Month: July 2023

Brett and I start this week’s episode of the In the News podcast by discussing the security updates issued by Apple for virtually all of its hardware this week. We next discuss how Apple’s built-in apps for Maps, Notes, Reminders, and Podcasts have come a long way and are now the preferred apps of their genre for many folks. We also talk about Belkin’s newest charging product and explain why it looks great but Belkon really has to come up with better names.

This week’s Where Y’at? segment is the largest ever. We talk about how Apple’s location technology can save lives, and we also note that not all Find My stories have happy endings.

In our In the Know segment, Brett recommends the Weber iGrill, and I recommend using Apple News+ to read articles from publications to which you do not subscribe.

Click here to listen to the audio podcast, or just listen using your podcast player of choice.  You can also watch the episode on YouTube:

As reported by Michael Simon of Macworld and many others, Apple rolled out updates this week for the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, and Apple TV. This is a full .1 update (for example, the new version for the iPhone is iOS 16.6), but it looks like this is primarily a security update. And as Simon notes, Apple deems these to be critical updates to address high-risk vulnerabilities, including at least one that is actively being exploited. I updated my iPhone, iPad, and Mac right away, and all was good. Thursday morning, my Apple Watch (a Series 7) alerted me that it had been updated to watchOS 9.6, and I was happy to see that it was also more secure. But around Noon on Thursday, I received an alert that my watch battery was almost dead. That seemed strange, but I thought that maybe my Apple Watch had not been properly based on the charging stand the night before, so I used the charger at my office desk to recharge my Apple Watch to 90% and then put it back on. But then around 5pm, I received another notice that my Apple Watch battery was almost dead. At that point, I shut down my Apple Watch and started it up again because something was obviously wrong. As I type this, it seems that the restart was a solution for me, but I’ll be keeping an eye on this. Hopefully, the large majority of folks were able to install the important update on all of their devices with no problems. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• One of my favorite travel apps is Flighty. Felipe Espósito of 9to5Mac reports that the app was updated this week to version 3.0, which now makes it even easier to keep track of your friends’ flights.
• If you have trouble hearing, you may be able to use AirPods instead of a hearing aid. John Gruber of Daring Fireball linked to a Mastodon post by Gary Knight, who explains that hearing loss has made him partially deaf, but he was able to use the accessibility settings on his iPhone to tweak his AirPods so that he can hear much better. He notes that he “literally gasped out loud at hearing the birds I’d been missing for some years!”. As Gruber notes, Apple doesn’t advertise AirPods as hearing aids for regulatory reasons, but they work wonders for many people. I followed the steps identified by Gary Knight to see if there was anything to tweak in my AirPods for my hearing, and after running through tests for just a few minutes, my iPhone reported that I didn’t need to change anything. But it is neat that the iPhone can walk you through the steps to see if AirPods can help you to hear better.
• Rikka Altland of 9to5Toys reviews the Belkin BoostCharge Pro and is a fan. This $100 device has a 10,000mAh battery and 20W USB-C to recharge your devices, plus it features a built-in fast charger for the Apple Watch, all in a nice design. If you want something portable to recharge an Apple Watch without having to worry about a cord, this looks like a good option.
• Federico Viticci of MacStories, who has written extensively about the Stage Manager improvements in iPadOS 17, shares a few additional thoughts.
• Ann-Marie Alcántara of the Wall Street Journal reports that the once-criticized Apple Maps app has gotten quite good.
• In an article for Macworld, Dan Moren says that Apple’s Notes, Reminders, and Podcasts apps have also improved quite a bit.
• Apple’s location technology came to the rescue for many folks this week. Amber Neely of AppleInsider reports that two tourists got lost while hiking in the Apennine Mountains in Italy in an area with no cellphone service. Fortunately, they were able to use an iPhone 14 to send for help via a satellite test message.
• CBS News in Las Angeles reports that a man drove over a cliff and his car fell down 400 feet. The car was totaled but the driver was alive, although he was bleeding from the head so he could have died soon. Fortunately, his iPhone 14 detected the crash. According to the report, his iPhone automatically used the Emergency SOS via Satellite feature because there was no cellphone service in the location. (I knew that a person could manually enable the SOS via Satellite feature, but I didn’t know that the iPhone could do it on its own.) The GPS coordinates were sent Apple’s communication center and then relayed to local law enforcement who were able to recuse the man using a helicopter. The article quotes Steve Goldsworthy, the Rescue Operations Leader, as saying that “[h]e was 400 feet down in a canyon with virtually no way out … So, who knows when, or if, we would’ve located him” without that GPS information.
• Caroline Williams of The Sun News in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, reports that a man had successfully burglarized several bars and restaurants, including stealing $15,000 from the Sneaky Beagle restaurant, when the employees decided to … well … be sneaky. They put an AirTag inside of a stuffed animal and put that inside of a decoy safe. Soon thereafter, the criminal stole the decoy safe from the Sneaky Beagle, and thanks to the AirTag, he has now been arrested.
• Vi Nguyen of NBC 5 in Chicago reports a frustrating AirTag story. A man who kept an Apple AirTag hidden under the seat of his Honda motorcycle recently discovered that the motorcycle had been stolen. Using the FindMy app on his iPhone, he discovered where his motorcycle is apparently located—in a box truck in an alley—and he told the police, but the police said that if the motorcycle could not be seen in plain sight, they would not help him. The man is heeding advice from the police not to take matters into your own hands, so he decided not to knock on nearby doors to investigate, but that left him with no solution other than to file an insurance claim.
• Speaking of AirTags, they usually cost $99 for a 4-pack, and occasionally they cost a little bit less. But right now, they are under $85 on Amazon. That’s a great price. There have been very few times in the past when you could get them for as little as $80, but those times are extremely rare.
• And finally, Apple released a short movie (13 minutes) shot entirely on the iPhone called Huracán Ramírez vs. La Piñata Enchilada. It’s fun and full of color—not to mention pinatas and Mexican wrestlers. The making of video is also fun to watch. Here is the short film:

For over a dozen years, law practice consultant Adriana Linares has been hosting a podcast called the New Solo podcast. I’m a big fan of Adriana, and she and I have given numerous presentations together over the years. Her New Solo podcast addresses a diverse range of topics including transitioning from a law firm to a solo practice, rainmaking, law practice management, networking, job searching, technology, and much more. I was a guest back in 2016 to discuss using an iPhone and iPad in a law practice.

Adriana decided to devote the latest episode of the podcast to the topic of choosing a Mac instead of a PC, and she invited Brett Burney and me to discuss the topic with her. It gave us the opportunity to discuss the plusses and minuses of using Macs and provide recommendations on which Mac and other Apple technology to use if you are a lawyer or other professional trying to get work done.

We had a great time recording this podcast, so if the topic is of any interest to you, I encourage you to check it out. You can subscribe to the podcast using your podcast player of choice, or you can just click below to listen to the episode:

When Brett and I started this week’s episode of the In the News podcast by talking about fonts—a discussion prompted by Microsoft’s recent decision to change the default font in its apps like Microsoft Word—I didn’t expect to spend much time on that topic. But once we got talking, there was quite a bit to nerd out about on the topic of fonts, and not just the best way to pronounce “sans serif.” After that, we talk about lots of new details on the StandBy mode of iOS 17, stands for the HomePod mini, the Eve Flare, the new Beats Studio Pro, and more.

In this week’s Where Y’at? segment, we discuss a magician who caused his lost luggage to reappear thanks to AirTags and Apple’s new video from The Underdogs.

In our In the Know segment, we both share tips for using Apple Maps (and Google Maps). Brett explains how to get a route that avoids toll roads, and I explain how to plan a route for a trip that you will be taking in the future.

Click here to listen to the audio podcast, or just listen using your podcast player of choice.  You can also watch the episode on YouTube:

As an appellate lawyer, I spend a lot of time typing in Microsoft Word. And I’ve been using Microsoft Word for a very long time—starting in the 1980s, where I used it on a Mac long before Word for Windows even existed. If you have also been using Word for a long time, then you remember a long period of time when Times New Roman was the default font. In 2007, Microsoft changed the default font to Calibri. Andrew Cunningham of Ars Technica reports that Microsoft is ready to change the default font again, and Microsoft has picked the sans-serif font Aptos (formerly known as Bierstadt) to replace Calibri as the default font in apps like Microsoft Word. According to that article, the developer of Aptos says that the font is similar to Helvetica but with a bit of a human touch. I still use Times New Roman in most of legal briefs because it is required by many courts, and that’s why the iPhone J.D. banner uses the Times New Roman font. When I have a choice of font to use in a brief, lately I’ve been a fan of Cambria, a font commissioned by Microsoft and designed in 2004. If you have a favorite font for when you write documents, feel free to leave a comment to this post and let me know what you like to use. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Of all of the new features coming to the iPhone this Fall with iOS 17—and there are so many of them—it appears that one of the most beloved new features is StandBy mode. John Voorhees of MacStories wrote a great in-depth review about how the StandBy feature works. Equally valuable, at the end of the article, both John and Federico Viticci recommend charging stands that work with StandBy mode. I suspect that lots of folks will be purchasing these items for a desk, a nightstand, a kitchen, etc.
• Tim Hardwick of MacRumors also discusses the new StandBy mode.
• To try out StandBy mode now, you need to install beta software on your iPhone. Should you do so? Jason Snell of Six Colors encourages people to try out the public betas. He has some interesting arguments, although stability and battery life are too important to me to do so.
• Last year, I wrote about a simple stand for the HomePod mini that I purchased for my Living Room called the balolo Real Wood TriPod for HomePod Mini. I’m still happy with that purchase. This week, Stephen Hackett of 512 Pixels takes a look at some more unusual stands for the HomePod mini.
• Final Cut Pro for the iPad received an update this week to add new keyboard shortcuts and more, as noted by Filipe Espósito of 9to5Mac.
• According to Chance Miller of 9to5Mac, if you are thinking of buying an AirPods Max, you should instead look at the Beats Studio Pro.
• Wesley Hilliard of Apple Insider reports that you can buy some Apple equipment without paying state sales taxes during the next few weeks in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, Tennessee, and West Virginia.
• Howard Sneider of The Gadgeteer reviews the Eve Flare, a battery-powered ambient lighting sphere ($99 on Amazon) that you can control using your iPhone.
• Kelsey Vlamis of Insider tells the tale of Danny Orleans, a magician who flew to Newark to perform a magic show in New York only to be told that his bag with all of his sound equipment didn’t make the flight. And yet, thanks to an AirTag, he could tell that his bag was just sitting on the tarmac, and he was finally able to convince someone with United to help him to recover his bag. If you travel frequently and you don’t use an AirTag for your checked luggage … you should.
• And finally, Apple released another video from The Underdogs this week. I linked to the first of these funny videos in 2019, and the pandemic version released in 2020 was also very cute. It’s been three years since the last one, and the third video in the series is now out and is very funny—even if it does the one thing that folks should probably never do when in this situation:

After missing a chance to record an episode of the podcast last week—COVID finally caught up to me after dodging it for three years—Brett and I had twice as many things to talk about in this week’s episode of the In the News podcast. We discuss Apple’s perhaps-too-rapid Rapid Security Response, the 15th anniversary of the App Store, and the once groundbreaking Evernote app. Then we turn our attention to new features coming out this Fall for the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and more. We then discuss a cool tip for changing the iPhone volume and a non-so-obscrue new app called Threads.

In this week’s Where Y’at? segment, we discuss a woman who recovered her stolen bag thanks to an AirTag, and we also talk about how GPS works.

In our In the Know segment, Brett shares a great tip for when you want to share a specific item of text from a website. And I explain how to share a URL for a website when all you want to share is the address, not a preview of the website, in an email message.

Click here to listen to the audio podcast, or just listen using your podcast player of choice.  You can also watch the episode on YouTube:

As Apple’s Phil Schiller recently noted on Mastodon, the App Store is now 15 years old. The App Store debuted with 500 apps and grew quickly. Just a few months later, I reported in one of the earliest posts on iPhone J.D. that there were 10,000 apps on the App Store. When the App Store first opened, some of the most popular apps included games like Super Monkey Ball and Bejeweled 2, social media apps like Facebook, Twitterific, AIM, and MySpace Mobile, the New York Times, OmniFocus, and MLB.com At Bat. Some of those apps are long gone, but others are very much thriving today. Between reading the news, doing crossword puzzles, and doing Wordle, some version of the New York Times is still open on my iPad or iPhone every day. And now, the recent news of note:

• Speaking of beloved apps from the past, I remember when it seemed that everyone loved Evernote, one of the first products to introduce folks to the idea of accessing your information from anywhere. As David Sparks of MacSparky notes, the current owner of Evernote is now laying off most of its employees. I haven’t used Evernote in a long time, but as David notes, it is an “an ignominious end.” For an interesting look at Evernote from about a decade ago when things were very different, check out this article by Harry McCracken.
• The public beta of iOS 17 is now available, so lots of folks are talking about the new features. The headline of this article by Allison Johnson of The Verge says it all: iOS 17 is a lot of little updates that make a big impact.
• Dan Moren of Six Colors likes the new Standby mode in iOS 17, especially when you use the widget view.
• Federico Viticci of MacStories says that the improvements in iPadOS 17 are especially nice, especially the Stage Manager improvements, and he also likes the improved widget on the iPhone and iPad.
• The public beta of watchOS 10 is also now available, so Dan Moren takes a first look at it. He says that the new emphasis on widgets is a fantastic use of the Digital Crown. He also notes that the new Snoopy watch face is truly excellent.
• Kate Kozuch of Tom’s Guide interviews Apple’s Eric Charles of Worldwide Product Marketing to discuss the changes in watchOS 10.
• Alex Guyot of MacStories previews some of the best new features of watchOS 10. Alex notes that you can still access the Dock, but now you do it with a double-click of the Digital Crown. And if you are using one of the few watch faces that could traditionally be changed by spinning the Digital Crown (like the Metropolitan face), in watchOS 10 you first need to touch the watch face and then spin the Digital Crown to change things.
• If you are using the beta version of iOS 17 and tvOS 17, you can try out using FaceTime on an Apple TV. Filipe Espósito of 9to5Mac says that the beta version of the feature is still a little buggy, but the idea is implemented incredibly well.
• One of the nice features of the current iPhone running iOS 16 is that if Apple sees an urgent need to push out a security update, it can now release a Rapid Security Response: a quick update that is far short of a full software update. Apple released iOS Security Response 16.5.1(a) earlier this week, and I installed it and it seemed to work fine. But Apple quickly pulled back that release because it was causing problems with certain websites. As Juli Clover of MacRumors notes, Apple subsequently released a revised version, 16.5.1(c), a version that addresses the security issue without messing up certain websites. It’s nice to see that Apple can issue rapid responses to Rapid Security Responses.
• Aaron Tilley of the Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is the world’s first $3 Trillion company.
• Justin Myers of Gadget Hacks notes that when you see a volume slider on the screen (for example, as you press the volume buttons on the side of an iPhone) you can actually touch the on-screen controls to change the volume.
• There is a new social media app on the iPhone, but I suspect that you don’t need me to tell you that. John Gruber wrote on July 5 that he liked Thread’s chances, and Jay Peters and Jon Porter reported earlier this week that Threads now has over 100 million users. And that is without Threads being available yet in Europe. You can find me on Threads at @iphonejd.
• Oliver Haslam of iMore reports that a burglar in the UK stole a woman’s bag from her home, but her bag contained an AirTag, and as a result, the burglar was traced to and arrested at a nearby hotel.
• Yesterday was World Emoji Day, so we saw a preview of some of the new Emoji that are likely to come to the iPhone in 2024. Zac Hall of 9to5Mac runs down what is new, including a head shaking vertically or horizontally, although the new Emoji are not yet set in stone.
• A key reason that many iPhone apps are so useful is that the iPhone has GPS. We all know that GPS works by using satellites in the sky, but most of us don’t know much more than that. Bartosz Ciechanowski wrote a truly amazing blog post last year that I just learned about. It explains how GPS works in a way that almost anyone can understand. And he doesn’t just explain it, he shows it using fantastic and easy-to-understand animations. If you are interested to learn more about GPS, or if you just enjoy learning how things work from a fantastic teacher, I highly recommend that you check out this incredible post.
• And finally, to highlight the extended battery life of the iPhone 14 Plus, Apple released a funny video this week called Battery for Miles:

In this week’s edition of the In the News podcast, Brett and I celebrate his birthday by discussing technology that we both love. We start with the iPad, which continues to gain the ability to perform even more sophisticated tasks. We then discuss how NFC is not a new technology but it is getting a new lease on life thanks to Apple. We provide tips for using the built-in Notes app, discuss Fitness circles on the Apple Watch, smart home technology, the upcoming Apple Vision Pro, and more.

In this week’s Where Y’at? segment, we discuss a woman who broke her leg while hiking but fortunately was airlifted to safety by helicopter thanks to her iPhone 14’s Emergency SOS via Satellite feature.

In our In the Know segment, Brett talks about sleep tracking on an Apple Watch. I provide tips for cleaning up your home screens on your iPhone or iPad by focusing on just your most important apps.

Click here to listen to the audio podcast, or just listen using your podcast player of choice.  You can also watch the episode on YouTube: