceptable compared to typing when your customer talks). The old pencil always seemed to be uncharged (probably because I would forget to plug it in). The new one is attached to the iPad so it charges constantly. The feel of the pencil is really nice.

I am not going to be one of those “reviewers” who complain about iOS not making it truly a laptop replacement. It is not a laptop replacement, and I don’t expect it to be. This is my quick, on the go device, when I need to do some work. When I want to code, I have a MacBook Pro and an iMac, when I have to edit video or audio – same. Could I edit video or audio on this device, yes. Does it match my workflow, no.

Apple will have to, one day, enable real programming on this device. My gut is that is in the works. We shall see.

One thing I really like is the new keyboard folio. The magnets work really well, and the ability to fold it back on the iPad, gives me a much better reading experience. I hope to write a more detailed review in a few weeks, when I’ve used the device a lot more. Can’t wait to share.

Today’s Announcements

What a great line up today from Apple’s latest announcements… A few highlights that caught my eye, and a desire for what I will be buying. They key thing is a ton of rumors have been provided to be true:

1) New MacBook Air – with Retina display, fingerprint reader and T2 chip. This is allowing for better storage, faster SSDs, and more memory. Of course, it now has the butterfly keyboard just like all other macs, I guess Apple is all in on this.

2) New Mac-Mini – this was a long shot by most rumors, but it has happened. They have again put the T2 chip in the design, allowing for Faster SSDs, and a whole lot of other options. Up to 64GB of Ram and 2TB SSDs.. a lot of ports, 4 USB-C and 2 USB-A, along with HDMI and Ethernet port. This will make a lot of people very happy.

3) So now we have the iPad Pro, in two sizes, 11 inch and 12.9 inch, with the rumored USB-C adapter, FaceID, and edge to edge display. (Well not really edge to edge, but pretty close – as it is LCD display). Up to 1TB of Storage along with a new A12X Bionic chip. Of course with the new size and shape, they have a new Apple Keyboard (more of a full folio which allows for two viewing angles – so glad to see this), and a new Pencil. The new Pencil accepts a tap and double tap on the pencil to allow for additional shortcuts (programmed by new apps).

4) Of course they showed off the new version of Photoshop for iPad (which will be available sometime next year. Also, 2K showed off their NBA release, pretty amazing graphics.

Other than the software, all items are on sale today and available next week. They obviously were in the queue for the September announcement, but I am guessing they were delayed due to code in iOS 12.1.

12 hours with the iPhone Xs Max and Series 4 Watch

I did not upgrade last year. I had jumped from the iPhone 6s Plus to the iPhone 7Plus because of the major upgrades to the camera. I had jumped from the original Apple Watch to the Series 2 because I wanted to swim with my watch, but I did not upgrade last year. The iPhone X looked amazing, but I wanted the longer battery life that the Plus size offered, and I did not upgrade last year.

I saw the iPhone Xs Max at the launch event, and knew I had to have it. It has not disappointed in the mere 12 hours that I’ve been using it. The screen is amazing! The biggest surprise to me is that the it is actually slightly smaller than my iPhone 7Plus, and as such fits even better in my the pocket.

I won’t bore you on all the technical details, there are plenty of really good blogs and reviews on that. What I hope to do is post a few more entries on the surprises that I have using this new device.

The upgrade I have been really excited about is the Watch Series 4. I am looking forward to the idea of the ECG/EKG sensor. It doesn’t appear to be enabled yet, but the screen size and clarity is greatly improved. The upgrade to this new watch has allowed me to relegate my Series 0 watch for sale. And my Series 2 to now be my sleep monitor. The one function that is missing – no camera, so my prediction of the Series 4 being the new Dick Tracey watch, is not coming true. Oh well, there’s always the Series 6 🙂

Getting ready for Wasted Time V8.0

This summer has been a ton of fun learning how to address SiriKit in WastedTime. The last piece I have been working on is changing the UI to leverage Reactive Swift – AKA RxSwift. This will (hopefully) allow you to start a meeting on your HomePod and then open the app on your iPhone or iPad and just pick right up.

It has been exciting learning new processes and completely (once again) restructuring the internals of WastedTime. You may not notice any differences in the interface, but this is a MAJOR rewrite.

I hope to launch this with the release of iOS 12.0

My Apple Watch Series 4 Prediction

So, I’ve been thinking about WWDC’s demos, and the rumors that the Watch Series 4 is going to be bigger.. so let me be the first one to blog this out loud…

The Apple Watch Series 4 will become your Dick Tracy watch. Here’s why I say this.. If you watched the keynote, they showed how Apple Messages will be adding multi-party video chat… this will be available both on iOS and on Mojave.

