The Look Around feature in Apple Maps is similar to the Street View feature in Google Maps, but I find that it works much better with higher quality pictures and smoother transitions when you move around. However, it is only available in a small number of cities including New York and San Francisco. Michael Potuck of 9to5Mac reports that the feature is now available in Washington, D.C., Boston, and Philadelphia. So now, you can easily see the United States Supreme Court and other important and historical locations from the Maps app. (When Look Around is available, you will see an icon with a pair of binoculars near the top right of the screen. Just tap that ot enter the Look Around mode.) And now, the news of note from the past week:
- The most recent episode of the Mac Power Users podcast — hosted by California attorney David Sparks along with Stephen Hackett — is called State of the iPad. It includes a great look at what is great about the iPad, especially the iPad Pro, and a nice look at what might be coming in the future. I enjoyed the episode.
- In the latest episode of the Apps in Law podcast, Brett Burney interviews Kentucky attorney Stephen Embry to talk about the CES conference and consumer technology that is of interest to attorneys.
- Photoshop has been around for 30 years, and to mark the anniversary, there is a new version of the Photoshop iPad app. Illinois attorney John Voorhees of MacStories describes what is new. I pay for a Photoshop subscription, mostly so that I can use it on my Mac but also to use the app on my iPad. It is very powerful, but I still find it somewhat confusing — largely because I haven’t been using Photoshop for decades like some other folks. One of these days I’d love to find a good, simple tutorial on how to make the most of the iPad version of the app, but for now, I’m figuring out how to get things done.
- Jason Cross of Macworld reviews five good weather apps for the iPhone. Most of the time, I use Carrot Weather, but sometimes I instead use Dark Sky — especially if I want to view a weather radar, which I think that Dark Sky does better than any other app.
- If you have a camera in your home that works with HomeKit, you should definitely check out HomeCam. The app was updated to version 2.0 this week, and based on this review by Bradley Chambers of 9to5Mac, it sounds quite powerful.
- As noted by Filipe Espósito of 9to5Mac, watchOS was updated this week to version 6.1.3 to fix a bizarre bug: irregular heart rhythm notifications were not working for certain Apple Watch owners in Iceland.
- This week, Apple announced that it will make less money this fiscal quarter than it had previously announced because of COVID-19, the Coronavirus. As a result of the virus, (1) Apple is not able to manufacture iPhones in China at the pace it had expected, and (2) Apple expects to sell fewer iPhones in China.
- I haven’t tried this yet myself, but I can see how this could come in useful. You can connect an iPhone or iPad to a TV in a hotel by using an HDMI cable and a dongle on your iPhone or iPad that connects to HDMI. That way, you can show video from your device on the larger TV, useful for streaming video from a service like Netflix. But some hotel TVs restrict access to the HDMI port, presumably to encourage you to watch their TV service and pay for pay-per-view. Charlie Sorrel of Cult of Mac shares a tip from Deviant Ollam on Twitter: just disconnect the phone-like cable on the back of the TV, restart the TV, and then it works like a normal TV and you can plug in your HDMI cord.
- And finally, this video from Apple is part of its Shot on iPhone series. It is called Powder: Backcountry Snowboarding at Baldface Lodge, and it includes some amazing snowboarding video: