On the list of things that I expected to happen this past week, there are two items that were way down near the bottom of my list and yet, to my surprise, they occurred. First, The Beatles announced that they have a new song coming out next week. No, you are not reading this website from the 1960s; there is a partial song recorded by John in the 1970s that George, Paul, and Ringo tried to turn into a song in the 1990s. They couldn’t do so at the time because the recording was too hard to work with; John recorded the piano and vocals on the same track and there was a loud hum on the recording. But as Mike Spohr of BuzzFeed explains, Peter Jackson was able to use sophisticated AI technology to clean up John’s track, the part that George recorded in the 1990s is still usable, and Paul and Ringo were able to finish the song. Thus, after being worked on for multiple decades, the song “Now and Then” will be released on November 2 as the very last song by The Beatles. I should have realized that anything was possible this week because just a few days before the Beatles announcement, Apple announced that it will stream a product release video on October 30. That’s a little late in the year, but not unprecedented. But what is unprecedented is that the event will occur at 8pm Eastern. I’ve been following Apple for decades and I cannot think of any precedent for an event like this at nighttime. What will Apple announce on the Eve of Halloween as the sun sets across this country? The page on Apple’s website for this event shows the Finder logo, so I’m sure that new Macs will be announced. But Apple hasn’t introduced a single new iPad in all of 2023, so I guess there is the slight possibility of an iPad announcement. (But probably not, because if Apple was going to do that, it probably would have waited instead of releasing the new Apple Pencil last week.) And now, here is the other news of note from what has been an extraordinary week:
- Apple released iOS 17.1 this past week, along with similar updates for other devices. Federicco Viticci of MacStories explains what is new. The promised improvement to AirDrop is now working: start sharing while you are close to someone else, but then the download can continue using the Internet if you go farther apart. There are also improvements to StandBy mode if you use an iPhone 14 Pro or 15 Pro with an always-on display; you can now control in Settings when the display should turn off. As I noted in this post, I’m a huge fan of StandBy, and I want to give another big shout-out to the Anker 3-in-1 Cube with MagSafe ($149.95 on Amazon) because everything about it works so incredibly well. There are also improvements to Apple Music and more.
- Now that iOS 17.1 is out, Apple is working on iOS 17.2, and beta versions are available. Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reports that one feature coming in iOS 17.2 is Apple’s new Journal app.
- That new iPhone is apparently a hit. Apple doesn’t have its next quarterly earnings call until November 2, but AT&T had it call recently and said the carrier saw “the strongest iPhone pre-orders we’ve had in years” thanks to the iPhone 15 lineup, according to Chance Miller of 9to5Mac.
- The Matter standard has been updated to version 1.2, and Jennifer Pattison Tuohy does a great job in her article for The Verge describing what this means. On the plus side, it allows your Apple device to control refrigerators, robot vacuums, smoke alarms, room air conditioners, laundry washers, air purifiers, and more. But as the second half of that article notes, this open standard only works with manufacturers update their devices to work with Matter and Apple updates the Home app to support the new standard. Hopefully, this will all happen soon.
- Brent Dirks of AppAdvice describes updates to the Google Maps app that make it easier to preview a route in an immersive view before you take a trip.
- Apple is raising the prices for some of its subscription services including Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple News+, and Apple One. John Gruber of Daring Fireball discusses the implications of these price hikes.
- Filipe Espósito reports on a lost Apple Watch Ultra that was found at the bottom of a lake. A person whose watch fell in a lake hired a scuba diver to try to find it (after dropping a marker) but had no luck. Three months later, another diver found it, and the Apple Watch Ultra is back in the owner’s hands and still works.
- Why is it that USB-C cables can vary so much in price, from a few dollars to over $100? The folks at Lumafield used an X-ray CT scanner to provide part of the answer. (Spoiler alert: you get what you pay for.)
- And finally, here is a silly new video from Apple to celebrate the power of the A17 Pro chip in the iPhone 15 Pro.