Category: Tech News

Web Finds for February 1, 2018

Web Finds are from my web surfing travels. You’ll find some unique and informative news, apps and websites that you may have never known existed. Enjoy!

Agenda – A new take on Notes
Agenda for Mac is a date-focused note taking app for planning and documenting your projects. With its unique timeline, Agenda gives you a complete picture of past, present and future, driving your projects forward. The notes in Agenda are beautifully styled, and include powerful features like tags, lists, and links. You can even connect your notes to events in your calendar. Agenda Review by Mac Stories.

Scoop: Apple delays iOS features to focus on reliability, performance
Apple has shaken up its iOS software plans for 2018, delaying some features to next year in an effort to put more focus on addressing performance and quality issues, Axios has learned.

Software head Craig Federighi announced the revised plan to employees at a meeting earlier this month, shortly before he and some top lieutenants headed to a company offsite.
Via Axios

Apple Said to Release New Entry-Level 13-inch MacBook This Year, Likely Replacing MacBook Air
Apple plans to release a new entry-level 13-inch MacBook in the second half of 2018, according to industry sources cited by DigiTimes. The report claims General Interface Solution (GIS) is expected to win more LCD display orders from Apple for the planned new model, after it began supplying the modules for existing MacBooks in the fourth quarter of last year.
Via MacRumors

Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Team Up to Disrupt Health Care
Three corporate behemoths — Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase — announced on Tuesday that they would form an independent health care company for their employees in the United States.

The alliance was a sign of just how frustrated American businesses are with the state of the nation’s health care system and the rapidly spiraling cost of medical treatment. It also caused further turmoil in an industry reeling from attempts by new players to attack a notoriously inefficient, intractable web of doctors, hospitals, insurers and pharmaceutical companies.
Via The New York Times

Strava Fitness App Can Reveal Military Sites, Analysts Say
A fitness app that posts a map of its users’ activity has unwittingly revealed the locations and habits of military bases and personnel, including those of American forces in Iraq and Syria, security analysts say.

The app, Strava, which calls itself “the social network for athletes,” allows millions of users to time and map their workouts and to post them online for friends to see, and it can track their movements at other times. The app is especially popular with young people who are serious about fitness, which describes many service members.
Via The New York Times

Previous Web Finds are here.

“This Is Serious”: Facebook Begins Its Downward Spiral

Nick Bilton, writing for Vanity Fair

There’s another theory floating around as to why Facebook cares so much about the way it’s impacting the world, and it’s one that I happen to agree with. When Zuckerberg looks into his big-data crystal ball, he can see a troublesome trend occurring. A few years ago, for example, there wasn’t a single person I knew who didn’t have Facebook on their smartphone. These days, it’s the opposite. This is largely anecdotal, but almost everyone I know has deleted at least one social app from their devices. And Facebook is almost always the first to go. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and other sneaky privacy-piercing applications are being removed by people who simply feel icky about what these platforms are doing to them, and to society.

And then there’s the main reason I think people are abandoning these platforms: Facebook knows us better than we know ourselves, with its algorithms that can predict if we’re going to cheat on our spouse, start looking for a new job, or buy a new water bottle on Amazon in a few weeks. It knows how to send us the exact right number of pop-ups to get our endorphins going, or not show us how many Likes we really have to set off our insecurities. As a society, we feel like we’re at war with a computer algorithm, and the only winning move is not to play.

Facebook only cares about Facebook not it’s users. I’m happy to see folks are starting to delete their Facebook accounts.

Web Finds for January 24, 2018

Web Finds are from my web surfing travels. You’ll find some unique and informative news, apps and websites that you may have never known existed. Enjoy!

How Bill Gates limits tech use for his kids
For all his success in designing world-changing technology, Bill Gates has set surprisingly strict rules for how his kids can use that technology, the billionaire philanthropist has said in multiple interviews.

Each of Gates’ three kids — ages 15, 18, and 21 — has grown up in a home that forbade cell phones until age 14, banned cell-phone use at the dinner table, and set limits on how close to bedtime kids could use their phones.
Via Business Insider

Apple plans $350 billion boost to u.s. economy over 5 years, 20,000 new jobs, and a new campus
Cupertino, California — Apple today announced a new set of investments to build on its commitment to support the American economy and its workforce, concentrated in three areas where Apple has had the greatest impact on job creation: direct employment by Apple, spending and investment with Apple’s domestic suppliers and manufacturers, and fueling the fast-growing app economy which Apple created with iPhone and the App Store. Apple is already responsible for creating and supporting over 2 million jobs across the United States and expects to generate even more jobs as a result of the initiatives being announced today.

Combining new investments and Apple’s current pace of spending with domestic suppliers and manufacturers — an estimated $55 billion for 2018 — Apple’s direct contribution to the US economy will be more than $350 billion over the next five years, not including Apple’s ongoing tax payments, the tax revenues generated from employees’ wages and the sale of Apple products.
Via Apple Press Release

On rumors of the iPhone X only being produced for one year
This would not be the first time an iPhone flagship model didn’t stick around for a second year. In 2013, Apple introduced the iPhone 5S to replace the iPhone 5, and also introduced the iPhone 5C to occupy the second pricing tier. The iPhone 5 was dropped from the product line when the 5S and 5C debuted.
Via Daring Fireball

Will millennials kill Costco?
Warehouse clubs such as Costco, Sam’s Club and BJ’s Wholesale Club have for decades been an American staple: a place where families can stock up on bulk items, try free samples and spend the better part of a weekend morning meandering through aisles filled with 26-packs of canned salmon and king-size mattresses. But as more of Americans’ buying shifts online, some retail analysts say warehouse clubs may largely be left behind.

The sector received more bad news this month, when Walmart announced it would close 63 Sam’s Club stores, affecting an estimated 10,000 workers. In a tweet, the company said the closures would help “better align” its physical locations with its strategy. (Ten locations will reopen as e-commerce fulfillment centers.)
Via The Washington Post

Previous Web Finds are here.

Web Finds for December 21, 2017

Web Finds are from my web surfing travels. You’ll find some unique and informative news, apps and websites that you may have never known existed. Enjoy!

Apple Plans Combined iPhone, iPad & Mac Apps to Create One User Experience
Starting as early as next year, software developers will be able to design a single application that works with a touchscreen or mouse and trackpad depending on whether it’s running on the iPhone and iPad operating system or on Mac hardware, according to people familiar with the matter.

Apple Throttles iPhones That Have Old Batteries (But Didn’t Tell You About it)
As the battery of your iPhone degrades, Apple throttles the speed of your iPhone. What was once just a hunch from people who feel annoyed that their old phone “feels slow” now has hard data and an Apple statement to back it up.

“What people inevitably think is, ‘My phone is slow, I need to replace it.’ And that causes a lot of perfectly good phones to get replaced.”

Twitter adds more verification options for two-factor authentication
Twitter today is beefing up perhaps its most important consumer-facing security measure, two-factor authentication (2FA), with an update to fully support third-party apps. Now, Twitter’s login verification feature (the name it gives its 2FA service) will let you rely on apps like Google Authenticator and Authy, whereas before you had to, by default, input a code sent via text message.

How to Hide Menu Bar Icons on Mac with Vanilla
If your Mac menu bar is looking increasingly cluttered with various menu bar icons, you may be interested in a nice little free utility called Vanilla. Vanilla allows you to hide Mac menu bar icons by placing them into a collapsible and expandable shelf of sorts contained within the menu bar.

Previous Web Finds are here.