WWDC is just around the corner. Wouldn’t it be nice if Apple used the occasion to introduce uniformity in the way it numbers its operating systems for different platforms? That is the first topic that Brett Burney and I discuss in this week’s episode of the In the News podcast. We also discuss the very difficult job that Apple—and Tim Cook in particular—has working with an administration that threatens to make iPhones more expensive for consumers if Apple doesn’t do something that is impossible. We also have a follow-up discussion on the new venture between Jony Ive and Sam Altman and discuss some great hidden Apple Watch tips, a great app for folks with multiple Apple Watch bands, Instagram, and more.
In our In the Show segment, we discuss the fascinating new Apple TV+ show featuring Bono and the fan favorite Severance.
In our In the Know segment, Brett shares an Apple Watch tip, and I explain why anyone who enjoys watching TV and movies should check out the Callsheet app.
Finally, a quick programming note: there will be no podcast next week due to vacation schedules, but we will be back in two weeks—on Friday the 13th of June—to discuss everything announced at WWDC during our 200th episode.
On June 9, Apple will begin its annual developer conference called WWDC. We are close enough that there is lots of speculation and rumors about what Apple might announce, and Mark Gurman of Bloomberg says that he has heard that Apple is going to announce a change in how it numbers its operating systems. Right now, we are using iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 for the iPhone and iPad, watchOS 12 for the Apple Watch, macOS 15 for the Mac, visionOS 2 for the Vision Pro, and tvOS 18 for the Apple TV. With all of those different numbers, it is difficult to remember which release number is the current one. Gurman says that Apple is going to instead adopt the typical approach used by car manufacturers: use a year number. So instead of iOS 19 being announced in 10 days and released this Fall, it will be iOS 26—an indication that this is the current iPhone operating system until the year 2026. I hope that this prediction is true. As John Gruber of Daring Fireball notes, this would make a lot of sense and would “certainly be helpful to anyone trying to figure out what’s up-to-date or not.” Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac argues that if Apple is going to do this, the number ought to be the year that the operating system comes out (so the next one would be iOS 25) instead of the year in which that version ends. I disagree. While the next version of iOS is likely to come out three months before the end of 2025, it will remain the current version for much longer, nine months, in 2026 (assuming that Apple holds to its traditional schedule). And we also use this numbering convention in other contexts, not just cars. My daughter is about to start her Senior year of high school, but we don’t call that the class of 2025 (when she starts becoming a Senior) but instead it is the class of 2026 (when she finishes). Of course, maybe none of this will happen, but I hope that Gurman is correct and that Apple does make this change. We will all find out in only 10 days. And now, the news of note from the past week:
A big story in the news this past week was that upcoming iPhones might become much more expensive because President Trump said that he would impose a 25% tariff unless Apple starts making them in the United States, even though that is about as realistic as Trump demanding that Apple start making them on the moon. Lisa Eadicicco of CNN explains the numerous reasons that it is impossible for Apple to start making iPhones in the United States.
Tripp Mickle of the New York Times reports that the real reason for that announcement was simply that Trump was throwing a hissy fit because he invited Apple CEO Tim Cook to join him on a recent trip to the Middle East, but Cook declined. Whatever the reason, it is clear that Cook (once again) faces the delicate task of navigating the landmines.
The courts may provide Apple with a solution. The U.S. Court of International Trade ruled this week that Trump overstepped his authority when he asserted that there was any national emergency that justified invoking the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act. But as reported by Tony Romm of the New York Times, just hours ago as I type this, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit stayed that ruling while it considers the merits.
iPhone apps can do lots of different things, and one of those is promoting mental and physical health. Law Technology Today surveyed a large number of folks to get their recommendations for the best of these apps—Alan Klevan, Debra Bruce, Michael Goler, Allison Johs, Michele Carney, Sarah Gold, Mark Rosch, Michael Eisenberg, and my podcast co-host Brett Burney—and it resulted in this article.
Last week, I noted that Jony Ive and a bunch of other former Apple employees (mostly designers) have teamed up with Sam Altman and OpenAI to work on a new product that is different from the iPhone and uses AI. I was excited by the announcement because whether they release something great or a flop, I’m sure that it will be interesting given the folks involved. But Jason Snell of Six Colors explained why he thinks it highly unlikely that this will result in a good product. We will see.
If you have a lot of Apple’s watch bands for the Apple Watch, or if you just lust over them, the best app for managing your collection and seeing what else has been released is the Bandbreite app. Joe Rossignol of MacRumors notes that the app was recently updated to version 2.0 and has lots of new features.
The movie Bono: Stories of Surrender is now available on Apple TV+, and I watched it last night. It is a fascinating one-man show in which Bono tells stories from his life and weaves into those stories some of the most famous songs from U2. I recommend it. But if you have an Apple Vision Pro, the immersive version of the movie is so much better that it is a must see. Parts of it feature immersive video, mostly the songs. Other parts feature the normal 2D movie, but there is 3D animation on top of and around the 2D movie, and the animation is really incredible and adds a lot to the experience. I was surprised to look at the regular version afterwards and see that there is virtually none of that animation because the animation is such a big part of what makes the show so interesting. I am so glad to have experienced this in the Vision Pro, and I hope that Apple gives us lots more like this.
Ethan Shanfeld of Variety interviews Ben Stiller and Adam Scott to discuss the show Severance. Stiller notes how happy he is that Apple was the only studio that showed interest in the project when he first tried to sell the idea.
And finally, the month of June starts on Sunday. Here is a preview of what is coming to Apple TV+ next month.
One of the best things to experience on the Apple Vision Pro is an immersive video, such as the impressive collection of videos created by Apple. You sit in a single spot, you look around, and thanks to the 180º video and the spatial sound, you feel as if you have been transported somewhere else. It is incredibly realistic and impressive. Some of these immersive videos feature musicians playing music, and one of the very best examples of that is notable becuase it was not produced by Apple. The Prima Immersive app currently includes one episode of the Sessions immersive video series from The Spatialists, and it features bluegrass band AJ Lee & Blue Summit. When you watch that episode, you feel as if you are sitting in the room with the band as they perform live, just for you.
If there is a downside to an immersive video musical performance, it is that you must stay in one place. You cannot walk around the band. Of course, there is nothing unusual about that limitation—when I attend a live concert or other performance, I typically have to stay in my seat. However, when listening to Episode 42 of the fantastic Vision Pros podcast hosted by Tim Chaten, I learned about a new Apple Vision Pro app called Mahler Chamber Orchestra that removes this limitation. The app allows you to experience a classical music performance, and while you are free to sit in a chair and join the musicians in a circle as they play music, what makes this app stand out is that you can stand up and walk around. For example, if you want to really hear the cello, just walk up in front of the musician playing the cello to get close to that instrument. That is almost certainly something that you would never be able to do in a live performance (unless you are really good friends with the musicians), but in a virtual performance, you can feel free to do so.
The app indicates that more music is coming in the future, but for now, there is just a single performance (which costs $6.99 to purchase): a performance of Mozart’s Quintet in G minor. The musicians are members of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, which is based in Berlin. The app was created by Reflekt Music, a company that consists of Henrik Oppermann (an expert in 3D sound) and Timothy Summers (a graduate of Harvard and Julliard who plays violin and is one of the musicians in the quintet).
I started by putting on my Vision Pro while I sat in a chair in the room in my house that has my piano and some other instruments, which seemed like the appropriate place in my house for a performance. Once I started the app, I felt like I was witnessing a private concert at my home.
The artists are represented by dots in space. It reminds me of the traditional Wall Street Journal Hedcut representation of a person that is created by dots, except that these dots are in color and the life-size musicians are animated in real-time to reproduce an actual performance. I can turn to one side or the other to face different musicians.
The representation of the artists with dots may be a technical limitation, but it also serves an artistic purpose: this app is not about what the artists look like but instead about the sound of the music that they create. And the spatial sound is really good. Oppermann says that the app uses “point clouds, offering a fully immersive experience with 6 degrees of freedom and spatial audio with precise acoustic modelling.”
What is most impressive is that as I move around the room, I can pay even closer attention to the music coming from each specific instrument. I could even place my head inside of the violin or cello or viola to better hear—and, in some ways, feel—that particular instrument and get a deeper understanding of each specific performance that is a part of the whole. The spatial music adapts in real time to your movements so that no matter where you are positioned, the sound comes from the correct location.
I used this app both using the built-in speakers on the Vision Pro and using my AirPods Pro. I didn’t notice much of a difference; they were both excellent.
Here is a video that, while in 2D, approximates what the experience is like:
Although using the Vision Pro to experience this performance is new, the performance was recorded a few years ago, and there has been an installation that has traveled to different locations in Europe where people could wear earlier VR headsets to experience the performance. This video shows both the original performance that was recorded (along with other performances that have not yet been released for the Apple Vision Pro) and attendees experiencing virtual performances:
After experiencing this quintet performing a composition by Mozart, I now want to hear more. In the podcast episode, Oppermann and Summers talk about recording a full orchestra using spatial sound. I’m not sure how that would work with a Vision Pro—I guess I would have to be standing in a huge room that is big enough to fit an orchestra?—but it would be fascinating to walk around and pay closer attention to individual instruments in a huge orchestra. I would also love a similar experience with other genres of music: perhaps Dixieland jazz, traditional jazz, bluegrass, folk music, or any other type of acoustic music where each instrument or singer provides unique contributions.
I’m still a fan of the immersive videos that Apple and others have been creating for the Apple Vision Pro. But now that I have tried this app, I am eager to see where this type of technology goes in the future as headsets get smaller, lighter, and more powerful, thus making it easier to walk around the virtual musicians.
Thank you to SaneBox for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month. I’ve explained in the past what the service does, so this month, I thought I would talk about a typical day of using the service for one of my inboxes. For the same reason that the service works well for me, I think it could work well for you.
The inbox that I use for iPhone J.D. (jeff@iphonejd.com) receives lots of emails from lots of different sources. Many emails come from readers, and I always want to read those. Others have something to do with running this website or the podcast. Others come from vendors who want to tell me about a new product or service, and maybe 5% of those are of interest to me. Others are essentially spam emails that I never wanted to receive but they were not caught by the regular spam filter. And there are others too, but that gives you a sense of it.
SaneBox is a service that works in the background at the server level, and it acts like a traffic cop. Within seconds of an email arriving in my Inbox, SaneBox decides whether the email should stay in the Inbox, move to my @SaneNews subfolder (becuase it looks like a newsletter to which I subscribe), move to my @SaneLater folder (becuase it is of questionable importance, but still could be important), or move to another SaneBox folder such as @SaneAutoReplyiJD or @SaneBlackHole—more on those in a moment.
I try to check my Inbox every day, and whenever I do so, I typically see only a handful of new emails, and they are virtually all emails that I care about reading right away, such as emails from readers of iPhone J.D. I deal with them and then go back to my day. A few times a week, I look at the @SaneLater folder. Maybe two-thirds of the emails in there are either true spam or things like marketing emails from legitimate companies that just don’t happen to interest me. I can triage those very quickly. Then I read the emails in that subfolder that I care about. If the email happens to come from someone who matters to me, I drag the email from my subfolder back to my Inbox. The SaneBox service notices that I did that, and it interprets that as an instruction to keep future emails from that sender in the Inbox. After using SaneBox for many years, it has become increasingly rare for me to need to do this, but it still happens maybe once or twice a month.
When I have time to look at my newsletters—typically at night when I’m on my couch at home—I’ll look at the @SaneNews folder. I don’t subscribe to many newsletters, but I enjoy receiving them. However, I don’t want them clogging up my Inbox during the day when I need to get work done, so I love that they are moved to @SaneLater folder.
I pay for a service called FeedBlitz that sends out a free-to-you newsletter in the morning whenever there is a new post on iPhone J.D. If you want to sign up for that, just use the form on the right side of this website. The return address on those emails is my own email address, and I sometimes receive an out-of-office auto-reply from people who get that newsletter. For example, I received 14 of those emails this past Friday. The last thing that I would want is for those emails to clog up my Inbox, but thanks to SaneBox, that never happens. I created a rule on SaneBox that automatically moves those emails into a subfolder that I called @SaneAutoReplyiJD. It is pretty rare for me to have a need to look at those emails, but occasionally, someone asks me a question about getting those newsletters and I might find it useful to look at that subfolder. Otherwise, I just let them sit in there and delete them all once every few months.
If an email makes its way to my Inbox and I know that I never want to see an email from that recipient again, I move that email into the subfolder called @SaneBlackHole. Any future emails will go into that folder, and I never need to worry about that sender again. I take a quick look at that folder once every few months just to make sure that it is not making any mistakes, but in my many years of using SaneBox, I have yet to find a mistake.
There are other specialized features of SaneBox that I also use, but what I’ve described above is my core use of the service. Once a week, SaneBox sends me an email that tells me how much time I saved each week by using the service. My most recent one says that I saved 38 minutes last week. Who knows if that number is accurate, but it is definitely true that I was in and out of my Inbox far more quickly thanks to the traffic cop function performed by SaneBox. Those emails also contain useful tips for using SaneBox, and it is nice to be reminded of features that I might enjoy but haven’t explored in a while.
Because I work for a large law firm and I don’t have access rights to our mailserver, I cannot use SaneBox with my work email. But depending upon your work situation, you might be able to use it with yours. The SaneBox server never reads the contents of any emails, only things like the subject line and who it comes from, which is a nice privacy feature. However, I do use SaneBox with anoterh email account: my personal Gmail account. That works really well. Because I use my Gmail account when I purchase items online and have done so for decades, there are tons of emails that go to my Gmail account that I really don’t care about, and it is great that SaneBox keeps that Inbox tidy for me. SaneBox tells me that I saved 2.7 hours last week by using SaneBox with my Gmail account:
Although that statistic is too high—it’s not like I would have opened each of those irrelevant emails—it is undeniable that SaneBox did a great job of making that a far more useful email account. There is no question that I saved time using my Gmail account last week, and that is great.
If what I have just described sounds like something that would help you, click here to get a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. 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.
This week’s episode of the In the News podcast addresses Apple over the decades. We talk about what it used to be like to purchase Apple products and how that changed substantially for the better 24 years ago when Apple opened the first Apple Store. We also discuss how Apple’s new announcement regarding Emory University in Atlanta is just the latest in a long history of Apple’s connection with that university. Then we talk about Apple’s need to fix the CarPlay of the past at the same time that it prepares for the CarPlay of the future. We also discuss new requirements for using batteries on Southwest Airlines flights, the latest Apple TV+ news, using an AirTag to track down a lost dog, and more.
In our In the Know segment, Brett shares a cool Apple Watch tip about showing your step count on your watch face, and I provide some tips for using an iPhone as a clock next to your bed by adjusting the settings for StandBy mode.
Twenty-four years ago this week, on May 19, 2001, Apple opened its first retail store. That original store was at Tysons Corner Center in Virginia. Tim Hardwick of MacRumors relives that day and shares a video of Steve Jobs showing off the store. John Gruber of Daring Fireball points out that, at the time, there were some who thought that the stores were a dumb idea. Of course, the Apple Store eventually became the most successful store in the United States in terms of sales per square foot, twice as much as the #2 store (Tiffany’s). And the Apple executive in charge of the Apple Store, Deirdre O’Brien, is on Fortune‘s 2025 list of the Most Powerful Women in Business. I’ve seen the Apple Store in the New Orleans area move to larger locations in the Lakeside Shopping Center multiple times, and no matter how big that store gets, it always seems packed with people. If you live in a place that has access to an Apple Store, you know how useful and convenient these stores are. Long before the first iPhone and even before the first iPod, Apple did a great job executing on this idea. And now, the news of note from the past week:
In an article for Six Colors, Joe Rosensteel explains that while CarPlay Ultra sounds great, Apple ought to also focus on improving and fixing the regular CarPlay. As much as I love CarPlay and use it every day, I agree 100% with this.
John Voorhees of MacStories reports that with the new version of the Airbnb app, you can not only book a place to stay but also “a chef, personal trainer, hair stylist, manicurist, photographer, and more,” even if you are in your own hometown and not staying at an Airbnb.
HomeKit News reports that new projectors from Epson have built-in support for AirPlay 2 and the Apple Home app. AirPlay support seems like an obvious and useful feature for a projector.
Joe Hernandez of NPR reports that starting on May 28, if you use a portable battery to charge a device such as an iPhone during a flight on Southwest Airlines, the charging device will need to remain visible at all times. No putting the charger in a bag or the back of the seat compartment and having a cord snake out to your device. This is being implemented as a safety measure to help crew members respond more quickly if a lithium-ion battery overheats and catches fire.
Joe Rossignol of MacRumors reports that Amazon will soon be using drones to deliver iPhones, AirPods, and AirTags. The service will only be available in Phoenix, Arizona, and College Station, Texas, at first, but the idea is that Amazon can deliver to a specified location, such as your backyard, in less than an hour.
I first spent any significant time using a Mac was when I was freshman in college at Emory University in Atlanta. The computer labs had Macs and Apple LaserWriter printers, making it easy to produce documents that looked great. I used the money I earned from a summer job to purchase a Mac Plus from the Emory bookstore at the beginning of my Sophomore year, and I’ve been a Mac user—at my home, at least—ever since then. So I was happy to see Apple announce yesterday its deep relationship with Emory Hospital, including the extensive use of Macs, iPhones, and iPads at the Emory Hillandale Hospital in Lithonia, Georgia. I also see on the Emory website that the computer lab in Cox Hall is still full of Macs.
Apple also recently announced a collaboration between Apple Music and Universal Music Group to introduce Sound Therapy, a collection of playlists designed to promote clearer focus, deeper relaxation, or better sleep. These are special versions of songs that embed “special sound waves designed to enhance users’ daily routines, while retaining the artist’s original vision” based on “scientific research” to harness “the power of sound waves, psychoacoustics, and cognitive science to help listeners relax or focus the mind.” Does it work? I’m not sure myself, but Devon Deundee of MacStories says that he thinks it does.
Kevin Purdy of Ars Technica explains how an AirTag on a lost dog—combined with Purdy having an extra battery on hand—helped man’s best friend to get back to his home.
If you are considering purchasing a refurbished iPhone from a company other than Apple, Dave Gershgorn of Wirecutter shares some helpful advice.
As the Peanuts characters are celebrating their 75th anniversary this year, Apple announced this week that on July 18, 2025, it will air the first Peanuts musical in over 35 years. (I believe that the last one was the TV version of the 1975 stage musical Snoopy! The Musical, which aired on CBS on January 29, 1988, and can be found on YouTube.) The new show is called Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical, and it features original music from one of my favorite artists, Ben Folds.
And finally, John Gruber of Daring Fireball notes that Jony Ive—the former design chief at Apple—has assembled an incredible team of former Apple designers, and they have joined with Sam Altman and OpenAI (creator of ChatGPT) to create a new company that will create … well, they haven’t quite told us yet, but it will be a brand new product in 2026 that, if you believe them, will be as great as the iPhone. Will this be a dud or the next big thing? I have no idea, but it will be fun to watch and find out. I agree with this take from Adam Engst of TidBITS: “Years of hearing overblown promises have made me inherently skeptical, but Jony Ive and his team have done important work in the past, and OpenAI has the resources and the chutzpah to bring a product to the mainstream market.” Here is the slick and interesting video released in which Ive and Altman explain why they are so excited to be working together:
There were a surprisingly large number of Apple announcements this week, and we have lots to say about them in this week’s episode of the In the News podcast. We start by discussing CarPlay Ultra. It looks like a big step forward, and the only downside is that most of us will need to wait before it is in a car that we are ready to buy. But hey, if you are in the market to purchase an Aston Martin car right now, this is your lucky day. Next, we discuss the numerous announcements of upcoming new features that Apple made on Global Accessibility Awareness Day. These features will be useful for lots of folks, and they also paint a picture of future improvements that are even more exciting. We also discuss the multiple ways that FindMy works on an Apple Watch, an iPad productivity tip, the next version of Bluetooth, the Dogcow, the first letter of the alphabet, and more.
In our In the Show segment, we discuss Murderbot, the newest show on Apple TV+. We also discuss Trying, the next season of Shrinking, and more.
In our In the Know segment, we provide some Apple Watch watch face tips designed for Pope Leo, but even those of us who don’t drive around in the popemobile can use them as well.
It made the news this week that the new Pope, Pope Leo XIV, wears an Apple Watch. He even did so during his first Holy Mass. If he uses an Apple Watch, that must mean that he uses an iPhone as well. (We also know that his brother John uses an iPad to talk to Pope Leo.) However, I still haven’t seen an answer to the heavenly question that we are all wondering: since Pope Francis had asked for his popemobile be turned into a health clinic for the children of Gaza, will the next popemobile for Pope Leo have CarPlay? Talia Lakritz of Business Insider reported that it is likely to be a custom Mercedes-Benz G-class electric vehicle, and that vehicle does come standard with CarPlay. But if only it had been an Aston Martin, Pope Leo might have been among the first to experience CarPlay Ultra, which Apple unveiled yesterday. As Jason Snell of Six Colors explains, this next generation of CarPlay, which comes first to Aston Martin vehicles and then to other brands, will “provide deeper integration with the car experience, taking over all of the vehicle’s screens, including providing real-time information in the instrument cluster.” CarPlay Ultra will not look the same in every car, in part because different cars may have different types and sizes of screens, and in part because different automakers will work with Apple to create different designs for CarPlay Ultra that reflect the style of each car. Top Gear has a video with a hands on review. Apple has been talking about the next generation of CarPlay for a while now, and it is nice that it is now here—for a few cars, at least. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Yesterday was Global Accessibility Awareness Day, and as Apple has done for many years now, Apple announced a ton of new accessibility features that will be coming in iOS 19 later this year. For example, Accessibility Nutrition Labels for apps will let people know whether an app will be accessible before they even download the app. But the feature that impressed me the most is the new Magnifier feature. Using the Continuity Camera feature, your iPhone and Mac will be able to work together so that the iPhone’s camera can zoom in on surroundings to see things more easily—such as the screen in the front of a classroom. I have poor vision, even when I wear glasses, so I sometimes found it difficult to read the chalk board when I was a student, and I sometimes have trouble today reading a screen, such as when I attend a CLE presentation. This new Magnifier feature looks impressive, and I included a video preview of this feature at the bottom of today’s post. There is also a similar Enhanced View feature coming to the Apple Vision Pro, which will allow you to zoom your surroundings—such as zooming in on a sign across the room so that you can read it. Very cool.
Another new accessibility feature coming later this year is an enhancement to Live Captions. Live Captions is currently available on the iPhone, and it provides you with a real-time transcription of spoken audio. Later this year, you will be able to see on your Apple Watch the live captions that your iPhone hears. You will also be able to use an Apple Watch to control the Live Listen feature of an iPhone paired with AirPods.
An amazing article by Rolfe Winkler of the Wall Street Journal describes how Apple is working with a company that installs a brain implant that allows a person to control an iPhone, iPad, or Vision Pro using brain waves. The article explains how Matt Jackson, a patient with ALS, is able to control and use the immersive video feature of the Apple Vision Pro to experience what it is like to be in different parts of the world.
I’m a huge fan of the Anker Laptop Power Bank for the reasons I explained in this review. Michael Burkhardt of 9to5Mac likes it as well, as he explains in his review.
Tim Hardwick of MacRumors discusses the new Bluetooth 6.1 standard, which will enhance privacy and improve power efficiency. Hardwick thinks we may see this in the next version of the iPhone that Apple will announce later this year.
If you know what I mean when I say “Dogcow,” then you will want to read this article from Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac to learn about the new stickers that come with the Apple Developer app.
