Cristian Carlos Juarez. Peninsula 360 Press.
I will approach this topic from the point of view, of course, of security - in our days - on the Internet, through new protocols and a new field in Engineering: digital civil engineering in which, by the look of the graphics we see in a smartphone, Apple leads this branch of Engineering.
A few months ago, Apple held the World Wide Developers Conference -WWDC- virtually, an event in which Apple's new mobile operating system was announced: iOS 14 -and with it, watchOS 14- and iPadOS 14 that would arrive in autumn this year. Well, it's autumn 2020 and with it, the update of, so far, more than the 36% of the compatible devices to the cut of September 28, according with information from Mixpanel that can be found here.
The final version of iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 was released on September 16, with a 1:4 adoption; that is, 1 in 4 would have updated their device by that same weekend.
Recently, Google announced the introduction of version 11 of the Android operating system; however, the 46% of mobile device users are using a version that was released two years ago, suggesting that this 46% is vulnerable to post-2018 computer threats.
If we look through the social networks, such as Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, we can see that the screenshots, as well as the typography used in the subtitles that accompany most of the images, stickers and emojisThe newest versions of the software, corresponding to Apple's devices, are visible in stories and publications.
iOS 13, which was released in the fall of 2019, is installed on 56% devices that support the iOS 14 update; the fact that Apple users can access the latest software versions responds to the introduction of automated updates on iOS 12 - released in the fall of 2018, the same year Android 9 was released. The process is seamless for the user, as all that is required is for the device in question - a compatible iPhone or iPad - to be at rest, connected to a Wi-Fi network and plugged into the charger.
iOS 14 introduces strong measures that Facebook and Google have criticized in recent weeks and that is that Apple bets on the user's privacy. The importance of upgrading to the latest version of iOS 14 is a strong shield that protects the user from crawlers on the network both in its highly efficient browser, Safari, as in other applications:
"(...) provides a Privacy Report so that users can easily see the tracking indicators between sites that have been blocked" and "users can choose to share their approximate location (...) rather than their precise location, (...) and gain even more transparency about the use of the microphone and camera in an app".
For example, both the iPad and the iPhone now provide a visual clue that lets the user know when the camera has been turned on or the microphone has been turned on.
The application developers expressed their dissatisfaction to Apple, since, a week after its launch, the company launched a version of iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 totally different from the last beta -a test version, not a final consumer version- to evidence bad privacy practices by developers who took advantage of the permissions granted by the user to collect information without permission, as happened with Tik Tok, Instagram and other applications that, in addition, constantly used the information in the clipboard -the place where information is temporarily stored when using the "copy" command- without the user's knowledge. Now, this information is accompanied by a notification: when an application makes use of the clipboard, an alert will be triggered to inform the user that such an action was performed.
Is it really worth intentionally circumventing the update process, not only of the iPhone or iPad, but of any phone, to seriously expose our information?
Once installed, Apple clarifies that "iOS, iPadOS, tvOS and watchOS software updates cannot be undone". So the process is final.
In the next installment, we will address the issue of accessibility on mobile devices and how Apple leads this category, just one, on the new Digital Civil Engineering.
