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iOS beta 6 comes out soon after the release of beta 5

Details: Category: News; Published on Friday, 18 May 2018 09:14; Written by Super User; Hits: 2480

Three days ago Apple rolled out the 5th beta of iOS 11.4, and then on this Thursday it seeds the beta 6 to developers. Two betas in one week? One guess is that the official version of iOS 11.4 will be coming soon. And possibly it might be the last version for iOS 11. After all, the WWDC 2018 event will take place during June 4-8 in San Jose, California, in which we will see the announcement of iOS 12 (and also macOS 11.14).

Another possible reason for this quick release could be that there exist bugs/issues in the previous beta that need to/can be corrected as soon as possible. Earlier this week, a vulnerability dubbed EFAIL was revealed by security researchers, and the HTML rendering flaws discovered in Apple Mail for iOS and macOS allow attackers to reveal the plaintext of someone’s encrypted emails without the encryption keys.

Anyhow, let’s review what new features and improvements iOS 11.4 introduces. First of all, iOS 11.4 adds the Classkit framework.

This feature was spotted in the beta of iOS 11/3 and then launched as part of iOS 11.4. Developers can integrate this framework with their education apps to add more features, while teachers can assign tasks through Schoolwork and keep track of student progress in those 3rd party apps.

Apart from the new Classkit, iOS 11.4 pulls back some features, which was introduced in the betas of iOS 11.3 but disappeared in the official version of iOS 11.3. For instance, the support for Messages on iCloud. Previously, you are not able to check the old messages in new devices or sync the deletion of one device to other connected ones. Now the Messages in iCloud feature allows users to download all iMessages on new devices and the deletion will sync on all connected devices. Storing all messages and attachments in iCloud can save the device’s valuable storage space.

There is also a long-awaited features: AirPlay 2. It allows one single source to send audio to multiple speakers that support AirPlay 2, including Apple TV and HomePod. With AirPlay 2, you can ask Siri on your iPhone to control the audio content playing on separate devices in multiple rooms. As for the HomePod stereo support, it was added in the first beta of iOS 11.4 but removed in the second beta for somehow.

Besides, iOS 11.4 also contains a new security feature called USB Restricted mode. This feature is probably designed to prevent authorized third parties (like the GrayKey box) from physical accessing to data stored in iPhone via USB cable.

EFAIL Vulnerability may Reveal Your Encrypted Emails

GrayKey iPhone unlocker poses serious security concerns

Mac Tricks: Convert Color PDF Files to Grayscale/B&W

Details: Category: News; Published on Friday, 27 April 2018 09:19; Written by Super User; Hits: 3541

There are some occasions that we need to convert a color PDF file to black and white. For instance, a PDF file that contains many color images may be quite large in size and you wish to reduce the size by converting it to the gray version. Other reasons for the conversion could be the attempt to save colored ink, or to verify how the PDF file looks in grayscale before putting it in the printing procedure.

To achieve the conversion on a Windows PC, you have to utilize standalone programs like Adobe Acrobat Professional, third party plugins or some free/paid online websites, while on a Mac computer, things become much easier: you can use the built-in Preview app to add effect on a PDF, or change colors by applying a sepia tone on it.

Have no idea how to remove Adobe Acrobat Pro after it is expired? Get help here.

Today in this post we are gonna show you how to take advantage of the Quartz filters in Preview app to convert a colorful PDF file to the gray/black and white counterpart.

Open a PDF in Preview, and choose File > Export from the menu bar on the top.
As the Export dialog box appears, you can type a named in the Export As field for the PDF file, add tags if you like, and specify the location you want to store the file.
Choose Gray Tone (or Black & White) from the drop-down menu of Quartz filter.

After all these configurations, click Save button to export the file in target location. The saved PDF file should be stripped of the colors except the one(s) you choose. Generally, the gray version may be more comfortable in visual than B&W version. And it’s notable that depending on the content and layout of the original file, the newly created one may not look exactly the same as it has not be converted before. Next time you would like to print a color PDF file in black and white, you can apply this trick to finish the conversion and check the effects before sending it to the printer.

By the way, if you need to convert PDF files on a frequent basis, you can take advantage of the built-in Automator app to create an automatic workflow, which will help you expedite the job. Wanna know more about this trick? Read on please.

Launch Automator via Spotlight or from Applications/Utilities folder in Finder.
Choose workflow as the type for the document, and click Choose button below.
On the left pane of the open window, click Files & Folders under the Actions menu, and drag Ask For Finder Items from the sub-menu to the blank space on the right side.
Again, drag the Copy Finder Items option to the right pane below Ask For Finder Items. Then assign a folder in the To drop-down menu as the destination converted files. And you can choose to whether check the Replacing Existing Files option or not.
In the PDFs sub-menu, drag Apply Quartz Filter To PDF Documents to the right below Copy Finder Items, and choose Gray Tone from the Filter drop-down menu.
After the customization, head to the File > Save in the menu bar on the top.
Type a name for the customized workflow, and save it to the Applications folder.

Dragging a color PDF file and drop it into the app icon will process the conversion automatically, and converted files will appear in the location you desired before. So that’s how to batch-convert color PDFs to grayscale. Thanks for reading this post.

How Can I Uninstall MAMP PRO without Trace Left

Details: Category: News; Published on Wednesday, 10 January 2018 09:36; Written by Super User; Hits: 3223

“Recently I installed MAMP on my Mac and later I realized it was not the app I want, so I decided to uninstall MAMP PRO. But how can I completely delete MAMP from my hard drive?” A reader sent an email to us, asking for the answer to this issue.

Once installed, MAMP creates a local server environment on your Mac. MAMP claims that users can simply delete the MAMP folder if the tool is no longer needed, and everything will return to its original state. But is it the truth? Let’s find out.

Apple Confirms all Mac and iOS Devices are Affected by Chip Bugs

Details: Category: News; Published on Friday, 05 January 2018 08:26; Written by Super User; Hits: 2618

Chip vulnerabilities affect the world, According to the Financial Times, Apple confirmed on Thursday that all Mac and iOS devices are affected by the Meltdown and Spectre CPU flaws that have roiled the computing industry for the past 24 hours, resulting in a race to patch operating systems and cloud computing infrastructure at the highest levels. It will release mitigations in Safari to defend against the Spectre bug "in the coming days," the release said.

The two CPU flaws were found by security officer which named Meltdown and Spectre. The Meltdown vulnerability allows a malicious program to read kernel memory, accessing data like passwords, emails, documents, photos, and more. While Spectre, deceives the security check that allows applications to access any location.

"Security researchers have recently uncovered security issues known by two names, Meltdown and Spectre. These issues apply to all modern processors and affect nearly all computing devices and operating systems."

Apple posted blog in its website, saying that All Mac and iOS devices are affected, but it is not clear if any users are affected by the flaws:

"All Mac systems and iOS devices are affected, but there are no known exploits impacting customers at this time. Since exploiting many of these issues requires a malicious app to be loaded on your Mac or iOS device, we recommend downloading software only from trusted sources such as the App Store. "

How to protect your PC against the major ‘Meltdown’ CPU security flaw

Apple indicated in San Francisco that it has released mitigations to defend against Meltdown with iOS 11.2, macOS 10.13.2, and tvOS 11.2. Apple also stressed that Apple Watches are not affected by “Meltdown " vulnerabilities, and plans to release mitigation measures in the Safari to defend against “Meltdown " vulnerabilities.

"Apple released mitigations for Meltdown in iOS 11.2, macOS 10.13.2, and tvOS 11.2. watchOS did not require mitigation. Our testing with public benchmarks has shown that the changes in the December 2017 updates resulted in no measurable reduction in the performance of macOS and iOS as measured by the GeekBench 4 benchmark, or in common Web browsing benchmarks such as Speedometer, JetStream, and ARES-6."

The complete statement from Apple blod is in here, hit it if you need to learn more.

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