In this special Memorial Day issue of TidBITS, Adam Engst looks at what’s new in Cardhop 2.0, not the least of which is that it’s now free, with advanced features bundled into a subscription with Fantastical. Josh Centers explains how Facebook surreptitiously uses your photos to track your location and how you can prevent it such antisocial behavior. The Mac community has discovered that M1-based Macs can’t boot from an external drive if the internal drive is dead. Glenn Fleishman explains why Apple made this change and why it probably isn’t a big deal. Finally, Adam takes you on a winding journey to extract data from an old iOS app that won’t launch in iOS 14.5 and ends up finding multiple solutions to what could be a relatively common problem. Notable Mac app releases this week include Security Update 2021-003 Catalina and 2021-004 Mojave and Safari 14.1.1.
Flexibits, developer of the Fantastical calendaring app and Cardhop contacts app, has released Cardhop 2.0, with core features available for free and new and advanced features as part of the Flexibits Premium subscription that includes Fantastical.
Though Apple’s App Tracking Transparency has thwarted some of Facebook’s tracking efforts, the social media company can (and will, of course) still extract personal information through photos you upload. Here’s how to prevent such antisocial behavior.
A little-noticed fact about M1-based Macs has started to get some attention. If the Mac’s internal drive is dead or fully erased, you can’t boot from an otherwise valid external drive. Why would Apple make that choice? Security, security, security.
iOS 14.5 has rendered some old apps inoperable that worked in previous versions of iOS 14. What options are available for recovering data from those apps if you can no longer launch them? Adam Engst spelunks through iPhone backups and numerous erase-restore cycles to see what’s possible.
Watchlist
Patches security vulnerabilities in Catalina and Mojave. (Free, various sizes, macOS 10.15.7 and 10.14.6)
Patches a number of WebKit-related security vulnerabilities. (Free, various sizes, macOS 10.15+ and 10.14+)
