A phone is not a villain, just a vessel. But with some narrow exceptions, where movement is the point, it does tend to exert on us a kind of physical binding, an arrest of motion and focus. Some of the apps I’ve mentioned include a daily yoga video or cues for a mindful run, but these serve a double purpose, roping our assertions of embodiment back into the hungry domain of the screen. Do you know what else is on that screen? Instagram. The effect of a mindfulness app, as with any other kind, is to keep you in the place you already spend much of your time. It’s a motionless place, and, not by coincidence, also a bit mindless.
I lost my smartwatch streak. For hundreds of days, I’d maintained a hundred percent move/exercise/stand record. But as midnight approached, I spotted too late I lacked time to log enough exercise. Despite having had an elliptical trainer session that morning, which my Apple Watch had duly ignored. Fume.
I know. In a list of first-world problems, this is one of the first-worldiest. It’s a bit obsessive to care to the level I do about maintaining a streak. And it’s a bad sign my immediate response to losing it was something my iPhone’s autocorrect would interpret as “duck it, then”. Yet I found I’m not alone.
Content sharing is a concept I navigate daily in a home with three kids. As technology becomes more essential to daily life, Apple is putting more emphasis on sharing. With the latest software updates coming to Apple products this fall, the company is making sharing content at home, in the car, and even in hotel rooms more effortless.
Shoemaker also believes that Apple is no longer doing enough to earn its 30% cut of most in-app purchases. “Apple deserved the 30% in 2009 but look, it’s 2023, things have changed a lot,” he tells us. “Tim [Cook] doesn’t want to give up this 30%, this is just a cash cow, especially as people aren’t upgrading their devices as they once were.”
“I agree with that developer you spoke to – this is a utility and they need to be charging utility prices, not innovation prices. I think they would do amazingly well if they dropped it down to 5%, something closer to credit card prices.”
The goal of the Apple Health app is to be a one-stop shop for all of your health-related data, including putting Apple Watch data alongside data from third-party apps, your healthcare provider, and more. This makes it easy to view trends over time, improvements, and more for all of your health data.
Apple unveiled its mixed reality headset called Vision Pro earlier this month. As of this week, developers have been able to access the necessary tools to create apps for visionOS. Now the latest version of App Store Connect is out with support for visionOS apps.
If you’re reading this column right now, you’re one of the most well-educated people on the planet about Apple stuff. But your friends, family, co-workers, and acquaintances? They might never know about flashy new operating-system features unless you personally show them off. It’s one of Apple’s most vexing problems: keeping devices relatively simple while also trying to make complex new features discoverable.
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I don’t have any answers here. I recognize how hard a problem it is to make new iPhone features discoverable and how hard it is to change ingrained user behavior. The new TipKit APIs suggest that Apple continues to wrestle with the issue.
Apple this week held its first Smart Manufacturing Forum for SMBs event in South Korea at the Apple Manufacturing R&D Support Center. It’s not only a education and research hub, it also builds smart process related equipment, potentially for use across Apple’s supply chain.
Oh hey, I am not a afternoon-nap person, but I have successfully taken an afternoon nap today. And it was kept at 20 minutes too. Science (I think) must be proud of me.
(Actually, I have no idea what is the latest science on napping. Good or bad?)
(I know the latest science is that wine is not good at all. What about coffee? I am still addicted to that.)
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Thanks for reading.