Stupid Companies Make AI Promises. Smart Companies Have AI Policies [Sponsor]

It seems like every company is scrambling to stake their claim in the AI goldrush–check out the CEO of Kroger promising to bring LLMs into the dairy aisle. And front line workers are following suit–experimenting with AI so they can work faster and do more.

In the few short months since ChatGPT debuted, hundreds of AI-powered tools have come on the market. But while AI-based tools have genuinely helpful applications, they also pose profound security risks. Unfortunately, most companies still haven’t come up with policies to manage those risks. In the absence of clear guidance around responsible AI use, employees are blithely handing over sensitive data to untrustworthy tools. 

AI-based browser extensions offer the clearest illustration of this phenomenon. The Chrome store is overflowing with extensions that (claim to) harness ChatGPT to do all manner of tasks: punching up emails, designing graphics, transcribing meetings, and writing code. But these tools are prone to at least three types of risk.

  1. Malware: Security researchers keep uncovering AI-based extensions that steal user data. These extensions play on users’ trust of the big tech platforms (“it can’t be dangerous if Google lets it on the Chrome store!”) and they often appear to work, by hooking up to ChatGPT et al’s APIs. 
  2. Data Governance: Companies including Apple and Verizon have banned their employees from using LLMs because these products rarely offer a guarantee that a user’s inputs won’t be used as training data.
  3. Prompt Injection Attacks: In this little known but potentially unsolvable attack, hidden text on a webpage directs an AI tool to perform malicious actions–such as exfiltrate data and then delete the records. 

Up until now, most companies have been caught flat-footed by AI, but these risks are too serious to ignore. 

At Kolide, we’re taking a two-part approach to governing AI use.

  1. Draft AI policies as a team. We don’t want to totally ban our team from using AI, we just want to use it safely. So our first step is meeting with representatives from multiple teams to figure out what they’re getting out of AI-based tools, and how we can provide them with secure options that don’t expose critical data or infrastructure.
  2. Use Kolide to block malicious tools. Kolide lets IT and security teams write Checks that detect device compliance issues, and we’ve already started creating Checks for malicious (or dubious) AI-based tools. Now if an employee accidentally downloads malware, they’ll be prevented from logging into our cloud apps until they’ve removed it.

Every company will have to craft policies based on their unique needs and concerns, but the important thing is to start now. There’s still time to seize the reins of AI, before it gallops away with your company’s data.

To learn more about how Kolide enforces device compliance for companies with Okta, click here to watch an on-demand demo.

Our thank to Kolide for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Obsidian’s Popularity Explained→

It’s been nearly three years since I first started using Obsidian. The app has come a long way since then. The app’s core functionality has expanded, its vibrant plug-in developer community continues to go strong, and more and more users have been captivated by its flexibility. According to Jared Newman, writing for Fast Company,

Obsidian estimates that it has one million users, and its Discord channel has more than 110,000 members, who use the app for everything from task management and bookmarking to organizing their daily thoughts.

That’s remarkable growth for an app originally developed by just two people and with a team that still stands at under a dozen members.

Newman’s story, The cult of Obsidian: Why people are obsessed with the note-taking app, does an excellent job capturing what makes Obsidian special and even attracts fans of native apps like Federico and me:

John Voorhees, the managing editor at MacStories, started using Obsidian a couple of years ago after being drawn to its local file structure, and both he and MacStories founder Federico Viticci have written extensively about their Obsidian setups since then.

Obsidian is on [sic] some ways the opposite of a quintessential MacStories app—the site often spotlights apps that are tailored exclusively for Apple platforms, whereas Obsidian is built on a web-based technology called Electron—but Voorhees says it’s his favorite writing tool regardless. He and Viticci have even commissioned some bespoke plug-ins for their Macstories [sic] workflows.

“No matter what your writing needs are, there’s probably a plug-in to satisfy them,” he says.

There are a lot of other reasons I use Obsidian, including its use of local, plain text files formatted in Markdown, but it’s the plug-in system that has made it indispensable to my work. The app simultaneously serves as my text editor, note-taking app, and database all at once, allowing me to move effortlessly among projects and tasks, thanks to the portability of plain text.

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The History of Cover Flow→

A few months ago when I was writing about Widgetsmith’s new music widgets in my iOS 17 review, I told my buddy Stephen Hackett I couldn’t believe there was no Cover Flow retrospective on 512 Pixels. Yesterday, Stephen delivered:

Over the last decade or so, Apple has been hard at work in simplifying the user interfaces that power its myriad platforms. I’ve welcomed most of that work, but it’s hard to deny that we’ve all lost some things along the way.

Today, we look at a UI element that started life in iTunes, but spread to the iPod, iPhone and Mac over time: Cover Flow.

I had completely forgotten that Cover Flow eventually found its way to Safari as well. I miss Cover Flow more today than I ever used it at the time; I wonder if a similar 3D interface could be revived for the age of visionOS and Vision Pro.

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MacStories Unwind: AV Club Edition, Only Murders in the Building

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In this month’s special AV Club edition of MacStories Unwind, Federico, John, and Jonathan discuss Season 3 of the Hulu Original, Only Murders in the Building.

  • iMazing 3 is coming, macOS and the public beta is available now.

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Game On: An Upcoming Game Release Check-In

Ever since WWDC 2022, when Apple showcased Resident Evil Village, the company has been eager to highlight console and PC titles that are coming to its platforms. Sometimes, it can be a little hard to keep track of what’s coming, so today’s Game On focuses on recent big-title release news as well as other recent updates in the world of Apple gaming.

Before looking at the titles coming next to Apple’s platforms, let’s take a quick look back at one of the all-time classic iOS games: Machinarium. The game, from Czech studio Amanita Design, which was followed up a few years ago on Apple Arcade by Pilgrims, started on the Mac and other platforms, but was also an iPad gaming pioneer, debuting on the tablet in 2011, with its unforgettable hand drawn style.

However, like a lot of games, Machinarium hadn’t seen an update in a long time. According to Touch Arcade, the game hadn’t been touched since 2019 but was updated last week with controller, Metal rendering, and Core Audio support. If you love puzzle games and haven’t played Machinarium, you can buy it on the App Store and play it on iOS, iPadOS, and tvOS for $5.99.

Source: Capcom.

Source: Capcom.

Skepticism about whether Apple will be successful in attracting console and PC-level games to its platforms is warranted, given the company’s track record with such games. However, they continue to push back, with Tim Cook recently telling The Independent in the context of an interview about the Apple Vision Pro that:

There’s significant excitement about our role in gaming, and we’re very serious about it. This is not a hobby for us. We’re putting all of ourselves out there.

Apple’s last self-proclaimed hobby was the Apple TV, which took a very long time to graduate from that role but is now part of the company’s videogame strategy.

Also, just before iOS and iPadOS 17 were released, Jeremy Sandmel, Apple’s Senior Director of GPU Software, and Tim Millet, Apple’s VP of Platform Architecture, were interviewed by IGN and emphasized the advantage of Apple silicon and its Metal framework across the iPhone, iPad, and Mac as a unified gaming platform:

So we really look at these many generations of SoC architecture across the phone, across the iPad, across now, Apple Silicon Macs. And we’d see that as part of one big unified platform, a graphics and gaming platform in particular.

Fort Solis. Source: Dear Villagers.

Fort Solis. Source: Dear Villagers.

And judging from the announcements, the pace of top-shelf releases is beginning to pick up and include the iPhone more often than in the past. Among other notable upcoming releases:

There may be other big releases coming that I’ve missed, but that alone is a pretty healthy lineup to go with other titles that are already available. It will be interesting to see if others are added to the release roster in the coming weeks.

Bartender 5 Is the Essential Menu Bar Upgrade for macOS Sonoma

The last time Bartender received a major update was back in 2021. Bartender 4 brought many new powerful features to help declutter the menu bar, particularly on the new MacBook models with a notch, which made menu bar real estate become even more valuable. Bartender 5 was officially released last month, and not only is it a fantastic maintenance update that brings support for macOS Sonoma – it’s also a release full of fun additions for all Mac users.

Read more

AppStories, Episode 354 – Apple Vision Pro and Apps→

This week on AppStories, we spent time with the visionOS simulator and consider the design of the Apple Vision Pro system apps and what to expect from third-party developers.

Sponsored by:

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[Subscribe here.](https://appstories.net/plans)

Subscribe here.

On AppStories+, Federico dropped a big AR surprise on me.

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To learn more about the benefits included with an AppStories+ subscription, visit our Plans page, or read the AppStories+ FAQ.

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iMazing 3 Is Coming, macOS Public Beta Available Now [Sponsor]

Rethought, rewritten, and redesigned from the ground up iMazing, the trusted iPhone manager, is about to release its third major version. Ahead of the launch later this year we’re inviting MacStories readers to check out the latest macOS beta today!

The iMazing team’s primary focus was to deliver the smoothest possible user experience. The all new interface brings the many available features to light, while remaining accessible to less technical users willing to perform simple tasks.

A new Discover view greets users with quick access to iMazing’s most-used features, like download photos from any iOS device, export text messages from an ‌iPhone‌ to a computer, back up a device or update to a new one, or drag and drop files via Quick Transfer!

Advanced and pro users will appreciate the new take on the Devices screen with a grid or a list view to pick from. The app then filters commonly available tasks, and makes it a breeze to backup or update multiple devices at once.

iMazing 3 lays the foundation for the future, with a robust roadmap of features for the upcoming years.

Learn more about iMazing 3 and try out the beta, we’d love to hear what you think!

Our thank to iMazing for sponsoring MacStories this week.

MacStories Unwind: Flora and Son and Federico’s Latest Tech Discovery

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This week on MacStories Unwind, I recommend an Irish family drama on Apple TV+, while Federico has been out exploring new corners of the tech world.

  • Kolide – It ensures that if a device isn’t secure it can’t access your apps.  It’s Device Trust for Okta. Watch the demo today!

John’s Pick

Federico’s Pick

Federico recording AppStories using the XREAL Air.

Federico recording AppStories using the XREAL Air.

MacStories Unwind+

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