Month: July 2024

As we get closer to the release of Apple’s new operating systems this Fall, in this week’s episode of the In the News podcast Brett and I discuss text formatting and other changes coming to the Messages app and some great new features coming to the Apple Watch. Next, we explain why it is now possible to run Windows 95 on an iPad, discuss aperture on an iPhone, including how and why it may become more adjustable on the iPhone in the future, Apple Maps in a browser, calling 911, and more.

In our Where Y’at? segment, we discuss why Find My is turned off in South Korea.

In our In the Know segment, Brett has a great tip for switching tabs in Safari on an iPhone, and I discuss changing alarm settings including the chime used to wake you up.

Click here to listen to the audio podcast, or just listen using your podcast player of choice. You can also watch the episode on YouTube:

I often share interesting stories of Find My being used to recover a lost iPhone, but apparently, there is a reason that none of those stories come from South Korea. William Gallagher of AppleInsider reports that Apple disables the Find My service when an iPhone is in South Korea. The Apple website page on Find My says: “The Find My network isn’t supported in South Korea and might be unavailable in other regions due to local laws. In South Korea, you can play a sound on your device, mark it as lost, or erase it, but you won’t be able to find your device on a map.” At first, I thought that the reference to “local laws” meant that Find My was somehow prohibited by government regulation. But it isn’t that—indeed, a similar feature is available in South Korea on Samsung phones. Instead, Gallagher says that the issue is that “South Korea law can be read as saying that all location data must be stored for six months, with an implication that the government must be able to access.” Apparently, Apple doesn’t want to risk turning on the Find My service and then finding itself in a position where it needs to violate the privacy of an iPhone owner. Very interesting. And now, the news of note from the last week:

• Wes Davis of The Verge reports that you can now use an app called UTM SE to run Windows XP on an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Vision Pro. It’s slow, but it works.
• William Gallagher of AppleInsider reports that iOS 18 will add support for Emergency SOS video so that a person who is stranded can show first responders their condition and environment. I have never had to call 911, so it didn’t ever occur to me that video has not worked with 911 in the past.
• There is a rumor that the next iPhone will include some mechanical control for the lens aperture. I don’t know if that is true or not, but Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac does an excellent job explaining how depth of field is handled on current iPhones and how it might be handled in the future if this rumor is true. The article does a great job of explaining how iPhone photography works.
• If you like to use the Apple Maps service and want to use it on a computer, even a PC, Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reports that Apple has launched a public beta of an online version of Apple Maps that works in certain browsers: Chrome and Edge on a PC, and Safari and Chrome on a Mac.
• A new Apple Vision Pro environment launched this week called Lake Vrangla, which transports you to Norway, as reported by Chance Miller of 9to5Mac.
• Justin Meyers of Gadget Hacks explains how the new text editing and text effects features will work in the Messages app in iOS 18. Prepare to see things like bold, italics, and underline in text messages, along with new animations.
• Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac explains why his favorite new features in the upcoming watchOS 11 are Smart Stack with Live Activities, Pasuing Activity Rings, and setting custom Activity goals.
• James Bentley of iMore reports that each episode of the upcoming second season of Severance costs $20 million per episode to make. By comparison, the article says that Breaking Bad cost $3 million per episode and the final season of Game of Thrones cost $15 million episode. I loved Season 1 of Severance and cannot wait for Season 2. And I know nothing about the cost of making TV shows. But Severance doesn’t strike me as the sort of show that would cost more to make the Game of Thrones. Perhaps this means that we will see dragons in Season 2 of Severance? We’ll see.
• And finally, Apple has a new video that emphasizes, rather dramatically, the privacy features in the Safari web browser. The commercial is called Flock and it reminds me of the famous Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds:

 

I love my Apple Vision Pro and use it all the time, but I’m always looking for ways to use it more, especially in my law practice. I’m planning an upcoming presentation on the current uses and, perhaps more importantly, potential future uses of the Apple Vision Pro and similar next-generation spatial computing devices in a law practice as this technology matures. If you are one of the few attorneys using an Apple Vision Pro right now and have any thoughts to share on these issues, I’d love to hear from you on what you are doing now and what you can envision doing in the future. If you want to share, send me a note at jeff@iphonejd.com.

Brett and I begin this week’s episode of the In the News podcast by discussing the global outages on Friday morning. Next, we discuss the iOS and iPad OS 18 betas, sleeping with an Apple Watch, AirPods updates, the Overcast app, Emmy nods for Apple TV+, soaring with an Apple Vision Pro, small iPods of the past and perhaps the future, and iPhone-friendly bird feeders.

In our Where Y’at? segment, we discuss Apple Watches in the ocean.

In our In the Know segment, Brett and I discuss standby mode and the Anker 3-in-1 Magsafe charger.

Click here to listen to the audio podcast, or just listen using your podcast player of choice. You can also watch the episode on YouTube:

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:

Amazon is having its Prime Day sale on July 16 and 17, and there is a big and rare discount on iPads. If you are in the market, this is a great time to buy.

First, you can get the 11″ model of the brand-new iPad Pro M4 for only $929, a discount from $999. If you want the larger 13″ model of the iPad Pro M4 it is only $1198, a discount from $1299. I own the new iPad Pro M4 (I prefer the larger 13″ model) and my review is here. This is by far the best iPad that Apple has ever made, and it is so advanced (for example, it is the first Apple product of any kind to use the M4) that this is a product that you can buy now and use for many, many years and it will still be a powerful machine.

Second, if you want to go the other extreme and get the cheapest iPad, the iPad (10th generation) is only $299, down from $349. I don’t recommend this model if you are looking to get real work done in your legal practice, but for anyone who wants a simple device to watch videos, check emails, and do basic web surfing. Also, this model has the camera is on the long side of the iPad instead of the short side. This makes so much more sense for video conferencing. This is the model that Apple first released in late 2022. This model will not be able to use the upcoming Apple Intelligence, but for basic iPad features for basic users, it is fine. Perfect for younger kids.

Third, if you want the middle of the road iPad, the iPad Air, you can currently get it for $739 instead of $799. That lowest price is for the model with only 128GB, you get a similar discount if you pay $100 more for the 512GB model, and I think you’ll be happier with the extra space.

There are other good deals on Apple items too, such as $50 discounts on many models of the Apple Watch. The newest, top-of-the-line AirPods Pro (2nd generation) are only $169, down from $249.

All of the above links have my Amazon affiliate links in them, so if you use them, you are supporting iPhone J.D. as you take advantage of rare discounts.

We begin this week’s episode of the podcast discussing the possibility that Apple is designing a HomePod with a screen attached. What might that be used for, how much would it cost, and do we want it? We next discuss the upcoming InSight feature for Apple TV+, the next version of the Photos app for the iPhone and iPad, the blockbuster movie from Apple TV+ being released next summer, and more.

In this week’s Where Y’At? segment, we discuss AirTags in cars and campaign signs and the reason that a HomePod might be able to save your life if you have a dog.

In our In the Know segment, Brett discusses sharing an AirTag with someone else. I discuss Recovery Contacts and Recovery Keys.

Click here to listen to the audio podcast, or just listen using your podcast player of choice. You can also watch the episode on YouTube:

For a while now, there has been a rumor that Apple was working on a new product that was similar to a HomePod with a screen attached to it. This week, Filipe Espósito of 9to5Mac noted that the beta version of tvOS 18 has a new hidden interface that supports a touchscreen that the code refers to as “PlasterBoard.” Nobody has a TV set in their living room with a touchscreen on it, so this code suggests that Apple is working on a device that will have an interface similar to tvOS but which has a touchscreen—matching the old rumors of a HomePod with a screen attached to it. On top of that, Mark Gurman of Bloomberg has reported that Apple is working on a table-top robot with a screen, which would seem to match this product if the screen is attached by an arm so that it can move around perhaps so that it always faces you in a kitchen. The combination of the rumors and the code in the beta software makes me think that this might be a real product that Apple is planning to release. Dan Moren of Six Colors has the same thought, and he writes about it in an article for Macworld. Do I need a HomePod with a screen in my life? I’m not sure, but I’m definitely starting to think about it now. And now, the other news of note from the past week:

• One of the things that I am looking forward to in tvOS 18 is Apple’s new InSight feature which will show you information about the show you are watching. The feature is now working in the beta software, and Filipe Espósito shows what it currently looks like. Apparently, for whatever actors are on the screen, you can see a picture of the actor’s face, the real name and the character name, and the music being played during the scene (if any). That looks great.
• Federico Viticci of MacStories says that while the Photos app has a new interface in iOS 18, it is growing on him as he uses the beta software and he likes how it improves the app.
• It was just last week that I mentioned that you could get Apple’s AirPods Max over-the-ear headphones from Amazon for $100 off, selling for only $449. This week, if you select the green or pink model, they are only $398, a substantial discount from the $549 that you will pay at an Apple Store.
• It’s been a frequent topic on iPhone J.D. of late that there are a large number of great shows on Apple TV+. But there are a small number of shows on Apple TV+ that are truly amazing, some of the best of the best. Ted Lasso is certainly on that list, and so is Severance. Thus, I’m excited that Apple announced this week in a new trailer on YouTube that Severance Season 2 will premiere on January 17, 2025. If the sophomore season is as good as the first season was, this will be awesome.
• Severance demonstrates a genre that Applt TV+ has been especially good at: sci-fi. For All Mankind, Foundation, Severance, Silo, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and Dark Matter have all been excellent science fiction series. Constellation was perhaps not as good, but it kept me interested enough to watch it to the end, and Hello Tomorrow! was the only one that I started and never finished. I was thinking about Apple’s excellent job with science fiction shows last night when I watched the first two episodes of Apple’s newest science fiction show: Sunny. It has a great cast, features interesting technology, and it is clear from just a few minutes into the first episode that there seems to be something going on that we may not know about for many episodes (much like Severance). If you enjoy watching science fiction, I recommend that you start watching Sunny and catch up on any of those prior sci-fi shows that you might have missed.
• One thing that Apple TV+ has not yet done is produce a big, summer blockbuster movie. That will change next year when Apple releases in theaters and IMAX the movie F1 starring Brad Pitt and brought to you by Jerry Bruckheimer and Joseph Kosinski who did Top Gun: Maverick. Stewart Clarke of Deadline interviewed Bruckheimer and Kosinski to discuss the movie. Based on their obvious enthusiasm, this could be a very exciting film.
• James Fanelli of the Wall Street Journal reports that a candidate running for a county position in Florida got frustrated when his campaign signs kept getting stolen from an intersection so he put a replacement sign there with an AirTag on it. (It’s unclear how he attached it.) Sure enough, that sign was stolen as well, but he was able to call the police who tracked it to a home where teenagers had been stealing signs.
• William Gallagher of AppleInsider reports that a man in Malaysia had his car stolen after it had been valet parked at a shopping mall. Fortunately, he had an AirTag in the car and was able to track it down and the thief was arrested.
• Juli Clover of MacRumors shares the story of a family in Colorado whose life was saved by a HomePod after their dog started a fire. The dog accidentally started the stove at night, and because some boxes were on the stovetop at the time, they caught fire, triggering a fire alarm. Apparently, that alarm wasn’t loud enough to wake them up, but the HomePod heard the alarm and then sent an alert that did get the attention of the homewoners.
• Eddy Cue is the executive at Apple in charge of most of its services: Apple Music, Apple News, Apple Podcasts, the Apple TV app, Apple TV+, Apple Pay, Apple Card, Maps, Search Ads, Apple’s iCloud services, and Apple’s productivity and creativity apps. He doesn’t do a lot of interviews, but he recently talked to Safwan AhmedMia of the SuperSaf YouTube channel to talk about what he does for Apple. It’s a fun interview with lots of information that I had not heard before, such as the fact Find My started as an idea of an intern at Apple. And like me, Eddy says that he is also really looking forward to Season 2 of Severance.
• And finally, the Apple Vision Pro is going on sale in Australia, so Trevor Long of EFTM (which calls itself “an online Men’s Lifestyle Magazine”) came to Cupertino, California to talk to Apple CEO Tim Cook about the Apple Vision Pro. In the video, Cook does a good job talking about why the Apple Vision Pro is an exciting product, and Cook discusses what he does with his own Vision Pro:

It’s often comforting to hear a familiar voice, and thanks to AI, the voices that we know very well may be around us all of the time even when the owner of that voice is not. In this week’s episode of the In the News podcast, Brett and I start by discussing AI celebrity voices on your iPhone and on TV. Next, we discuss external keyboards for the iPhone, AirPods improvements that are just around the corner, the perennial question of whether you should spend the additional money to purchase AppleCare+, and more.

In our Where Y’at? segment, we discuss the ability of the Apple Watch to tell you that where you are at is on the precipice of a heart attack.

In our In the Know segment, Brett provides advice for selecting text on an iPhone by using Trackpad mode. I recommend three shortcuts for the Notes app that you should learn if you use an iPhone or iPad with an external keyboard.

Click here to listen to the audio podcast, or just listen using your podcast player of choice. You can also watch the episode on YouTube:

ElevenLabs, a company that creates realistic-sounding voices using AI, released a new iPhone app this week called Reader. You can give it any text and it will read the text out loud. We’ve seen this technology for a long time, but what caught my attention is that the app includes four voices that the app calls Iconic Voices: the (licensed) AI voices of Sir Laurence Olivier, James Dean, Burt Reynolds, and Judy Garland. So if you want the app to read you the Wizard of Oz using Judy Garland’s voice, it can do that. In a similar vein, I saw this article in Vanity Fair in which Tom Kludt explains how NBC convinced legendary sportscaster Al Michaels to let the network digitize his voice to use during the upcoming Olympic coverage. The network will offer recaps tailored to your favorite events and it will sound like Al Michaels is providing the narration. The text will be created by an AI that will analyze subtitles and metadata to produce a summary of what happened. NBC says that this could result in millions of different versions of customized recaps. All of this sounds interesting and fun, but of course, the line between appropriate use of this technology and malicious deep fakes is thin. Photoshop has been around for so long that we are way past the days of thinking that you can believe something just because you see what appears to be a picture of it, so perhaps we are ready for this next step forward in the use of AI. I hope so. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Apple recently announced a relationship with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. I think that is a good idea, but the OpenAI company has been the subject of controversy. Thus, I was interested to see the report from Chance Miller of 9to5Mac that Phil Schiller of Apple will have an observer role on OpenAI’s board of directors.
• Fernando Silva of 9to5Mac reviews the Clicks Keyboard, an external keyboard that attaches just below the iPhone.
• Cory Bohon of Gadget Hacks provides a helpful and large list of keyboard shortcuts that you can use when you connect an external keyboard to an iPhone.
• A Dutch cardiologist believes that an Apple Watch can detect heart blockage, a leading cause of heart attacks, as reported by Leander Kahney of Cult of Mac.
• The Apple Vision Pro is now available in China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore. There is a page on the Apple website that shows interesting pictures of people at Apple stores in those countries trying on the device on Day 1.
• Tammy Rogers of iMore reports that an upcoming firmware improvement to the AirPods, now in beta, will vastly improve the microphone audio quality when connected to a Mac.
• In an article for Six Colors and Macworld, Jason Snell points out that when Apple Intelligence is available for the iPhone, we will live in a world in which Siri is much more powerful on some Apple devices than on others, and he shares some thoughts on how that might work. It’s an interesting dilemma.
• Apple’s AirPods Max over-the-ear headphones are currently $100 off at Amazon, selling for only $449. There have been a few rare occasions when I’ve seen the price go a little lower than that, but that’s a great price on this device. I don’t see many people using an AirPods Max, but when I do talk to people who use the product, they consistently tell me that they really like it.
• When you buy an Apple Product, should you purchase Apple Care+? John-Anthony Disotto of iMore used to work at an Apple Genius Bar and he offers his advice. I purchased AppleCare+ for my Apple Vision Pro because it was so expensive and seemed relatively easy to drop and break, and I purchased it for my new iPad Pro M4 13″ for similar reasons. But I typically don’t purchase AppleCare+ when I get a new iPhone each year. It’s not an easy decision, but it is an important one that Apple users need to make all the time.
• Life in Seven Songs is a new podcast from the San Francisco Standard that asks people to identify seven significant signs from their lives, and Episode 3 is an interview with Jony Ive, the former chief designer at Apple. I enjoyed listening to this episode. He describes meeting Steve Jobs for the first time and also talks about his work on the Pixar movie Wall-E.
• For every product that Apple releases, there are many more that never make it out of the labs. D. Griffin Jones of Cult of Mac shows off some interesting prototypes from Apple’s history.
• Will Apple ever make a ring? Malcolm Owen of Apple Insider discusses two decades of rumors and speculation about an Apple ring.
• If you have fond memories of playing Minesweeper on a now-ancient PC, Anna Washenko of Engadget reports that there is a modern version of the game now available for the iPhone from Netflix. The game is free to play (with no ads) if you have a Netflix account. I tried it, and I thought it was fun to play the game again after all of these years.
• Apple TV+ doesn’t disclose the number of subscribers, but Devesh Beri of the Mac Observer reports that JustWatch has come up with its own estimates for all of the streaming services. It believes that Apple TV+ recently surpassed Paramount+ to become the sixth-biggest streaming service in the United States. JustWatch estimates Prime Video and Netflix have over 20% market share, Max around 14%, Disney+ around 11%, Hulu around 10%, and Apple TV+ at 9% and growing.
• And finally, the Notes app from Apple was not very impressive when Apple first released it, but over the years it has gotten better and better, and today it is a fantastic app that I use daily. Stephen Hackett of the 512 Pixels website and many podcasts including Mac Power Users recorded a presentation about the Notes app that he gave to a user group in Texas and it is full of interesting information. I love the subtitle of the presentation: From a Joke App to a Superstar. If you want to go deep on the Notes app, check this one out: