Top Bananas | Monthly Archives: June 2017

The TouchBar Coming to the iMac Pro?

Posted on June 23, 2017 by admin Posted in Hardware, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Apple introduced the Touch Bar on their MacBook Pro laptops, but may be readying it for desktop models as well.

Last year, Apple introduced a new type of user interface called the Touch Bar. The Touch Bar is a touch screen that replaces the row of largely useless function row keys and displays a strip of virtual keys instead. By modifying these virtual keys for whatever you’re currently using, the Touch Bar can be more versatile than generic function row keys. Unfortunately, Apple has yet to introduce the Touch Bar to the desktop Macintosh.

That may change with the iMac Pro. Although Apple’s prototypes of the iMac Pro showed a traditional keyboard with function row keys at the top, the latest technical specifications suggest Apple will include Secure Enclave technology, which uses an ARM processor to authenticate Touch ID operations. Look for an ARM processor in a Macintosh and chances are good it will support Touch ID.

If Apple wants the world to adapt the Touch Bar, they have to make it available on desktop models. Right now, Apple still sells laptops without the Touch Bar because the Touch Bar adds to the cost of the computer. Eventually, the Touch Bar will become standard for all but the lowest cost Macintosh models.

The Touch Bar represents a step forward in user interface design. Just as early PCs resisted the idea of using a mouse, so will today’s Macintosh users resist the idea of using the Touch Bar. Over time, the Touch Bar will become a standard feature on the Macintosh. Like the original computer mouse, the Touch Bar isn’t obviously useful until you actually use it.

In case you want to try out the Touch Bar without buying a Touch Bar laptop, you can load Apple’s free Xcode compiler on your Macintosh. Then choose the Window > Show Touch Bar option. This will display a Touch Bar on the screen so you can see how the Touch Bar would work in your favorite program.

The Touch Bar isn’t an obvious change, much like the initial iPhone didn’t change the smartphone market overnight. But given time, expect the Touch Bar to become a common feature on all Macintosh computers. When you start seeing the Touch Bar gravitate to the PC world of Windows and Linux, then you’ll know the Touch Bar has finally been accepted.

Until then, try the virtual Touch Bar. You may like it enough to start depending on it.

Building a Hackintosh

Posted on June 22, 2017 by admin Posted in Hardware, Software Leave a comment

What it is: A Hackintosh is a do-it-yourself Macintosh built out of ordinary PC parts.

Many people are content to buy a Macintosh, plug it in, and start using it. If you want features that differ from the standard configuration, you’ll have to order it when you buy the Macintosh because adding a new hard disk, processor, or memory will be difficult for anyone except for serious and dedicated computer technicians. Because the Macintosh is such a closed system, many people prefer the more open nature of PCs running Windows or Linux. For those who want to run macOS but still want the open nature of the PC world, they often create their own Macintosh out of standard PC parts. Such computers are often called Hackintosh computers.

Building a Hackintosh is relatively simple and allows you to customize the parts you want. In addition, buying individual parts can often be less expensive than buying a standard Macintosh, although the amount of savings may vary. An ordinary macintosh uses Intel processors and standard memory chips along with solid state or hard drives, so it’s not hard to duplicate the hardware components of a Macintosh. The real trick is getting macOS to run properly on an odd collection of hardware parts.

One of the biggest headaches in the Windows world is getting hardware to work properly with Windows, and that’s also one of the biggest headaches with getting a Hackintosh to work properly. Apple designed macOS to run on the various Macintosh models. If you build a Hackintosh with a different processor and graphics card, macOS may run poorly or not at all. As a result, building a Hackintosh is easy. Getting macOS to run on a Hackintosh may take time.

Even worse, Apple updates macOS all the time so it’s possible that macOS could work fine on your Hackintosh but as soon as Apple releases a new version of macOS, this new version no longer works on the Hackintosh. Because you may need to constantly tweak and fiddle with macOS to get it to work with a Hackintosh, a Hackintosh is best as a hobbyist project or for someone with enough technical skill and determination to keep a Hackintosh running.

In return for building a Hackintosh, you’ll get rewarded with a more powerful machine, less cost, and an upgradeable machine for the future. For many people, this is worth the hassle of keeping a Hackintosh running. For most people, this hassle is the reason why abandoned the world of Windows in the first place.

The fact that so many people enjoy building their own Hackintosh proves that there’s a small market for an upgradable Macintosh. Whether Apple ever offers an upgradeable Macintosh or keeps it a closed system remains to be seen, but the upcoming Mac Pro may be more upgradeable than today’s current Mac Pro cylinder design.

So if you want a Macintosh just to get useful work done, buy a Macintosh. If you have the time to fiddle and tweak a Hackintosh into working, then build your own Hackintosh and have fun. A Hackintosh isn’t designed for crucial work but for fun. Depending on your needs, a Hackintosh just might be the right choice for you.

The Self-Driving Car Revolution Will Arrive Slowly

Posted on June 21, 2017 by admin Posted in Hardware, Software Leave a comment

What it is: The University of Michigan is testing a self-driving shuttle.

The fantasy is that self-driving technology is almost ready and that self-driving cars will soon flood the world’s roads. The reality is that self-driving technology isn’t ready for snow-covered roads, detours due to traffic accidents, and dirt roads in rural areas. Just as the Wright Brothers started with a simple airplane rather than build a 747 jumbo jet, self-driving technology is going too tart off slowly until the technology matures.

The simplest way to test self-driving technology is to limit its scope. Rather than put a self-driving car on the road and hope for the best, the University of Michigan is putting self-driving shuttles on part of its campus that has the least amount of traffic. The goal is simply to test self-driving technology within a restricted space to minimize problems while still gathering data on self-driving technology.

Once self-driving cars master a restricted space, then it’s likely self-driving cars will graduate to larger domains such as driving only on certain roads. By limiting self-driving cars to major roads, engineers can gradually overcome problems such as snow, hard rain, pedestrians darting in front of moving cars, and avoiding cars driven by human drivers. Besides limiting self-driving cars to restricted domains, the second way to introduce self-driving technology is to put it in cars as assisted-driving technology.

Instead of a car driving itself, a car can display warnings if a human driver gets too close to another car and automatically brake before an impending collision. Such assisted-driving technology will aid drivers and collect more data for the future of self-driving cars.

The eventual goal is a self-driving car. The immediate goal is to learn the flaws and drawbacks of self-driving technology before releasing them to roam in the wild on their own. Self-driving technology isn’t ready for total freedom and trust from both a technology and social point of view. Can a self-driving car drive itself over a snow-covered road while winds constantly blow snow over the road, hiding the road’s surface? Probably not.

Will people trust a self-driving car? Probably not. At least not until they see self-driving cars working in limited domains or get used to assisted-driving technology in their own cars. Self-driving cars will arrive eventually, but it will take time. Until then, projects like the Apple Car can continue learning and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. Just don’t expect the possible to become reality too soon.

Get Kids to Code

Posted on June 20, 2017 by admin Posted in Programming, Software Leave a comment

What it is: Tim Cook told Donald Trump that coding should be a requirement in American schools.

American has been a hotbed of personal computer activity since the introduction of the first personal computer kits that hobbyists slapped together. Then pre-built computers arrived in the form of the Commodore 64 and Apple IIe. Finally, personal computers evolved even further with IBM PC compatibles and then mobile computers like the iPhone and iPad.

Despite America’s massive influence on computing on the rest of the world, coding isn’t a requirement in most schools in the United States. While the attitude of letting kids learn coding on their own may have worked in the early days of computing, it likely won’t work any more.

Just as more schools force students to learn foreign languages so they can better deal with today’s global economy, so should American schools force students to learn coding. It’s not important that kids learn a particular programming language so much as they learn the logic behind solving problems and thinking up steps to write commands.

Learning to tackle difficult problems, break them down into parts, and find a solution while learning how to debug problems is a crucial skill that everyone needs to learn. While technology enthusiasts can grab a language compiler and teach themselves to program using a book, most other people will likely want a more colorful and interactive way to learn.

In that case, you want to download a copy of Swift Playgrounds, a free iPad app that lets you write Swift code to control cartoon characters. By letting students visually see the results of their code, Swift Playgrounds makes programming more enjoyable and easier to understand.

Many students will likely be happy learning coding through Swift Playgrounds and never graduate to more sophisticated compilers, but some students will likely be intrigued to learn more, and that just means getting more kids involved in coding.

Coding is no longer just a skill computer scientists need. Anyone can benefit from coding just so they learn how to solve problems. Because of that, coding should be mandatory in American schools. Coding is a critical skill that everyone needs to master.

In the old days, people learned BASIC because of its simple structure and syntax. Nowadays, people can learn programming with Swift Playgrounds. It’s free, it’s fun, and more importantly, it’s educational.

Teach your kids to code today. You can’t wait for schools to catch up to the future.

European Union Proposes Ban on Encryption Backdoors

Posted on June 19, 2017 by admin Posted in Software Leave a comment

What it is: The European Union proposed banning backdoors on encrypted devices to protect citizens’ privacy.

Encryption is nothing more than math. At one time, Hillary Clinton suggested the United States embark on a Manhattan style project (which created the atom bomb) to find a way to crack encryption. The idea was to deny terrorists the ability to use encryption to mask their communication, but that idea has two serious flaws.

First, cracking encryption is always possible, but not always easy. The moment people find a way to easily crack encryption, other people come up with a newer way to create stronger encryption. At one time, banks used an encryption standard called DES (Data Encryption Standard) that most people could never crack. As personal computers got more powerful, it became possible to crack DES encryption in hours using ordinary computers. That essentially made DES useless so that’s why the government created a new encryption standard called AES (Advanced Encryption Standard). AES will likely foil most people and even governments until sometime in the future when computers get even more powerful. Then AES will be as useless as DES is today.

Second, it’s not possible to crack encryption just for bad guys. If you can easily crack encrypted data used by terrorists, you can also easily crack encrypted data used by so-caleld good guys like governments and banks. There’s a reason terrorists and governments don’t use DES to encrypt their data ny more because almost anyone can crack it. Encryption either works for everyone or for no one. There’s no possible way to use encryption just for good guys.

Terrorists can use telephones and pencils to communicate, so it makes as much sense to ban telephones and pencils in case terrorists might try to use them. There’s always two ways at least to look at any problem. One view is to think of how to keep terrorists from using encryption. The other view is to think how to keep everyone’s data safe from prying eyes. It’s not possible to have one without the other.

If we keep data safe, then terrorists can hide data. If we make it impossible for terrorists to hide data, then nobody else will be able to hide data either. The delusion that we can encrypt the good guys’ data while banning encryption for terrorists is ludicrous and impossible.

Encryption is a mathematical problem. Terrorism is a social problem. You can never solve social problems with technology just as you can never solve technology problems with social solutions.

You can see the values of people by how they view problems. The European Union values privacy for its citizens so that’s why they’re proposing a ban on encryption backdoors. Far too many people on the other side value violating the rights of others just as long as they’re not affected by their own rules. Unfortunately, their own rules can be turned against them at a later data. If you ban encryption for terrorists, you also make it easy for criminals and terrorists to spy on everyone else’s data and you still need solve the problem of terrorism.

Encryption is neutral. It doesn’t care what data it’s hiding from others. That’s why Apple resisted the FBI’s early attempt to crack encryption on the iPhone. If Apple could easily crack the encryption on the iPhone to help the police, then Apple (or someone else using the same techniques) could easily crack encryption for anyone using an iPhone. Encryption either protects everyone or nobody. There’s no in between.

Incentivizing the Use of Apple Pay

Posted on June 18, 2017 by admin Posted in Business, Software Leave a comment

What it is: Apple offers discounts with select merchants in San Francisco to use Apple Pay.

One of the biggest problems with using credit cards is that when you use your credit card with a merchant, that merchant stores your credit card number in their computers. That’s why hackers routinely break into the networks of major retailers like Target and Home Depot so they can steal thousands of valid credit card numbers. To prevent credit card fraud, most of the wold moved to secure chips embedded in credit cards years ago, but the United States resisted. That’s why credit card fraud is so rampant in the United States because it’s the easiest target.

While embedded chips in credit cards insure that the physical card must be used and can’t be duplicated easily, a far safer alternative is to use a payment system like Apple Pay. The idea behind Apple Pay is that merchants never receive your credit card number so you never risk losing your credit card number to any hacker who breaks into a retailer’s computer network. For that reason alone, Apple Pay (and its rivals, Android Pay and Samsung Pay) are far more secure than ordinary credit cards.

Yet most people don’t use Apple Pay despite its availability and security. Part of that reason is habit and inertia. It’s far easier to keep using credit cards instead of using your iPhone or Apple Watch to use Apple Pay. To use Apple Pay, you have to go through a fairly simple process to load a credit card into Apple Pay. Then you have to figure out how to use Apple Pay when buying something.

Setting up Apple Pay isn’t hard, but it does take time and effort so it’s far easier not to do it at all. Even worse, many merchants don’t take Apple Pay so it’s easy to get discouraged and forget you can use Apple Pay when certain merchants do offer it. As a result, Apple Pay isn’t used by as many people as it could, despite its obvious security advantages.

That’s why Apple is promoting Apple Pay with select San Francisco merchants. Most likely this is a trial to see how well this promotion boosts usage of Apple Pay. Hopefully Apple will eventually use Apple Pay nationwide or worldwide by offering discounts to encourage people to use Apple Pay.

Once people have an incentive to try and use Apple Pay, they’ll be more likely to continue using it. Why Apple took so long to offer incentives to Apple Pay remains a mystery like why Apple waited so long to update their Macintosh models. Still, better late than never. If you have an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch, give Apple Pay a try. You still won’t be able to use it at all merchants, but when you can use it, you can trust your credit card number will be safe. Then you just have to remember which merchants accept Apple Pay and which ones do not.

Apple Pay offers security in exchange for the inconvenience of setting it up and finding merchants that will accept it. Still, Apple Pay will likely continue growing. As more merchants accept Apple Pay, more people will start using it, just like people avoided credit cards initially until now everyone uses them. Apple should convince people to use Apple Pay as much as possible because once people rely on Apple Pay, it will just make it harder for them to switch to rival products, and that’s the real benefit of Apple Pay for Apple.

To learn more about Apple’s recent Apple Pay promotion in the San Francisco area, click here.