Issue link: https://imageup.uberflip.com/i/1504899
By Steve Benoff It's time to revisit some apps I've spoken of in past articles. Hopefully the reasons will become clear. Sometimes I get referred to apps with no comment from the person who sent them to me. That is not what I hope for when I ask, at the end of every monthly column, for "apps you'd like to share with others." I want to know your opinion of these apps – why you like or dislike them. Nevertheless, quite a while ago someone suggested several apps one can use to identify plants and trees. No comments accompanied the referral – only a suggestion to try them. I actually did try to use them, but they required payment to truly put them to a test. What little progress I made didn't result in anything useful. So, I gave up. Well, it turns out that Apple apparently has come to the rescue. And how did I make this discovery, you are no doubt asking? To answer that I'll have to go into disclosing a personal preference of mine. When it comes to magazines, I prefer the printed page to a digital device. I know this comes as a shock to you since I've shared my fondness for reading the New York Times on my phone and my absolute conversion from printed books to reading books on my Amazon Kindle and my Kindle app on my phone. For one thing, magazines are filled with pictures, and I prefer to view pictures in a larger format than my phone's screen. Of course, I could use a tablet, but I just haven't developed a fondness for tablets. But one problem with printed magazines is that they keep disappearing. My wife loves decorating magazines, but over the last few years several stopped publication. I love bicycling, audio/ video, and car magazines, but excellent magazines like Automobile, Peleton, and several A/V mags have disappeared and others like Road & Track and Sound & Vision no longer publish monthly. So I've been on a quest to replace these lost magazines with acceptable replacements. I obviously like digital technology. I used to read PCMag religiously, but it's now only available digitally. So, when a recent search revealed a magazine called Mac Life, I subscribed immediately. My first issue of Mac Life focused on the myriad changes to Apple's Mac and iPhone/iPad operating systems. Among these changes was a very interesting one to Apple Photos. Those leaf and tree apps suggested to me may now be obviated by this new feature. I'll quote Mac Life – "Take a photo of a plant, or open one in Photos. Tap the 'I' with a star. Look for the leaf icon on the photo and tap it. The Visual Look Up window should open with Siri Knowledge showing what it thinks the plant is." I took two photos to give it a try. The first was a dead leaf on my front lawn; the second was a living plant. When I looked at the first photo on my phone, I tapped the circled-I but could not see anything that looked like a leaf icon. I guess Photos didn't recognize the subject of the photo as a leaf. The second photo did show a leaf icon and pressing it revealed several suggested plants. I like this feature and don't see the need to pay for an app that does the same thing. By the way, I looked at these photos on my Mac computer and couldn't duplicate the features offered on my phone. Speaking of added features to iPhone apps, I refer you to Apple's Weather app. I admit to taking this app for granted. If you've used this app, as I do daily, you know that you can see hourly weather for the current day. But I discovered by accident the coolest new feature. If I tap one of the 10 days in the forecast, a graph of weather for the day is displayed. Furthermore, if you run your finger along the bottom of the graph, you can see temperature and weather conditions for any time within that day. Now when I see a chance of rain for a given day, I can see when in that day the rain is predicted. This is most important to me in planning my bike rides. If you scroll to the lower part of the Weather screen, you'll see lots of helpful information – a precipitation map, UV index, sunset and sunrise times, wind speed and direction, humidity, visibility, barometric pressure. And there's even a place to "Report an Issue." From time to time, I've noticed the weather on the app didn't mesh with what I experienced at my location. For example, having the app say it's raining when it's perfectly dry where I am. Now I have a way to report this difference. Thank you, Apple, for improving an app that was already quite good. (Apple doesn't always hit a home run with its app revisions, but I'll save that for another day.) Sadly, I have to report that Mac Life has also ceased publishing a printed edition. This suggests the question: who/which is going to die first – me or my last printed magazine? If you use an app you'd like to share with others, let me know at steve.benoff@verizon.net. 26 FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | AUGUST 2023 THERE'S AN APP FOR THAT! Apps Improve While Magazines Disappear* *Editor's note/cheap plug: The Breeze is not disappearing… and you can read the Breeze on your smartphone at www. imageup.uberflip.com and enjoy some hidden goodies.