eXtensions - Thursday 2 January 2025
By Graham K. Rogers
A happy new year to all: the Year of the Snake. No predictions from me: a mug's game. There are some changes I would like, however. Photos could do with a lot more work and versions that fully reflect the device the app is installed on. Health features are valuable: to Apple and to users.
Inevitably at this time of the year many producing online content are forced into looking back, and looking forward to the coming months. There will be no predictions. That way madness lies. Those falling into this trap are either wrong or may miss something significant. Speculation can be fun, but many making predictions are using inside sources which removes some of the gloss. I would rather work towards a wish list.
In 2024, for example, who would have predicted an M4 chip in the iPad Pro before any Mac and missing the M3? Only Mark Gurman a few days before the announcement, and that was probably inside information. I had been ready with my cash waiting for the M3 iPad a month or two before April, so was delighted when the better-equipped M4 iPad Pro was announced. This foreshadowed the Macs that were to come a couple of months later, but even then, Apple gave us a couple of surprises, particularly with the redesigned Mac mini pair and the all round upgrade to a standard 16GB of memory. As this is built in, that saved a lot of money.
I had been pleased by the M4 iMac announcement, but the Mac mini trumped that. They did not arrive here immediately, although by the time they went on sale I had convinced myself that I should go for the basic Mac mini. I have not been disappointed. Writing a few words on the end of the year, Howard Oakley comments, "Perhaps inevitably, I and a great many others recognised a new classic in the making".
Just recently, however, some users of the M4 Mac mini and the MacBook Pro have seen problems with certain high end displays. Filipe Espósito (9to5Mac) writes that "the M4 Macs seem to break support for some ultrawide monitors . . . with 5K2K (5120 x 2160) resolution". The resolution works fine on the M1 Mac mini. I presumed from this that the problem is software-related. That appears to be confirmed by William Gallagher (AppleInsider) who notes that "the list of possible resolutions that are displayed in the Mac's System Settings are taken directly from the display itself". He adds, "users are saying they understand that the company is working on a fix." Software.
I expect that Apple will produce some computers with the M5 chip later in the year and that the iPhones (Autumn) will have the usual step up, with more AI capabilities. Some iPads will have A-series chips, while others will have the M-series. It might be better if all iPads were equipped with the M-series and Apple developed iPadOS to be more suitable for the larger format. One must for me is the rewriting of Photos for the iPad and that may be more likely with the new tools Apple has at its disposal from the purchase of Pixelmator and its Photomator app.
Although it is nice to have the biggest and best iPhones possible, these may not suit everyone. Some people (including ladies and children) have smaller hands so the iPhone Pro Max is a bit hefty for them. There is a clear need for a smaller iPhones and perhaps a selection of devices that are a little cheaper too.
Apple is expected to move more into the home market as speakers and a rumored Home Pad are developed to control devices. I am quite happy using my iPhone or iPad to turn the lights on and off, but I live in a fairly small condo. For those with a larger home, managing a wider selection of devices could probably do with something more substantial than the Home app.
This weekend, starting Friday 3 Jan, through to Sunday 5 Jan, Apple is making all of AppleTV+ free, so those who are not yet subscribed can look at the full range of series and movies that are available to the rest of us. If I had only 3 days to view it all, I would not know where to start: perhaps Foundation, Silo, La Maison and Slow Horses for series, with Greyhound, Wolfs, Cherry, Macbeth (Denzel Washington), Tetris, Napoleon and The Family Plan for the movies. I am sometimes cynical about offers from Apple as so many features are unavailable here, although users in Thailand (and other countries) still pay full price for their devices. The opening sentence of the 30 December press release does include the words, "all around the world", however.
My new year viewing had me looking at a number of movies on AppleTV+ and on Netflix where I saw a documentary on the London Nail Bomber a right wing terrorist responsible for killing and injuring many people in the late 1990s. I remember the news about this on television, but this documentary gave some good insights into the white extremism at the time (and now) in the UK. As a contrast I was delighted by the Italian movie, The Children's Train, a fictional rendition of children of Naples being transported to the north to stay with families there. The story focuses on one rebellious youngster who ends up as a concert violinist. The young Amerigo is payed by Christian Cervone and from the moment he appears onscreen there is an unusual power as he plays from defiance ranging down to a tearful and vulnerable child.
Apple is a hardware company. In general the products are reliable with the occasional problem (see above) that is usually software related and likely to be fixed soon. To make the hardware work, Apple has developed some robust software, starting with the early OS up to System 9, then OS X, which has now become macOS. As security and privacy have become more important, changes to macOS seem to make it harder to work with. There is plenty of explanation for this, for example on Howard Oakley's site, The Eclectic Light Company: lots of articles there with some deep analysis.
Photos on a Mac
There is other software of course, good and less endearing, like Photos which falls short and needs to be supplemented by other applications. I miss Aperture. Photos is worse on iOS and iPadOS. iWork does a fairly good job for those not interested in Microsoft applications and I particularly like Keynote on the Mac. I do use Numbers for basic spreadsheet work, but concede that there is no real replacement these days for Excel. One reason I use Photos is the ability to synchronize with iCloud, so that all my photographs are accessible on each device I have. That applies also to documents, so anything on the Mac at home can be worked on wherever I am (more or less).
Photos on the iPhone
It was clear, when I first used iTools, the predecessor of the disastrous MobileMe, that eventually became iCloud, that this was a cash cow for Apple. In those days, however, with a smaller user base and a limited number of tools, that was not so obvious. Its major expansion, and real value, came when other devices appeared: the iPhone of course, and the iPad a couple of years later. iCloud also became more valuable as the number of features increased (FindMy, iWork, et al).
The arrival of health features added to the strength of the devices and to iCloud, as well as helping many become more aware of their own wellness. Ryan Christoffel (9to5Mac) puts forward an interesting argument - based in part on Tim Cook's comments - that Health is the next big thing from Apple. Cupertino has of course been pushing this for several years. For example, I was invited to interview Dr. Richard Milani who was an advocate for the use of Apple devices in healthcare when he visited a conference here in 2016. That gave me a number of insights that I was able to act on. In 2017 I had a look at the ideas being floated concerning blue light for glucose detection with the Watch. IR is also mentioned along with other methods. In that article I also mentioned the Dexcom solution I had seen at WWDC (similar to Medtronic's device).
I was recently asked about the Apple Watch and its uses at the engineering faculty I work at. The conversation began with one engineer who works on electrical filter design for use in devices like EEG discussing new ways he expected light sensing to be used in the Watch as well as the ECG. I ran this as a demonstration for the small group and we commented on the way that the index finger is used as a 3rd contact, replacing the normal electrodes that would be attached to the body. Since the first Apple Watch, green light has been used to detect heart rate, while red was used later for blood-oxygen readings. He was thinking about blood pressure (which can only be done currently with input from a separate device) and I mentioned the idea of blood-sugar detection.
Invasive testing for blood-sugar levels
Non-invasive detection of blood-sugar levels has been the aim of much research although some suggestions that blue light might be a key to this do not appear to have come to fruition. I tried a month of testing: pricking my finger every morning when I woke up to test with a device I had bought. The figures were higher than I wanted so had a test done at a local hospital to confirm: high, but not diabetic. Being able to test easily at home would be a boon for non-diabetics of course, but frequent testing is essential for those with diabetes and this means drawing a blood sample in some ways, or being fitted with a continuous glucose monitoring device (GCM). Non-invasive monitors (such as IR light) have not been approved by the US FDA (University of Rochester) and may not be as effective.
I explained to my colleagues that I use the Watch and the Health app to monitor various parameters: heart rate, blood-oxygen, sleep (Sleep Cycle app and Apple Health app), exercise, weight (input from separate scales), blood pressure (external input), temperature (external device), handwashing, breathing, water intake, and a number of other parameters, including the occasional ECG. None of these provides a specific answer, but can give an overall picture, although unusual temperature and weight changes can be early indicators. Being able to monitor changes gives me a hint of problems, and if anything seems amiss, I visit a doctor to make sure.
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Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs. After 3 years writing a column in the Life supplement, he is now no longer associated with the Bangkok Post. He can be followed on X (@extensions_th). The RSS feed for the articles is http://www.extensions.in.th/ext_link.xml - copy and paste into your feed reader.
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