Here in New Orleans, we are preparing for our first hurricane of the season, Hurricane Barry. Hopefully it will not cause much damage, but with risks of flooding and the loss of electricity, folks in this area are preparing for the worst, just in case. (As I’m typing this, I can hear the wind outside of my house starting to make a lot of noise. Ugh.) No matter where you live, there is always a risk of a power outage, so it is a good idea to be prepared by having items like backup batteries charged and ready to go. One option that I can recommend is the Weego Jump Starter 22, which I reviewed last year when it was about $95 on Amazon, but now I see that it is down to $60 on Amazon. You can keep it in your car to jump-start your car or a friend’s car if you ever have the need to do so, plus it has enough charge to keep your iPhone going for a long time if there is a power outage. The Weego is like an insurance policy; it’s an item that hopefully you will never need to use, but if you do need it, you are going to be so happy that you have it. I also recommend keeping one or more small, portable batteries charged and in your briefcase or purse. And now, as we continue to batten down the hatches in the Big Easy, here is the recent news of note:
- California attorney David Sparks explains two reasons that an iPad will be much more useful with iPadOS: better file management and a better version of Safari, which can load many websites that have never before been able to work correctly on an iPad or iPhone.
- Similarly, David Pierce of the Wall Street Journal says that with the upcoming iPadOS, the iPad will be much more useful for getting work done.
- One of the new features in iPadOS will be the ability to connect many new USB devices to an iPad. Charlie Sorrel of Cult of Mac identifies all of the USB devices he has tried to plug into an iPad.
- Jeff Benjamin of 9to5Mac identifies over 80 changes and new features in the upcoming watchOS 6.
- Andrew O’Hara of AppleInsider identifies all of the changes coming to Photos in iOS 13.
- Juli Clover of MacRumors wrote a similar article on all of the changes coming to Photos in iOS 13.
- In an article for the Sweet Setup, Rose Orchard identifies all of the changes in Shortcuts in iOS 13.
- Indeed, are so many upcoming changes to Shortcuts that California attorney David Sparks explained this week that he is going to need to start from scratch to create a new version of his Shortcuts Field Guide.
- Lory Gil of iMore explains how she uses HomeKit in her own house.
- In an article for The Sweet Setup, Rosemary Orchid and Curtis McHale review the Brydge Keyboard for iPad Pro.
- In an article for Vice, Joseph Cox explains that at some borders, China is using technology to access all of the information on the mobile phones of folks entering the country. Of course, here in the U.S., Customs and Border Protection often tries to do something similar, and I’ve written before about the implications of this practice for attorneys.
- In a video for the Wall Street Journal, Joanna Stern talks about a pilot program in Delaware allowing you to use a digital version of a driver’s license on your iPhone. We have something similar here in Louisiana, and I wrote about it last year.
- Karen Freeman of iMore reviews the Adonit Note stylus, a $50 alternative to the Apple Pencil that I reviewed earlier this week. She likes the stylus for the same reasons that I did, but when she discussed the drawbacks, she didn’t say anything about accidentally hitting the power button while using the stylus and having the stylus turn off, which was a problem that I had. So maybe that is less of an issue for others than it is for me.
- And finally, here is a video from Apple showing a situation — a somewhat bizarre situation — in which it makes more sense to use FaceID to unlock an iPhone than TouchID: