Will Apple buy Disney? The idea would have been ridiculous 10 years ago, 20 years ago, etc. But the idea has been kicked around quite a bit recently. John Gruber of Daring Fireball writes a persuasive piece on why Apple doesn’t seem to have the interest and Disney will want to stay independent. On the other hand, Jason Snell of Six Colors thinks the idea isn’t that crazy. Large technology companies are trying to purchase content companies more and more, and Disney itself faces an uncertain future. If any tech company is going to buy Disney, Apple seems like the best fit. As Snell notes, Disney CEO Bob Iger suggested in his memoir that had Steve Jobs lived, the two companies might have combined. I have no idea what will happen, but if at some point soon my monthly Apple One subscription also gets me a Fast Pass to Space Mountain, I’d be fine with that. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- Why is the iPhone called the iPhone? Back in 2009, I provided the answer in a post called Why the “i” in iPhone? That post still gets a lot of readers to this day. In short, the answer is that Apple first used the “i” when Apple introduced the iMac in 1998. As Jason Snell writes in an article for the Verge, it was 25 years ago this week that Apple released the iMac—a cute but powerful computer that saved Apple from bankruptcy. If Apple had not made it through that period in its history, there would have been no iPod, no iPhone, no iPad, etc. Thank goodness for the iMac.
- John Voorhees of MacStories reviews Mercury Weather, which looks like a great weather app for the iPhone and iPad.
- Jonny Evans of Computerworld suggests a few iPhone features that you may not know about. For example, as my In the News podcast co-host Brett Burney pointed out all the way back on Episode 23 in 2021, if you hold down the mute button for a few seconds you can place the rest of the call on hold—which means you cannot hear the other person, and if there are multiple people on the phone, they cannot talk to each other.
- John Gruber of Daring Fireball explains how, in the Messages app on the iPhone, you can pin a website link that someone sends you to make it easier to find again later.
- Bradley Chambers of 9to5Mac reviews the Aqara light strip, which works with HomeKit (if you have an Aqara hub).
- If you use a third-party app on your Apple Watch to monitor for common symptoms of Parkinson’s (Tremors and Dyskinesia), there was a bug in watchOS 9.6 that prevented those apps from working. Apple fixed the bug in watchOS 9.6.1 released this week, as explained by Chance Miller of 9to5Mac.
- A woman in the Netherlands was able to recover a stolen bike because she had hidden an AirTag in it, as reported by Filipe Espósito of 9to5Mac.
- A woman in Vancouver was not able to recover her stolen car, even though it had an AirTag, because the thief found the AirTag and attached it to an Evo Car Share vehicle, as reported by Malcolm Owen of AppleInsider. So when the woman traced the AirTag to a winery, she was disappointed to find out that her car was not there.
- Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac reports that as the monthly fees for streaming video services have increased, subscribing to the popular streaming services is now more expensive than cable, even though many people “cut the cord” on their cable provider to save money by moving to streaming services.
- One upcoming streaming video show on Apple TV+ is a Godzilla TV series. Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac reports that parts of the show are being filmed in Apple’s Immersive Video format, which means that you will be able to watch them in spatial 3D using the upcoming Apple Vision Pro.
- And finally, while excessive heat has made life difficult for many of us lately, don’t forget that heat makes it tough for your iPhone, too. Joann Stern of the Wall Street Journal has a helpful video showing why heat is bad for your iPhone’s batteries, and she also provides hints for preserving battery life: