When I think of the intersection of the iPhone and the law, I usually think about how lawyers can use an iPhone and related products like the iPad and Apple Watch in a legal profession. But there are also legal implications of the data stored on an iPhone and other devices that must be considered by all iPhone users, regardless of whether they are lawyers.
Sometimes, the data comes from a victim of a crime. For example, Christine Hauswer of the New York Times reported in 2018 that a man was arrested for killing his stepdaughter because while he claimed that he had an innocent visit with her that just so happened to occur shortly before she was killed, the victim was wearing a FitBit that recorded a spike in her heart rate when he was there, then a slowing and eventually stopped heart rate after he left the house. Carol Robinson of the Birmingham News reported in 2021 that a man was convicted of killing his wife in part based on data from the Health app on her iPhone, which provided evidence of where she was and when she moved.
Sometimes, the data comes from the iPhone or other device used by the person accused of breaking the law. For example, Samantha Cole of Motherboard reported in 2018 about a man in Germany who was arrested for raping and murdering a student in part based on data in the Health app on his iPhone, which showed that he climbed stairs at the time that the police knew that the victim’s body was brought down to a river embankment. That defendant refused to give the police access to his iPhone, but they were able to use hacking software to bypass his passcode.
I’m not going to focus on the legal merits of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which of course overruled Roe v. Wade and numerous other precedents and sets the stage for a large number of other decisions that will take away even more privacy rights. Instead, I want to point out an important iPhone angle that I’ve seen mentioned in numerous news stories, such as this one by Cordilia James and Shara Tibken of the Wall Street Journal and this one by Geoffrey A. Fowler and Tatum Hunter of the Washington Post. For women who use an iPhone app to track their period, if they live in a state that has criminalized abortion, the data in that app could be used as evidence against them. Prof. Danielle Citron of the University of Virginia School of Law was quoted in a CNN article by Jennifer Korn and Clare Duffy as saying: “Let’s say you got your period, stopped your period and then got your period again in a short time … It’s [potential] evidence of your own criminality, or your doctor’s criminality.”
As those articles note, some of these apps store the data online, so the police or others looking for evidence would not even need to access the woman’s iPhone, just the online data being stored by the developer of the app. In response to this, numerous apps are now promising to anonymize the data to reduce this risk.
Women don’t need to use a third-party app to monitor their cycle. Apple’s built-in Health app can be used, and as John Gruber of Daring Fireball noted recently, if you are using two-factor authentication on your iCloud account, the data is mathematically secure via end-to-end encryption. But there is always some risk that the police could bypass the security on an iPhone just like those German police officers did in 2018, although today’s iPhone is far more secure than it was a few years ago. Police might also try to force a woman to place her finger on an iPhone or use her face to unlock her iPhone against her will. In another recent post, Gruber reminds all of us that you prevent that from happening by using the side buttons to lock your iPhone.
And of course, it is not just police who might try to access this type of data. Texas, for example, has a law with a $10,000 bounty to encourage private citizens to sue any women who they believe may have had an abortion. I’m sure that folks taking advantage of a law like that would see no problem invading a woman’s privacy by seeking access to confidential records on her iPhone.
I wish I could conclude this post by pointing to some easy answer for women trying to protect their digital privacy, but I don’t have one. Using Apple’s own Health app seems more secure than third-party alternatives, but it is not without risk.
This week’s episode of the In the News podcast starts with a discussion of a new feature in upcoming iOS 16: the ability to stop some websites from forcing you to complete an annoying CAPTCHA. We then discuss updates to Apple’s iWork apps (Keynote, Pages, and Numbers), why you should swim with an Apple Watch, power adapters, great shows to watch on Apple TV+, and a creepy feature that might come to Amazon’s Alexa.
In our In the Know segment, Brett and I both share Apple Watch tips. Brett has a tip for listening to music on an Apple Watch, and I have a tip for listening to other beeps and boops that come from an Apple Watch.
Don’t you hate it when a website forces you to complete a CAPTCHA to prove that you are not a robot? I especially despise the ones that make you click the squares that contain a [something], because there is invariably some ambiguity over whether that [something] is or is not in some of the boxes. Plus, many folks say that these systems don’t actually prove anything … except that the Internet can annoy you. Thus, I was thrilled to read a report by Joe Rossignol of MacRumors that iOS 16 will include a way to bypass CAPTCHAs and have your iPhone provide the confirmation that you are a real person. It will only work on supported websites, but any reduction in that nonsense sounds like great news to me. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Juli Clover of MacRumors describes updates to the iOS and Mac versions of Apple’s iWork apps: Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Keynote gets a new dynamic themes feature (which slowly animates the slide background and works across transitions), Numbers gets improved performance, and Pages adds mail merge and the ability to export as text files, and more.
Dan Moren of Six Colors notes that mail merge used to be a feature in Pages on the Mac nine years ago, but Apple removed the feature when it brought parity to iPad/iPhone/Mac iWork apps. It’s a little surprising that it took this long for this feature to return. Nevertheless, overall, I’m happy with the capabilities of the iWork apps—especially Keynote.
WatchTube is a new app for the Apple Watch (download it using the App Store on the Apple Watch) that lets you watch YouTube videos on an Apple Watch. Filipe Espósito discusses the new app on 9to5Mac. In my tests, I got a lot of error messages on a lot of videos. But for the YouTube videos for which it works, it is pretty amazing, and unlike anything that I’ve previously seen on the Apple Watch. Note that to hear the audio portion of a video, you need to either wear Bluetooth headphones that are paired to your Apple Watch, or you need to make sure that you turn off the mute mode on the Apple Watch before you start the WatchTube app.
Zac Hall of 9to5Mac shares the story of a woman who was swimming in the Colorado River (with 56° water) when her foot got caught in rocks and she was trapped. Fortunately, she was wearing her Apple Watch, so she was able to call 911 and get help just as she was nearing exhaustion and showing signs of hypothermia.
I’m loving this season of For All Mankind on Apple TV+. In last week’s episode, the show was set in the year 1992, but because technology is more advanced in the alternative universe of this show than in our real life, you see some things in this version of 1992 that were definitely not around in the 1992 that I lived through. I won’t put any spoilers here, but if you want to see an Apple-related example of what I’m talking about, look at this tweet from Ben Nedivi, the co-creator and showrunner of For All Mankind.
Apple recently released a 35W power adapter with two USB-C ports on it–two of them, actually. Arin Waichulis of 9to5Mac reviews the new $59 product.
Taiwan-based analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reports on Twitter that AirTag shipments have grown since the initial release, which he predicts could lead Apple to develop a second generation. This tweet has me thinking about what new features Apple might add in a second generation AirTag.
In what sounds like an episode of the TV show Black Mirror, A. Khalid of Engadget reports that Amazon showed off a new technology that lets a voice assistant mimic the voice of a real person, so instead of talking to Alexa, you can talk to your deceased grandmother. Hey Siri: please don’t ever do that.
And finally, William Gallagher of AppleInsider shares the story of an Australian man, Shane Miller, who lost luggage containing $4,500 of cycling equipment on a Singapore Airlines flight, but an AirTag on the luggage helped him to track down his luggage. It turns out that Shane Miller has a popular YouTube channel, so he recorded his recovery of the bag. Although I didn’t watch the entire 30-minute video, it was interesting to watch the middle part where he used the FindMy app on his iPhone to get closer and closer to his bag until he finally located it in a back office of the airport, where you can see lots and lots of other lost luggage that may not ever be reunited with owners.
After last week’s big episode of the In the News podcast, in which Brett Burney and I discussed the highlights of Apple’s WWDC conference, this week Brett and I discuss some of the other Apple announcements from last week. This includes the new features that we will see in a few months in watchOS 9 and tvOS 16, as well as Apple’s new Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) program. We also report on the new Stage Manager feature for the iPad, HomeKit equipment that you can use as a renter, and the Passskey system that Apple will use to replace passwords.
In our In the Know segment, Brett shares a fantastic YouTube video featuring music from the the Floppotron 3.0, and I discuss pinning conversations in the Messages app.
One of Apple’s many announcements last week was a new Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) service. When iOS 16 comes out this Fall, you will be able to pay for something using Apple Pay and break the cost of your purchase into four equal payments over six weeks. Peter Butler of CNet has some details on how it works. You can use Apple’s BNPL at all stores that work with Apple Pay. At first, I thought that Apple might be doing this to charge high interest rates for people who miss payments (the way that other BNPL services work), but Apple won’t charge fees or interest. If you don’t pay or pay late, Apple will just limit your ability to use the service in the future. What’s in it for Apple? First, it gets people to use Apple Pay even more, and encourages folks to make purchases that they might otherwise not make because they can pay off the purchase over a few paychecks. Second, as pointed out by John Gruber of Daring Fireball, Apple wants to control the BNPL experience because when third parties offer the feature, they share a ton of personal data with all sorts of partners. By handling the service itself, Apple provides a feature that some people want while maintaining the privacy that people expect with Apple Pay. It’s fascinating to see Apple expanding its financial offerings. Making payments on an iPhone, Apple Watch, etc., certainly makes a lot of sense nowadays, but I doubt I would have predicted this 10 years ago. And now, the news of note from the past week:
California attorney David Sparks has been trying out Stage Manager in the beta software. He says that it can be nice on a Mac, but he says that it is a substantial improvement on the iPad.
Matthew Panzaarino of TechCrunch interviewed Apple’s Craig Federighi to discuss Stage Manager on the iPad. Federighi explains why you need one of the newest iPads with an M1 processor to use the feature so that the iPad is sufficiently responsive when you switch between screens.
Federico Viticci of MacStories points out on Twitter that the Messages app in iOS 16 can convert temperatures, currencies, time zones, and more. For example, if someone sends you their temperature in Celsius but you know Fahrenheit, you can hold your finger down on the number and convert it to a number that makes more sense to you.
What do you do if you want to take advantage of HomeKit home automation but you are a renter so you are limited in what you can install? Bradley Chambers of 9to5Mac recommends HomeKit products for renters that are easy to install and remove.
One of my favorite shows, and certainly one of my favorite Apple TV+ shows, is For All Mankind. Season 3 just started. If you are curious about what the buzz is all about, I see from the show’s account on Twitter that everyone can now watch Season 1 for free for a limited time, even if you don’t subscribe to the service. You should check it out. The first season was great, the second season was even better, and critics that have seen most of Season 3 have given it excellent reviews.
Apple TV+ is moving into sports. The service already offers Major League Baseball, and as Jason Snell of Six Colors reports, Apple TV+ now has a 10-year deal with Major League Soccer. Note that you will need to pay extra for the MLS streaming service (although some games will be free for non-subscribers), but there will be no local blackouts.
WhatsApp is a popular secure texting service in the U.S., but it is even more popular outside of the U.S., with around 2 billion users worldwide. Until now, if you used WhatsApp on an Android device, there was no real way to switch to an iPhone without losing your text history. Jason Snell of Six Colors reported that WhatsApp now works with Apple’s Move to iOS system, a way for Android users to migrate their data to an iPhone. Given how important WhatsApp is to many people, this new feature could have an impact on the number of new iPhone users.
Jeff Dengate of Runner’s World discusses the improvements coming in watchOS 9 for runners. He says that the Apple Watch is best if you are running for five hours or less because of its battery life—for longer runs, he prefers a device like a Garmin—but that amount of time fits with your runs, he is a big fan of using the Apple Watch.
Currently, you turn off water lock or sleep mode on an Apple Watch by spinning the Digital Crown. José Adorno of 9to5Mac explains that this will change in watchOS 9 to a long-press on the Digital Crown.
Although it wasn’t mentioned during Apple’s keynote address last week, Apple has also previewed the new features coming to tvOS 16. Joe Rossignol of MacRumors reports on what is coming. Note that initial reports were that Apple was adding HDR10+, a feature used by some TVs (such as I believe some Samsung models) that do not have support for Dolby Vision, but Joe updated the post to note that this is now uncertain. If you are in the market for a new TV and you want to get the most from Apple TV hardware, I recommend that you look for support for Dolby Vision (and Dolby Atmos for your sound system).
Speaking of an Apple TV, you can currently get the top-of-the-line Apple TV 4K for $129.99 on Amazon, which is about $50 off the regular price and an all-time low on Amazon. That unit works great even if you don’t yet have a 4K TV; I used it for many months with a 1080p TV before I upgraded to an LG OLED C1, which I still love and highly recommend to anyone looking to get an amazing TV. (You can now get the 77″ model for $300 less than what I paid seven months ago.)
Jovana Naumovski of Gadget Hacks explains that you can have the Mail app tell you when you are sending an email to a domain that isn’t one of your favorites, which may help prevent sending an email to the wrong person. Set up the approved domains in Settings -> Mail -> Mark Addresses, and the domains that you approve will be in blue and others will be in red. I didn’t know you could do that.
Brent Dirks of AppAdvice notes that the CARROT Weather app was updated with a new card layout style and with the ability to use two windows to better track storms.
And finally, in a new video on YouTube, Rene Ritchie does a nice job of explaining what Apple (and others) are doing to try to get rid of passwords in the future using FIDO. Apple is calling this technology Passkey. I have high hopes for this new technology, and I think that it will vastly increase security and make us all much safer from hackers.
Apple recently provided a preview of new features that are coming in watchOS 9, which I presume will be released this Fall (perhaps along with new models of the Apple Watch). The update will work on the Apple Watch Series 4 (released in 2018) and newer models. Here are the new features that I am most interested in using in a few months.
Notifications
The Apple Watch has always been an incredibly nice way to receive notifications from your iPhone. In watchOS 9, Apple says that “notifications have been redesigned to be less interruptive while still being impactful, arriving with new slimline banners when Apple Watch is being actively used.” What this means is that when your wrist is down, you receive a full-screen notification, but when you are actively using your Apple Watch, the notification is reduced to an unobtrusive banner.
Workout app updates
The Apple Watch is a particularly useful device for improving and monitoring your health. Thus, the built-in Workout app is a favorite for many Apple Watch users.
In the current watchOS 8, when you are working out, the Workout app shows one screen with workout statistics. If you spin the Digital Crown, it simply changes what is highlighted. In watchOS 9, spinning the crown will rotate between different workout views so that you can see different types of metrics. For example, one new view shows you not only your heart rate but also a clear indication of what heart rate zone you are in to help you to monitor the intensity of your workout. Another view can be used to help you track your elevation during a workout.
watchOS 9 also gives you the ability to create a Custom Workout with work and rest intervals.
If you are a triathlete, a new Multisport workout type will automatically switch between swimming, biking, and running workouts. I will never ever ever be using that feature, but kudos to you if you will be doing so.
New statistics for running include Running Power, Stride Length, Ground Contact Time, and Vertical Oscillation. New features for swimmers include kickboard detection and a SWOLF score (a swimming metric that helps you to measure swimming efficiency).
When you are finished with your workout, the iPhone app will provide an enhanced summary of your workout with new statistics.
Fitness+ updates
If you subscribe to Apple Fitness+, the display at the top left of your TV / iPad / iPhone will provide new information, including on-screen guidance on how intense you should be working out during different segments of the routine.
AFib History
For a while now, the Apple Watch has had sensors that can help to detect and monitor health conditions. However, Apple has limited what it said about these sensors because they lacked FDA approval.
That starts to change in watchOS 9. People diagnosed with atrial fibrillation (AFib) will be able to turn on an FDA-cleared AFib History feature to provide an estimate of how frequently the person’s heart shows signs of AFib. The Apple Watch will be a pioneer in this area because there are currently no easy ways to track the frequency of AFib over an extended period of time, which is especially important for folks modifying their lifestyle factors to try to decrease the amount of time spent in AFib.
I’m sure that this feature will be immediately useful for many people. I’m also interested in this feature as Apple’s first real step towards the Apple Watch becoming an approved health device.
Medications
I mentioned in my iOS 16 preview that an update to the Health app lets you manage, track, and learn more about the medications that you take. Wearing an Apple Watch makes this feature even better because your watch is likely on your wrist, even if your iPhone is not nearby, to provide medication reminders based on the schedule that you create.
Dock improvements
In watchOS 9, you can still access the Dock by pressing the button on the right side of the watch. But now, apps that are running in the background are listed near the top, making it easier to quickly return to them.
New faces
Every year, I cross my fingers to hope that Apple adds support for third-party watch faces. That didn’t come this year, but we did get four new faces:
Lunar displays in a circle a lunar calendar, with phases of the moon, next to a traditional Gregorian calendar. It can display the time in analog or digital, and has space for four complications in the four corners.
Metropolitan is a classic watch face. The marquee feature is that you can change the font used for the numerals to make them thin and long, short and fat, or something in-between.
Playtime is a whimsical watch face featuring animated numbers that dance around. There are no complications, but this is one of the interactive watch faces; tap a number, and it moves around in response.
Astronomy is not a new face, but Apple did significantly remaster the images, making everything look better.
Apple also updated some of the other existing watch faces. For example, the Portraits watch face can now add a 3D-type effect not just for people but also for cats, dogs, and landscapes.
On-screen keyboard
If you have an Apple Watch Series 7, which has a larger display, you can use an on-screen QWERTY keyboard to type messages. I don’t use it often, but when I do, it always seems to work better than I would expect given the small key size. In watchOS 9, this on-screen keyboard also works for French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese (Brazil), and Spanish (Mexico, Spain, Latin America).
And the rest…
Those are the highlights, but there are other new features that I can see being useful. For example, there is as improved ability to edit the details of Reminders, and an updated Calendar app that lets you create a new event on the watch. Also, sleep tracking is improved to provide more insights into your sleep patterns.
Conclusion
watchOS 9 looks to be a nice, incremental update to the Apple Watch. Many of the best features are related to health, and I think that is the right thing for Apple to be thinking about as it improves the Apple Watch.
The latest episode of the In the News podcast is available, and it is all about WWDC. In fact, there was so much announced by Apple this week that we ran out of time before we could get to all of it, so we’ll have to save some items, like the Apple Watch announcements, until next week. In this episode, Brett and I discuss the interesting way in which Apple handled the WWDC keynote address on its campus, the new hardware announcements, and what the next version of the Mac operating system means for iPad and iPhone users. Next, we talk about the key new features coming in iOS 16 and iPadOS 16. We also address Apple’s announcement on Passkeys—part of a future in which we move away from passwords thanks to the FIDO Alliance, which, as everyone knows (ahem), stands for “Fast IDentity Online.” We also discuss interesting direction that CarPlay is going.
In our In the Know segment, Brett and I provide our big picture perspectives on what we take from all of the Apple announcements this week.
Monitoring the news from Apple this week has been a little like drinking water from a fire hose. The keynote presentation on Monday was full of announcements. Then, during presentations to developers throughout the week, Apple released more details. Additionally, some folks are now running the earliest beta versions of iOS 16 and iPadOS 16, so we are now starting to see some of the initial first-hand reports on how the new features work. Everything is subject to change between now and this Fall so if you don’t like the way that something looks or works right now, it may well improve before it ships. But my sense is that, in the future, we will look back at iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 as among the more significant updates in the history of those operating systems. In today’s post, I’ve collected some of the reports that jumped out at me the most and included them along with the other news of note from the past week:
Let’s start with two law-related items unrelated to WWDC. First, David Price of Macworld explains that the EU has approved a ruling that all new smartphones, including the iPhone, will have to support a USB-C connection starting in 2024. I’m a fan of USB-C, and there are rumors that Apple was going to do this anyway. But I’m not a fan of a governmental body telling a tech company which standard it is required to use. What if there is a connector that is even better than USB-C, but no manufacturer can develop it because they know that they cannot sell phones using that better connector in the EU? Would USB-C have even been invented if there was a prior EU ruling that everyone had to use the original version of USB?
Second, Molly Quell of Courthouse News Service reports that Apple lost to Swatch in a court battle in the European General Court in Luxembourg over the Think Different slogan. The court agreed with Swatch that Apple had not used the slogan in a number of years, and thus Swatch could use the slogan Tick Different for its watches without violating Apple’s intellectual property.
One of the most interesting upcoming new features that Apple showed off this week was changes to CarPlay to accommodate new cars with bigger and more screens. Illinois attorney John Voorhees of MacStories describes the new CarPlay.
Last month, I discussed how Apple and other companies created the FIDO Alliance to move towards a future in which we no longer have to use passwords and instead can use an authentication method like Touch ID on your iPhone to log in to a website. This week, Apple shared more information on how it will let you use passkeys instead of passwords, and Dan Moren of Six Colors did a great job of summarizing what Apple is doing with passkeys.
