In the News

If you purchase an Apple gift card for yourself or someone else—and I’m sure that a lot of people are doing that this holiday season—be careful. Paris Buttfield-Addison shared the story on his blog of how he purchased a $500 Apple gift card from a reputable store, but when he went to redeem it, the code failed. Apparently, some thief had already acquired the code from that card and used it. But even worse, after the code failed for him, Apple disabled his Apple Account, presumably thinking that he was the thief. Even worse, Apple wouldn’t actually tell him why they had disabled his account—an account that he had been using for purchases for 25 years. Fortunately, his story was picked up by a number of news outlets, and after about five days, someone with a division of Apple called Apple Executive Relations was finally able to restore his account. That Apple employee warned him to only buy Apple gift cards from Apple itself. But I see Apple gift cards for sale at other stores all the time, including the Walgreens that is just a few blocks from my house. John Gruber of Daring Fireball noted another possible solution is to tear open the Apple gift card before you purchase it to inspect the redemption code and see whether it has scratched-off characters, but as Gruber notes, that is a crazy “solution” because if anyone sees you doing that, they will assume that you are the one who is trying to be a scammer. I’m glad that there was a happy ending to this particular story, but how many other people don’t have popular blogs and/or don’t get their situation picked up by numerous news outlets such that their story never escalates to someone with Apple Executive Relations who can fix the problem? But if you want to play it safe, I guess you need to be very cautious about buying an Apple gift card from any store other than an Apple Store. Indeed, Adam Engst of TidBITS goes so far as to recommend avoiding Apple gift cards completely. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Speaking of scams, Tara Siegel Bernard of the New York Times shares the story of a retired lawyer who tried to call tech support when he had problems with an iPad, but the number that he located from a Google search instead put him in touch with scammers, who subsequently stole $85,000 from him. This is an excellent reminder that online fraud is a serious problem and that we all need to be careful for ourselves and protect our friends and family members who are less tech savvy.
• One week ago, Apple released iOS 26.2 and similar updates for its other platforms. Juli Clover of MacRumors notes what is new, and there is quite a lot. For example, the Reminders app has a new option to have an alarm go off when a reminder is due. There are also options to increase the security of AirDrop.
• Jason Snell of Six Colors notes that if you use Slide Over on an iPad, you can now change the app in the Slide Over window by dragging an app from the App Library, Dock, or Spotlight into the Slide Over area.
• In another post, Snell notes that there are also some significant security updates in iOS 26.2, including some zero-day bugs—i.e., bugs that were already being exploited. If you haven’t yet updated all of your devices, you should do so now.
• Harry McCracken of Fast Company wrote a fascinating post about how filmmakers are exploring how to make immersive videos for the Apple Vision Pro.
• Do you sometimes sleep through your alarms? Then you might want to consider using the Awake app. As Devon Dundee notes in his review for MacStories, the app can make you do various things to turn off the alarm, such as rotating your iPhone, solving math problems, walking a certain number of steps, and more.
• In a post for Six Colors, Glenn Fleishmann provides advice for dealing with names that Siri has trouble understanding (such as the name “Caryn” which is pronounced like “Karen”).
• Apple’s new intro “fanfare” for its shows on Apple TV has been out for a little while now, and the more that I see it, the more that I like it. John Gruber feels the same way, and he talks about it in detail in this post. As he notes, the old one “was not bad,” but it “just wasn’t great,” and now Apple has something that is really special.
• Slow Horses is one of my favorite shows on Apple TV, and it is based on a series of books by Mick Herron. Herron wrote another series of books that Apple developed into another series: Down Cemetery Road. I just finished watching the first season, and while I didn’t like it nearly as much as Slow Horses, it was decent. I mention all of this today because Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac reported this week that Apple has picked up Down Cemetery Road for a second season.
• If you are watching Pluribus on Apple TV, and if you have watched all the way through episode 7 (which came out last week), then I encourage you to read this post by Marcus Mendes of 9to5Mac to learn about something very interesting discovered on Google Maps. If you have not yet watched episode 7, then DO NOT READ THE ARTICLE or you will get a big spoiler.
• Speaking of Pluribus, Zac Hall of 9to5Mac notes that the season finale will be released two days early: on Tuesday night, December 23. If you want to avoid spoilers from others discussing the show at the Christmas dinner table, watch the episode before Santa Claus makes his deliveries.
• Long before there was Apple TV, there was Applevision. When I was in middle school, I remember using the Apple ][ computers in my school’s computer lab, and there was a fun demo called Applevision, created by Bob Bishop. I haven’t thought about that demo in decades, but I just learned that you can watch it on YouTube. At the time, this was considered to be extraordinary computer graphics. You can read more about Bishop and how Applevision came to be in this post by Steven Weyhrich on the Apple ][ History website. Bishop passed away over a decade ago, but many of us fondly remember his early contributions to Apple technology.
• And finally, in this video from Apple called Outrun, Apple shows how useful Apple Pay can be. Especially when you are in a real hurry.