MyAppleMenu

The Difficult-to-Parse Edition Tuesday, September 20, 2022

Dark Sky Fading; iOS 16’s Weather Brightens, by Adam Engst, TidBITS

Welcome as these features are, I don’t see myself using them. Apple’s Weather app may have integrated Dark Sky’s capabilities, but I don’t love its interface, particularly with the individual metric cards, which are difficult to parse quickly. Ever since it became clear that Dark Sky was living on borrowed time, I’ve become fond of CARROT Weather and its interface construction set approach, which lets you tweak all the possible display options to your preferences.

The Best Thing About My New Apple Watch Is The Super-stretchy Band, by David Pierce, The Verge

For the first time, I can now comfortably use my Apple Watch all day instead of constantly taking it off when I sit down and putting it on when I get up. It’s been a big win, both for my ability to actually wear this very expensive gadget I bought and for the functionality of the watch since some of its best health features are meant to be collecting data 24 hours a day.

Apple’s Hidden Redesign Makes The iPhone 14 Much Easier To Fix, by Emma Roth, The Verge

A new iPhone 14 teardown video from iFixit shows a major repairability improvement: removable back glass. The video demonstrates how you can lift the rear glass panel with ease, using only a heating mat, a suction handle, and an opening pick — a huge deviation from the past few generations of iPhones that weren’t so repair-friendly.

Stuff

Apple Executive Responds To Annoying iOS 16 Copy And Paste Prompt: 'Absolutely Not Expected Behavior', by Sami Fathi, MacRumors

Ron Huang, a senior manager at Apple, joined the email thread saying the pop-up is not supposed to appear every time a user attempts to paste. “This is absolutely not expected behavior, and we will get to the bottom of it,” Huang said. Huang added that this behavior is not something Apple has seen internally but that Kieran is “not the only one” experiencing it.

Unique 2-in-1 Calculator App Adds Up To Surprise Hit For Retired Engineer In Japan, by Tsuyoshi Goto, The Mainichi

A 63-year-old man in Japan who is an avid iPhone user has dedicated some of his post-retirement years to developing a popular, unique app that displays two calculators on one screen.

[...]

The double calculator app allows users to move the computation results of one calculator onto the other by tapping arrow keys displayed on the middle of the screen. For example, if a user calculates "89 x 15 = 1335" on one calculator and taps the arrow key, the result "1335" will be displayed on the other calculator, allowing the user to continue a problem while the previous equations are still shown on the screen. This makes it easy to notice errors.

iOS 16 Lock Screen Widgets: The MacStories Roundup, by John Voorhees, MacStories

With so many choices and only three to five Lock Screen widget slots to fill, it’s hard to know where to start, so I’ve compiled a list of my top recommendations from the over 40 I’ve tried so far. Of course, this list doesn’t include the apps I already covered last week, but it goes without saying that Widgetsmith, Lock Screen One, LockFlow, and CARROT Weather would be also be included in this list if I hadn’t already written about them.

Notes

Apple Will Hike App Store Prices From Europe To Asia Next Month, by Vlad Savov and Takashi Mochizuki, Bloomberg

Customers in nations that use the euro as well as those in Sweden, Japan, South Korea, Chile, Egypt, Malaysia, Pakistan and Vietnam will all see price hikes as early as Oct. 5, the company said in a message to developers. [...]

The strong dollar may be a key driver. In Japan, prices are rising by roughly 30%, a significant hike that follows the yen’s dramatic weakening this year.

Logitech Website References Unreleased iPad Pro Models Ahead Of Rumored Apple October Event, by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

Ahead of Apple’s rumored October event, Logitech has updated the website for its Crayon stylus to reference these yet-unannounced new iPad Pro models. Usually, we’re hesitant to put too much weight behind accessory makers referencing unreleased Apple products, but this one is a bit different.

AI Art Is Here And The World Is Already Different, by John Herrman, New York Magazine

Still, most discussions about AI media feel speculative. Google’s Imagen and Parti are still in testing, while apps like Craiyon are fun but degraded tech demos. OpenAI is beginning the process of turning DALL-E 2 into a mainstream service, recently inviting a million users from its wait list, while the release of a powerful open-source model, Stable Diffusion, means lots more tools are coming.

Then there’s Midjourney, a commercial product that has been open to the masses for months, through which users have been confronting, and answering, some more practical questions about AI-media generation. Specifically: What do people actually want from it, given the chance to ask?

Bottom of the Page

I've never purchase any Apple products with engraving; I was always too impatient to get the products into my hands.

But I am thinking I should try engraving for my next Apple product -- which is likely to be the new AirPods Pro. The battery on my current pair will, sooner or later, run out. But not yet, so I still have plenty of time.

However, I am at a loss what the engrave text will read. No good ideas at all.

~

I wish I can have a way to figure out when the battery on my current AirPods Pro will run out, so that I can plan for the purchase of the new pair.

~

Thanks for reading.