It was a big week at the United States Supreme Court, and one person who was happy with the decisions is Apple CEO Tim Cook. After Monday’s decision in Bostock, Cook — the most prominent gay CEO in the world — tweeted: “Grateful for today’s decision by the Supreme Court. LGBTQ people deserve equal treatment in the workplace and throughout society, and today’s decision further underlines that federal law protects their right to fairness.” The other big decision this week was in the DACA case Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of Univ. of Cal. After the decision was announced yesterday, Cook tweeted: “The 478 Dreamers at Apple are members of our collective family. With creativity and passion, they’ve made us a stronger, more innovative American company. We’re glad for today’s decision and will keep fighting until DACA’s protections are permanent.” Apple submitted amicus briefs in both of those cases, so Apple certainly helped to contribute to those victories. With everything else going on in the world nowadays, it’s certainly nice to see good decisions coming out of Washington, D.C. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- Virginia attorney Sharon Nelson of Ride the Lightning discusses preparing for what happens to your digital life after you die.
- Last month, I reviewed the Photos Field Guide, created by California attorney David Sparks of MacSparky. This week, David announced that he added transcripts to the Field Guide. This is actually a very big deal and makes the already great guide even more useful. First, you can quickly skim the transcript of a lesson to decide if you want to watch it. This is really a visual guide so reading the transcript alone doesn’t tell you everything that you need to know, but it certainly tells you enough to help you decide if you want to watch a video. Second, the guide now includes a single PDF transcript of the entire course. You can look at the PDF file from within the course, or better yet, you can download it to your PDF app of choice, which makes it easier to work with. You can use that full transcript to search for a needle in the haystack. I mean that literally; when I searched for “needle” I see that David uses the phrase “needle in a haystack” in § 6.10, in which he discusses searching for photos on an iPhone or iPad. Thus, you can search for the part of the course that discusses any topic that you want. This is especially useful after you have finished multiple lessons and cannot remember which one included the discussion of some specific topic. As I am typing this, you can still sign up for the Photos Field Guide (2nd Edition) for only $24, but David is just about to raise the price, so act quickly if you want it.
- David Sparks also discusses an update to the Grammarly app for the iPad, a grammar checker.
- Earlier this week, I discussed the new update of Fantastical to version 3.1. David Sparks also shared his thoughts (and some videos) on the update.
- Ryan Christoffel of MacStories also discusses the new update to Fantasical.
- This week, Apple announced a new program that gives you 0% financing on a new iPad, AirPods, Mac, and other products when you purchase using an Apple Card — which also gives you a 3% cash back. For example, if you want to buy a 12.9″ iPad Pro with 256GB, the cost is $1,099. But instead of paying that all at once, your Apple Card can automatically pay $91.58 a month for 12 months, at which point you will have paid for the device without paying any interest. And along the way, Apple will pay you $32.97 for the 3% cash back — which makes you feel better about the extra $100 you spent to get the 256GB model instead of the entry-level 128GB model.
- Speaking of money, Apple also announced this week that the App Store ecosystem facilitated over half a trillion dollars of commerce in 2019. And in case my wife is reading this, I promise that only a small part of that was from me.
- If you want to learn about great apps that you can use for task management, calendars, and note-taking on your iPad, you should check out the recent Episode 27 of the Adapt podcast in which Federico Viticci and Ryan Christoffel discuss a large number of the options. I enjoyed listening to this one.
- I’m always interested to learn about new smarthome technology that works with the iPhone. Michael Potuck of 9to5Mac reviews Flo by Moen, a device that monitors the plumbing in your home and can shut off your water if it detects leaks or burst pipes.
- Speaking of water, here is a really cool slow motion video that shows how the Apple Watch uses its speakers to eject water.
- And finally, Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal created an interesting video to show how the iPhone and other smartphones have become a tool over the last decade to tell the story of police brutality: