ExtraBITS for 15 May 2017
In ExtraBITS this week, it seems like Amazon Prime Video is heading to the Apple TV, the Apple Watch could potentially prevent a stroke, and MacPaw has taken possession of Tekserve’s legendary Apple hardware collection.
Is the Apple/Amazon Video Feud Over? — BuzzFeed’s John Paczkowski reports that Apple and Amazon have reached an agreement that will bring Amazon Prime Video to the Apple TV and put the Apple TV back in Amazon’s store. The deal will reportedly be announced at the WWDC keynote next month. Recode previously reported on the rumor, making it sufficiently substantial to pass on. If everything pans out, the Apple TV’s content lineup will become significantly more compelling. The agreement also raises the broader question of whether Apple is adjusting some App
Store policies to be more accommodating to competing digital retailers.
Apple Watch Can Detect Abnormal Heart Rhythms — The eHeart study at the University of California, San Francisco has shown that a “deep neural network” fed data from the Apple Watch app Cardiogram was 97 percent accurate in detecting the most common type of abnormal heart rhythm, paroxysmal atrial fibrillation. Paroxysmal atrial fibrillation causes about 25 percent of strokes and two-thirds of those strokes are preventable with relatively inexpensive drugs, making this potentially life-saving news. Cardiogram and UCSF plan to further
validate the neural network’s findings against external data and incorporate the results into the Cardiogram app itself. The team also intends to see if the system can detect health conditions beyond atrial fibrillation.
MacPaw Bought the Tekserve Apple Collection — When legendary New York City Apple reseller Tekserve closed its doors in August 2016, many wondered where its collection of Apple relics would end up. The good news is that our friends at MacPaw quietly purchased the entire collection to display at their Ukrainian office. The next time you’re in Kyiv, be sure to swing by for a tour, which includes a 128K Mac signed by Steve Wozniak, a NeXTcube, and other pieces of Apple history.