Mardi Gras is now in full force here in New Orleans. Multiple parades will go by my house tonight for the third night in a row, and that will continue every day until Mardi Gras day on Tuesday, with some of the biggest parades this weekend. This season has been full of King Cakes, beads, parties, costumes, and a whole lot of purple, green, and gold. As has been true for many years now, a parade app is a great way to use your iPhone to see the schedule and find out where the next parade is and how long it will take to get to you. The free WDSU Parade Tracker app has been working well for me this season. If you haven’t experienced Mardi Gras yet, I recommend that you take the time to check it out one year. Whether you are enjoying time with kids and family on St. Charles Avenue or experiencing the craziness of the French Quarter, it is a fun experience that you won’t forget. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- A quick programming note: there will be no episode of the In the News podcast today.
- Apple released iOS 16.3.1 for the iPhone and similar updates for other devices this week. Juli Clover of MacRumors says that this is an update that you should install if you haven’t done so yet because it fixes a security vulnerability that was actually being exploited in the wild.
- Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reports that Ivory, the Mastodon client for iOS, added a number of improvements this week including the ability to edit prior posts.
- I know a number of people who use a folio wallet with an iPhone so that they can carry cash and credit cards in an iPhone case. Rikka Altland of 9to5Toys wrote a favorable review of the SurfacePad for iPhone 14 by TwelveSouth. I’ve been a fan of other products made by TwelveSouth, so this one deserves a look if you are in the market for something like this. I see on Amazon that there are similar SurfacePad products for many other iPhone designs.
- 1Password for the iPhone and iPad was updated this week to add a number of new features, as noted in this post on the 1Password blog. One that I particularly look is the ability to reorder fields and sections. It is also nice that when you are looking at any list of passwords or other items, there is now a search tool at the top (swipe down to make it appear) that you can use to search just that list.
- Manuel Vonau of Android Police compares Apple Maps on an iPhone to Google Maps on an Android and finds lots of areas in which Apple Maps is better.
- Jason Snell of Six Colors reviews the new HomePod. He likes the sound, but is frustrated by the limitations of Siri and some bugs that he encountered, so much so that he concludes that he “can’t in good conscience recommend them to anyone who isn’t well-versed in troubleshooting misbehaving Apple technology.”
- Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reports that the new Apple Watch crash detection feature played a critical role in rescuing people in a car crash in Germany because it contacted emergency services and was able to provide a precise location for the car.
- Hiba Fiaz of the Make Use Of website recommends some useful ideas for the Shortcuts app on the iPhone.
- Justin Meyers of Gadget Hacks came up with a list of Siri commands for the iPhone that you might not already know. Many of these were new to me.
- And finally, here is a short compilation of the Apple TV startup screens used from the first version introduced in 2007 to the version used today. Spoiler alert: only the first two versions were interesting. I myself would not want to waste time with a startup animation on my iPhone, iPad, or computer, but I have to admit that there was something fun about seeing it on the first two generations of the Apple TV, and I sort of miss it.