Apple Pencil May Include a Grip-Monitoring Haptic System in The Future

Future versions of the Apple Pencil may include a haptic system that will monitor the user’s grip. That’s according to AppleInsider, who noticed a recently granted patent.

In a patent granted by the USPTO to Apple on Tuesday titled “Touch-based input device with haptic feedback,” the filing details how a system could be used to perform two jobs: providing haptic feedback to the user, while also being able to read force measurements from the user’s grip. Apple’s proposal involves the use of a piezoelectric device attached to the inside of the housing, one that would be connected to the user grip region of the housing. The grip section would be deformable, both inwards and outwards, allowing it to be used for providing information to the user as well as taking in grip data. The piezoelectric device would theoretically push out the housing in the grip region when it needs to alert the user via haptic feedback.

Smartphones Could Help Death Photography Make a Comeback

The New York Times has a piece today about death photography, and how it’s returning with the help of our ubiquitous smartphone camera.

“But we are returning to the older ways,” she went on, “a movement backward that some say began in the ’70s, with the back-to-nature movement and midwifery and natural births. The natural death movement is part of that. And these photos are unsurprising, too, because we carry our smartphones all the time, and it’s almost like if there isn’t a photo it didn’t happen. Now everyone is a photographer.”

Apple Leverages iOS for Advertising You Can’t Block

Tumblr software engineer Steve Streza makes the case that iOS is adware for all of Apple’s services.

iOS 13 has an abundance of ads from Apple marketing Apple services, from the moment you set it up and all throughout the experience. These ads cannot be hidden through the iOS content blocker extension system. Some can be dismissed or hidden, but most cannot, and are purposefully designed into core apps like Music and the App Store. There’s a term to describe software that has lots of unremovable ads: adware, which what iOS has sadly become.

This particularly annoys me with Apple News, where roughly half the space is dedicated to showing me News+ content, even though I don’t subscribe. On iOS you can swipe to “See Less Often” but you can’t do this on iPad.

How Jeff Bezos Built a Data Collecting Empire

BBC News published an inside look into “Why Amazon knows so much about you.”

“They happen to sell products, but they are a data company,” says James Thomson, one of the former executives interviewed.

“Each opportunity to interact with a customer is another opportunity to collect data.”

Founder Jeff Bezos frames it in terms of being a “customer obsession”, saying the firm’s first priority is to “figure out what they want, what’s important to them”.