In the news

I’ve noted in the past that you can charge an iPad Pro twice as fast by using a USB-C charger instead of the 10W or 12W charger that comes with an iPad Pro.  The new iPhone 8 also supports fast charging, but the results are not the same as the iPad Pro.  According to a test conducted by Dan Loewenherz reported by John Gruber of Daring Fireball, a USB-C charger is much faster than the 5W charger that comes with the iPhone 8, but you can get almost the same results using a standard 10W or 12W iPad charger with an iPhone 8 as you can using a USB-C charger.  Of course, if you have both an iPhone 8 and an iPad Pro, using a USB-C charger with both makes sense because then you get the fastest possible charging with both devices.  I’ll be curious to find out in a few weeks if the iPhone X results with USB-C are similar to the iPhone 8.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• I often link to articles relating to the iPhone or iPad written by California attorney David Sparks, who publishes the MacSparky website.  This week, that website had its 10th anniversary.  In addition to the iOS-related articles that I often mention here, David also writes about the Mac, technology in general, and occasionally even his favorite topic, Jazz music.  (And yet amazingly, I don’t think that David has ever made it to Jazz Fest down here in New Orleans, which just makes no sense to me.)  Congratulations, David, on reaching this milestone, and thanks for all of the informative posts over the past decade.  I hope that you can celebrate by taking some time to relax and listen to Kind of Blue.
• Chicago attorney John Voorhees of MacStories discusses the new drag-and-drop feature in GoodNotes, the app that I use to take handwritten notes on my iPad Pro.
• Earlier this week, I wrote about Apple’s impressive new general counsel, Kate Adams.  Supreme Court practitioner Neal Katyal noted on Twitter that now both Apple and Facebook have a general counsel who previously clerked for Justice Breyer.
• If you feel like taking three seconds to vote for iPhone J.D. in a legal blog contest being run by The Expert Institute, feel free to click the VOTE box on this website.  (No registration required.)
• Apple is developing a video service, and news broke this week that Apple reached a deal with Steven Spielberg to bring back his Amazing Stories TV series from the 1980s.  I have lots of questions about what Apple has planned, and Jason Snell of Six Colors saved me the time of asking them out loud by exploring them all in this post.
• With iOS 11, many iPhones and iPads can now run apps that take advantage of Apple’s new ARKit to create virtual reality experiences.  These are early days so we don’t yet have a lot of these apps, but Andrew Hayward of Macworld describes 10 of the best ARkit apps that you can try out now.
• Apple CEO Tim Cook explains why ARKit is such a big deal in an interview with Andrew Griffin of The Independent.
• The iPhone X is the major new design for the iPhone, but Apple VP Jony Ive says that it is just the beginning of a new chapter in iPhone development, as reported by Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac.
• Michael Simon of Macworld reviews the Apple Watch Series 3.
• Neil Hughes of AppleInsider explains why he likes the Apple Watch Series 3.
• Craig Lloyd of How-To Geek explains that in iOS 11, if someone wants to use your WiFi network, you can have your iPhone send the password, saving your friend the trouble of typing it in.
• Thanks to Apple’s AirPods, which I absolutely LOVE, I haven’t needed or wanted to use a wired headphone in a long time.  But if you prefer to use wired headphones which plug into a headphone jack, and you want to be able to charge your iPhone at the same time that you use headphones, the Belkin 3.5mm Audio + Charge RockStar ($35 on Amazon) is what you need.  Jesse Hollington of iLounge posted this review.
• And finally, here is a short but great video in which photographer Albert Watson talks about some of his most iconic photographs over the years, including the great shot of Steve Jobs which appears on the cover of Water Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography.  I’m sure that you will recognize many of the photos in this video.  As for the Steve Jobs photograph, Watson explains:  “When you think of a Mac or an iPad, it’s pretty simple.  And the shot is pretty simple and direct.  I said, ‘I’d like you to think about your next project, and think about that some people might not let you do it.’  And that’s where that look came from.”  Here is the video: