Can you feel the excitement in the air? It's new iPhone day! At least, it is for those getting the new iPhone 12 or iPhone 12 Pro. The small one (iPhone 12 mini) and the big one (iPhone 12 Pro Max) come out next month. Yesterday, Juli Clover of MacRumors shared some photos of folks in Australia getting their new iPhones at 8am Australian Eastern Daylight Time, which is 15 hours ahead of the Eastern Time Zone. Plus, we have the new iPad Air coming out today — which looks like a fantastic device. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- Illinois attorney John Voorhees of MacStories reviews Halide Mark II, a sophisticated camera app that allows you to have lots of control over your photographs. Whenever I have tried to use prior versions the app, I find myself a little overwhelemed by the options, but I see that this update includes some tutorials so I may have to give it another go.
- Jack Nicas of the New York Times explains how police departments use sophisticated tools that can sometimes unlock the iPhones used by criminals.
- Joel M. Podolny used to be the dean of the Yale School of Management, and now he is the Dean of Apple's in-house educational program for its own employees called Apple University, which helps Apple employees learn from the company's past successes and failures. In an article for the Harvard Business Revue, Podolny and Morten Hansen of U.C. Berkeley discuss how the program works.
- With the pandemic limiting social activity, I was surprised to see this report by Dennis Sellers of Apple World Today saying that the top-grossing app in September was Tinder.
- iOS 14 makes it possible to customize the way that your iPhone looks in ways that were never before possible. Tim Hardwick of MacRumors explains how you can use the Launch Center Pro app to create custom app icons.
- Apple released iOS 14.1 this week. As Chance Miller of 9to5Mac explains, it fixes lots of bugs, adds support for the new iPhones, and more.
- If you want wireless headphones but the AirPods are too expensive, Apple released the Beats Flex, which cost only $50. Chris Welch of The Verge wrote a favorable review.
If you were around in the 1980s like I was, you remember when MTV played music videos. This week, Apple began a new 24-hour stream of music videos called Apple Music TV. Jem Aswad of Variety describes the new offering. As I'm typing these words, I've got Apple Music TV running on my iPad, and the channel is showing Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band play songs from their new album, Letter to You. I love it when a band that has been around for decades still sounds so incredible. I saw them play New Orleans Jazz Fest on May 3, 2014 (picture to the right; click to enlarge). The band was fantastic then and they still sound great today. If you subscribe to Apple TV+, you can now watch a documentary about the making of the new Springsteen album.
- John Gruber of Daring Fireball reviews the new 2020 version of the iPad Air.
- If you are getting a new device in the iPhone 12 family and will change to a cellphone plan in the U.S. that supports 5G, there are lots of plans to choose from. Eli Blumenthal of CNet explains all of the 5G options. I see that my current AT&T unlimited plan isn't even being offered any more.
- And finally, Apple shared a video showing what three-time Academy Award winner Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki was able to film with the iPhone 12 Pro. It won't surprise you that there are some stunning shots in here: