Apple’s highly secure iPhone Lockdown Mode is surprisingly usable

Lockdown Mode is the first major capability of its kind designed to offer an extreme, optional protection for the very small number of users who face grave, targeted threats to their digital security.
Apple’s Lockdown Mode offers specialized additional protection to users who may be at risk of highly targeted cyberattacks from private companies developing state-sponsored mercenary spyware. When enabled, Wired‘s Lily Hay Newman found it to be “surprisingly usable.”
Lily Hay Newman for Wired:
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The company has consistently emphasized that Lockdown Mode is not meant for mainstream use by most people—but in a week of testing, it’s surprisingly tolerable.
Turning on Lockdown Mode simply involves confirming the setting change with your device PIN or a biometric authentication in “Privacy & Security” and then rebooting so the system can apply all the restrictions and limitations. Enabling Lockdown Mode is similar to changing the language of your device—the system needs to comprehensively adopt the new configuration and apply it everywhere. Once the reboot is complete, your device comes back on looking pretty much like normal.
When malware developers target Apple devices, they tailor their attacks to exploit weaknesses in the complex features of iOS and macOS that facilitate communication and data sharing and handle different file types and information formats. So Lockdown Mode aims to make it much harder for commercial spyware vendors or other motivated and well-resourced actors to develop exploit chains that combine vulnerabilities in multiple iOS or macOS features to take control of devices. In practice, this means that it’s harder and less fun to casually share — and especially receive — links, GIFs, and integrated elements in tools like Messages. And services like HomeKit are curtailed as well…
But by and large, you can continue to function normally while using Lockdown Mode. Sometimes you’ll miss a call from someone you’ve never interacted with digitally before or need extra seconds to convey something you’re trying to share to a friend, but the restrictions start to make sense and become more intuitive over time.

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MacDailyNews Take: It’ll stop you from doing things, but if you’re a potential target of state-sponsored mercenary spyware, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
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