Welcome to 95 Mac Daily for Tuesday, August 19th, 2025. I'm your host, Chance Miller. We are sponsored

this week by Backblaze. Leading off today, the United Kingdom has retreated from a controversial order that would have forced Apple to provide a backdoor to American user's data.

This is according to a statement from U.S. Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.

Gabbard said the decision comes after months of work between the U.K. and the U.S.

to ensure that American's private data remains private.

The U.K. as such, has agreed to drop the

mandate. The backstory here is that in January, UK authorities confidentially issued a so-called

technical capability notice under the company's Investigatory Powers Act, a law that

gives the government sweeping powers to compel tech companies to weaken

encryption. The order would have required Apple to turn off advanced data protection for

iCloud users in the United States so that UK agencies could access cloud backups, voice

memos, and other encrypted content. The Financial Times reports that the UK has fully agreed to

rescind the order, but it has yet to be formally withdrawn. The BBC reports that Apple has yet to

receive any formal communication from the U.S. or the UK. The British government has fought hard

to keep the details of its demands private, so it's

unclear how much or if any of the decision-making process around walking back the order

will be made public.

And in response to the initial order, Apple did disable advanced data protection in the

UK.

Theoretically, this decision to walk back the demands by the UK government opens the door

for Apple to reenable the feature in the country, but we have no timeline on when that might happen.

Next up today, a new report says that Apple will finally hit a long-held goal to reduce its

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