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The Taking-The-Temperature Edition Friday, January 26, 2018

I Tried Apple's Improved Health App. Here's What I Found, by Edward C. Baig, USA Today

For now you can’t send medical records from the app to a new doctor or some other health care provider you’re considering. You can let them look at your phone screen, which might not exactly be convenient. Apple won’t say, but I’m guessing they’ll get around to letting you send data through the app.

Nor can you contact the hospital or clinic directly within the app, should you want to consult with someone about test results that seem out of whack or beyond a “normal” range. If that happens you’re expected to contact your doctor directly the old fashioned way, assuming the physician hasn’t gotten in touch with you first.

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Apple is just getting started here. I look forward to taking the temperature of this app once iOS 11.3 is no longer in beta and more medical institutions come on board.

Up Close With Apple HomePod, Siri’s Expensive New Home, by Lance Ulanoff, Medium

Recently, though, I heard Apple’s HomePod again in a variety of scenarios and spaces. It sounded even better, especially when compared to larger Google Home Max and the aurally excellent Sonos One, the HomePod’s separation of sounds and fidelity to original instrumentation is astonishing.

This listening experience also added the smarts, or utility, that was missing back in June. Apple’s HomePod is, finally, a functioning Siri smart speaker.

Emerging LA Filmmakers Create Short Films With Small Budgets And Big Ideas, by James Hughes, Apple

In Los Angeles on a Saturday morning in November, a crew of 10 students from Hollywood High School, helmed by 17-year-old director Celine Gimpirea, are transforming a corner of the Calgary Cemetery into a movie set. In The Box, a boy slips inside a cardboard box and finds himself transported to other realms. On this well-manicured, impossibly green lawn, among rows of flat, black granite grave-markers, are rows of flat, black camera cases holding DIT stations, iPads and MacBook Pros — the tools that will bring the story to life.

Gimpirea’s is one of three teams of filmmakers involved in a month-long filmmaking workshop connecting creative professionals with emerging talent. The teams worked with powerful tools from Apple, including the MacBook Pro, iMac and Final Cut Pro X, as well as the RED Raven camera for shooting, and worked alongside Apple Retail experts and industry pros. LA-based independent filmmaking collective We Make Movies provided post-production supervision to help the filmmakers realize their visions.

Apple Finally Gets Cupertino’s Permission To Occupy Parts Of Apple Park Spaceship Building, by Chris O'Brien, VentureBeat

About one year after construction on the first phase of Apple Park was originally scheduled to be finished, the city of Cupertino has finally granted Apple a series of temporary occupancy permits that allow employees to move into parts of the main building.

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Last February, when Apple announced that the name of the new campus would be Apple Park, the company also said the new headquarters would be “open to employees” in April 2017. That proved to be overly optimistic.

Stuff

Logic Pro X Gets Major Update: ChromaVerb, Vintage EQs, Multi-Effects, Much More, by Justin Kahn, 9to5Mac

While we are getting a very long list of minor tweaks and enhancements here, version 10.4 is bringing some major new features to the table along with some serious gear in the way vintage EQ emulation, new orchestral instruments, a pair of multi-effect plug-ins and hundreds of new sounds.

Apple Updates Clips With New Poster For Chinese New Year & More, by Peter Cao, 9to5Mac

The update also improves browsing and recording selfies on iPhone X, and fixes an issue with the Top Secret poster animation.

Apple Watch Series 3 With Cellular Coming To Singapore & Hong Kong Next Month, by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

Apple has updated its website in Singapore and Hong Kong to announce that the Apple Watch with cellular will be available for preorder on February 2nd. The first orders will arrive to customers one week later on February 9th.

Develop

Mistakes In Time, by Aaron Harris, Y Combinator

And then something funny happened. I let go of the need to be immediately great, and started focusing on getting just a little bit better at what I was doing. Now that I think about it, this is the same thing that happens when I work with startups to set weekly growth goals. With a startup, the goal isn’t to go from $0 of revenue to $1mm of revenue in a day. The goal is to build the first version of a machine that consistently delivers growth. As you iterate on the machine to make it a little better each day, the growth that results compounds on itself unbelievably quickly. When you look back over the growth curve of a great company, it seems impossible that it started out with nothing.

When you let go of that need to be immediately great, you are also able to better learn from the people around you. Rather than compare yourself to where people are, and decide that it would be impossible to match them in the time you have, you think more about how to get gradually better over the time you have.