PDFpen 11

PDFpen 11 is the ultimate tool for editing PDFs on the Mac, and it's available now.

PDFpen 11 includes several new features:

Split view mode for comparing pages in a document

A new Font Bar for easier text editing

Continuity Camera support for scanning documents with your iPhone

The ability to add multiple items to the PDFpen Library simultaneously

PDFpenPro 11 users can edit multiple form fields at the same time

And more!

Learn more about PDFpen and PDFpenPro at: smilesoftware.com/podcast

More Mac Pro tidbits

A slip up on the Mac Pro site might have revealed the desired release month for the Mac Pro and new Pro XDR display

For a moment clicking the “Notify me” were bringing up the box to enter your email address with the text “Coming September”. It has since been changed to “Coming this Fall”

The connector for the SSD modules looks like it may be proprietary

AppleInsider analyzed the images on Apple’s site and compared it to many different connectors on the market and none of them seemed to match up with Apple’s design

The closest was probably mSATA, but the number of pins in Apple’s seemed different

standard mSATA also couldn’t match the performance Apple is quoting

Other connectors like M.2 (or the upcoming U.2) and Optane didn’t match up

FindMy Tags

We have heard rumors of Apple developing a Tile like device tracking system

Developers exploring iOS 13 Beta 1 have found revenues and possible asset images of the device

The product is codenamed B389, but the asset package for the product is labeled “Tag 1,1”

It’s also similar to assets used for pairing devices in close proximity like AirPods and HomePods

The device appears to look like small white round tag that could be attached to everyday objects like you keys or a glasses case.

The system would use Apple’ s proximity technology along with the recently rebranded Find My app.

Can get notified if you move too far away from a tagged object

System will let you set common locations, like a home or office, where the local proximity notifications would be ignored

Play an alert to locate an item

Part of the Find My apps tech that was mentioned by Craig Federighi at WWDC was the ability to track device even when they are offline

They system uses local Bluetooth beacons that can be picked up by other iOS devices or Macs in proximity to the object

The systems send the device identifier and it’s location info back to Apple all in an encrypted, secure, and private manner according to Apple.

The system requires ate least two registered Apple products which, together, generate a cryptographically strong private key that is shared between registered devices through end-to-end encrypted communication.

The private key is stored on the device locally in the Secure Enclave or T2 chip

Devices, like the Tag, would then have the public key which is used to encrypt and protect the data sent out by the device.

The public keys also rotate frequently to avoid the ability to link back previously used keys

Along each device hop location data is combined and encrypted with the public key and ultimately delivered from Apple to the devices Find My app where it can be decrypted with the local private key

It’s believed Apple could announce the Tag at their iPhone event in the Fall

Sidecar Mac limits in beta

Many of you are excited about the new Sidecar feature coming to iOS 13 and macOS Catalina

This will allow you to connect an iPad with iPad OS to a Mac via a cable or wireless and use it as a mirrored display and use it like a graphics tablet.

Developer Steve Trougton-Smith has been playing with the new feature in the iOS 13 beta and, at least currently, it seems locked down to just newer Macs

The 27-inch iMac from Late 2015, the 2016 MacBook Pro, 2018 Mac mini, the new Mac Pro, the 2018 MacBook Air, the Early 20 16 MacBook and newer models

There does appear to be a Terminal command that works with mixed results to enable the feature to be used with older Mac Models.

My guess is Apple will expand support as they get further in development and can figure out which models will deliver the best user experience and performance before the set the hard limit.

Apple picks-up Drive.ai

News coming from The Information says that Apple might be acquiring the self-driving vehicle startup Drive.ai

Apple is said to be mostly in the engineering talent vs the technology

When The Information reached out for a comment Apple replied with simply, “We don’t comment on speculation”

Interesting because literally they don’t, but in this case the commented that they don’t comment.

Speculation is that it’s early and since a deal has not been reached.

Drive.ai was founded in 2015 by students from Stanford and has launched a self driving vehicle shuttle service in some cities in Texas.

9to5 Mac had a breakdown of all the rumored potential outcome for Apple’s self driving car efforts

A. Apple selling a car

B. Apple run ride-sharing service using minivans

C. Apple shuttle for employees

A “HomeKit” for cars

Apple licensing a system and technology to car companies.

I would go with B,C, and D, sort of

Apple car as a service, likely with different vehicle options, depending on your need at the moment

The shuttle service I think will be used for R&D and prototyping

Integration of Apple information, location, and entertainment services in the vehicle possibly combined with AR display technology in the vehicle windows.

Look Around looks impressive

Apple’s new “street view” feature for Maps in iOS 13 is called Look Around and early reviews seem positive

The transitions as your tapping to move down streets seems to be smoother with “in-between” images being used for the transitions rather than motion blur effect

The street photos are also said to be highly detailed with good quality

for privacy faces and license plate numbers, etc are blurred out

There are also points of interest, shops, landmarks and more that are labeled and you can tap to get more information.

Apple states that they plan on having all of the US photographed and mapped by the end of 2019, with plans to do other countries in the year after.

Currently it seems to work in Cupertino, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Honolulu

Second Apple TV+ show gets a trailer

at WWDC we got a look at the Ron Moore show “For All Mankind”

Now at, of all places E3, during the Ubisoft event they have showed a trailer for “Mythic Quest”

It’s a comedy series from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Charlie Day and Rob McElhenney

The story is focused around a highly successful game studio as they get set to launch their next major expansion

The Post is also reporting that Apple is looking to back small budget films with the potential to win Oscar’s

The piece says they have been contacting approaching “elevated” directors and other film talent and offering to bankroll them for between $5 and $30 million per project

They say Apple is looking to back about six projects per year

They also say these deal are separate form the multiyear agreement, signed in November, to make movies with A24

One production company that Apple was seriously rumored to be considering a partnership with was J.J. Abrams Bad Robot

Unfortunately it looks like Apple lost out on that one to WarnerMedia which stepped Up with a $500 million dollar deal

Abrams was one of the celebrities in the announcement parade for the Apple TV+ announcements at Apple’s Apple Services event, so he has at least one show that will run on the service.

It’s not clear yet if the Time Warner deal is exclusive.

Apple may still buy Intel modem business

Again from The Information.

They say Apple is in talks to buy a piece of Intel’s now shuttered modem business

The piece Apple supposedly wants it the German piece, which is considered to be one of the strongest.

That’s because a big chunk of it came from an Intel acquisition of Infineon in 2011

It’s just talks at this point, but if Apple can get the deal done it would result in Apple gaining hundreds of talented cellular modem engineers.

Apple has also hired a number of ex-Intel executives from this modem division

The days of Apple’s own modem chips are reportedly years off, but they are expected to ship a 5G iPhone by 2020

Ming Chi Kuo says he expects the 5G iPhone in 2020 along with growing and shrinking OLED displays

He believes the 2020 iPhone will come in 6.7-inch, 5.4-inch, and 6.1-inch screen sizes

It will also be the first year the iPhone XR version moves to OLED

As a side note the 2019 iPhone XR is also expected to have a 6% larger battery

The move of the iPhone XS’s 5.7 inch display downward to 5.4-inch will supposedly please fans who are looking for smaller devices

Combine that with an even bigger 6.7-inch “Plus” device and you have irritated mid-sized phone fans like myself.

The 5G would supposedly have support for both the leading standards sub-6GHz and mmWave technology, but will use Qualcomm tech.

5G is only expected in the 5.4 and 6.7-inch devices with the XR successor expected to remain an LTE device.

Apple’s own chips still are not expected until at least 2022, but Kuo thinks apple will use their own power amplifier and RF antenna designs.

The move to full OLED by 2020 has not been good news for Apple’s current LCD supplier Japan Display

They have been in financial trouble and were hoping for a $700 million dollar bailout from a consortium, but they bailed out reportedly over concerns about the future of orders from Apple

Part of their troubles are due to Apple’s lower phone sales after they agreed to guaranteeing orders.

Apple is said to be considering waiving the money owed for those order and possibly investing $185 million in the company to keep it going.

Japan Display may begin supplying OLED displays for Apple Watch, but they are not currently set up to produce iPhone displays.

New iCloud for Windows

Apple introduced an updated iCloud for Windows app for Windows 10

Let’s Windows users access iCloud Drive, iCloud Photos, Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Reminders, and Safari Bookmarks from their PC

You can also see and manage your iCloud Storage

Microsoft says the iCloud Drive feature uses the same Windows technology behind the OneDrive Files On-Demand Feature.

iCloud for Windows can be downloaded from the Microsoft Store

IDs moving to iPhones

At least in some countries and largely enabled by Apple opening up the devices NFC capabilities

In Japan users will be able to read the NFC chip in their national identity cards using a government developed app allowing the person information to be stored on the device.

Germany has also announced plans to make their IDs compatible with the iPhone’s NFC

It will allow German citizens to put national ID cards, residence permits, and biometric passports onto their iPhones

Apple has also approved a UK app that let’s citizens their scan the NFC chip in their passports.

It will allow EU citizen’s more easily verify or apply their citizenship in the UK should Brexit move forward.

Apps that are allowed to scan and read NCF chips will also need to be approved by Apple on a case by case basis. And third party apps are only allowed to read tags when the app is active in the foreground.

In addition to IDs and password the tech can be used to read NFC stickers for things like fixed payment transactions.

Bye bye Dashboard

One thing you won’t find in macOS Catalina is the Dashboard. It was no where to be found in the beta and could not be enabled in Expose

Then Mac Otakara noticed that the technology had also been removes from Apple’s WebKit.

So it’s a pretty safe bet it’s gone and not coming back. Sad for something that has been with use ins Mac OS Tiger

Luckily macOS Catalina offers a viable alternative in the form of widgets in the Notifi cation Center’s Today view. And with Widgets as part of the desktop in iPadOS, you have to wonder if that feature might find it’s way to a future version of macOS.

Apple Watch Independence

We already knew from WWDC that Apple Watch is getting it’s own App Store

In the current watchOS 6 beta you can start OS updates directly from the Apple Watch

You will need to accept the Terms & Conditions on the phone

They are also adding the ability to delete some of the first party apps

Alarm, Breathe, Camera Remote, Radio, Remote, Stopwatch and Timer

ECG, Walkie-Talkie, and the upcoming Cycle Tracking app also.

Other apps, including Heart Rate and Messages, will remain unremovable

Apps that have partner apps on the iPhone, like Activity, Contacts and Calendar will require you to remove the app from the iPhone to remove it from the Apple Watch

Apple authorized repairs at BestBuy

Apple announced that 1000 BestBuy stores are now Apple Authorized service centers.

Adding Best Buy locations now means that 8 out of 10 Apple customers in the US are now with 20 minutes of an authorized service provider

I do wonder about the overall experience though.

Apple Card testing has expanded to Apple Employees after being available Goldman Sachs employees

Employees can get the digital wallet version of the card immediately after approval, but will need to be running iOS 12.4, which is in beta.

They say they will get the physical, titanium card within two to three weeks.

The public release is said to be “this Summer”, but this expansion of testing is a good sign they may be getting closer to public release.

The card will launch first in the US, but Apple is reportedly in talks with financial regulators in Europe so hopefully expansion will happen quickly.

Moar Catalyst

We know that Apple is planning more Catalyst apps, like Podcasts, for macOS Mojave

Catalyst is the technology that allows iOS apps to be more easily ported by developers to the Mac.

Apple used the tech to develop the Stocks, News, Home, and Voice memos to the Mac for macOS Mojave

The apps are fine, but they have never really felt 100% like “Mac” apps.

Now Craig Federighi has revealed in a CNET interview that those apps will get a refresh with the updated Catalyst tech coming with Catalina

He’s says that refresh will make their designs more Mac-like.

He also claimed the 90 percent of the design decisions that make they feel not “Mac-like” where intentional design choices and not the technology.

There are also new hints in the macOS Catalina beta that Apple could be working on Catalyst versions of Messages and Shortcuts

The could mean we finally get support for stickers and iMessage effects on the Mac

It’d be also great to have Shortcuts as an option for automation on the Mac. Including Siri Shortcuts.

Linode

Linode allows you to instantly deploy and manage an SSD server in the Linode Cloud. Get a server running in seconds with your choice of Linux distro, resources, and choice of 10 node locations.

They are giving all new Maccast customers a $20 credit.

I've been wanting to set up a Minecraft server and Linode offers One-click installs including gaming installs

They have Minecraft, Ark, Terraria, and more.

Also one-click installs for things like Wordpress, Drupal, GitLab, OpenVPN and more.

Plus a whole bunch of distros. If it runs on Linux, it runs on Linode.

Most Linux distributions available out of the box, but you can upload custom images or create your own

Basically you can build whatever server you want.

Featuring native SSD storage, a 40 Gbit network, with industry leading processors

Pick from any of our 10 worldwide data centers

They just opened their newest one in Toronto, Canada

Built using their most up to date hardware and their Next Generation Network backbone

Allows users to comply with in-country data protection requirements while taking advantage of all Linode's technology and tools.

Additional datacenter opening in Mumbai India by end of 2019

Pricing is simple with no surprise fees. Pay for what you use with hourly billing across all plans and add-on services

Can get what you need from a $5/month Nanodes plan to high power Dedicated CPU plans

Their dashboard makes it easy to manage your Linodes and upgrading your plan is easy.

Can add-on backups, large storage volumes, and load balancing

And if you need support they have 24x7 live customer support and a large documentation library which provides a great resource when you get stuck.

Visit: linode.com/maccast to set up your first Linode and get a $20 credit when you use promo code: maccast2019

Apple and your data

[Axios](https://www.axios.com/what-apple-knows-about-you-fa7fa529-05af-48fa-bc51-54c15a6f5fbc.html) has a great piece, actually a series, detailing what companies know about you.

A lot of this info about Apple and their data and privacy is not new. In fact Apple details most of it on their [privacy page](https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/) on their site

One of the most interesting things I noticed on the site was the transparency information about requests from governments for information

Apple breaks it down my country and request type.

Device

Device requests generally seek information regarding customers associated with devices and device connections to Apple services - for example, law enforcement investigations on behalf of customers regarding lost or stolen devices.

Financial

Financial Identifier requests generally seek information regarding suspected fraudulent transactions - for example, law enforcement investigations on behalf of customers in which a credit card was fraudulently used to purchase Apple products or services.

Account

Account requests generally seek information regarding customers’ Apple ID accounts, such as account holder name and address and account connections to Apple services - for example, law enforcement investigations where an account may have been used unlawfully. Account requests may also seek customers’ content data, such as photos, email, iOS device backups, contacts or calendars.

Emergency

Emergency requests relate to circumstances involving imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to any person, and generally seek information regarding customers’ connections to Apple services - for example, instances where law enforcement believe a person is missing and in danger.

To me the country breakdowns seemed the most interesting. For example:

China and South Korea seemed to have the most device requests, not too odd considering these would be used in fraudulent device investigations, but Germany and Poland were also high on that list

The US but far lead financial fraud requests

China and the US had the most account requests - these also can potentially reveal the most data as they contain iCloud backups, etc.

Across the board emergency requests seem to be low

Holes in the Mac Lineup?

I think at this point most people would agree that from a pure technology stand point Apple has one of the strongest Mac line-ups they’ve had in a while.

They seem to have most of the bases covered from their consumer lineup with the Mac mini, the MacBooks and MacBook Air and the iMac

For Pros you have the MacBook Pros, the iMac Pro, and now Mac Pro (for elite Pro). You can also Mac the Mac mini into somewhat of a “prosumer” machine.

But even still, there seems to arguably be some spaces in the lineup, especially with the desktops.

Most notably on the entry level, sub $1,000 and at the Prosumer desktop level.

Darren was a listener who wrote in to express the frustrations of the budget Mac owner

The Mac mini does have an “entry” level $799 price tag, but when you really look at the specs most would agree it’s a little crippled

A measly 128GB of built in storage. Most iPhone’s and iPads offer more than that now.

Also, just 8GB of RAM

To jump up to a more respectable 512GB of storage will set you back another $400 bucks.

So you might argue a base model iMac or Macbook

The iMac has a $1,099.00 price tag, but old tech in a 7th gen Intel processor, and while 1TB an old spinning hard drive. These day spinning HDD basically equals spinning beachball.

MacBooks start at $1,299 so are really already above that “budget” price.

Not that Apple HAS to offer a budget offering, but they once did with the $499 mini. I still have one in use today and it’s freaking awesome.

Meanwhile my 2014 model needed an SSD upgrade to function well and my 2009 iMac is definitely showing signs of aging

Truth be told though it might help that the 2006 mini is stuck on Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard

The other underserved user is the guy or gal who wants an expandable desktop Mac at the Prosumer level

Something in between the $3000 to $5000 range

Yes you can configure something quite nice in this range in a Mini, MacBook Pro, or iMac

But you’re left to all external expansion.

It’s be nice to see Apple do a miniTower version of the new Mac Pro.

How about six memory slots and 4 expansion ports (half the tower)

Look, I’m realistic, Apple has never been about cheap and they have never been about choice and i don't seem them changing, but it’s still nice to think about where they could go and what’s missing from the lineup.

I’m still super amazed by what they are offering and I think, if you can afford it, it’s never been a better time to be a Mac owner.

Cellular modem issues

Andy is having an odd and annoying issue with the cellular modem on his trusty iPhone 6S

The issue is we will be connected to 4G with a strong signal yet not be able to connect to the Internet or receive data on his device

The mobile data is switched on and rebooting the device fixes the issue for a bit, but eventually it loses connectivity again

Wi-fi is fine.

He has tried resetting the Network setting, but that doesn’t seem to permanently resolve the issue.

It seems to possibly have begun with his upgrade to iOS 12.

Anyone else?

I would try a couple of possible things:

What happens if you toggle the Mobile Data switch? Leave it off for 30 seconds.

If that doesn’t work I have found that toggling my device in and out of Airplane mode can do it.

If none of that works then you may need to try backing up and restoring the iPhone completely

Andy was worried about data loss and the restore process bringing back the same bug.

Unlikely because the OS would install from scratch, just data is restored.

Finally it could be a hardware issue with the cellular modem.

You might also check with your carrier to see if you possibly missed a carrier update?

Any other thoughts?n

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