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The iPhone-Signature Edition Thursday, May 23, 2019

Android And iOS Devices Impacted By New Sensor Calibration Attack, by Catalin Cimpanu, ZDNet

This new technique -- called a calibration fingerprinting attack, or SensorID -- works by using calibration details from gyroscope and magnetometer sensors on iOS; and calibration details from accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer sensors on Android devices.

According to a team of academics from the University of Cambridge in the UK, SensorID impacts iOS devices more than Android smartphones. The reason is that Apple likes to calibrate iPhone and iPad sensors on its factory line, a process that only a few Android vendors are using to improve the accuracy of their smartphones' sensors.

Apple Pledges To Be 'Clearer And More Upfront' With iPhone Users About Battery Health And Performance In UK, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

In a pledge submitted to the Competition and Markets Authority or CMA, Apple committed to several actions it has already taken, including providing consumers with "clear and comprehensible information" about lithium-ion batteries, unexpected shutdowns, and performance management in iOS and on its website.

Apple added that if a future iOS update materially changes the impact of performance management when installed on an iPhone, it will notify consumers "in a clear manner" of those changes in the release notes for the update.

One Inventor’s Race To Manage His Parkinson’s Disease With An App, by Peter Andrey Smith, Medium

Finucane has Parkinson’s disease, a condition that occurs when cells in the substantia nigra, a region in the midbrain, deteriorate and die. These cells produce dopamine, a chemical messenger that is essential for normal muscle movement. To replenish dopamine levels, doctors prescribe levodopa, a drug that remains the gold standard for treatment despite the fact that it is now more than a half -century old. But because there’s no practical way to monitor the concentration of dopamine in the body, it’s difficult to perfectly tailor the dosing of levodopa to an individual patient’s needs. Too much levodopa can mean overfilling the brain’s tank with dopamine; too little can mean running out of steam. While doctors do their best, Parkinson’s is a fluctuating condition — symptoms come and go — and clinicians are limited in their insight into how patients respond to medication. So in 2015, Finucane decided to treat his disease like an engineering problem, and build a tool that would better match his medication with the onset of symptoms.

“What I have done is to come up with a way to predict the cumulative effect of a specified prescription, and a scheme to derive a pill schedule to meet the desired end point goal,” Finucane wrote me in an email. “It involves something akin to unwinding a blockchain, if that makes sense to you.”

Getting Ready For Marzipan Apps

Apple Sends Out Invitations For June 3 WWDC Keynote, by Raymond Wong, Mashable

Right on cue, the tech giant sent out media invites for its 30th annual WWDC keynote. Like previous years, the developer conference keynote starts at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California.

Apple Updates WWDC App With Customizable Icons, Hidden Session Info And iMessage Stickers Ahead Of 2019 Event, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

There have been no design changes to the app aside from a new neon icon that better matches the darker theme of the 2019 conference, but according to Apple's release notes, the update adds a new profile area for managing notifications, virtual queuing for labs, and app icon selection.

Stuff

I Was Wrong About The iPad Pro, by Owen Williams, Charged

There are two things that the iPad excels at: battery life—despite a constant 4G connection—and the ways it forces you to multitask: slowly, with intent.

I've tested a lot of computers for getting work done, but the majority of my day job involves writing words—not code—which is a perfect fit for the iPad Pro. It feels backwards to say it, but because the iPad doesn't have multiple floating windows, and no mouse, I'm able to focus on on thing at a time.

Hands-On With The New 4K 23.7-Inch LG UltraFine Display, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

The display is crisp and vivid, rivaling the Retina display on Apple's Macs, and we liked the high gloss finish despite the fact that it tends to add more glare. With 500 nits brightness, it's fairly bright, and because it has P3 wide color support, all the colors are rich and true to life.

Notes

Panic Reveals Plans To Sell A Handheld Gaming System Called The Playdate In 2020, by John Voorhees, MacStories

The Playdate's hardware is not like anything currently available on the market, and Panic says the device isn't meant to compete with other handheld systems either. Instead, the goal is to complement existing systems for those times in between using other devices when you want to play a game.

That message seems to have resonated with independent game developers because Panic has announced an impressive lineup of game developers who are making games exclusively for the Playdate.

How AirPods Became An Unlikely Status Symbol, by Kaitlyn Tiffany, Vox

The absurd cultural reaction to AirPods defies exact explanation. They are a deeply boring-looking item and not a particularly innovative one either. The choice to own them is not really as revolting or funny as anyone makes it out to be. It seems closest to say that our collective reaction is against a superwealthy tech company mandating that we do something a little bit strange with a body part super near to our face. And then some of it is just the joy of having someone to dunk on — a rich doofus with AirPods, a swagless late adopter without them. AirPods can turn everyone into the butt of the joke.

Bottom of the Page

It is never a good idea to add scripting to HTML. We've successfully removed plug-ins. Time to remove Javascript, as well as whatever version of Basic that Microsoft still supports in its browser.

Replace whatever we are doing in Javascript with new HTML tags, if you must. <hamburger>, anybody?

Yum.

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