The best analogy to describe Check In is a security guard making their rounds in a building with a specialized alarm system. At specific time intervals, the guard must insert a key in a particular alarm box along their route—these days, that may be an RFID card tap or similar mechanism. [...] If the guard fails to hit that point in their rounds, an alarm goes off, the police are called, or other consequences ensue. It’s hard to identify when something doesn’t happen in our day-to-day life—what I like to call negative knowledge. We are used to alerts, alarms, phone calls, texts, and knocks on the door to tell us something has occurred, or positive knowledge. When something fails to happen, we often don’t know about it until it’s too late. Check In builds on a mix of both positive and negative signals.
It’s essentially a digital diary that keeps all of my recently-listened-to music in one place, allowing me to share my music opinions with star ratings. Whatever I listen to on streaming, be it a new artist or an album recommended by a friend, I enter it into Musicboard and it logs the date, star rating, and optional written review. Very simple.
However, music journaling is only on the surface of what Musicboard has to offer. Since joining the app my exposure to artists and genres has grown exponentially, and I’d argue that its database and search engine makes it better for music discovery than those of streaming services. If you struggle to search for new genres, one of my top ways of finding new music is through list making.
Have you ever wanted to share a song or a playlist with a friend or a group online, only to find that they subscribe to Apple Music and you subscribe to Spotify? Earbuds, an iPhone and Android app, breaks down those walls so music nerds can share whatever they’d like.
Outsidify uses your phone's speaker and microphone to create feedback loops and capture resonances from the world around you. You can create feedback using the sounds in your environment or load audio clips into Outsidify to be played through the onboard sample player.
There’s not one major change I can point to and say “this is what broke the Fitness app.” Instead, it’s more like a death by a thousand cuts, with lots of small tweaks that add up to a much less pleasant experience.
Kelly explained that if you own an iPhone, your first and last name could show up for any stranger who uses the AirDrop feature, which allows you to send photos and videos to other Apple product users.
If you are in Singapore, do try the carrot cake. It's one of my favorite local food.
(Spoilers: There's no carrot in this carrot cake, and this is also no cake.)
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Thanks for reading.