The most important story in the news this week has been the impeachment trial of President Trump. To my surprise, there is actually an Apple angle here — and not just that millions of people are streaming it live on an iPhone or iPad. Katherine Tully-McManus of Roll Call reports that at least seven Senators are wearing an Apple Watch and that this technically violates the Senate rules of decorum. Many judges make you turn off an iPhone in court, but I have yet to hear of a judge telling attorneys to turn off an Apple Watch. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- Attorneys often have a need to export text messages from an iPhone. Legal tech consultant Brett Burney of Apps in Law wrote and prepared a video about iMazing, a product that lets you do this.
- John Gruber of Daring Fireball discusses a recent report by Reuters on how Apple was going to encrypt iCloud backups but then did not do so. As Gruber notes, if you backup your iPhone or iPad to your own computer instead of iCloud, then you get greater protection for your backup.
- William Cohan of Fast Company reports on a $10 million cyber lab used by New York City to gain access to iPhones.
- Federico Viticci of MacStories wrote about his must-have iPad and iPhone apps.
- Khamosh Pathak of How-To Geek explains how you can use an app called My Altitude to determine your altitude using an iPhone.
- In an article for Macworld, Jason Snell explains why apps were key to the success of the iPad.
- Juli Clover of MacRumors reviews an external flash for the iPhone made by Anker.
- I don’t wear my Apple Watch when I sleep very often, but a Kentucky woman did so, and her Apple Watch woke her up to warn her that it detected atrial fibrillation, as reported by Chance Miller for 9to5Mac.
- Ryan Christoffel of MacStories writes about some of the shows coming to Apple TV+. I’m most looking forward to Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet.
- And finally, if you want to get a sense of how much the iPhone has improved over the years, check out this video by Arun Maini which lines them all up and shows the same activity on all of them at the same time. (Not that he reads this website, but thanks to my 14-year-old son for coming across this video and sharing it with me.)