For those of you who celebrate Christmas, the season is now upon us with Christmas less than three weeks from today. To get you in the mood, California attorney David Sparks created an Apple Music holiday playlist. It’s really good, and I’ve been listening to it with my iPhone and my AirPods as I write this post. David calls his playlist “Yule” but a better name for it might be “A Very Jazzy Christmas.” It’s got artists like Dave Brubeck, Diana Krall, Ella Fitzgerald, Vince Guaraldi, Miles Davis, and artists from my hometown of New Orleans such as Louis Armstrong, The Dixieland Ramblers, Harry Connick, Jr., and Wynton Marsalis. And because a large number of the songs are instrumental, I find it easy to work while listening to the playlist. Click here for David’s post on his MacSparky website with a link to the playlist. And now, the recent news of note:
- In an article in The Daily Record, New York attorney Nicole Black recommends some tech holiday gifts for lawyers.
- In the latest episode of the Digital Edge podcast, Virginia attorney Sharon Nelson and Jim Calloway of the Oklahoma Bar Association recommend tech toys for the holidays.
- In addition to creating a holiday playlist, California attorney David Sparks recently spent some time on vacation in Hawaii, and he talks about taking advantage of the cellular Apple Watch during that vacation.
- Dan Goodin of Ars Technica reports on a ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that police violated a suspect’s Fifth Amendment rights when they forced him to reveal his (computer) passcode.
- The Apple Watch screen is small, but there have still been a few times when I have wished that I could look at Twitter on the screen. Ryan Christoffel of MacStories reviews the new update to Chirp, a free Twitter app that lets you use Twitter on an Apple Watch. I was really impressed to see what a good job the developer did with this one.
- Sascha Segan of PCMag reports that Qualcomm President Cristiano Amon said this week that Qualcomm and Apple are working to launch a 5G iPhone as fast as they can.
- This week, Apple announced its editorial picks for the best apps and games of 2019. Apple also announced the most downloaded apps of 2019, and many of my favorites made the list such as Dark Sky Weather, Scanner Pro, Things 3.
- If you are in the market for a new car, I recommend that you don’t consider a car unless it has good CarPlay support. I really love using CarPlay in my Honda Accord. Until recently, BMW has been (I believe) the only company to charge you an $80/year subscription to use CarPlay, which makes no sense to me. But Filipe Espósito of 9to5Mac reports that BMW has finally decided to phase out this requirement on new BMWs with the latest infotainment system.
- Michael Potuck of 9to5Mac reports that Readdle’s Calendars 5 for iOS has gained Microsoft Exchange support.
- In an article for TidBITS, Donald C. O’Shea shares some good tips for using geolocation with Apple’s Photos.
- Jeff Benjamin of 9to5Mac reviews the iPhone 11 Pro Smart Battery Case, which features a new dedicated hardware camera button.
- Jonathan Taraya of Fox40 News in Sacramento, California reports that police arrested two men who stole an Apple Watch because the owner pinged the watch while the police were searching their motorhome. I presume it was a cellular Apple Watch, unless the owner was also close enough to be in Bluetooth range.
- And finally, Apple released two great videos this week showing off the amazing video capabilities of an iPhone. Snowbrawl is a 90-second video that tells the story of a truly epic snowball fight. It was filmed on an iPhone 11 Pro by David Leitch, the director of Hollywood films such as John Wick and Deadpool 2. Just as good as the video itself is the behind-the-scenes “making of” video, which shows some pretty creative things that they did with the iPhone as a video camera.