Apple’s WWDC conference has been taking place all this week. And all week long, Apple has revealed — and people have discovered on their own — countless details about what is coming this Fall to the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, etc. I’ve tried to capture some of the highlights in today’s post. I find myself wishing that I could jump to September to take advantage of all of the new features now. You can also get an early taste of the future if you enroll in Apple’s public beta program, which I suspect that Apple will open up before the end of this month, but I virtually always avoid installing beta system software on the devices that I use to get work done every day. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Voice-to-text dictation works differently in iOS 15, and attorneys will especially appreciate what is new. The process now runs on your device, which has at least three advantages. First, it is a little faster. Second, the words you say don’t leave your device and go up to an Apple server, which provides additional privacy. Third, there is no longer a time limit on how long you can speak. California attorney David Sparks has installed the beta and tried it out. He created a fantastic video that shows you how the new and old systems work, side-by-side.
Attorneys can do a good job of identifying the tiny details that are important. Illinois attorney John Voorhees of MacStories came up with a great list of small details in iOS 15 that are significant, even if they are not yet getting much attention.
Is this the right time to buy an iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, etc.? Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal provides the answers. (As a reminder, if you subscribe to Apple’s News+ service, you can read Wall Street Journal articles by using the steps I noted at the bottom of this post.)
Chris Welch of The Verge wrote a great article about spatial audio and Dolby Atmos and noted that the quality of the track depends upon decisions made by the engineers who create each Dolby Atmos track. He provides examples of tracks that are done well and tracks that are either worse or different, depending upon your perspective.
There are lots of improvements to FaceTime in iOS 15. In an article for Macworld, Jason Snell provides a good overview of the improvements to FaceTime.
Dave Hamilton of The Mac Observer does a great job explaining Apple’s iCloud Private Relay service that will be a part of iOS 15 this Fall for folks with iCloud+ (any tier of the paid iCloud accounts). Attorneys and others interested in privacy and security will be interested in this feature, which in some ways offers even more security than using a private VPN. For example: “Where it differs is that a VPN is generally just one server between you and the website you’re visiting. With a VPN, your traffic takes the route of You <> VPN Server <> Website. Private Relay adds another server to the mix, which ensures that no one in the chain—not even Apple—can see the whole picture: You <> Apple’s ingress server <> Content Provider’s Egress Server <> Website.”
Killian Bell of Cult of Mac describes the new Digital Legacy feature in the upcoming iCloud+ which lets you designate another person who can access your Apple data after you die.
iOS 15 will provide preliminary support for Matter, a new smart home standard that will allow you to work with a wide range of smart devices, as opposed to the situation today where we have Apple’s HomeKit and many competing standards. Dan Moren of Six Colors provides an overview of Matter.
If you watched the WWDC Keynote video earlier this week, every presenter was wearing an Apple Watch. And if you pay close attention, you can see that every single one of them said that the time was 10:09. Why? This article from Steve Tweedie of Business Insider (written back in 2015) explains the most likely theories for why Apple always uses 10:09 on the Apple Watch. It is an interesting attention to detail.
If you are in the market to upgrade the Wi-Fi in your home or office, I’m a big fan of the eero. I reviewed the eero Pro last year, which sells for $499 for three units. But there is a big sale on Amazon on all eero devices right now, so you can get the system that I still use and love for only $349 right now. That’s an absolute steal for a fantastic system. Many other eero devices are also on sale.
If you subscribe to Apple Music and you own a pair of AirPods (or if you own a pair of Beats headphones with an Apple H1 or W1 chip in it), now is the time to listen to some music. Spatial music is now available in Apple Music (at no additional cost) which means that songs produced or remastered for Dolby Atmos can now be streamed through Apple Music. And these songs sound great.
I wrote about spatial audio a few weeks ago in this post. But as the old saying goes (perhaps first said by Martin Mull), writing about music like dancing about architecture. To really understand what spatial audio is about, you need to hear it yourself. And now you can.
Apple has created some playlists in which all of the songs feature Dolby Atmos, and this is a great way to begin listening to spatial audio. For example, the primary list is called Made for Spatial Audio and it includes over 100 songs from every different genre of music.
You should start with the first track, Marvin Gaye: From Mono to Stereo to Spatial, because Zane Lowe of Apple starts to play the classic song What's Going On in the original mono, then switches to stereo, and finally switches to Dolby Atmos. This makes it easy to appreciate how much better stereo is than mono and how much better Dolby Atmos is than stereo. You can also hear Zone Lowe do something similar with this track for the song Save Your Tears by The Weeknd.
How much of a difference does spatial audio make? It depends. I noticed that for some older songs that I've listened to countless times, such as Here Comes the Sun by The Beatles, I Want You Back by the Jackson 5, and The Gambler by Kenny Rogers, the difference was substantial. I've been listening to those songs in stereo for so many years that hearing them in Dolby Atmos for the first time was pretty stunning. The music seems much more immersive than I've ever experienced in the past. I can more easily pick out different instruments as if they are in specific locations around me — and for the song The Gambler, it was like I've never heard each string of the guitar so clearly. For modern songs that are already heavily produced to sound great in stereo, the Dolby Atmos version still sounded better, but the difference was less dramatic to me. But Dolby Atmos was always an improvement.
I tested the songs using my iPhone 12 Pro and my AirPods Pro. I also asked my wife to check it out, and she used her iPhone SE (second generation) and her AirPods (I believe the first generation). She agreed that Dolby Atmos sounded better than stereo, but she also said that she doesn't normally pay that much attention to differences in audio quality, and thus she said that she wouldn't want to pay extra for it. Fortunately, Apple isn't charging extra for spatial audio. It is just a new feature of an Apple Music subscription.
Along with spatial audio, Apple also added the (optional) ability to download songs in a lossless format, if you turn that on in the Settings app. Much as I predicted a few weeks ago, to my ears, I didn't notice any difference with lossless audio. So after trying it for a while, I just turned it off to avoid the substantial increase in data streaming required for lossless audio. If you can appreciate the difference of lossless audio, then you have much better hearing than I do. But most anyone can appreciate the clear, immersive, three-dimensional sound of spatial audio.
If you subscribe to Apple Music, you should absolutely check out spatial audio for a new way to listen to music. If you don't, now you have another reason to check out the service.
[UPDATE 6/10: Alex Castro of The Verge wrote an excellent article on Spatial Audio and I recommend that you read it. He identifies songs that sound great. He also points out some songs that were remixed poorly and sound worse. He also notes that you don't need AirPods to turn on Spatial Audio, which I did not know, although your results may vary. And he provides a great tip for using the Control Center to quickly switch between the Dolby Atmos and stereo versions of a song so that you can easily do your own A/B test and decide what you think.]
Yesterday, at the start of Apple’s WWDC conference, Apple gave the first public preview of iOS 15 and iPadOS 15. These updates will be available this Fall, and they bring a large number of new features to the iPhone and iPad that lawyers will love – as will others who use their devices to get work done. I cannot possibly discuss everything that is new — Apple’s full lists of the new features for the iPhone and iPad are huge — but here are some of the highlights that I think will be very much appreciated.
Widgets on the iPad home screen
iOS 14 brought widgets to the iPhone home screen, and folks have come up with lots of great ways to use them. But the problem is that there is only limited space on an iPhone screen. The iPad is just the opposite — there is tons of space. And because you can put your 15 favorite apps in the Dock, the apps that do appear on your home screen are likely of lesser importance, making it easy to justify moving them aside to make way for widgets. That’s why I think that widgets are going to be vastly more useful on the iPad in iPadOS 15.
I can foresee potentially using only widgets on the first page of my home screen so that, with a quick glance, I can see a large amount of information that is important to me — my calendar, my to-do items, the weather, the news, and more.
Quick Notes on the iPad
The Notes app is a great place to store little tidbits of information. For example, I have a list of my most active file numbers, which I find useful almost every day. It is a great place to jot down quick information, such as a phone number. And I use it for so much more.
In iPadOS 15, you can simply swipe from the corner and immediately start writing a Quick Note, without having to first launch the Notes app. Thus, it’s a quick way to capture a note, no matter what else you are doing on the iPad. Better yet, Quick Note is aware of the app that you are using and can easily incorporate information from that app. For example, if you are looking at a web page in Safari, you can swipe from the corner to create a note and then tap one button to paste a link to the website that you are viewing. You can also easily take text from a website and place that in a Quick Note. In the future, when you look at that note, you can tap to go right back to where that text is located on the website.
Based on the demonstration yesterday, this looks like a very useful way to keep track of information.
Easier multitasking on the iPad
Although it has been possible to use multiple apps on the iPad at the same time since iOS 9 was introduced in 2015, the feature can sometimes be confusing to use. And worse yet, sometimes it can be triggered unintentionally.
In iPadOS 15, Apple is adding a new multitasking menu at the top of the screen (three small dots) to make it easier to use multitasking. You can even have two apps open on the left and right and then have a third app in the center. Each of those windows has its own set of three dots at the top to control multitasking.
When you have multiple instances of an app opened at once, iPadOS 15 has a new Shelf feature that can display small thumbnails of each of those windows at the bottom of the screen. The Shelf appears when you first open the app and then fades away as you start to use the app. This should make it much easier to keep track of and use different windows in the same app.
Has Apple finally figured out the best way to use multitasking on the iPad? Time will tell, but I’m encouraged that Apple has recognized that there is room for improvement and is taking a new approach.
A new Safari interface
There is a new interface for Safari on both the iPhone and iPad that is designed to let you see even more of a webpage on the screen and that is designed to make it easier to work with different tabs. For example, on the iPad, there is no longer one bar devoted to the address and a second bar below it devoted to different tabs. In iPadOS 15, there is just a single bar with tabs and the address space is part of the currently active tab.
You can also save a set of related tabs in a Tab Group, and a Tab Group syncs to your other Apple devices.
Photos improvements
Sometimes I take a photo because I want a picture. But other times I take a photo because I want to remember some information — like a photo of the front of a store to remember the name of the store, or a photo of a sign to remember the information on that sign. In iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, the Photos app has a new feature called Live Text to recognize text in a photo. And then you can quickly take action on that text, such as select the words to paste them into an email. Or select a phone number in a picture to dial that number. You can even translate the text. And this activity takes place on the device itself, so you can do it even without an Internet connection. It even works with handwriting.
Another new feature in Photos is called Visual Look Up. With this feature, you can take a picture of something, and then your iPhone or iPad will understand what is in the picture and provide you information on that topic. Take a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge, a famous painting, a plant, or a dog and get information about the bridge, the painting, the type of plant, or the breed of dog. This is another one of those features that I cannot wait to try. Even if it only works part of the time, I can see this being very useful.
Until now, if you wanted to change the date, time, or location of a photo, you needed to use a third-party app. (The one I use is called Metapho.) But in the new Photos app, you can adjust these from within the Photos app itself. Finally!
Apple’s amazing Memories feature is also improved this year. Memories has always done a good job of intelligently selecting and reminding you of photos and stitching them together into movies in which the photos change with the beat of the music. These features are enhanced in iOS 15 and iPadOS 15. During a Memories movie, there are better features for pausing and going back to a photo. And there is a new interface that makes it easy to remix one of those movies to give it a different feel. And instead of working with a small selection of songs for background music, Memories movies now have access to the entire Apple Music library (if you subscribe). There have been many times when I have been working on an intense project in my office when I notice that Memories has suggested a new picture or set of pictures or a Memories movie for me. I take a pause, sometimes just for a few seconds, to enjoy the memory, and then I return to my work with a smile on my face. It’s a small thing, but it often gives me just the jolt of energy that I need. I love the Memories feature, and I’m glad to see these updates coming this year.
