GAB’er Page: 1 June 9, 2020

THE GAB’ER
Newsletter of the Greater Albany AppleByters: June, 2020
GAAB is celebrating its 36th year (2019-2020).
The next GAAB Meeting is:
Tuesday, June 9, 2020
7:00 PM
This will be the last meeting until September 2020
The June meeting will be an online meeting because of the

Coronavirus Pandemic
The meeting will use Zoom and we will send out an
invitation to the meeting with a link and password. I will
open a Zoom waiting room at 6:30 p.m.
GAAB Meeting Agenda
Greetings
Discussion: Topics presented by members andNews from Apple including
Mac OS X and iOS UpdatesGAAB Help Desk: Bring your questions

Editorial: Universal broadband now

the Times Union editorial board

May 25, 2020 Updated: May 25, 2020 8:16 p.m.

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The view from above of the vast Adirondack Park, N.Y. on May 31, 2019. Roughly six million
acres comprise the Adirondack state park and some 2.6 million acres of forest preserve
contain broad stretches that are open to public recreation. (Tony Cenicola/The New York
Times)TONY CENICOLA

THE ISSUE:

A decade after Congress ordered universal broadband access, we still don't have it.

THE STAKES:

This is the time for states and the federal government to deliver on the promise.

Back in 2009, amid a brutal recession, Congress passed a stimulus package that included a
directive to the Federal Communications Commission to develop a plan to bring broadband
internet service to everyone in the country.

It hasn't happened.

Fights are still going on in Washington over internet access and funding for it. Billions of
dollars are riding on this. But you ought to ask: Just how much does this need to cost?

You won't find that answer in the FCC's 311-page 2019 progress report. It estimates that 93.5
percent of the population had access to high-speed internet. Sounds good, except that it
means 21 million Americans don't have it. The geographical disparities are apparent: In rural
areas, coverage was only 73.6 percent, while it was more than 98 percent in urban areas. But
the pandemic has revealed an income disparity, as well: Even in wired cities, many children
live in homes that can't afford broadband service, so they're unable to "attend" online classes.

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Broadband Now, a website that gathers internet access data and provider information,
reports that more than 98 percent of New York residents have access to a broadband,
leaving 307,000 people without it. The state has a $500 million broadband initiative in the
works, along with $170 million in federal money. And state officials are fighting for a share of
another $20 billion available nationwide — money that the FCC says shouldn't go to any of
the 30 states that already have received federal broadband funds.

Went to a 50-person Zoom party and I may never recover

Zoom may be the default tool for business, but how does it work for a sizable birthday party?
I just found out.

By Chris Matyszczyk for Technically Incorrect | May 17, 2020 -- 12:00 GMT (05:00 PDT) |
Topic: Coronavirus: Business and technology in a pandemic

This is what happens at a crazy 50-person Zoom birthday party

I'm not much of a party animal. Unless that animal is a skunk, a platypus or a koala.

ZDNet Recommends

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Best video conferencing software for business: Microsoft Teams plus eight more Zoom
alternatives

Which video conferencing platform is right for your business? We've gathered details about
10 leading services, all capable of providing high-quality video with collaboration tools.

I tend to find a corner, occupy it like some used to do with Wall Street and, if a lonely human
drifts my way, I try to be polite.

It's rare, though, that exciting conversation ensues. It's less rare that the other person is
slurring and severely dislikes their spouse.

But we're living a different life now, so when a birthday party invitation sloped into my inbox,
my feelings bordered on excitement.

Then I had a coffee, fully opened my eyes and realized this was a birthday party enacted via
Zoom.

Yes, we've all spent long hours on Zoom lately. Its creators insist it was only ever designed
for business. How could it possibly be the party house for -- looks at the invitation -- fifty
people?

This, I should explain, was a birthday party for my friend Kevin. Regular Technically Incorrect
churchgoers might remember him as having a husband who regularly needs to mute him with
the help of AirPods Pro.

Trying to get fifty people to simultaneously have a good time on Zoom is surely a far larger
problem. How do you create a sense of party? How do you get people to mingle? And what
about canapés?

More basically, when was the last time I was in the same room with fifty people?

Those Awkward First Moments.

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When you arrive at any party, you stare at the faces, watch them stare back at you and then
espy the nearest point of shelter.

This is usually a bar or a bedroom where you can toss your coat.

Here, though, you've nowhere to hide. You log on and you stare. Not everyone stares back at
you because many don't actually know you're there.

The Zoom screen fits nine people snugly on an iPad screen. It took my wife and I a moment
or several to realize that we had to scroll sideways in order to see everyone. In groups of
nine, that is.

I looked and, other than the hosts, we knew no one. That's not usually a problem. You offer a
smile or two as you move to find your corner. Here, though, you just stare until someone says
something to you.

Finally, the hosts did. But a Zoom party isn't like a real one. There's only one conversation.
And you either join in -- if you can squeeze a word through the ether -- or you stare and sip
on your wine.

For me, then, it wasn't so different from a pre-Covid party. Except here, no one played dress-
up. Well, except for the hosts and my wife, who put on a purple wig. (Please don't ask.)

Thankfully Kevin and his husband Donal had thought through some of the technology's
limitations. So they'd organized the evening as if it was a variety show.

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First, they introduced a comely drag queen who acted as host for the evening. She
proceeded to take us through several rounds of bingo. Yes, she had a machine full of balls on
her dining room table. And technology is clever enough to email everyone bingo cards.

The drag queen had to work very hard.

When people are at a party, their reactions are geared toward that. When people are at
home, sitting on their sofas, in their kitchens and, at least in one case, on their porches, it's
harder to get into the party spirit. Especially as, in practical terms, you can't speak easily
unless you're spoken to. No wonder at least one attendee sat stroking their cat and looked
entirely as if they were watching Monday night Netflix.

The Arrival Of The Fittest.

Then the entertainment took a turn. Then another turn. Then the entertainment removed an
item of clothing while writhing up against a wall. At 11.42 a.m.

11.42 a.m Australian time, that is.

One of the joys -- should you be so inclined -- of a Zoom party is that it's much cheaper to fly
in your entertainment from overseas.

So here was a highly muscular male dancer -- of the more erotic variety -- performing a piece
that I'd never seen at the ballet. Or in my Polish folk dancing troupe.

Even more commendable, he was doing it in the hallway of his small apartment.

This really got the party started. Suddenly, the guests realized they could communicate with
each other via chat.

Sample: "He is giving me life." Another sample: "This is his cardio workout."

Some sighed that they couldn't slip cash into his extremely tight shorts. But then technology
came to the rescue. The dancer's Venmo details appeared on the chat and soon cash was
shooting its way down under.

Personally, I spent half the time wondering what his neighbors must think. Especially as he
began a truly exalted interpretation to Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" and, at the appropriate
lyric, he literally walked out the door.

He did turn around and come back, of course. Every artist knows when to stop for applause.

I focused on Kevin's mom and dad -- oh yes, they were there -- to see what they thought of
the tight-shorted dancer. Mom seemed to like it.

Still, though, the smiles were those of the distant, rather than the present. The conversation
couldn't really get going because the hosts wanted to include everyone. Which took quite a
long time.

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The (Good) Times, They Are A Changin'.

At the end, I felt slightly numbed. Not (principally) by the spectacle of the erotic dancer -- in
fact, there was another, equally enthusiastic one later on from slightly closer to home -- but
by the truly radical ways in which our lives have changed.

Working from home is supposed to the new norm. Yet partying from home simply can't be.

You want to hug people. You want to really look into their eyes and see how their faces
move. You want to whisper to them and laugh with them, while you hear the echo of laughter
from another conversation drift through the air.

There simply isn't a technology that can help you do that. We're forced to modify our behavior
-- as so often happens -- to the available tech.

So we sit, smile, stare and occasionally try to project at least a little of ourselves.

Yes, partying has become a lot more like a business meeting.

