It was a rather slow Apple news day today, so we spend some time in today’s podcast telling you about some new products and a survey that compares the cost of an iPhone around the world:
- A new tool for diabetic blood glucose monitoring is now available in the online Apple Store
- The best drawing tablet for the Mac? An iPad Pro running Astropad
- While the average iPhone is more expensive in the US than Japan or China, it’s totally out of reach for Venezuelans
The text version of the podcast can be viewed below. To listen to the podcast here, click the play button on the player below.
Text Version
Hi, this is Steve Sande for Apple World Today, and this is the AWT News Update for January 11, 2017. It’s been quite a slow news day, so this will be a fast one.
Almost 10 percent of the population of the United States has diabetes, and for a large number of those folks, daily blood glucose monitoring is a fact of life. One Drop launched a new product today on Apple’s online store that offers an iOS-centric way to monitor blood glucose. The $99.95 Chrome Blood Glucose Monitoring kit uses an FDA-certified meter that transmits data to the One Drop Mobile app over Bluetooth. Included with the meter is a lancing device, 10 lancets, and 100 test strips. The meter requires just 0.5 micro-liters of blood for accurate results, and the iOS app has both HealthKit and CareKit integration. CareKit lets diabetics share their blood glucose data with doctors and caregivers, and the app is designed to provide tracking of food, activity and medication along with glucose levels. That medical tricorder of Star Trek lore is getting closer to reality, and it looks a lot like an iPhone.
Creatives have been quite happy with the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil for doing drawing. Astropad Studio is a free app for iPad Pro with a subscription plan for support that is designed to be used as a Mac drawing tablet. According to Astropad, the app offers almost zero latency and full pressure sensitivity support for the Apple Pencil, making it probably the best drawing tablet for Mac. The app has a new technology called Liquid Extreme that offers color corrected output and retina display resolution, so what you see on the iPad as you draw is exactly what is displayed on the Mac. The app connects to the Mac via either Wi-Fi or USB, and there’s a Mac companion app to be installed on the desktop or laptop machine.
Finally, a survey into the average cost of electronics around the world finds that the price of the iPhone is higher in the US than in many other countries…but there are some places where an iPhone is totally out of reach. For example, you can buy an iPhone in Angola for an average of $401.94, with prices in Japan and China very close to that level. In the US, however, you’ll spend $625.88 for that same average iPhone. Venezuelans who are suffering from their socialist dictatorship’s policies will never be able to afford an iPhone. With high inflation, taxation, and restrictions on importing goods, it costs $97,813.82 on average to purchase an iPhone in the South American country. The survey was conducted by Latin America retailer Linio.
That’s all for today; I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon with another edition of the AWT News Update.
