We learned this week that September 9 is the day when Apple will announce the new iPhone for 2024. And as I explained earlier this week, while you are marking your calendar, you might also want to do so for September 9 in 2025 and 2026 as well. There are lots of rumors on what we might see, Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac does a good job of running them all down. Of course, we will see a new iPhone, and it is rumored to have a slightly larger display, more RAM (which will be helpful for handling on-device AI), a faster processor, new colors including a brown/tan/bronze color, 5x optical zoom on the entry-level models, better low light photography, and more. But the rumor that has intrigued me the most is a new physical button on the side of the iPhone that would serve as a shutter button to instantly take a picture without the need to launch the Camera app first. It is rumored to have some neat features such as the ability to focus by pressing the button lightly (similar to a half-press of the button on an SLR camera), take a picture by pressing it all the way, and zooming in and out by swiping left and right. Considering that it would be more accurate to call my iPhone an iCamera since I use it to take pictures frequently, the rumor of a shutter button has me intrigued. We might also see new models of the AirPods, a new Apple Watch that is thinner with a larger screen, a new iPad mini, and who knows what else. It is all coming in less than ten days, and I'm very excited about the announcements. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- David Sparks of MacSparky discusses the rumor that Apple is about to release a second version of the AirPods Max. I have never had a need for an AirPods Max and they are too expensive to buy on a lark, but I've always thought that they might be fun to have in certain circumstances.
- Joe Rossignol of MacRumors wonders whether we will see a new Apple TV in 2024, and suggests that a new model could include a camera for videoconferencing. Using a current Apple TV with an iPhone provides great quality for videochats with friends and family, but getting the iPhone connected to the Apple TV is a little complicated. Having a single unit with the camera built-in would be much nicer and easier to use.
- This past week, Hawaii added support for storing a driver's license in the iPhone's wallet app. Unfortunately, as reported by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, you still need to have your physical ID with you when you are driving. Wallet support in Hawaii, like some other states, is offered as a convenience, not as a replacement. Here in Louisiana where I live, we have a digital wallet app called LA License that works just like a physical license so you can drive a car with just the digital license. It even works with TSA at a large number of airports, but TSA requires that you also have a physical ID when you travel.
- Dan Moren of Six Colors believes that despite the potential for Apple to do so much more with Apple Books, the company instead seems to be headed in the wrong direction.
- If you ever bring in your iPhone to be fixed and the Apple Store decides to replace it instead of fixing it, Apple is likely giving you a refurbished unit. That shouldn't be a problem in most circumstances, but as Finn Voorhees explains, he could no longer use Snapchat when he got his replacement iPhone. Although the contents of the phone were erased, Snapchat was apparently still associating a hardware number for the device with a previous user that it had banned.
- Apple says that AirTags are not designed for tracking people or pets, but people still do it. William Gallagher of AppleInsider reports on a woman in Illinois who put an AirTags in her kindergarten son's backpack, and it is a good thing that she did so because the school lost track of her boy and she was able to track him to a school bus and find him again.
- Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reports that new immersive content is coming to the Apple Vision Pro soon, including a short film called 4 Minutes Inside Super Bowl LVIII.
- Ted Lasso is coming back! Michaela Zee of Variety reports that Season 4 of Ted Lasso is now being planned. Warner Bros. has picked up the options on British actors Hannah Waddingham, Brett Goldstein, and Jeremy Swift, and the actors who are part of SAG here in the U.S. will presumably be put under contract next. Jason Sudeikis is expected to have a much more limited role, and Phil Dunster (who played Jamie Tart) may be tied up on other projects, but as long as we have most of the cast along with the same great writing, Season 4 should be great fun to watch. Believe!
- I have not yet watched the Napoleon movie on Apple TV+, in part because of the mixed reviews. I heard that it was a beautiful movie, but that much of the plot had to be cut out to reduce the running-time of the movie, making it seem more disjointed. As reported by Matt Grobar of Deadline, Apple has now released a Director's Cut version of the movie that adds 48 more minutes for a new running time of almost three and a half hours. So this is the version that I plan to watch, perhaps breaking it into a few different nights as if it were a mini-series.
- And finally, Season 4 of the fantastic Apple TV+ show Slow Horses debuts in just a few days on September 4, and here is a short, fun, spoiler-free video to get you ready:
