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Intego Mac Security Podcast

A Potpourri of Apple News – Intego Mac Podcast Episode 369

The well-respected photo editing app Pixelmator has been purchased by Apple; are its creative tools coming to Apple Photos? Apple expands Apple Intelligence features in the latest betas of its operating systems. And speaking of Apple Intelligence, Apple’s own commercials paint its users as not so intelligent.

  • You can trick Apple Intelligence into following sensitive prompts if they sound “happy”
  • Apple acquires Pixelmator: “A new home for Pixelmator”
  • How to install App Store apps on an external SSD
  • Apple’s New USB-C Accessories Require macOS Sequoia, Don’t Work Properly With macOS 15.2 Beta
  • In Apple’s new ads for AI tools, we’re all total idiots
  • Security research on Private Cloud Compute
  • LastPass warns of fake support centers trying to steal customer data
  • LastPass password manager suffers massive data breach
  • Google fixes two Android zero-days used in targeted attacks
  • Android 15’s theft protection features keep your device and data safe

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    Transcript of Intego Mac Podcast episode 369

    Voice Over 0:00
    This is the Intego Mac podcast—the voice of Mac security for Thursday, November 7, 2024. This week’s Intego Mac Podcast security headlines include: the well-respected photo editing app Pixelmator has been purchased by Apple; are its creative tools coming to Photos? Apple expands Apple Intelligence features in the latest betas of its operating systems. And speaking of Apple Intelligence, Apple’s own commercials paint its users as not so intelligent. And Last Pass, the nefarious password manager is back in the news for all the wrong reasons again. Now, here are the hosts of the Intego Mac Podcast. Veteran Mac journalist, Kirk McElhearn. And Intego’s. Chief Security Analyst, Josh Long.

    Kirk McElhearn 0:53
    Good morning. Josh, how are you today?

    Josh Long 0:54
    I’m doing well. How are you, Kirk?

    Black Friday is at the end of the month

    Kirk McElhearn 0:56
    I’m doing okay. We’re early November and we’re three weeks away from Black Friday. So in a forthcoming episode, we’ll talk about the things you need to be aware of if you go to buy tech devices on Black Friday sales. I didn’t Black Friday start in October, though this year, at least at some places.

    Josh Long 1:12
    I have seen some quote, unquote Black Friday sales already. And I imagine me doing a face palm right now, because that’s what I’m doing. Because this is, this is so ridiculous. Like, how does this? I know we talk about this, like, every year. I know everybody talks about this every year. How like this? The shops all do like, Christmas and Halloween at the same time. And it’s just, it’s so silly. But okay, now, now we’re doing Black Friday in October.

    Kirk McElhearn 1:36
    I guess here, Christmas starts as soon as Halloween is over. So the first of November, all the stores put their Christmas things up. I don’t see Black Friday where I am because supermarkets don’t do it. If I go to a supermarket, you don’t see anything about Black Friday because I go to a supermarket that sells food, right? I don’t go to a supermarket that sells TVs and refrigerators. Even in the town near where I live, it’s not big enough to have Black Friday stuff. I mean, there’s a couple stores that do it, but I’ve been getting emails about Black Friday, and it just annoys me. And I want to put a filter. I want to put a rule into mail, if it is before November 1 and it message contains Black Friday, move to trash. Stop evaluating rules. I really think I need to do that.

    Josh Long 2:17
    That’s that’s not a bad idea. Actually. I kind of like that idea. You know why everybody does this, of course. So, so Black Friday, traditionally, this is the day after the US Thanksgiving holiday, of course. And the theory is that this is when everybody will start their Christmas shopping, because now they’ve had their turkey day with their family, and now they’re gonna go out and buy Christmas stuff. And so that’s when all the sales would begin. And, of course, now it’s just like a months long event. And it’s, it’s kind of ridiculous.

    Kirk McElhearn 2:47
    Well, also it’s because most people get the Friday off. They get the long weekend so they can do shopping. But over here, there’s no Thanksgiving, so the idea of Black Friday is just ridiculous. It’s just, you know, it’s just spread around the world. Anyway. We want to talk about a lot of Apple news. Today we have a potpourri of Apple news. I like that word. The first thing we want to mention is that the second dot two developer betas have come out this week. Now we’ve talked as we’ve gone through the discussion of Apple Intelligence features. There are a number of milestones, and the dot one was the first features, such as the writing tools and some other minor features. The dot two is going to contain some more features, like the integration with ChatGPT, image, playground, etc. Dot three is going to contain more features. So this is more of a big deal than the normal betas, essentially, because remember, all the Apple Intelligence tools are in beta only, and when they come out in betas, they’re in beta, in beta, but we’re going to talk in a minute about how Apple’s advertising around these tools. Each of these milestones is going to bring, I would say, consequential new features as they roll out new Apple Intelligence stuff.

    Additional Apple Intelligence features are available in the latest Apple OS betas

    Josh Long 3:55
    Right? Kirk and I both have opted into these developer betas on at least one or two of our test devices, and we’re waiting on the image creation part of the beta. So, so as you might recall, you can opt into Apple Intelligence beta on your device after you upgrade to the point one releases. So Mac OS square 15.1 iOS or iPad OS 18.1 if using the developer beta of the dot two releases, that’s when you have a second waiting list. And this one is actually a long waiting list, unlike the other, where you pretty much get approved almost right away. This one, Kirk and I are both waiting more than a week at this point.

    Kirk McElhearn 4:35
    At least 10 days. I think. I mean, I’ve requested on my iPad. Well, actually, you request on a device, and it’s for all your devices in the account, so both my MacBook Air and my iPad show early access requested. But I don’t know why it’s taking so long. I don’t know if they’re drip feeding it to people depending on their region or the type of device, like I have an m4 iPad. Which is going to be one of the fastest devices available. So I would have expected to get that more quickly than, say, someone who’s got an M1 MacBook Air that’s a lot slower, right?

    Josh Long 5:08
    I think as we get closer to the anticipated release date, and I think December is when we’re expecting the dot two releases to come out, they’ll probably start rolling it out to more people. I think probably what they’re doing right now is rolling it out very slowly, just to make sure that there’s not a lot of weird things and hallucinations and kind of awkward things that they just don’t want a lot of people in the press, you know, trumpeting about like how weird Apple Intelligence image creation is.

    Kirk McElhearn 5:40
    Have you seen anything on social media about this? I have not seen any examples of images.

    Josh Long 5:45
    I have one of the awkward things that people have been able to get it to do is create an image of a happy plane crashing into two towers. And as long as the as long as you put in a little keyword that makes it seem like it’s friendly and happy, then Apple kind of ignores some of the context and doesn’t really realize, oh, wait, this might be inappropriate.

    Kirk McElhearn 6:09
    Okay, that sounds like maybe this is why Apple is not rolling this out to a lot of people at once. I think, I think Apple’s made a big mistake with all these AI tools. We’ll talk in a minute about the ads that they’re running. We all know that these things hallucinate. So hallucination is when an AI tool mix things up. I was writing an article recently, and I was looking for some interesting first lines of novels, and the AI was using insisted that this was the first line of Raymond Chan was The Big Sleep. It’s not from The Big Sleep at all. And after four or five follow up questions, saying, Are you sure this isn’t the right one? He says, I’m sorry. I don’t have access to this information, so I can’t give you the actual first line. So this is text, right? And text makes a lot of mistakes, but with images, if it makes a mistake, or it allows you to go beyond the guard rails, it has, I would say the consequences are a bit more serious. We’ll see. I can’t I don’t think Apple should be doing this anyway. It’s gonna happen, and we’re there, and we’ll let you know when we have it.

    Apple acquires photo editing app Pixelmator

    So Apple buys a number of companies every year. I think Tim Cook once during an earnings call said, we buy between eight and 12 companies a year, and these are mostly small companies that no one’s ever heard of. A lot of them are companies that maybe own patents or other intellectual property or back end, or they have research or something. But Apple bought some well known software announced six days ago, a company called Pixelmator, which is a small developer in Lithuania that has currently two image apps called Photomator and Pixelmator. And this is very surprising, because this is only the second software that I can remember Apple buying that I’ve ever heard of. The previous was dark sky three or four years ago, the weather app. And on the Pixelmator blog, they say something interesting. Pixelmator has signed an agreement to be acquired by Apple subject to regulatory approval. I can’t imagine what sort of regulatory approval Apple would need for this, but I wonder if it has to do with the fact that in Lithuania, maybe there’s some sort of regulation if a company gets purchased. But no matter what Pixelmator makes, some wonderful apps that would be perfect to improve the Photos app. Their Photomator app can read and write to the Photos Library. Not many apps can do this, or only a few, and it has more powerful editing tools than the Photos app. So Apple could easily add these tools into the Photos app and well, give it a lot more features and things that it can do. Pixelmator is kind of a combination of Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator that is incredibly powerful and has a lot of AI machine learning tools, and this could end up being like Apple’s photos Pro, similar to kind of Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro. I don’t expect Apple to do anything right away. They’ve acquired this company for the developers and for their knowledge and their intellectual property, but it’s interesting to see Apple acquire a company that’s relatively well known in the Mac space.

    Josh Long 9:04
    I rarely buy software. Josh is so true. And Kirk that’s absolutely true. I do not deny it. I use a free tool called the GIMP for years, G, I m, p, the GNU Image Manipulation Program, I think is what that stands for. And this tool is free. It’s available on like, every operator, every desktop operating system. And I’ve always, always used this as my free alternative to Photoshop. And, you know, it does layers and all that kind of stuff. So it does everything that I felt like I really needed. And I’ve heard Kirk Tell me about some cool features in Pixelmator, for example, the what do they call the image? Upscaling?

    Kirk McElhearn 9:46
    Super resolution. You can blow up an image and instead of blowing up the jaggy pixels of the image, it smooths everything.

    Josh Long 9:54
    Yeah. And Kirk had used this a couple of times for some of his articles, and I was like, wow, it actually did a really good job. Job. It’s not just, you know, making it blurry as it gets bigger, like, you know, most of the time you would see in in just about any normal Image App. So this is using machine learning to extrapolate and figure out what it would look like if it were a bigger image. So that’s just one example of many, many features that this Pixelmator has, and it was on Black Friday sale last year, and it was like, 20 or 25 bucks, and I’m like, shoot, I’m just gonna buy it. And I’ve been using it for the entire past year, and I love it so much. And so I’m a little bit worried that Apple might not continue to allow this app to be updated, because, you know, I bought a lifetime license, right? Like, and now it’s like, well, lifetime of the product might only be like, I don’t know, another year. Maybe if Apple decides to discontinue Pixelmator, after rolling in a handful of these features into some apple utility, I don’t know, we’ll see. Maybe Apple will allow Pixelmator to exist as a standalone product for the foreseeable future, maybe even years down the road. We just don’t know yet at this point, but good for Pixelmator may or may not be good for Pixelmator users. Longer term, we’ll see.

