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 incredibly valuable. 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.
The iconic Apple Store cube on Fifth Avenue in New York is covered with an interesting structure. It makes sense that this is a temporary structure erected to renovate the glass on the cube, but based on the picture that Brett Burney took in New York this week, it doesn’t look like any ordinary temporary structure. We begin this week’s episode of the In the News podcast discussing the cube. We then discuss our plans for ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago next week, what we expect to see announced in iOS 19 in two months and what we expect to see available in iOS 18.4 perhaps as soon as next week. We also discuss the original and latest versions of the AirFly from Twelve South, music updates, and the latest news relating to Apple TV+. We also discuss the great behind-the-scenes video associated with the Spike Jonze commercial for AirPods noise cancellation called Someday.
In our In the Know segment, I preview my upcoming ABA TECHSHOW presentation on iPhone and iPad tips by sharing some tips that are definitely both oldies and goodies.
Apple announced this week that its developer conference, WWDC, will take place June 9 through June 13, 2025. For those of us who are not developers, WWDC is significant because it is when Apple always previews the next versions of its operating systems, which are typically released in the Fall. What will be included in iOS 19? Only Apple knows for sure right now, but Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac notes that two people with a reputation for leaking unannounced Apple products—Mark Gurman of Bloomberg and Jon Prosser of FrontPageTech—say that we will see a new user interface for the iPhone and other devices, although the two of them disagree somewhat on what it will look like. I remember the major iPhone user interface change in iOS 7, which Apple first previewed at WWDC 2013, and the change was controversial at the time, although as Apple tweaked the design and users became more comfortable with it over time, I now look back on it as a change that was for the better. Perhaps we will see similar growing pains later this year when iOS 19 is released. Jason Snell of Six Colors also offers some interesting thoughts on what we may see announced at WWDC 2025. And now, the news of note from the past week:
This is a busy time of year in the world of legal technology. First, Legalweek New York 2025 wrapped up yesterday. My podcast co-host Brett Burney was in New York for the conference, and he noticed that the iconic Apple Store on Fifth Avenue looks different. There is now a structure over the cube. I’m not sure if this is intended to be a permanent change, but it dramatically changes the look of the store. Here is a picture that Brett took on March 26, 2025:
For comparison, here is what the cube looked like when it first opened on May 19, 2006. You can see me standing in line wearing the red shirt:
Second, another big legal technology conference, ABA TECHSHOW 2025, will take place next week in Chicago. Brett and I will both be there. The spots for the Taste of TECHSHOW dinner that Brett and I will host disappeared only minutes after the ABA started taking reservations. For those of you who did get a spot, I know that it will be a lot of fun. For those of you who are attending TECHSHOW and did not get a spot, you can still sign up for the waiting list, and there will be lots of other opportunities for everyone at TECHSHOW to interact. Brett and I are going to try to record an episode of the In the News podcast on Friday, April 4. I don’t yet know where we will record it or if there will be an opportunity for folks to join us while we do so.
You can currently get the new Apple Watch Series 10 on Amazon for an all-time low price of $299, which is a huge 25% discount. That’s the smaller model with the 42mm case, but that same link will get you the 46mm case model at 23% off, only $329. I love my Apple Watch Series 10 and I even prefer it to the more expensive Apple Watch Ultra 2, for the reasons I explained in this review.
Clover reports that one change coming to watchOS 11.4 is the option for an Apple Watch alarm to “Break Through”—i.e., make noise—even when your watch is in Silent Mode. I actually like the way that an Apple Watch can wake me up by tapping my wrist and not making a sound, but for a morning when you fear that you may have trouble waking up and you don’t need to worry about annoying someone else in the same room by making noise, this feature seems very useful.
Lando Loic extolls the virtues of using Apple’s built-in productivity apps instead of third-party alternatives. His post focuses on the Mac versions of these apps, but I think that the same logic applies to the iPhone and iPad apps.
In 2018, I reviewed a product from Twelve South called AirFly that added Bluetooth to any headphone jack—such as the one that is part of an in-flight entertainment system on an airplane or the audio in a health club—so that you could listen using your AirPods. I’ll always remember writing that review because it was the day the music died—on my iPod, at least. (Read the end of that post for the bittersweet tale.) Twelve South has come out with newer versions of the AirFly since 2018, and Ed Hardy of Cult of Mac reviews the brand new AirFly Pro 2, which offers better sound, better controls, and can connect to two pairs of headphones at once. It is $59.99 on Amazon.
Apple TV+ has a reputation for releasing fantastic TV series, but it hasn’t released many movies. There is a big one coming to theaters this summer called F1 starring Brad Pitt and directed by Joseph Kosinski. (Apple released a trailer earlier this month.) Borys Kit of the Hollywood Reporter says that Apple is so happy with how that movie is coming along that it also signed a deal with Kosinski to direct and produce another movie about UFOs, and the famous producer Jerry Bruckheimer is involved as well. That sounds like it could be a great movie.
A new series debuts on Apple TV+ this week called The Studio. It was created by and stars Seth Rogen, it also stars the treat Catherine O’Hara and Kathryn Hahn, and it has more cameos than you can shake a stick at. And the early reviews for it are fantastic. Dana Stevens of Slate calls it the best new comedy of 2025.
Last week, I ended my In the News post with the impressive Spike Jonze commercial for AirPods noise cancellation called Someday. Here is a new video on the making of that commercial. As much as I enjoyed the original video, the behind-the-scenes video is perhaps even more interesting. It also shows that a lot of the parts that I thought could be CGI were, in fact, practical effects.
And finally, John Gruber of Daring Fireball points out that if you go to the Apple website right now and you click on the word Mac at the top of the page, you will see a list of all of the computers that Apple sells … along with a listing for a computer not sold by Apple, but another company that you may have heard of: Lumon. Yes, that Lumon. It is a fun promotion for the incredible Apple TV+ show Severance, which just finished its second season. Apple also released this fun video that shows how Macs were used to edit the show, but DO NOT WATCH THIS VIDEO until after you have watched the final episode of Season 2 because this video goes behind the scenes on the surprising parts of that season finale:
Next week, I’ll be speaking at ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago, which takes place April 2-5 at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place. That’s a new location for this conference, but the conference itself is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. And I’m celebrating my 10th year speaking at the conference—my first presentation was in 2008, and my most recent presentation was in 2019. I’m really looking forward to being back this year because I always learn so much and meet so many great people at TECHSHOW.
I’m presenting two sessions. First, on April 3, at 2:15 pm, I’m presenting a session called Practicing Law in an Augmented Reality. Perhaps a better name for that session is the Apple Vision Pro Hour. My co-presenter is Prof. Kenton Brice of the University of Oklahoma College of Law. If you own a Vision Pro, we will share lots of tips for getting the most out of that device in your law practice. But if you don’t own one, we will explain why you are likely to own something similar in the future, and this session will explore the role of this new type of device in the legal setting. The Apple Vision Pro is a revolutionary device—even if, like the first iPhone, the first personal computer, the first tablet computer, etc., it is likely to change quite a bit in the future. If you want to get a preview of the future of legal technology, you should attend. This session is going to be incredibly fun.
Second, on April 4, at 2:45 pm, I’m presenting a session called Maximizing Your Productivity with an iPad and iPhone. My goal in this session is to try to tell you almost everything I know about how to do more with your iPad and iPhone. Apps, services, tips, and more, I will try to cover it all in this jam-packed session.
