In the news

Starting today, the iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 12 Pro Max are now available for purchase, which means that you can now buy any of the four models in the iPhone 12 family.  And when you do so, there is now a new option for getting and setting up your new iPhone.  But first, a little background.  In 2000, Ron Johnson joined Apple and became Apple’s Senior Vice President for Retail.  As the guy responsible for the creation and original roll-out of the Apple Stores, he had incredible success.  In 2011, he left Apple to become the president of JC Penny, where he was far less successful and was fired after two years.  In 2014, he started a company called Enjoy, a company that changes the shopping experience by bringing a store to you.  An Enjoy employee goes to your house to help you set up a new device.  And the employee has additional accessories available for purchase.  Michael Steeber of 9to5Mac reports that Apple is now working with Enjoy for the iPhone 12, which means that Ron Johnson has gone full-circle and is now helping to sell Apple products again.  If you purchase an iPhone 12 using the Apple website or the Apple Store app, in select cities you can select Delivery with Setup during checkout and an Enjoy employee will bring your new iPhone to you and spend 30 minutes helping you set up your new device.  (Or, you can talk to the Enjoy representative via FaceTime for extreme social distancing.)  My understanding is that Enjoy is paid by Apple so there is no additional cost to you, and it looks like the service is available in 54 cities in the United States, plus locations in Canada and the UK.  This looks like an interesting alternative to visiting an Apple Store to purchase and have someone help you get started with a new iPhone.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Back in 2006, when I was living in New York City after Hurricane Katrina, I had a chance to chat with Ron Johnson at Apple’s Fifth Avenue store.  Here is a picture of us.  I’m the one on the right — the one who didn’t make hundreds of millions of dollars working at Apple.
• In an article for TidBITS, Glenn Fleishman wrote the best article on 5G that I’ve seen.  He explains how it works, why it matters, how to get it (in the U.S.), and what it may become in the future.
• Using AirPlay to mirror an iPad screen on a TV without wires is incredibly useful, making it easy to give a presentation.  For a long time, you could only do this with an Apple TV, which starts at $180.  But now, you can use AirPlay with an inexpensive Roku connected to a TV, which starts at $40.  Jared Newman of TechHive describes the experience of using AirPlay on a Roku, and he said that it works incredibly well.
• Jim Darlymple of The Loop wrote a detailed and interesting review of Apple’s new HomePod mini.
• Emma Baccellieri of Sports Illustrated explains how MLB is using iPads in stadiums to recreate the sound of a crowd for baseball games played in empty stadiums.
• Jason Cross of Macworld reviews the iPhone 12 Pro Max.
• Travel photographer Austin Mann brought an iPhone 12 Pro Max to Zion National Park in Utah to show off what the camera can do.  His pictures are stunning.  And at the end of his article, he created a very helpful decision tree to help you to decide which model of the iPhone 12 is best for you.
• Bradley Chambers of 9to5Mac explains how HomeKit devices saved his car from being stolen.
• When I was a kid, my brother and I would spend countless hours playing the Atari 2600, and one of the things that I loved about it was the joystick.  In a recent episode of his YouTube show Will It Work, Niles Mitchell shows how he managed to connect (wirelessly) an Atari 2600 joystick to an iPhone so that he could play old Atari 2600 games on it, such as the Activision game Pitfall.  If you feel the same nostalgia for the Atari 2600 that I do, then you should check out the video.
• Apple has published its 2020 Holiday Gift Guide.  It’s worth checking out just to see the fun design of that web page.
• And finally, while I don’t think that the new MagSafe Wallet from Apple is for me, photographer Peter McKinnon is a fan of this product.  He prepared a compelling video to explain and show what is great about the MagSafe Wallet: