Medical ID Record Provides an Extended, More Flexible Solution to Storing Medical Data

Many of the stock system apps installed with iOS are designed to meet the needs of most people, but they rarely satisfy everyone. Apple leaves it to third-party developers to fill in the gaps. That comes with the risk of being ‘Sherlocked’ in the future, but it’s also an opportunity for developers to attract users who want more than Apple provides.

Medical ID Record is a perfect example of such an app. It takes a feature of the Health app and extends it. The depth of functionality in Medical ID Record may not be needed by everyone, but it’s an excellent option for anyone who has felt constrained by the Health app’s Medical ID feature.

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Scanbot 7 Adds Customizable Filters, Document Merging, Improved Search, and New Themes

Scanbot 7 was released today, the latest update to the popular document scanning app for iOS. This is the first major version bump for Scanbot since Apple introduced its own scanning feature into the built-in Notes app, making it especially of interest. Every time Apple introduces a free app or feature that competes with existing third-party options, the impetus falls on those developers to prove their app’s continued value. Scanbot already offered a variety of features that Notes’ scanning doesn’t, but it adds to those in today’s update with a handful of thoughtful enhancements that make a great app even better.

In Scanbot 7, each of the app’s five color filters for scans can be tweaked to your exact preferences. There are sliders included to make three types of adjustments for each filter. On most filters, those options are Brightness, Color, and Contrast, and with the Gray filter they’re Brighter, Darker, and Color. Not every scan is the same; a good scan depends on the type of document being captured and your lighting conditions, so it’s great having more control over filters to make every scan look as good as possible.

A second new feature is the ability to merge multiple existing scans into a single PDF. This is done by hitting the checkmark in the top-right corner when browsing previous scans, then selecting multiple scans and hitting Merge. You’ll then be able to rearrange the page order of the soon-to-be-merged documents, and choose whether to replace the original documents altogether, or keep them intact post-merge. This kind of task can be accomplished in other apps, such as PDF Expert, but it’s nice to bring it in-app, especially in situations when you need to consolidate scans to send to someone else.

Search has been upgraded in Scanbot 7, with auto-complete suggestions that appear even before you’ve typed a single character. These make Scanbot’s search screen one of the best I’ve used in any app. Also added in today’s update are five new theme options, my favorite of which is High Contrast: it uses true black and white to provide beautiful contrast in the interface, especially on the iPhone X’s OLED display.

If you’re in the market for a scanning solution, and want more power and customizability that Apple Notes provides, Scanbot 7 makes the app a better option than ever. All its power features are easy to use, and the app is full of thoughtful design touches that make for a delightful experience.

Scanbot 7 is available on the App Store.

How to Adjust iOS’ Volume via Workflow When Streaming Audio to HomePod

One of Workflow’s least known functionalities is its ability to get details about the hardware it’s running on and control some system features. Among these, Workflow can both retrieve an iOS device’s current volume level and set the volume. A few days ago, I realized I could make a workflow to quickly adjust my iPhone’s volume when streaming music to one of our HomePods. Unlike other automations I’ve crafted over the years, this workflow was quite a success in our household and I felt like it was worth sharing with the wider MacStories audience.

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Apple Hires John Giannandrea, Google’s Chief of Search and Artificial Intelligence→

According to The New York Times, Apple has hired John Giannandrea, Google’s chief of search and artificial intelligence. In a memo obtained by The Times, Tim Cook said:

“Our technology must be infused with the values we all hold dear,” Mr. Cook said in an email to staff members obtained by The New York Times. “John shares our commitment to privacy and our thoughtful approach as we make computers even smarter and more personal.”

Giannandrea joined Google in 2010 as part of the company’s acquisition of Metaweb and is credited with infusing artificial intelligence across Google’s product line. Giannandrea will report directly to Apple CEO Tim Cook.

This is a huge ‘get’ for Apple and comes fast on the heels of reports that the company is hiring over 100 engineers to improve Siri.

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iOS 11.3 and HomeKit’s Software Authentication→

Mikah Sargent, writing for iMore, on the importance of software-based authentication for HomeKit devices that Apple officially rolled out with iOS 11.3 last week:

Up to this point, commercial accessories were also required to incorporate Apple’s hardware-based Authentication Coprocessor in order to obtain HomeKit certification. The coprocessor handled Apple’s strict rules for encryption and security for HomeKit-enabled accessories. Apple takes HomeKit security seriously — the company says all HomeKit sessions are end-to-end encrypted and mutually authenticated (authenticated by all parties). Each communication session also includes something called “perfect forward secrecy,” meaning that encryption keys aren’t reused — a new key is generated for every session.

These strict rules meant most companies had to build accessories specifically with Apple’s HomeKit requirements in mind. It was a beneficial rule for consumers in terms of privacy and security, but it also meant — at least at the beginning — fewer available HomeKit-enabled accessories. Companies who already had smart home products on the market would need to rethink their products if they wanted to offer HomeKit-enabled accessories. That changes as of iOS 11.3.

I was under the assumption that HomeKit software authentication was already available since Apple announced it at WWDC ‘17 (in fact, I covered it in my iOS 11 review here). As Sargent notes on Twitter, however, accessory makers only received support for software authentication with iOS 11.3, which explains why we haven’t heard of major “HomeKit software updates” yet. Assuming that Apple’s certification process for HomeKit accessories is still going to take weeks, I’m curious to see if software authentication will at least make it easier for third-party manufacturers to consider HomeKit integration.

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Progressive Web Apps on iOS 11.3→

Great overview by Maximiliano Firtman on progressive web apps, which are now supported on iOS 11.3 thanks to new web technologies Apple adopted in Safari 11.1.

I wouldn’t call progressive web apps a “replacement” for native software from the App Store (just read the list of technical limitations from Firtman’s article), but they are indeed a remarkable improvement over how Safari used to save web apps to the Home screen. I recommend checking out these two lists to try some progressive web apps and see how they work on iOS. I spent way too much time playing around with Web Flap, a Flappy Bird clone that runs as a progressive web app and even supports offline mode on iOS 11.3.

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The RSS Revival→

The platformization of the web has claimed many victims, RSS readers included. Google Reader’s 2013 demise was a major blow; the company offed it in favor of “products to address each user’s interest with the right information at the right time via the most appropriate means,” as it Google executive Richard Gingras put it at the time. In other words, letting Google Now decide what you want. And the popular Digg Reader, which was born in response to that shuttering, closed its doors this week after a nearly four-year run.

Despite those setbacks, though, RSS has persisted. “I can’t really explain it, I would have thought given all the abuse it’s taken over the years that it would be stumbling a lot worse,” says programmer Dave Winer, who helped create RSS.

I enjoyed this story on the state of RSS by Wired’s Brian Barrett because it resonates with a trend I’ve also noticed in the past couple of years. Many of us have often praised social networks as “winners” in the battle against pure old RSS feeds, but the reality is that RSS is here to say. Perhaps, like rock and roll, RSS can never truly die.

What’s even more interesting is that, beyond RSS as a protocol, RSS services and clients (web backends and apps) are improving and growing more powerful on a weekly basis now. Barrett mentioned Feedly, The Old Reader, and Inoreader (which I’ve been using since 2016 and offers terrific power user features); I would also add NewsBlur and Feedbin – two services that have relentlessly iterated on the RSS experience since Google Reader’s demise. Just in the past few months, for instance, NewsBlur launched infrequent site stories to fix the very problem of subscribing to too many feeds, and Feedbin rolled out support for Twitter subscriptions. Both are genuine innovations that help people who want to get their news directly from the sources they choose. And if we look at the iOS side of this, apps like Fiery Feeds and lire are rethinking what advanced RSS readers for iPhone and iPad should be capable of. We wanted to do an RSS-focused episode of AppStories, and we ended up producing two of them (you can listen here and here) because there was just so much to talk about.

While millions of people may be happy getting their news from Facebook or an aggregator like Apple News (which I also use, occasionally, for more mainstream headlines), the resiliency of RSS makes me happy. There was a time when I thought all my news could come from social feeds and timelines; today, I’m more comfortable knowing that I – not a questionable and morally corrupt algorithm – fully control hundreds of sources I read each day.

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Downie: Elegant and Efficient Video Downloads for Your Mac [Sponsor]

Downie for Mac makes downloading video from the web as simple as dragging and dropping a URL. From your browser, drag a URL to Downie’s menu bar icon or onto its Dock icon from sites like YouTube, Youku, Bilibili, Vimeo, and many more to immediately download a video. The app supports video downloads for over 1,000 different sites, and the list keeps growing.

Downie is efficient and organized. Instead of downloading now, queue up downloads for later. It’s a great way to process dozens of videos while you sleep and aren’t using your Internet connection for something else. Downloads can be organized autmatically into folders too based on source and playlist, saving you the hassle of organizing them yourself.

When you use Downie, you also know you’re getting the best version of a video that’s available. For example, unlike many other download apps, Downie can grab the 4K version from YouTube if one is available. It’s that sort of attention to detail, combined with attentive support, frequent updates, and localization that makes Downie a great choice for video downloads.

Downie has a special 25% discount just for MacStories readers. All you need to do is use this link to purchase the app. The same great deal applies to the Downie and Permute bundle if you use this link. Permute is a great companion to Downie that lets you convert video between a wide variety of formats. You can use the coupon code 905E0C5D at checkout to get either discount too.

Expand your video collection the easy way, with Downie.

Our thanks to Downie for sponsoring MacStories this week.