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The Supply-Chain-Shifts Edition Thursday, December 29, 2022

Just How Badly Does Apple Need China?, by Chris Miller, The Atlantic

Nevertheless, China will be affected by these supply-chain shifts. The task of finding new jobs for assembly workers as Foxconn and Apple shift their focus to Vietnam and India is the easiest problem Beijing must deal with. Chinese firms have advanced by embedding themselves into international supply chains and learning from the world’s best tech firms—a strategy that will no longer work if companies like Apple shift their businesses elsewhere.

U.S. tech firms and consumers won’t notice too much change, except maybe for slightly higher prices as the supply chain shifts away from China. Companies will still rely on Japanese and Korean components and offshored assembly, especially in Vietnam and India. This isn’t the end of globalization for U.S. tech or for American allies. But it sure feels like it for Chinese tech firms.

Sure, Kids Can Develop iPhone Apps. But It’s Not Easy, by Simon Hill, Wired

And so, our project ended on the scrap heap (as, no doubt, most app projects do), but the journey was fun, and we all learned something— newfound respect for app developers who go the distance.

The LastPass Disclosure Of Leaked Password Vaults Is Being Torn Apart By Security Experts, by Mitchell Clark, The Verge

As for what people should do about all this, both Palant and Gosney recommend at least considering switching to another password manager, in part because of how LastPass has handled this breach and the fact that it’s the company’s seventh security incident in a little over a decade. “It’s abundantly clear that they do not care about their own security, and much less about your security,” Gosney writes, while Palant questions why LastPass didn’t detect that hackers were copying the vaults from its third-party cloud storage while it was happening.

Stuff

20 Surprisingly Practical Uses For Apple AirTags, by Jake Peterson, Gadget Hacks

As you can see below (and in the headline), we've thought of 19 fun ways to get the most out of AirTags.

The 10 Best Journaling Apps To Collect Your Thoughts In 2023, by Hannah Holway, Women & Home

The best journaling apps are a great way to take some time to yourself during the day and collect your thoughts. While the traditional way to journal includes putting pen to paper, there are now so many ways you can journal on the go, making it even easier to incorporate this habit into your daily routine.

The 25 Best New Apps Of 2022, by Jared Newman, Fast Company

The best apps of the year spanned a wide range of categories, including some surprising new ones. We’ve seen a boom in AI tools for creatives, for instance, along with more ways to take control of your content and privacy. Clever productivity tools haven’t gone away either, with several great new apps for getting things done.

As with previous years, this list focuses on apps, websites, and extensions that either launched over the past year or received substantial new updates. With any luck, it’ll help you discover some gems you’ll use all the time. Here are the best new apps that 2022 had to offer.

Notes

Ultra, Max, And The Next Big Thing: How Apple's 2023 Will Change Everything, by Jason Snell, Six Colors

Apple’s 2022 was a little slow on the Mac side, but there are brighter days ahead in 2023 if you ask me. But what about the iPhone, Apple’s most important product? And what about the rest of Apple’s product line-up–including product lines not yet introduced? 2023 promises to be a big one. Here are my predictions for the iPhone, AirPods, HomePod, and Apple foray into an AR/VR headset.

Why The Future Of Technology Is So Hard To Predict, by Faye Flam, Bloomberg

More recent predictions by futurists haven’t been quite as accurate, perhaps because they rely too much on extending the latest, trendiest technologies into new realms. One of the most famous living futurists, Ray Kurzweil, predicted back in 1999 that by 2019 robots would educate us, conduct business transactions for us, adjudicate political and legal disputes, do our household chores, and have sex with us.

Even someone as brainy as Kurzweil couldn’t have imagined that in late 2022 the main feature in MIT Technology Review would be headlined: “A Roomba recorded a woman on the toilet. How did screenshots end up on Facebook?”

Worse still, the Roomba is still not as good at vacuuming as a diligent human.

The Work-From-Anywhere War Is Beginning, by Bruce Daisley, Wired

Who calls the shots on how many days you end up working in the office? It has gradually dawned on bosses that it isn’t them. The real power holders? The elusive “top talent” that every firm is trying to attract.

Bottom of the Page

Are there still major effort over in Apple working on Swift Playground for iPad? I haven't hear anything to new from Apple or from the rumor-mills about this app, which is very much still a work in progress.

Or perhaps someone at Apple can revive and modernise Hypercard for iPad? Surely we should have alternative development environment on iPadOS that cater to the less Swift-inclined audience?

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Thanks for reading.