MyAppleMenu

The Small-and-Customisable Edition Monday, August 30, 2021

Compressing Your Keyboard, by Matt Gemmell

The beauty of small and customisable keyboards is that, quite contrary to sacrificing the functionality you’re used to, you can actually smooth over many of the rough edges of adaption by introducing consistency and thus comfort that’s unique to your own needs, expectations, and muscle memory. That’s a delightful thing, and something you ought to avail yourself of.

Infrared With An iPhone, by William Sawalich, Digital Photo

Recent generations of iPhones (the 11 and 12, in particular) use LIDAR to aid in measuring depth and space and their front-facing lenses are sensitive to infrared light. This means if you place an IR filter over all three lenses on an iPhone 12 Pro Max, for instance, you can effectively capture infrared images. Here’s how.

Apple's New Child Safety Technology Might Harm More Kids Than It Helps, by Elissa Redmiles, Scentific American

These issues of algorithmic accuracy are concerning because they risk misaligning young people’s expectations. When we are overzealous in declaring behavior “bad” or “dangerous”—even the sharing of swimsuit photos between teens—we blur young people’s ability to detect when something actually harmful is happening to them.

On App Stores

Developers Suffering Through 'Kafkaesque' App Store Review Process, by Malcolm Owen, AppleInsider

The App Store Review process is failing developers for being "Kafkaesque," the CEO of coding app Hopscotch claims, with system bugs and inconsistent application of policies preventing a legitimate app update from passing through.

Apple Accentuates The Positive, by M.G. Siegler, 500ish

To be clear, it’s obviously the goal of every PR person around every single announcement to accentuate the positive as much as possible. No one can fault Apple for that, of course. But if this bit of reporting by Jack Nicas of The New York Times is to be believed — and I believe it is to be believed given my own experiences in such matters — Apple’s positioning and tactics were decidedly more slippery than just your standard PR spin.

Bottom of the Page

Apple need to realize to run a proper App Store that is good and profitable, it need to invest more and more money as it grows more and more popular. Stop trying to take shortcuts, and do the hard work that can justify for the money it charges off developers.

~

Thanks for reading.