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ExtraBITS for 5 February 2018

In ExtraBITS this week, a former Apple employee speaks out about how things changed inside Apple between Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, 9to5Mac’s Michael Steeber looks at Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard’s continuing popularity, and the Strava fitness network has accidentally revealed military secrets.

Former Apple Employee Discusses What Changed Between Jobs and Cook — On the rebooted Menu Bar podcast, which focuses on Apple and related subjects, former Apple employee Bob Burrough stopped by to discuss his experiences working on the original iPhone, including how he smuggled the first production models out of China. Burrough also talks about the transition from Steve Jobs to Tim Cook and the resulting changes in company culture. Burrough says that under Jobs, employees were allowed to call out faults anywhere they saw them, regardless of whether or
not it was in their wheelhouse, but under Cook, Apple employees are encouraged to stay in their own lanes.

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The Legend of Snow Leopard — In the view of many long-time Mac users, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard was the pinnacle of Apple’s desktop software, with every update since a step backward in one way or another. 9to5Mac’s Michael Steeber looks into this phenomenon and its origins. Along with the timing and pricing issues Steeber mentions, an argument could be made that Snow Leopard was the last version of OS X before Apple started to add iOS elements in 10.7 Lion. Plus, Snow Leopard was the final version of OS X to support Rosetta, and thus the last version that could run PowerPC
applications. Despite all this, it’s worth remembering that Snow Leopard hasn’t seen a security update in years.

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Strava Fitness Network Reveals Secret Military Sites — How’s this for an unintended consequence? The Strava fitness app, which brands itself as the “social network for athletes,” lets users map their workouts, which has led to a potentially deadly security breach. U.S. troops stationed abroad are using Strava to share their workouts, and a heat map released by the company reveals the locations of military bases and travel routes — some known, others not. The company responded by pointing out the app’s privacy settings, but this is likely a problem the military will have to
solve with smarter policy.

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