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Glenn Fleishman

Glenn Fleishman

Glenn Fleishman writes about the past, present, and future. He’s been a technology journalist since the 1990s, contributing to TidBITS since 1993, and to publications like the Economist, Fast Company, the New York Times, Fortune, and many others (many of them long out of business). He’s also a printing historian, specializing in processes used between original artwork and typeset material and the final printed page, concluding flong. Glenn writes the Mac 911 column for Macworld, was the editor and publisher of The Magazine, and regularly appears on technology and nerd-culture podcasts.

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Newspaper Cartoonists Rely on Digital Tools, but Not as You’d Expect

You might think that modern cartoonists would create their strips using digital drawing tools, but in fact, many still rely on traditional pens and brushes. Glenn Fleishman explored the surprising way that cartoonists meld the old with the new as part of the research for a new book, How Comics Were Made.

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Reconnect a HomeKit Accessory over a 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi Network

After a network hiccup caused his HomeKit-enabled smart thermostat to lose its network connection, Glenn Fleishman had to do tweaky network reconfiguration to get it to rejoin his Home setup.

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How To Avoid AI Voice Impersonation and Similar Scams

The “grandparent scam” goes back almost 20 years, but it and similar frauds are gaining new traction through AI voice impersonation. Protect your family, friends, and colleagues with advance planning.

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Upcoming Contact Key Verification Feature Promises Secure Identity Verification for iMessage

Apple has released details about Contact Key Verification, an upcoming option in Messages that lets you manually verify an iMessage correspondent’s identity without relying on encryption data managed centrally by Apple. The feature also watches for anomalies, warning you when changes prevent it from guaranteeing a conversation is with the same person.

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Cloudy with a Chance of Insanity: Unsticking iCloud Drive

As with all its services, Apple offers no real troubleshooting when iCloud Drive synchronization stalls in macOS. Glenn Fleishman encountered a problem that took months to diagnose and fix. In the process, he went through the wringer of trying nearly everything suggested online, via Apple support, and from colleagues. In the end, the magic that fixed it was undisclosed engineers.

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iOS 17’s Check In Feature Provides Peace of Mind and Could Even Save Lives

Glenn Fleishman explores iOS 17’s new Check In feature, which lets you specify someone as a temporary safety partner who can confirm you got where you intended to to go. It’s a welcome addition to Apple’s collection of features aimed at increasing personal safety.

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Avoid Overspending for iPhone 15 USB-C Cables and Chargers

With USB-C replacing Lightning across Apple’s new iPhone 15 series, shun expensive Apple cables and adapters in favor of third-party alternatives.

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AirTag in the News: NYPD Recommends, Apple and Google Propose Industry Tracking Standard

In response to a surge of car thefts, the New York Police Department recommends the city’s car owners install an AirTag to help with stolen vehicle recovery. Meanwhile, Apple and Google have partnered on a new industry standard to provide consistent anti-tracking protection for devices that can track object locations persistently.

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PowerPhotos Enables Ventura Users to Migrate iPhoto and Aperture Libraries

With Apple dropping support for migrating iPhoto and Aperture libraries to Photos in macOS 13 Ventura, Fat Cat Software has thrown a lifeline to people who still have old photo libraries.

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Authory Provides Writers a Permanent Record of Their Articles

Authory preserves articles you write for any website, giving you a permanent copy that’s also searchable by others. It’s worth a look for anyone who wants a record of their personal or professional writing that’s independent of any given publication or platform.

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Mastodon: A New Hope for Social Networking

With centralized, ad-driven social networks in disarray and suffering from misinformation, harassment, and declining users, can the long-simmering Mastodon microblogging system offer a distributed future for conversation and community?

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Is Your Future Distributed? Welcome to the Fediverse!

A growing set of services let users on independently operated servers interlink with standard, open-source protocols for microblogging, photo sharing, and dozens of other purposes. Could the Fediverse be a solution to the ugliness of commercial service algorithms designed to drive outrage and titillation?

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Bring Yourself Recurring Joy with Apple’s New Lock Screen Photo Shuffle

Technology has a hard time delivering happiness. Apple has cracked the code with how it uses machine learning to populate the Lock Screen Photo Shuffle feature and Featured Photos widget with images you’ll like.

Glenn Fleishman 33 comments

An Apple a Day: iOS 16 Medications Feature Provides Alerts, Logging, and Peace of Mind

Apple quietly added a Medications section to the Health app in iOS 16 that lets you list all your medications, remind you when to take them, and log when you do.

Glenn Fleishman 29 comments

USB Simplifies Branding but Reintroduces Active Cables

The group that creates USB standards listened to feedback and has released a reduced set of logos that make it easier to figure out the capabilities of your ports, peripherals, and cables. But changes to USB4 also mean the return of active cables to provide maximum throughput for a new 80 Gbps data rate over distances beyond 0.8 meters.