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Remaster, Episode 13: Nintendo: If Not VR, Where?→

Federico is back to discuss his thoughts on his first VR experience. This leads to a discussion on what Nintendo’s VR plans could be, before wrapping up with some thoughts on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

A good VR-focused episode of Remaster this week, with a final segment on Zelda. You can listen here.

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Apple to Add Organ Donor Option to Health App→

Update: Apple and Donate Life America, which maintains the National Donate Life Registry in the US, issued a press release that provides further detail regarding the plan to add organ donor registration to the iOS Health App:

Through a simple sign up process, iPhone users can learn more and take action with just a few taps. All registrations submitted from iPhone are sent directly to the National Donate Life Registry managed by Donate Life America. The ability to quickly and easily become a nationally-registered donor enables people to carry their decision with them wherever they go.

As Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer, explains:

Apple’s mission has always been to create products that transform people’s lives. With the updated Health app, we’re providing education and awareness about organ donation and making it easier than ever to register. It’s a simple process that takes just a few seconds and could help save up to eight lives…

The organ donation feature will be added to the Health app as part of iOS 10, which is scheduled for release as a free update this Fall.

MacRumors (via CNBC) reports that Apple plans to add a button to its Health app this Fall that will make it easy for US customers to sign up for the national organ donor registry. Tim Cook, who spoke to the Associated Press, said that he hopes the new feature will make it easier for people in need of organ transplants to quickly find a compatible donor. The number of people in need of organ transplants has long exceeded the number of donors in the US, causing people in need to have to wait, which Cook said hit home for Apple when Steve Jobs waited for a liver transplant in 2009.

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watchOS 3 and Wheelchair Users→

John Brownlee, writing for Fast Company on support for wheelchair users in watchOS 3:

Each test subject was allowed to use their own wheelchair, which they fitted with special wheel sensors. In addition, many were outfitted with server-grade geographical information systems, which collected extremely precise data on their movements through the world. The number of calories burned, meanwhile, were determined by fitting test subjects with oxygen masks, and precisely measuring their caloric expenditure as they pushed.

In the end, Apple collected more than 3,500 hours of data from more than 700 wheelchair users across all walks of life, from regular athletes to the chronically sedentary, in their natural environments: whether track or trail, carpet or asphalt. From this data, they learned how to adjust watchOS 3’s algorithms to track wheelchair users.

This is the kind of work that truly makes an impact on how people live their lives.

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The Elements of Stickers→

With stickers coming to iMessage in iOS 10, Connie Chan has posted a great overview of stickers in WeChat and Line and why they’re more than glorified emoji:

Besides invisible messages, bigger and predictive emoji, full-screen effects, and movie/TV GIFs, Apple recently announced that stickers, too, are finally coming to its most popular app, iMessage. It’s no surprise that messaging is the company’s most popular app — if smartphones are like extensions of our fingers, then messaging is like touching people and things.

What is surprising — especially when compared to the more mature messaging ecosystem in Asia — is that many people still tend to treat stickers (i.e., the ability to easily incorporate pre-set images into texts) as just-for-fun frivolity, when they’re an important visual digital language fully capable of communicating a nuanced range of thoughts. For example, a single sticker could convey very different messages: “I’m so hungry I could collapse” or “I miss you” or “I’m sound asleep snoring”. Complex feelings, actions, punch lines, and memes are all possible with stickers.

(via Jeremy Burge’s excellent Emoji Wrap newsletter.)

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Connected, Episode 97: 70% Optimistic→

Federico’s back, to talk about iOS 10 and Messages while Stephen gets sad about his Thunderbolt Display.

I’m back on Connected this week, which features one of the (many upcoming) segments on the progress with my iOS 10 review. You can listen here.

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Remaster, Episode 12: E3 2016→

Just back from E3 2016, Shahid shares his personal history with E3, and gives the lowdown on what was announced this year.

Shahid did an amazing job telling his E3 stories in the latest episode of Remaster. You can listen here.

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Dropbox Adds Scanning Feature to iOS App→

Alongside some welcome improvements to their desktop client, Dropbox announced today they’re adding a document scanning feature to their iOS app:

With document scanning, you can now use the Dropbox mobile app to capture and organize scans from whiteboards, receipts, and sketches, so your ideas are right at your fingertips. Dropbox Business users can even search inside the scans.

The feature is detailed here, and it looks like it’s been integrated with the ‘+’ button to behave as any other file you’d manually import into Dropbox.

I don’t think of Dropbox as an app on my phone – it’s my online filesystem, which is why right now I’m struggling to imagine using it to scan documents. Essentially, I keep Dropbox on my iOS devices for two reasons: to share files with others and to grant other apps access to Dropbox. I don’t spend a lot of time in the Dropbox app itself.

However, it appears that Dropbox has done a nice job in streamlining the functionality as much as possible, and I like how they’re moving more and more features to Business-only users, so I’m going to give this a try.

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Connected, Episode 96: Simplified the Paradigm→

With post-WWDC flu raging throughout Europe, most of the Connected crew talks about the winners and losers of WWDC including watchOS, macOS Sierra and the iPad.

I couldn’t join Myke and Stephen for Connected yesterday – I’m still recovering – but they had a fun episode about post-WWDC thoughts. You can listen here.

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