As a resident of New Orleans, a city that unfortunately has had ample experience with hurricanes, I know what it is like to live through a natural disaster. But as Hurricane Helene is reminding us all, you don’t have to live below sea level near the Gulf of Mexico to experience devastating effects from a hurricane. Fortunately, the iPhone can be a big help in these circumstances. Three years ago after Hurricane Ida, I wrote about how the iPhone was incredibly valuable and shared some advice for using the Messages app to communicate with family and friends when cellular service is overloaded and many cell towers are down. For folks who have been suffering from a lack of cellphone and WiFi service after Hurricane Helene—Kevin Collier of NBC News reports that some areas have had fewer than 10% of cell sites fully functioning—there is a new option: messages via satellite. As Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac reports, there have been numerous reports of people using this feature, and as one person in Asheville, North Carolina, noted: “This is literally saving lives @Apple.” To send a message via satellite, you need to have an iPhone 14 (all models) or later and you need to be running iOS 18. And as Apple explains, you need to be outside with a clear view of the sky and horizon, and the person you are contacting has to be using either an iPhone running iOS 18 (to receive and reply to your message via iMessages) or an iPhone running iOS 17.6 or later or a non-Apple device (to receive and reply to your message via SMS). When Apple first announced the feature, I was thinking of it being most useful when you do an off-the-grid activity like hiking in the mountains. But after a disaster, when the power is out and cell towers are not working well or at all, I now see that this feature can be just as useful in an urban environment. I would have loved to have had access to a feature like this after Hurricane Ida. and I’m so glad that I will have it in the future. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- Yesterday, Apple released iOS 18.0.1 for the iPhone and iPadOS 18.0.1 for the iPad. Chance Miller of 9to5Mac discusses what is new. I know that many owners of an iPad Pro with an M4 chip (the newest model) have been unable to use iOS 18 since it came out over two weeks ago, and this update should finally fix that. There are other updates too, like watchOS 11.0.1 and visionOS 2.0.1.
- The Audio Mix feature on iPhone 16 models is really neat, as I noted in my review of the iPhone 16 Pro Max. Tim Hardwick of MacRumors explains how to use the feature.
- I still haven’t decided what I think about the new Photographic Styles feature of Photos, but Filipe Espósito of 9to5Mac explains why this is his favorite feature of the iPhone 16.
- I love the Camera Control button on the iPhone 16. John Gruber of Daring Fireball recommends a recent episode of the Design Tangents podcast, a podcast hosted by Evan Orensten and Josh Rubin (founders of the Cool Hunting website), in which they interview Johnnie Manzari and Rich Dinh of Apple to discuss the Camera Control. I haven’t listened to this one yet, but it looks like it could be good.
- Federico Viticci of MacStories explains why after five years of using “Pro” models of the iPhone, this time he instead purchased the iPhone 16 Plus. If you are trying to decide which iPhone 16 model to get, you should check out his reasons. For me, I prefer the Pro model because of the 5x telephoto lens, the Always On display with support for Stand By mode, the better display with ProMotion, the better video recording with Dolby Vision up to 4K at 120 fps, and the support for USB 3 (which I used to quickly transfer home movies or other video from my Mac to my iPhone).
- Aman Kumar of How-To Geek recommends 12 features of iOS 18.0 to check out.
- At some point this month, Apple will release iOS 18.1. Tim Hardwick of MacRumors highlights some of the expected big features in that upcoming release.
- Everyone has different ears, so while Apple’s AirPods Pro are a great fit for some folks, for others they don’t work well. If you fall in that category, John Moltz writes in an article for Macworld that the AirPods 4 are worth checking out.
- I know that some people have been able to locate a stolen car when there is an AirTag in the vehicle, but Marko Zivkovic of AppleInsider reports that police found a stolen Ferrari worth over half a million dollars by tracking the owner’s AirPods, which were in the car when it was stolen. Better yet, when the police pulled over the car, the suspect escaped but left his iPhone behind, allowing the police to identify the thief when he was later arrested for stealing another car.
- One week ago, I recommended using the Juno app for the Apple Vision Pro to view 3D content on YouTube. If you own a Vision Pro, I hope you took advantage of my recommendation when I made it because as July Clover of MacRumors reports, YouTube forced Apple to remove the app from the App Store. If you don’t already have the app, you can no longer get it. As John Gruber of Daring Fireball reports, this is the second time that the same developer, Christian Selig, has had Apple remove one of his well-reviewed apps from the App Store because of a complaint by a service provider. (Selig used to make the beloved Reddit client Apollo.) If you want to view 3D content from YouTube on a Vision Pro and you don’t already have Juno, I don’t know what else to suggest since YouTube itself doesn’t yet make a native Vision Pro app.
- William Gallagher of AppleInsider reports that Wolfs, a movie that debuted last week on Apple TV+ starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney, was the most watched new movie ever on the service. Of course, there haven’t been that many new movies on Apple TV+, but clearly this movie is popular, and Apple is already planning a sequel. I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet and have other plans this weekend, but this one is on my short list.
- And finally, there is a limited series coming to Apple TV+ starring Billy Crystal, but don’t get ready to laugh. The show, called Before, is a psychological thriller in which Crystal plays a child psychiatrist, and it is interesting to see Crystal playing such a drmatic role. As the preview video shows, this is not a remake of When Harry Met Sally: