Professional Email Marketing Built Just for Mac Users
As Apple’s education event began in Chicago today, the company played a video narrated by school kids called ‘One Person Can Change the World.’ You can watch it here:
You can follow all of our Chicago education event coverage through our March 27th event hub, or subscribe to the dedicated March 27th event RSS feed.
On this week’s episode of AppStories, we interview filmmaker and YouTuber James Rath, who is legally blind, about accessibility on Apple’s platforms.
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Federico has taken over San Jose line watching, so Stephen gets to join Myke to talk about the long-rumored Beatles iPod, laptop cart repair and the eMac.
I wasn’t on last week’s episode of Connected, but I really enjoyed the discussion about old Apple rumors and the potential for a new education iPad. You can listen here.
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One lesser known improvement to the Health app in iOS 11 was the addition of Heart Rate Variability data, which can be obtained in a variety of ways, including via the Apple Watch. According to Apple’s description in the Health app:
Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is a measure of the variation in the time interval between heart beats. Apple Watch calculates HRV by using the standard deviation of these beat-to-beat intervals measured by the heart rate sensor (also known as SDNN).
While that offers a basic explanation of this data type, Serenity Caldwell of iMore just completed a deep dive into exactly what HRV is, how tracking it can be beneficial, and Apple’s current methods of tracking it. She writes:
Apple currently records HRV averages in your iPhone’s Health app through Apple Watch readings (as well as any third-party apps that have chosen to write data to the repository). When you first put your Apple Watch on for the day, you’ll trigger an HRV morning reading; the wearable monitors your heartbeat steadily for one minute, then uses under-the-hood calculations* to come up with your HRV average, displayed as ms (milliseconds) in the Health app for iPhone.
Caldwell also shares recommendations for different apps that can be paired with additional tracking methods – such as third-party heart monitors or even just your iPhone’s camera – to obtain more extensive data than the Apple Watch provides with its daily readings.
If you’re interested at all in Heart Rate Variability, and what your iPhone or Apple Watch can do to track it, Caldwell’s write-up is a fantastic resource.
Aim at text. Shoot. It’s yours! Prizmo Go lets you quickly grab text with an iPhone or iPad’s camera. Text is recognized in a blink of an eye, after which you can interact with it in many useful ways in Prizmo Go or send it to another app. If you’ve got a Mac, you can copy/paste it there too. No more retyping. It feels like magic at your fingertips.
Prizmo Go provides rich interactions with captured text. After shooting, text from the original picture is revealed, and swiping through it allows fast and accurate text selection directly from the image. Selected text can be read aloud, or you can tap to go straight to any web URL, call phone numbers, trigger the Mail app from an email address, or reveal physical addresses in Apple Maps and initiate navigation.
Prizmo Go comes with enhancements specifically built for VoiceOver, in addition to spoken guidance prior to capturing text. That, combined with its text-to-speech capabilities, make the app a great companion if you need help reading printed documents.
Prizmo Go has just been updated to version 2.0, which brings handwriting recognition (English only), translation to/from 59 languages, and new, more powerful, built-in neural network-based OCR in more languages.
Prizmo Go 2.0 Export Pack is 20% off ($3.99 instead of $4.99) this week only, so download it on the App Store today. Hint: the discounted Export Pack also entitles you to an introductory subscription price.
Our thanks to Prizmo Go for sponsoring MacStories this week.
I’m a big fan of HomePass and Homecam, the two HomeKit utilities created by indie developer Aaron Pearce to store accessory setup codes and view live feeds of HomeKit cameras, respectively. I covered both apps a few times on MacStories this year, and I’m glad to see two substantial updates released by Pearce today that address all my complaints from previous versions.
According to a report in the New York Times, producers and executives who have met with Apple recently said the company is targeting sometime between March 2019 and summer 2019 to launch a video service. With about a dozen shows signed in the past several months, the Times says Apple is on track to spend significantly more than the $1 billion or so that it told TV executives last year it had budgeted to spend on programming. The report says the turning point came last summer:
The week after “Planet of the Apps” made its debut, Mr. Cue greatly improved the company’s standing in the entertainment industry by hiring the veteran television executives Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht away from Sony Pictures Television, the studio behind “Breaking Bad” and “The Crown.”
The two executives moved quickly to build Apple Worldwide Video from the ground up, expanding its staff to roughly 40 people and opening divisions for adult dramas, children’s shows and Latin American and European programming. In putting together its slate of 12 projects (and counting), Mr. Van Amburg and Mr. Erlicht made deals with big names including Reese Witherspoon (for three shows), Steven Spielberg, Damien Chazelle, M. Night Shyamalan, Jennifer Aniston, Octavia Spencer and Kristen Wiig.
As reports have trickled in about new shows that Apple has signed, it’s become clear that the company has plans to launch a full slate of original programming. Although it remains unclear how Apple intends to roll the shows out to consumers, the New York Times’ report provides an interesting peek at where the project stands today and when it might launch.
Apple has updated the Apple TV Special Events app with the artwork used in the invitation for its March 27th education event in Chicago. The update to the app encourages users to:
Watch the special event — held at Lane Tech College Prep High School in Chicago, Illinois — after it concludes.
While it’s a shame that the event will not be available for viewing in real-time, it’s not unprecedented. The last event held outside of Cupertino by Apple was another education event that was held at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City in 2012, which likewise was not available for steaming or downloading until after the event had concluded.
In separate news, MSNBC announced that Kara Swisher of recode and MSNBC’s Chris Hayes will interview Apple CEO Tim Cook on April 6, 2018 at 8:00 PM Eastern.
JUST ANNOUNCED: @MSNBC & @voxmediainc’s @Recode present “REVOLUTION: APPLE CHANGING THE WORLD” ft. @Apple CEO Tim Cook onstage with @karaswisher & @chrislhayes, airing Friday, April 6th at 8:00pm ET on @MSNBC. pic.twitter.com/GjgT5evSRu
— MSNBCPR (@MSNBCPR) March 23, 2018
Without more information it is unclear what the interview will cover, but given the proximity in time to the education event, it’s likely that education will be a topic of discussion.
You can follow all of our Chicago education event coverage through our March 27th event hub, or subscribe to the dedicated March 27th event RSS feed.
Next Tuesday, Apple will take the stage at Lane Tech College Prep High School in Chicago to announce ‘creative new ideas for teachers and students.’ As any Apple event approaches, it’s natural to speculate about what products might be announced. After all, that’s what usually happens at an Apple event.
However, there’s a forest getting lost for the trees in all the talk about new hardware and apps. Sure, those will be part of the reveal, but Apple has already signaled that this event is different by telling the world it’s about education and holding it in Chicago. It’s part of a broader narrative that’s seen a shift in Apple’s education strategy that can be traced back to WWDC 2016. Consequently, to understand where Apple may be headed in the education market, it’s necessary to look to the past.
