Nokia’s HERE mapping app has been available in Apple’s App Store since the problematic launch of Apple Maps with iOS 6 last summer. But due to “recent changes in iOS 7”, Nokia has pulled HERE indefinitely.
Here’s what Nokia PR had to say:
As the new Mac Pro trickles out into people’s hands, lucky owners of the world’s most high tech trash can have started playing with the machine to see what it can do. Over at Other World Computing, they figured that since the 2013 Mac Pro can drive three 4k monitors, it should be able to drive six 27-inch displays at 2560 by 1440 pixels – right?
The verdict? Yes, it can. Shown here is the diminutive dark tower surrounded by six 27-inch displays, radiating and reflecting in all their glory. Pretty slick. Besides serving as the ultimate multi-tasking system, this capability can also help drive things like video walls in museums, sports arenas and other on-location installations. Just remember to leave room for the stack of external hard drives!
Update: I just did the math, and this is equivalent to twenty-one 11-inch MacBook Airs…
Source: Other World Computing
Gaming publisher extraordinaire Square Enix just emailed us here at Cult of Mac to tell us that it has added quite a few more titles, most of them from arcade game publisher, Taito, to the big iOS Holiday Sale.
Most of the games below are 50 to 60 percent off the usual prices, so if you’re in the market (or just the mood) for some great retro iOS games, this is your chance. The sale lasts through January 6, so don’t take too long to head on over to the App Store.
Rather than slogging through a lake of year-end lists to find something you’re just going to put down after 30 minutes, Cult of Mac has once again waded through iTunes to compile a list of the best new movies, albums and books to come out in 2013.
Enjoy!
Pretty much everyone picked Kayne West’s Yeezus as the album of the year, and while I really enjoyed the different direction and sounds Ye slayed us with, I was more impressed with J. Cole’s sophomore album Born Sinner.
In year filled with pop megastars and divine rap albums, good, solid rock was hard to find but the Arctic Monkeys’ latest album AM provided just the right amount of distortion, power and melody with Do I Wanna Know earning more repeats listens on my Rdio list than almost any other song this year.
How many times did you listen to Random Access Memories this year? 13? 50? 112? It doesn’t matter, because every single spin of this record was a delight as Daft Punk wooed us with their beats for the best album of summer.
iTunes
This darling sister trio from Los Angeles created their addictive sound with a combination of R&B, pop, classic rock and more, to create one of the most impressive debut albums of the year. Everything about HAIM is a labor of love. Danielle, Este and Alana won’t do anything if they don’t feel totally comfortable with presenting it, Valley girl tics, snorting laughter and all.
Even the best of artists are supposed to fizzle out after their fourth or fifth album, but Tegan and Sara’s seventh effort Hearthtrob was one of their best albums in nearly 10 years. The sisters busted out new songs about regret, failed romance, solitude and self-loathing for their most adult-themed album yet that still managed to feel amazing.
If Kanye’s not making the list, we have to give a spot to one of his most visible proteges – Pusha T. After having his first solo album pushed back for years, Push’s My Name Is My Name served up some of the MC’s finest lyrical flows and combined them with more minimalist production to deliver one of the most compelling rap albums of the year.
Vampire Weekend rose to prominence on a tsunami of hype in 2008 with their fun guitar licks and tales of college romance, but Ezra Koenig and his band have matured into some of the best songwriters of our time with their phenomenal album “Modern Vampires of the City” that spins a chorus of new songs about love and loss while still being one of the funnest bands to listen to.
I’m almost ashamed to admit how much I listened to The Bones of What You Believe this year. Mostly because it’s like totally a hipster album, but also because I think I’ve been hypnotized by The Scottish trio’s explosive pulsating songs that are layered into some sort of neon electric masterpiece.
by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru
Maybe I just watch too much SportsCenter, but I don’t recall any sports book making as much noise this year as League of Denial which sent shockwaves through the NFL with its painful stories of NFL players who have suffered football-related concussions and the repercussions of the sport.
The Goldfinch starts off with a bang – literally – as a 13-year-old New Yorker named Theo and his mother are rocked by an explosion at a New York museum. Theo survives the blast, but his mother doesn’t, leading to 800-pages detailing the aftermath of his experience over the course of a decade and a half.
The book moves us through the life of Theo as an adult, as he drifts between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of antiques in his shop. He is alienated and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle as the novel unfolds with a healthy serving of suspense.
Rather than focusing on the culture gap between Bengali immigrants and their Americanized offspring, Jhumpa Lahiri’s work for her second novel takes a turn by exploring a family that is bound together by painful tragedy and bad choices more than by love. Reactions from critics have been mixed despite Lowland’s nomination for the National Book Award, but the Lahiri’s characters are just vivid and lonely as some of her best short stories, making Lowland a must-read for 2013.
Our Newsstand editor recommended David McRaney’s second book to me earlier this year and proved to be one of the funnest and most insightful reads of 2013 thanks to McRaney’s wonderfully smart and entertaining commentary on scientific studies related to self delusion. You Are Now Less Dumb is grounded in the idea that we all believe ourselves to be objective observers of reality–except we’re not. But that’s okay, because our delusions keep us sane.
by Scott Anderson
It seems like not a week goes by without some news reports of violence in the Middle East, but if you want to dig into the history of the region that shaped the problems, dive into Lawrence in Arabia, a group biography that weaves the stories of legendary British officer T.E. Lawrence, who played a key role in the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Turks during World War I; German Curt Prufer, who conspired with the Ottomans; Zionist agronomist Aaron Aaronsohn, and American oil company representative William Yale.
by Hilton Als
White Girls, Hilton Als’s first book since The Women fourteen years ago, finds one of The New Yorker’s boldest cultural critics deftly weaving together his brilliant analyses of literature, art, and music with fearless insights on race, gender, and history. The result is an extraordinary, complex portrait of “white girls,” as Als dubs them—an expansive but precise category that encompasses figures as diverse as Truman Capote and Louise Brooks, Malcolm X and Flannery O’Connor. It’s the best book you probably never heard of this year.
by John Brockman
Fans of You Are Now Less Dumb will probably also enjoy John Brockman’s compilation of explanations on everyday occurrences. In This Explains Everything, Brockman asked experts in numerous fields and disciplines to come up with their favorite explanations for everyday occurrences. Why do we recognize patterns? Is there such a thing as positive stress? Are we genetically programmed to be in conflict with each other? Only instead of having to spend years reading research paper for the answer you’re presented with elegant answers to 150 questions for the world’s scientific minds.
by George Saunders
While Jhumpa Lahiri decided to make another go at writing novels, George Saunders went with what he does best with his fourth collection of rambunctious and original short stories. Tenth of December shows why Saunders is one of the most inventive writers of his generation. The honest, accessible collection has earned nods as a National Book Award finalist and showcases the manic energy of Saunders that few writers possess.
by James McBride
John Brown’s disastrous raid on Harpers Ferry has already been retold by countless Civil War buffs, but you’ve never heard a retelling of the events leading up to it in as an imaginative a way as James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird.
The Spectacular Now was one of the most surprising movies I saw in 2013 even though the plot sounds like its just another teen-angst-drama movie. The film focus on tale of Sutter Keely as he finishes off his senior year of high school and falls in love for a good girl despite his reputation as a wise-ass troublemaker. The movie starts off as a unlikely romance tale but then unfolds into a charming, insightful look at youth with snapshots of the confusion and passion as Keely deals with family drama, friends moving on, in this wonderful coming of age movie based on the book by Tim Tharp.
Watching Matthew McConaughey morph from everyone’s favorite shirtless surfer bro to a serious character driven actor over the last two to three years has been quite amazing, but no film showcases McConaughey’s talent more than Dallas Buyers Club.
Steve Carell usually plays the exact same lovable goof in every movie, which is one of the reasons why The Way Way Back is so good as we get to see him take on the role of a sleazy, condescending boyfriend in this endearing coming-of-age tale about shy 14 year-old boy named Duncan who has trouble fitting in.
I only just got around to watching Fruitvale Station last night, but holy crap is this movie a stab in the gut. It quickly jumped into my top 10 list thanks to the performance of Michael B. Jordan in the role of Oscar Grant III, a 22-year-old Bay Area resident, who crosses paths with friends, enemies, family, and strangers on the last day of 2008.
Technically, Django Unchained came out at the tail end of last year, but I don’t care. Cristoph Waltz’s performance is so perfectly hilarious he won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Dr. King Schultz and Jamie Lee Fox is both hilarious and brutal, but the real kicker is watching the greatest movie star of our generation fill the shoes of the abhorrent slave trader Calvin Candies.
Have I mentioned how bad ass Matthew McConaughey is as an actor now? If a movie about a drug dealing cowboy with AIDS isn’t your thing, check out McConaughey’s other incredible film Mud, about two young boys who encounter a fugitive and form a pact to help him evade the bounty hunters on his trail and to reunite him with his true love.
Formula One has never ever peaked my interest during my past 28 years of existence until Thor himself got behind the wheel. Rush is a re-creation of the merciless 1970s rivalry between Formula One rivals James Hunt and Niki Lauda. Hemsworth fans will undoubtedly fall in love with his portrayal of Hunt, but the most intriguing character in the movie is actually the calculated, obsessive little rat, Niki Lauda.
2013 was packed with big budget action movies featuring huge stars and even bigger comic book characters, but my favorite action movie of the year was Pacific Rim. The film doesn’t have much to offer in regards to amazing acting performances – although Idris Elba and Charlie Day give memorable efforts – but it does boast a shit ton of incredible fight scenes between the colossal Yager machines and nasty Kaiju monsters. It’s absolutely ridiculous but you won’t be able to take your eyes away from the visual spectacle of robots and godzilla-like monsters destroying the largest cities in the world without breaking a sweat.
The world was supposed to end in 2012 but instead we were served two great apocalyptic comedies this year with This Is The End and Simon Pegg’s The World’s End. Both films feature a great cast of supporting actors crawling through the end of humankind while all-too-ready to dispense some of the best cracks of the year, but I have to give the nod to The World’s End as the funniest movie of the year thanks to the creative ways morphs from a character character analysis of guys who peaked in high school and are broken people in adulthood, before robots aliens suddenely attack and all hell breaks loose.
Don Jon
Joseph Gordon-Levitt has risen up as one the hottest young actors around thanks to a string of lead roles in indie film over the past few years, but in 2013 JGL decided to get behind the camera in his first directing role for the hit film Don Jon which he also wrote.
Yes, there’s pulchritude aplenty throughout the film, but rather than throwing sex on the big screen for the sake of sex, Jon and Barbara struggles against a media culture full of false fantasies provides a compelling and honest reflection we all can relate to.
Paper is quickly becoming a thing of the past, so we’re offering you a three-year digital subscription to Hacker Monthly that you can enjoy on any device you want (PDF, MOBI, EPUB format), DRM-free for the price of just one year. Plus, you get access to all current and past issues immediately after your purchase.
2013 is arguably the year where phone cameras, and specifically the uiPhone camera, got as good as regular cameras. A DSLR or awesome mirrorless camera will still give you better photos technically, but the iPhone is way more convenient, and will give most folks better results in most instances.
Even in the days of film, convenience could win over quality. Only an enthusiast of a pro would go anywhere near an SLR. In those days, most people used a compact camera with fixed focus (AF crept in in the 1980s), and the real cheapskates opted for crappy 110 or Disc cameras, which used tiny films — the equivalent of small sensors these days.
I own probably the best camera I’ve ever used, the Fujifilm X100S, and I’ve all but given up taking it out with me, saving it for portrait work where it really shines. For everything else, I use the iPhone. So what’s changed to make it so compelling?
Alongside the powerful iPhone 5, and now the amazing iPhone 5S, iPhoneographers in 2013 have enjoyed some pretty rad photo apps. What follows is a completely subjective list of my favorite photo apps of the year. Some are in there because I use them and love them so much (I’m looking at you, Snapseed and PhotoSync), and others because they brought something truly new or great to iOS. Whatever, they’re all worth a look.
You know how when you’re working with numbers on paper, and you draw a line from the result of one equation to kind of “link” the result to the beginnings of another? Like maybe you’re planning a New Year’s Eve party and you tot up the cost of drinks in one section, the fake mustaches in another, and the overall cost in yet another?
Well, with Tydlig you can do that with your iPad and iPhone. And even better, the linked numbers get updated in any linked equations.
One thing that’s still lacking in the Nerdiverse is a way to collect quotes which I clip from, well, from everywhere. How neat would it be if you could collect snippets of text from Kindle books, web pages, news articles and so on?
Very neat, is the correct answer.
Lightly comes pretty close, and with a new update, the clip-to-Evernote service can run in the background indefinitely, grabbing anything you copy to the clipboard. In theory at least.
There’s something utterly terrifying about the above image, which is the promo picture for the Shot Trak HD, an HD gun camera. There’s nothing wrong with hunting (as long as you’re actually eating the animals you’re killing), and I guess that recording the action is no different than clamping a GoPro to your helmet and jumping off a mountain wearing a squirrel suit.
But the idea that you’d sit around with friends and family to view the kill shot in the comfort of your own living room? That’s a short trip to Creepsville, man.
Heyday for the iPhone is a little like the great (and defunct) Everpix flashback feature, which showed you photos you took on this day in history. Only Heyday goes one better: it doesn’t just remember photos, it remembers places, and weaves the two together into a rather neat little automatic journal.
Wahoo has added yet another low-power Bluetooth sensor to its range of bike fitness gadgets. The RPM is a cadence sensor which works without magnets, or bulky attachments on the frame, and talks direct to compatible apps on your iPhone.
Does the recent spat over Writer Pro and its software-patenting shenanigans leave you wishing you could use its beautiful Nitti Light font in a different developer’s app? Or are you so scarred by years of using Microsoft Word that you can’t concentrate unless you’re staring at a page of Times New Roman?
Fear not, friends, because The Soulmen have the answer. Hidden in the latest update to Daedalus Touch is a way to import any font you like. Yup, I’m talking about Comic Sans on iOS.
This is Cult of Mac’s exclusive column written by an actual Apple retail store genius who answers all your questions about what it’s like to work at an Apple Store. Our genius must remain anonymous, but other than “Who are you, anyway?” ask anything you want about what goes on behind that slick store facade.
As the year is winding to a close, we revisit the five most top questions you guys asked the genius this year, including tips on escalating to a manager, secrets of the Apple Store, coming clean when your MacBook is waterlogged and more..
If you’ve got a question you want an inside scoop on, send us your questions and the answers will be published first in Cult of Mac’s Magazine on Newsstand. Send your questions to newsATcultofmac.com with “genius” in the subject line.
Q. What’s the most polite way to escalate an issue to a manager?
First, make sure you follow your technician’s protocols. When working on an issue, we have a set of troubleshooting guidelines that we have to follow to try to isolate your issue. We must get that done first before we can get a manager involved, so give us time to get all of the housekeeping issues squared away first. After those are out of the way, you’ll be given a couple of options to fix your issue and at that point you could ask for a manager.
If you’re not satisfied with the options presented by the Apple Specialist or Genius helping you, the best way to ask for a manager is to be straight up. Say, “I don’t think this is right and I’d like to talk to a manager.” Being nice really does go a long way in the Apple Store.
If you throw a temper tantrum, we’re still going to help you, but we’ll basically just do everything down to the letter of the law to resolve your issue and get you out of our hair. However, if you’re polite and friendly, managers will be more willing to go above and beyond the basics to repair that connection you have with the Apple brand.
Keep in mind that requesting a manager isn’t a silver bullet for killing any Apple issue you have. Even when a manager does finally come around, a lot of times they’ll just reaffirm that the Genius is following Apple policy, reiterate your options and go help another customer.
Q. What are some hidden “features” of the Apple Store that most customers don’t know about/notice?
Apple Stores are designed to be more and more efficient every day. Next time you visit a store, take a look around to see some of the hidden features that help the wood-and-steel adorned stores sell as many iDevices as possible. It’s easy to spot our portable Point of Sale (POS) systems which consist of an encased iPod with dedicated apps that allow us to scan products and swipe cards.
What you might not see is the cash drawers at the end of the display tables. With one click these drawers pop open wirelessly for cash transactions. Our special iPods, called EasyPays, can also print receipts to the hidden printers underneath the product tables.
The tote bags that are given to carry out purchases can also be found here. The tables also house security alarms that are triggered if a device is removed from the table. Inside, there’s also a network and power hubs for the display products. You can usually find a couple of card terminals around the store that are used in case of EasyPay issues.
If you’re at the Genius Bar, in the training or setup area and need a quick charge, check under the tables – or bar depending on the store – to find hidden power outlets and ethernet ports for wired network connections, cables not included.
Q. Have you ever worked drunk?
The job can be pretty stressful sometimes. Occasionally, I’ll have a drink before work or on a lunch break. It’s not a bad way to relax and most of the managers at the store don’t care unless you’re always coming in sloppy drunk.
There are always a few situations throughout the day where it’d be great to take a short drink break after helping out a particularly horrible customer, but I don’t make it a habit. Fixing people’s iPhones really isn’t any easier after a few drinks so there are few benefits to being hammered on the job. As for what happens after work, it isn’t uncommon for employees and managers to meet up and toss back a few.
Q. My 30-day-old MacBook Pro had a little accident involving water on the ride home. The screen isn’t working, but it will output video to an external monitor. What’s my best bet when approaching the Genius Bar – pretending I don’t know what happened, or fessing up?
Honesty is the best policy right? The Apple Geniuses are going to find out one way or another that your MacBook is water damaged. It’s better for them to find out from you right away, so fess up to it, but ask them what the best options are.
Ask them what was damaged and what repairs can be done. Sometimes – especially in your case where you purchased it very recently – they may be able to talk to a manager to help you out, so it’s good start off on the right foot.
The Genius Bar is there to fix your computer, but it’s really about fixing your relationship with Apple. Because the company wants to represent itself well and get great customer satisfaction scores, a manager might give you a break and only make you pay a partial amount of the repair, or even hook you up with a free repair.
Q. Am I really getting a NEW iPhone when I pay $49 for Apple to replace a broken iPhone covered by AppleCare+?
My line is that, yes, it is a new iPhone, but Apple terms and conditions state that “Apple may use parts or products that are new or equivalent to new in reliability and performance,” meaning the iPhone you’re getting is really “reconditioned,” not straight from the factory like it is when you buy a brand new iPhone.
We’re told to say that they aren’t “refurbished” because they’ve been totally gutted down to the frame. Apple’s stance is that they really are brand new devices, in the sense that they get a new enclosure, display, and innards, but there are a lot of parts that have been recycled from old iPhones, like the metal frame and some other parts.
We know they’re just rebuilding them. I’ve seen some that had a screw missing, others with a bad display, but it’s only been a small percentage. I’ve seen reconditioned iPhones that lasted twice as long as a new iPhone, so they’re not necessarily worse.
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a flippin’ quadrocopter… with an aerial camera! It’s the Micro Drone 2.0 with an aerial cam so you can capture video from the sky.
This crazy maneuvering remote-controlled Micro Drone 2.0 can do it all! You can literally throw it into the air like a frisbee, upside down or at any angle, and its new self-righting algorithm and sensors will immediately stabilize it back to its horizontal flying position. And you can get it for just $69.99 – 45% off the regular price – thanks to this limited time offer from Cult of Mac Deals!
The barrier to entry for emulating classic games on a Mac has always been pretty high, until now. OpenEmu is an amazing retro game emulator for the Mac that has been literally years in the making, and it’s finally available for everyone to download and use for free.
Apple has been fined 20 million New Taiwan dollars by the country’s Fair Trade Commission for illegally fixing iPhone prices with Japanese carriers. At only $670,000 U.S, the fine is chump change for Apple, but the allegations are serious.
In Japan and other Asian countries, an annual tradition that many retailers participate in during the holidays is called “Fukubukuro,” commonly referred to as “lucky” or “mystery” bags.
The concept is simple: you put together bags of heavily discounted products at random and sell them to customers who don’t know exactly what they’re getting. It may sound weird to westerners, but if you really think about it, an overweight old man in a bright robe coming down your chimney at night is a lot weirder.
Anyway, Apple Japan is participating in the tradition again this year, and it has confirmed the special sale’s kickoff date of January 2nd. Lucky Bags will cost 36,000 yen, or around $345. Bags usually contain items like iPods, random accessories and t-shirts, but customers have received more expensive hardware like iPads and even MacBooks in years past.
Supplies are limited, so Apple stores in Japan will definitely have lines of eager customers after New Years.
Source: Apple
This is the first year Apple has made its 12 Days of Gifts app available for U.S customers, and to kick things off the company is giving away a free EP of Justin Timberlake’s performance at the 2013 iTunes Festival.
The iOS app will be giving away a free gift (music, iBooks, apps, movies, etc.) once a day until January 6th. A new single from popular artist Lorde was released as a separate, bonus giveaway through the app last week.
Four exclusive tracks and two accompanying videos from Justin Timberlake’s concert are available for download. Once you tap the album cover in the app, you’ll be taken to the iTunes Store where you can get the album.
Source: App Store
What do you get when you combine flying cities, re-fictionalized American history, an arsenal of weaponry, genetic engineering and quantum mechanics? One of the best games of 2013, that’s what.
If you haven’t played it by now, you owe it to yourself and your laptop to get BioShock: Infinite. It’s the perfect gift for yourself this holiday season – and you can get it right now from Cult of Mac Deals without putting a huge dent in your pocketbook, either. That’s because BioShock: Infinite is available for only $9.99 – a savings of 75% – during this special holiday promotion.
Look, gaming is a big thing, right? You can’t swing a dead cat in an ugly holiday sweater without hitting someone who’s busily involved in some kind of gaming screen these days, and iOS has the clear advantage with the hundreds of thousands of games on offer, all of which are fairly inexpensive or free to play.
We’ve taken some of the effort out of finding the best games of the past year, with this mega-list of over 20 iOS games (in no particular order) that you really should check out right away. Except where noted, all these games will work on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. Because, really, there’s no excuse for not making a game work universally these days.
Have you recently fell victim to a photobomber? Have a memorable picture that is ruined by an object that just didn’t (or couldn’t) get out of the way?
Well, Snapheal can help you with that. And Cult of Mac Deals is giving Snapheal away for free during this special holiday offer.
We’re getting to the season where we start to think about taking on new challenges, and this Cult of Mac Deals offer will help those who want to tackle learning two of the most popular programmnig languages out there.
In this course – suitable for beginners, enhtusiasts, or even professionals – you’ll learn HTML5 and JavaScript. And for a limited time this course is available for just $19. That’s a savings of 51%!
When it comes to the art of the pitch, presentation is everything.
With The Ultimate Keynote Presentation Bundle you’ll get 5 fully customizable decks from Pitchstock, which will help you take your pitch to new heights. These modern, beautifully crafted presentation templates will enable you to create cracking presentations in minutes. And you can get the bundle for only $15 during this limited time offer.
Your iPhone isn’t capable of the instant diagnosis and treatment of illnesses yet, but in time it may rival the Tricorder of Star Trek fame.
Whether you’ve made a New Year’s resolution to lose weight, to keep better track of your kids’ immunization schedule, or to provide more help to your aging parents, there’s a florid universe of apps in 2014 to help you to do it all.
Last year, more and more people used devices such as Jawbone UP, Nike Fuel or the FitBit Flex to track their health, fitness and dietary habits. But in 2014 and beyond, mobile health apps are going to expand well beyond that to become, as David Albert, CEO and Founder of San Francisco startup AliveCor puts it: “physician-guided self-management,” systems.
Soon, the worried — well quantified-self fans — and the rest of us are increasingly going to be able to collect more kinds of information about ourselves on our mobile devices. Once those daily habits and vitals are tracked, algorithms will be able to make recommendations on actions to take, or they will whisk that data straight back to the doctor for a more informed discussion during a later visit.
Already, smartphone owners in the United States and the United Kingdom can produce their own electrocardiograms with AliveCor and send them off for instant analysis. In the coming year, some doctors will be prescribing Type 2 diabetes patients a digital health product that incorporates an app called BlueStar from Baltimore, MD startup WellDoc to manage their conditions. Both products have been examined and cleared for the U.S. market by the Food and Drug Administration. They’ve also been through extensive use and testing in clinical trials.
“We see AliveCor [eventually] becoming your personal healthcare portal,” beyond ECGs, Albert said in an interview. “You’ll use it to analyze yourself, and to communicate with the doctor, and your healthcare providers will use it to provide you with feedback, guidance and coaching.”