    Apps from the App Store can be downloaded to external media

    Kirk McElhearn 11:10
    Okay, William Gallagher of Apple insider had an article last week, which is a feature that I hadn’t noticed, and I’m really glad to find this out. The title of the article is How to Install App Store apps on an external SSD. Now it doesn’t have to be an SSD. It can be a hard disk of any kind. In the App Store, app on Mac, there is now an option in the settings to download and install large apps to a separate disk. And if you do this, apps more than a gigabyte will go on to a separate external disk. Now I looked in my Applications folder, and I have about a dozen apps that are more than a gigabyte, some of them that I don’t really use a lot, like Xcode, which is 12 gigabytes, but I have to have it for occasionally using it. I have the Microsoft Office apps that are all two or three gigabytes. I have iMovie, which I don’t know why. I keep it on my Mac. It’s almost four gigabytes. I never use it, but I keep it in case I might need it. And this would allow me to offload, like, 25 gigabytes of apps onto an external drive. Now this is really useful if you have a Mac without a lot of storage, and if you have a lot of apps that are a gigabyte or more. I don’t have many games on my Mac, but games can be 10 or 20 or 50 gigabytes. Now, you would want an external SSD, if it’s a games for the performance, but for other apps, you can just put them onto a hard drive. I think this is a really good feature. And if you do have a lot of apps and not a lot of storage and you have an external drive, you should definitely turn this on right.

    Josh Long 12:32
    Really useful, and especially if you’re starting to run out of space on your internal drive. So depending on how much storage you purchased your Mac width, you may not necessarily have a lot of free space, especially, again, if you’re if you’re installing games.

    Kirk McElhearn 12:48
    Josh, you know that Microsoft Edge doesn’t come from the Mac App Store, and you can move it anyway. One of the things about Mac App Store apps is you can’t move them from the Applications folder, whereas you can move third party apps. It’s always been like that. So what Apple is doing is probably creating a new folder with special entitlements on the external disk to allow Mac App Store apps to go there, but you can already offload other apps. This said, I wouldn’t offload a browser onto an external drive, because you want your browser to be pretty quick, and this might slow it down.

    Josh Long 13:17
    That actually is a really good point about Microsoft Edge. So you can get Microsoft Edge for iPhone and iPad from the App Store, but you can’t get Microsoft Edge for Mac from the app store, so that’s a good point.

    Kirk McElhearn 13:29
    Okay, we’re going to take a break. When we come back, we’ve got some more Apple news for you.

    Voice Over 13:35
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    Apple’s new USB C accessories require newer operating system

    Kirk McElhearn 14:52
    Okay, PSA about Apple’s new USB C accessories with the announcement of the new Macs last week. Apple also came out with USB C keyboards, Magic Mice and Magic Track Pads. Now, up until recently, they’ve only been lightning. In fact, I’m looking at the keyboard for my iMac, and that the only it’s one of the last two devices that uses a lightning cable that I own, and the other one is my AirPods max. So you can now get USB C keyboards, mice and track pants, but you got to be careful, because they will not work with anything before Mac, OS, Sequoia, and apparently they don’t even work with the current 15.2 beta so if you’re using one of these devices on a Mac that is running beta software, you should be careful. What’s really interesting is we looked up these new devices on the Apple online store, and when you look at device compatibility, so you can see that the USB C standard keyboard without Touch ID is compatible with a whole bunch of devices, even back to the last iPod touch, but it requires Mac OS 15.1 yet iOS 14.5 which is four years ago, and that’s really strange. Now, of course, it doesn’t connect to any of these devices. It uses Bluetooth. There must be some kind of driver in Mac OS Sequoia that not in previous versions of Mac OS, but why is but why do old versions of iOS have that driver?

    Josh Long 16:18
    Yeah, this is a really good question. The most shocking thing to see here is that compatibility list, including iPod models. There’s a category for iPod models, and there’s just one. It’s iPod Touch, seventh generation. But remember, this is a device that Apple hasn’t been releasing operating systems for for what are we up to? Three years now, it was iOS 15 was the last version of the operating system that you could get on the iPod Touch seventh generation. This was the final iPod model, and it can’t run anything beyond iOS 15. Can’t get 16, can’t get 17, can’t get 18. IOS 15 is not getting security updates. It hasn’t been for quite a while now, and somehow they’re still supporting those old iPod Touches for the new magic, what they’re calling magic keyboard, USB C. It’s actually a Bluetooth keyboard, but it charges with USB C.

    Kirk McElhearn 17:12
    Right. And of course, there’s a version with Touch ID, and then there’s a more expensive version with Touch ID and a number pad available in black, which is $20 more than the white version, and it’s, you know, anyway, if you’re thinking of getting these new USB devices, you should be careful. You if you’re using an older version of Mac OS, or particularly if you’re using a beta that’s a problem, because, let’s say you’re a developer and you need to run beta software, and the keyboard doesn’t work with it and the mouse doesn’t work well, then you’re kind of stuck so.

    Josh Long 17:42
    Well, I think that’s a short term thing. I think it’s just that if you’re using the 15.2 Mac OS Sequoia beta, that this is going to affect you, and probably all beta is going forward for Mac OS, I would assume would have the proper drivers for these devices.

    Apple’s video ads for Apple Intelligence leave a bad taste

    Kirk McElhearn 17:57
    In any case, make sure you have another keyboard, mouse and or track pad, just in case, which we all do, right? How many keyboards you have? Josh, like a dozen? I probably, yeah, okay. Apple has been running new ads for its AI tools. And what did you say earlier, when we were talking about this? Josh, it makes us look like…

    Josh Long 18:16
    Morons. It makes us it makes Apple Intelligence users look like complete and total morons.

    Kirk McElhearn 18:23
    It’s kind of sad. And there’s one in particular of a guy who’s like spending his time in his office, like playing with things and spinning around on his chair, and I don’t know what, and he writes this really dumb email to his manager to say, you know, I want to work on this project. And then he runs it through the Apple Intelligence rewrite thing to make it sound professional, and the manager is like, Oh, wow, Warren wrote this. And it’s like, this guy is like, goofing off and loafing, and all of a sudden he’s using this tool. And this is Apple Intelligence. Tools are for people like that. They’re not for creative people. They’re not for people who actually know how to write and just want to improve their writing. They are for idiots. And this is not the only one. The one the guy, someone takes his pudding from the refrigerator, he writes like a 500 word email, but then he wants to tone it down. Who would write a 500 word email about people taking his pudding from the refrigerator already? This is a problem.

    Josh Long 19:18
    Yeah. So there have been, I think, four of these ads so far, and Apple just released a couple of them, the pudding one is one of the ones they released two days ago. The biggest problem that I have with these is that they make every single person in these ads who’s using Apple Intelligence look like, again, a complete idiot. Apple’s ad campaigns in the past have presented Apple users as smart people, maybe a little bit arrogant? Remember that I’m a Mac. I’m a PC. You you had the Mac guy who could sometimes, and some of those ads come across as a little bit arrogant, but, you know, at least smug, yeah, a little smug maybe, but at least he was smug for a good reason. Because Apple products are just amazing, right? So it’s kind of understandable. With these. It makes Apple users look like the biggest idiots on the planet, because, you know, they can’t seem to do anything, right? I’m kind of mad, right? Because, like, I just bought the new iPhone 16 pro specifically for Apple Intelligence, because I’m an intelligent person, I like using writing tools and things like that and and, hey, I want to have access to all the latest features, right? And yet, now Apple is kind of implying that people like me who are using Apple Intelligence are complete idiots, because you couldn’t possibly do anything without Apple Intelligence. You couldn’t tie your shoes without Apple Intelligence. It’s like, really apple

    Kirk McElhearn 20:49
    That’s where you don’t need Apple Intelligence. And that’s what surprises me the most. You would want apple to say, Okay, you’re a knowledge worker in an office and you’re doing things, and I don’t know, maybe you’ve been working on a presentation all night long, and it’s the morning and you have to type an email about something, and you use Apple Intelligence to proofread it and make it a little bit better, to improve what you’re doing, instead of just totally falsifying. I mean, what’s next? They’re going to have ads of people cheating in tests using Apple Intelligence.

    Josh Long 21:17
    See the thing you just said a minute ago. That’s what Apple should be doing, where the late night, oh my gosh, like, we’ve got a deadline. And, you know, how do we clean up that we need? We need to finish this marketing campaign, or whatever it is that they’re working on, and they’re hitting a deadline, and someone’s like, oh, I’ll just use Apple Intelligence, and it rewrites it for them. They get this beautiful thing, and hey, it miraculously saved them. It doesn’t have to make you look like a complete idiot. Why? Why? Why apple? Are you doing this?

    Kirk McElhearn 21:51
    Well, we talked about Apple’s ad for the iPad, where they crushed a whole bunch of things like a piano and some paints and easels and brushes and all sorts of creative things that they crushed into an iPad. Someone in Apple’s marketing is a bit tone deaf. I don’t know if they feel that this is like edgy to have ads like this, but it is a bad look. I think the whole point of Apple Intelligence should be it enhances your intelligence instead of replacing it. But Apple’s not gonna hire me to do ads. As long as we’re talking about Apple Intelligence, there’s one element of the Apple Intelligence infrastructure that’s called Private Cloud Compute, and this is the part that when you send a request to Siri and it goes up to Apple’s server, this is what keeps it secure and private. Doesn’t store the data, etc. Apple has a blog post on their security research blog. They rarely post on this, and it’s quite a long discussion of how this works, of the different elements about security, the virtual research environment, the private cloud compute source code. You can download source code and see how this works, and then they talk about the bug bounties for private cloud compute. I like the icon they have for the bug bounty section there. The maximum bounty is a million dollar for an arbitrary code execution with arbitrary entitlements. Now this is like total nerd, geek stuff, and I don’t understand half of what’s there, but if you are interested in seeing some of Apple’s more detailed discussions of private cloud compute, go to the link in our show notes. Okay, when was the last time we talked about LastPass, that password manager that is not worth using anymore. It wasn’t that long ago, was it?

    Last Pass at center of new call center scam

    Josh Long 23:26
    Well, there have been a couple of things I remember. There was a Trojan horse that imitated last pass and called itself last L, A, S, S, P, A, S, S, that was in the app store a while back, ever since it was January 2023, when we wrote an article on the blog talking about how last pass shouldn’t be used anymore. Like, let’s get real. Like they’ve had enough problems in the past, and they’ve had these really big security problems that have led to basically, the exposure of everyone’s password database, not everyone, but a lot of LastPass users password databases. That’s a really big, big problem. So we’ve been recommending ever since January 2023, that if you’re using LastPass, you probably shouldn’t, and it’s best to switch to a different password manager. And we do have a list on the Mac security blog of other password managers that are well known and trusted Password Manager options. But by the way, Apple’s passwords app, which is included with Mac OS, Sequoia iOS 18, iPad OS 18, is actually a really good option, and it’s completely free. So if you haven’t yet switched to another password manager and you just want to use something that’s free, that’s a really good alternative to LastPass.

    Kirk McElhearn 24:47
    Completely free in Josh’s budget, definitely.

    Josh Long 24:51
    Yeah, exactly, it checks one of my boxes.

    Kirk McElhearn 24:52
    So what’s the problem with LastPass this time, Josh?

    Josh Long 24:55
    Well, the story is that people who are using the LastPass. Chrome extension, have been seeing these fake reviews showing up that list a phone number that people should call for support. And these sort of look like they could be plausible users of the product. Who are saying, if you have any trouble with this extension, just call this phone number and you’ll get last pass support. In theory, if you’re, you know, having some trouble with the last pass extension, and you go and look at the reviews, you might plausibly come across these phone numbers and think, oh, okay, so some other users have been having problems, and they called that number for support, and you might not even think twice about it. The only problem is, this is actually a scam call center, and these same phone numbers are being used for scams related to multiple different products, including, apparently, iCloud, that’s one of the things that they’ve been scamming people with iCloud related scams with the same phone numbers. So be very careful about seeing any kind of phone number like this in a public place, only trust it if you see that phone number on a site that you know belongs to the company. Otherwise, I would never trust a phone number. Don’t trust a phone number you get in an email or you see in a product review, because it could be from somebody who’s trying to scam you.

