The MacValley blog

 

Welcome to the MacValley blog, your first stop for all the latest MacValley news and views.

 

Tom Briant

The MacValley blog

Editor: Tom Briant

 

Click here to email Tom

Click here for Tom's profile

 

 

To search the blog posts please use the box below

Monday, January 16, 2017

Senior Correspondent Arnold Woodworth's Weekly Wrap-up for 1-15-2017 now with clickable links!

Consumer Reports recommends MacBook Pro laptops after Apple bug fix
 
Consumer Reports reversed its decision to not recommend Apple's MacBook Pro laptops after the tech giant issued a fix to a bug that caused battery-life issues.
 
"Now that we've factored in the new battery-life measurements, the laptops' overall scores have risen, and all three machines now fall well within the recommended range in Consumer Reports ratings," Consumer Reports wrote.
 
Apple’s updated software ... will be rolled out in a full Software Update to all users in several weeks. According to Apple, the new software fixes a bug in Safari that caused the poor battery-life results in Consumer Reports testing.  

Consumers who want to download the new software right now have to sign up for the company’s Beta program.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Apple Confirms MacBook Pro Battery Problems: You're Testing It Wrong
 
The results are in, and it feels like a score draw.
 
Consumer Report has confirmed that the low battery life was due to a bug in Safari's code. This bug is only present when Safari is in developer mode, which Consumer Report has to use to disable the local cache.
 
When Consumer Report was asked to test the MacBook Pro machines using Apple's normal user settings, the laptops delivered Apple's expected battery life.
 
 
 
 
Apple Warns You When Your Display is Using Significant Energy in Latest macOS Beta
 
Apple advertises that the latest MacBook Pro models provide up to 10 hours of battery life on a single charge for web browsing and iTunes movie playback, but a user's mileage may vary based upon factors such as display brightness, which apps are running, and external devices connected.
 
 
 
 
Korg's iOS music production app is coming to Mac soon
 
Korg Gadget, an all-in-one iOS production studio, was first introduced in 2014 and now the the mobile suite is heading to Apple's desktop computers.
 
Korg promises seamless integration between the mobile and desktop versions.
 
 
 
 
 
 
The original iPhone changed phones as we knew them, but iPhone 4S was a game-changer too
 
The iPhone 4S had three features that were arguably more monumental than anything else we’ve seen in smartphones: iCloud on iOS 5; Siri, Apple’s personified artificial intelligence; and much better camera capabilities.
 
In the beginning, iCloud was flawed and is still not perfect, but it has essentially become the backbone of everything we do on our computing devices.


The iPhone 4S also ushered in the era of Siri.

 
The iPhone 4S’s new and improved camera (and all of its smartphone competitors) eventually replaced lots of cameras that weren’t phones.
 
 
 
 
How to enable the ‘dark mode’ feature hiding in your iPhone browser right now
 
There’s actually a special dark mode in Safari that most people don’t know about.
 
This article explains how to enable it.
 
It’s not the system-wide dark mode we’ve all been waiting for, but people spend a tremendous amount of time reading in Safari, so this should be a big improvement at night.
 
 
 
 
A beginner’s guide to iOS: How to get started with your new iPhone or iPad

 
 
 
Un-jailbreak Your iPhone: An Easy How-To Guide
 
Did you Jailbreak your iPhone and now regret it?
 
You can use iTunes to reverse the Jailbreak.
 
 
 
 
How To Jailbreak iPhone: Pros, Cons & How It's Done
 
Disclaimer: Jailbreaking your iOS device can go wrong, so please, follow these instructions at your own peril. We cannot be held responsible for any damage made to your phone while following these instructions.
 
 
 
 
Here’s an interesting accessory for your Apple Watch:
A re-charging stand that looks like a tiny original Macintosh computer.
When you slip your Apple Watch into it, the watch screen becomes the screen for the tiny Macintosh.
 
It’s a $15 silicone smartwatch stand that makes your Apple device look like a miniature Macintosh, equipped with a floppy drive cutout and everything.
 
It makes the Apple Watch look like it’s a display for the Mac Classic while it charges.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Watch Player Plays Podcasts From Apple Watch Directly
 
While Apple is hyping up the arrival of the Apple Watch 2, there are still very underrated apps for the former model, which people haven't discovered yet. The WatchPlayer in particular is an app extremely useful for playing back Podcast episodes.
 
The app easily allows people who own an Apple Watch to play full podcast episodes without the need of any optional gadget. As 9to5Mac reports, the app is an convenient tool for saving full episodes and saving them in the device's storage for offline playback.
 
 
 
 
Video:
WatchPlayer is a free app that allows you to transfer full podcast episodes to the Apple Watch for offline playback. That means you can leave the house without your iPhone and listen to your favorite shows while on-the-go.
 
The app isn’t the prettiest from a design perspective and podcast file transfers to the Apple Watch are slow, but it’s one of the easiest ways to play podcast episodes on the Apple Watch without an iPhone. 
 
 
 
 
Your Apple Watch is replacing your doctor - smartwatch can tell when you're falling ill
Waiting around to see your GP could see be a thing of the past with smartwatches now able to tell when you're getting sick.

Researchers have found that your wrist tech can give you a heads-up on an impending cold or illness.
They discovered that elevated heart rate and skin temperature recorded by the wearables can act as an early warning system and let you know when you might want to go see your doctor.
 
As your wearable's heart rate sensor can be used to continually track your stats, it's able to create a baseline reading for you.
Once this is established, variances are easier to spot, and patterns in these changes can be indicators of specific conditions and health problems.

Michael Snyder even used the findings to self diagnose an illness.
On a flight from the US to Norway, he notched changes in his heart rate and blood oxygen levels. These were consistent with the symptoms of Lyme disease.
Having alerted a doctor and been prescribed the appropriate medication, later tests revealed he had indeed contracted Lyme disease from a tick bite.
 
"Once these wearables collect enough data to know what your normal baseline readings are, they can get very good at sensing when something's amiss," Snyder said.

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/tech/news/578965/Your-Apple-Watch-is-replacing-your-doctor-smartwatch-can-tell-when-you-re-falling-ill
 
 
 
Digital Health: Tracking Physiomes and Activity Using Wearable Biosensors Reveals Useful Health-Related Information
 
A new wave of portable biosensors allows frequent measurement of health-related physiology.
 
First, wearable sensors were useful in identifying the onset of Lyme disease and inflammation. From this observation, we then developed a computational algorithm for personalized disease detection using such sensors.
 
 
 
 
Sharpen your iOS coding chops for next to nothing [Deals]
 
Want to learn how to create apps for your iPhone.
Here’s an inexpensive way to do it.
But this special offer is available for a limited time only.
 
 
 
 
3 iOS apps for learning to code in bite-size lessons
 
Learning to code in bite-size mini lessons is completely possible if you choose one of these three mobile apps. With lessons as short as five minutes there's always time to squeeze one in during a break, on the bus, or before bed.
 
 
 
 
This is the best WiFi router I’ve ever used
 
Apple’s Airport Extreme
 
This router gets my seal of approval because of its performance.
 
Connection strength and speed are the two most important factors when assessing a WiFi router, and the current Airport Extreme continues to pass both of those tests with flying colors.
 
The Airport Extreme's software is easy to operate and works on both PC and Mac
 
$179.99, available at Amazon.
 
 
 
 
Video:
Apple’s Campus 2 starts looking less like a construction site as it prepares for grand opening
 
 
 
 
Apple's $5 billion 'spaceship' campus is covered in mud
 
 
 
 
Apple was the manufacturer that shrunk its PC shipments the most in 2016, with its Mac laptops and desktops ceding 9.8% market share to other companies, according to a report from analyst firm IDC.
 
 
 
 
Apple and Steve Jobs Steal From Xerox To Battle Big Brother IBM
 
Jobs recalled that he and the Lisa team were very relieved when they saw the Xerox Star: “We knew they hadn’t done it right and that we could–at a fraction of the price.”
 
Xerox could have owned the entire computer industry.
 
Says Isaacson: “…there is more to it than that… In the annals of innovation, new ideas are only part of the equation. Execution is just as important.”
 
 
 
 
10 years after iPhone launch, innovation flagging at Apple
 
“If we’re measuring innovation, Apple is over,” said Steve Blank, an adjunct professor at Stanford University and a former tech executive. “They are just turning into another commodity phone company.”
 
 
 
 
These 13 online classes will help you learn something new in 2017 — and they’re all $10
 
 
 
 
The weird and spooky stories told by people who explored the internet's hidden websites
 
The "Dark Web" is a hidden corner of the internet that is home to many things people want to keep in the shadows: drugs, counterfeits, stolen items, and so on.

But there are also far stranger elements.
 
Here are some of the bizarre and creepy things you can stumble on when accessing the dark underbelly of the web, as told by the people who actually experienced them.
 
 
 
 
Artificial Intelligence Replacing Management At World’s Largest Hedge Fund
 
Bridgewater Associates, which manages $160 billion worth of assets, tasked a team of its engineers with creating AI software that can automate decision-making and eliminate emotion from financial analysis. Leading the effort is the same man, David Ferrucci, who helmed IBM’s supercomputer Watson, which became famous in 2011 for beating humans at Jeopardy!

Now Ferrucci is developing the ambitious PriOS management software that Bridgewater anticipates will make three-quarters of its decisions within just five years.
 
Futurist Zoltan Istvan previously told Anti-Media that automation will decimate the job market so substantially that a Universal Basic Income (UBI) will become necessary.
 
Istvan recommends humans get used to jobs disappearing, and not just blue collar jobs.
 
Are any jobs safe? Istvan believes artists and creatives may be uniquely situated to withstand the automation takeover. But with AI taking over the jobs of hedge fund managers and bankers, one has to wonder how long creativity will remain the sovereign territory of humans. A writers’ room of robots could save networks and studios billions.
 
 
 
 
Video:
Humans Need Not Apply
 
 
 
 
3D Printed Drone Swarms Could Give U.S. Army On-Demand Eyes In The Sky
 
the military is seeking to combine advancements in 3D printing with a trend toward drone miniaturization into a project that will offer the capability for soldiers in the battlespace to produce their own quadcopter drones within 24 hours.
 

No comments:

Post a Comment

 

 

Blog Archive