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The Phasing-Out Edition Friday, January 24, 2025

Apple Watch Bands Are Safe To Wear, Says Apple, After Lawsuit Filed, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

Following a class action lawsuit that alleges some Apple Watch bands contain toxic "forever chemicals," also known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), Apple has ensured that Apple Watch bands are "safe for users to wear."

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Despite saying Apple Watch bands are safe to wear, Apple plans to phase out PFAS.

Ai Ai Ai

Not So Super, Apple, by Paul Kafasis, One Foot Tsunami

So, how did Siri do? With the absolute most charitable interpretation, Siri correctly provided the winner of just 20 of the 58 Super Bowls that have been played. That’s an absolutely abysmal 34% completion percentage. If Siri were a quarterback, it would be drummed out of the NFL.

Siri Is Super Dumb And Getting Dumber, by John Gruber, Daring Fireball

What hadn’t occurred to me until now is that not only is OpenAI getting no money from Apple out of this arrangement, but that the net brand equity they’re getting from it might be negative. These Super Bowl and high school basketball queries are handled perfectly by ChatGPT when using it directly — but Siri’s attribution makes it look like ChatGPT is to blame for these utterly and at times laughably wrong bungled answers. As it stands, Apple is getting a scapegoat more than a partner out of this deal.

Coming Soon

Apple Expected To Release iOS 18.3 Next Week With These New Features, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

iOS 18.3 should be released to the public next week, following beta testing since mid-December. While the software update is a relatively minor one, it still includes a handful of new features, changes, and bug fixes for iPhones.

Stuff

PolyCapture Simplifies Multi-Source Recording, by Adam Engst, TidBITS

The elegantly designed PolyCapture, from the German developer Martin Lexow, enables the simultaneous recording of multiple sources: a video feed, a microphone, and actions on the Mac screen. This capability is particularly helpful for those who want their final video to switch fluidly between camera angles, Mac windows, and audio tracks.

Smartphones Are Making People Lonely. This App Thinks It Has The Cure, by Patrick Sisson, Fast Company

Last night, at more than 1,600 restaurants in 325-plus cities around the globe, approximately 20,000 people gathered for dinner with complete strangers. It’s what the creator of Timeleft—a French app that has been arranging impromptu dinner dates among strangers all over the world for the past year and a half—sees as a small but useful contribution to the fight against global loneliness.

Luminar Mobile 2.2 Adds RAW Editing To The AI-Powered iPhone And iPad Photo Editor, by Jeremy Gray, PetaPixel

Alongside RAW image editing, Luminar Mobile 2.2 introduces a new edit history feature that tracks and saves all user modifications, enabling photographers to return to earlier versions of their edits. This is an essential part of a non-destructive image editing workflow.

Notes

Apple Says Several Car Makers Still Plan To Support Next-Generation CarPlay, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

Apple today confirmed that "several" car makers still plan to support next-generation CarPlay in future vehicle models. Apple said each car brand will share more details as they near the announcements of these vehicles, but it did not provide a timeframe. Apple previously said next-generation ‌CarPlay‌ would launch in 2024, but that did not happen.

Apple Park By Foster + Partners Was The Most Significant Building Of 2017, by Tom Ravenscroft, Dezeen

Arguably no company has ever used architecture to define its brand more successfully than Apple has in the 21st-century, and for its HQ the technology company set the lofty intention of creating "the best office building in the world".

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I really hate having to do stuff like shaving. And that's all I have to say.

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