The Wall Street Journal recently featured Apple getting into the automobile business. It is a well-researched article, and I learned a lot. It seems Apple is deeper down the automobile rabbit hole than I initially thought.

The above quote from Jim Adler, the director of Toyota’s venture-capital fund, about software eating the world stood out to me. Even though I’m a geek, I can’t help but feel that as computers and software become more prevalent in everyday objects (cars, TVs, refrigerators), things have the dual possibilities of getting much easier or infinitely more complex. To make ice in my freezer, I open the freezer and throw a physical lever. It’s an easy system to operate, and there is very little that could go wrong.

If computers take over that task, there is the possibility to make the process better. The computer could see when I use more ice and when I use less and adjust accordingly. Maybe I am home more on weekends, so I have greater demand. Perhaps it sees I have a friend coming over Friday night, so it makes even more ice. The flip side is that I don’t have a physical lever to operate if something goes wrong with the software. I have no ice.

In addition to software bugs, we have to consider malicious code. Because if there is software, there is some clever person somewhere in the world trying to exploit it. The battle to protect us from hackers is one that never ends. Exploits are constantly being found. Software teams are continually plugging security holes. Hopefully, the software handles much of this for us, but ultimately it is the consumer’s responsibility to keep software up to date. This has never been a thing for my freezer, but one day it will be.

Finally, as I wrote just a few days ago, so long as our devices can observe our behaviors, people will look to profit from that data. The bold new world of software-everything could very easily result in an Orwellian-level of lost privacy.

The thing that concerns me is that Mr. Adler is right. Software is going to eat everything. While that does have tremendous potential upside, it requires informed consumers and lawmakers who will insist the software is consumer-friendly (as opposed to consumer-hostile), that the software is safe from hackers, and that our privacy is protected. We could do this in parallel, but things don’t appear to be shaping up that way.

Two of my favorite legal nerds, Jeff Richardson and Brett Burney, have started a podcast, In the News (Web)(Apple Podcasts)(YouTube). In it, they look at developments in the Apple Ecosystem with a slight focus on practicing law. You definitely don’t need to be in the law racket to enjoy this show.

Since first showing up last year, M1 Macs have not been bootable from external media. There was some question as to whether this was something Apple hadn’t got around to yet or just one of those things we lost with the processor transition and the increased focus on security.

I suspected the latter, but it was the former. With macOS Big Sur 11.4, booting from an external disc now works. This is good news (via Stephen Hackett). Howard Oakley at the Eclectic Light Company has a full explanation.

Stephen and I are both working more video than ever, so on this episode of Mac Power Users, we’re comparing notes on our processes, gear, and editing tools.

This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:

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Charty puts together two things I love: visual representations and Shortcuts. Specifically, Charty allows you to create charts directly from Apple’s Shortcuts app. And now they’re out with an update. With Charty 1.4 comes not only an updated UI and more customization options for widgets, but also a whole new app section featuring 11 video tutorials. They’ve also added rings, an entirely new series type that is so useful to track progress across multiple goals. For example, they’ve got this Track Omni Project that asks you to pick an OmniFocus project. It’ll show you a ring chart of tasks completed versus remaining. You know I think being able to visually see what you’ve done and what you still have to do is so important in tracking your time and productivity.

It’s free to download with iOS 14 Widgets support and 5 Shortcuts’ actions. Or, for $4.99, you can unlock a number of Shortcut, more styling and customization options, and unlimited series per chart. Check out Charty.

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