Peanuts In Space: Secrets of Apollo 10 is coming next month to the Apple TV. It’s a documentary that tries to answer a fundamental question.
Apple Watch Returned, Still Working, After 6 Months
We all know how painful losing a device is. Well, here is a story to warm the soul. Robert Bainter lost his Apple Watch whilst out surfing. He said the device was his “lucky charm,” reported 9to5Mac. Mr. Bainter turned on Lost Mode, more in hope than expectation. A whole six months later he got a call. Not only was his beloved piece of kit back, it still worked. Truly a lucky charm!
After losing the device, Bainter turned on Lost Mode for his Apple Watch through the Find My iPhone app. This displays a message on the Apple Watch’s screen with the owner’s phone number and a message saying it was lost. Six months went by and Bainter hadn’t been able to locate his watch, but then he received a call from a random number. The person calling had found Bainter’s Apple Watch 3 miles north of where he originally lost it – still in working condition.
Reeder 4 is Out: Bionic Reading Mode, Image Previews, and More
Silvio Rizzi is back with the release of Reeder 4, bringing new improvements like a new Bionic Reading mode, an in-app Read Later service which syncs with iCloud, image previews in the articles list (finally), search, much improved article viewer, more layout options, improved reader view, more shortcuts, matching the ones of Reeder for Mac. Supported sync services include Feedbin, Feedly, Feed Wrangler, FeedHQ, NewsBlur, The Old Reader, Inoreader, BazQux Reader, and Instapaper. If you want to use a self-hosted service, Reeder 4 should work with services which use the Fever or the Google Reader API. Or just standalone RSS (without syncing) if you don’t want to use any service. Reeder 4 is also available for macOS. Note: If you rely on image caching, this feature unfortunately wasn’t ready for the 4.0 release but it’s in the works. App Store: US$4.99
Princeton IoT Inspector Tells You When Your Smart Speaker Spies on You
An app called Princeton IoT Inspector is a new app that can tell you if/when your smart speaker spies on you.
App Notarization, #DeleteFBSDK – TMO Daily Observations 2019-04-25
John Martellaro and Andrew Orr join host Kelly Guimont to chat about Apple’s app notarization and devs removing the Facebook SDK from apps.
Apple Halved Its AWS Spend in 2018
Apple slashed its AWS bill from $775 million in 2018 to $370 million in 2018 as it invests further in its own cloud infrastructure.
Clicker for Netflix Puts Netflix Controls on the Touch Bar
Clicker for Netflix is a cool Mac app that lets you control Netflix right from your Touch Bar. Launch Netflix right from the Dock, control it with the Touch Bar, use Picture-in-Picture to watch while multitasking, prevent trailers from auto-playing, auto-resume your last played video, automatically skip the video intro, automatically advance to the next episode, hide the “Who’s Watching?” popup, and remove the Netflix Originals row. The Touch Bar controls include play/pause, jump back 10 seconds, jump forward 10 seconds, go to the next episode, enable/disable closed captions, and launch Picture-in-Picture. It requires macOS 10.10 Yosemite or higher. Get the app for US$5.
PDF Reader Pro For Mac: $24.99
We have a deal on PDF Reader Pro For Mac. This app features bookmark and search functions, as well as a night mode that’s easier on your eyes. You can also iInsert, add, and replace images and texts in your PDFs and use markup tools to highlight, strikeout, underline, and more in the PDF file. It’s $24.99 through our deal.
How Nasa Recorded a Quake on Mars For The First Time
Early this month, the NASA InSight probe detected seismic events on Mars for the first time. Wired has a feature on how the Mars scientists achieved this staggering feat.
It took NASA’s InSight probe two long months of listening before it detected the first faint rumblings from the red planet. On April 6, the probe’s seismometer registered what was later confirmed as the first ever marsquake detected by human instruments. But measuring the rumblings of a planet that – at its closest – remains almost 34 million miles away, requires an almost unimaginable amount of patience. Twice a day, a team in Switzerland receives seismic data from the InSight probe, where they perform an initial analysis.
New Zealand Man Gets a Surprise With New iPhone Purchase
Glen Cottle recently purchased a brand new iPhone for his partner. But upon opening the package, it might not be as brand new as he thought.
Apple Recalls Some Three-Prong Plug Adapters
Apple has announced a recall of three-prong wall plug adapters designed to be used in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the UK.
Google Assistant Can Read Your Kids a Bedtime Story
If you have Google Assistant and the latest version of Google Play Books on your iOS device, it can now read your kids a bedtime story.
Ahead of National Tell a Story Day taking place on Saturday, youngsters now have more ways to hear a bedtime tale. As of today, the feature will be available on iOS and Android phones in English in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and India.
Sounds like a great feature. When I asked Siri to read me a bedtime story, she said: “Next you’ll be asking me for a glass of milk. And a dark matter cookie.” Damnit Siri, that doesn’t even make sense.
Podcasters are Having Problems With New Service Luminary
Luminary is a new podcast service without ads. Instead it’s subscription-based. But it sounds like the company is stealing podcasts.
It Turns Out That Science Petition Wasn’t Warning About AirPods
Remember that science petition going around that 250 scientists signed, warning about AirPods and cancer? Turns out it had nothing to do with AirPods.
So rather than finding any link between cancer or other issues in levels of EMF at or below the current, accepted regulations, the scientists involved here were simply asking for more research into to area and suggested that it was probably a good idea to limit human exposure.
Various bloggers picked up the subject and worked to associate it with Apple’s AirPods…without regard for the fact that nothing in the petition even suggested concern about in-ear headphones, Bluetooth, or AirPods.
WhatsApp Defends Child Protection Record After Criticism
WhatsApp is contesting accusations it has not done enough to prevent child sexual abuse, insisting it had “no tolerance” of such behavior.
Financial Gain in Modern Tech Dehumanizes Us
Axios writes:
Tristan Harris, the former Googler who helped popularize the notion of “time well spent” laid out the shift he says the tech industry needs to make in order to stop, as he puts it, “downgrading humanity.” … Harris made the case that today’s technology downgrades humanity by creating a vast artificial social system powered by “overwhelming” AI and an “extractive” attention economy.
The problem, as Harris notes, is that the first company to blink loses.
With Notarization, Apple Moves to Greatly Reduce Malware on Macs
Notarization is an automated code scan service for Mac developers that looks for malicious code and blesses it if none found. In a future version of macOS, the Gatekeeper will look for that notarization. This is a good thing.
Mighty Vibe Spotify Offline Player: $76.99
We have a deal on the Mighty Vibe Spotify Offline Player. This device is just what the name suggests: it will play your Spotify music on-the-go without a smartphone or Internet connection. It’s Bluetooth and Wi-Fi enabled, supports wired and most Bluetooth headphones and speakers, has 1,000+ song storage, and is durable and has a built-in clip-on. Plus, the promo video below is definitely funny. It’s $76.99 through our deal.
iOS Mouse Support Could Come This Year
Federico Vittici and Steve Troughton-Smith are saying that iOS mouse support could be coming this year as an accessibility feature of iOS 13. Mr. Vittici mentioned it on the Connected podcast, while Mr. Smith confirmed the rumor via Twitter.
I personally don’t see the need for a mouse on a touch-oriented device. But I’m glad it will be optional, instead of a required component of iOS. Edit: 20190425: I take that back. I didn’t think of the scenario where many people can hook up an external monitor to their iPad. In that case, mouse support is perfect.
Developers, it’s Time to Delete the Facebook SDK
Developers, it’s time to consider deleting the Facebook SDK and not using its tools anymore. Do we even need to explain why?