The general hope is that digital technology, wireless sensors and cloud storage can make healthcare management more efficient, reduce costs and shift much of the balance of managing individuals’ health back to the individual from the doctor’s office.
While anyone can buy AliveCor’s sensors, access to WellDoc’s BlueStar Type 2 diabetes management product will only be available with a prescription. A half-hour in-person product installation and training session accompanies the prescription. Once installed, the BlueStar software uses the information that’s entered into the system to make personalized recommendations on how users should regulate their blood sugar levels.
A randomized controlled trial of the WellDoc Bluestar system published in the American Diabetes Association’s journal in 2011 showed that there was a significant two-point reduction in users’ three-month average glucose levels, said Chris Bergstrom, Welldoc’s chief strategy and commercial officer in an interview. That means that the chances of those users’ diabetes getting worse are also significantly reduced.
The hope from the medical community is that individuals will use apps not only to keep fit, but to better manage their chronic conditions so that they don’t progress to the next stage.
It’s a significant goal both here in the U. S. and globally. The World Health Organization estimates that two thirds of the 55 million people who died in 2011 suffered either from some form of cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes or a chronic lung disease.
In the U.S. alone, almost 24 million people suffer from diabetes and someone has a heart attack every 34 seconds.
For more people than ever before, there’s an increased financial incentive to live healthily: A new Obama administration rule that became effective at the beginning of the year allows employers to either reward employees for meeting certain health-related goals, or to penalize them.
The incentives are designed to get people to stop smoking, exercise more, lose weight and maintain certain levels of cholesterol, blood pressure and a healthy body mass index. According to the Pew Research Center, a quarter of adult Americans have high blood pressure, 13 percent have some sort of chronic lung condition such as asthma, bronchitis or emphysema, and 11 percent have diabetes. Employers can now start offering their employees up to a 30 percent discount on their healthcare premiums if they participate in specific programs to help them to achieve their health goals.
Two other reasons that we’re likely to see more and more mobile healthcare apps: The Obama administration has been incentivizing healthcare systems to digitize their patient records in order to make doctor-patient interactions between office visits easier, and to encourage patients to manage their own health between visits, says Priyanka Agarwal, an assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco.
And the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, also encourages the formation of “Accountable Care Organizations,” which will flip the financial incentive system to compensate doctors for keeping their patients healthy, rather than rewarding them for treating patients when they’re in a health crisis.
Nevertheless, the potential of the app universe has so far been stymied by the legacy healthcare systems, says Michael Wasser, an independent software developer and co-creator of HealthSherpa, the indie web site that helps people comparison-shop for insurance plans offered through the federal healthcare insurance exchange.
That means that it’s hard for third-party developers to build apps that can help family members to easily access and manage information relating to either their kids or elderly parents.
“The problem with these types of apps is that they frequently require health records to be useful (which most electronic medical record systems wall off),” he said. “In my opinion, this lack of information availability is why Google Health was shutdown and why Microsoft HealthVault hasn’t been very successful. I personally believe there’s a category of app could exist that we currently see very little to none of at the moment.”
A survey of the more than 40,000 healthcare-related apps in the U.S. iTunes store conducted last Fall by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics in Parsippany, New Jersey, found that most apps fall in the diet, exercise and wellness category.
Agarwal, for her part, says that we’ll see more usage of healthcare apps once more of them have been clinically tested, like drugs, so that more doctors can start recommending them.
The IMS report also notes there are legal liability issues that need to be sorted out, in addition to other questions relating to privacy and security.
Below are some apps rated highly for their functionality and popularity by IMS, and other doctor-recommended apps (listed on HealthTap:)
DIET/FITNESS
Calorie Counter and Diet Tracker by MyFitnessPal HD Cost: Free. This is probably the most popular diet and exercise logging app that comes with a huge database of three million different kinds of foods (including ethnic foods like dim sum dishes.) Unlike other apps, if what you’re eating is not in there, it allows you to add it. Once you’ve created a fitness profile and goal, the app establishes a daily food and exercise budget for you. Users can track their food and water intake, log their exercise routine, connect with friends, and track their progress.
