Month: January 2025

The actions and statements of President Trump and those in his administration aimed at undermining equal opportunity and anti-discrimination efforts have increased daily since Inauguration Day, culminating yesterday—as reported by Erica Green of the New York Times and countless others—in the president’s bizarre, baseless, and insulting suggestion that the devastating plane crash into the Potomac River this week was somehow caused by diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. Ariana Baio of the Independent reports that these actions will result in the U.S. State Department significantly downplaying Black History Month when it begins tomorrow. I’m sure that other federal agencies will follow suit. [UPDATE: And less than 12 hours after I wrote that sentence, NBC News is reporting Federal agencies bar Black History Month and other ‘special observances’] Nevertheless, Apple is still recognizing Black History Month, and Apple debuted its 2025 Black Unity Collection this week. The part of that collection that intrigued me the most was the new watch face now available to all Apple Watch owners. It is called Unity Rhythm, and it features custom numerals formed by intertwined threads of red, green, and yellow. The design is impressive. The new watch face uses the watch’s gyroscope so that the colors change as you move your wrist. The design also moves when you touch the watch face. It is a bold and interesting watch face that I encourage you to check out. Sure, you can enable it to show that you support diversity, but it is also just fun to play around with. The only downside is that it reminds me that I wish that Apple would release new watch faces far more frequently and/or allow third parties to create watch faces. This new watch face demonstrates that there is so much potential for watch face creativity. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Apple released iOS 18.3 this past Monday. Juli Clover of MacRumors explains everything that is new—which isn’t much, but there are some tweaks to Apple Intelligence. There are also some critical security updates, including a fix for one actively exploited vulnerability.
• Rumor has it that at some point in 2025, Apple will introduce a new smart home product, something similar to a HomePod with a screen. Jason Snell of Six Colors explains in an article for Macworld that while perhaps it would have been nicer for Apple to have introduced a product like this long ago, this may actually be the perfect time for such a product from Apple because there is no clear leader in the market and a lot of the technology, like the Matter and Thread standards, seems to be maturing.
• Harry McCracken of Fast Company explains why surgeons and other doctors are using the Apple Vision Pro and seeking to expand the use of that device.
• Apple released a new immersive video for the Apple Vision Pro today called Man vs. Beast. It is a 10-minute short film about rodeo bull riders. I was afraid that it might include shots taken by people actually riding the bulls, which would have been nauseating. Instead, the film provides a better-than-front-row seat to the action guaranteed to get your heart beating. It’s worth watching if you have access to an Apple Vision Pro.
• The Apple Vision Pro may be a new device, but much more simple virtual reality devices have been around for some time. Wesley Hilliard explains how to watch some of that legacy content on a Vision Pro.
• As Samsung has done many times in the past when Apple releases a product, Samsung is now copying the Apple Vision Pro. The product, which is still in development, is called Project Moohan, and Samsung has worked closely with Google to develop the product using the upcoming Android XR operating system. According to a video by tech reviewer Marques Brownlee and a related article by Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac, the headset is very similar to an Apple Vision Pro with only minor changes, and much of the user interface is a direct copy of what Apple came up with. That is disappointing. One feature that Samsung is showing off that is not currently a part of the Apple Vision Pro: the ability to press the Gemini button and talk to the AI. This includes asking the AI about something that you are currently looking at. Of course, Apple already has a similar feature for the iPhone 16—you can hold down the Camera Control button and then ask the iPhone to tell you about the places and objects around you—and so I suspect that Apple plans to add this and other Apple Intelligence features to the Vision Pro. Samsung predicts that it will have a product on sale at some point in 2025, but no price has been announced.
• The Super Bowl will occur in my hometown of New Orleans in about a week on February 9. The halftime performer will be Kendrick Lamar, and Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reports that starting on February 6, you will be able to play a special version of the Apple Vision Pro game Synth Riders that lets you move through one of his songs.
• You can also watch the Super Bowl in 4K for free on any Apple device, including the Apple TV, by using the Tubi app, as reported by David Snow of Cult of Mac.
• Chance Miller of 9to5Mac shares his thoughts on how Apple could improve CarPlay.
• Amber Neely of AppleInsider reports that an update to the Netflix app for the iPhone and iPad now lets you download an entire season of a show by pressing one button.
• Abner Li of 9to5Google reports that the Gmail app for the iPhone and iPad has been updated with a new design. I like it.
• Adam Engst of TidBITS compares Grammarly to Apple’s new AI writing tools.
• For the last few years, if you have wanted to watch Major League Soccer, you had to use Apple TV+ to do so. Jason Snell of Six Colors explains that Apple is now making MLS League Pass available as a subscription add-on for users of Xfinity and DirecTV.
• Season 4 of the comedy Mythic Quest is now streaming on Apple TV+. The first two episodes came out this week, and I thought they were very funny. I’m happy to see that even though a lot has changed about the story since Season 1, there are still lots of big laughs. Kelly Woo of Tom’s Guide says that it looks like this will be a good season of the show.
• I haven’t started watching it yet, but Lucy Mangan of The Guardian says that the new Apple TV+ show Prime Target is “like Good Will Hunting meets The Bourne Identity” and is both “utterly preposterous and brilliant fun.” It’s on my list.
• For those having difficulty deciding whether to carry around an iPhone or a banana, you’ll love this post from Lewis Wallace of Cult of Mac.
• And finally, 15 years ago this week, Apple launched the iPad. The Apple keynote during which Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone may have been the best one ever, but I think that this was the second best. Steve Jobs was noticeably frail from his health problems, but his enthusiasm for what Apple was introducing was palpable. The video is also interesting to watch because as Jobs shows off the very first iPad interface and apps, you cannot help but think about how far we have come. Steve Jobs asked during that presentation: “Is there room for a third category of device in the middle, something that is between a laptop and a smartphone?” Clearly, the answer is yes, and I use my iPad virtually every day. Here is that introduction video:

Thank you to SaneBox for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month. SaneBox is a service that changes your relationship with email. Looking at your Inbox no longer means having to weed through tons of messages that you don’t need right and now may not want at all. Instead, when you open your Inbox, you essentially see just the good stuff that matters.

How does SaneBox do this? Less important emails, such as newsletters, are moved to subfolders so that you can deal with them when you have time, and it is often faster to deal with all of those at once. And if you tell SaneBox that there is an email sender from which you never want to see email again, those go to the Black Hole folder.

If this general approach sounds familiar, it should. Apple started doing something sort of similar in iOS 18.2, where it tries to manage your mailbox by sorting messages. However, the way that SaneBox does this is infinitely better than what you get in iOS—just like many other third-party apps for things like calendars, podcasts, reminders, passwords, etc., are much more sophisticated than Apple’s built-in apps.

First, the mail sorting feature introduced iOS 18.2 only applies to the iPhone, so when you use a Mac or an iPad, you don’t see it at all. SaneBox works at the mail server level so it works no matter what you use to read your email—iPhone, iPad, Mac, PC, Apple Watch, etc.

Second, SaneBox gives you complete control over how the sorting takes place, and as I’ve explained in the past, that makes all of the difference. For example, if SaneBox moves a newsletter into its @SaneLater folder, but you know that this one particular newsletter is important to you and that you want it to always stay in the Inbox so that you see it right away, simply drag an email containing the newsletter from @SaneLater to your Inbox. That’s it. That teaches SaneBox that you want future issues of that newsletter to go to your Inbox.

The end result is that SaneBox lets you avoid the distraction of dozens of non-essential emails in your Inbox. Instead, your Inbox just contains the few messages that really matter, the ones that you want to know about and/or need to act upon. When you have more time, you can click the sub-folder in your Inbox into which SaneBox stores items like email newsletters—things that you want to see at some point, but there is no urgency to read right away. Or you can click the sub-folder in your Inbox into which SaneBox filters items to be read later. For me, these are mostly junk messages missed by my email’s built-in spam filter. For unwanted items, you can drag them over into your @SaneBlackHole folder, which teaches SaneBox’s brain that you never want to see items from that sender ever again.

SaneBox offers much more than what I’ve just described. For example, it can remind you when you haven’t received a response to an email, and it can filter emails in countless other ways. But those core features make the process of reading your email so much faster and so much less annoying.

I’ve been paying for and using SaneBox for over two years, and I find the service well worth it. For my iPhone J.D. emails, when I look at the Inbox, I can quickly focus on the messages that matter the most to me, such as a reader sending in a suggestion with a news story for my Friday In the News post or interactions with someone who matters to me. From time to time, I look at the other folders used by SaneBox, and I can quickly deal with those emails, but they are virtually always the emails that don’t really matter to me. For my Gmail account, SaneBox has been a lifesaver. I use Gmail when I make purchases from websites, stores, services, etc., and as a result, there is so much in there that I don’t really care about. But I don’t want to miss my Gmail emails that do matter. Before I started using SaneBox, I would open up Gmail and see over a hundred messages, most of which didn’t really matter to me. Now, I often see less than 10 messages in my Inbox. Every few days, I’ll take the time to look at the folders used by SaneBox, and I can easily read things that I want to see or quickly delete all of them that I don’t care about. It has made a huge difference in my life, and it saves me so much time.

If you want to try out SaneBox to see what a huge difference it can make in your life, click here to get a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. If you don’t like having a clean and tidy Inbox and decide to return back to how you had it before, no sweat. But if you appreciate having a better way of working with email, using this link in this post will give you a generous $25 credit for when you pick a plan—and there are lots of different plans offered so that you can choose the one that gives you just what you want.

Thanks again to SaneBox for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month and for giving all of us a more efficient way to work with email.

In this week’s episode of the In the News podcast, Brett Burney and I start with our Where Y’at? segment. We begin in New Orleans to discuss and show pictures of the historic snow that fell this past Tuesday. Then, the location shifts to Colorado to discuss a program initiated by a police department to give out free AirTags—and related stickers to place on vehicles—in an effort to deter vehicle theft.

We expect to see iOS 18.3 in just a few days, so we next discuss the changes that will bring to your iPhone. Then, we discuss some iPhone time-saving tips, the Vitals app, the future of CarPlay, the future of the Matter and Thread standards, the latest music video from the band OK Go, and more.

In our In the Know segment, Brett discusses the fantastic Modular Ultra watch face that is only available for the Apple Watch Ultra, including the Training Bezel complication. I discuss iPhone battery life in extreme weather, such as when it is really cold.

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:

If you had asked me last week to bet which city would receive more snow this winter, Anchorage (Alaska) or New Orleans (Louisiana), I would have put all of my money on Anchorage and laughed at the question. But as reported by James Finn of the New Orleans Time-Picayune, National Weather Service data reports that Anchorage has seen 3.8 inches since December 1, 2024, and thanks to the historic snowfall in New Orleans this past Tuesday, the Big Easy has seen 10 inches. I certainly saw that much at my house, and no matter how many times I look at the pictures and videos I took on Tuesday, I still cannot believe that it happened. Even as I type these words, I can still look out my window and see snow on the ground, cars, rooftops, trees, etc., although I suspect that it will all have melted in the next 24 hours or so. Like everyone else in this city, I really had no idea how to prepare for significant snowfall, let alone the most snow that this city has seen since 1895, so I mostly followed my hurricane protocol, which included making sure that my iPhone, iPad, and backup batteries were all fully charged to prepare for a possible power outage. Fortunately, that never happened. I know that the snow was disruptive for some, but as an attorney, it was pretty easy for me to get my work done even when working remotely. And when I took a break from work to get bundled up and walk around my neighborhood with my son, what I saw was magical. Of course, I’ve seen snow in other parts of the country and the world in the past, but seeing that pristine white coating on this tropical city was truly breathtaking, and the pictures taken around this city (such as these from the Times-Picayune) are something to behold. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Adam Davidson of How To Geek recommends some time-saving tips for your iPhone, and he covers a lot of great ones, such as using the text replacement function, customizing the Control Center, using Siri for certain tasks, and more.
• Adam Engst of TidBITS explains how the relatively new Vitals app on the iPhone may be able to detect an illness.
• Using an Apple AirTag is a great way to track an item that is lost or stolen. The police department in Arvada, Colorado, agrees—so much so that they are giving away AirTags for free, along with stickers to place on your vehicle to (hopefully) deter potential criminals, as reported by William Gallagher of AppleInsider.
• If you cannot find anyone to give you an AirTag for free, they are still at the all-time low price of $69.99 for a four-pack on Amazon.
• Ed Hardy of Cult of Mac reports that what is expected to be the final beta version of iOS 18.3 was released this past Tuesday, which means that we may see iOS 18.3 released next week. There will be some tweaks to Apple Intelligence, but he says that this update is expected to focus on bug fixes.
• If you want more info on what is coming in iOS 18.3, Justin Meyers of Gadget Hacks has a list.
• At some point after iOS 18.3, we will see iOS 18.4, and that version will include new Emoji. Jovana Naumovski of Gadget Hacks previews some of the new characters, such as Face with Bags Under Eyes, Fingerprint, Harp, Leafless Tree, and Shovel.
• Until yesterday, the CarPlay page on Apple’s website said that the next generation of CarPlay, which I presume will be called CarPlay 2.0, would “arrive in 2024.” Obviously, that did not happen, and Joe Rossignol of MacRumors noticed that Apple has now wisely removed that date from the page. Nevertheless, Apple issued a statement that this update is still planned.
• Matter is a protocol that works with Wi-Fi, Threat, Bluetooth, and more to allow lots of different types of devices to talk to each other locally. This is the same thing Apple tried to do with HomeKit, and other companies tried to do with their standards. What makes Matter promising is that it has the support of all of the key players: Apple, Amazon, Google/Nest, Samsung, and lots of smart home companies like Lutron and Philips Hue (Signify). Products have been supporting the Matter protocol for years, but every year it seems like we are not quite there yet. All of our devices are not yet talking to each other. Jennifer Pattison Tuohy of The Verge interviewed Tobin Richardson of the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), which develops Matter, Vividh Siddha of Apple, who is also the president of Thread Group, and Kevin Robinson of the Wi-Fi Alliance to discuss where the Matter protocol is today and what we can expect in 2025.
• And finally, the band OK Go is well-known for its impressive music videos that are amazing to watch and often seem almost impossible to have made. The latest music video from the group for the song A Stone Only Rolls Downhill was created by playing 64 perfectly timed videos on 64 iPhones, and the result is truly stunning:

In this week’s episode of the In the News podcast, Brett Burney and I discuss Apple and your TV. This includes the recent update to the Apple TV that added the Snoopy screensaver and everything that Apple has been doing to hype up Season 2 of the Apple TV+ show Severance, which debuted yesterday. We also discuss the cool new features added to the CARROT Weather app this week, possible upcoming changes to the Genius Bar in Apple Stores, Apple CEO Tim Cook’s recent revelations, using the Wallet app on you iPhone to store a digital license, and more.

In our In the Know segment, we return to a discussion of the Apple TV. Brett explains why you might want to long-press on the Back button on the remote, and I explain why you might want to long-press on the TV/Control Center button on your remote.

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:

It is rare for Apple to devote space on its main Apple.com website to a specific show on Apple TV+. However, Apple is doing it right now because today is the launch of the second season of the fantastic and popular show Severance. And that is not the only thing that Apple is doing to build excitement for the show. Apple is doing traditional types of promotions, such as having the star of the show, Adam Scott, go on the talk show circuit, such as this appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. But Apple is also doing some more unusual things, like putting something very similar to the workstation cubicles from the show in the middle of the very busy Grand Central Terminal in New York City and then having the stars of the show pretend to work in there for a few hours, as reported by Juli Clover of MacRumors. Apple also created this site so that you can put your face on a blue balloon (here’s mine), which apparently will be a thing in Season 2. If you haven’t watched Season 1 since it first aired in 2022 (or haven’t seen it yet at all), I recommend going back and watching the first season again. I started doing so last weekend, and I was amazed at how many details I had forgotten over the last three years. And I agree with this statement by John Gruber at Daring Fireball: “We started that re-watch just after New Year’s, and holy hell was I reminded how much I don’t just like but love this show. … One true test of a great series is that it’s better on the second watch through.” After you watch each episode, I also recommend that you listen to the new Severance podcast hosted by show creator Ben Stiller and star Adam Scott. They rewatched Season 1 and recorded a podcast episode for each Season 1 show episode, and then they will be doing the same thing throughout Season 2. The podcast episodes are filled with behind-the-scenes stories and information on what happens in the episode and also feature special guests, such as other stars of the show. I cannot wait to finish my Friday workday so that I can go home and watch Severance. If only there was a way that I could have another version of me do all of the lawyer stuff so that the rest of me could stay at home and watch Apple TV+. Hmm. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac reports that the excellent CARROT Weather app was updated this week to add two new features. First, you can set Live Activities to start automatically when it is about to rain, so the notification will automatically appear on your Lock Screen. This sounds great. Second, there is now a new CarPlay app that provides turn-by-turn driving directions along with a map featuring a live weather map. I tried this last night when I drove home from work, and I can see this being an especially useful feature when you are on a road trip and want to see what kind of bad weather you are about to start driving into and how long it is likely to last. Even if you don’t stay in this mode all the time—for pure turn-by-turn driving directions, I think that Apple’s own Maps app or an app like Google Maps is better—I love being able to quickly switch to this mode to get a sense of upcoming weather systems. You need to pay for the Premium Ultra level subscription to take advantage of these new features ($29.99/year, or $49.99/year if you want to share with your family, which is what I do), but I think that level was already worth it for the great features and now there is even more to love.
• One of the new Apple Intelligence features that was part of the recently released iOS 18.2 was summaries of news headlines. However, that feature has been criticized by many, including the BBC, because some of the headline summaries were inaccurate. I’m not surprised; when you take something that is already very short, like a headline, and then try to make that even shorter by summarizing it, chaos can ensue. Jason Snell of Six Colors discusses how Apple is responding to the criticism by changing this feature in the upcoming iOS 18.3. I will summarize Snell’s take and say that Apple may not be going far enough with this inherently problematic feature.
• Joe Rossignol of MacRumors shows off a new Apple Store in China that features a combined Genius Bar and Apple Pickup station, and he wonders if this could be something that Apple will expand to other locations. I have to admit that I like the current Apple Pickup stations at the back of an Apple Store because there is often not much of a line there, so it is a quick way to get help with something simple like a pickup or a return. If it also becomes a Genius Bar, you know that it will be crowded.
• Apple CEO Tim Cook was recently a guest on the Table Manners podcast, and he answered lots of questions about his personal life that I hadn’t seen him discuss before. Juli Clover of MacRumors sums up the tidbits in this post.
• Zac Hall of 9to5Mac shares the story of a man who passed out while driving, and then his car was soon upside down in a swimming pool with water rushing in, but fortunately, his Apple Watch detected the crash and helped to save his life.
• Clover also reports that the next states to let you add a driver’s license to the Wallet app on the iPhone will include Illinois, Connecticut, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Utah, Montana, and West Virginia.
• After using the Apple Watch Series 10 for three months, Oliver Haslam of AppleInsider wrote this review. One of the things that he likes is the fast charging system. As he notes, a 30-minute charge is enough to get you from 0% to 80%. I really like that feature too. It means that I can wear my Apple Watch 10 while I sleep at night—which I like for sleep tracking, for silent alarms from the watch just tapping my wrist, and for easily seeing the time if I wake up in the middle of the night—and there is more than enough time to recharge the watch while I take a shower and get ready. And if my watch is starting to run low on power, even just a fast five or ten-minute charge will do a lot. When I shifted from an Apple Watch Ultra 2 to the Series 10, I was worried that I would miss the amazing battery life of the Ultra line, but thanks to fast charging, it really hasn’t been an issue for me.
• Wesley Hilliard of AppleInsider reports tvOS 18.2.1 is now available to provide some bug fixes. That’s not a big news item, but I’m linking to it anyway to give me an excuse to talk about tvOS 18.2, which included a new Snooper screensaver for your TV. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you should do so. I find it clever and funny, and I often find myself just waiting to see what Snoopy will do next. Be warned, however, that my teenage daughter informed me that the Snoopy screensaver was boring and that she prefers the traditional aerial screensaver. So, if you are reading this post and you are a teenager, feel free to roll your eyes at my suggestion and, while you are at it, tell me that my “Dad jokes” are lame when, of course, they are actually awesome.
• Yvonne Villarreal of the Los Angeles Times interviewed Bill Lawrence in an article published on December 25, 2024. I waited until this week to read it because it has some light spoilers for the end of Season 2 of the Apple TV+ show Shrinking, which my wife and I just finished watching. (And it was so good!) The interview is great, and Lawrence also discusses the Apple TV+ shows Ted Lasso and Bad Monkey, as well as the upcoming reboot of Scrubs and a show that will soon come to HBO featuring Steve Carell.
• And finally, let’s finish this post where we started. Here is a short video from Apple showing off the Severance pop-up in Grand Central Terminal:

We start this week’s episode of the In the News podcast by discussing the Apple-related announcements from CES in Las Vegas this past week. Next, we discuss why you should keep track of how much space is in your iCloud account and how you can do so. We also discuss strange sounds coming from your AirPods Pro, the recent improvements to the Messages app, enjoying the Vision Pro while you lie down, and more.

In our In the Show segment, we discuss a number of Apple TV+ news items including the return of Severance in just a few days. (I’ve just started doing a re-watch of Season 1 to prepare for Season 2, and I’m surprised at how many details I have forgotten! I guess it has been quite a while since Season 1 first aired.)

In our In the Know segment, Brett share a great CarPlay tip, and I talk about restarting an Apple Watch or iPhone..

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:

Whether you only have the default and free 5GB of iCloud storage or you pay for additional storage, it is always possible to run out of space. In an article for Fast Company, Michael Grothaus provides three tips for deleting items in iCloud that you might not need: large attachments in the Messages app, large videos in the Photos app, and iCloud emails. But many other items use up space in iCloud, so if you haven’t checked out what is using up your iCloud storage in a while, you should consider doing so now. In Settings, tap your name at the top, tap iCloud, tap Storage, and then see how your storage is being used. Because I subscribe to the Apple One Premier plan, I get 2TB of space for me and up to four others. That sounds like a lot, but I’m using about 75% of it. I’m currently using almost 1TB myself—primarily because of a large Photos library, but there are other large items on there like the backups for my iPad and Vision Pro—and the other three members of my family are currently using just over 0.5TB. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• It has been horrible to learn about the fires this week that have devastated many communities in the Los Angeles area, and my heart goes out to the people affected. When disasters like this occur, local officials often use smartphone alert systems to communicate with people in danger. Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reports that an evacuation warning that was supposed to be sent only to residents of two communities was instead, by mistake, sent to all iPhone owners in Los Angeles last night. It took 22 minutes before an updated alert was issued to correct the error. That must have been a scary 22 minutes for a lot of people.
• Speaking of those fires, Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac reports that Apple is making a donation to support the victims and recovery efforts.
• If you think you hear your AirPods Pro play a sound when they are in a case and you didn’t do anything to cause that sound (like use the FindMy app to try to find them), apparently, that is a feature, not a bug. Juli Clover of MacRumors reports that ‌at the same time that Apple gave AirPods Pro the ability to run a hearing test, it also made them occasionally play a sound while in the case to ensure the microphones and speakers still work as intended. I don’t think I’ve noticed this noise yet for my AirPods Pro, but perhaps I haven’t been paying close enough attention.
• There were many changes to the Messages app when iOS 18.2 was released on December 11, 2024. Jeff Carlson of CNet highlights the key changes in Messages.
• The big CES show took place this week in Las Vegas. It is an event at which many product manufacturers show off products that they plan to release this year—along with other products that are just concepts and will never see the light of day. Juli Clover of MacRumors discusses some of the new products announced by Belkin, a company with a great track record for creating good accessories for Apple products.
• Andrew Orr of AppleInsider discusses new iPhone chargers from Scosche that were previewed at CES.
• Hartley Charlton of MacRumors discusses new smart home devices previewed at CES by Aqara that work with Apple devices because they include HomeKit and/or Matter support.
• Lutron, which makes some of my favorite HomeKit products, makes window shades called Serena that can be raised or lowered using HomeKit. My wife and I seriously considered getting them a few years ago for our living room, but they were too expensive to justify the cost. At CES, Lutron announced new Casetta window shades. Andrew O’Hara of AppleInsider reports that Lutron “re-engineered the internals” and “streamlined the manufacturing,” and as a result, this new line of window shades costs $399 for any size under 48″, which can be half the cost of the Serena shades depending upon the configuration.
• Apple hasn’t previewed any products at CES since the 1990s. (In 1992, Apple CEO John Sculley unveiled the Newton at a CES show.) However, William Gallagher of AppleInsider notes that Apple is very much in the minds of people at CES every year. I think that this has been true since the days of the iPod.
• Both Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac and Apple CEO Tim Cook recommend lying down on a couch to watch shows on the Apple Vision Pro. I’ve tried this out, and it is a comfortable way to watch a show. Another tip from me for cold winter nights: get under your cozy covers on your bed and watch a show on a giant virtual screen on your bedroom ceiling. If you use AirPods, you can enjoy a show without disturbing your spouse.
• Predicting music artists who are on the brink of going big is a job traditionally held by smart people in the music industry. Sometimes, artists become famous simply because many people hear a good song and then think, “I like this; I wonder who that artist is?” People often use Shazam to answer that question, so it can be a good source to predict which artists are about to become stars. Apple, which has owned Shazam since 2018, released its Shazam Fast Forward 2025 list this week. It’s an interesting webpage that lets you hear previews of songs by the spotlighted artists. I guess we’ll check back in a year and see how many of these artists hit it big in 2025.
• Two of my favorite Apple TV+ shows—Slow Horses and Shrinking—were nominated this week for Screen Actors Guild awards, as reported by William Gallagher of AppleInsider.
• Another of my favorite Apple TV+ shows is Severance. Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac reports that you can now watch the first season for free on the Roku Channel as we await the launch of Season 2 on Apple TV+ on January 17.
• Andrew Webster of The Verge has seen half of Severance Season 2 and, without giving spoilers, states that the new season “hits just as hard as the original, pushing further into the dark, weird edges of the Severance universe, while expanding it in fascinating new ways.” I’m excited!
• And finally, here is the trailer for Season 4 of the Apple TV+ show Mythic Quest, which begins January 29. It looks like the new season will be just as funny and zany as the first three seasons.

I suspect—and certainly hope—everyone reading this knows how valuable an AirTag can be. Put one on a suitcase or in a briefcase, purse, car, camera bag, etc., and you can locate that item even if it goes missing. AirTags became even more useful a few weeks ago when iOS 18.2 was released because you can now share an AirTag’s location with airlines to help them locate lost luggage more easily.

One of the few drawbacks of an AirTag is that, because it uses a small CR2032 coin cell battery, you need to replace the battery about once every year or so. Wouldn’t it be nice if an AirTag could last more than ten years? That is now possible thanks to a new product from Elevation Lab called the TimeCapsule.

This is a small device, 4.45″ x 1.57″ x 0.75″ in size, that connects an AirTag to two AA batteries so that the AirTag has much more power. With the AirTag and batteries installed, the TimeCapsule weighs 3.4 ounces, which isn’t very heavy, but it is heavier than an AirTag alone (0.39 ounces).

To use the TimeCapsule, you need to supply an AirTag and batteries. Elevation Lab recommends using Energizer Ultimate Lithium batteries, which typically cost between $2 and $4 each on Amazon, depending on how many you get. That type of battery gets you the most battery life (25 years), plus they provide a flat voltage and do not leak, unlike alkaline batteries.

The TimeCapsule uses four small screws to stay closed. These are hex socket screws that require a hex key (which is included). Because this is a less common type of screw, if someone finds your TimeCapsule, they are unlikely to have easy access to the hardware required to open up the TimeCapsule, which I suppose provides some additional security.

Here is what the head of the hex socket screw looks like:

To install your AirTag in the TimeCapsule, twist the AirTag open—the same thing you do when you replace the battery. Set the CR2032 battery aside because you won’t need it. And set aside the shiny silver back of the AirTag because you won’t need that either. All you need is the white half of the AirTag, which contains the electronics.

Place the white half of the AirTag on the part of the TimeCapule that looks like a CR2032 battery. Next, install the two AA batteries.

Finally, place the top on the TimeCapsule and use the hardware tool to screw in the four hex socket screws.

That’s it. Now you have a small device that can fit in your hand and that Elevation Lab says has 14 times the power capacity of a regular AirTag.

The main advantage of the TimeCapsule is the long battery life. The developer of the TimeCapsule explained that he created the product because his camera bag with $10,000 of gear was stolen from his car. When he tried to use FindMy to track the thief, he discovered that his AirTag battery was dead, and the last location was from three months earlier. Ugh. If you use an AirTag in something you don’t use very often, like an RV or a boat, a TimeCapsule could make a lot of sense.

There are other advantages besides the long battery life. First, it may provide a security advantage. Nothing about the TimeCapsule looks like an AirTag, so if a thief sees it, he may be less likely to quickly discard it. A picture of the top of the TimeCapsule is up above. Here is what the bottom looks like, just smooth black plastic:

Another advantage of the TimeCapsule is that it is more durable than a regular AirTag. Once sealed shut, the fiber-reinforced composite body of the TimeCapsule becomes waterproof. If you put an AirTag inside something that you use for camping, boating, or by a pool, this might be helpful.

The TimeCapsule is also relatively inexpensive. I bought one on Amazon for $19.99, but you can also get two for $29.99 or four for $39.99. An AirTag four-pack is currently being sold on Amazon for an all-time low price of $69.99. Thus, if you buy a four-pack of each, that works out to only $10 for each TimeCapsule, $17.50 for each AirTag, and a few bucks for AA batteries: just over $30 each for something that will provide security and help you locate a lost item for more than a decade.

For now, I’m hiding my TimeCapsule in my car. (I trust each of you to keep that information private and not share it with any thieves who say that they plan to steal my car.) However, I’m also considering whether there is another place where the advantages of a TimeCapsule may make even more sense. If you come up with other great uses for a TimeCapsule, please let me know!

The TimeCapsule from Elevation Lab is a fantastic idea that was turned into a well-designed and well-constructed product.

Click here to get a TimeCapsule from Amazon ($19.99 to $39.99).

I realize that it is a bit of a cliché to be talking about weight loss in early January, but the reality is that this is the time of year when a lot of people focus on that. Fortunately, the iPhone can help. It is easy to record your weight every time you get on the scale by using the iPhone’s built-in Health app. I find that the fastest and easiest way to get your weight into the Health app is to use a very simple Shortcut. The one I use has only two steps. First, the shortcut uses the Ask for Input command to ask the question “How much did you weigh?” and you respond by typing a number. Second, the shortcut saves that to the “Weight” section of the health app. That’s it. I have a widget on my iPhone that launches this shortcut, and because I use the shortcut just about every morning, just about every morning my iPhone home screen automatically recommends that I run the shortcut, so it is easy to tap that home screen recommendation and then log my weight.

The Health app lets you view your weight for the last day, week, month, etc., and even shows you trends for the last few weeks But if you want a better way to look at your weight measurements, that is where the Happy Scale app comes in.

Although you can enter weights directly in the Happy Scale app and have that sync over to the Health app, I find it easier to use the shortcut noted above to get my measurements into the Health app. Happy Scale can then read those measurements to display and analyze them.

Note that the following images are taken from the Happy Scale website. The latest version of the app has a slightly improved look, but these images are pretty close—and no, I’m not going to take my own screenshots that display my own personal data in this post.

The first thing that I like about Happy Scale is the way that it graphs your weight change over time. There are several parts of the app that show your weight change in different ways. But what they all have in common is an emphasis on showing smoothed-out trends, not each specific weight. The app recognizes that your weight will always fluctuate up and down, and what matters is not to get hung up on any one specific number but to think about your trends over time.

Another part of the app that I like is the Predictions. You can control these manually using the commitment option (you input how much you commit to lose each week), but I don’t use that. Instead, I let the app make predictions based on my current rate and my overall rate. And if you provide a goal weight, the app will predict when you will meet your goal. I find that this is a helpful way to keep you focused on the future and to encourage you to keep up the good work.

The app also has a useful Logbook mode. In this mode, you can see your specific weights recorded on specific days (if you have multiple weight entries for a single day, it uses the lowest one), but even more useful, you can see things like your weekly rate, your 7-day averages, any notes that you (optionally) enter for specific days, how much you have lost or gained since you started trying to lose weight, and information telling you that your weight on a specific day was your lowest since X days / weeks / months / years ago. It can be very encouraging to see that a weigh-in is, for example, your lowest entry in three months or three years. And you can choose what is and is not displayed in the Logbook.

The app also lets you set milestones so that you can break up a big overall effort into small, more manageable chunks.

As you can probably tell so far, just about everything in this app is configurable. So you have lots of control over what you see, how it is presented to you, etc. The default settings are really good, but being able to tweak them to make them more relevant for you is even better. I’m using this app to lose weight, but you can also tell Happy Scale that your goal is to maintain weight or even gain weight, and it will help you with that as well.

If you own an Apple Watch and you keep track of your circles, then you already know how the gamification of your own personal statistics can be a powerful motivator. By displaying so much information in so many different ways about your weight loss journey, Happy Scale does a great job of encouraging you to stick with it. And by emphasizing overall trends and not the inevitable ups and downs from day to day, the app keeps you focused on the big picture.

You can try out the app for free, but the best parts of the app, such as predictions and syncing, require a subscription. Fortunately, you can subscribe for a month for only $1.99 to see what you think. I paid $11.99 for an annual subscription. You can also pay $39.99 for a lifetime unlock.

Happy Scale has been around for more than a decade, and the developer, Russ Shanahan, continues to add new features and improve the app regularly. As the developer noted in an interview by Yuvraj Singh, he used his own app to lose 100 pounds. I love this app because of its great user interface and impressive features, and the fact that it has been around for so long gives me more confidence that this is a good app to use.

If you want to use your iPhone to help manage your weight, Happy Scale is a fantastic app.

Click here to get Happy Scale.