Universal Control
Last year, I reviewed the Logitech MX Keys keyboard and noted that it is useful to be able to press a button to have the keyboard switch between working with a computer and working with an iPad. In iPadOS 15, Apple has a new feature called Universal Control. With it, you can use a single mouse and keyboard to work with both an iPad and a Mac that are next to each other. You can move your cursor to the end of the Mac screen and have it show up on the iPad screen and vice versa.
Keyboard improvements on the iPad
When you use an external keyboard with an iPad, you will be able to do even more. There are new global shortcuts, including shortcuts for multitasking and contextual menus. And there is a new interface for viewing keyboard shortcuts organized into categories like File, Edit, and View … yet another example of the iPad borrowing good ideas from computers. App developer Steve Troughton-Smith explained that you can “hold down the command key, and you can then touch a menu item or scroll to see all of the app’s menus hierarchically.”
Maps
Apple has added significantly more details to maps — although, at first, it will only be for a few major cities. Apple also added immersive walking instructions for some cities so that you can hold up your iPhone and see an augmented view of the world around you with big arrows that appear on top of an upcoming street to show you where to take a left or right.
iCloud+
If you pay for any additional iCloud storage, even just the $0.99/month 50GB plan, you will be upgraded this Fall to iCloud+. It includes many new features, but one interesting one is called iCloud Private Relay. It provides you with additional privacy when you are using Safari and other web services by concealing your IP address. That way, the website cannot see your IP address, location, and browsing activity.
Use 5G instead of Wi-Fi when it makes sense
Have you ever been in a situation in which your iPhone or iPad was connected to a Wi-Fi network, but the network was so slow that you find it faster to just switch to a cellular connection? If you have a newer iPhone or iPad that supports 5G, this will now happen automatically. As Apple describes it, your device “now automatically prioritize 5G when Wi‑Fi connectivity on networks you visit occasionally is slow, or when you are connected to captive or insecure networks, so you can enjoy faster, safer connectivity.”
And so much more
And that is really just scratching the surface of the new features. There are significant improvements to FaceTime that will make it far more attractive to folks who are currently using Zoom or other videoconferencing services, including a grid view, the ability to schedule a FaceTime call, the ability to work with folks using Windows or Android, and the ability to isolate your voice and reduce background noises. There are tons of improvements to the Messages app that make it easier to see photos and other content shared with you. A new Focus feature takes the idea of Do Not Disturb and makes it more advanced so that you can customize notifications that you receive at work, at home, or while doing other activities. And you can use Find My to locate your missing AirPods Pro or AirPods Max.
Another new feature is that Siri requests are processed on the device. This allows Siri to work faster, and it also enhances privacy because the audio of your requests is processed on the device. I know that a lot of attorneys, and others who discuss confidential information, will appreciate the idea that audio recordings do not leave the iPhone or iPad to go to some server for Siri to analyze the audio.
And finally, as we spend the rest of 2021 getting used to the idea of traveling again, later this year you will be able to add your driver’s license to the Wallet app on the iPhone and a paired Apple Watch and present them securely at TSA checkpoints.
Conclusion
The smart engineers at Apple may not have been able to work in their offices in Cupertino and elsewhere since early 2020, but they have clearly been very busy while they were working at home. I’m impressed by the large number of new features in iOS 15 and iPadOS 15. We are now about four months away from these updates being finished, and I can’t wait.
Today is the first day of Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC), and it gets started with a Keynote address from Apple. At 10 Pacific / 1 Eastern, Apple CEO Tim Cook and other executives will give a preview of software, and perhaps hardware, that Apple plans to release later this year. For example, I’m sure that Apple will debut iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, both of which should be final and ready to use this Fall.
Episode 4 of the In the News podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, Brett Burney and I discuss what we hope to see Apple announce at the WWDC conference, which starts on Monday. We also discuss the AirTag, including an update that enhances privacy and some of the initial stories of using an AirTag to track a stolen item. Then we discuss USB-C hubs for the iPad Pro. Finally, in our In the Know segment, Brett recommends the Walkie-Talkie app on the Apple Watch, and I discuss the 2021 Apple Design Award Finalists.
In just a few days, on Monday, Apple will begin its 2021 Worldwide Developers Conference, WWDC. Like last year, the conference is online-only due to the pandemic. The conference begins at 10 Pacific / 1 Eastern with a Keynote address by Apple, and Apple always uses this opportunity to announce new products. I’m sure that we will see previews of new features coming this Fall to the next version of the iPhone and iPad operating systems, iOS 15 and iPadOS 15. I’m especially hoping that we see some iPadOS advances that allow the new 2021 version of the iPadPro to take full advantage of the power of that hardware. I’d also like to see full support for widgets in iPadOS15 so that we can place widgets anywhere on the large screen, not just on the left side. Apple always previews new software at WWDC, but Apple sometimes uses the opportunity to introduce new hardware as well. Parker Ortolani of 9to5Mac did a good job of discussing the important announcements at prior WWDC events. For example, iPhone home screen widgets were introduced in 2020. I’m very excited to see what surprises Apple will reveal next week. And now, the news of note from the past week:
The TranscriptPad app from Lit Software is an essential app for me whenever I am working with deposition transcripts in the discovery and motion stage of litigation. I most recently discussed that app as a part of my review of LIT SUITE earlier this year. This week, the app was updated to add the ability to share an annotated transcript with another TranscriptPad user. That way, another attorney working with you on a case can easily take advantage of your work product. Click here to learn more about this feature in a recent post on the Lit Software blog. I’ve been using TranscriptPad for almost a decade, and I love how much the app has improved over the years. (Here is my January 18, 2012 review of the first version of the app.) Ian O’Flaherty, the CEO of Lit Software, mentioned to me earlier this week that more cool features are coming to TranscriptPad over the next few months. I can’t wait to find out what comes next.
Illinois attorney John Voorhees of MacStories reviews the new 2.0 version of the HomeRun app. I’ve long enjoyed the original iPhone app because it has allowed me to customize an Apple Watch app with buttons that I can press to control the HomeKit device in my home. The new 2.0 version adds support for widgets on the iPhone and iPad. It is not an automatic upgrade; you need to download a new app and either pay $5/year or $20.
Will Apple announce something called homeOS next week? Hartley Charlton of MacRumors notes that Apple posted up a job listing looking to hire someone to work on homeOS, but has since revised the job listing, and Charlton wonders if this might possibly signal a replacement for HomeKit.
When Apple first released the AirTag, the company emphasized the built-in privacy features and noted that it could adjust these features through software upgrades over time. Apple has now done that, as first reported by Ian Sherr of CNet. If someone tries to use an AirTag to track another person’s location (for example by slipping the AirTag into a purse or briefcase), the original version of the AirTag would start to beep after three days. Apple is now releasing firmware version 1.0.276 to change that to a random window between 8 and 24 hours. (The AirTag shipped with firmware version of 1.0.225.) The update happens automatically when an AirTag is near an iPhone. If you want to see what version of the firmware you are using, open the Find My app, tap on Items at the bottom, tap on the entry for an AirTag, and then tap once on the name of the AirTag to reveal two lines of information that is normally concealed: the serial number and the firmware number.
Speaking of the AirTag, a Reddit user posted an interesting story of how his wallet, containing an AirTag, was stolen at a gym and he tracked the thief through the New York subway system.
If you want to attach an AirTag to a bike but don’t want it to be obvious to a bike thief, Killian Bell of Cult of Mac discusses a mount from Device Therapy that hides an AirTag holder in a bike reflector. That seems like a great idea.
Luke Dormehl of Cult of Mac shares the tale of Frederik Riedel, who had a friend that dropped an iPhone into a canal (ugh!) but then used a magnet on a fishing rod to retrieve it thanks to the MagSafe connection (yeah!).
And finally, here’s a video from Apple promoting the durability of the iPhone 12, including how it can stand up to spills. I don’t encourage you to do anything in this video, but if something like this happens anyway, hopefully an iPhone 12 will be okay.
Wikipedia tells me that SongPop has released a series of music trivia games since 2012. However, I did not learn about this franchise until the newest version of the app, SongPop Party, was recently released as a part of Apple Arcade. If you already pay for Apple Arcade, or if you already pay for an Apple One subscription which includes Apple Arcade, then you can now play this game at no extra charge. I rarely review games on iPhone J.D., but I consider this one to be incredibly fun for anyone who enjoys music — and, hopefully, that includes you. I mentioned this game last Friday at the end of Episode 3 of the In the News podcast, and since then I’ve had a chance to play it more, including playing games with other members of my family. I’m now a big fan of this game, and I encourage you to check it out.
The gameplay is simple. It’s a version of name that tune. The game plays about 10 seconds of a song and gives you four buttons. The buttons either show four different artists or four different song titles. You press the button that corresponds to the artist or song title of the song being played.
You compete against others to see who can press the correct button as quickly as possible. The faster that you press the correct button, the more points that you get.
After ten rounds, the person with the most points wins.
As you win games and earn other achievements, you receive keys. You can use the keys to unlock additional characters.
Better yet, you can use keys to unlock different playlists. Here is how the playlists feature works. When you start a game, you select a music category. The categories include decades (1960s to 2020s), genres (pop, rock, R&B, hip hop, country, dance), and special categories (top hits, family, mixtape, love, soundtrack). Whatever category you pick, you will play against other people within that category.
Within each category, there are multiple playlists. There is always one standard playlist that anyone can select, plus you can use your keys to unlock additional playlists. For example, for the category of the 1980s, the playlists are Essential 80’s, 80’s Breakup Songs, Cheesy 80’s Fun, 80’s Mixtape Rewind, 80’s Hair Bands, New Wave, 80’s Movie Songs, 80’s Night Out, 80’s Music Expert, 80’s Exercise, and then “best of” lists for each year from 1980 to 1989.
When you play in Arena mode, your iPad or iPhone connects you randomly with three other people. Each of you selects a playlist within the same category, and one of the four is randomly selected. For example, I may pick the 1980s as a category because I grew up with the music in that decade and know it pretty well, but if the playlist chosen is Hair Bands, I often confuse the different heavy metal artists and I find it harder to win. But pick 1987 when I graduated high school, and I’m pretty good.
I celebrated Memorial Day by taking a beach vacation with my family, and during some downtime one night, we played this game in Party mode. That mode works the same way as Arena except that one player is the host and the host can invite other players. Thus, I invited my wife, my son, and my daughter. Playing against your friends and family in the same room can be much more fun than Arena mode because you are all cheering or booing for each other. (I recommend that different players use headphones because the music doesn’t sync 100% for each device so you get an echo effect.) In my family, there was a fairly direct relationship between how new the song and who won. I think I won a single round in the 2010s, but otherwise, my kids dominated for the last two decades. But select the 1980s or 1990s, or even 1960s, and my wife or I would always win. As much as I enjoyed Party mode, I also like Arena mode because I am more likely to compete against people with similar music knowledge.
You can also play the game on an Apple TV. Instead of tapping on a button, you swipe in the direction of a button to select it. And you can play on a Mac, where the arrow keys on the keyboard correspond to the four buttons.
If you don’t subscribe to Apple Arcade, you can instead download the app SongPop 3. That game is from the same developer and features the same name that tune premise, but a different interface. Unfortunately, that game frequently urges you to pay $10 a month for a premium subscription. Trying that version reminded me that one of the things that I like about Apple Arcade is that the games never pressure you into paying for in-app features or subscriptions and don’t include any advertisements. I always feel better about my kids playing Apple Arcade games because I know that the games won’t include any of that nonsense.
SongPop Party is a fun game that I recommend. With both Arena and Party mode, you can play a quick game yourself or compete against friends and family. And I was amazed how many times the game would remind me of a song that I like but haven’t listened to in a long while. I even created a new playlist in Apple Music to keep track of many of the songs I hear in this game that I like, and it is turning into a pretty good playlist.
Click here to get SongPop Party (free with Apple Arcade):
