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The Bigger-Plans Edition Saturday, February 24, 2024

Simple Complexity: Apple’s Trio Of Sports Apps, by Jason Snell, Six Colors

This is the conundrum of the Apple Sports app: It avoids the complexity of adding a News tab and a TV tab and focuses on scores, which is good. But if you want to start a Live Activity or jump to watch the game, it’s at least one app and several taps away.

I don’t think the app will stay this simple. The name alone—it’s Apple Sports, not Apple Scores—suggests that Cue and his team have bigger plans. I have to imagine that eventually you’ll be able to follow games right in the app, and jump to video sources without needing an intermediary app.

The Fastest Way To Save RSS Articles To A Read-Later App, by John Voorhees, MacStories

RSS has been good to the publishers who embraced it and stuck with it. Now it’s time for developers to help individuals leverage the same power to share their finds with the world in a low-friction, open way.

Stuff

1Password 8.10.26, by Agen Schmitz, TidBITS

The update now highlights the content from note items or fields beside item titles when searching.

FastMinder Is An Easy-to-use Fasting Tracker With Live Activities, Widgets, More , by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

It offers a clean and easy to use interface for tracking your fasts, while simultaneously offering an impressively-rich suite of features and data points.

Withings Finally Adds Cycle Tracking To Its App Via ScanWatch Light, by Laura Rosenberg, 9to5Mac

Withings is late to the game when it comes to giving users the ability to track their menstrual cycles, but with the release of its ScanWatch Light – a hybrid smartwatch – users can now not only track their cycles with the ScanWatch Light, but also within the Withings app itself.

Looks Like Rain: Visualizing The Weather On A Color-Coded Timeline, by Niléane, MacStories

The layout of the app is clean, the elements are well-spaced, and the color palette has clearly been composed with care. Most importantly, though, I’m absolutely loving its unique approach to visualizing the weather forecast on a color-coded timeline.

Vision Pro App Spotlight: Longplay Adds Immersive Album Listening, by John Voorhees, MacStories

The coolest feature, though, is that Immersive button. Tap it, and you’re surrounded by a 29x10 grid of album covers that wrap around you in a semicircular arrangement. In the center of it all is the playback window for the current album, with controls to change the grid behind the player and more.

Notes

AppleCare Support Advisors Testing New ChatGPT-Like Tool 'Ask', by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

Apple recently launched a pilot program that provides select AppleCare support advisors with access to a new tool called "Ask" that can automatically generate responses to technical questions they receive from customers, according to information obtained by MacRumors. Advisors can then relay the info to customers in online chats or on the phone.

Spotify HiFi Is Still MIA After Three Years, And Now So Is My Subscription, by Chris Welch, The Verge

A couple months ago, I got tired of waiting, so I let my longtime Spotify subscription lapse and purchased a year’s worth of Apple Music.

Thanks FedEx, This Is Why We Keep Getting Phished, by Troy Hunt

What makes this situation so ridiculous is that while we're all watching for scammers attempting to imitate legitimate organisations, FedEx is out there imitating scammers! Here we are in the era of burgeoning AI-driven scams that are becoming increasingly hard for humans to identify, and FedEx is like "here, hold my beer" as they one-up the scammers at their own game and do a perfect job of being completely indistinguishable from them.

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I am playing an online game in Apple Arcade, where dice throwing plays a significant role in winning or losing. And I have doubts if the dice thrown by the computer is truly random and fair.

I wonder if this gives Apple's API team any ideas…

:-)

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Thanks for reading.