“Apple’s choice of name for the new OS X drew a few comments and one particularly interesting observation from Keith Blount developer of Scrivener at Literature & Latte,” Karen Haslam writes for Macworld UK. “He said: “One of the most significant announcements of the keynote was something that seems superficial: the change of OS X code names from cats to California place names. When Apple reached Lion, it seemed to imply that OS X was nearing its end: here was the ultimate version of OS X, the king of cats – how much further did they plan on taking the OS? The switch to a naming convention with plenty of life left in it is a welcome sign from Apple that they think there is likewise plenty of life left in OS X. As a Mac lover and developer, that makes me very happy.”
“What many developers picked up on is the fact that a significant number of changes in OS X are geared towards power users,” Haslam writes. “This new focus on power users comes after years of an apparent focus on the consumer and specifically iOS. CEO of Boinx Software Oliver Breindenbach suggested: ‘It looks like a solid release and to my relief it seems that it will keep catering to the power user and not being dumbed down to follow the consumer lead of iOS.’ Bare Bones Software CEO Rich Siegel echoed that sentiment: ‘It’s great to see that Apple’s commitment to power computing for professionals is stronger than ever.'”
“However, there were some concerns about one new feature in particular. Security concerns about iCloud Keychain,” Haslam writes. “Readdle’s Igor Zhadanov noted: ‘With iCloud keychain Apple made a strong move to managing your digital identity via iCloud. Once you have your passwords generated and saved for you by Apple, at some point you no longer know the credentials to the services you use. Instead, you will rely on iCloud ID to access your secure data. Apple takes a huge responsibility of managing users identity properly, and some users may be not comfortable with that news.’ SecureMac rang some warning bells, noting that: ‘There are some great new features in OS X Mavericks that are very exciting and should make a lot of developers happy, however with the recent revelations concerning the NSA and the PRISM data collection system, some features may give users pause – such as entrusting all of your passwords to the cloud.'”
Read more in the full article here.
FYI. Apple just had a nice decision in the rubberbanding patent trial.
It really depends upon how those credentials are entrusted. The safe way to do it would be a way of storing the credentials encrypted where Apple has no idea of the encryption key. Then they can share them with the snoopers all they want; the value of my information is far less than the cost of decrypting all of my passwords (i.e., “adequate security”).
Google, MS, Apple and other have way to guaranty privacy to their users if they would not store client’s keys on their servers.
This would make impossible to recover password and data users would forget the password, though.
However, if user does not forget the password, then there is way to have encryption that would require hundreds of years to crack even with the latest PFLOPS-level crunching power.
If Google, MS, and Apple would be free of NSA/CIA disctate, then at least they could offer an *option* for users whether they are sure that they will never forget their iCloud password and so they are fine with being never able to recover their information if they forgot password, OR they would rather continue current variant, which makes all of the data see-able to NSA/CIA spies and transferred to giant government datacenter that would keep it forever in exabyte-level storage.
Passwords are ancient; we need a commercially viable, widely adopted, authentication system based on zero knowledge proofs.
Oops — forgot the link: zero knowledge proofs
“However, there were some concerns about one new feature in particular. Security concerns about iCloud Keychain,” Haslam writes. “Readdle’s Igor Zhadanov noted: ‘With iCloud keychain Apple made a strong move to managing your digital identity via iCloud. Once you have your passwords generated and saved for you by Apple, at some point you no longer know the credentials to the services you use. Instead, you will rely on iCloud ID to access your secure data. Apple takes a huge responsibility of managing users identity properly, and some users may be not comfortable with that news.’ SecureMac rang some warning bells, noting that: ‘There are some great new features in OS X Mavericks that are very exciting and should make a lot of developers happy, however with the recent revelations concerning the NSA and the PRISM data collection system, some features may give users pause – such as entrusting all of your passwords to the cloud.’”
Hey dumb ass! How many credit cards does Apple have on file? yes, you’re right, a lot! When was the last time Apple had a breach of those? Was there one time? I think your passwords will be safe locally on your machine and backed up to iCloud… However I personally like to use my own passwords rather than randomly generated, it gives me a better chance at knowing what the hell is going on with my own property, just saying 😉
I trust Apple with my secure information far, far, FAR more than the government, Google, Facebook, etc.
Why? All the for-profit entities you named freely give your government anything it asks for. Moreover, while you can call your representative to demand a hearing, you will never know what protocols are in place to prevent some Google contractor from perousing every gmail and every search and every map you’ve ever touched.
OK, maybe I do too, but that is relative!!!!
So, I guess I don’t trust them either.
Hey dumb ass! Past results are no guarantee of future success!
Millions of credit card frauds are perpetrated every year; many of them are family members misusing the credit card of the bread winner of the family. Sony’s playstation network, you may recall, was hacked by thieves. Intentional and unintentional fraud happens in so many ways, there’s no way an individual can truly minimize it unless he controls the access code PERSONALLY. Most people, including myself, allow Apple to store my credit card number ONLY with continuous monitoring of the account, reconciling purchase history every month at a minimum. Last year our business credit card was hacked and we had to get a replacement. We will never know how the frauds stole our identity.
I’ll believe Apple — or any other digital marketplace — is as secure as Fort Knox on the day that Apple stops releasing security updates and the prisons run short of criminals.
“Hey dumb ass! How many credit cards does Apple have on file? yes, you’re right, a lot! When was the last time Apple had a breach of those? Was there one time? ”
……
Knock on wood. Sony and their supporters probably thought the same thing about their Playstation Network, before it got hacked a year or two ago and customer credit card details were stolen.
Day to day you’d use Apple’s solution but when you are being ultra private you’d use other tools. Of course using such tools would put you in the 51% of foreigners ’cause no god fairing true patriot would use such tools. So it would catch the preverts
From what little I’ve seen and heard Mavericks is like Snow Leopard, primarily under the hood improvements rather than new features. (No that isn’t a bad thing I can’t wait to see what it does to MBP battery life.)
I’m presuming its not statutory so what’s the problem
Logic 10! Please!
Been syncing my keychain between computers since iTools. Never had a problem.
=:~)
I would trust Apple as my Bank and I think allot of users would.