If you had asked me last week to bet which city would receive more snow this winter, Anchorage (Alaska) or New Orleans (Louisiana), I would have put all of my money on Anchorage and laughed at the question. But as reported by James Finn of the New Orleans Time-Picayune, National Weather Service data reports that Anchorage has seen 3.8 inches since December 1, 2024, and thanks to the historic snowfall in New Orleans this past Tuesday, the Big Easy has seen 10 inches. I certainly saw that much at my house, and no matter how many times I look at the pictures and videos I took on Tuesday, I still cannot believe that it happened. Even as I type these words, I can still look out my window and see snow on the ground, cars, rooftops, trees, etc., although I suspect that it will all have melted in the next 24 hours or so. Like everyone else in this city, I really had no idea how to prepare for significant snowfall, let alone the most snow that this city has seen since 1895, so I mostly followed my hurricane protocol, which included making sure that my iPhone, iPad, and backup batteries were all fully charged to prepare for a possible power outage. Fortunately, that never happened. I know that the snow was disruptive for some, but as an attorney, it was pretty easy for me to get my work done even when working remotely. And when I took a break from work to get bundled up and walk around my neighborhood with my son, what I saw was magical. Of course, I've seen snow in other parts of the country and the world in the past, but seeing that pristine white coating on this tropical city was truly breathtaking, and the pictures taken around this city (such as these from the Times-Picayune) are something to behold. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- Adam Davidson of How To Geek recommends some time-saving tips for your iPhone, and he covers a lot of great ones, such as using the text replacement function, customizing the Control Center, using Siri for certain tasks, and more.
- Adam Engst of TidBITS explains how the relatively new Vitals app on the iPhone may be able to detect an illness.
- Using an Apple AirTag is a great way to track an item that is lost or stolen. The police department in Arvada, Colorado, agrees—so much so that they are giving away AirTags for free, along with stickers to place on your vehicle to (hopefully) deter potential criminals, as reported by William Gallagher of AppleInsider.
- If you cannot find anyone to give you an AirTag for free, they are still at the all-time low price of $69.99 for a four-pack on Amazon.
- Ed Hardy of Cult of Mac reports that what is expected to be the final beta version of iOS 18.3 was released this past Tuesday, which means that we may see iOS 18.3 released next week. There will be some tweaks to Apple Intelligence, but he says that this update is expected to focus on bug fixes.
- If you want more info on what is coming in iOS 18.3, Justin Meyers of Gadget Hacks has a list.
- At some point after iOS 18.3, we will see iOS 18.4, and that version will include new Emoji. Jovana Naumovski of Gadget Hacks previews some of the new characters, such as Face with Bags Under Eyes, Fingerprint, Harp, Leafless Tree, and Shovel.
- Until yesterday, the CarPlay page on Apple's website said that the next generation of CarPlay, which I presume will be called CarPlay 2.0, would "arrive in 2024." Obviously, that did not happen, and Joe Rossignol of MacRumors noticed that Apple has now wisely removed that date from the page. Nevertheless, Apple issued a statement that this update is still planned.
- Matter is a protocol that works with Wi-Fi, Threat, Bluetooth, and more to allow lots of different types of devices to talk to each other locally. This is the same thing Apple tried to do with HomeKit, and other companies tried to do with their standards. What makes Matter promising is that it has the support of all of the key players: Apple, Amazon, Google/Nest, Samsung, and lots of smart home companies like Lutron and Philips Hue (Signify). Products have been supporting the Matter protocol for years, but every year it seems like we are not quite there yet. All of our devices are not yet talking to each other. Jennifer Pattison Tuohy of The Verge interviewed Tobin Richardson of the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), which develops Matter, Vividh Siddha of Apple, who is also the president of Thread Group, and Kevin Robinson of the Wi-Fi Alliance to discuss where the Matter protocol is today and what we can expect in 2025.
- And finally, the band OK Go is well-known for its impressive music videos that are amazing to watch and often seem almost impossible to have made. The latest music video from the group for the song A Stone Only Rolls Downhill was created by playing 64 perfectly timed videos on 64 iPhones, and the result is truly stunning: