Apple’s WWDC conference is going on this week. As a result, all week long, Apple has been sharing a ton of information about what is coming to future versions of Apple software, and that is the focus of most of the links that I am sharing today. I realize that I probably feel this way every year at this time, but the news of this week has me incredibly excited for how much better my iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and even AirPods will be in a few months. So let’s get to it, the news of note from the past week:
- One of the new features in iOS 14 is the ability to double-tap or triple-tap the back of your iPhone to trigger some action. California attorney David Sparks shows off in a video how to use the Shortcuts app to make these actions trigger the flashlight or open the Camera app. This sounds useful and I could see myself doing this myself once iOS 14 comes out.
- In an interesting article in ABA Journal, San Francisco attorney David Lowe discusses how he prepared for a Zoom trial, including why he had to use his PC instead of his iPad.
- Timothy Lee of Ars Technica reports that the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that it violates the Fifth Amendment for the police to force someone to unlock an iPhone. As noted in that article, the courts are split on this issue.
- If you want to see what iOS 14 looks like (at least, the current beta of it), Dieter Bohn of The Verge prepared a good video overview.
- Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal also prepared a good video overview of some of Apple’s announcements at its Keynote.
- Ryan Christoffel of MacStories discusses the new features to Apple’s Notes and Reminders apps coming in iOS 14 and iPad OS 14.
- Christoffel also discusses what will be new in tvOS 14.
- Christoffel also discusses some of the minor, but interesting, new features announced this week.
- Dan Moren of Six Colors similarly discusses some of the little stuff.
- Jason Snell of Six Colors discusses a WWDC session focused on the new cursor in iPadOS.
- Snell also discusses the new App Clips feature in iOS 14.
- Joe Rossignol of MacRumors explains how iOS 14 will be able to detect the position of your hand or your body pose to trigger actions.
- Juli Clover of MacRumors notes that a new feature of iOS 14 is that it gives you an alert when an app reads the clipboard. And folks running the beta version discovered this week, as a result of that feature, that the TikTok app was reading the clipboard every few seconds.
- Michael Simon of PCWorld discusses features in iOS 14 that are improvements upon similar features in Android.
- Raymond Wong of Input wrote a similar article comparing iOS 14 to Android. In that article, he writes: “I think it’s inevitable someone creates a double-tap Shortcut to launch the camera app, which would put it on par with Android’s double-tap on the power button to activate the camera.” Obviously, Wong has yet to see the video from David Sparks, linked above, in which David has already done that.
- Many law firms and other companies use Mobile Device Management (MDM) to manage and protect secure information on iPhones and other mobile devices. Bradley Chambers of 9to5Mac reports that Apple purchased one of the MDM companies, a company called Fleetsmith.
- Chance Miller of 9to5Mac shows how sharing Apple Watch faces will work in watchOS 7.
- In this 90-minute video episode of The Talk Show, John Gruber interviews Apple executives Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak to discuss the announcements at WWDC this week. Even if you don’t watch the whole video, watch at least a few minutes to see how beautiful Apple Park is as a background behind Federighi and Joswiak.
- Ben Keough of Wirecutter recommends his favorite mobile scanning apps.
- Andrew Cunningham and Thorin Klosowki of Wirecutter pick 1Password as the best password manager.
- Jonathan Mann created a silly music video called I Just Go Into Jiggle Mode by using clips from the Apple keynote earlier this week.
- This has nothing to do with technology, but since I’m talking about music, I also enjoyed watching this one. Andry Greene of Rolling Stone shares a video of Paul McCartney, Dave Matthews, Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters), Elvis Costello, Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Nathaniel Rateliff, Irma Thomas, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and others signing When the Saints Go Marching In. Paul McCartney on the trumpet is something that I haven’t seen before.
- And finally, Serenity Caldwell of Apple has been producing some great videos at the end of every day of WWDC this week to highlight the big announcements of each day. Here are the videos for Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, and Day 4. (I’ll update this post with links when she posts more.) Each video is short and worth watching. Here is the video for Day 1: