June starts in just a few days, and in celebration of Pride month, Apple has released two new Pride Edition bands for the Apple Watch in support of the LGBTQ+ community. Rikka Altland of 9to5Mac shows what the new bands look like. But even if you don’t buy a new band, all Apple Watch users can now use the new Pride Threads watch face. It’s a really interesting design in which the numbers float around when the face is active. Which reminds me, I wish that Apple would substantially increase the number of watch faces available for the Apple Watch, and a good way to do this would be to allow third parties to create and sell watch faces. This is not a new request—people have been asking for this since the first Apple Watch came out in 2015—but a dramatically new watch face like Pride Threads that is so different from all of the others is evidence that clever designers could come up with countless interesting watch faces. Apple is a big supporter of diversity, and that is one of the best parts of the company under CEO Tim Cook. Diversity for watch faces is obviously less important than diversity for people, but it still ought to be something that Apple embraces. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- In an article for ABA Journal, New York attorney Nicole Black discusses some of the best apps that you can use for trial presentation from an iPad, such as TrialPad.
- Claire Stern of Elle magazine interviews Jane Horvath, a lawyer who is the head of Apple’s Privacy, Policy, and Regulatory team.
- California attorney David Sparks notes that in 2011, Steve Jobs announced that iPhones would get 5GB of iCloud storage for free. And now, eleven years later, Apple still only provides 5GB, even though iPhone storage needs have gone up substantially during that time. Sooner or later, it seems that Apple needs to change this, but when?
- Speaking of Sparks, Episode 640 of the Mac Power Users podcast recommends dozens of useful iPhone apps. It’s a great episode.
- Time magazine’s cover story for the issue dated June 6/June 13 is the 100 most influential people of 2022. Apple CEO Tim Cook made the list, and Time features a short video interview with Cook and two paragraphs about Cook written by Laurene Powell Jobs. Of course, I’m going to mention Cook on a website like this, but frankly the entire list of full of incredible people, and the accompanying paragraphs are all written by other incredible people who know the honorees. Of course, “influential” isn’t synonymous with “good,” so while Zelensky made the list, so did Putin. But most of the folks who made the list are inspirational, and I look forward to reading about all of them.
- Apple will introduce some of the new features coming in iPadOS 16 in less than two weeks. Michael Simon of Macworld shares his predictions for what might be included.
- There are rumors that Apple might announced a new HomePod at some point soon. In an article for Macworld, Jason Snell speculates on what a new HomePod might include.
- Brian X. Chen of the New York Times discusses using Apple’s self-repair program to replace his iPhone’s battery in an article that is interesting but, in my opinion, unfair. He complains that it is more expensive to use this program than to have a battery replaced by a professional at an Apple Store, but of course that is true given the economy of scale that comes from replacing lots of batteries by a trained professional, and Chen doesn’t even mention that Apple is clearly subsidizing the cost of this program. He complains that the process is complicated, but of course that is true when you are taking apart something complicated in a small package. He complains that the equipment Apple rents to you is bulky and heavy, but it is the exact same equipment that Apple uses in its stores; if Apple provided something less than what it itself uses, people would be complaining about that. And he complains that he broke his iPhone screen as he tried to replace the battery, but then he admits a few paragraph later that his screen broke because he skipped a step in the instructions. His article is still a good read because it demonstrates how complicated this process is, but I find his gripes unwarranted.
- After I wrote the prior paragraph, I saw that John Gruber of Daring Fireball has a similar take on article with a similar slant published on The Verge.
- Erin Jones of VERIFY explains that the personal information stored in most period-tracking apps is not protected by HIPAA (because the app developers typically do not constitute “covered entities” or “business associates” under the statute), notwithstanding what some of these apps assert. Thus, these apps could share your personal data with third parties. As the article notes, this is something to keep in mind should Roe v. Wade be overturned.
- Abner Li of 9to5Google reports that the Street View function in the Google Maps app on the iPhone now has the ability to show you historical pictures of a location in addition to the most recent image. The new feature hasn’t yet shown up in the app on my iPhone, but perhaps Google is just rolling it out slowly.
- Joe Otterson of Variety reports that J.J. Abrams is executive producing a live-action “Speed Racer” series for Apple TV+. There was a heck of a lot less to watch when I was a kid than there is today, but I used to enjoy watching that one. I’ll be curious to see what they do with this series. Go, Speed Racer, Go!
- An article by KATU in Portland explains that a thief stole a number of items over the course of a day last week, but his downfall was stealing a knapsack because it had an AirTag in it, allowing the police to track and apprehend the thief.
- Ross Feinstein of The Points Guy reports that his airline lost his luggage containing ski gear, but the luggage had an AirTag on it so he was able to help the airline to locate his luggage. It turns out that the ski bag was still near the plane, presumably because it was a larger item. With this information, the airline quickly had someone retrieve and bring him his ski bag.
- Katie Francis of WDW News Today reports that a woman was fidgeting with her Apple Watch while on a ride at EPCOT (The Seas with Nemo & Friends) when the watch fell off our wrist and onto the pathway below. Her husband jumped off of the slow-moving ride and tried to retrieve it, but was told by an employee that the watch would be returned to their hotel room at The Contemporary Resort. The Apple Watch was not returned, and instead, the victim says that a thief used Apple Pay on the watch to make $40,000 in purchases. This does seem possible if the thief guessed her passcode, which I can imagine that happening if it is something simple like 1-2-3-4. If you lose your Apple Watch, consider alerting your credit card companies.
- And finally, David Pogue of CBS Sunday Morning created a video discussing how an Apple Watch can continually monitor your health and act as an early warning device. He interviews Dr. Sumbul Desai of Apple and others to discuss what the Apple Watch can do today and what it may be able to do in the future. If you currently wear an Apple Watch or you are thinking about getting one, this one is worth watching.