Justin Pot, writing for How-To Geek:
Planning on selling or giving away your MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar? Even if you wipe your Mac and reinstall macOS from scratch, it won’t remove everything: information about your fingerprints and other security features are stored separately, and may remain after your wipe your hard drive.
Woah. I was not aware of this. Something to keep in mind if you’re planning to sell or transfer a recent Mac. Hit the link to see how to clear this data.
Michael Ansaldo, writing for TechHive:
To help you find the best security camera for your needs, we outline the key features to consider and share the results of our testing. Whether you’re looking for an easy way to check on your kids and pets, or a full-service sentinel to monitor for intruders, we’ll help find the right product for your needs.
This is a nice roundup, and other reviews share its praise for the Netgear Arlo. But I’m looking for two features that aren’t addressed here – HomeKit support, and compatibility with Synology’s Surveillance Station package. Cameras with support for the former are in short supply. I’m going to let this market settle a bit before investing too deeply in the home surveillance market.
Rajesh Pandey, writing for iPhoneHacks:
Interestingly, Apple also seems to be adding support for multiple voice recognition in HomePod. The icons discovered in the Home app suggest that Siri would be able to recognize an individual’s voice and offer them personalized results.
Although the Echo offers multiple user support, you have to tell it to switch users. I’m not aware that it supports voice recognition, so this would be a big differentiator for the HomePod. And of course leave it to Apple to allow for easy muting of the Siri, for privacy-minded users. That’s the benefit of Apple’s business model not being tied to advertising.
Samuel Axon, writing for Are Technica:
Microsoft has released a major Office update for Mac. Update 16.9.0 finally brings long-anticipated real-time collaboration features and automatic cloud saving. Notably, the Mac version of this software is now built from the same codebase as the Windows version, which means that Office shares a codebase across all platforms for the first time in 20 years.
This bodes well for Mac-using lawyers, and really for all Mac users who use Office in a mixed-platform environment. I don’t expect to ever see complete feature parity, but this might get us closer. I use Word on both Windows and Mac, and require some brain re-wiring each time I jump between them. Tools such as Quick Parts work differently on each platform.
From Colin Devroe’s interview of Manton Reece, the man behind micro.blog:
Facebook recently announced they were hiring 10,000 moderators, and I know Twitter has a large staff as well. I expect one mistake that these larger social networks made early on was hiring too many programmers, and not enough curators. For Micro.blog we always want people who can interact with the community and stay ahead of any issues.
I’ve been getting heavily into micro.blog over the last week or so. I like the philosophy behind it, which comes through in this interview with its creator. Micro.blog is all about the open web – you own your own content. If Twitter has you down, or you have a blog that has been stagnating, check out micro.blog.
