Fifty year ago tomorrow — July 20, 1969 — Neil Armstrong announced "The Eagle has landed" and then took one small step as mankind took its first step on the Moon. David Perini of Cult of Mac explains that the iPhone in your pocket is millions of times more powerful than the Apollo 11 computer that put a man on the moon. Meanwhile, Apple celebrated the the 50-year anniversary by releasing a cute preview of the Snoopy in Space movie coming to the Apple TV+ service later this year. I'm fairly certain that this is the first time that I've mentioned the iPhone, astronauts, and a Peanuts character in the same paragraph of iPhone J.D. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- California attorney David Sparks discusses and shows off in a video the new dictation feature of Voice Control, coming to iOS later this year. It is vastly more sophisticated than Siri dictation. If you have ever used Dragon Dictation or a similar product, you'll feel right at home.
- 5G is just starting to become available in a few locations, but you don't need to worry about it not being supported on the iPhone yet; the technology is far too early to use. Nevertheless, Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal wrote an interesting article testing the 5G technology that is available, noting all of its limitations. As is usual for her, the video accompanying her article is the best part.
- Rene Ritchie of iMore prepared a good overview of the Files app, USB Storage, and sharing features of the iPadOS, which will come out later this year.
- You can use an Apple Watch to track your sleep, and I have tried some of the apps that do so, but I've never stuck with it because I never found anything interesting that I could do with that data. Brian X. Chen writes about these apps in an article for the New York Times, reaching the same conclusion. There are rumors that Apple is looking to make sleep-tracking a feature in an upcoming version of the Apple Watch — two years ago, Apple purchased a company called Beddit that sells a sleep tracker — and I hope that if Apple ever does release this as a built-in feature, Apple also comes up with a good explanation of how sleep-tracking technology is useful.
- John Gruber of Daring Fireball wrote an interesting analysis of some recent statements by Bill Gates about Microsoft, Apple, and the early days of smartphones.
- Ed Hardy of Cult of Mac writes about two of Apple's ads that received Emmy nominations this week.
- CNBC has a fun video interview of Angela Guzman, who as an intern at Apple helped to design many of the emoji that we all use today.
- And finally, let's talk about Easter Eggs, hidden features in software. They have been around for decades, and one of the coolest can be found in PCalc, a calculator for the iPhone, iPad, and iPhone. (On the iPhone, tap the Info button, then tap Help, then tap About PCalc, and then just explore.) The developer of PCalc, James Thomson, used to work at Apple. Earlier this month, he gave a half-hour presentation called An Illustrated History of Easter Eggs at a conference, and it is delightful. I sat down last night to watch the first minute or so, and before I knew it I had watched the whole thing. It takes you on a journey that starts with the Atari 2600 (when the term "Easter Eggs" was created) and ends with the Apple Watch. Here is the video:
