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The Break-and-Shock Edition Thursday, April 25, 2019

Apple Initiates Three-Prong AC Wall Plug Adapter Voluntary Recall Program, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

Apple states that, in very rare cases, affected Apple three-prong wall plug adapters may break and create a risk of electrical shock if touched. These wall plug adapters shipped with Mac and certain iOS devices between 2003 and 2010 and were also included in the Apple World Travel Adapter Kit.

Apple Maps Gains Detailed Terrain Features For Arizona, New Mexico, And Nevada US States, by Tim Hardwick, MacRumors

The overall look and feel of Apple Maps is mostly the same, but zooming and panning reveals more details like grass, trees, sports fields, and parking lots. Apple says search results also become more relevant.

Apple Updates XProtect To Combat 'Windows' Exploits On Mac Machines, by Charlie Osborne, ZDNet

The Apple update, dated April 19, adds a definition for one item, MACOS.d1e06b8, which includes a signature for PE files. Wardle connected the signature to TrojanSpy.MacOS.Winplyer, which Trend Micro describes as an .EXE file designed to deploy on Mac machines.

While the .EXE format is more commonly associated with Windows, back in February, Trend Micro researchers found an interesting campaign which was making use of weaponized .EXE files bundled with a popular firewall app for Mac called Little Snitch.

Stuff

MindNode 6 Review: Refined Mind Mapping, by Ryan Christoffel, MacStories

For current MindNode users, the app you love now offers more power and flexibility than ever before. Iterative, feature-adding updates like this run the risk of cluttering the core app experience, but that's not at all the case here – every addition serves as a meaningful enhancement that, rather than cluttering the app, instead makes it more pleasant to use.

AliveCor Monitor Gets FDA Approval To Detect Two More Heart Conditions Than Apple Watch, by Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac

The KardiaMobile EKG Monitor is a tiny $99 device that measures heart-rate through two finger pads, with results reported in an iPhone app. The company already had clearance to detect AFib, but has now been approved to detect two other common heart conditions.

Juice Consolidates The Mac’s Bluetooth Functionality Into A Single, Handy Utility, by John Voorhees, MacStories

However, if you want to manage all of your Bluetooth gear in one centralized place, Juice is a better option, especially if you have a MacBook Pro and find yourself pairing Bluetooth headphones with it a lot because the Touch Bar means those controls are always close at hand without cluttering up your Mac's screen.

Google Fit Now Available On iOS With Apple Health Sync, by Abner Li, 9to5Google

Google’s fitness app is an aggregator of health data rather than a creator. For now, Google is just taking that data to calculate Move Minutes and Heart Points, which might be a better measure of activity than just step count. However, the promise of Google Fit — and the company’s up-and-coming health effort — is using that data to provide unique insights.

Notes

Is The Immediate Playback Of Events Changing Children’s Memories?, by Julia Cho, New York Times

Many studies have been done on how a person taking a photograph reinforces or reshapes their memory, but what about our children — the subject of our constant documentation? Does seeing themselves in the third person change or even falsify their memories? Instead of remembering the experience of singing up there on the stage looking out at the audience from her own eyes, my daughter’s memory becomes entangled with the videographer’s perspective from the audience looking up at the stage.

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