Like in previous years, there is also a Taste of Techshow where you can sign up for a group dinner. On Thursday, April 3, at 7 pm, Brett Burney and I will present the dinner version of our In the News podcast. Officially, our topic listing is iPhone, iPad, iFun! These dinners always fill up incredibly fast, so if you want to join us, do so as soon as possible before it is too late. [UPDATE 3/27/2025: Dinner sign-ups went live today, and only a few minutes later, our dinner hit capacity. But you can still sign up for a waiting list, so if someone else changes their plans, you might still have an opportunity to join us.]
If you see me in Chicago next week, please don’t be shy. Stop me and say hello! I’d love to meet you and talk technology with you.
I’ll end this post with a picture of me and Brett Burney from ten years ago at ABA TECHSHOW 2015. It’s amazing how we haven’t aged a day since then.
We begin this week’s episode of the In the News podcast with a discussion of the latest news relating to Siri: a new example of it not working as expected and why we now have new hope that it will improve in the future. Next, we discuss the state of the art in streaming video devices and why an Apple TV is still your best bet. We also discuss improvements to Maps and Messages, my review of the fantastic Anker Laptop Power Bank (and the news that you can once again get it on Amazon for under $100, the end of the current season of Severance and the confirmation of a new season of Ted Lasso on Apple TV+, confirmation that Texas attorney Rod Ponton is still not a cat, and Apple’s latest video for the AirPods Pro.
In our In the Know segment, Brett describes “Safe Driving Mode” in the Zoom app on iPhone, and I explain why the built-in Compass App on the iPhone and Apple Watch is more useful than you might think.
I have been using an Apple TV since the first model was released in early 2007. That doesn’t just predate the launch of this website in 2008; it predates the iPhone. I’ve upgraded to different models over the years and have been using the Apple TV 4K (2nd generation) since 2021. As a result, I haven’t paid close attention to the competition in a long time. Thus, I was curious to read the comparison of the latest TV streaming devices by Jason Snell of Six Colors. Even though the current generation Apple TV hardware hasn’t been updated in four years, Snell explains that it is still the best of the pack. One huge advantage is the lack of ads, which he notes are especially obnoxious with the Fire TV. (Snell writes: “I wouldn’t use the Fire TV if Amazon gave me one for free, and given the amount of advertising on the box, they should be paying people to use them.”) But Snell also identifies some software features used by other devices that he thinks Apple should implement, such as listing streaming live TV channels. If you use an Apple TV like I do, this is an interesting article that helps you to appreciate what is good about what you already have while also showing how others have taken some interesting different approaches. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Last week, I discussed Apple’s acknowledgment that it was behind in AI, and Siri got even more bad press this week when folks realized that Siri doesn’t even know what month it is, as noted by John Gruber of Daring Fireball. But maybe there is hope in the future. Gruber also discusses a report by Mark Gurman of Bloomberg that Apple is changing its AI leadership, replacing John Giannandrea (formerly of Google) with Mike Rockwell (who had been in charge of the Apple Vision Pro). It will be a while before we see the impact of this change, but hopefully, the change will pay dividends for us users.
Esther Fung of the Wall Street Journal reports that 13 people were arrested in an international crime ring targeting FedEx deliveries of iPhones and other Apple products. An AT&T store employee was bribed to leak order details, and theives would track the deliveries and then pick up packages from doorsteps immediately after items were delivered.
If you want a new watch band for your Apple Watch at a huge discount, Woot is once again selling Apple Watch bands at an extreme discount: Apple Solo Loops for $20 and Apple Braided Solo Loops for $30. I took advantage of a similar sale in the past. These are original Apple products from prior seasons, and I loved gaining two new Solo Loop colors for only $40.
Christoffel also discusses a recent study of Apple’s new C1 modem in the iPhone 16e by Ookla—maker of the popular Speedtest app—and the conclusions are quite promissing. Qualcomm modems can outperform the C1 when the network connection is good, but when you have a good connection, you are less likely to notice slight improvements. What really matters more is how the modems perform when the network performance is poor, and Apple’s C1 modem beat Qualcomm’s modems in those tests. Considering that this is Apple’s first effort, these findings make me think that future C2, C3, etc. modems from Apple could be quite impressive.
Ed Hardy of Cult of Mac reviews the PNY Pro Elite V3, a flash drive with a huge capacity, including a 2TB version fo $145 on Amazon. That’s a ton of storage in a very small package. I could see it being useful with an iPad if you want to carry around a ton of files that won’t fit on your internal storage.
If you don’t use a password manager, you should. The one that I use and highly recommend is 1Password, which is especially useful if you get 1Password for Families so that you can easily share certain passwords and other important information with others. Mitchel Broussard of MacRumors reports that 1Password Families is currently 50% off (and the individual version is 25% off).
I heard from a lot of you who purchased an Anker Laptop Power Bank after reading my review earlier this week. That device is fantastic, and I highly recommend it. After I first published that post, Anker (or Amazon?) added a coupon so that you can get it for about $100 on Amazon. If you ever have a need for portable power when you lack convenient access to an outlet, you should check it out. Of course, Anker makes many other products too, and Eric Slivka of MacRumors reviews some other new interesting charging accessories from Anker.
Joe Rossignol of MacRumors identifies the nine states, plus Puerto Rico, where you can currently add a driver’s license to the iPhone’s Wallet app and identifies eight more states that are working to add this feature: Connecticut, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, Utah, and Oklahoma.
Who is that actor, and what else were they in? Callsheet is a great app from Casey Liss that can answer those types of questions. Devon Dundee discusses an update to that app that allows you to create multiple pinned item lists.
Speaking of TV, I stayed up late last night to watch the Season 2 finale of Severance. No spoilers, but OMG it is so good! An incredible episode of television. The only thing I don’t like is that now I’ll have to wait until Season 3 to get more. Fortunately, Armando Tinoco of Deadline reports that we won’t have to wait as long for Season 3 as we did for Season 2.
If you are a fan of Severance, do a Google search for the word “Severance” and then tap the blue button at the bottom. And feel free to keep tapping it repeatedly. Nicely done, Google!
Speaking of great shows on Apple TV+, Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reports that Season 4 of Ted Lasso is confirmed and will feature Lasso coaching a women’s team.
Mitchel Broussard of MacRumors reports that you can currently get a bundle of Disney+ and Hulu (both with ads, unfortunately) for only $2.99/month for four months. I’m currently watching Paradise on Hulu, and it is really good.
The very best content for the Apple Vision Pro comes from Apple: the almost two dozen Apple Immersive Videos that I identified in this post (a post that I continue to update as new content is released and announced). But third parties are also doing interesting things with immersive video, and the very best one right now is the Prima Immersive app, which premiered on February 10, 2025, with the first episode of the Sessions immersive video series from The Spatialists, featuring bluegrass band AJ Lee & Blue Summit. Tim Chaten of the Vision Pros podcast interviewed Tom Rettig, the founder and Executive Producer of The Spacialists, in the latest episode of the Vision Pros podcast. I thought it was a fascinating interview, and it provides some great insight into additional great third-party content that we should see in 2025 and beyond.
One of the funniest viral videos that came out of the COVID-19 pandemic featured Texas attorney Rod “I’m not a cat” Ponton. Claire Moses of the New York Times caught up with Ponton to discuss it, and he has a great sense of humor about the incident. That video still brings a smile to my face when I watch it.
And finally, for a very long time, Apple has released ads for the iPod and iPhone featuring people listening to music as they walk down the street. But the one that Apple released this week called Someday is particularly impressive. It was created by Spike Jonze, it stars Pedro Pascal, and it is a feast for the eyes:
One of the very first accessories that I ever reviewed on this website was a portable battery. I actually reviewed two of them at once back in 2008, two different models made by the now-defunct Richard|Solo, a company started by Richard Thalheimer, who started as a lawyer and then turned into an incredibly successful businessman. Most famously, Thalheimer founded The Sharper Image, which he shut down in 2008 but was resurrected in 2010 when a new company bought the brand name. As I noted in my review, I found it incredibly useful to have external portable power for my iPhone, especially when I had long days in depositions or in court. Since that first review in 2008, I used and/or reviewed countless other external portable batteries for the iPhone, iPad, and other devices. As a result, I did not expect to come across a portable battery that seemed special. But I did. I recently purchased the Anker Laptop Power Bank, which is typically around $100 on Amazon (see below), and this thing is awesome. It gets my highest recommendation. In fact, I recently bought a second one as a gift for my brother. I love this battery because it packs a lot of power, cleverly includes two USB-C cords, and has a very helpful display.
Power
Let’s get the important but least interesting part out of the way first. This battery has a lot of power. It includes a huge 25,000 mAh capacity battery that can charge multiple devices multiple times. For example, my iPhone 16 Pro Max has one of the largest internal batteries of any iPhone at 4,685 mAh, so this device could charge it many times over. It also has no trouble recharging my iPad Pro M4 13-inch with its 10,340 mAh internal battery.
One of the main reasons that I purchased this device was to use it with my Apple Vision Pro. That headset comes with an external battery pack with a capacity of 3,166 mAh, and it can go for a little more than two hours before it runs out of power. That is not nearly enough when I sit at a table and use that device to get significant work done. But when I connect it to this Anker device, I essentially have all of the power that I would ever want.
Note that comparing the mAh of this power bank to the mAh of your device’s internal battery is not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison because energy is lost due to inefficiencies in battery cells and circuitry, so you will often see a 30% to 45% capacity reduction. Anker says that you can estimate the number of charges by using this formula: 25,000 (the capacity of this power bank) x 0.65 ÷ device battery capacity. So for my iPhone 16 Pro Max with a 4,685 mAh internal battery, I can expect to recharge it about three and a half times.
Having this much power means that you can also charge multiple devices. And you can do so simultaneously. When I attend a deposition, I typically use my iPad throughout the deposition (which can last all day) and I typically use my iPhone at the same time—including as a mobile hot spot to provide Wi-Fi for my iPad. I can connect both of those devices to this battery to make sure that they both can go all day long. With this device with me, I don’t have to worry about finding an outlet and a long cord that will reach up to my devices. I just put this battery right next to my iPhone and iPad. It works great. I haven’t been in trial since I purchased this battery, but I’m sure it would be great for that purpose as well.
The name of this Anker device—the Anker Laptop Power Bank—tells you that Anker had laptop charging in mind when it designed this thing. I virtually always use an iPad, not a laptop, when I am away from my office, so I haven’t tested this Anker device with a laptop, but I’m sure that the ample power it contains would be very useful for charging a laptop. Anker says that this product can get a 16-inch MacBook Pro (M3) to 50% in 33 minutes and an iPhone 16 to 50% in 25 minutes.
Even though this is a large and powerful battery, Anker says that it is approved for flight.
The only real downside of having a battery this big is that it makes this Anker device somewhat heavy at 21 ounces (just over 1.3 pounds). When I put this device in my bag, I can definitely notice that it is there. It weighs about the same as my iPad Pro M4 13-inch, which weighs 1.28 pounds.
When it comes time to recharge this power bank, it supports 100W ultra-fast recharging that can recharge the power bank to 30% in only 20 minutes and to 100% in about two hours. It even supports pass-through charging if you use a charger rated at 20W or higher and if the input power exceeds the output power.
Two built-in USB-C cords + two ports
One of the reasons that I was a big fan of that Richard|Solo battery that I reviewed back in 2008 was that it had a built-in 30-pin connector that could directly connect to the bottom of my iPhone. I could just carry the battery without worrying about carrying a cord. The same is true with this Anker power bank because it has not one but two built-in USB-C cords. (And reading that old review reminds me that we have come a long way from 30-pin to USB-C!)
The first built-in USB-C cord is on the very top of the power bank. It is retractable so that it stays out of the way when you don’t need it. It extends to up to 2.3 feet, but you can extend it less if you don’t need that much cord. Anker says that it is tested to withstand over 20,000 retractions.
The second built-in USB-C cord cleverly becomes a lanyard so you can use it to carry around the power bank. Anker says it is strong enough to support up to 44 pounds, so it can definitely support the 1.3 pounds of this power bank when used as a carrying strap. When you use it as a USB-C cord, it extends to almost one foot.
There is also a USB-C port on the side of the power bank. I typically use that to recharge this power bank at night, but you can also use it to charge another device. For example, this past Saturday, I realized that I had not charged my Apple Watch since Thursday night, so the battery was running low. I used the USB-C charging cord that came with my Apple Watch to recharge my watch using this battery while I was sitting on my couch and using my iPad. That saved me the trouble of walking upstairs to charge my watch on my regular Apple Watch charger on my nightstand.
Finally, there is a USB-A port, which is useful for recharging older devices that don’t support USB-C.
Each of the USB-C ports can send up to a 100W charge. The USB-A port can send up to a 33W charge. The maximum total output is 165W, and you can get that much if you are charging either one or two USB-C devices. (If you are charging one USB-C and one USB-A, you will get up to 100W on the USB-C and up to 33W on the USB-A.) If you are charging three or four devices, the maximum total output drops to 130W. The retractable cord on the top, which is designated USB-C1, will get up to 100W and the other ports will get up to 30W. If you are not using the USB-C1 cord, you will get up to 100W on the USB-C2 cord (the one that doubles as a carrying cord) and up to 30W each on the USB-C3 and USB-A ports on the side. If you are using all four ports at once, which I haven’t had a reason to do yet, you get up to 100W on USB-C1 and up to 30W on each of the other three ports. Note that the power bank has to have at least 25% of its power to achieve the 100W peak recharging rate for a single port.
There are a lot of numbers in that last paragraph, and it is good that Anker disclosed all of this, but when I have been using this power bank, I haven’t had a need to think about any of those numbers. I just know that it does a great job of keeping multiple devices powered.
Having one built-in cord would have been really nice. But having two of them built in is decadent. I love that this power bank is all that I need to have with me, and then when I need to charge one or two devices, which is virtually always all that I need, the cords are right there. I figured that this would be handy when I bought this power bank, but now that I have been using it for a while, I realize that this feature is even more valuable than I expected. And then having a regular USB-C port and a regular USB-A port means that I have everything that I might need.
Display
Every other external battery that I have ever used either doesn’t have an interface at all or perhaps has a few lights that roughly indicate things like the amount of battery power remaining. This Anker power bank has an awesome display that gives you precise information about everything that you might want to know.
Normally, the display is black. If you press a button on the left side of the power bank, the display comes on for a few seconds to tell you how much battery life you have left.
If you start charging a device, the circle on the display indicating battery life changes from green to blue and, just above the remaining battery life number, you see an indication of how much power is going out of the power bank.
While you are charging one or more devices, you can press the button on the side to see which ports are being used and how much power is going out of each port. After a few seconds, it returns to the main display.
If you are charging the power bank, the display shows you how much charge the battery is getting, how much charge the battery has, and how much longer it is estimated to take to fully recharge the power bank. I find that third number to be particularly helpful.
But that’s not all. Press the side button twice when you are looking at the main display and you will see the current battery temperature and whether it is a safe temperature. The reason for this is that when the power bank outputs high power, its temperature increases, so if the battery senses that it is getting too hot it will slow things down a bit to cool down. There are many batteries smart enough to regulate power for safety reasons, but I like that this Anker battery lets you see what is going on.
If you press the side button three times, you will see the battery health and the total number of times that power has been cycled. I’ve only had mine for a month so the battery health is still 100%. But if it doesn’t seem to be at top performance in a few years, it will be interesting to check out that number again.
