If you or someone in your family spent money at the App Store on New Year’s Day, then you contributed to Apple reaching a new daily record for App Store sales — $386 million in sales on January 1, 2020. That’s 20% higher than last year. Not a bad day for Apple. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- Juli Clover of MacRumors notes that, 13 years ago yesterday, Steve Jobs introduced the original iPhone. She provides a link to the video of Steve Jobs doing so, and every time I watch it, I’m amazed at what a great job Steve Jobs did with that presentation.
- In an article for Macworld, Dan Moren explains why he expects Apple to push HomeKit forward in 2020.
- Christopher Close of iMore reports that a company called Waciao (pronounced like “watch out”) is entering the smart home market and has plans for lots of HomeKit-compatible products.
- I’m a big fan of Lutron’s smart home products. I recently installed a simple Lutron Caseta switch in my garage, and now I can use my iPhone or even my Apple Watch to turn the light on in my garage (which is not connected to my house) before I even go out to the garage. This is especially great at night; I love having the light already on when I unlock the door. Even my wife likes this one, and she is not nearly as interested in smart home technology as I am. I mention this because at CES this week, Lutron announced that it will release a new smart motion sensor and also a new Caséta Repeater which can expand your system range by 60 feet. A few months ago, I explained how you can use a Lutron Caseta Wireless Smart Lighting Lamp Dimmer to extend the range by 30 feet, so this Repeater will be even better. If you have a large house, a house in an irregular shape, or you have dense stone or concrete walls, this Repeater sounds like it will let you get much more out of Lutron devices.
- Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac describes a HomeKit device that does one simple thing — pushes a physical button.
- Apple plans to launch a series of ads featuring great pictures that people have taken using the Night Mode feature on an iPhone 11. And if you contribute your photo between now and January 29 and it is selected by the panel of judges, Apple will pay to license your photo for its campaign. All of the information is contained on this page of the Apple website. Good luck!
- If you have been waiting to buy a pair of AirPods or AirPods Pro, you wait was worth it (ahem) because now you can order yours with an emoji on it, as July Clover of MacRumors explains.
- Apple has released some fascinating “shot on iPhone” videos. Apple recently released an interesting one called Fire & Ice. Click here to watch it — and it is formatted to look best on an iPhone, So I recommend that you watch it there, not on a computer. When you are done watching that, I found the behind-the-scene video to be even more interesting — and this one is in landscape orientation so it looks great on a computer, or iPad, or iPhone: