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The Staving-Off-Decline Edition Tuesday, April 15, 2025

Older People Who Use Smartphones ‘Have Lower Rates Of Cognitive Decline’, by Ian Sample, The Guardian

Fears that smartphones, tablets and other devices could drive dementia in later life have been challenged by research that found lower rates of cognitive decline in older people who used the technology.

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It is unclear whether the technology staves off mental decline, or whether people with better cognitive skills simply use them more, but the scientists say the findings question the claim that screen time drives what has been called “digital dementia”.

Protecting Privacy

Understanding Aggregate Trends For Apple Intelligence Using Differential Privacy, by Apple

At Apple, we believe privacy is a fundamental human right. And we believe in giving our users a great experience while protecting their privacy. For years, we’ve used techniques like differential privacy as part of our opt-in device analytics program. This lets us gain insights into how our products are used, so we can improve them, while protecting user privacy by preventing Apple from seeing individual-level data from those users.

This same need to understand usage while protecting privacy is also present in Apple Intelligence. One of our principles is that Apple does not use our users' private personal data or user interactions when training our foundation models, and, for content publicly available on the internet, we apply filters to remove personally identifiable information like social security and credit card numbers. In this post, we’ll share how we’re developing new techniques that enable Apple to discover usage trends and aggregated insights to improve features powered by Apple Intelligence, without revealing individual behavior or unique content to Apple.

Stuff

Get Active With Apple Watch, by Apple

Over the past 10 years, Activity rings on Apple Watch have offered a simple, engaging, and customizable way for users to stay active throughout the day. To highlight how staying active can lead to a healthier life, on April 24, all Apple Watch users are encouraged to close their Activity rings to earn a special Global Close Your Rings Day limited-edition award, along with animated stickers for Messages.

iPhone Feature For Tracking Lost Baggage Expands To China Airlines, by Tim Hardwick, MacRumors

Taiwan's China Airlines now supports Apple's iPhone feature that makes it easier to share the location of AirTag-equipped baggage at airports, according to local media.

A Tweet Asked For A Simple Finance App: Two Hours Later, It Existed, by Fernando Silva, 9to5Mac

The idea here is to just have a glanceable look at what you’ve spent in the past day, the past week and the past month.

Chipolo’s Colorful New Trackers Now Work With Apple’s And Google’s Networks, by Andrew Liszewski, The Verge

Chipolo has announced a new Bluetooth tracker called the Pop, featuring the same bright color options as its Chipolo One but with support for both Apple’s Find My and Google’s Find My Device networks. The Chipolo Pop also has a much larger Bluetooth range than the company’s current lineup of trackers and features improved water and dust resistance, expanding where it can be used.

Notes

Apple Rebrands Search Ads Business As 'Apple Ads', by Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac

Apple today announced that it has officially rebranded Search Ads as ‘Apple Ads’, reflecting the expanding scope of Apple’s advertising business.

When Apple first launched ads in the App Store, they were only shown as promoted search results, hence the name ‘Search Ads’. But the company now offers advertising placements in many more places beyond just the Search tab, so the old name had become a bit anachronistic.

Bottom of the Page

I hope that playing daily word puzzles and Backgammon on my iPhone will also decrease chances of dementia too.

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Thanks for reading.