In many ways, that's a good thing. We've partied too much in recent times and let the world
drift into noxious airs and parlous waters.

But no one stayed late at Kevin's party. No one made a fool of themselves. No one said
anything remotely ridiculous.

There's a certain pity in that.

Apple releases macOS Catalina 10.15.5 supplemental update with security

fixes

AppleInsider
Posted: June 1, 2020 6:43PM
in macOS edited June 1
Apple released a supplemental update to macOS Catalina 10.15.5 on Monday afternoon only
one week after its official release.

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Following an afternoon of updates, Apple's macOS Catalina supplemental update is a simple

security update with no special features noted or revealed. The release notes read as follows:
macOS Catalina 10.15.5 supplemental update provides important security updates and is
recommended for all users.

Some features may not be available for all regions, or on all Apple devices. For detailed
information about the security content of this update, please visit:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211215

The support article Apple referred to stated that a kernel exploit was patched which could
allow an application to execute arbitrary code. Apple makes direct reference to the unc0ver
exploit that was being used to jailbreak iOS devices in the note.

macOS Catalina 10.15.5 introduced battery health management to the operating system,
which first appeared in iPhones and was originally released on 27 May.

• Reply 1 of 9

melgross Posts: 32,410

June 1, 2020 7:41PM

Is there still the problem with creating cloned bootable drives? That’s keeping me from
updating to 10.15.5. One backup system I use for my boot drive is to clone it with
SuperDuper, which has been very reliable. That also allows incremental updates.
Every so often I will wipe that, and do a new bootable clone. This will allow clones
created before 10.15.5 to continue to be used, but won’t allow new ones to be created.

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The developer of Carbon Copy Cloner, another popular app for this, is concerned that
this isn’t an easily fixed bug, as it involves just a couple of small changes, but is a
deliberate move by Apple to end the cloning presses altogether. I hope not! But the
way Apple has been moving lately has me concerned that it is. The problems I’ve been
having with third party preferences panels, which hasn’t been fixed, has me thinking
that Apple is closing that area down as well. Not good Apple!.

Reply 2 of 9

Mike Wuerthele Posts: 5,564administrator

June 1, 2020 7:52PM

melgross said:

Is there still the problem with creating cloned bootable drives? That’s keeping me from
updating to 10.15.5. One backup system I use for my boot drive is to clone it with
SuperDuper, which has been very reliable. That also allows incremental updates.
Every so often I will wipe that, and do a new bootable clone. This will allow clones
created before 10.15.5 to continue to be used, but won’t allow new ones to be created.

The developer of Carbon Copy Cloner, another popular app for this, is concerned that
this isn’t an easily fixed bug, as it involves just a couple of small changes, but is a
deliberate move by Apple to end the cloning presses altogether. I hope not! But the
way Apple has been moving lately has me concerned that it is. The problems I’ve been
having with third party preferences panels, which hasn’t been fixed, has me thinking
that Apple is closing that area down as well. Not good Apple!.

I think this info is going to take about a day or two to shake out.

• Reply 3 of 9

ShapeshiftingFish Posts: 35

June 1, 2020 8:43PM

My 2019 13” MacBook Pro has been frequently (like 50% of the time) restarting when
waking up from sleep since the update to 10.15.5 couple of days ago (I was waiting for
bug reports and felt safe to do it, in hoping it would iron some lingering eGPU issues).
Let’s see it this update fixes the new problem. I used to dread only major MacOS
updates, now it’s every single one.

• Reply 4 of 9

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gilly33 Posts: 345

June 1, 2020 8:56PM

ShapeshiftingFish said:

My 2019 13” MacBook Pro has been frequently (like 50% of the time) restarting when
waking up from sleep since the update to 10.15.5 couple of days ago (I was waiting for
bug reports and felt safe to do it, in hoping it would iron some lingering eGPU issues).
Let’s see it this update fixes the new problem. I used to dread only major MacOS
updates, now it’s every single one.

I’m having the same problem with my iMac. As a matter of fact since 10.15.4 thought
10.15.5 would solve the problem. Sometimes it shows an icon suggesting there is no
bootable drive. Catalina has been a disaster for me. Have a late 2012 machine so it’s
upgrade time for sure but still ‘bad Apple’ to borrow from Brian Tong.

• Reply 5 of 9

agilealtitude Posts: 98

June 1, 2020 9:00PM

gilly33 said:

» show previous quotes

I’m having the same problem with my iMac. As a matter of fact since 10.15.4 thought
10.15.5 would solve the problem. Sometimes it shows an icon suggesting there is no
bootable drive. Catalina has been a disaster for me. Have a late 2012 machine so it’s
upgrade time for sure but still ‘bad Apple’ to borrow from Brian Tong.

Interesting.,.. I was having this issue with 10.15.4, but 10.15.5 seemed to resolve
it. When I do wake the machine up, sometimes I get a washed-out screen. I need to
close the lid and re-open to make it get back to normal.

• Reply 6 of 9

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lkrupp Posts: 8,203

June 1, 2020 9:00PM

There’s also an update for tvOS that brings it to 13.4.6 and no one seems to be
mentioning it.

• Reply 7 of 9

dewme Posts: 2,604

June 2, 2020 2:59PM

I dread updates to macOS only because no matter how small they are the update
always imposes a big time penalty and are often aggravating. Apple obviously went
out of their way to make the process as hands-off as possible but in doing so they
make life difficult for anyone that doesn’t have a bone stock setup.

For example, I boot my Mac Mini from an external SSD because the pathetic HDD that
Apple put in it is horribly slow. When I install a macOS update to the SSD image the
stupid reboot process used by the installer totally friggen ignores the specified boot
order (why?) and the machine reboots to the HDD image. It’s brain dead too, because
once the machine boots into the HDD the boot order still shows the SSD as the boot
drive. Idiots.

Anyway, it usually takes me an hour or two of having to install the update on both the
HDD and SSD while periodically intercepting the boot with the Option key to force it to
boot to the SSD. Yeah, I should just tear the stupid thing apart and put an SSD in the
Mac Mini. It just blows my mind that an HDD equipped (or infected) Mini is so damn
slow. I have Windows and Linux machines with HDDs that are still functional but for
some reason a HDD Mac Mini is pure torture.

I won’t get into the problems on my iMac and why it prefers to attempt booting from the
Time Machine backup disk rather than the built-in fusion drive. All I can say is never
ever buy a Mac with a HDD or Fusion drive, and yeah, I’d prefer that the Mac used a
Linux APT style update model rather the horrendously slow and convoluted model
they are now using. WTF are they doing for those 45 minutes and 3-4 reboot cycles
that it takes to install a patch?

• Reply 8 of 9

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Mike Wuerthele Posts: 5,564administrator

June 2, 2020 5:04PM

dewme said:

I dread updates to macOS only because no matter how small they are the update
always imposes a big time penalty and are often aggravating. Apple obviously went
out of their way to make the process as hands-off as possible but in doing so they
make life difficult for anyone that doesn’t have a bone stock setup.

For example, I boot my Mac Mini from an external SSD because the pathetic HDD that
Apple put in it is horribly slow. When I install a macOS update to the SSD image the
stupid reboot process used by the installer totally friggen ignores the specified boot
order (why?) and the machine reboots to the HDD image. It’s brain dead too, because
once the machine boots into the HDD the boot order still shows the SSD as the boot
drive. Idiots.

Anyway, it usually takes me an hour or two of having to install the update on both the
HDD and SSD while periodically intercepting the boot with the Option key to force it to
boot to the SSD. Yeah, I should just tear the stupid thing apart and put an SSD in the
Mac Mini. It just blows my mind that an HDD equipped (or infected) Mini is so damn
slow. I have Windows and Linux machines with HDDs that are still functional but for
some reason a HDD Mac Mini is pure torture.

