Brett and I start this week’s episode of the In the News podcast discussing the technology that made it possible for The Beatles to release one last song, and then we turn our attention to the Apple event planned for Monday night. Neither of us has a good idea for why Apple made the change to an after-hours event. Maybe Apple is just trying to mix things up? We also discuss the recent release of iOS 17.1 and what is coming next in iOS 17.2. We also discuss iPhone sales, what is coming in smart home technology, Apple services price hikes, USB-C cables, and more.
In our Where Y’at segment, we share the story of a man who recovered his Apple Watch Ultra after being at the bottom of a lake for three months.
This week’s episode is sponsored by Lit Software, the company behind must-have apps for many lawyers such as TrialPad and TranscriptPad. Today, we discuss a way that a law firm can purchase 10 or more licenses at once, which can not only provide a significant discount but also makes it easier to manage all of the different licenses. Learn more at the Lit Software website.
In our In the Know segment, Brett explains what happens when you press your fingers on the end of AirPods Pro and how you can adjust that as a result of recent changes. I explain a new feature in iOS 17.1 that makes it easy to extend a picture so that it works great for wallpaper or a contact photo on the iPhone.
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.
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.
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.
Brett and I start this week’s episode of the In the News podcast discussing surprises. First, many folks are being surprised by Apple’s new 3D reactions while in video calls, so we discuss what will happen and how you can control it. Second, virtually everyone was surprised to see Apple announce a new product this week: the Apple Pencil (USB-C). We also discuss iOS 17.1 (expected to come out in just a few days), how Wi-Fi will soon change substantially because of the new 6 GHz band, using Generative AI to make pictures better fit an iPhone screen, and much more.
This week’s episode is sponsored by Lit Software, the company behind must-have apps for many lawyers such as TrialPad and TranscriptPad. I discuss a great new feature in Lit Software that lets you incorporate video with a transcript and why this can be truly game changing, a topic that I also addressed in this post. Learn more at the Lit Software website.
In our In the Know segment, Brett talks about one of my favorite features of TranscriptPad: the ability to quickly search across all of the transcripts in a case. I provide tips for what to do when you are using the Maps feature in CarPlay and your car has trouble figuring out where you are (i.e. the GPS doesn’t work correctly).
Both iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma bring new features to FaceTime and other video apps: 3D reactions. If you do a thumbs up or thumbs down, you will see a similar bubble on the screen. If you do a double thumbs up, fireworks appear behind your head. If you do a double thumbs down, rain appears. If you use two hands to make a heart, floating red hearts appear to come from the center of your hands. A peace sign from one hand results in balloons around you, and from both hands results in confetti. And finally, if you use both hands, palm forward, and fold down your third and fourth fingers to make the Sign of the Horns, lasers go off behind you. It’s cute, but you can turn it off if it is not for you. However, by default, it is turned on, and Jay Peters of The Verge reports that it is surprising some people. Sometimes that is a pleasant, amusing surprise. But in other situations, like a business meeting, you may be embarrassed if you create special effects by mistake. Even worse, some folks have reported being in a remote video therapy session when a hand gesture made during a difficult moment can result in special effects that are exactly the opposite of how you are feeling, interrupting the therapy. Yikes. Jason Snell of Six Colors suggests that Apple should provide more warnings to prevent this. If you want to turn these special effects off, you need to first be in a video call, then activate the Control Center, tap Video Effects, and tap Reactions to toggle the feature off. And now, the news of note from the past week:
iOS 17.1 is expected to be introduced next week. Chance Miller of 9to5Mac explains what will be new.
For many years, Apple and other tech companies have been asking the FCC to let them use the 6GHz band for wireless devices, and Wes Davis of The Verge reports that the FCC granted the request this week. These signals will not go far, but they are high speed, and this spectrum could be perfect for inside of a car or for augmented reality devices. I look forward to seeing what Apple does with this.
And finally, we are three weeks away from Season 4 of For All Mankind, one of my all-time favorite shows on Apple TV+. Here is the Season 4 trailer. If you haven’t started watching the show yet, I recommend that you watch a season each week for the next three weeks so that you are ready on November 10:
Apple introduced the first-generation Apple Pencil in 2015. That is the one that has a cap at the end covering a Lightning connector, and you plug it into the Lightning port of an iPad to charge it. Awkward, but functional. In 2018, Apple introduced the second-generation Apple Pencil. It was a big step forward because that flat edge meant not only that it was less likely to roll off of a table but also it attached magnetically to the top/side of an iPad. Not only is that a convenient place to store the Pencil, but it also charges the Pencil. The second-generation Apple Pencil also added a new gesture: you can double-tap the side of the Pencil to change what the Pencil does. Now that so many years have passed, I have been wishing that Apple will introduce a third-generation Apple Pencil with even more new features.
Apple has not yet done that, but it did introduce a new entry-level Apple Pencil yesterday called the Apple Pencil (USB-C). At only $79 (compared to $99 for the first-generation Pencil and $129 for the second-generation Pencil), it is the least expensive Apple Pencil ever. The new Apple Pencil works with every iPad model that has USB-C: the iPad Pro 12.9″ third-generation (released in 2018) and later; any model of the iPad Pro 11″; the iPad Air fourth-generation (released in 2020) and later; the iPad tenth-generation (released in 2022); and the iPad mini sixth-generation (released in 2021).
Unlike the other two models, this entry-level Apple Pencil lacks pressure sensitivity, so you cannot change the width of a brush depending upon how much pressure you apply on the iPad screen. Artists will miss that feature, but if you are just taking notes and annotating documents, that feature is not very valuable. I rarely ever use it myself.
The new Apple Pencil gets 50% of the design advantage of the side of the second-generation Apple Pencil. I say that because just like the second-generation model, this new model has a flat side and contains a magnet, so you can attach it to the side of an iPad for easy storage (plus that flat side makes it less likely that the Pencil will roll around on a table). That’s good. But it is just a magnet, so the new Apple Pencil does not charge when it is attached to an iPad, nor does it wirelessly pair to an iPad by being attached to the iPad.
Instead of magnetic charging, the new Apple Pencil charges at the end, but does so in a way that seems better than the first-generation Pencil. With the original Apple Pencil, you remove a cap to charge via Lightning, and the cap could get lost. With this new Apple Pencil, you slide back back the cap (so it stays attached) to reveal a USB-C port. This is still far less elegant than charging when attached to the side of an iPad, but that is one of the trade-offs for saving $50.
The new Apple Pencil does support the hover feature of the second-generation Apple Pencil that was introduced with the 2022 version of the iPad Pro (the one with an M2 processor). However, it does not support double-tap to switch tools, which I think most folks would use more than hover. Frankly, if you have already spent the money on an iPad Pro, you would be much happier spending the extra $50 to get the second-generation Apple Pencil with both magnetic charging and double-tap support. Nevertheless, by adding hover support to this new Pencil, Apple is indicating that hover support is coming in the future to less-expensive models of the iPad.
Indeed, I think that a primary reason that Apple developed this new Apple Pencil is that it is a better solution for the least expensive iPad: the iPad (10th generation) introduced in 2022, which starts at $449. That iPad uses USB-C instead of Lightning but doesn’t support the second-generation Apple Pencil. You can use the first-generation Apple Pencil but you have to use a USB-C to Lightning dongle to charge, which is an extremely awkward solution. All of this makes me wonder why this new Apple Pencil was introduced yesterday instead of on October 18, 2022, when the iPad (10th generation) was introduced. But hey, better late than never.
I love my Apple Pencil and use it almost every day to take handwritten notes, highlight and annotate documents, and more. But I frequently talk to attorneys and others who use an iPad and don’t see a need for an expensive stylus. If that sounds like you, then perhaps the $79 selling price will make this the perfect Apple Pencil for you. You don’t get the advanced features of the second-generation Apple Pencil (pressure sensitivity, magnetic pairing and charging, double-tap to change tools) but you do get a stylus that is made by Apple, so it is likely to work better than any third-party stylus, at the lowest price ever. I’m sure that this new Apple Pencil will do a great job for taking notes and annotating documents.
Meanwhile, I’ll continue to hope that Apple is working on an even better Apple Pencil (an Apple Pencil Pro?) with even more features.
The smart folks at Lit Software have been making top-quality apps for lawyers who use iPads since the year that the first iPad was introduced in 2010. My favorite has always been TranscriptPad because I often work with deposition transcripts. A recent update to the app adds the ability to work with video when that is available. I’ve been trying it out for a few months, and it is very impressive. Whenever you feed a transcript and a video into the app, the app can automatically sync the audio and video—a process for which video professionals will sometimes charge around $75/hour. Better yet, you can easily edit deposition excerpts to create the perfect edited video to present to a jury, to a judge, at mediation, to a client, etc. And you can do it all yourself, without having to wait for or rely on anyone else to make precisely the edits that you want.
Adding video to a deposition
After you have imported your transcript in the app, press the new icon at the top of the screen that looks like a monitor to import the video. The import process will link that video to the transcript that you are viewing. Follow the directions for the next few steps, and then you will see a circle with a percentage so you can see how much longer it will take to import the video:
What takes place during this import process is pretty sophisticated. First, the app transcribes the raw speech. Next, the app uses Natural Language Processing to further improve the accuracy in synchronizing the speech with the words in the transcript. Next, the app uses AI technology to account for similar words with the same meaning, just in case the person says something and the transcript gets it slightly wrong. (I’m amazed how often this happens; you assume that the written transcript is 100% accurate, but then you go back and listen to the video and hear that there are minor differences.)
All of this takes place on your iPad—not in the cloud—so newer and better iPads with more sophisticated processors will be faster than older iPads. On my fifth generation iPad Pro 12.9″ (the one that was released in 2021), the process took long enough for me to set aside my iPad and let it do its work while I turned my attention to something else, but not very long.
When this process is done, you can review your transcript just like you normally do in TranscriptPad with one big difference: you will also see video at the top.
At any point, you can tap the icon at the top that shows a monitor with a play button to play the video and have the transcript move automatically as the video progresses. While video is playing, you can scroll up and down to jump to another part of the deposition and the video will quickly jump to that point as well.
Even if this is as much as you do with this new feature, it is really nice. It gives you the ability to not just read the words in the transcript but also hear them spoken and see the witness say them. Sometimes, the manner in which something is said is just as important as what is said, and you don’t miss any of that thanks to this new feature as long as you had a video created at the time of the deposition.
Create video excerpts
When you are ready to show off the video to someone else, TranscriptPad has great tools for doing so. Perhaps you want to create a short video clip of a few questions and answers to share it with your client. Or maybe you want to select the most relevant parts of a deposition to show at a mediation or at trial. No matter what you need to do, TranscriptPad can handle it.
To create video excerpts, simply tap the line in the transcript for the start and the end of a clip—the same process that you do in TranscriptPad to highlight, assign issue codes, etc. Then tell the app that you want to create a video clip. You can follow step-by-step directions in this second blog post from the developer.
When you select the first video clip, you need to assign a name like “Mediation” or “Trial” or “Testimony on Causation.” Next, select the next set of question(s) and answer(s) that relates to that issue and assign the same name. Keep going until you have everything relevant designated.
Next you have two choices. The easy choice is to just export a video and save it in your Photos. Then, you can watch it and see how it looks. If everything is good, then you are done.
Although you can often stop there, I find that you get a better result if you edit, more precisely, where the video starts and stops. The app includes an easy-to-use editor that allows you to pick the perfect start and stop point for each video. There is even an audio waveform at the bottom so that you can see whenever there is noise, so your editing can be very precise—starting or stopping the video after a specific word, or even after an “umm” or a cough.
Once you have edited each clip as appropriate, you can export the total video that contains just the relevant parts. The quality of the video is excellent. The witness is shown at the top, and the words from the deposition are shown at the bottom as the witness is speaking.
Best of all, if you want to change anything, it easy to do so. Just add more designations (taking the time to precisely end the start and stop point, if you want) or delete ones that you no longer need, and then export the video again.
iPad and Mac
Although I primarily use these apps on my iPad, the Lit Suite apps also work on a Mac. Because I store my TranscriptPad depositions in iCloud, I can start working with a video deposition on my iPad, then work with it on my Mac, then go back to my iPad.
Pricing
There is no extra cost for this or any other new feature added to the Lit Software apps. When you pay for an annual subscription to LitSuite—which I believe is currently $399—you get access to all of the developer’s apps for your iPad: TrialPad, TranscriptPad, DocReviewPad, and ExhibitsPad. The company is currently working on its next new app that will be part of the bundle: TimelinePad.
If you want to pay for access for 10 or more users in a single law firm, you can take advantage of the Enterprise Program, with discounts of up to 50% for the first year with a three-year license.
Conclusion
The developer of this app notes that by syncing video/audio to a transcript on your own, you can save money. I’m sure that is true and will be a selling point for many. But for me, the real advantage is total control. I’ve been involved in many trials where late night changes needed to be made to video excerpts and it can be inefficient to have to wait for a graphics professional to implement the needed changes. With this new feature in TranscriptPad, an attorney or a paralegal can create the perfect edits right on an iPad or Mac, without the need to involve anyone else. It is the same reason that many attorneys prefer using TrialPad on their own iPad rather than hire a graphics professional to present evidence at trial.
Moreover, because working with video becomes so much easier thanks to this new feature, you may find that you will start to use videos for depositions in settings in which previously it was not worth the trouble. Favorable witness testimony comes to life even more when it is presented in a video format. And impeachment can be more effective as well, with video sometimes showing how a person was uncomfortable with their answer even though the words on a black-and-white transcript won’t show that.
Adding support for video is a great feature update for the already outstanding TranscriptPad app.
This article won the LitigationWorld Pick of the Week award on October 24, 2023. The editors of LitigationWorld, a free weekly email newsletter for litigators and others who work in litigation, give this award to one article every week that they feel is a must-read for this audience.
Your new iPhone comes with a USB-C cord, but how many watts should you use for your power adapter? Brett and I start today’s episode of the In the News podcast by tackling that question. We then discuss faster 5G in the new iPhones, how to clean any model iPhone, advanced video features in the newest iPhones, tips for using and changing the face on an Apple Watch, and more.
In our In the Know segment, Brett discusses sharing a virtual business card between two iPhones running iOS 17. I discuss Stage Manager on the iPad, including why it is worth giving this feature a second look even if—like me—you were not a fan in iPad OS 16.
The iPhone 15 Pro supports log video recording. If you don’t know what that is, then you don’t need to worry about it … it wasn’t designed for you. But if you are still curious about what this means (like I was), Stu Maschwitz of Prolost wrote a great post that tells you everything that you might want to know about log and LUTs. In short, the idea is that serious video professionals can now use the iPhone along with other, far more expensive, videocameras because it is now possible to sync up the color profiles. As a result, an item that looks a certain shade of blue when filmed with one camera will look the same way when it is filmed with an iPhone, so the editor has the freedom to switch back and forth between the different recordings. It also allows pros to make their videos look even better with more compelling colors. Even though none of this directly affects me, I have no doubt that as Apple pays more attention to the needs of professional users, good stuff will trickle down to folks like me who appreciate great pictures and videos but are just doing this for fun. And now, the news of note from the past week:
What to clean the outside of your iPhone? This page on Apple’s website explains how to do so safely.
Glenn Fleishman of TidBITS wrote a detailed description of the new Check In feature of iOS 17, the digital version of “call me when you get there so that I know that you arrived safely.”
If you select the right photo for your Apple Watch clock face, you can create some pretty interesting watch faces, as journalist Harry McCracken showed off this week on Mastodon. Check out these: Porky Pig Opera, TRS-80, Classic Mac, Newton, etc.
Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reports that if you have a smart garage door (and many models have this feature even if you don’t know it), you may soon be able to open and close the door via the Honda and Acura apps in CarPlay.
Director Ridley Scott’s new movie Napoleon comes to theaters on November 22, 2023. But after that, it will come to Apple TV+, and William Gallagher of AppleInsider reports that Scott is working on a director’s cut version that is about four hours long and will hopefully come to Apple TV+ as well.
And finally, if you want to get some work done but find it too quiet to work all by yourself, how about a virtual study buddy? Apple released a video this week called Study With Me featuring Storm Reid (who is a college student at USC). There is a brief introduction and then a 90 minute video in which you see Storm get her work done for 25 minutes (with background music), then take a five minute break, in three cycles. I guess the idea is that you might play this on your iPad or on your TV while you get work done on another device. Seems like a nice idea for people who like to have a little background noise while they get work done. The video is incredibly well produced, and it features a few surprises along the way. I suspect that if this one gets lots of views, Apple will release others:
We begin this week’s episode of the In the News podcast by discussing a recent update to iOS and what it means for the iPhone 15 Pro. Then we discuss what some of the pros think about taking pictures with the new pro iPhones, the USB-C port on the new iPhones, and StandBy mode in iOS 17. We talk about the very first Apple Watch (may it rest in peace) and the new double-tap gesture for the newest Apple Watch. We also discuss the latest version of tvOS, happy tears, and more.
This episode is sponsored by SaneBox. This week, Brett and I discuss how you can save significant time by using SaneBox and explain the different plans that are offered and provide advice on picking the plan that makes the most sense for you. Go to sanebox.com/inthenews to sign up for a free trial and get a $25 credit toward a SaneBox subscription.
In our In the Know segment, Brett discusses the new crosswords in the News+ app, including why they are especially appealing to people who do not do crosswords very often. I go deep on what is new in the People and Pets feature on the Photos app on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
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:
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.
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:
