British actor Stephen Fry talked to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Apple's Jony Ive, and wrote an interesting article about it earlier this week in The Telegraph. The article reveals that Ive has a new position at Apple: Chief Design Officer. This led to much speculation as to whether this new position signals that Ive will be spending more time in England and less time designing cool new Apple products, but John Gruber of Daring Fireball disagrees with that and thinks that it means that Ive can spend less time focusing on administrative duties and more time thinking about design, which seems like a good thing to me. Whether Ive is involved or someone else, hopefully we will have a very long future of well-designed products from Apple. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- Florida attorney Katie Floyd talks about how the Apple Watch can be pretty smart in suggesting replies to text messages.
- Although the iPhone is now the most popular smartphone for attorneys, there was a time when most of the attorneys I knew were using a BlackBerry. Jacquie Mcnish and Sean Silvoff wrote a book called Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry, which explains how Research in Motion (maker of the BlackBerry) was blindsided by the iPhone. There is an interesting excerpt in the Wall Street Journal.
- This week, there were reports that if someone sends a very strange series of characters to you in a text message, it can crash the Messages app on your iPhone. If this happens to you, yesterday Apple posted instructions for fixing it, and also said that a permanent fix will come in a future software update.
- Marques Brownlee put together a video addressing 10 common Apple Watch questions.
- Jason Snell of Six Colors explains that even after you decide to get an Apple Watch, it is very difficult to decide which one to get because of the large number of choices, something new for Apple.
- Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reports that the new Marriott app lets you check in and check out from your Apple Watch.
- I noticed the day that I received my Apple Watch that the box / storage case that it comes in is really nice, which almost makes me feel guilty about never using it. Zac Hall reports that people are actually selling the boxes on eBay — not the Apple Watch, just the empty box — and people are buying them.
- Marco Arment notes that the circles on the Apple Watch have caused him to exercise every day. The same thing has happened to me. I realize that this is just gamification, but I know many people who pay for a personal trainer mostly for the encouragement, so there is nothing unusual about using encouragement to be healthier. It's nice to see that the Apple Watch is providing positive reinforcement for others, not just me.
- This week I reviewed the excellent Weather Line app, but as I noted in that review, there are lots of other good weather apps too. Allyson Kazmucha put together a list of some of the best weather apps for the iPhone. I own most of the apps on that list and I agree with her that these are good ones.
- M.G. Siegler, a partner with Google Ventures and tech expert, says that force touch works so well on the Apple Watch that it makes sense to also put force touch on the iPhone and iPad. I agree, and I hope the rumors are true and that Apple adds this to the 2015 version of the iPad and iPhone, which I expect to come out this Fall.
- ITV News reports that a man in England survived a shotgun attack because he was lucky enough for the bullets to hit his iPhone 5c, which absorbed most of the impact.
- The sapphire glass screen of the Apple Watch is also pretty resistant, but as Chris Smith of BGR learned, it can be broken if you drop an Apple Watch on concrete. Lets be careful out there.
- And finally, the Jasper Hamill of The Mirror reports that Gregory Papadin handed his iPhone 5 (in a waterproof case) to his brother to dive into the ocean near San Diego. Then the brother tried to throw the phone back to him... but instead it fell in to the water and went down, down, down. But the camera was on, so the whole thing was captured on video — including the captain swimming down and saving the phone. It's a fun video: