If you’ve ever been late to an appointment due to missing a notification, you may want to sign onto Adam Engst’s proposal that Apple add persistent alarm-style notifications to its operating systems. Jeff Carlson joins us to look at the ckbk cookbook-subscription service, which just announced a partnership with the cookbook-indexing service Eat Your Books. Adam also marks the end of Apple’s COVID-19 exposure notifications for the iPhone, which never gained sufficient societal support. Finally, he shares his discovery of the Explain xkcd wiki and the news of Apple releasing Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for the iPad. Notable Mac app releases this week include Acorn 7.4.2 and Firefox 113.0.1.
The little-used COVID-19 exposure notification system built into iOS is being shut down. It's a shame that it wasn't adopted broadly enough to make a more significant difference in the infection numbers and death toll to date.
If you've ever found yourself unable to understand one of Randall Munroe's xkcd comics, run, don't walk, to explain xkcd, a wiki that does just what it claims for every xkcd comic so far.
Do you want the experience of cooking from a cookbook alongside the convenience of pulling up recipes online? ckbk’s collection of 700 books and 120,000 recipes makes that possible. And a new collaboration with Eat Your Books expands the offerings.
Frustrated by how easy he finds it to ignore notifications for important events and timed reminders, Adam Engst proposes alarms that continue to go off until stopped manually, creating a third notification type alongside banners and alerts.
Watchlist
Brings enhancements to Picture-in-Picture video playback. (Free, 127 MB, macOS 10.12+)
Brings new screenshot capabilities and bug fixes to the image editor. ($39.99 new, free update, 21 MB, macOS 10.13+)