In the news

Here we go again; another week in which there is very little iPhone/iPad news but a lot of Apple Watch news.  For example, I enjoyed the short article by Dave Caolo of Apple World Today in which he recommends silencing your iPhone, silencing your Apple Watch, and turning your Apple Watch haptic settings to high.  This way, you get your alerts via a tap on your wrist instead of a noise or vibration from an iPhone, maximizing the utility of the Apple Watch and making you less annoying to others in meetings.  The way that I do it is a little different, but he and I agree on the goal.  Indeed, shifting my alerts from my iPhone/iPad to taps on my wrist is one of my favorite features of the Apple Watch, especially since you can control which notifications are important enough to tap you on the wrist.  As the Macalope wisely wrote in an article criticizing a New York Times editorial, “the Watch is like an administrative assistant for your phone.  It filters the things that vie for your attention.”  I agree 100%.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• A small administrative note:  I switched my domain registration service this week, and depending upon your own internet server provider, iPhone J.D. may have been down for a period of time yesterday.  Also, if you sent me email on Thursday afternoon, there is a chance that it did not come through so consider resending it.  I apologize for the inconvenience, but everything should be up and running now.
• Serenity Caldwell of iMore has a great set of tips for being productive with an Apple Watch.
• Jason Snell of Six Colors was the first person I saw who figured out and posted that you can change the volume of your iPhone playing music or a podcast by using the Digital Crown on the Apple Watch.  This is really useful.
• Mark Johanson of CNN recommends 10 travel apps for the Apple Watch.
• Susie Ochs of Macworld offers advice for using Apple Pay on the Apple Watch.  The feature has worked well for me; I used it this week at both a Subway and a Walgreen’s. 
• Melissa Holt of the Mac Observer recommends using an Apple Watch to mark your location on a map so that you can, for example, find where you parked your car.
• Matt Gemmell wrote an interesting article on how the Apple Watch helps him to reduce distractions.
• Rene Ritchie explains some of the things that you can do with Force Touch on an Apple Watch.
• Steve Kovach of Business Insider wrote a very good review of the Apple Watch.
• I like Michael Steeber’s review of the Apple Watch for 9to5Mac because he has an interesting perspective, focusing on just the design.
• And for a really interesting perspective on the Apple Watch, Molly Watt explains why she loves the Apple Watch, as a person with Usher Syndrome who is legally deaf and blind.
• Alex Heath of 9to5Mac reports that Apple has started to let third parties make bands for the Apple Watch.
• Jeff Benjamin of iDownloadBlog has advice for completing various actions on the Apple Watch without touching it.
• Jon Fingas of Engadget reports that a Florida woman, who was held hostage and not permitted to use her phone for anything other than to order pizza, inserted a 911 message in her pizza order using the Pizza Hut app.  The Pizza Hut employees saw the plea for help and called the authorities.
• On a somewhat related note, Kit Eaton of the New York Times recommends iPhone apps that you can use in the event of a disaster.
• Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal has recommendations for the best iPhone cases.
• Apple has a new part of their website called Everything changes with iPad, showing off lots of different ways that you can use your iPad when cooking, learning, traveling, redecorating, and in business.
• And finally, as we get ready for Mother’s Day, what would it be like if Siri was your mom?  The Daily Dot explores this in a funny video — which works because it stars Susan Bennett, whose voice was the basis for the first version of Siri.  Very much worth watching: