Oh, tax season. Admittedly, the annual ritual has gotten a lot easier for me since getting a) an accountant and b) getting most forms delivered electronically as PDFs.
But I ended up with a wrinkle this year when I was processing a few of the tax forms provided by my clients. Several of them used a handy service that emails tax forms, which also thoughtfully encrypts and password protects those files. However, when uploading these for my accountant, I find it convenient to strip out the protection, so that I don’t have to provide a bunch of passwords as well.
In the past, I’ve simply used the loophole of opening a PDF in Preview, entering the password, and then using the File > Export as PDF… command or the old trick of printing to a PDF. That generates a version of the file without the password protection.
However, in macOS Monterey I was surprised to discover that these loopholes have been plugged. Exporting as a PDF simply maintained the password protection, and trying to save as as PDF from the Print menu wasn’t even an option: the system now grays it out.
In theory, this is a good security practice to avoid having password protected files easily stripped of those protections.1 But when it comes to my personal usage, it’s decidedly inconvenient.
But it turns out, whoops, Apple didn’t implement these security features across the board. Making an end-run around these restrictions is as easy as firing up your web browser. I used Chrome for my first foray, but I then tested the same process in Safari, and it works just as well.
Just open the password-protected PDF in your browser of choice, enter the password, and then print to PDF just as you would have in Preview (or even just open an unencrypted copy right in Preview). I was then able to save a password-free version.
All of this is a bit silly: there’s really no point in locking down Preview if all you need to do is use another app. Then again maybe this loophole will itself get plugged in another five years or so.
Of course, you still need the password, so just how much this is actually a security loophole is questionable. ↩
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]
Upon arriving at our tropical resort for a week on vacation, my wife and daughter sat out on the deck doing crossword puzzles and I broke out my iPad with Magic Keyboard and tried to solve a puzzle of my own—namely, debugging a Python script. (This is how this family rolls.)
Literally minutes after leaving our house to go to the airport, I got an alert indicating that our home network might be down. Perfect timing, as always. Just before I left I had noticed a notification on my phone that our eero base station had restarted overnight. Given a five-hour flight to Hawaii to stew on that one, and a frantic text message from our housesitter who couldn’t watch anything on our TV, I took a shot in the dark and tried to remotely restart the eero.
The good news is, that totally worked. Within a minute, the network came back and our housesitter was happily binging the HBO Max shows she only gets to see at our house. I checked the weather page on my home server to verify that everything was up and running—and discovered that all of my precious charts and graphs were seriously messed up.
Jason imagines a future iOS App Store improved by sideloading, Myke gets back into reading digital comics, and both of them have a very strongly worded wish list involving the rumored big new iMac.
My thanks to Clay for sponsoring Six Colors this week.
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Electric Cars and Sleeping Macs
The long, slow transition to electric cars. And is Jason’s iMac shut-down procedure Lawful Good or Neutral Evil?
We’ve been in the Apple silicon era for 15 months now, and I’m tired of waiting.
My last two primary Macs have been 27-inch iMacs. First the original 5K model, then the iMac Pro. As much as I have loved using this iMac Pro for the past four years, I’m over it now. I’m ready to enter the Apple silicon era. And Apple has, thus far, failed to oblige.
Will Apple announce a new, large iMac at an event next month? “Reply hazy, ask again later,” said Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. (Or at least that was my interpretation of his reporting.)
What I’m saying is, if the next new Mac to be announced is a faster Mac mini or an upgraded 13-inch MacBook Pro, I’m going to treat them fairly and evaluate them properly… and the entire time, I am going to be grumbling. Because what I want is a new big iMac.
So to pass the time while I’m waiting, I’m going to do what they taught me to do as a kid and enter the land of the imagination. Here’s what I want to see in a new, big Apple silicon-bearing iMac.
Don’t make it too big. As much as I have loved the screen on my 27-inch iMacs, I’m not sure more is better. Occasionally I find myself dragging windows in from the far-off corners of my display because it’s uncomfortable to focus on them unless they’re a little more central. Then again, there are times when I have to switch to “more space” mode to fit more on the screen. I contain multitudes.
However, the 24-inch iMac expanded the screen of the smaller iMac without making it feel huge. Apple has done some similar expansions with the MacBook Pro recently. So if Apple could take a 27-inch iMac and transform it into a 30-inch model without making it seem ridiculous, I’d go for that. But that’s all.
More ports than other Apple Silicon Macs. The 24-inch iMac comes with two or four ports, some of them Thunderbolt and some USB. That won’t cut it on the larger iMac, which needs to offer Thunderbolt ports, at least a couple of USB-A ports (you heard me!), and an SD card slot. (Just for perspective: my current iMac Pro has four USB-A and four Thunderbolt ports on the back, as well as an SD card slot! And I use them, frequently! This sort of Mac should not be limited by its ports.)
A better webcam. I will continue to hold out hope for Face ID on the Mac because it makes a lot of sense—but it hasn’t happened yet, so it’s a bit of a stretch. Still, at the very least, the new iMac should offer a webcam more in line with what’s available on the iPad line. That means a 12-megapixel camera with support for Center Stage, a feature that feels like it was built specifically for the iMac. I’m tired of Apple releasing Macs with 1080p webcams and declaring them the best Mac webcams ever. Compared to the iPad and iPhone’s front-facing cameras, they’re a joke. It’s time to change things, and this is the right place to start.
Better ergonomics. If I’m being honest, the 24-inch iMac’s stand seems a little short. And since it’s not adjustable, if you need to get it to the proper height, you’ll need to put that cute little iMac on a riser or dictionary or leftover cardboard box. That’s not great, and I hope Apple puts a bit more effort into the ergonomics of the larger and more expensive iMac model. I don’t think we need a $1000 stand in the vein of the Pro Display XDR, but users should be able to make their iMac taller or shorter as needed.
Everything the M1 Pro and M1 Max deliver. I’m expecting Apple to offer the new iMac in both M1 Pro and M1 Max chip configurations, as they have with the MacBook Pro. (If, as rumored, Apple is working on a dual-Max configuration, I’ll have that as well!) This means that, as on the MacBook Pro, the M1 Pro models will be configurable up to 32GB of RAM, and the M1 Max models will reach up to 64GB. Yes, please.
A better power brick. I assume the new iMac will have the same power brick as the 24-inch model does, complete with an Ethernet jack. That’s a great feature, but speaking as someone who has a USB hub velcroed to the bottom of his desk, I’d love it if Apple also offered a brick with additional USB ports. I doubt that it will, but what’s the harm in asking?
A better display. I don’t know if Apple is ready to ship a 27- or 30-inch micro-LED display, but I’d love one. The display on the new MacBook Pro models is something to behold. I’d love that same high-dynamic-range display in a big iMac. (And while we’re at it, Apple, don’t forget to keep the glare-resistant nanotexture coating option that you currently offer on the high-end Intel iMacs.)
Nice colors. I don’t expect that Apple will release larger iMacs in the same bright colors as the 24-inch models. These are likely to be expensive iMacs—probably with “Pro” in the name—and if the iPhone has taught us anything, it’s that professional products don’t come in bright, bold colors. I’ll take a dark blue or dark green iMac, though, if that’s all the choice that’s open to me. I’d just rather not be stuck with Space Gray again if I could help it.
Announced March 8, orders March 11, shipping March 18. This is my list, and like I said, I’m tired of waiting. Let’s make it happen, Apple.
Each year when Apple’s WWDC wraps up, I find myself doing what a lot of app developers do: planning my response to the upcoming version of iOS. But my summers aren’t consumed by Xcode or SwiftUI. My annual contribution to the Apple economy is a book called iOS Access for All: Your Comprehensive Guide to Accessibility for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. You think that title’s long? The iOS 15 edition weighs in at 215,000 words, 11 chapters, and four appendices—all written, assembled and sold by me.
Realizing I’d just published the book’s ninth edition got me thinking about how this all happened, and the extent to which I’ve managed to streamline many parts of the publishing process, while hopefully living up to the expectations of a group of readers who don’t get much attention from other iOS books and overviews.
Beginnings
Before I focused on iOS or accessibility, I wrote books about the Mac, web development, and wireless networking. I worked with book publishers whose end products were heavy, paper volumes you could find on a bookstore shelf. Even in 2012, when I first had an idea for a book about accessibility on Apple platforms, I knew the publishing model I had worked under for 10 years or so had changed dramatically. Who needs Mac Answers when you have Google?
I learned soon after iOS became accessible in 2009 that good search craft can’t find what isn’t online. Lots of knowledge about how to use Apple’s accessibility tools was ephemeral. And what was available quickly went out of date with no one having the incentives or a mandate to fix it.
I decided there should be a book about iOS accessibility, written by an experienced tech author. So, as you do, I pitched some publishers. But despite my track record and an opportunity to own a corner of the market, the answer was no. These publishers didn’t think they could sell enough copies of a book focused solely on accessibility.
