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The Easy-and-Frictionless Edition Wednesday, April 26, 2023

Apple’s New Banking Features Feel Too Easy To Use, Too Hard To Resist, by Sara Morrison, Vox

Do you want the company that makes your phone to be your bank, too? That’s the question some people are surely asking themselves now that Apple has rolled out its new Apple Card savings account, which comes with a 4.15 percent interest rate — well above what most traditional banks are offering.

It’s also not traditional because, unlike any other savings accounts out there, this one is baked into the operating system of your phone, as is the Apple Card, the credit card you must have in order to get the savings account. Thanks to digital banking and financial technology, or fintech, financial services have become so easy and frictionless that you can make important decisions about a lot of your money with just a few taps. Those could be applying for a credit card, sending money to friends, or using buy now, pay later services.

Festival Style's Must Have? Good Hearing Health, by Sam Cole, Highsnobiety

Now, I know what you're thinking – "who the hell wears AirPods to a festival?" While I'm inclined to agree that someone sporting their earbuds while bass music rips through the crowd would spin me out somewhat, hear me out.

The key to protecting your hearing through the use of earplugs, or in this case, the Air Pods Pro (2nd Generation), is the amount of noise reduction or attenuation that they offer.

On Security

Hackers Are Using A Fake PDF Viewer To Infect Macs With Malware — How To Stay Safe, by Anthony Spadafora, Tom's Guide

The BlueNoroff hackers are using an unsigned application called “Internal PDF Viewer.app” to infect vulnerable Macs with the RustBucket malware. However, this internal PDF viewer app is just the first stage of the infection.

Coming Soon?

Amazon Just Spoiled The Next Beats Earbuds Before Apple Could Even Announce Them, by Chris Welch, The Verge

Well, there's not much left for Beats to "announce" after this. On Tuesday evening, Amazon prematurely published a retail listing for the rumored Beats Studio Buds Plus. The page contains every last detail about the buds: among other upgrades, they have more powerful active noise cancellation than the original Studio Buds, better air venting, and an improved transparency mode.

2023 Apple Watch Pride Edition Face And Band Unearthed In Code, by Tim Hardwick, MacRumors

Apple’s 2023 Pride watch face and band will stick with a rainbow of colors, but dispersed in confetti-like pill shapes that are vaguely reminiscent of the iPhone 14 Pro’s Dynamic Island. As with previous Pride styles, it’s likely the watch face will animate when interacted with.

Apple Is Reportedly Developing An AI-powered Health Coaching Service, by Aisha Malik, TechCrunch

Apple is developing an AI-powered health coaching service code named Quartz, according to a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The tech giant is reportedly also working on technology for tracking emotions and plans to roll out an iPad version of the iPhone Health app this year.

The AI-powered health coaching service is designed to help users stay motivated to exercise, improve their eating habits and sleep better. The idea behind the service is to use AI and information from a user’s Apple Watch to develop coaching programs specially tailored for them. As with Apple’s other services, the health coaching service is expected to have a monthly fee.

Stuff

Apple Mac Mini M2 Review, by Jon Musgrave, MusicRadar

With a wealth of configuration options and prices to tempt everyone from entry-level dabblers to power users, the Mac mini has come of age.

Slack Launches 'Canvas' As A New Hub To 'Create, Organize And Share Essential Information', by Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac

Slack has announced that it’s starting to roll out a new user-facing feature called “canvases” to solve the issue of how to “manage, find and share knowledge and team resources.”

Notes

Shift Happens: Writing About The History Of Keyboards, by Allison Arieff, MIT Technology Review

When the designer and typographer Marcin Wichary stumbled upon a tiny museum just outside Barcelona five years ago, the experience tipped his interest in the history of technology into an obsession with a very particular part of it: the keyboard.

“I have never seen so many typewriters under one roof. Not even close,” he shared on Twitter at the time. “At this point, I literally have tears in my eyes. I’m not kidding. This feels like a miracle.”

Bottom of the Page

I have been marred with the experience with Java, and I still do not believe in cross-platform user-interface frameworks.

Sorry, SwiftUI. You have not convinced me yet.

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Thanks for reading.