If you add a few millimeters to the size of the Apple Watch you can add in the the Front facing camera to the watch, and then use the new UI, allows you to see the current speaker and then scroll up and down to the other participants on the video chat.

The crown on the Watch is the perfect interface for this scrolling, and now that the Watch Series 3 has LTE, you can see all the pieces on the board.

Enjoy!

Holiday Card App and other progress

So, I finally have had a few things slow down enough so I could do some more coding. I am working on two projects at once. The first is adding Siri support to Wasted Time v8.0 – this has been really fun, as I am learning about Siri Intents, changing the app to run without a UI, and learning about RxSwift to make many of the events “observable”. This will really clean up the code for Wasted Time. I have added in all my intents and am now fighting with Xcode and cocoaPods to support RxSwift. Hopefully I will solve that issue soon. In the mean time I’ve added support for the following features in the Holiday Card Tracking App – Search (YEAH!! you can now pick people from your contacts list), Edit – (you can now correct addresses on your recipient list), and Full Screen image view (want to get a better look at the front of the card you sent, press on the card and it will go full screen). I have a few other minor updates I want to do, but I am trying prioritize the work between so many things I am working on: 1) Pan and zoom of the fullscreen image so you can zoom in on the cost of a card, 2) saving images in the camera roll, instead of in the App, and 3) pick a picture from the camera roll – this is important if you are sending a ton of the same card for an event – you don’t want to have to take 100 pictures, and use up 100 pictures worth of storage.
I am releasing this version without the last three features to my TestFlight team for feedback. Hopefully they will provide some!

Don’t Change your Account on your iMac

When I replaced my old iMac (after it’s graphics card died), I had setup my new one and then migrated the old one via Apple’s account migration tools. Of course I had messed up and could not use my old account name, so in an effort to just get a working iMac I appended -blank to the account name. This got me up and working quickly and I then deleted the temporary account, that I had setup to test the machine (which had my old account name).

So on the US 4th of July holiday I had time to finally rename the account and get rid of the annoying -blank at the end of the account name. Since I was not going to change the home directory, I figured life would be good and I would not have any issues with installed software, etc. Boy was I wrong.

Many of the non-appStore software required me to re-register (not really a big surprise) and I had to log into the AppStore for some of the AppStore based software to re-authenticate the application with my account. These were not big deals, but when I started my iTunes library, all hell broke lose.

I have a very large library of ripped Movies, TV Shows, and Albums (from my purchased Blu-ray’s, DVDs, LPs, and Cassette tapes), as well as a significant amount of iTunes and MoviesAnywhere content. So large in fact that I have terabytes of storage used up on my Drobo5N with my library. When iTunes starts it points at a iTunes Library on the Drobo5N that contains 6-8TBs of media content. The the first thing that happens is iTunes starts re-organizing the library and creating additional copies of the files on the Drobo5N, while I have 6TBs of free space, duplicating the library again would likely fill the Drobo5N and cause issues. I canceled the re-organization and discovered that iTunes now couldn’t find any of the content. Every song required me to “locate” the file, which then would scan the drive and not find the rest of the library. Same with Movies and TV Shows. I looked and iTunes had created a new iTunes library file, which was having issues. I figured this was an easy fix, just point back at the old library file, Nope! That made it worse.

After 3 more trial and error fits and starts, I exited iTunes and started looking at my directory structure on the Drobo5N. There were multiple copies of the music, TV Shows, and Movies directories, all in various stages of completeness. Music was duplicated, TV Shows were duplicated, and Movies had both duplicates and strange directory setups. So over the last weekend, I decided to create a new manual directory structure and de-dupe all the music, movies, and TV Shows. This is where the ditto command comes in (ditto -V source_directory destination_directory [the -V will show you all the copies as they happen]). If you’ve never used the ditto command, it will merge directories and keep all the metadata for files. If you try to merge directories via Finder it has been known to replace the directories and there by deleting some files you want to keep. The music library took 3 ditto commands, to merge all the directories together, and two days. The TV Shows was done via move in the finder, as the shows were much more all or nothing in the splits. The Movies were done as ditto (a parallel 2 days).

Today when I have time, I will delete the iTunes “library” file, and build a new one, importing all the movies, music and tv shows into the library. The directory structure will be the already defined iTunes library so hopefully it won’t create yet another copy of all the content. If you follow my blog you will remember the music sort discussion last year. I really really hope that the meta data is correctly attached to the files, and I will not have to do too much clean up.

The lesson after all of this, don’t rename your account.