MyAppleMenu - Tue, Dec 22, 2015

Tue, Dec 22, 2015The Contains-Ambiguities Edition

Apple Raises Concerns Over UK's Draft Surveillance Bill, by Gordan Corera, BBC

Aspects of these issues have been voiced by Apple and other companies before. But one of the key concerns about the new legislation is that it contains ambiguities.

Get Work Done

Daylite 6 Review: Excellent For Creating, Managing, And Keeping Business Opportunities, by Jeffery Battersby, Macworld

Daylite, Marketcircle’s contact, schedule, project, and sales management program, is designed to help you stay on top of everything your business is doing. It’s purpose is to keep you focused on two objectives: Tracking new business opportunities and following through on what you promise to current and potential customers.

Living With: Scrivener, by William Gallagher, MacNN

Scrivener's makers call it a writing studio and I'm not sure that's a great description as I'm not sure what it means. Yet I completely understand why they want to find a new term for it, why they don't want to call Scrivener a word processor. If you look at it as a word processor, you're automatically comparing it to Word and Pages. Apple's Pages is easier to use and Word's got more features than should exist in heaven or on earth, so Scrivener loses out in both directions. The areas where it wins, though, are big enough and important enough that Scrivener customers regularly become evangelists.

Practice+ Makes Perfect, by Jeff Byrnes, AppAdvice

Serious musicians need tools that can help them practice and perform at their best, without the utilities getting in the way. This was often hard to accomplish in the past, since multiple tools, such as a metronome and tuner, would clutter up the music stand. An all-in-one app, Practice+, combines all of the most important things a musician needs into a single, intuitive title.

Stuff

Workflow Launches Support For Bursts, Live Photos And More, by Joe White, AppAdvice

Workflow, the smart app countless iOS device owners (including myself) use to get work done each and every day, is now better than ever thanks to the release of a brand new update. In particular, two new actions are available inside the automation application: Get Latest Bursts, and Get Live Photos. These, as you’d expect, source the most recent bursts or iPhone 6s-generated Live Photos from the Photos application, and pass them into the next action in the workflow.

Astropad Update Transforms iPad Pro And Apple Pencil Into A First Class Mac Graphics Tablet, by Zac Hall, 9to5Mac

With the latest version of Astropad, it can now recognize Apple Pencil’s tilt feature which the app turns into accurate brush simulations on the Mac. Apple Pencil, of course, supports pressure sensitivity, and Astropad is now using a custom pressure curve to make use of that. The update also adds advanced stroke tuning with Apple Pencil so you only see what you intend to draw and not accidental marks.

Obscura Camera 2.0 Brings New Pricing Model, Photos Extension And More, by Dan Thorp-Lancaster, iMore

Obscura Camera, a solid camera app that gives you access to some advanced controls for your photographic adventures, has received an update to version 2.0, bringing a Photosextension, an improved photo browser and more.

It’s All In The Cards With Relevant – The Missing Home Screen, by Sandy Stachowiak, AppAdvice

What is the easiest way to see your weather, calendar, breaking news, stock information, and what’s going on nearby? Do you have an app that shows all of this to you in one spot plus a whole lot more? Check out Relevant – the missing home screen that gives you customizable cards to flip through for the sites, services, and apps you use most.

Airflow Sends Just About Any Video To Chromecast Or Apple TV From Windows Or OS X, by Thorin Klosowski, Lifehacker

Develop

How To Solve Tabs Vs. Spaces Forever, by Brent Simmons, Inessential

I wrote most of my code in an outliner for eight years (when I was working on UserLand Frontier). And I miss it every day. Writing code in an outliner is the exact opposite of horrible. It’s marvelous.

Why Are Projects Always Behind Schedule?, by Priceonomics

The dataset of SketchDeck projects contains 70,000 hours of projects through our on-demand service. When we first started, we found that setting simplistic timelines – adding up median completion times for each step in your project – consistently underestimated how long projects would take. In fact, creating a timeline based on median completion times underestimates the actual project timeline 67% of the time.

A misunderstanding of statistics might be a huge part of why projects are alway late at your company.

Swift Proposal For Default Final, by Michael Tsai

Notes

The Problem With Technological Ignorance, by Samuel Arbesman, Slate

We need to popularize this concept of how sophisticated technological systems are constructed. Only then will those building microchips be appreciated in the same way as those working with precise tools that allow for the placement of a miniature watch gear.

When we take microchips or really any complex technology for granted, as monolithic commodities, we lose some of the wonder we should have for them. What’s more, we lose sight of how incredible it is that we have gotten to this level of complexity at all.

Rendering The Food Of The Future, by Julian Spector, The Atlantic

The commercial meat industry is wildly unsustainable, ecologically speaking, and the UN has estimated that food demand will increase 70 percent by 2050. To keep the world’s ever-growing population fed, we’re going to need somealternate sources of protein to go mainstream.

One group is using the humble meatball as a vehicle to explore what the future of food could look like. The creative team at Space10—a “future-living lab” in Copenhagen sponsored by the company that franchises IKEA—decided to visualize this transition by making and photographing “meatballs” composed of eight viable meat substitutes.

Bottom of the Page

I've been using the iPhone 6 for quite a few months already, and the position of the sleep button still gives me frustration on a regular basis.

~

Thanks for reading.