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The Nine-Megabytes Edition Saturday, May 5, 2018

Apple Took 8 Days To Give Me The Data It Had Collected On Me. It Was Eye Opening., by Jefferson Graham, USA Today

The zip file I eventually received from Apple was tiny, only 9 megabytes, compared to 243 MB from Google and 881 MB from Facebook. And there's not much there, because Apple says the information is primarily kept on your device, not its servers. The one sentence highlight: a list of my downloads, purchases and repairs, but not my search histories through the Siri personal assistant or the Safari browser.

Apple Acknowledges Microphone Issue With Some iPhone 7 And 7 Plus Models On iOS 11.3 And Later, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

In an internal document distributed to Apple Authorized Service Providers this week, obtained by MacRumors, Apple said affected customers may experience a grayed-out speaker button during phone calls. The issue may also prevent affected customers from being heard during phone calls or FaceTime video chats.

GymKit Is The Best Thing To Happen To Treadmills In A Long Time, by Daniel Bader, iMore

To be fair, I'm not unfamiliar with the gym environment, but in recent years I've kept my training mostly at home, both to save money and to save myself the embarrassment of having to come face to face with perfect lungers.

I shouldn't have been worried, because before long my head was buried exactly where I like it: in a screen. I was there to demo Apple's nascent GymKit platform, which was announced at 2017's WWDC keynote but didn't debut in the U.S. until December. Having since arrived in several other countries, it's now available to use in Canada at Equinox gyms and on Life Fitness equipment, and it's a really great experience.

Stuff

Apple Shutting Down Texture’s Windows Magazine App After Acquisition, by Jacob Kastrenakes, The Verge

While this might sound like a case of Apple immediately cutting off users outside of its ecosystem, the discontinuation of Texture’s Windows app may have been a long time coming. The app seemingly hasn’t been updated in some time, and on the Windows Store, it’s inundated with bad reviews dating back years about how poorly the app works. Multiple reviews mention being unable to download magazines, which is kind of the entire point of the app.

Get Your Life In Order With These Apps, by Blayne Slabbert, Stuff

Here's a selection to consider if you want help organising your life.

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As an experiment, I've turned off 3D touch on my iPhone. (The setting is under General > Accessibility, if you want to follow along.) And, so far, I have not noticed my phone being less usable.

In fact, the two annonying buttons on the lock screen -- the torchlight and the camera buttons -- are gone. Which made me happy.

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Thanks for reading.