512 Pixels

John Timmer, Ars Technica:

Earlier today, IBM announced that it would be using Watson, the system that famously wiped the floor with human Jeopardy champions, to tackle a somewhat more significant problem: choosing treatments for cancer. In the process, the company hopes to help usher in the promised era of personalized medicine.

The announcement was made at the headquarters of IBM’s partner in this effort, the New York Genome Center; its CEO, Robert Darnell called the program “not purely clinical and not purely research.” Rather than seeking to gather new data about the mutations that drive cancer, the effort will attempt to determine if Watson can parse genome data and use it to recommend treatments.

A far more noble use for Watson’s horsepower than playing Jeopardy.

Shawn Blanc:

Here is a running list of our personal favorite apps on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. These are the apps we, The Sweet Setup staff, use day in and day out for work and play.

Why this list? We enjoy spending an inordinate amount of time to research, test, try, use and then pick the best apps. However, this is a slow process for us. And so, what to do in the meantime as we build out our catalog of app recommendations? Well, here are the apps that we use.

Our list has over 100 apps in it.

Myke interviewed Jonathan Mann on this week’s Command Space, and the whole interview is just great. The bits about the iPhone 4 and ATP shouldn’t be missed.

There’s a rumor floating around that Apple will be bringing TextEdit and Preview to the iPhone and iPad with iOS 8.

For years on OS X, Preview has been the default applications for opening images and PDFs. Preview has had iCloud support on OS X for a couple of years ago — leading to confusion for some users — and it’s a no-brainer that Preview for iOS would tap into that iCloud container. Saving a PDF or an image in Preview on the Mac would sling it over to iOS over the air, which would be great.

If this all Preview does, I think it would be a great addition to iOS, filling the gap iOS users who don’t have something like GoodReader or Documents 5 experience.

However, I would much prefer if Preview were more powerful. Matt Birchler writes:

They could go the extra mile and allow all third party apps to access the contents of Preview, again just like how all apps have access to your photo stream and camera roll. I kind of doubt this part, but hey, this is all speculation, right!?

Since we’re playing the speculation game, let’s imagine a world where Preview for iOS is more than an image and file viewer, and became a hub for files on iPads and iPhones.

In this world, Preview could be the default application for not only PDFs, but even screenshots and photos not taken by the device’s camera. The downside of all of this would be the same thing that plagues the iOS Camera Roll: clutter.

The key to solving this could be Tags. Introduced in Mavericks, here’s how Apple sells the feature:

Tags are a powerful new way to organize and find your files, even documents stored in iCloud. Simply tag the files you want to organize together with a keyword, like “Important.” Then when you want to find those files, just click Important in the Finder sidebar or enter it in the search field. And all the files with that tag will appear together in one Finder window, even if they’re stored in different locations. Tag a file once, or give it multiple tags to assign it to multiple projects. So if you’re planning an event, you could tag the guest list you saved in Numbers, the flyer you designed in Pages, and the presentation you created in Keynote — and see them all with just one click.

On OS X, this means a user to see all like-tagged documents, even if they are in separate iCloud app silos:

If iOS 8 were to ship with Tags support, apps that rely on iCloud’s document sync — including the rumored Preview — would gain simple organizational tools. Past that, Tags (on the Mac at least) give apps the ability work around some of the limitations imposed by sandboxing, as apps can open files in other applications’ silos via Finder’s Tag view and the “Open File” dialogue box.

Tools like Preview and Tags would make iOS more powerful and more flexible, and I don’t know anyone who would complain about that. Apple’s Tags technology isn’t a true user-facing file system, but they might be as close as we’ll ever see on iOS.

We celebrate The Prompt’s ruby anniversary by discussing how Google approaches wearables (and how Apple may move in a different direction), Checkmark 2, iOS 8 rumors and the recent changes Apple has made to its iPhone and iPad lineups.

Sponsored by lynda.com, Squarespace (use code TALLYHO3 for 10% off) and Freshbooks

Shawn Blanc:

My analog watches are my reminder that utility exists apart from an internet connection and usefulness doesn’t require the latest software.

Adrianne Jeffries at The Verge:

Twitter has shelved a project that would have made it more difficult for the government to intercept users’ private messages without a court order, sources tell The Verge, a sudden reversal for a company that has been ahead of the curve on privacy at a time of creeping surveillance.

Most of Twitter’s content is public, but there are a few channels that users consider private: personal information, protected accounts, and direct messages, which function like a limited email system.

In November, news leaked that Twitter had started work on encrypting direct messages in order to prevent unauthorized snooping by hackers or the state. But the project was dropped earlier this year without explanation, to the confusion of employees who were working on it and those in the internet security community who were aware of it.

Twitter’s share holders should push back on this move. In our post-Snowden world, canceling work like this is a big deal. However, what really worries me is that many users may assume DMs are encrypted.

Without this report, would Twitter have ever set proper expectations for their users?

I highly doubt it:

Twitter declined to comment on why its latest encryption effort has stalled, but all signs point to its overloaded to-do list rather than an abandonment of its values.

As a demo at least, this doesn’t look bad at all. I think it really drives home how voice-driven devices like these need to be, which is where some of this falls down for me.

If Siri were the only (or at least main) control scheme for my watch, there’d be lots of times I would’t be able to fully use it. I work in an open office, and would never use Siri at my desk. Likewise, I often look at my watch while watching a movie, at church, while with a resting child and in about a billion other situations where silence is critical.

Update: LG and Motorola have both announced new devices, and Moto’s sports a traditional round display.

Federico Viticci at MacStories:

The return of the 16 GB iPad 4 marks the company’s official discontinuation of the iPad 2, first introduced in March 2011 and sold until today as the most affordable iPad in Apple’s line-up. The relaunched iPad 4 is the same device that Apple unveiled in October 2012 — it comes with an A6X processor, FaceTime camera, and LTE support, but it replaces the iPad 2′s 30-pin connector with Lightning, making it consistent with the rest of Apple’s iPad family.

The iPad 4 — now named the “iPad with Retina display,” which was the name of the iPad 3 — sits at the $399 price point.

At $299, the non-Retina, A5-powered iPad mini remains. Clearly the A5 is still a player, as the iPhone 4S is also still for sale.

(Granted, the A5X-powered iPad 3 was fairly slow in many regards; the iPad 4 is a much better device on the power end of things.)

On the iPhone front, Apple’s now shipping a 8GB version of the iPhone 5c. Ina Fried at Re/code:

The company on Tuesday started selling an 8GB model of the iPhone 5c in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Australia and China, with the unlocked device selling for around $70 less than the 16GB model.

“The mid-tier iPhone segment is growing year-over-year and the 8GB model provides a more affordable option for markets where LTE is becoming more established,” an Apple representative told Re/code. The iPhone 5c, unlike the iPhone 4s, which is also still sold, supports LTE networks.

While many nerds consider 8GB way too limiting storage-wise, my guess is that this new model may fair well in certain markets, but not as well as if the iPhone 4S had gone away today.

After a successful fundraising campaign, App.net launched in 2012 as a member-supported Twitter-like social network.

That makes a ton of sense, as App.net was born during a period of distrust around Twitter. Many of my geeky friends flocked to it, hoping to re-kindle the magic of 2007-era Twitter. While I think that did happen to an extent, the reality is that App.net could probably never really rival Twitter.

App.net’s leadership recognized this early on, and have been working for years to grow App.net into something much broader. As a result, App.net has grown over the years, and now has several core services:

• Alpha — The original Twitter-like interface.
• Backer — A flexible crowd-funding platform
• Broadcast — A push notification service for publishers

In addition to these three components, App.net offers private messaging, online file storage, an extensive API and more. All that said, the backbone — and main interface — of App.net for most users is Alpha.

And that’s why I didn’t renew my paid membership. I really like the App.net guys — and have spent time with several of them in San Francisco — but at this point, it’s hard to see where things are going. Broadcast and the other components are all well-done, and there’s some nice apps being built on top of the API, but all I really use it for is manually cross-posting stuff from Twitter every once in a while.

(Even my usage of the excellent Whisper has even fallen off, as apps like GroupMe have come in and offered many more features.)

I understand that App.net is being grown into an entire platform, but that’s a hard thing to sell.

I hope App.net does well. I’ll still be checking in from time to time, and I think at some point I’ll re-subscribe as a paying member, but for now, I have a hard time seeing the return on that investment.

OneNote is pretty great on the PC, and the Mac version isn’t far behind it. I’m glad to see Evernote have some competition on OS X, and I find it very interesting that this on the Mac App Store. My guess is that the Office update rumored to be coming later this year will be in the App Store as well.

Update: It’s been awarded Editor’s Choice in the App Store.

I first got to know Shawn Blanc back in 2009 when he ran an article about my Mac setup. Five years later, we’ve worked together on several projects, so it felt right to finally re-visit my Mac rig.