The advantage of this app is that everything is in one place: it also syncs up to the Jawbone UP system. The problem with using a lot of different exercise and dieting apps is that you have to re-enter the same information over and over again.
Quit It 3.0: If you’re still smoking but want to quit, this is a $0.99 cent motivational program that constantly reminds you of how much money you saved, and how much your lungs benefited from not inhaling all those chemicals.
BodyWeight Training Cost: $2.99. This app provides its users with more than 200 video demonstrations of exercises that can be completed at home. The 10-week fitness program of half-hour workouts is based on the book You Are Your Own Gym by the military trainer Mark Lauren. A lot of doctors on Healthtap recommended this app.
GENERAL INFORMATION
HealthTap This is a free app that lets you pose health questions to a network of 50,000 doctors licensed to practice medicine in the U. S. The Palo-Alto-based company received a second round of venture funding this spring from the high profile venture companies Khosla Ventures, the Mayfield Fund and Mohr Davidow Ventures.
Users can pose short questions to the network on an anonymous basis. You can pay to speed up the response time by sending a “charitable donation” of $0.99 cents. But before that happens, you are shown a list of other previously-asked questions and answers that may answer your own.
You can also use the app as your personal health record in that there’s a profile to fill out that lists your contact and insurance information, your medications, your allergies, the medical procedures you’ve had, your immunizations, and so forth.
The app also helps users find doctors, look up symptoms, and find out about health conditions (what does it mean to be obese, technically, anyway?) It even features other doctor-recommended apps.
iTriage Cost: Free. This app lets you look up symptoms by tapping on a naked avatar corresponding to your gender. I found this app to be overwhelming and clunky. For example, tapping on the lower back pulled up a menu of everything from “Backache or pain” to “Urinary retention.” Tapping on “Backache or pain,” gave me a massive list of potential ills that ranged from lumbago to a bladder infection to cancer. Tapping on low back pain (lumbago) provided me with a description of the problem, symptoms, potential tests and treatment. The experience was the equivalent of trying to figure out what the problem is myself by opening a medical encyclopedia. In other words, not very helpful.
PRESCRIPTIONS
Goodrx Cost: Free. Goodrx helps you to comparison shop for your drugs through a mobile app. It provides coupons and discounts on those drugs. As the company says, it’s like an “Orbitz” for prescription drugs. Some of the prices listed for some of the drugs I use were lower than my current co-pay with insurance.
Dosecast Cost: Free. If you’re taking a lot of different medications, this simple, elegant app is a neat way of scheduling your doses, keeping track of when you need a refill, and recording the prescription numbers all in one spot.
SYMPTOM CHECKER
Kids Doc Cost: $1.99. Anyone with a small child can relate to the experience of panicking and not knowing what to do when your child falls off the end of the bed and crashes loudly onto the floor, or when they suddenly develop a rash or a fever. The American Academy of Pediatrics developed an iPhone app called KidsDoc, where you can look up symptoms and then decide what to do based on a matrix of possible listed actions. It also provides dosage tables for common over-the-counter medications and first aid “topics” and illustrations. This would have saved me hours on the phone with nurses over the past four years.
NEW MOTHERS
Total Baby Cost: $4.99
Baby Connect Cost: $4.99
Both of these apps enable you to keep detailed logs of your baby feeding schedules, naps, and diaper changes. They also enable you to chart your child’s growth.
MANAGING KIDS’ DOCTORS SCHEDULES
Baby Health Record. Cost: $3.99 I balk at keeping a social security number in an app, but keeping the rest of my daughter’s information in one portable location instead of a paper file in my study appeals to me. This app is a file of all of her basic information, including her blood type, vaccinations, growth history, doctor and dentist appointments and medical history. Obviously, if you decide to use these and other health-related apps, it’s crucial to password-protect your device.
OTHER
One other interesting app that’s worth mentioning that wasn’t listed by either the IMS Institute or HealthTap: HomeTouch. It’s a system developed in the United Kingdom by a British dementia specialist that uses tablets to help the elderly and their family to stay on top of the parents’ care remotely.
With all the horror stories of in-home nurses and nursing homes abusing or neglecting the elderly, this is an idea that’s definitely worth further exploration anywhere in the world.