Seasons Greetings
We would like to wish all our customers a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. We will be taking a short break ourselves and restricted trading hours over the festive period. We would also like to remind everyone to backup their files. This time of year people take lots of photos and look back over photos from previous years. Backups are becoming increasingly more important with new and encrypted hard drives.
Christmas and New Year Trading
We will be closed from Christmas eve through New Years Day, returning on the 2nd January
Black Friday in Australia.
The Black Friday fires of 13 January 1939, in Victoria, Australia, were considered one of the worst natural bushfires (wildfires) in the world, and certainly the single worst in Australian history as a measure of land affected. Almost 20,000 km² (4,942,000 acres, 2,000,000 ha) of land was burnt, 71 people died and several towns were entirely destroyed. Over 1,300 homes and 69 sawmills were burnt and a total of 3,700 buildings were destroyed. It was calculated that three quarters of the State of Victoria was directly or indirectly affected by the disaster. Considered in terms of both loss of property and loss of life, the 1939 fires were one of the worst disasters to have occurred in Australia and certainly the worst bushfire up to that time. Only the subsequent Ash Wednesday bushfires in 1983 and the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009 have resulted in more deaths. In terms of the total area burnt, the Black Friday fires are the second largest, burning 2 million hectares, with the Black Thursday fires of 1851 having burnt an estimated 5 million hectares.
Please remember this as the phrase Black Friday now seems to reference a sales event here instead, as it does in the United States.
Learn more about Australia’s Black Friday at Australian Disaster Resilience Knowledge Hub
Learn more about Australia’s Black Friday at Wikipedia
Black Friday in The United States.
In the United States, Black Friday is the day following Thanksgiving Day, traditionally the beginning of the Christmas shopping season and Apple runs a One Day Sale. Unfortunately the “Black Friday” sales are gaining popularity in Australia as well so despite the name, Geekworks will match or better Apple one day specials for this day stock allowing.
We have now moved to our new store with far better parking available. Our new address from the 15th July 2019 is 412 Old Cleveland Road, Coorparoo 4151 (Corner of Old Cleveland Road and Bennets Road)
watchOS 4.3.2 Software for Apple Watch
Apple today released watchOS 4.3.2, a small update to the watchOS 4 operating system that runs on the Apple Watch. watchOS 4.3.2 is a minor update and follows about a month after 4.3.1.
watchOS 4.3.2 can be downloaded through the dedicated Apple Watch app on the iPhone by going to General –> Software Update. To install the new software, the Apple Watch needs to have at least 50 percent battery, it needs to be placed on a charger, and it needs to be in range of the iPhone.
Apple’s USB Restricted Mode – your iPhone’s latest security feature
Apple quietly introduced a significant privacy safeguard as part of the new iOS 11.4.1 update that was released on July 9th. USB Restricted Mode prevents USB accessories that plug into the Lightning port from making data connections with an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch if your iOS device has been locked for over an hour.
USB Restricted Mode works like this: after an hour of your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch sitting without being unlocked, iOS will basically cut off the Lightning port and limit it to charging only. This hour timeout should theoretically stop devices like GrayKey (which plugs into an iPhone and cracks the passcode within a few hours) from working successfully.
If you’re not concerned about someone potentially breaking their way into your iOS device, you can disable the new security measure immediately. Just go to Settings —> Face ID (or Touch ID) & Passcode —> USB Accessories. Toggle this option to on (green) and your accessories will function the exact same way they did before iOS 11.4.1.
