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The More-Watch-Ads Edition Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Apple Grabs More Celebrities For A New Series Of Apple Watch Ads, by Jacob Kastrenakes, The Verge

Apple just put out a new series of Apple Watch ads, and while they're in the same style as last run, they go much heavier on celebrity appearances. This time around they feature Nick Jonas, Alice Cooper, Jon Batiste, and another appearance from Chloë Sevigny.

Bluetooth Problem SE

Many iPhone SE Users Experiencing Bluetooth Phone Call Audio Issues, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

Over the past two weeks, an increasing number of iPhone SE early adopters have reported audio issues with Bluetooth phone calls when the smartphone is paired with a vehicle or wireless headset. The issue extends to GPS voice navigation for some, but streaming music over Bluetooth appears to be unaffected.

Security Matters

Half Of People Plug In USB Drives They Find In The Parking Lot, by Shaun Nichols, The Register

Researchers from Google, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Michigan, spread 297 USB drives around the Urbana-Champaign campus. They found that 48 percent of the drives were picked up and plugged into a computer, some within minutes of being dropped.

MIT Tech Review Tries To Blame Apple Encryption For Wrongful Arrest, by Tim Cushing, TechDirt

Bergstein glosses over the security implications of requiring phone manufacturers to hold the decryption keys for devices and services and instead presents his argument as an appeal to emotion. Those on Apple's side -- including Apple CEO Tim Cook -- are given only the briefest of nods before alarmists like Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance are given the stage.

NSFW Problem

Apple Pulls Third-Party Reddit Clients For NSFW Content, by Graham Spencer, MacStories

Some of the third-party Reddit clients have now returned to the App Store. Both Narwhal and Antenna are now available in the App Store, but both have been updated to remove the NSFW toggle that used to be in their apps. It is our understanding that Apple's objection is with the implementation of those NSFW toggles. Apple wants them removed from all Reddit apps so that if a user does want to view NSFW content, that toggle must be manually changed from the Reddit website.

Stuff

With Version 1.1 And An iPad App, I’m Switching To Airmail, by Federico Viticci, MacStories

When I first covered Airmail for iPhone, I noted how the vision of an email client for power users on iOS was only halfway there due to the lack of an iPad app and a variety of glitches and technical issues. Airmail showed that it was possible to build an email app for power users on mobile devices – asking for a fair price in the process – but I couldn't switch to it as my full-time client yet.

That's changing with today's update to Airmail for iOS, which I've been using as my only email client on the iPhone and iPad for the past several weeks. In addition to an iPad app – which mostly follows in the footsteps of its iPhone counterpart in terms of UI and navigation choices – Airmail 1.1 brings powerful new features such as saved searches, customizable keyboard shortcuts, support for send later and read receipts, and more.

Review: Leaf, A Minimalist RSS Reader For The Mac, by Christian Zibreg, iDownloadBlog

Leaf offers a carefully crafted set of essential features regularly used by average users, but don’t let that fool you—this is a very capable app.

Prose. 3.0.2 Review: Safe Haven For Writers, Far From Maddening Social Media Crowd, by J.R. Bookwalter, Macworld

Assuming you don’t mind sharing everything with other users, Prose. is the perfect middle ground for writers, falling somewhere between blogging and the cacophony of social networking.

This App Knows What Devices Are Connected To Your Network, by Dave Farrington, Noodlemac

What you get is a lengthy list of every device (or, all the devices that allow themselves to be viewed) sortable by device name, IP address, MAC address, and so on, including when the device last appeared on the network.

BBC Announces Family-Friendly iPlayer Kids App For iOS, by Tim Hardwick, MacRumors

Parents and guardians can create a profile for children by selecting an age and a character avatar to identify the child's account, after which specific programs for pre-schoolers or over-fives can be viewed.

Develop

The Inherent Problem With Anonymous Apps, by David Byttow, Medium

Like Secret, Yik Yak captured the imagination of millions of people and provided a lot of entertainment value, but it doesn’t foster community the way social products that last do. I like to refer to this as the Fantasy Land Theory, because most anonymous apps are rooted in just that: fantasy. And like most entertainment, they’re designed to provide an escape from reality.

Medium And Twitter Founder: ‘We Put Junk Food In Front Of Them And They Eat It’, by Andy Meek, The Guardian

Ev Williams is not a fan of the increasingly homogenised media he currently sees, with its emphasis on feeding the great, gaping maw of platforms like Twitter and Facebook too often producing what he describes as tantamount to junk food.

Notes

Apple Has A Bunch Of Secret Buildings Named After Greek Deities, by Matt Rosoff, Business Insider

Apple has quietly bought and leased a bunch of buildings and named them after Greek deities, according to a report today in the Silicon Valley Business Journal based on documents filed with city governments.

A lot of the buildings seemingly relate to Apple’s reported plans to build an electric, possibly self-driving, car.

Bottom of the Page

Can your RSS reader check individual feeds from individual web sites, or must it go through a centralized server maintained by your RSS reader's manufacturer? Can your podcast player check individual feeds from individual web sites, or must it go through a centralized server maintained by your podcast player's manufactuer?

Remember: that centralized server can be shut down at any moment.

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If Mondays are meant for me to remind myself that there are things in life that I shouldn't be caring too much, Tuesdays are meant for me to come to the realization that there are things in life that I can't avoid.

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Thanks for reading.