Apple released the first public beta versions of iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 this week. If you are curious to get a preview of the new features coming this Fall but don’t want something that is quite as buggy as the beta releases aimed at developers, the public beta may be the sweet spot for you. Jason Snell and Dan Moren used the release of the first public beta versions as a good excuse to provide a hands-on preview of many of the new features that are coming—at least, those that are available in the beta version. This excludes, for example, Apple Intelligence, which is not coming out until later this year. Here is Dan Moren’s look at the iOS 18 public beta and Jason Snell’s look at the iPadOS 18 public beta. Even if you don’t plan on installing any beta software this summer, these articles provide a nice preview of what is coming for everyone soon. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- Christopher Lawley has an interesting video interview with two Apple executives, Jenny Chen and Ty Jordan, to discuss Smart Script and Math Notes—two incredible things that you can do with an iPad and an Apple Pencil in iPadOS 18.
- My favorite smart home devices are my Lutron Caséta switches, which are available on Amazon. I last wrote about them eight months ago when I reviewed the new Lutron Caséta Diva Smart Dimmer Switch and Claro Smart Switch, both of which were great for me. Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reports that Lutron has expanded the line to announce a smart dimmer with ELV+ support (which means it works with lots of low voltage configurations, and thus works with nearly all residential lighting types and loads) and new colors for the simple Pico Paddle Remotes.
- I’ve written before about making a portable version of the HomePod mini by connecting an external battery so that I can take it outside. I don’t do this very often—just a few times a year—but it works well for me when I do so. Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reviews a battery that is made to work with a HomePod mini from a company called PlusAcc, and he says that this approach gets the job done. It is $44 on Amazon.
- Speaking of the HomePod mini, if you haven’t gotten one yet because the space gray option wasn’t quite doing it for you, Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac reports you can now get the very similar but slightly bluer color called midnight. But chances are, most people will just call them both black.
- My favorite app for listening to podcasts is Overcast. To celebrate the app turning 10 years old, the developer, Marco Arment, rewrote most of the app in Swift, Apple’s modern programming language. As a result, the app is much faster and more responsible. Better yet, it has a great new look and lots of new improvements, all of which are described in this post. I’ve been using the new version for a few days, and I absolutely love it.
- At the beginning, the iPhone was only available on AT&T, and there are still tons of iPhone owners who use AT&T. So it was unfortunate to see the recent news that AT&T was hacked, with the bad guys getting access to information on who users called during a certain period of time. John Gruber of Daring Fireball argues that this is a reason why Apple should have declined to support RCS—the new standard that will make it easier to send text messages to non-iPhone users because of better picture and video support and more—because while RCS has more features than traditional SMS, it doesn’t support end-to-end encryption. Thus, there is a real risk of future successful hacks. Gruber presents an interesting argument.
- The Emmy nominations came out this week, and Apple TV+ earned 72 nominations, the most ever for the streaming service. Sixteen shows were honored, including The Morning Show, Palm Royale, Lessons in Chemistry, Slow Horses, Loot, Hijack, The Reluctant Traveller With Eugene Levy, and more. The winners will be announced on Sunday, September 15.
- The quality of Apple TV+’s original programming is outstanding, but I also like it when Apple brings a select set of older movies to Apple TV+ for a limited time. Lucas Shaw and Thomas Buckley of Bloomberg report that Apple is talking to major studios to explore doing even more of that.
- When watchOS 11 comes out in a few months, Apple will encourage people to sleep with an Apple Watch to feed data into the new Vitals app. Jessica Rendall of CNet interviewed Apple’s VP of Health, Dr. Sumbul Desai, to learn more about this app.
- If you own an Apple Vision Pro, it is always great when Apple releases new immersive content. Yesterday, Apple released the first episode of a new series called Boundless, a six-minute movie in which you take a hot-air balloon ride over Turkey. It’s stunning; I only wish it were longer. Apple also announced this week that other new content is coming in August and September with even more coming later this year. As Jason Snell of Six Colors notes: “This is good. I want more, the more the better, and I’m glad Apple is announcing this stuff in advance instead of leaving us to wait and wonder why there isn’t more content available for the Vision Pro.”
- Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac notes that the AirPods Pro 2 will get even better in a few months with iOS 18 because they will gain new features such as nodding or shaking your head to respond to Siri and voice isolation to improve phone call audio quality in a noisy environment.
- A swimmer in Australia realized that he was being carried out to sea and could not swim back to shore. Fortunately, he was wearing an Apple Watch, and as Hannah Ross of ABC North Coast reports, he managed to call emergency services. It took a rescue helicopter an hour to get to him, but he was able to stay on the line and talk to someone the entire time until he was rescued.
- Charles Martin of Apple Insider writes about a man who lost his Apple Watch in the British Virgin Islands while swimming. Eighteen months later, someone found his watch and it was still working and displayed information on the owner, and as a result, the owner recovered his watch when someone sent it back to him.
- Juli Clover of MacRumors reviews the Bird Buddy, a bird feeder that sends pictures and videos of birds to your iPhone. The version with a solar roof is $239 on Amazon. This looks really fun, but I don’t think that I have a location in my yard to put it where it wouldn’t attract squirrels.
- I no longer have a need for an iPod in my life because of the other Apple products that I use, but the idea of a small and powerful device is still intriguing. That is the thinking behind tinyPod, a small device that surrounds an Apple Watch and adds a scroll wheel to create a product that seems similar to an iPod. I don’t know how well it works, but they get points for creativity.
- My father is an architect, so I grew up reading magazines like Architectural Digest that featured amazing pictures of stunning houses. William Gallagher of Apple Insider reports that Laureen Powell Jobs, widow of Steve Jobs, recently paid $70 million to purchase a home in the Pacific Heights region of San Francisco that was first built in 1916 and extensively renovated in the 2010s. Architectural Digest called it the most beautiful house in America. For example, one side of the house has four stories of glass that present an incredible view of San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. It also has a pretty amazing interior courtyard.
- And finally, in 2019, Apple released a video called The Underdogs that told the story of a scrappy team of office workers with a chance to sell their great idea. The point of the video is to show off how the iPad and other Apple products can be used to get work done. Apple followed up in 2020 with a sequel in which the same characters used Apple technology to work from home during the pandemic. The third installment came in 2022 to coincide with workers returning to their offices after the pandemic. (Apple has removed the first three videos from YouTube, but someone put them together into this video.) In 2023, Apple released the fourth video, Swiped Mac, in which the characters worked together to find a stolen Mac. And now, the team is back with a fifth video called OOO (Out of Office) in which they travel to Thailand and use all sorts of Apple technology to get the project done—even the new Apple Vision Pro. Here is the video: