One year ago this week, we had more snow here in New Orleans than Anchorage, Alaska, as a result of a once-in-a-century record 10" of snowfall. It was magical to see the historic architecture in this tropical climate draped with the beautiful snow. When I look back at the pictures and videos that I took with my iPhone, I still cannot believe it. This weekend, large parts of the United States are about to experience a winter storm. The Weather app on my iPhone tells me that we will get down to 29º Monday morning in New Orleans, but we are too far South to see snow. However, if I want a second opinion about the weather, I guess I’ll have to watch the news. Judson Jones of the New York Times explains why the predictions of what will happen provided by Apple’s Weather app and similar apps on your iPhone can be very different from what you hear from the meteorologist on your local news channel. If you will be in a part of the country where your iPhone—or others—are predicting severe weather, please stay safe, and stay warm! And now, the news of note from the past week:
- One of the things that I liked about walking around in the snow last year was that the world was so peaceful and quiet. It felt the same way in my office yesterday afternoon because the email on my computer, iPhone, and iPad went completely silent. As Marcus Mendes of 9to5Mac reports, there was a massive Microsoft 365 outage. I finally started getting emails at 9pm last night that had been sent seven hours earlier. With the service down much of the day, I heard one person remark that the name should be Microsoft 364.
- If you shop at Walmart, you know that it is one of the rare stores that doesn’t support paying with Apple Pay. You might assume that this is because Walmart doesn’t want to pay Apple, but as Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reports, that isn’t the case at all. Instead, it is because Walmart wants to collect data on you and your buying habits, and that is far harder to do if you use a more secure service like Apple Pay.
- John Gruber of Daring Fireball explains that stores like Walmart and Amazon collect this data about you for all sorts of purposes, noting that Target was once able to use this type of data to determine when a woman is likely pregnant. Of course, you can decide whether that matters or not. You may decide that sharing information about who you are is worth it for the tradeoffs. When I shop at Walgreens using Apple Pay, I often use my Walgreens rewards card as well because of the discounts that I receive, even though I know that it means that Walgreens can build a profile of who I am. But I like having that choice, and I very much like the convenience of using Apple Pay on my Apple Watch or iPhone for as many payments as possible.
- John Gruber also offers his thoughts on Apple’s new Apple Creator Studio subscription, which comes out in a few days on January 28. He thinks that it is a good value, but he hates the app icons and doesn’t understand the integration with Keynote, Pages, and Numbers. (The app icons don’t bother me, but I agree that the integration with the apps that we used to call the iWork apps is odd.)
- And here is one more post from Gruber: his comments on the report from Wayne Ma and Qianer Liu of The Information that Apple is working on a wearable pin device that uses AI. I thought that this statement was interesting: “Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because existing AI pins have sucked (and in one notable case, flopped in spectacular fashion), they’re all going to suck. Google Glasses were an embarrassment but glasses are a great form factor. MP3 players used to suck too.” [UPDATE: If that first link to Gruber’s post doesn’t work for you, try this one.]
- Brandon Miniman of Make Use Of identifies three things that you can do with the camera on an iPhone to solve everyday problems: accurately measure anything, grab text from anywhere, and turn a real document into a digital PDF.
- Michael Burkhardt of 9to5Mac reviews the Satechi 7-in-1 OntheGo hub (which is $59.99 on Amazon). The device adds seven ports: microSD, SD, USB-C, two USB-A, 4K 60Hz HDMI, and Ethernet. All of that fits into a small puck that attaches to the MagSafe on the back of your iPhone. If you need ports on your iPhone, this is a compact way to get them.
- If you are a fan of dogs, you might want to purchase a Vision Pro this week, because on January 30, 2026, Apple is releasing an immersive video called Top Dogs that gets up close with dogs. As Rajat Saini of The Mac Observer reports, it is a two-part series that will make you feel like you are right in the middle of the action of Crufts, the famous international dog show held every year in the UK since 1891. Here is a link to the YouTube trailer.
- If you are more a basketball fan than a dog fan, M.G. Siegler of Spyglass offers this perspective on the immersive NBA games that Apple is showing. One interesting point that he makes: after years of people speculating that Apple might make a television, the Vision Pro really is the Apple television set. It’s true. Unless I want to watch a show with someone else in my house at the same time, I now do all of my TV viewing using the Apple Vision Pro because the screen size is huge and amazing.
- One of my all-time favorite shows on Apple TV is For All Mankind, and Andrew Orr of AppleInsider reports that Season 5 debuts on March 27.
- And finally, if you haven’t yet watched Pluribus on Apple TV, you should. If you have, then you know that the theme song is distinctive but short. As is often the case for theme songs, there is also a longer version, and I had never heard it before last night. Apple uses it in this video, which features a large number of clips filmed with overhead cameras from Season 1 of Pluribus: