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.
- Lisa Eadicicco and Jason Cipriani CNet have a good list of settings on the Apple Watch that you might want to change.
- 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.
- Baz Bamigboye of Deadline interviewed numerous Ted Lasso cast members to discuss tidbits about the show.
- Jason Snell of Six Colors speculates about the future role of CarPlay in light of the other work that we know Apple is doing on cars but that Apple has not yet announced.
- 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.