Apple is being honored with the Helen Keller Achievement Award for their work in making technology more accessible. Specifically, the American Foundation for the Blind is singling-out Apple's work on VoiceOver, which can let users hear descriptions of what happens on their display.
For the visually-impaired in particular, this is a huge feature. The world we live in isn't always considerate of everyone living in it, and even as technology has pushed farther, it hasn't necessarily moved in a positive direction for everyone. Look at games, as an example. Early games were text-heavy, requiring the player to use their imagination to visualize the world they were interacting with. As time has gone on, some of the biggest pushes have been in graphics, sadly making them less accessible to the visually-impaired. Apple's iOS devices have changed that, if only a little. The tools are now there to offer more choices than ever to a group of gamers who have had to get by with very few. The big problem is, many of us don't know they're there.
Apple today launched a new microsite focused on the iPad, exploring the way the iPad can "change the way you do things every day." The site offers up a selection of apps and usage ideas for the iPad, organized into several categories: Cooking with iPad, Learning with iPad, Small Business with iPad, Traveling with iPad, and Redecorating with iPad.
When you connect to a hotspot, TripMode automatically starts restricting access to the internet with any apps you have open. You can customize which ones get access and which don’t. You can also monitor how much data they use, which is handy if you have a data cap on your hotspot.
Augmented with text and videos, Snapshots provides a decent introduction to some key concepts in both Newtonian and Einsteinian physics. It's a good resource for secondary-school physics students, and anyone who wants to better understand physics.
Sometimes you stumble on something by making assumptions that turn out to be right, and it’s hard to tell whether you were a dummy for taking so long to realize something so obvious, or whether you’ve uncovered something that other people haven’t.
This is a long way of saying that if you use Apple’s Remote app or the Now Playing glance, you can turn the Digital Crown to adjust the volume of the source you’re controlling. As you turn the crown, the volume control gets a nice bit of highlighting to indicate what’s going on.
It's pretty nuts that 59 sales is top paid on the Mac App Store in the US.
Like most time management tools, you can spend a whole lot of time and money buying books, gadgets, and organizers to help you get the most out of every minute of your day. And, if that’s your thing, have at it; a simple Google search will yield more Pomodoro options than you can imagine. But the beauty of the Pomodoro Technique is that you don’t need anything more than a basic timer to start getting your work done.
"Top Paid" is a terrible name for that leaderboard, because it implies being paid more money than … everybody. "Trending Paid" is fairer.
— Daniel Jalkut (@danielpunkass) May 7, 2015We had 50M monthly active users and 250M searches every month. Steve Jobs told the labels, including Warner Music, to sue us. So they did and for $40B. How do I know? I know because Steve Jobs gave them a list of music streaming sites that were competitive threats to iTunes, and told them to take care of it.
This project contains what I believe in when it comes to a mindful and intentional approach to technology. After nearly 2,500 posts, I have nothing more to add to what has already been said.
For every comedy bit produced, there were roughly a hundred pitches that didn’t make it. So I asked fellow Late Night and Late Show vets to recall their most memorable rejections. Then I ran some of those by Dave, who was happy to reminisce about former writers.
“I can’t thank these men and women enough,” he said, “because I was doing their show more than they were doing mine.”
When was the last time you heard a busy signal?
— mat (@mat) May 6, 2015Thanks for reading.