¬ just serendipity 🍀 (not just serendipity)

dedoimedo makes me realize that the iOS lockdown mode is actually quite usable, even for us normies:

For a while now, I’ve been hearing about this tool. Mostly in regard to high-profile zero-day, zero-click, hands-free, security vulnerabilities in iPhones and subsequent hacking of said devices by nation-state actors. Sounds blockbustery, which piqued my interest. I am usually rather disdainful of mainstream media reporting of tech affairs, but that does not mean there isn’t something genuinely cool behind flashy, scary headlines. And so I decided to test the Lockdown Mode.

What are its effects?

Specifically, most attachments are blocked in Messages, websites that use JavaScript engines that run Just-in-Time (JIT) compilers or use remote fonts will not render their pages correctly, various app invitations and calls are blocked from people you haven’t approved beforehand, location information for shared photos is excluded, Wi-Fi connectivity to insecure networks is limited, and so on.

Aren’t these all sensible defaults anyway?

Pretty much everything in the list above makes absolute sense. None of the “restricted” features are actually important or desired. Think about it. Calls from people you don’t know? Check! Photo location blocking? Check! Web pages with pointless remote fonts? Double check! Sounds like an Internet reset, going back to 2010, when the computing world was nicer, saner, cleaner!

Enabling it is trivial, the prompts are perhaps a bit scarier than necessary though:

You get a whole bunch of explanations and warnings. Confirm. Reboot. The iPhone will load without any visible signs that it’s actually running in a “restricted” mode. Now. Launch Safari, and you will see a notification displayed below the address bar. This is the first indication that the phone is using the Lockdown Mode. But that does not mean you will be affected. Far from it. I spent quite some time browsing, and I didn’t notice any website not working correctly. Then again, the sites I go to are normal, sane sites, with no sensory overload.

Initially Logseq and Obsidian would not properly work: they didn’t seem to be able to read files from iCloud. I had to explicitly whitelist them in lockdown mode settings. All other apps worked just fine.

When web browsing with Safari I didn’t find any issue (so far) in the websites I normally surf. The only noticeable UI difference is that, as web fonts are blocked, the visual identity of websites are gone¹.

This is not necessarily a negative point: blocking web fonts has the positive side effect of loading less remote data / reducing bandwidth.

Furthermore, by making websites look more generic, perhaps that doubles-down as a feature to make them less appealing / interesting, akin to using a software filter to make your phone display everything in black-and-white; we’re all spending a lot of screen time after all.

I am curious how long it will take until I run into some limitation and/or strong annoyance from using lockdown mode. If that doesn’t ever happen though, perhaps it’s a good idea to stick to it.