Mark Gurman and Alex Webb at Bloomberg Technology report on how Apple has scaled back its automotive ambitions from becoming an outright competitor to Tesla Motors to developing an underlying self-driving car platform for now. The Project Titan team has suffered from hundreds of layoffs, reassignments, and engineers leaving on their own, and the refocused team reportedly has a year to determine the feasibility of the platform and decide on whether to design its own vehicle or partner with existing carmakers. It’s possible that Apple waded into the murky automotive waters with an overinflated view of its ability to reinvent a complex and entrenched industry, but we can hope that Apple’s continued presence will at least spur carmakers to improve the software aspects of their automobiles.

Ever wondered what happens if the solid-state Home button on the iPhone 7 fails? 9to5Mac reports that iOS 10 puts a virtual Home button on the screen so you can keep using your iPhone (presumably in conjunction with your passcode, if the Home button’s Touch ID sensor is also broken). This virtual Home button is similar to the on-screen Home button provided by Assistive Touch (in Settings > General > Accessibility > AssistiveTouch), except it’s affixed to the bottom-center of the screen. With rumors swirling that Apple may be planning to ditch the physical Home button entirely, this could be a first glimpse at the future of the iPhone.

Two of the hottest technologies at the moment are virtual reality (VR), which isolates users in an entirely virtual world, and augmented reality (AR), which overlays virtual elements on top of the real world. In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Apple CEO Tim Cook expressed a clear preference for AR, saying, “VR has some interesting applications, but I don’t think it’s a broad-based technology like AR. Augmented reality will take some time to get right, but I do think that it’s profound.” Why? Cook said, “There’s no substitute for human contact, and so you want the technology to encourage that.”

Voracious readers take note: Amazon has added another perk to its $99-per-year Amazon Prime program. Prime members can now download over 1000 books, comics, and Kindle Singles to their Kindles or Kindle apps for free. This benefit comes on top of Amazon Prime’s free 2-day shipping, free video streaming for thousands of movies and TV shows, free streaming of over one million songs, and more. The book selection is unsurprisingly random, with a few best-sellers like “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” and “The Hobbit” mixed in with titles and authors looking for an audience. On its own, Prime Reading isn’t a good reason to subscribe to Amazon Prime, but if you’re already a subscriber, it might be a good way to get something to read when you’re out of books. (The link goes to the list of Prime Reading books, something that’s otherwise hard to find.)

Fujitsu has published a schedule for addressing problems with its ScanSnap software running in macOS 10.12 Sierra. A fix for scanning using ScanSnap models iX500, iX100, SV600, S1300i, and S1100i in Sierra became available on 6 October 2016, and the company promises an additional update on 17 October 2016 for ScanSnap models S1500, S1500M, S1300, and S1100. The ScanSnap Evernote Edition will receive an update by the end of October. Still to come, and with no estimated release date, are fixes for older PDF content created by ScanSnap scanners so those PDFs can be modified in Sierra. In the meantime, if you’re using Sierra, work on copies of older scanned PDFs and keep good backups.

Over at Six Colors, Jason Snell reveals that macOS 10.12 Sierra calculates free space on your drive differently than in the past. Along with drive space that doesn’t contain any data, Sierra now includes in the calculation “purgeable space,” which holds data that can be deleted from your drive because Sierra can redownload it if necessary. This purgeable data includes stuff like files stored in iCloud, certain large fonts, and unused dictionaries, along with purchased video content from the iTunes Store and photos and videos you have in iCloud Photo Library (those last two require you to have enabled the appropriate settings in iTunes and Photos). Keep this in mind, or you could get confused when trying to determine how much space you have left on your drive!

Cookbooks often feature elaborately staged food photography designed to make the recipes seem as compelling as possible, which is why it’s notable that the photos in Alton Brown’s latest cookbook were shot with an iPhone 6s Plus. The “Good Eats” host’s latest project is EveryDayCook, a cookbook featuring recipes he regularly prepares for himself. In the preface, Brown explained that all the photography for the book was shot with an iPhone because he’s “a bit of a control freak.” Aren’t we all?

In a move that should surprise no one, Apple has discontinued the third-generation Apple TV. Apple has been phasing out the four-year-old streaming device for months, and it has been a long time since Apple updated its pre-tvOS software. You may still be able to buy a refurbished third-generation Apple TV, but with no future support planned, we can’t recommend it. Those looking for a streaming video box should instead look at the fourth-generation Apple TV or a streaming video device from Amazon or Roku. We hope Apple will reduce the price of the fourth-generation Apple TV to make up for the loss of the $69 older model and get it into more homes.

Bill Atkinson, the legendary developer behind the original Mac’s QuickDraw graphics system and classic Mac apps like MacPaint and HyperCard, has been waiting for Apple’s forthcoming AirPods for years. Back in 2011, he gave a Macworld Expo presentation in which he explained why Siri belongs in your ear, which the AirPods will provide. Atkinson cites the Jane artificial intelligence in Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game” series as a model for Apple to follow. As for the future of Siri on the AirPods, Atkinson says, “Within a few years it’s going to be able to do lots of things: It will hear everything you hear, it’s going to be able to whisper in your ear.” For the moment, though, he’s realistic about Siri’s capabilities. “Siri is a bit of a joke now; it doesn’t really understand the meaning of conversations,” Atkinson admits. “That’s going to improve.”

Apple touts the end-to-end encryption and overall privacy of its iMessage service, but Sam Biddle of The Intercept reveals a loophole: when you enter a phone number to start a conversation in Messages, the app contacts Apple’s servers to find out whether to send the message via iMessage or SMS. The problem is that Apple’s servers currently log the contact number, the date and time, and your IP address (which could disclose your general location). Apple has verified that it keeps these logs for 30 days and will give them to law enforcement if compelled by a court order. We hope these revelations will encourage Apple to reassess the privacy implications of this system.

In an initiative to improve the health of its employees and customers, health insurance company Aetna is buying Apple Watches for its nearly 50,000 employees and will be offering subsidized Apple Watches to select large employers and individual customers in the upcoming enrollment period, with the remaining cost to be paid via a monthly payroll deduction. Aetna will be providing iOS apps to simplify and improve the healthcare process through care management and wellness, medication adherence, and health plan information and decision support. In addition, Aetna app users will be able to use Apple’s Wallet app to check their deductibles and pay bills. If implemented well, Aetna’s program could improve healthcare, reduce costs, and enhance the company’s ratings with its millions of members.