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I just went to my doctor for a long-overdue checkup, and I pretty much knew what he was going to say about each ailment I brought up. (I had a list on my iPhone!)
That’s because I’d Googled the lot, and even though Googling mystery health issues is often not a great idea (the top result from Dr. Google is invariably some deadly cancer), my issues were easy enough to figure out.
Tell that to Geoffrey Fowler, a veteran tech columnist for The Wall Street Journal, who fed a decade’s worth of health data from his Apple Watch to OpenAI’s new ChatGPT Health.
The results were not what he was expecting. And the more data he fed the bot, the worse it got.
It’s an interesting and cautionary tale. The good news is — human doctors won’t be going anywhere soon.
Also in today’s newsletter:
Apple later this week will announce its first-quarter results (including the crucial holiday period), and once again, the company is expected to set records! But this time, there are some key differences.
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Apple is rolling out a new privacy feature that’s bound to be controversial with law enforcement. Cellular carriers will not be able to track your exact location — if you’ve got the right iPhone.
It’s only taken a year, but the brilliant OhSnap Mcon iPhone game controller is finally available.
I recently switched my iPhone’s long-neglected Action button to turn on the flashlight. And, crucially, I removed the on-screen flashlight button to actually train myself to use the Action button. But this is kids’ stuff! Look how our writer D. Griffin Jones set his up — mind-boggling is the only word for it.
After I initially set up my Apple Watch Activity rings, I studiously ignored them ever since. But they really are a good and handy metric that can be cleverly tweaked.
— Leander Kahney, EIC.
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A message from the Cult of Mac Deals team
A message from the Cult of Mac Deals team
Cult of Mac’s buyback program
Tweets of the day
Wallpaper of the day
One more thing ...
Netbooks aren't better at anything. They're slow, they have low-quality displays, and they run clunky old PC software. So, they're not better than a laptop at anything. They're just cheaper. They're just cheap laptops. And we don't think that they're a third-category device. But we think we've got something that is, and we'd like to show it to you today for the first time. And we call it the iPad.
Today’s poll
Where do you seek medical advice?
Results from yesterday’s poll: Do you use third-party Find My trackers in addition to AirTags?
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