Apple released iOS 12.1.4 yesterday. This update fixes a number of bugs, including the security hole in Group FaceTime which someone calling you could use to listen to you before you even accept the FaceTime invitation. For anyone who loves being able to FaceTime with multiple people at once, you are up and running again. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- Attorney John Voorhees of MacStories discusses the latest update to CARROT Weather (my review) which adds new complications for the Apple Watch. I hope that more developers create this high level of customization on their Apple Watch apps, and I hope that Apple provides new avenues for developers to do so.
- Zack Whittaker of TechCrunch reported this week that many companies are watching what you do with their apps, recording every button that you press, how long you take to do so, etc. Or perhaps I should say that they “were” doing so. Whittaker followed up yesterday to report that Apple notified the developers who were doing so to stop immediately because they didn’t get permission from the users to do so. Companies involved included Expedia, Hollister, Hotels.com, Air Canada, Singapore Airlines, and Abercrombie & Fitch.
- Yesterday, Netflix enabled a feature called Smart Downloads on the iPhone and iPad. When you finish watching a TV episode, the app will automatically delete it and then download the next episode, so that it will be ready to watch even if you are on a plane or otherwise have no signal or a poor signal. You can turn the feature off if you don’t like it. When I start watching a show on Netflix or Amazon, I usually download the entire season to my iPad and iPhone, but it’s nice to know that Netflix will do something similar even if I forget.
- The Apple Watch Series 4 can detect when you fall. It gives you a warning that it sensed it, and if you don’t respond after a period of time, it can call emergency services for you. Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reports that this feature may have saved the life of a man in Norway. After I read that story, I turned on the feature on my own Apple Watch (it is turned off by default for most users). Later that day, as I reached for the door on my car door, I got an alert saying that the watch thought that I fell. I tapped the screen to say that it was a false alarm, and it hasn’t happened again since. I’m not sure what it was about swinging my hand towards my car door that triggered the alert. Hopefully I won’t get many more false alarms; for now I’m keeping this feature turned on just in case.
- Apple CEO Tim Cook is going to be the commencement speaker at Tulane University’s graduation on May 18, 2019, which will once again occur in the Superdome. As a New Orleans resident and a former adjunct professor at Tulane, I’m thrilled for all of the Tulane students who will get to hear him speak. I wonder if he was convinced to come down here by Lisa Jackson, who is in charge of environmental, policy, and social initiatives at Apple. She grew up in New Orleans and graduated from Tulane before going on to bigger and better things, including four years as the EPA Administrator. Tulane and Apple announced that Cook was coming here by releasing a fun video created in the Clips app.
- And finally, the new 2019 Emojis are here! Or at least, they are coming. Here is a video from Emojipedia showing off all of the new ones. These are Emojipedia’s own graphics, so the pictures will look somewhat different when Apple implements them later this year — or at least I assume that is when we will see them — but this video gives you a preview of what is coming: