Monthly Mini-Bytes - May 2025

 

Do You Know Where Your Data Is? The Cloud. It's probably tech's biggest and best marketing gimmick. It soothes you with the assurance that your data is safe and stored away in some secure location just waiting for you to access it from any of your devices. But the truth is by being in the "Cloud" your stuff can be just about anywhere from a data center in Mesa to a converted cargo ship sailing in the Indian Ocean connected to the internet by dozens of Starlink modules. "The Cloud" gives tech companies a lot of wiggle room, and that's not good when you need to know where your data is and to keep control of it. So, just like anything it means more work for you to track where your data is, how to access it, and back it up so you don't lose it. The good news is that it's not that difficult, but takes effort. Here are a few tips to get you started: Take an Inventory of Your Accounts We all have at least one DropBox account, but know that if you have a Gmail address you also have Google Drive. If you use Office... or Microsoft 365, you may have files on OneDrive. How these files are kept depends on each setting at each service. The best thing is to login to each via your web browser and see what data is stored. Maybe you don't want it anymore. Or maybe you want to download it so that it gets backed up to Time Machine, which I hope you all are using. You may even want to delete or close those accounts. The most important thing here is to take an active inventory of what you have stored other places then your computer and figure out if you want to continue storing the data in the cloud, saving locally, or deleting. Check Out Your Email Accounts Email is no longer just email. It is contacts, calendars, and sometimes notes, too. You can be syncing contacts to an old work email, or your calendar to a Gmail you don't recall the password to. The process is the same as above: login to the accounts via your web browser and see what is up there. Then you can take action to export contacts, move calendars, or save notes offline. Don't Forget About Photos Apple Photos is the default for saving pictures, but you also may have content on Google Photos, DropBox, or even Adobe's cloud servers. Just open your web browser and login to see if there is any content up there. Downloading into your Apple Photos is a way to preserve them in your ecosystem. Once you have a handle on where your data lives and how to access it, creating a plan goes a long way to ensure that you don't fall into the void that is the "Cloud" and keep access to the stuff that is most important to you.

Apple Intelligence is Watching You

Apple Intelligence is still in beta, but do you know that it is still logging your activity even if you have it turned off? Yes, and it's not cool. If you use any of the tools, it may record confidential information and send it to Apple. It will, of course, be anonymized, but if you are not comfortable with this and you have Apple Intelligence turned off, here is how to disable the report.  This is only for Macs or iPads with an Apple Silicon chip or the iPhone 15 Pro or one of the 16s. Older stuff does not get access to Apple Intelligence, so no worries there. On your Mac go to System Settings -> Privacy & Security -> Apple Intelligence Report and turn it to Off. On the iPhone or iPad go to Settings -> Privacy & Security -> Apple Intelligence Report and turn it to Off.

Hide My Email

Have you ever ordered something online like a pair of socks only to have a bajillion marketing emails follow from various websites only a few days later? I know that I have, but Apple has a solution with Hide My Email. It is part of iCloud where you can create an email alias that links with your current iCloud email. This email allows you to keep your main address private, and can help with shutting out spam and unwanted noise. If you use Safari, you should see the option to create a Hide My Email when signing up for a new service or creating an account at a website.  To learn more about Hide My Email, visit: https://support.apple.com/en-us/105078

The Micro-Bytes - May 2025

 

Apple to Raise iPhone Prices

According to the Wall Street Journal, Tim Cook is considering making iPhones even more expensive. And this has little to do with the tariffs. Supposedly all the new features are raising manufacturing costs and it's time to pass those along to the Apple faithful. But isn't the iPhone expensive enough? An iPhone 16 Pro can easily reach $1500 with AppleCare+ and accessories. That is a lot of money when even comparing the costs to full-powered Mac computers that can be had for hundreds less. So what to do? The one silver lining is that Apple offers an array of different iPhones and every single one is powerful, capable, and can run all those apps that most of us use every day. They will work with iCloud. They will work with your email. They will support a calendar full of those Zoom meetings you love. Every iPhone is good, so there is no reason to spend huge stacks of cash on a phone with capabilities you don't need.  When it comes down to the differences between the iPhone 16e, for example, and the iPhone 16 Pro, the biggest difference is the camera. The cameras on the iPhone 16 Pro are excellent for the photography enthusiast, but the iPhone 16e is great, too. In fact if you look at a comparison of the camera output over the past several years you will be surprised on just how small the differences in quality are even from an iPhone 12 or earlier. Yes there will be feature differences like the Dynamic Island versus The Notch, or the camera button, and even the design of the case, but a cheaper iPhone is not a cheap iPhone.  Bottom line: Just get as much iPhone as you need. There is no reason to pay for more that you won't notice or won't use. It puts you back in control so you won't be forced by Apple to pony up all those extra dollars for the expensive-to-develop features that won't make a difference to your user experience. To read more about this, check out CNET: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/tariffs-or-no-apple-may-raise-iphone-prices-this-year/