MyAppleMenu

The Light-Years Edition Thursday, September 15, 2022

Apple Watch Series 8 Review: If It Ain’t Broke, by Victoria Song, The Verge

Listen, the Series 8 doesn’t revolutionize the Apple Watch as we know it, but it doesn’t have to. Part of the reason why Apple can get away with year after year of incremental updates is because it is light-years ahead of its rivals for iOS users.

iPhone 14 Pro Camera Review: Scotland, by Austin Mann

When I first started shooting with iPhone 14 Pro, I was thinking about it as my new 48 megapixel camera, assuming I would just always be shooting 48MP ProRAW. But after just a few days using it, I’m pretty sure I’ll generally leave my settings set to 12MP ProRAW and only push up to 48MP when I really need it. Here are a few reasons why.

iPhone 14 Pro: Is The Always-On Display Actually Too On?, by José Adorno, 9to5Mac

I wish Apple would only highlight the clock and my widgets, instead of notifications and the background. It would for sure save battery and would diminish my privacy concerns.

Stuff

Apple Releases iOS 16.0.1 With Bug Fixes For iPhone 14 And 14 Pro Models, by Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac

iOS 16 was released to all users on Monday. However, as reported this week, iPhone 14 models are shipping with a version of iOS 16.0 that predates the official build (20A362). Now the company has made iOS 16.0.1 available exclusively for the new iPhones as the update comes with even more bug fixes for the 14 and 14 Pro models.

iOS 16: Three-finger System Gesture Bug Impacts Apps And Games, by Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac

Some game developers are warning players not to update to iOS 16 due to a bug with the system three-finger gestures, affecting gameplay. The issue is that the triple-tap system gesture to reveal the undo/cut/copy/paste menu, and the three-finger swipe gestures to undo and redo, are a bit overzealous in iOS 16, activating in contexts where they shouldn’t.

Lock Screen One: Text Widgets For Your iOS 16 Lock Screen Automated With Shortcuts, by John Voorhees, MacStories

Lock Screen One lets you add text to an inline or rectangular widget, but it also lets you automate the process with Shortcuts. Let’s take a look.

Camo Challenges Apple’s Continuity Camera With Variable Frame Rates, Smart Zoom, And Video Stabilization, by Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac

The new release brings variable frame rates to customize your video up to 60 fps, and comes with a new Smart Zoom plus video stabilization.

Review: Here's Why The Moft Flash Has Become My Favorite MagSafe Wallet For iPhone, by Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac

Along with carrying two to three cards, the clever design means you’ve also always got a handy stand for both portrait and landscape use.

Develop

Apple Confirms Live Activities Will Come To The Lock Screen And Dynamic Island In iOS 16.1, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Apple today confirmed that the Live Activities Lock Screen feature is going to be available when iOS 16.1 launches. Apple shared the information with developers and said that the ActivityKit API is available so developers can begin incorporating Live Activities into their apps.

Notes

What Modern Humans Can Learn From Ancient Software, by Paul Ford, Wired

Did you know that you can, right now, for free, go to Archive.org, the great online library of all things, and load up within your web browser an ancient, decrepit emulated computer—a DOS box from 1991, a black-and-white Mac, a green-and-black Apple II—and run the WordPerfect of yore, boot old HyperCard stacks, or use 1979’s VisiCalc as God intended?

Perhaps this does not seem miraculous to you. Fair. Moore’s law has taken us from 250 billion or so CPU churns per year on the earliest Macs to a quintillion potential clock cycles on a good gaming PC, a healthy 4,000,000X increase. Anyone with sense might reasonably ask, What? Why use a shiny new computer to run old spreadsheets? And I might nod and shrug, but inside I am a translucent plastic iMac of emotion. Because it is, I think, important to emulate.

Goldman’s Apple Card Business Has A Surprising Subprime Problem, by Hugh Son, CNBC

Goldman’s credit card business, anchored by the Apple Card since 2019, has arguably been the company’s biggest success yet in terms of gaining retail lending scale. It’s the largest contributor to the division’s 14 million customers and $16 billion in loan balances, a figure that Goldman said would nearly double to $30 billion by 2024.

But rising losses threaten to mar that picture. Lenders deem bad loans “charge-offs” after a customer misses payments for six months; Goldman’s 2.93% net charge-off rate is double the 1.47% rate at JPMorgan’s card business and higher than Bank of America’s 1.60%, despite being a fraction of those issuers’ size.

Five Years Of Data Show That SSDs Are More Reliable Than HDDs Over The Long Haul, by Andrew Cunningham, Ars Technica

Backup and cloud storage company Backblaze has published data comparing the long-term reliability of solid-state storage drives and traditional spinning hard drives in its data center. Based on data collected since the company began using SSDs as boot drives in late 2018, Backblaze cloud storage evangelist Andy Klein published a report yesterday showing that the company's SSDs are failing at a much lower rate than its HDDs as the drives age.

Bottom of the Page

It happened: I've held my iPhone (with the brand new iOS 16 and its new Now Playing widget) wrongly, and have 'scrubbed' the playback location of the audiobook that I'm listening unknowingly.

It also happened: I've wanted to rewind my audiobook, and I mistook the two circular widgets up on the lock screen as the rewind-30-seconds and fast-forward-30-seconds buttons.

~

Thanks for reading.