Tech Trends: A look into the latest dental and general technology on the market

Yoink ($8.99, Matthias Gansrigler)

Clipboards on desktop and mobile devices are extremely useful. Every day, users copy and paste a plethora of things within an app or in between apps. This productivity tool has traditionally been limited to copying and pasting one item at a time. Yoink for iPhone and iPad provides an unlimited clipboard experience across multiple mobile devices, expanding the versatility of this commonly used tool.

Yoink is a “shelf” app that stores virtually anything users may need to recall later. Anything that can be dragged, shared, copied or downloaded can be kept in the app such as files, text, images, links, videos and more. Users can add items to the shelf once they enable the app through the Share Sheet button. The traditional method of copying and pasting directly to the app is also available. Users can transfer items from the shelf to any app through several means depending on the device. For iOS and iPadOS devices, users can enable the Yoink keyboard, which displays shelf items for easy drag-and-drop or copy and paste. For iPadOS devices only, the shelf is available directly from the app using Side-by-Side or Slide-Over mode. Files stored in Yoink are also accessible from the Files app once the extension is enabled. Simple tasks to add items to the shelf can also be found through Siri Shortcuts. Shelf items are synchronized and available across multiple iOS and iPadOS devices when iCloud sync is enabled. When the Clipboard Monitor feature is enabled, content in the clipboard can be automatically stored in Yoink when the app is opened. Shelf items are also available to share via Handoff on macOS devices with the Yoink app for Mac, which is sold separately. With multiple ways to interact with the shelf, this app is indispensably accessible to any productivity user workflow.

With Yoink for iPhone and iPad, users have a clipboard that can store an unlimited number of items and be easily shared across mobile devices, making this already useful tool even more productive and efficient.

— Hubert Chan, DDS

BoneBox Dental Lite (Free, BoneBox)

Mobile apps can be effective and engaging educational tools. Because few teaching modalities can rival the mobile app’s portability, interactivity and “wow” factor, Apple’s App Store has been flooded with these applications. Topics from cooking to writing have their own sections of instructional apps, so why shouldn’t dentistry be the same? BoneBox Dental — from iSO-FORM — is a dental anatomy application designed by anatomists for the dental community.

Developed on the Unity game engine, BoneBox Dental is a no-frills educational experience. Upon opening, users are greeted with a partial maxilla and mandible. There appears to be a graphics bug where flecks of black mar the model when it is rotated, but this does not distract from the image. The mouth can be opened and closed with a three-fingered pinch or spread motion. Tapping on a tooth in either arch isolates it for viewing. Users can rotate and magnify to their heart’s content before returning to the mouth. The 3D models look anatomically correct; however, it does not have any variations, limiting its breadth of information to the most common presentations of each tooth. BoneBox Dental boasts a quiz function that asks users to identify all 32 teeth in a multiple-choice game. Users are shown one tooth at random, asked to select a response from a list of four choices, then scored at the end of the quiz. Overall, BoneBox Dental is a novel way for those with a dental background to improve their basic tooth identification skills. Because of its lack of features, the public may find it of little use.

— Alexander Lee, DMD