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.
- Lance Ulanoff of Tech Radar interviewed Apple’s Craig Federighi and Alan Dye to discuss the new Lock Screen coming to iOS 16.
- 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.
- In an article for Macworld, Dan Moren explains how in the upcoming new operating systems, many of Apple’s devices are becoming more like each other.
- 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.