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The Updated-All Edition Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Apple Releases OS X 10.11.6, iOS 9.3.3, tvOS 9.2.2, And watchOS 2.2.2, by Josh Centers, TidBITS

Apple has updated all of its operating systems with security improvements and mostly unspecified bug fixes, but no new features. As always, we recommend waiting a week or so before installing these updates, and then checking to see if early adopters are complaining about any problems.

Apple Squashes FaceTime Bug That Facilitated Eavesdropping On Calls, by Mikey Campbell, AppleInsider

Apple in a pair of security updates for iOS and OS X on Monday addressed a FaceTime vulnerability that allows attackers to surreptitiously maintain audio connectivity in a seemingly terminated FaceTime call.

Practice, Practice, Practice

How To Get Your Photos Featured On Apple’s Shot On iPhone Billboards, by Haje Jan Kamps, TechCrunch

I tracked down Jordan Ison, one of the photographers featured in Apple’s most recent campaign, to find out how his images came to be featured in the world’s biggest art exhibition.

Apple Shares Two New 'Shot On iPhone' Videos Featuring Wildlife, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Apple today shared two new "Shot on iPhone" ad spots on its YouTube channel, highlighting the video capturing capabilities of the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus.

Why Wasn't This Done Last Year?

Apple Begins Rolling Out iTunes Match With Audio Fingerprint To Apple Music Subscribers, by Jim Dalrymple, The Loop

One of the biggest complaints about Apple Music over the past year was that it wouldn’t properly match songs subscribers had in their existing iTunes libraries. That problem is being fixed by Apple.

Apple has been quietly rolling out iTunes Match audio fingerprint to all Apple Music subscribers. Previously Apple was using a less accurate metadata version of iTunes Match on Apple Music, which wouldn’t always match the correct version of a particular song. We’ve all seen the stories of a live version of a song being replaced by a studio version, etc.

Using iTunes Match with audio fingerprint, those problems should be a thing of the past.

Apple Releases iTunes 12.4.2 With Fix For Short Track Playback Bug, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Apple today released iTunes 12.4.2 with a fix for a bug that caused playback issues when listening to Apple Music tracks shorter than 60 seconds.

Research With iPhones

Apple Entices Its First Big Drug Company To ResearchKit, by Matt Brian, Engadget

GSK's Patient Rheumatoid Arthritis Data from the Real World (PARADE) study is the first of its kind and is the first time a major pharmaceutical (or big pharma) company has embarked on such a project. PARADE is designed to look at the impact of rheumatoid arthritis on a patient's life, by using iPhone sensors to collect information on joint pain, fatigue and overall mood. GSK will track the activity and "quality of life measures" for 300 patients over a three-month period.

Pixel Drawing

iPad Pro: How Apple's Tablet Can Make You Into A Painting Master – Or Almost, by David Phelan, Independent

How creative are you? When the Apple iPad Pro was released last autumn, I interviewed several artists who had just started using the advanced tablet and its clever, super-precise Pencil. The results they came up with were phenomenal and used some of the inexpensive, or free, apps available for general use on the iPad.

My own attempts, however, were frankly rubbish. The apps did everything they could to help, and confirmed what Tim Cook told the Independent at the time, that Apple has always sought to help creativity flourish.

So an invitation to a life-drawing class at the Royal Academy to see if I could manage something a little more imaginative was not to be missed.

How Do You Pronounce Pixelmator?

Pixelmator 2.3 For iOS Adds Magnetic Selection, Quick Selection, More, by Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac

This update brings the latest selection tools from the Mac app to iOS devices. This includes the intelligent Quick Selection tool and automatic Magnetic Selection tool, where users roughly trace around an object and the app fits a precise line, using edge detection algorithms.

Pixelmator 3.5 Canyon Review: Better Selective Editing And A New Apple Photos Extension, by Jeff Carlson, Macworld

For a large amount of image editing tasks, Pixelmator is an excellent, affordable alternative to Photoshop. Its enhanced selection tools work well and add to its utility, while the Pixelmator Retouch Extension for Photos is a good way to add selective edits while remaining within your Photos library.

Plan For It

Schedules Aren't A Constraint On Life, They Let You Live It, by Nick Janetakis

Having a schedule lets you mix things up which in turn gives you a fresh outlook on something rather than just spinning your wheels with a guilty conscience.

Want to know the difference between a programmer and the so-called “10x programmer”? Amazing time management.

Tweets Noted

Was Taylor Swift Betrayed By Her Own Notes App?, by Brian Feldman, New York Magazine

The Notes app giveth, and the Notes app taketh away. Last night’s rumble between app mogul Kim Kardashian and Apple critic Taylor Swift — the latest in a long-running feud over an lyric from a song by Kardashian’s musician husband, Kanye West — began with a set of videos uploaded to Snapchat by Kardashian, showing that Swift had, in fact, approved a lyric she later disparaged. But it reached its apex a few hours later, when Swift responded with — what else? — a screenshot of a statement written in Notes, one of Apple’s iPhone apps, and uploaded to Instagram.

A Brief History Of Celebrities Using The Notes App To Share Their Thoughts With The World, by Bobby Finger, Jezebel

In this hyperconnected celebrity age, every snapchat becomes a news story, and starting a feud is as easy as tweeting a single snake emoji. Comments and clarifications don’t need to be sought out by journalists or fed through publicists, they can be delivered instantly to millions immediately after being written out on a device they have with them at all times. Some celebrities simply share their thoughts in tweet storms. Others explain themselves in lengthy Instagram captions. But the savvier among them head to the Notes app on iOS.

The Kim-Kanye-Taylor Feud, Explained For People Who Don’t Know What The Hell Is Going On, by Ellie Bate, BuzzFeed

From award show interruptions to character assassination.

Stuff

Why You Should Continue Paying For Evernote, by Jill Duffy, PC Magazine

The problem right now is that there is no other tool that does it all, at least not to the deep extent that I use Evernote.

BBC Announces New Personalized Content Portal With 'BBC+' App, by Tim Hardwick, MacRumors

The idea behind the app is to work as a customized one-stop portal for all things BBC that corrals content from across the service, from TV and radio to exclusively online bitesize and longform content.

Quiet, Please

The Sea Will Get A Lot Quieter Without The Navy’s Whale-Killing Sonar, by Nick Stockton, Wired

If you were a blue whale, the water in most of the world’s oceans would be so murky that you wouldn’t be able to see your own flukes. Which is why most marine species use sound to navigate, feed, find mates, and communica—BLUURRRRGGGGHHHH AAAARRROOOOOO WAA WAA WAA—oh, sorry, pardon the interruption.

That’s just the noise of whales cheering. See, they just won a major noise pollution battle against the US Navy. For over a decade, the Navy has been trying to convince the courts that they can use an ultra-loud sonar array in a way that is safe for marine life. But on July 15, the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said that no, actually it’s not safe at all.

Bottom of the Page

Is it 'irony' that I am listening to the audiobook Quiet: The Power of Intorverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking every morning in a not-so-quiet subway train?

(I think I still don't understand the meaning of the word 'irony'.)

~

Thanks for reading.