I really like all of the information that this display provides.
Etc.
[Update on cost] The cost is $109.99 on the Anker website, but as noted above, you can often buy it for less on Amazon. When I bought mine, and at the time that this review was first posted, it was $94.99 on Amazon. However, a reader alerted me that the price on Amazon increased a few hours after this review was published. And yet another reader alerted me that on the afternoon of March 17, 2025, Amazon added a a coupon code to the listing that lets you get it for $99.99. According to Camel Camel Camel, the Amazon price for this product has fluctuated between $89.99 and $109.99. In my opinion, at any of those prices, this product is worth it.
The height is just over six inches, and the sides are about two inches. Anker says that the size is comparable to a soda can, which I suppose is a fair comparison.
Although in most of the pictures in this post I show the Anker battery on its side, the bottom of the battery is rubber so you can stand it up straight on a desk and it stays in one place.
The model that I purchased is silver, but Anker also sells a space black one.
Conclusion
I am so glad that I purchased this Anker power bank. I have been using it frequently, and every time that I do so, it is a delight to use. Not only is this easily my all-time favorite external battery, it is such a useful and clever device that it is also currently one of my favorite accessories. As noted above, I was so impressed that when it was my brother’s birthday—he is a doctor who has always made good use of mobile technology—I bought him one too. The only downside is that at just over a pound, it is a little heavy, and it is larger than other batteries that I own. Thus, this is not a battery that you would want to carry around in a pants pocket. But the Anker Laptop Power Bank is so powerful, useful, and well-designed that it still gets my highest recommendation.
This week’s episode of the In the News podcast starts with a public service announcement: update to iOS 18.3.2 to fix a security flaw in the Safari browser. Next, we discuss the surprising recent announcement that the most interesting features of Apple Intelligence that we were told about last year are nowhere close to being ready. We also discuss some easy ways to transcribe audio, getting a weather forecast when you will be visiting different cities, a great list of Apple Watch tips, and more.
In our In the Vision segment, we discuss the amazing Immersive Video released by Apple this week that gives you the best seat in the house for a Metallica concert.
In our In the Show segment, we discuss Severance and some really interesting shows coming to Apple TV+ in the coming months.
In our In the Know segment, Brett provides a super helpful tip for using pins in the Notes app, and I recommend some background music to make it through your work day even if your Outie has to do the work.
Last year, when Apple previewed the AI tools that it was bringing to the iPhone and other platforms—which it called Apple Intelligence—one of the coolest featured announced by Apple was the ability to help you based on information on your device, including things in your emails, text messages, and even things displayed on your screen. For example, Apple said that you would be able to tell Siri to send an email or take something from your photo album and move it into a Note. Perhaps the coolest example is that Apple said you could ask Siri something like: “Siri, what’s the name of the guy I had a meeting with a couple of months ago at Cafe Grenel?” and it would answer you correctly because it knows what is on your calendar. In fact, Apple thought that last one was so cool that it hired actress Bella Ramsey—one of the stars of the HBO show The Last of Us and the actress who played Lyanna Mormont in Game of Thrones—to record a TV commercial. I linked to that commercial on September 13, 2024, and noted that I would love if it actually worked this easily. Well, it turns out that my skepticism was justified. Last Friday afternoon—the perfect time for a company to announce bad news that it hopes gets lost in the end-of-the-week news cycle—Apple issued a statement to a few people such as John Gruber of Daring Fireball that Apple would delay the ‘More Personalized Siri’ Apple Intelligence features until “the coming year,” whenever is. Gruber wrote a follow-up piece this week that is critical of Apple for not only announcing but also advertising a feature that was vaporware. Why the delay? Apple isn’t saying, but Federico Viticci of MacStories notes that it could be because of security concerns, and that explanation makes sense to me. Will Apple eventually be able to do what it promised? Perhaps, but there could be some long-term repercussions. Apple previously had a good reputation for not announcing products until they were close to being ready to ship. In light of this situation, how much can we trust Apple in the future when it announces a new feature but is cagey about showing it off? Now to be fair, we’ve all probably been in a situation in which we over-promised because we misjudged how long it would take to do something or we misjudged whether it was possible to do it at all. Apple can regain our trust by being more circummspect in the future about what it promises. And hopefully, that is exactly what Apple will do. And now, the news of note from the past week:
This has nothing to do with the iPhone, but I was proud to see that TimeOut magazine named New Orleans the best city in the world right now for food based on a survey of over 18,000 people. The number of amazing restaurants in this city is truly astonishing, whether it is a high-end (but very affordable compared to other cities) meal at a restaurant like Commander’s Palace in the Garden District or a delicious banh mi sandwich from the Vietnamese bakery Dong Phuong in New Orleans East, it’s no wonder that Homer Simpson found a thousand little things to love about this city. Kudos to all of the amazing chefs in the Crescent City whose talents earned this designation.
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of ZDNet reports that iOS 18.3.2, released this week, is an important update because it patches a serious security flaw in Safari that was already being exploited by hackers.
Jason Snell of Six Colors recommends the iPhone app Mercury Weather because of its ability to give you a forecast for different cities that you will be visiting in the future.
John Voorhees of MacStories tested the new iPhone 16e for 10 days and concludes that it is “an iPhone stripped to its core in a (mostly) uncompromising way that may not excite gadget nerds but exudes a quiet elegance for half the price of a flagship Pro Max” and is a particularly good camera for taking simple but great pictures.
I’m not a fan of heavy metal, but I just watched a heavy metal concert, and it was one of the most amazing concerts that I’ve ever seen. The band Metallica announced this week that it is featured in a new immersive video from Apple for the Apple Vision Pro, and the video was released today. The video was recorded in Mexico City, the band’s final stop of its 2024 tour, and Apple had numerous 3D cameras there. At times, you feel like you have a front-row ticket that you could never afford. At times, you feel like you have a ticket that doesn’t even exist—one that lets you stand next to the band members on stage as they perform. Other shots are from overhead cameras. Other shots provide close-ups of the crowds who are loving the concert. It is all very well done and incredibly immersive. The band performs three songs in this 25-minute show. Two of them are new to me (Whiplash and One) but they finish up with a song that almost everyone knows, Enter Sandman, and it is fantastic. Considering how much I enjoyed this concert video for a band that is almost totally outside of my zone of interest, I cannot wait to see something similar for a band that I love. If you are a fan of Metallica, you might want to buy an Apple Vision Pro just to watch this immersive video.
If you want to try out an Apple Vision Pro, you can go to your local Apple Store or you can go to Lowe’s. Lowe’s? Yes, Lowe’s.
Christoffel also discusses some of the shows coming to Apple TV+ that could be really good: Dope Thief, The Studio (which is getting some amazing early praise), Your Friends & Neighbors starring Jon Hamm, Murderbot starring Alexander Skarsgård, and Stick starring Owen Wilson.
And finally, I’m a big fan of the show Severance on Apple TV+, and I can’t wait to watch the penultimate episode of Season 2 tonight. At the recent SXSW 2025 conference, Ben Stiller (director and executive producer of the show) talked to Apple VP Eddie Cue to talk about Severance, Apple TV+, and more. It’s a great conversation that I enjoyed watching, and I hope that you do too:
There are two new iPads to choose from, and we begin this week’s episode of the podcast discussing who should consider each of the new models. We also discuss improvements in the iPhone 16e, new features to protect children, new emoji coming next month, location-based passwords in 1Password, hockey, ABA TECHSHOW, Severance, The Gorge, and much more.
In our In the Know segment, Brett and I share tips for getting the most out of the 1Password app.
