Originally published at: https://appletalk.com.au/2018/09/tuesday-morning-news040918/
It’s Labor Day in the US, but I’ve got enough tabs open in my browser that we’re doing news anyway, both as a sort of catch-up and a kind of clean-out. By now it should be clear that Apple’s putting a lot of eggs into the AR basket, and one of the places they might be able to bring that technology to everyone (besides the experiences enabled by AR Kit) is in maps. It’s not too crazy to speculate that Apple’s recent AR hiring spree relates to some first-party AR application, which could very well be bringing AR tech to Apple Maps.
As good as the wrist-raise detection is on the Apple Watch, it’s a solution that solves a problem that wouldn’t exist if we had always-on displays on the Apple Watch. One such patent looks at the efficiently storing the usage data that can then be used to adjust brightness and contrast of specific areas of the display to compensate for display burn-in, leading to speculation Apple is working on an always-on screen for the Apple Watch. What’s more, and older patent tells us about non-invasive glucose monitoring that could potentially be used in a future Apple wearable, although the method sounds like it isn’t without accuracy issues.
Fast Company talked to Imran Chaudri, one of the original UI designers on the iPhone project, about how he views his legacy given that we now know about some of the downsides of smartphones. As it turns out, Apple knew we needed Do Not Disturb a lot earlier than we got it, there’s some kind of internal struggle at Apple over how much control you should have over your device, and with the Screen Time features in iOS 12, Apple is responding to bad press, even though product design in as large a company as Apple is a highly complex issue that can often mean customers aren’t getting the best possible product.
The Touch Bar on MacBook Pros is divisive, to say the least. So what’s the solution? Instead of removing it entirely, how about doubling down on it? How about making the entire keyboard area a touchscreen, turning the bottom half into a giant Touch Bar? Of course, we’re just talking about a concept here, but I think iPads have shown us that people want some kind of tactile feedback for extended typing, else we might have seen giant dynamic keyboards before now.
Macworld says there are no good solutions when it comes to dealing with multiple Apple IDs, but if you’ve accidentally created an Apple ID associated with another email address, you can just give it up, otherwise known as the “log out and never log back in” method. I’m interested to know if you can delete your Apple ID (it can apparently be done via Apple’s privacy portal), then add the email address to your main Apple ID, because that would be a good, if slightly complicated, solution.
The developer of Super Duper talks about changes to AppleEvents in macOS Mojave in the context of SuperDuper scheduling, and it’s mostly the same thing that you read yesterday. Changes to the various security prompts mean that it’s not possible for SuperDuper scheduling to have the same user experience as in previous versions. The good news is, they’re working on a version that has scheduling that bypasses System Events.
MacStories gives us the changes in version 3.0 of journaling app Day One. The three major changes are an improved editor which makes making changes easier overall, as well as a dark mode that can be activated on schedule and support for recoding audio clips up to 30 minutes long, although you’ll need a premium subscription to take advantage of the latter two features.
Philips has committed to adding support for Siri Shortcuts later this year in a future version of its Hue app, which will allow users to change lighting using Siri voice commands. Hue voice commands will also be compatible with other shortcuts, allowing you to perform multi-step actions using a single voice command.
Mac RSS reader NetNewsWire has been handed back to its original developer Brent Simmons, after spending some time away at Black Pixel. Simmons continues to work on his own RSS reader Evergreen, which will now be rebranded as NetNewsWire 5.0, and there’s a very early not-even-beta build available if you want to try it out.
Today’s Apple support article of the day is the one about getting to know Finder on your Mac. It’s basic stuff, but could be useful for any new Mac users that you know.