This time last week, the lead story concerned AirTags. I am starting with the AirTag again this week because of an excellent article by Kashmir Hill of the New York Times called I Used Apple AirTags, Tiles and a GPS Tracker to Watch My Husband’s Every Move. (Gift link, so even non-subscribers can read it.) The article does a great job of explaining the pros and cons of using different devices to track a person and demonstrates that the AirTag is far less concerning than an inexpensive GPS tracker like the LandAirSea. As the author’s husband explains: “For all the bad press the AirTags have gotten, and as flaky as the detection mechanisms were, at least I was consistently getting notifications they were following me. … The privacy dangers of the other trackers were way worse.” There are lots of other interesting details in that article, so whether you own a tracking device or simply want to learn more about them in case someone else tries to track you, I recommend that you read it. And now, the other recent news of note:
- Illinois attorney John Voorhees discusses a number of solutions that he uses to manage email in this long post. The part that jumped out at me is a discussion of the Triage 2 app (near the end of the article). Triage 2 doesn’t replace a normal email app, but instead, it gives you a quick way to triage your messages: decide what to toss and what to keep. Each new message is displayed as a card. Swipe one way to archive or delete, swipe the other way to keep (either marked read or unread, which you configure in the settings). That way, when you use the email app to go to your real mailbox, all of the junk is gone and you can focus on the messages that matter to you. I just tried it with my Gmail account, and it seemed to work quite well.
- California attorney David Sparks discusses options for keeping an AirTag in your wallet, such as the Wallet Holder for Apple AirTag by Elevation Labs ($10 on Amazon).
- In an article for Macworld, Jason Snell argues that Apple should allow iPhone owners to install apps from a source other than Apple’s App Store, much like one can do so on a Mac. I’m not as enthusiastic about this idea as Jason is. I’m concerned about the risks associated with an app that can bypass Apple’s review and can thus invade your privacy and security in lots of different ways, which is especially dangerous for a device that is always with you. Nevertheless, Jason does raise some interesting points.
- Oliver Haslam of iMore reports that when Apple releases iOS 15.4, Apple’s Podcasts app will add filtering features. Thus, you can select a podcast, and then filter episodes by played, unplayed, downloaded, or saved.
- If you use Shortcuts automations, they will be much better in iOS 15.4 because, as Chaim Gartenberg of The Verge explains, you will be able to turn off the notifications that currently pop up every time you run them.
- If you want to use your iPhone with CarPlay in your car but do so wirelessly (and don’t have one of the few car models that supports the feature), you can use a dongle to achieve the same thing. Anthony of CarPlay Life has a good article and video review of the Ottocast U2 ($89 on Amazon). One disadvantage of this approach is that your iPhone isn’t charging while you are using the CarPlay, which I find useful. But for some folks, I’m sure that a wireless solution is desirable.
- Opensignal, an organization that studies mobile networks, reports that 5G speeds are increasing quite a bit around the world. For example: “In South Korea average download speeds were 129.7 Mbps at the end of 2021, up from 52.4 Mbps at the start of 2019, before 5G. Similarly, our users’ speeds more than doubled in Germany rising from 22.6 to 48.7 Mbps, in the Philippines (from 7 to 15.1 Mbps), Saudi Arabia (13.6 to 31.1 Mbps), and in Thailand (5.7 to 17.4 Mbps) — all of which are 5G markets.”
- Nick Guy of Wirecutter provides tips on keeping your iPhone clean.
- Jennifer Pattison Tuohy of The Verge wrote a comprehensive review of the Belkin Wemo Video Doorbell, which works with Apple’s HomeKit and seems to have a lot of good features. ($250 on Amazon.)
- Bruce Crumley of 9to5Mac reports on an Australian health insurance company, AIA Health, that provided an Apple Watch Series 7 to its customers and told them that if they exercised 4 or 5 times a week, the Apple Watch would be free. The result was that activity rates jumped 35%. This probably says more about human psychology than it does about the Apple Watch, but it is interesting nonetheless.
- One of the commercials during the Super Bowl that made me smile was the Cutwater Spirits commercial called “Here’s to the Lazy Ones.” It’s funny because it is a pretty good parody of Apple’s Here’s to the Crazy Ones commercial from 1997. How fascinating that a company can run a commercial in 2022 that is a parody of another commercial from 25 years earlier and enough folks will remember the original to justify spending the big bucks necessary for a Super Bowl commercial. That tells you something about the success of Apple’s Think Different campaign.
- And finally, here is a video from Apple that shows how two people in two locations can use their Apple TVs and SharePlay to watch a TV show or movie at the exact same time. You start by initiating a FaceTime call with one or more other people, and then you just press a few buttons. I haven’t tried this feature myself, but this video makes it look like it is really easy to do.