Apple announced its 2023 models of the iPhone a few weeks ago. This week, Google announced its new Pixel 8. What interested me most about this introduction is something that also jumped out to John Gruber of Daring Fireball: Google's heavy use of AI in the camera app. Of course, Apple also uses its powerful processors to take pictures; the reason that the relatively small lenses on an iPhone can take such great pictures is that Apple uses computational photography to bring out the best in every image. But I do wonder if Google has taken this too far. Google's new Magic Editor lets you move around objects in a photo, so if you take a picture and realize that two people look too far apart, you can just move them together. Google's new Best Take feature works when you take a number of pictures of a group of people; the feature takes the best face for each person (eyes open, smiling, etc.) and merges that into a single best photo. I've occasionally used Photoshop on my Mac or even apps on my iPhone to make these types of changes in the past, but there is something about making it a part of the process of taking pictures that seems somewhat bizarre to me. Are you taking a picture or creating a picture? And is there really a difference between those two? I've taken courses in photography and I've taken courses in Philosophy, but perhaps we need some photographic philosophers to provide some advice and help us navigate these issues. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- Sebastiaan de With wrote an interesting and insightful review of the iPhone 15 Pro Max cameras.
- Jason Snell of Six Colors wrote a very good review of the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.
- Jovana Naumovski of Gadget Hacks identifies some of the new features for working with photos in iOS 17.
- Overall, I'm happy that the iPhone now uses USB-C instead of Lightning, but it does serve of a reminder that USB-C is a pain. As Dan Moren of Six Colors notes in an article for Macworld, some cords only provide power, some provide data, some provide different amounts of power or different speeds of data, and it is often impossible to tell what kind of cord you have by just looking at it. Ugh.
- Christian Zibreg of iDownloadBlog notes that if you subscribe to Apple News+ you can now do daily crosswords in the News app. There are some aspects of these crosswords that I like, but I think that Apple needs to improve the interface.
- Ross Trudeau, the Puzzles editor for News+, says that Apple is trying to make its crosswords "more welcoming to newcomers." He also says: "We also intend to eliminate the opaque and coded language often seen in crossword clues. In an old-school puzzle, USSR might get a clue like 'Erstwhile federation for Brezhnev, briefly.' That won’t be us. We’ll use plain language: 'Country that broke up in ’91.'" I suppose that I understand that, but sometimes I like the more opaque clues that are used later in the week in the New York Times crossword puzzles; it seems more satisfying when you figure out the clue.
- I purchased the original Apple Watch in 2015, and at the time, I was a fan of that product. But any modern Apple Watch is so infinitely better than the first generation that I cannot imagine anyone seeing a reason to still use one ... except, perhaps, if you splurged and paid up to $17,000 for the gold Apple Watch Edition (which Caitlin McGarry of Macworld reviewed in 2015). But as Steve Dent of Engadget reports this week, Apple has now placed all of the original models of the Apple Watch on its obsolete list, which means that is no longer eligible for hardware service and you can no longer order spare parts. So if you had plans to try to spend thousands of dollars on just a gold digital crown spare part, you may now be out of luck.
- Ellen Lee of Wirecutter has advice for using an Apple Watch or other devices to track your kid.
- Sigmund Judge wrote an extensive review of tvOS 17 for MacStories.
- Andrew O'Hara of Apple Insider reports that the new Double Tap feature on the newest Apple Watch works much better than the similar accessibility feature that Apple made available in the past.
- Now that your Apple devices can work with smarthome Matter devices without needing to worry about HomeKit support, Bradley Chambers of 9to5Mac discusses using inexpensive smart bulbs from OREiN. For example, I see that you can get a 4-pack of standard A19 60W equivalent bulbs that you can set to be any color for less than $24, so less than $6 a bulb.
- Band of Brothers was an amazing series on HBO; I cannot believe that it has been 22 years since it first aired. A sequel is coming out, produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, and it is called Masters of the Air and will premiere on January 26, 2024 on Apple TV+, as reported by Benjamin Mayo of 9to5 Mac. This one could be really good.
- William Gallagher of AppleInsider reports that a woman in the UK who works in a gym and is named Siri has decided to change her name because, well, you can probably guess why.
- And finally, here is a powerful video released by Apple called Another Birthday:
