A Future Without Passwords?!?

Digital Security of the Future: Apple Edition

In The Beginning… and, Also, The Present

Photo, by your Author.

In 1980, my parents purchased an Apple II+ desktop computer for their three kids. I was immediately smitten. I taught myself BASIC, learned some coding, and other software tricks, and I never looked back. For 42 years (which is INSANE), I’ve owned one or more Apple products. I’m currently typing this on a 16” 2019 Macbook Pro while my Air Pods Pro rest comfortably in my ears as I listen to the amazing Tugela Fairy.

However…

As I wrote back in my newsletter in Episode #47 and Episode #47b, I’ve soured on Apple as a responsible corporate player. The company has kowtowed to both Russia and China on matters of human rights and digital privacy & security. I guess the “privacy first” company also wants or needs customers in those nations and so… they made the conscious decision to accommodate authoritarian governments in order to keep their profits high and their shareholders happy.

While I continue to find that distasteful… I begrudgingly admit that the company continues working on helping customers in other countries to improve their privacy and security in multiple ways. I’d like to highlight two of the company's newest offerings, both of which are scheduled to arrive in the Fall of 2022: Apple’s Passkey and Lockdown Mode.

I’m fascinated to see how these new technologies impact the global market. For example:

• Will Apple offer these technologies to customers in China & Russia?
• If they do, will these technologies work exactly the same as they will for customers in the US, Europe, and other democracies, or will Apple — once again — cave to autocrats to remove or dumb down their technology to allow for state-sponsored digital policing?
• How will these new technologies impact how malicious hackers operate (because they always find a new way…)?
• How much time will the new technologies save me and others?

Apple has historically invested time and money into software and hardware products that take complex ideas and technologies and make them extremely easy to use for the masses. Will they succeed again?