Mac OS X Lion: The Missing Manual

Two Mac OS X Privacy Shields

Making its debut in Mac OS X Lion: a new Privacy tab in the Security & Privacy pane of System Preferences. It harbors two fairly random privacy-related options:

Send Diagnostic & Usage Data to Apple

If you turn on this box, your Mac will automatically and quietly send data to Apple about what’s going on with your Mac (anonymously, of course—Apple won’t know it’s you). The transmissions include details about crashes and freezes, what programs and hardware you use, what software versions and peripherals you have, and so on.

None of this is transmitted unless you turn this box on.

Incidentally, you have another chance to turn on automatic reporting: when a program, or your Mac, crashes. At that time, a message invites you to send a crash report to Apple; you can click either OK or No Thanks. You can also turn on “Don’t ask me again,” which makes your OK or No Thanks decision permanent. (What you’re actually doing with that “Don’t ask me again” option, of course, is changing the status of this checkbox here in the Security & Privacy pane of System Preferences. That’s how you can change your mind later.

Tip

Want to see the sort of information being sent? Open the Console app in Applications→Utilities. In the toolbar, click Show Log List, if necessary. Next to Diagnostic and Usage Information, click Show, if necessary. Under the subheadings here, you can read the sort of reports that Apple gets if you permit automatic sending. (Understanding the gobbledygook is ...