    Google fixes vulnerabilities in Android

    Kirk McElhearn 26:18
    Okay, two quick Android stories for those who are using Android phones. The first is that Google is fixed to Android zero day vulnerabilities that have been used in targeted attacks. Not much to say, if you’ve got an Android phone that can be updated, update your phone. If you don’t, you’ll just have to wait until your carrier updates your Android phone. What a shame.

    Josh Long 26:36
    And if you know somebody who uses an Android phone, which you probably do. It would be a good idea to have them check for updates to make sure they’re on the latest Android security patch level. The latest Android security patch level is the 2024 dash, 11, 05 that’s, in other words, November 5, 2024 patch level.

    Android introduces theft protection lock

    Kirk McElhearn 26:57
    Okay. The second story is that Android 15 has a really interesting feature that I think Apple needs to emulate. It’s a theft protection feature that keeps your device and data safe. I don’t know what it’s like over there, but here in London, there’s been an epidemic of phone theft. People are walking down the street talking on their phones or looking at their phones, and people ride by on bicycles and grab them. And what this theft protection feature does is it locks the phone automatically. I guess it’s kind of like a, you know, a crash detection, when the accelerometer feels something very quick, it locks the device. Because the problem is, if your device is unlocked and someone grabs it, and they can get someplace before it’s locked, they might be able to do a whole lot with it, like they can send and receive emails, for instance. And if they keep the device from walking, then they can have control of your stuff. I think Apple really needs to add this to the iPhone in the future.

    Josh Long 27:47
    I think the idea behind this that what Google was going for here is that Apple has something now called stolen device protection, and this is sort of Google’s answer to that. That’s kind of how I feel about this. Now there are some really key differences, and I agree with Kirk that this could be a useful feature to have on iPhone two now, one way that this doesn’t protect you is if somebody grabs your Android phone while it’s locked, it’s not going to help you at all. This specifically will just lock your device if you have it unlocked, meaning you’re using it actively, and somebody grabs it out of your hand and runs off with it. It’s going to lock automatically. So I agree this. This is actually a really good feature. Would be a nice thing to have on Apple devices. So maybe in a year or two, Apple will copy this feature. That would be kind of nice.

    Kirk McElhearn 28:33
    Google says that this uses Google AI to sense if someone snatches your phone from your hand and tries to run, bike or drive away if a common motion associated with theft is detected, your phone screen quickly walks, which helps keep thieves from easily accessing your data. It’s probably not difficult, and Apple is probably already working on this, because an accelerometer in the iPhone can detect this sort of thing.

    Josh Long 28:56
    I love how they say that it uses AI, because

    Kirk McElhearn 28:59
    Google AI, not just AI. Okay, that’s enough for this week until next week, Josh, stay secure.

    Josh Long 29:04
    All right, stay secure.

    Voice Over 29:08
    Thanks for listening to the Intego Mac podcast. The voice of Mac security with your host, Kirk McElhearn and Josh long to get every weekly episode. Be sure to follow us in Apple podcasts or subscribe in your favorite podcast app, and if you can leave a rating, a like or a review, links to topics and information mentioned in the podcast can be found in the show notes for the [email protected] the Intego website is also where to find details on the full line of Intego security and utility software intego.com.

    About Kirk McElhearn

    Kirk McElhearn writes about Apple products and more on his blog Kirkville.

    He is co-host of the Intego Mac Podcast, as well as several other podcasts, and is a regular contributor to The Mac Security Blog, TidBITS, and several other websites and publications.

    Kirk has written more than two dozen books, including Take Control books about Apple’s media apps, Scrivener, and LaunchBar.

    Follow him on Twitter at @mcelhearn.
    View all posts by Kirk McElhearn →

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