An app to diagnose COVID-19 needs nothing more than a voice sample, according to an Israel-based company. In tests of 2,000 participants, the app achieved an accuracy rate of 81.2%, including asymptomatic carriers …
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All Apple Stores in France are closing from tomorrow as the country returns to a stricter lockdown. Previously, some flagship stores in the center of the city had remained open, while those in shopping centers have remained closed since the end of January.
Although France tomorrow enters its third national lockdown, the move by Apple is actually a voluntary one …
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The pandemic saw a record spend on apps last year, and App Annie reports that this has continued into the first quarter of this year.
The analytics firm says that demand for entertainment during lockdown saw developers enjoy the biggest quarter since records began…
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Apple yesterday announced that for the second year running its Worldwide Developers Conference will be a virtual event – and I think this has implications for the future of WWDC.
While the Cupertino company is a great fan of in-person interactions, the online event definitely offers significant benefits …
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Apple CEO Tim Cook may be keen to return to the office, but a large-scale international survey shows that the majority of people want flexible remote working options once the pandemic is under control …
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There have been multiple suggestions that Apple plans to adopt under-screen Touch ID for the iPhone 13, given that masks have greatly reduced the usefulness of Face ID. The company already has a bunch of patents for different ways to pull this off, and has today applied for an interesting new one.
Apple explains that optical fingerprint reading can be unreliable for two reasons, and explains how it would address these …
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Facebook would probably be the last place you’d turn for accurate information on how to get a COVID-19 vaccination, but the social network is working with hospitals, governments, and health authorities to help people get the answers …
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COVID-19 test kits have been in short supply, so Apple stepped in to help develop a more efficient manufacturing process for a key supplier, boosting output by almost 4,000% since last April. It saw output rise from thousands per week to over a million.
Apple’s Advanced Manufacturing Fund provided COPAN Diagnostics with both manufacturing expertise and a capital injection of $10M…
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A rapid antigen home COVID-19 test is a purely standalone chemical process, but that hasn’t stopped one enterprising company with a smart marketing team from finding a way to involve an iPhone…
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The NHS coronavirus contact tracing app – built on the Apple/Google API – has saved thousands of lives in England and Wales, according to a study.
Ironically, the privacy protections built into the API made it challenging to measure its effectiveness…
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A report today says that TSMC COVID-19 countermeasures are being significantly stepped up after an fresh outbreak of the coronavirus in Taiwan …
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While 2020 was all about social distancing and staying at home, there was a controversial app promoting secret private parties during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thankfully, the iOS app was removed from the App Store this week.
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The coronavirus crisis has changed many things. People working from home, school closures, hospitality restrictions and more. It’s no surprise, then, to find that smartphone usage has also changed.
A Kantar study found that some of these changes were temporary, shifting back and forth in line with lockdowns – but other changes appear permanent, or at least longer-lasting …
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The coronavirus outbreak saw Apple curtail employee visits to China for a time, but now that the company wants to encourage staff to resume business trips to the country, it’s facing one very specific problem…
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All UK contact tracing apps are now compatible, working across borders.
The UK has separate coronavirus apps for each of England & Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. All three are built using the joint Apple/Google API, and two of them are based on the same core source code which has been made open-source to facilitate easier interoperability between apps …
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An update by Apple and Google to a more sophisticated version of their joint coronavirus contact tracing API should mean more accurate risk assessments by the apps which use it.
In the UK, however – and likely elsewhere – that may result in more people being told they are at risk and being asked to self-isolate …
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A project to ensure that coronavirus contact tracing apps work across Europe has hit its first goal: the Scottish contact tracing app – built using the Apple/Google API – now works in Northern Ireland and Jersey.
The shared code is what also enables interoperability between apps used in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware …
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A new Snapchat Friendship Time Capsule feature is designed for coronavirus times, letting you take augmented reality selfies with a friend in a future time and place.
The company has also surveyed 30,000 people across 16 countries to assess the impact of the pandemic on friendships …
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Coronavirus contact tracing apps on the iPhone 12 may stop working after restoring from the iCloud backup of your old phone. The issue has so far been seen with the UK’s NHS COVID-19 app…
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US contact tracing apps are still a mess, says a new report today, despite efforts by Apple and Google to make it as simple as possible for countries and US states to use their API.
We’ve been tracking adoption of the joint Apple/Google API by US states, with just eleven having done so as of our last update at the beginning of the month … Update: Michigan has just launched its app.
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Belgium is the latest country to roll out a coronavirus app using the joint Apple/Google contact tracing API. The app is available from today.
Belgium posed a particular challenge for a contact tracing app …
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A professor in Canada has suggested that both governments and Apple and Google could reward people for using contact tracing apps.
Joshua Gans, Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Toronto, has said that, ironically, we need an app dealing with a coronavirus to itself go viral – and so far that isn’t happening …
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Ireland launched a contact tracing app using the Apple/Google API back in July, and Scotland did so yesterday – but England and Wales were still waiting. The government has today announced that the new coronavirus app for England and Wales will finally be launched on September 24.
The mess began back in May, when the government tested an app that did not use the Apple/Google API. That was found to have ‘serious’ security problems, and the government missed a series of promised delivery dates before absurdly claiming that an app wasn’t very important …
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A Digitimes Research report suggests that the economic hit caused by the coronavirus crisis could heavily hit initial iPhone 12 sales.
It suggests that early sales could be lower than those seen for the iPhone 11 last year …
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