There are lots of new Apple products to be excited about this week, but before I discuss those, I wanted to say thanks to Sir Clive Sinclair, who died yesterday. In the 1970s and 1980s, this British entrepreneur invented lots of products in the earliest days of the computer age, including the ZX computers in the 1980s: the ZX80, then the ZX81, then the ZX Spectrum. As Haroon Siddlique of The Guardian wrote in this tribute, "[m]any modern-day titans of the games industry got their start on one of his ZX models." The Sinclair ZX81 was my first computer. The computer itself had only a membrane keyboard and 1K of RAM, but that made it inexpensive and accessible to anyone, including kids like me. I added an external keyboard, a 64K expansion pack, a thermal printer, a voice synthesizer, and a tape cassette drive. I wrote lots of programs in the BASIC computer language, and I devoured issues of SYNC magazine to learn everything that I could do with Sinclair's creation. I eventually moved on to the Commodore 64 and then the Mac, but it was the Sinclair ZX81 that sparked my original interest in technology. So I guess you could say that Sir Clive Sinclair's creativity played an indirect role in me eventually launching this website in 2008 and the In the News podcast with Brett Burney a few months ago. May he rest in peace. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- Apple started taking pre-orders for the new iPads a few days ago, and Apple announced this week that pre-orders for the iPhone 13 start at 5am this morning, with delivery a week from today. (I'll be getting an iPhone 13 Pro, 256GB.) Apple also announced a new Apple Watch Series 7 this week, but Apple has not yet announced when that device goes on sale or when it will be available. (Next week, I'll share some additional thoughts on the newest Apple Watch.)
- Illinois attorney John Voorhees of MacStories wrote excellent overviews of two sets of the new Apple products announced this week. Here are his articles on the iPhone 13 and the new iPad and iPad mini,
- California attorney David Sparks recommends an app called Breathable for checking air quality.
- Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac discusses all of the new announcements from Apple this week and then concludes that the coolest new product is the iPad mini. He makes a good argument.
- Jason Snell of Six Colors provides some interesting overall thoughts on the Apple product announcements.
- One change coming to the new iPhone is a smaller notch in the iPhone 13. Michael Simon of Macworld prepared a diagram to illustrate the difference.
- Alex Guyot of MacStories discusses the new Apple Watch Series 7.
- José Adorno of 9to5Mac explains the new features coming to the HomePod and HomePod mini when Apple provides an update next week.
- Adorno also notes some of the smaller tidbits about the iPhone 13 that you might have missed.
- Adorno also discusses another new product announced by Apple this week: a new MagSafe wallet that attaches to the back of your iPhone. The new feature announced this week is that after your wallet is disconnected from your iPhone, your iPhone can tell you that location, which may make it easier to retrace your steps and find a lost wallet based on where it was when it came disconnected from the iPhone.
- Apple announced new features coming to its Fitness+ service. As Tim Hardwick of MacRumors explains, this includes new workout types (like pilates) and guided meditations.
- Mitchell Clark of The Verge notes that another new feature coming to Fitness+ is the ability to connect remotely to up to 32 people so that you all do a workout together at the same time and see each others' faces on the side of the screen. I'm sure that some folks will find this feature inspiring. However, I think that I prefer doing my workouts on my own so that nobody else needs to watch me sweat.
- Although Apple announced a new Apple Watch this week, it will continue to work with all of the same bands that we have been using since the very first Apple Watch. That's good news. Nick Guy of The Wirecutter identifies a few of his favorite third-party Apple Watch bands.
- Some changes may be coming to the App Store after the district court decision in the Apple v. Epic lawsuit as well as other actions in Japan and South Korea. App developer Marco Arment provides his thoughts on what will likely change.
- Attorney John Voorhees of MacStories provides this analysis of the 185-page decision in the Apple v. Epic trial.
- Roman Loyola of Macworld notes that if you mount an iPhone to the front of a motorcycle, Apple is now recommending that you not do that.
- Eric Slivka of MacRumors discusses the CarPlay system in the Acura MDX which takes an approach that is new to me: you cannot touch the screen. Instead, the car has a touchpad near the gear shift. It is an interesting approach that supposedly keeps the screen closer to the driver's line of sight and limits the time that the driver spends not looking at the road.
- Lesley Goldberg of The Hollywood Reporter says that the folks behind Ted Lasso on AppleTV+ are negotiating sizable pay increases given the popularity of the show. My hope is that they find a way to make more than three seasons even though the creators of the show had previously announced that limitation.
- Comedic actors Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell are currently filming a Christmas musical coming to Apple TV+ in December called Spirited. How do they sound when singing together? Here's one clue.
- The Chattanooga Times Free Press announced that it is ending its paper publication, telling folks to read the newspaper on an iPad instead. The twist here is that the newspaper is giving out thousands of iPads to subscribers so that they have a way to read the new digital newspaper.
- Here is a new type of HomeKit product. Bradley Chambers of 9to5Mac discusses the Yale Smart Cabinet lock, which keeps a cabinet locked shot unless you use your iPhone to unlock it.
- In an almost complete break from all of this week's Apple news, California attorney David Sparks writes about the experience of using Windows 365, a virtual form of Windows that you can access from almost anywhere. He accessed it from an M1 Mac mini and an iPad.
- And finally, I really enjoyed this video from Justine "iJustine" Ezarik in which she interviews Apple CEO Tim Cook to discuss the announcements this week:
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