All of these little changes are giving us greater control over what our digital lives look like, however superficially. (Privacy protections, for example, remain fully in the hands of the corporation.) It’s a delightful pivot toward the mid-2000s digital golden age of custom Buddy AIM profiles and designing your Myspace layout while accidentally learning to code in the process.
Widgets have only given iOS users a taste of the levels of customization that could await them — people want more, and they’re willing to go to absurd lengths to get it.
Do you value your sanity? Do you want to do literally anything else with 2-4 hours of your free time? Do you prioritize speed and function when it comes to using apps on your phone?
Is Apple’s a good one? It’s hard to say just yet. Besides the issues of adjusting to different skin colors, coping with motion, and other design challenges faced by all pulse oximeters, putting the sensors on top of the wrist raises the difficulty level. The devices used in hospitals as well as the standalone gadgets sold in drugstores typically clip onto a fingertip or, sometimes, an earlobe.
The battery is notably bigger, at 1.17Wh for the 44-millimeter model and 1.024Wh for the 40mm. That's a modest, single-point increase for both. There are fewer display cables to disconnect when disassembling the device, and there's a larger Taptic Engine in the Watch, too. And of course, iFixit found the pulse oximeter sensor inside.
Microsoft now tells me the goal is actually to have full parity between the iOS and Android apps, and that Apple is already reviewing the iOS version now.
Scribble is the new iPadOS 14 feature that allows you to use the Apple Pencil to handwrite text into a text field that the app then converts into text. The feature also allows you to do things like scratch out text with the Pencil to erase it.
Over the course of the summer betas, it’s completely changed my use of the app and done something I didn’t think would ever happen: Drafts is no longer in my dock. This isn’t because the app has lost its usefulness, rather it’s actually increased in versatility so much through the widget that I no longer need it elsewhere.
Weather Line doesn’t provide any options to choose which data a widget will display. You get the data it gives you: nothing more, nothing less. However, the app has gone all-out with personalization in an entirely different way: widget themes.
1Password today announced a new partnership with Privacy.com, allowing users to make safer payments online by creating virtual cards that are unique to each of your online accounts.
Of course, there’s another side to the whole iOS 14 launch story, and it’s one fraught with frustration, sadness, and disappointment.
Researchers said that a tip from a child led them to discover aggressive adware and exorbitant prices lurking in iOS and Android smartphone apps with a combined 2.4 million downloads from the App Store and Google Play.
For the first time in more than 20 years since Apple began its operations in India, the iPhone-maker has started selling its products directly to consumers in the world’s second largest smartphone market.
I'm still playing around with widgets. My current homescreen setup: one smart stack, with three widgets: Shortcuts, step count, and battery.
I do wish the buttons in the Shortcuts widget are smaller in size.
And, no, I am not changing all my app icons to Shortcut icons. I do use the long-press menu on some of these apps, which you will lose if they are Shortcut icons instead.
~
I am wishing there will be a MacBook that looks like an iPad Pro: compact, light, and maybe even a detachable keyboard.
And if the price looks more like an iPad Air than an iPad Pro, so much the better.
~
Thanks for reading.