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The Knobs-and-Switches Edition Saturday, June 11, 2022

Apple Embraces The Ever-Expanding Dashboard Touchscreen, by Aarian Marshall, Wired

For more than a decade, the answer from automakers has been to stuff their cars with sprawling and sometimes complex infotainment systems featured on mammoth touchscreens that stretch across dashboards—in the case of one Mercedes-Benz model, more than 4.5 feet across. While using those while driving is “not necessarily optimal,” says McGehee, director of the National Advanced Driving Simulator at the University of Iowa, it likely beats the alternative of people pecking at tiny widgets on a cell phone screen while driving.

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No matter how CarPlay comes out, what is certain is that touchscreens are here to stay, and knobs and switches are on their way out. But they “come with a special responsibility” for tech developers, McGehee says. “You have to do thorough testing in driving environments, and complex simulations so that you can understand the limits of human vision and cognition.” Maybe it’s cynical or maybe it’s realistic: The world is a distracting place—how can we make it as safe as it can be?

iPadOS 16 Beta 1 Has Secret Debug Menu That Enables Custom Lock Screen – Sort Of, by Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac

At this point, it’s clear that there’s a basic implementation of the new lock screen on the iPad. It works with new wallpapers, it can merge the background photo with the time, and it even lets users change the font and colors. However, multiple features are broken, especially widgets – which don’t work at all.

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It seems that Apple didn’t have enough time to get the new lock screen ready for the iPad, but they’re working on it. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll see lock screen customizations coming to iPadOS 16, even in a future beta. Apple will probably hold the feature for iPadOS 17, just as they have done with home screen widgets and App Library in the past.

Apple CEO Tim Cook Writes Letter To U.S. Senate Supporting Strong Privacy Legislation, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

In the letter, Cook said Apple continues to support efforts at the federal level to establish strong privacy protections for consumers. Cook added that Apple is encouraged by the draft proposals that Senate leaders have produced and reiterated Apple’s belief that privacy is a fundamental human right. Cook said that while Apple fights to protect user privacy, “only Congress can provide strong privacy protections for all Americans.”

Apple Makes Further Adjustments To Dating App Rules To Satisfy Dutch Regulatory Requirements, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Apple today announced further changes to its App Store rules for dating apps in the Netherlands in an attempt to comply with requirements put in place by the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM).

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Though Apple is making these changes, the company says that it does not believe these updates are “in the best interest” of user privacy or data security, and it is continuing to appeal the original ACM order.

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Had the iPadOS diverged so much from iOS that the new lock-screen customization stuff on iPhone cannot be available on the iPad this year? It is hard for me to imagine any technical differences between the two platforms.

Of course, lack of imagination on my part is not... well... unimaginable. I'm still looking at iPads as just big iPhone. :-)

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Thanks for reading.