It’s possible they were entirely right. But as I started embedding myself into the accessibility community, I became aware that publishers really didn’t know who might want the book I planned to write, or how to sell it to them. At least I had the advantage of being a daily user of some of what I planned to write about. I learned a lot by listening – over coffee and on Twitter – to people who make and use accessible tech every day. They reinforced in me the need to make the book, even if I couldn’t yet prove a market existed.
Self-publishing
The other thing you need to know about my plan to publish a book on my own is that I was on a budget. I would need to spend as little money as possible while still doing a professional job. I was a freelancer planning to devote months of full-time work to this endeavor. And I knew I would need to pay for things like a cover design and a copy editor. I also gave myself a travel budget, but not one for software.
At the last couple of Macworld Expos, I sat in on ebook publishing sessions, where I learned the gospel of ePub as a flexible online format that Apple was already using in what was then the iBooks Store. And from accessibility experts, I learned that it was an important part of special-purpose devices that turn text into audio for blind users.
Coming into the 2013 iOS release cycle, I had a topic, a format and publishing strategy, and a foothold in a community I would need to sell the book.
Maximum Accessibility
A major advantage of ebooks over paper ones is that they’re accessible on devices, where screen readers and text visibility options break down the barriers between readers and content. And you’ll find free ePub readers on all platforms.
As a book builder, ePub turned out to be a great choice, There are lots ways you can build a good-looking ePub. Structurally, an ePub is just a bunch of XHTML files, images, CSS, and a manifest, all zipped together.
A brief flirtation with Pages taught me that using an app that was easy to write in would not yield the book I wanted. (Pages support for ePub improved considerably once Apple discontinued iBooks Author, but it’s still not beefy enough for my needs.) Nor did I choose the popular Scrivener, or the expensive inDesign, both of which will export fine ePubs, and in which many of my writer friends have boundless faith. Ditto Calibre and Sigil, which at least appealed to my desire to think of the book as a giant ball of text.
BBEdit in action, displaying the book’s source code in a project window.
The way I published the iOS 7 version of the book and the way I do it today are remarkably similar. I work in BBEdit on the Mac, and Textastic on the iPad, then I run ancient AppleScripts that verify the book against the ePub specification, and finally put the files together as a book. Building my book this way is a little like compiling a program. A big part of the editing process is debugging it.
Learning to Ask for the Sale
To promote the book, I became a regular at accessibility tech conferences, bought party sponsorships and tables on trade show floors (these were less costly than they might sound). I even had gimmicks, like business cards with QR code stickers on the back that were easy to scan, even if you couldn’t see them.
I used Twitter extensively, and embarked on a podcast book tour – going on any show that would have me to hawk the book. And you know what? People did have me on their shows – there seemed to be real enthusiasm for what I had made.
Acquired Wisdom
Every couple of years I re-examine my publishing process. I’ve made refinements, like adding shortcuts that help me frame and size screenshots. And because there’s demand for a PDF version, I now build an accessible one based on a Microsoft Word template.
At this point, iOS and the book itself are mature propositions. Like the rest of the software, the accessibility tools in iOS have gained incremental updates each year, but the fundamentals remain, meaning not everyone needs either a new phone or a new book each year.
But people do keep buying it and telling me how valuable it has been to them. So chances are pretty good there will be a tenth edition sometime late this fall.
If we know anything about iOS as a platform, it’s that if you want to run apps on it, you need to download them from the App Store. (If you missed it, it turns out that this decision continues to be controversial!) The iPhone and iPad have never been platforms defined by a combination of Apple-approved apps and third-party apps from random sources.
But what if that’s what iOS was to become? Certainly, as legislators and regulators circle around Apple and its practices, it’s possible that someone will force Apple to allow apps onto the platform without them going through the App Store.
It’s almost unimaginable. And yet… what if that calamity ended up being the best thing for the App Store, and improved it–and the base iOS experience–for most users?
Everyone has a thing in their life long overdue for a change. It might be a piece of clothing that you’re convinced still looks good on you or that pickup line that’s more sleaze than smooth. For macOS, it needs to admit that settings… I mean… System Preferences is long (LONG!) overdue for an overhaul. Like insisting, against all evidence, that your favourite pair of jeans still fit, it’s time to face the fact that you’ve outgrown what you’ve got and move on.
This is one of the oldest-feeling corners of macOS. It is long past time for a complete rethink. And I like the look of this proposal.
Last in, first out? John Gruber, who was the final person to enter the Six Colors Report Card (to be fair, there were four stragglers who popped in at the very last moment), has published his full responses:
I appreciate everyone who submits to the survey, but especially appreciate those who take their comments and turn them into posts on their own sites later!
I subscribe to a lot of streaming video services, and that means I use a lot of streaming video apps. Most of them fall short of my expectations. Here, then, is a simple specification for a streaming video app. Follow it, and your app will be well on its way to not sucking.
This spec includes only the basics. It leaves plenty of room for apps to differentiate themselves by surprising and delighting their users with clever features not listed here. But to all the streaming app developers out there, please consider covering these fundamentals before working on your Unique Selling Proposition.
John’s list is really solid. I quibble about a couple of the things he’s looking for, but can’t argue with most of them: there’s nothing more frustrating than an app that gets in your way, especially when you’re trying to do something as simple as watch an episode of TV.
My personal addition to this list is better recognition of when you’ve finished an episode (I’m sorry, I’m not always going to watch all five minutes of credits—you should be able to figure that out).
Apple’s newer video player UI, rolled out in tvOS 15, has become adopted by more and more apps, and it’s really pretty good. Frankly, I wish all players used this framework because then I wouldn’t have to figure out where the features are in every different player.1 This would be like if every television channel had its own slightly different interface.
There are a lot of bad UI experiences in video streaming apps, but Peacock might be the worst on the Apple TV. Getting to the controls is a pain and I’ve never figured out how to make the “jump back 10 seconds” command work correctly. ↩
Finding a common time when a group of people can meet has been a recurring theme of my life for a couple of decades now. Back in the old days, it was often finding common times for project meetings at work. For more than a decade, it has also included scheduling podcast episodes with a disparate group of panelists. And as an independent type person, I often need to schedule Zoom meetings with a random collection of people in different time zones with different schedules.
Looking at Fantastical meeting sign-ups.
My calendar app has never really done this job well, so I’ve used a bunch of web-based tools to facilitate this work, most notably Doodle and (more recently) StrawPoll. As of last week, though, my calendar app does do this—because last week Flexibits announced Fantastical 3.6, an update to its subscription-based calendar app that adds a new web-based scheduler.
Fantastical’s scheduler works both ways. If you’re trying to find a common time, you can create an event with multiple possible times, and then generate a link to send to potential participants. They can respond on the web with the times they’re available, and—this is maybe my favorite part—you can see their responses right within Fantastical.
If you’re someone who keeps open “office hours” or wants to provide a quick link to clients or potential customers to schedule time with you, you can now do that within Fantastical, too. The new feature, called Openings, lets you offer up time slots in your schedule and generate a web link to let people sign up.
Fantastical (and its cousin contacts app, Cardhop) are bundled together in a subscription service called Flexibits Premium, and these additions show that Flexibits is getting comfortable implementing new features that span apps and the cloud to get the functionality that they want. And all these new features are covered by the regular Flexibits Premium subscription—as they should be, since getting the benefit of new features was a key part of the deal when Flexibits converted Fantastical to a subscription model.
There are a few other tweaks in Fantastical 3.6, including a Quarter view that shows three months at once, and a couple of subtle niceties—clicking or tapping a second time on the current day toggles between showing the whole day and scrolling to what’s next, and clicking on a future day with no calendar events no longer confusingly shows you whatever the next day with events is—it shows you the day you selected, with a reassuring indicator that there are no events that day.
This week Jason and Myke both revive some classic hardware that hits them right in the feels. Also, there’s a confusing set of Apple event rumors, and Apple tries to address AirTag security concerns.
Ah, the humble wireless router: a staple of the internet age, something we’ve all got tucked away in our house somewhere (or worse, out in full view). They’re a pain, a thing that sometimes just needs to be rebooted for no apparent reason, whose errors can be mystifying, and whose troubleshooting and management can make even the most tech-savvy among us grit their teeth in frustration.
It didn’t have to be this way. Once upon a time, Apple was in the business of making wireless routers. The AirPort line debuted in 1999, at the same event where Apple introduced the iBook, the first consumer computer to offer built-in wireless networking. Over the course of nearly more than a decade, Apple made a succession of the devices, until it finally discontinued the line in 2018.
And now, more than ever, it’s starting to feel like that might have been a mistake. Is it too late? Could an AirPort resurgence save us from the pain of dealing with substandard routers? Or are we consigned to a future of annoyance and irritation?
The Six Colors Report Card for 2021 is in the books, but nerds being nerds, there’s always a clamor for more statistical slicing and dicing of the data.
This year I’m happy to present a few charts from Six Colors member, Duke University professor, and data-visualization expert Kieran Healy that take the initial Report Card scores and slice them in a few interesting ways. (The last one might break your brain. You’ve been warned.)
