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The High-Efficiency Edition Saturday, July 1, 2017

HEVC And HEIF Will Make Video And Photos More Efficient, by Glenn Fleishman, TidBITS

If you haven’t already experienced abbreviation overload, Apple has added two more to your plate: HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) and HEIF (High Efficiency Image File Format — yes, it’s short one F). These two new formats will be used by iOS 11 and macOS 10.13 High Sierra when Apple releases them later this year.

While you may never have heard of HEVC or HEIF before, both are attempts to solve a set of problems related to video and still images. As people take photos and shoot video at increasingly higher resolutions and better quality, storage and bandwidth start to become limitations. Even in this day of ever-cheaper and ever-faster everything, consuming less storage space and requiring less bandwidth when syncing or streaming still has many positive aspects.

Apple To Recognize National Parks With Donations, Activity Badge, by Jake Underwood, MacStories

Paying homage to United States national parks, Apple announced today that it will introduce opportunities for customers to donate to the National Park Foundation and earn a new Activity badge and iMessage stickers.

The Environmental Case For The iPhone, by Adam Minter, Motherboard

I recently visited a Vermont electronics recycling company, and wandered through a warehouse packed with obsolete, difficult-to-recycle devices: electric typewriters, video game consoles, reel-to-reel tape decks, guitar amplifiers, television, spectrometers, stereo speakers, and even some medical imaging consoles. I thought the mashup was interesting, so I took a picture with my iPhone and tweeted it. A few minutes later, Nathaniel Bullard, a renewable energy analyst (and friend), tweeted back at me: "How many of those single-function boxes are now just a module in a smartphone, I wonder?"

Love In The Time Of iMessage, by Ankita Rao, Motherboard

"What I love about iMessage is that the interface keeps the most important feature front and center: the text messages," Yalla told me. "No matter how many updates the app has undergone over the years, this remains true."

While much of iMessage looks like other messaging platforms, several features have had a particular impact on the way we date. Like the animated dots ("...") that indicate that someone is typing, and the optional (and insane, in my opinion) read receipts, which confirm that somebody has seen your message.

Stuff

The iPad Is Not Your Enemy: Using Technology To Promote Learning This Summer, by Randy Kulman, Additude

Summer is an opportunity. It is a time to expand learning beyond four walls, and encourage the kind of hands-on education that children with ADHD especially love. With some vigilance and creativity, parents can fill summer vacation with learning and healthy habits that will set up their children for success at school.

Develop

Chris Lattner On The Realm WWDC 2017 Swift Panel, by Ole Begemann

Chris Lattner was a guest on a Swift panel during WWDC a few weeks ago. Here are some quotes I found interesting, edited for brevity and clarity.

Notes

Removal Of 3D Touch App Switching Gesture In iOS 11 Confirmed As Intentional Change, by Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac

It’s unclear why Apple would remove something that was so useful — perhaps it interferes with the gestures of the upcoming bezel-less iPhone 8 somehow, although it’s hard to envision how it might clash.

Removal Of Built-in YouTube App In iOS 6 Was YouTube's Decision To 'Take Back Control Of Our App', by Mitchel Broussard, MacRumors

Now, in a series of Tweets, former YouTube employee Hunter Walk has said that it was YouTube and Google's decision not to renew an agreement with Apple for YouTube on iOS, so that the company could "take back control of our app".