Does FIDO mean that you won’t use a password manager anymore? Maybe not. Jeff Shiner, the CEO of 1Password, announced this week that 1Password has joined the FIDO alliance and that the 1Password app will be able to serve as an authenticator. The idea is that if a site requires a password, 1Password would handle that the traditional way, and if the site works with passwordless authentication, 1Password can handle that too.
Jason Aten of Inc. discusses Apple Pay Later, a feature coming in iOS 16 that will let you purchase something and pay for it over six weeks instead of all at once.
I mentioned earlier this week that iPadOS 16 adds the ability to improve your penmanship. Juli Clover of MacRumors explains that one way it does this is to straighten lines of text. There may be other ways that you can use iPadOS 16 to improve your handwriting, but I’m not yet sure.
José Adorno of 9to5Mac identifies the features that Apple said are coming to iOS 16 but which won’t be available at launch.
One fascinating iOS 16 feature if you have both a Mac and an iPhone is Continuity Camera, which lets you use your iPhone as a webcam for your computer. This makes sense becuase the iPhone’s camera is so much better, and as a bonus you can use the Ultrawide camera to show what is on your desk—a trick that seems almost too good to be true. Jason Snell of Six Colors explains the Continuity Camera feature.
Sami Fathi of MacRumors shows off some of the user interface changes in iOS 16, such as the new interface for FaceTime and the video player, but remember that we are still seeing a very early beta so these user interfaces may change substantially before iOS 16 is released later this year.
You can control HomeKit even if you are not in your home if you have a HomeKit hub. An Apple TV will work, as will a HomePod. For now, an iPad at your home can also work, but David Snow of Cult of Mac reports that this will change in iPadOS 16.
For a good read on the WWDC keynote event itself, as opposed to the announcements, Jason Snell wrote a great article for Macworld. He has been attending WWDC for more than 25 years so he has seen it in many shapes and sizes, and he explains why this year’s format may be the best.
Here is some Apple news that is not related to WWDC. Apple TV+ reached an agreement to purchase the rights to a Formula One racing movie starring Brad Pitt, but David Snow of Cult of Mac says is interesting is that this is the first such agreement in which the movie will first run in theaters for at least 30 days before coming to Apple TV+, and the filmmakers will split the profits from the theatrical run. We may see more of this in the future.
I was also surprised to see this report by Joe Otterson of Variety that one of the cast members in a new show coming to Apple TV+ called Mrs. American Pie is Carol Burnett, who is now 89 years old. The show will also feature Kristen Wiig, Allison Janney, Leslie Bibb, Josh Lucas, and Ricky Martin.
And finally, the Lock Screen in iOS 16 will be very different. This quick video released by Apple does a good job of showing off all of the new features:
Yesterday, I wrote about iPadOS 16, and I think it was obvious how excited I was to use all of the new features. But iOS 16 on the iPhone, which should also come out this Fall, looks to be just as interesting. From the moment that you first pick up your iPhone, it will look and work differently because of the brand new Lock Screen. And there are tons of changes throughout the operating system and the built-in apps. Here are the features that I am most excited about and the reasons that I think that lawyers will love iOS 16.
Messages
I suspect that others will not put Messages at the top of their iOS 16 list, but I’m a person who hates to make mistakes. I’m certainly not perfect in my legal writing, but I do my best, and on the rare occasions when I file a brief and then discover that there was a typo that I missed, I feel crushed. It is similarly, albeit less, annoying when I type a text message and hit send, only to realize that there was a typo or autocorrect misinterpreted what I was trying to type. I’ve long wished for a way to edit a text shortly after you send it.
In iOS 16, for up to 15 minutes after you send a message, you can go back and edit it. When you do that, a small notification under the message will advise others that you have edited the message, and I’m all in favor of full disclosure. But I love that you can clarify a text quickly and easily. You can also delete a message that you sent—again, within 15 minutes. Click here for a short video showing how this works.
I presume that those two features will only work for conversations with others using an iPhone—your “blue bubble” friends. But for me, that is probably 95% of my text communications, if not more.
Another nice change is that if you start to read a message but then know you will have to turn your attention to it later, you can mark a message as unread, just like you might do for an email. Note, however, that if you have the feature enabled to let another person know that you have read a text message, the message on their end will show “Read” even if you have decided to mark it unread. In other words, mark as unread is designed only for your convenience—not to trick another person.
I mentioned yesterday that SharePlay is coming to Messages so that you can text with someone else while you watch a movie or listen to music with them at the same time. On the iPhone, I can see this being particularly nice for music. You can listen to a song with someone else and have shared playback control while you are chatting.
These are simple improvements, but they will be immediately useful for me and millions of others.
Personalized Lock Screen
The new Lock Screen is the feature that Apple has been promoting the most, so let’s talk about it next. If you own an Apple Watch, you already have a sense of how it works. Just like you can swipe to switch watch faces on an Apple Watch, and you can modify specific watch faces to change the colors, complications, etc., in iOS 16 you can have multiple Lock Screens that you can swipe between and customize. If you use a picture of a person, pet, etc., the time can be displayed somewhat behind the subject, similar to the Portraits face on an Apple Watch.
You can also place widgets on the Lock Screen so that you can see important information as soon as you first pick up your iPhone. Widgets can provide information on upcoming calendar events, the weather, battery life, alarms, activity ring progress, etc.
One special type of widget is called Live Activities. It can update information in real time to show you things like the score of a sports game, the status of a ride-share service, flight status, order status, etc. I can see Live Activities being very useful, especially when third parties start to use them with their apps.
Notifications on the Lock Screen are different in iOS 16 to provide space for some of these other features and make it easier to see the subject on your Lock Screen. They now roll up from the bottom of the screen.
I don’t use Focus Mode on my own iPhone, but I know that others do so to manage their notifications. Focus Mode has expanded uses in iOS 16 because you can have different Lock Screens associated with different modes. Thus, you may have one Lock Screen that only shows content from Messages and another Lock Screen that only shows Calendar information.
The new Lock Screen will be one of the most notable changes in iOS 16. I’m not sure that I will use all of the new features, but I suspect that I will enjoy some of them, and it is always nice to have the ability to personalize an experience.
Mail
I almost talked about the Mail improvements in yesterday’s post, but I think that I might use Mail on my iPhone even more than I do on my iPad. Regardless of which platform you are using, there are lots of nice new features in Mail.
First, you can schedule emails ahead of time. I’m a night owl, and I have often drafted a work email before I went to sleep after midnight, but I may not want to express the sense of urgency that some recipients may read into a middle-of-the-night email. In iOS 16, you can tell Mail to send an email at a specific time.
Much like you can delete a message in Messages after it has been sent, you can now cancel delivery of an email. I believe the way that it works is that Mail can automatically wait 10 seconds before sending a message after you hit the send button. That way, if you change your mind quickly enough, you can still edit the message or change your mind about sending it.
Mail will also look at the text in an email—all on your device, so your Mail is not being read by anyone at Apple—and will prompt you if it appears that you mentioned an attachment but forgot to add the attachment.
If you receive an email but you are not yet ready to review it, you can tell Mail to resurface the message at a later date or time.
Finally, Apple says that the Search feature is dramatically better in Mail (and other apps).
Working with emails on my iPhone and iPad is an important part of my law practice. I will be thrilled to start working with these new, useful tools
CarPlay
According to Apple, over 98% of new cars in the United States now have CarPlay available. Moreover, 79% of buyers in the United States say that they would only consider buying a car if it has CarPlay. I’m certainly part of that 79%; I love using CarPlay, and I do so every day.
Apple noticed that cars are starting to add larger screens and more of them. Apple has been working with auto manufacturers to reinvent the CarPlay experience and provide deep integration with the car’s hardware. You will be able to use CarPlay to do things like look at your speed, check your gas tank, change your car temperature, defrost windows, and more. How it will all look depends upon your specific car model, but CarPlay can adjust to lots of different layouts, and the end result can be a dramatic new look for your (next) car:
Of course, it will be a while before cars are shipping with the new screens that support CarPlay, but it is nice to know that it is coming. Apple is currently working with Land Rover, Mercedes, Porsche, Nissan, Ford, Lincoln, Audi, Jaguar, Acura, Volvo, Honda, Renault, Infiniti, and Polestar.
Apple Maps
When I use CarPlay in my car, I am often using a map to travel to a destination. But what if I have multiple stops along the way? In iOS 16, Maps will support multistop routing so that you can plan up to 15 stops in advance. You can even plan the route on a Mac and then sync it to an iPhone.
Home app
Apple’s Home app, a central place to control HomeKit devices, see your home video cameras, and more, has a new interface. The main screen of the Home app has a single view on which you can see all of your devices. And there are new options for grouping different accessories together. There are categories for things like climate, lights, cameras, etc., and if you tap on a category, you see everything associated with that category. And the tiles that correspond to accessories can now have different shapes to make some more prominent.
From what Apple has shown off so far, it looks like a much-improved interface.
Siri dictation
Even though it has been a very long time since I dictated a letter to a tape so that a secretary would type it, old habits die hard, and it still comes naturally for me to say out loud the punctuation marks when I am speaking. But most people don’t do that, and Siri in iOS 16 will automatically add commas, periods, and question marks as you speak. You can also use Siri to insert emoji as you are dictating.
Also, as I mentioned yesterday, you can dictate and use the keyboard at the same time, unlike the old system where nothing else could happen while Siri was listening to your voice.
Medications
An update to the Health app lets you manage, track, and learn more about the medications that you take. You can even scan a prescription bottle to add a medication into the Health app. If the Health apps detects that different medications may have adverse interactions, the app will warn you.
Conclusion
These are great new features, but this just scratches the surface. iOS 16 includes tons of other new features, some of which we may not even realize how useful they are until we try them. iOS 16 looks to be a great update for the iPhone.
Yesterday, Apple had a keynote event at its Apple Park campus in Cupertino, CA to introduce lots of new products and software features. It will take some time to process everything that Apple announced, and I expect additional details to surface throughout the rest of this week as Apple holds its WWDC developer conference. Today, I’m going to start by focusing on the announcement that Apple saved for last in the keynote presentation: the new iPadOS 16. Combine the new features that are unique to the iPad and the features that are coming to the iPad, iPhone, and/or Mac, and the result is a significant update to the operating system for the iPad, especially iPads that use Apple’s M1 chip (the iPad Pro and the newest iPad Air). Here are the highlights that I am looking forward to the most because I think that they will enhance the use of my iPad in my law practice or because they will increase the enjoyment that I get with my iPad.
