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The Wider-Range-of-Data Edition Monday, December 13, 2021

What Devices Like Apple, Google Smartwatches Are Beginning To Display About Our Health, by Bob Woods, CNBC

Fitness trackers from companies like Apple, Amazon, and Google are making a significant shift from being low-tech devices that counted steps to now becoming what's fashionable in personal health.

Tracking fitness and workout data for personal use or sharing with friends can be useful and fun. But there's an increasing interest in incorporating a wider range of medical data into the digital health ecosystem — piggybacking on the dramatic rise in remote telehealth services necessitated during the Covid-19 pandemic — making individuals' information accessible to physicians and hospitals as part of electronic medical health records.

It's Been A Decade Since Siri Came Out, And It Still Sucks, by Christianna Silva, Mashable

Ten years later, we've seen the importance of virtual assistants. It's incredibly helpful to people with disabilities. It can be paired with Bluetooth speakers for those with difficulty hearing and can assist people with calling for help if they need. Amazon's Alexa and Google's assistant have gotten more useful. And voice readers have really become a huge phenomenon on TikTok.

But, unfortunately, for anyone with an iPhone, we have to deal with the least helpful voice assistant of them all — and there's no reason to believe they'll be getting any better over the next decade.

Stuff

MusicMatch Makes It Easy To Share Music Between Streaming Services, by Daryl Baxter, TechRadar

The app allows music lovers to open shared song links in either Spotify or Apple Music within the app. You can also play song links utilizing a Safari extension, without opening the MusicMatch app.

Browse The Web From Your Wrist With µBrowser, by Josh Centers, TidBITS

Other than the custom font quirk and the tiny screen, the main annoyance is that you must tap through a “Sign In” prompt every single time you load a website, even though you’re not signing into anything. Arno explains during µBrowser setup that this is an Apple requirement, and you’re not actually handing over any personal information when you do this. Hopefully, Apple eliminates this requirement soon.

Notes

Change My Mind: MagSafe Is Awesome, by Rita El Khoury, Android Authority

I never thought that solution would come from Apple and its iPhones, but well, what do you know? When MagSafe was introduced, it was an “aha” moment for me. Magnets — of course, it had to be magnets. And built in too. Simple, and awesome in its simplicity, MagSafe is, in my opinion, the perfect answer to the problem of phone accessories.

Bottom of the Page

For me, the most difficult-to-use interface control on my iPhone is the volume slider on the lock screen. At least half of the time, I inadvertently activates either the camera or the Today's widgets rather than adjusting the volume.

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Thanks for reading.