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The Update-All Edition Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Apple Updates Its Operating Systems To Address Telugu Bug, by Josh Centers, TidBITS

In what seems to be an increasingly common refrain, we’re here to tell you that Apple has once again updated all of its operating systems, this time to address the Telugu character bug that would cause Apple’s operating systems to crash when displaying a particular character. In this case, the character in question was in the Indian language Telugu, perhaps not something that many users outside India would use intentionally, but something that could be employed by anyone with malicious intent. We hope Apple figured out the underlying cause of these crashes, since it’s not the first time a particular character or string has crashed Apple devices.

It’s relatively unlikely that any given person (outside India, of course!) would run across the Telugu bug or be targeted by a bad actor in the near future, so we recommend waiting a few days before installing to make sure these updates don’t introduce additional problems. But after that, make sure to update to eliminate the possibility of someone messing with you via this bug.

Readers Weigh In On Pogue's Apple HomePod Listening Test, by David Pogue, Yahoo

Soon enough, my little test started bouncing around the Twitterverse; here are some of the most popular theories and critiques of the test.

[...]

I suspect, in the end, that my original conclusions are correct: That different pieces of music are different, and the people listening to it are different. There is no right answer.

Apple’s Decision To Make Health Care Records Available On The iPhone Is A Game-Changer, by Aneesh Chopra, Wired

But the announcement portends great things for consumers and the app developers seeking to serve them, from our perspectives as the former US chief technology officer under President Obama, and as an early adopter of the Apple service as Rush University Medical Center’s chief information officer. That’s because Apple has committed to an open API for health care records—specifically, the Argonaut Project specification of the HL7 Fast Health Interoperability Resources—so your doctor or hospital can participate with little extra effort.

This move is a game-changer for three reasons: It affirms there is one common path to open up electronic health records data for developers so they can focus on delighting consumers rather than chasing records. It encourages other platform companies to build on that path, rather than pursue proprietary systems. And it ensures that the pace of progress will accelerate as healthcare delivery systems respond to the aggregate demand of potentially millions of iPhone users around the world.

10 Best Mindfulness Apps, by Jacqui Agate, Independent

Some apps take a traditional approach, with sessions guided by voice; others use music, stories or animation. Some are completely free, while others require a subscription. Some can be easily used on the go; others are better tried at home, when you’re free from distractions.

Your choice will depend on whether you’re a novice or a pro, how much time you can set aside and how you prefer to learn. It’s also worth remembering the difference between “meditation” and “mindfulness”. Though they're often used interchangeably, meditation is an umbrella term, while mindfulness is the specific practice of peaking your awareness of your surroundings, actions and physicality.

Stuff

Twitterrific Adds Multi-Account Features, Follower And Following Lists, And More, by John Voorhees, MacStories

One of the highlights of the update is enhancements to multi-account support. If you have more than one Twitter account set up in Twitterrific, right clicking on the reply, quote, retweet, or like buttons displays a popup window for choosing which account you want to use for each of those functions.

Life On An iPad, by Charles Arthur, The Overspill

The big advantage these days is that if you trust your documents to iCloud, then moving between Mac and iPad isn’t a problem. [...] I was able to go straight to my iPad and have all the tools I needed.

Setapp, The Netflix Of Mac Apps, Is Better Than Ever, by Bob LeVitus, Houston Chronicle

Setapp isn't for everyone, but, if you love checking out new apps (like I do), or you've considered buying one or more of the included apps (as I did), you're sure to find Setapp a bargain at $9.99 a month.

Hands On: Promise Apollo Cloud 2 Duo Provides Network Time Machine, iOS Files Compatibility, by Mike Wuerthele, AppleInsider

Promise's Apollo Cloud 2 Duo has a simple setup process on the iPhone that just about anybody can handle, and is the closest thing we've seen yet to network storage as an appliance.

Develop

A Taste Of CoreData - Part 0 - A Graph Framework, by Yannick Heinrich

I would like to start a series of post presenting CoreData using a different approach, starting more from the code documentation and trying to provide some explanations about how the framework seems to work under the hood.

Bottom of the Page

How many bloggers and reviewers and such who disagreed with David Pogue's little experiment conducted and published their own blind test? I'm interested to see the results.

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Thanks for reading.