Stage Manager
Up to now, multitasking on the iPad has mostly meant running two apps side-by-side. There are a few exceptions, like the ability to put one or more apps in Slide Over mode, but there was always a sense that Apple was resisting any move away from a single app on the screen at the time.
Yesterday, Apple introduced a new way to manage windows on the iPad and the Mac for whenever you want to do so: Stage Manager. With Stage Manager, you can have overlapping windows of different sizes on the iPad, much like you might have on a PC or a Mac. But it is better than what you are used to doing on a computer. On a computer, overlapping windows can get confusing when you have a whole bunch of windows on top of each other. Stage Manager solves this by putting apps into groups. You can work with one, two, three, or four windows at a time in the main portion of your screen. To the left, you will see miniature versions of the other windows or groups of windows in order of how recently you used them, turned on their side so that they take up less space:
I cannot wait to try this out. From the first look, this appears to be a great solution for going back and forth between different apps and seeing what is going on in one or more windows while you work in another one. And I love the solution of just working with one window, or a group of windows associated with a single task, in the main portion of the screen while easily seeing the other open windows peaking out on the left side.
Another advantage of Stage Manager over the current approach is that right now, when you have two apps running side-by-side, there is often confusion over which app you are using. If you type on the keyboard, are the letters going to appear in the app on the left or on the right? With overlapping windows, it is immediately apparent which window is on top.
Now that you can use more apps at the same time, do you need to worry about your iPad running out of memory when you use multiple power-hungry apps at once? Apple has a solution for that too. iPadOS 16 adds Virtual Memory Swap for iPads that have the M1 chip, which currently means the iPad Air (5th generation, introduced in 2022), iPad Pro 12.9-inch (5th generation, introduced in 2021), and iPad Pro 11-inch (3rd generation, introduced in 2021). With this feature, Apple can use your iPad’s storage instead of RAM to help run software. Computers have done something similar for a long time, and it’s nice to see Apple borrowing this for folks who want to run multiple apps that each can use up to 16GB of memory.
Stage Manager is optional. If you prefer to use just one app at a time, you can continue to do so. But if you want to jump into Stage Manager mode, it looks like you can just use a finger to shove in from the bottom corner of a full-screen app to jump into this mode.
More space to work
With the ability to use multiple windows at one time, you may find yourself wishing that you had more screen real estate. iPadOS 16 gives you two ways to get some.
First, for the first time ever, you will be able to connect an iPad to an external display without simply mirroring what is on the iPad’s display. External display resolutions of up to 6K are supported. Thus, you can put your iPad on a desk in front of an external display and have some app windows on your iPad’s display and a bunch of other apps windows on the monitor behind the iPad. You can even drag and drop between your iPad’s display and the external display.
Because we have never before had this ability, I’ve never before thought about how I might use it. And I’m curious how it might work in practice. I’m also curious if an iPad can use an iMac as an external monitor, much like a Mac can currently use an iPad as an external monitor.
Second, even if you don’t have an external display, the new Display Scaling Mode changes the pixel density of your iPad’s display. That way, you can see even more at one time—although, of course, text and pictures become smaller.
I believe that both external display support and Display Scaling Mode require using an iPad with an M1 chip, which—as noted above—means the higher-end iPad introduced in 2021 and 2022.
I certainly don’t imagine that I will use these two modes very often. But in certain circumstances, I can see both of them being incredibly useful.
Customizable toolbars
On my Mac and PC, I always love it when a program gives me the ability to customize a toolbar so that I have easy access to the commands that I want to use the most. Traditionally, not many iPad apps have offered this feature, but I love it when I find it. For example, one of the main reasons that I pay for the PRO version of the fantastic PDF Expert app is that I can create a custom toolbar with the pens and drawing tools that I use the most. It makes me much more efficient when I am annotating documents on my iPad.
iPadOS 16 will allow you to customize toolbars in apps to display the buttons and actions that you use most often. Apple only mentioned this feature for a few seconds, so at this point, I don’t know what built-in apps and third-party apps will take advantage of this feature. I hope that lots of apps gain this feature.
Other cross-app improvements
The new customizable toolbars feature looks like a particularly useful feature that will make lots of apps better. There are other system-wide improvements that I look forward to using.
For example, a new multiselect feature will allow you to select multiple items and have a context menu appear that lets you apply an action to all of the items at once. A new find-and-replace feature in apps like Mail, Messages, Reminders, and others looks like a nice improvement with a search field above the keyboard and an improved interface for finding, moving, and replacing words. Apple also said that undo and redo will work better in more apps such as Files, Photos, and Calendar. And a new instant Search feature will show results in apps as you type.
Files app improvements
The Files app will become even more useful in iPadOS 16, adding features such as the ability to change file extensions, view folder sizes, additional options for sorting in a column, and more. Apple has also improved the open and save panel, including the ability to rename folders inline.
iCloud Shared Photo Library
Now, I want to turn to a few features that technically work on multiple platforms, including both the iPhone and iPad, but which I think will be particularly valuable on the iPad.
Let’s start with photos. Although I love to take photos on my iPhone, I far prefer to look at them on my iPad because of its large, high-quality screen. That is especially true if, like me, you have the larger 12.9″ iPad Pro with its Liquid Retina XDR display. The Photos app on my iPad already works great when I want to see the pictures that I took, but what about when my family and friends want to see my pictures and videos or I want to see the ones that they took? The new iCloud Shared Photo Library lets you share all or some of your photos and videos with up to five other people. Thus, if you and your spouse both take pictures at an event or on vacation, you each have access to all or most of the photos.
I say “all or most” because you may not want to share all of your photos. iCloud Shared Photo Library will have different ways that you can manage who can see which photos and videos. For example, you can choose only to share photos starting on a specific date, or only the photos that have the other person in them, or only the photos that you have both you and the other person in them. There is also a new icon in the Camera app on an iPhone associated with your shared library. Turn it on by pressing the icon (much like turning on the flash or other features in the camera app) and then photos that you take will automatically go to the shared library.
If one person in your group edits or deletes a photo, that applies to the photo for everyone in the group. I’m not yet sure if this means that it also deletes the photo on the iPhone of the person who originally took the photo; I suspect that the edit or deletion only occurs in the shared library, but we’ll see.
There are lots of other features also coming to Photos. A new duplicate detection feature allows you to find duplicate photos and clean up your library. By default, your hidden and recently deleted albums are locked and you need to use Face ID / Touch ID / passcode to access them—a great privacy feature. If you make edits to one photo, you can copy those edits and quickly apply them to other photos. You can sort your People album alphabetically—which is something that I’ve been doing manually for years, wondering every time why I couldn’t do this automatically. And if you like using the Photos widget but wish that it only showed you photos, you can now disable Memories and Features Photos from appearing in the widget.
SharePlay via Messages
When Apple first came out with the ability to use SharePlay with a video, it didn’t much appeal to me because it relied on FaceTime. Although I can imagine a circumstance in which I might want to watch a movie with someone else in a different location at the same time, I don’t really need to see their face while I’m watching the movie, nor do I need them to see me.
In iPadOS 16, you can watch a movie or show, or listen to a song, at the same time as others using SharePlay via Messages. This makes a lot more sense to me. You can watch a show and send text messages to each other about what you are watching or listening to.
There are related collaboration features coming to SharePlay via Messages, such as the ability to share notes, reminders, Safari Tab Groups, and presentations with others via Messages. I have never really collaborated with others this way, so I don’t think I’ll do it in iPadOS 16. But sharing a movie or music does sound interesting to me.
Copy text and objects
Currently, if you are looking at a picture that contains text in it—like a picture of a sign—you can use Live Text to copy the text and then paste it someplace else. With the new Live Text for Videos, you can pause a video that you are watching and then do the same thing with any text that is in that frame of the image. That’s a natural extension of Live Text.
Currently, if you are looking at a picture that has an object in it—like a dog in the middle of the picture–if you want to take just the dog and put him someplace else, like on a page of notes or in a presentation, all you can really do it crop the image to a square around the dog. You need to use other apps or tools to remove the rest of the background. But in iPadOS 16, you can now tap on an object in a picture to lift that subject from the background. This works in Photos, Screenshot, Quick Look, Safari, and other apps, as long as you have an iPad with an A12 Bionic chip or later, such as the iPad Air (third generation, released in 2019).
I love the enhanced ability to copy just the part of an image or video that you want and then use it elsewhere.
Dictation
I often find that it is faster to dictate an email, text message, etc. than to type it. And since Siri translates your voice to text on the device without sending what you say to the cloud, the system is private and I am comfortable using it for text entry in my law practice.
In iPadOS 16 and iOS 16, Apple has made it easier to talk, use the keyboard, and (on the iPad) use the Apple Pencil all at once. You can more quickly go back and forth between typing something or dictating something because the keyboard remains on the screen and remains usable even while you are talking. This will be useful in lots of different apps and allow you to be more efficient when you are entering text, no matter what tool you are using to do so.
Freeform
I’ve noted above the new features that interest me the most. Another addition in iPadOS 16 looks interesting, although I’m not sure that I will ever use it myself. it is a new app called Freeform.
Freeform lets you create a white board and share it with others. Thus, instead of getting together in a room and writing on a board with markers, you can use your Apple Pencil to write on a virtual white board. I rarely use a white board so I don’t think I’ll get much use out of Freeform, but I’m sure others will appreciate this new app.
Handwriting straightening
Apple says that if you handwrite something in a note, you can select what you wrote and then ask the iPad to automatically straighten your handwriting so that your notes look neater. I could have really used this feature when I was in grade school being told by a teacher to improve my penmanship.
Other interesting features, especially on the iPhone
iPadOS 16 will get other new features that will be nice on the iPad but especially useful on the iPhone. For example, in the Messages app, you will (finally!) get the ability to edit or delete a message after you send it (for up to 15 minutes). I’ll discuss these features in an upcoming post on iOS 16, but they will also be great for iPad users.
Weather app
When the iPad was released in 2010, there was a weather app on the iPhone, but not the iPad. It has taken Apple a dozen years to figure out how to accomplish this monumental task, but there is now also a built-in Weather app on the iPad. Just think, maybe in a dozen more years, there will be a built-in calculator app on the iPad too.
Conclusion
I had my fingers crossed that Apple would introduce some features that would appeal to intermediate-to-advanced iPad users. Apple has certainly done that in iPadOS 16, plus they added some crowd-pleasers that lots of folks will enjoy. This looks to be a fantastic update that will make all of our iPads even better to use.