I won’t get into the problems on my iMac and why it prefers to attempt booting from the
Time Machine backup disk rather than the built-in fusion drive. All I can say is never
ever buy a Mac with a HDD or Fusion drive, and yeah, I’d prefer that the Mac used a
Linux APT style update model rather the horrendously slow and convoluted model
they are now using. WTF are they doing for those 45 minutes and 3-4 reboot cycles
that it takes to install a patch?

Out of curiosity, which Mini model, and which external drive?

• Reply 9 of 9

photoeditor Posts: 242

June 3, 2020 3:37PM

I held off on Catalina until about three weeks ago. The update process was disastrous
for me; 10.15.4 was rough, 10.15.5 tanked my boot partition on my primary machine
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GAB’er Page: 13 June 9, 2020

and baked in a problem to the other one that rendered my system preferences
dysfunctional, and I ended up having to erase and start over. Fortunately I was all
backed up --- in 10.15.4, so without this ridiculous cloned backup crippling.

10.15.5 works well for me otherwise, generally a bit better than 10.14. I hope we find
out soon about the cloned backup; if this is deliberate, it's outrageous, and if it's
accidental it is highly sloppy.

Apple releases iOS 13.5 with COVID-19 contact tracing feature, Face ID
improvements

https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-releases-ios-13-5-with-covid-contact-

The Exposure Notification API is included in this update, enabling contact tracing for iPhone
and Android phone owners alike.

By Jason Cipriani | May 20, 2020 -- 17:31 GMT (10:31 PDT) |

Contact tracing: COVID-19 panacea or privacy nightmare?

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Jason Cipriani/ZDNet

Apple on Wednesday released iOS 13.5 and iPadOS 13.5. The update includes bug fixes,
improvements, and, perhaps most notably, changes to how Face ID works when iPhone
owners are wearing a face mask, along with the COVID-19 contact tracing feature.

The update is available right now. You can install it by opening the Settings app and going
to General > Software Update and following the prompts.

Once installed, Face ID will immediately display your PIN code prompt after it fails to
recognize your face. Previously, Face ID would try to recognize your face multiple times
before prompting for your PIN code. The change is welcomed, especially for those who are
wearing face masks while in public -- something that causes Face ID to fail.

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Apple also included a new COVID Exposure Notification feature in iOS 13.5 on the iPhone.
The feature is part of Apple and Google's previously announced partnership that enables a
contact tracing API for health officials to build apps and use to fight the spread of COVID-19.

It provides an anonymous way to alert others you've come in contact with over the last 14
days should you contract COVID-19 and test positive, as well as a means for you to be
alerted if someone you've been in contact with has tested positive. We have a complete
breakdown of how the feature works and attempts to maintain anonymity.

The feature is found in Settings > Privacy > Health > COVID-19 Exposure Logging. Until
you install an approved app from a public health authority the feature will remain turned off.
We're unaware of any apps that work with the API at the moment, but now that the update is
out, we expect that to change.

Once we begin to see approved contact tracing apps available do you plan on installing and
using them? Or are you worried about privacy implications? Let us know in the comments
below.

Coronavirus Updates

• Critical IT policies and tools (TechRepublic)

• Roundup: Cyber-security during the pandemic
• What does the new normal look like? 15 CXOs answer
• Google: Super-spreaders are a big part of the problem
• How tech workers are supporting vital services
• Dashboard delivers real-time view of virus
• Most remote workers feel more productive
• Can 5G survive the pandemic?
• HPE plans new post-pandemic operating structure
• Face masks for businesses: Where to buy
• Online retail sales surge 49%
• Can holograms help overcome the frustrations of social distancing?
• LinkedIn debuts Virtual Events
• State-backed hackers trying to steal coronavirus research
• AR/VR during a pandemic
• How Verizon brought hospital ship USNS Comfort online
• Elon Musk defies local order by reopening Tesla factory
• Rolls Royce, Google Cloud, IBM, others partner to model economic recovery
• 'You can't just stop.' How data centers are dealing
• IT spending will be viewed through new lens as business resumes

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