Nathan Ingraham of Engadget explains why he wants to see a change to the “a” in Apple’s Notes app. Before I saw this, I can’t say that I paid much attention to the distinction between a “single storey a” such as the one that you probably use in your handwriting and which Apple used in its logo in the late 1970s and the 1980s and the “double storey a” used in most fonts (including the one I use on this website).
There is a new show on Apple TV+: Murderbot, starring Alexander Skarsgård. Ryan Christoffel reports that the early reviews are excellent. I watched the first two episodes last night, and I really enjoyed them. I’ve never seen a show like this before, and Skarsgård is excellent.
Just in case I needed a reason to love the Apple TV+ show Shrinking even more, Selome Hailu of Variety reports that Michael J. Fox will appear in Season 3. It will be the first time that Fox has acted since 2020. Fox and Bill Lawrence, the co-creator of Shrinking, worked together on the sitcom Spin City.
The Baltimore Ravens released their 2025 game schedule and teamed up with Apple to do so Severance style. The joke gets a little old in this video, but the idea of what they did is still cute. If you are a Ravens fan, I suspect that you will especially enjoy the video.
If you were not able to make it to the South of France for the Cannes Film Festival, then you will not be able to see the debut of the documentary Bono: Stories of Surrender. Ne désespérez pas, tout va bien; you will still be able to see the film on Apple TV+ on May 30. And if you own an Apple Vision Pro, you will be glad that you skipped Cannes because it will also be available that day in a special immersive version for the Apple Vision Pro. I first read this interview of Bono by Mike Fleming, Jr., of Deadline because I wanted to see what Bono had to say about how the immersive version of this film provides what Bono calls “radical intimacy.” But I was delighted to discover that the entire interview is incredibly interesting, and it makes me really want to see this documentary—regardless of whether it is in 2D or 3D.
Speaking of 3D movies on the Apple Vision Pro, it used to be rather difficult to find all of them in the TV app. But as Juli Clover of MacRumors notes, visionOS 2.5 came out this week, and it includes a new “Vision” tab in the app to make it easier to see all of the 3D content in one place.
By the way, I continue to update a curated list of every Apple Immersive Video that has been released for the Apple Vision Pro. You can find it at iPhoneJD.com/AppleImmersive.
The blockbuster summer movie coming from Apple this year is F1, starring Brad Pitt. John Voorhees of MacStories describes a number of new features recently added to Apple’s Maps app, such as integration with Michelin ratings. One of the new features is the addition of a Detailed City Experience—which I described just a few weeks ago—for Monaco. That’s just in time for the Formula 1 TAG Heuer Grand Prix de Monaco 2025, which starts in a few days. The new details make it easy to see the course, the grandstands, iconic buildings such as the Monte Carlo Casino and the Hôtel de Paris, and even representations of the racecars. (If you want to see the cars, open the Maps app and search for “Formula 1 Pit Garages” in Monaco.)
And finally, here is the video released by Apple yesterday that I mentioned above. It shows off the upcoming Magnifier feature of the Mac and iPhone. This is going to be very useful for a lot of people.
In an antitrust lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice against Google, Judge Amit Mehta of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled last year that Google illegally maintained monopoly power in the market for general search services and the market for general search text advertising. The court held that Google entered into an anticompetitive deal with Apple and others for the placement of Google’s search engine. That left the question of what remedy to impose for this violation of the Sherman Act.
The phase of the trial to determine the remedy is going on right now. One of the witnesses called to testify was Apple executive Eddy Cue. As the court fashions the remedy, Apple has an interest in continuing to be paid by Google to make Google the default search engine in Safari. Documents filed in that lawsuit reveal that Google paid Apple $20 billion in 2022 to be Safari’s default search engine. (Apple’s revenue for fiscal year 2022 was $394.3 billion, so that was about 5% of Apple’s total revenue and about 25% of the portion of Apple’s revenue for fiscal year 2022 that Apple attributed to “Services.”) When Cue testified, it was no surprise that he favored a remedy that allowed Google to continue paying Apple. For example, he testified that it “just seems crazy to me” that the DOJ argued that the appropriate punishment against Google would be to let Google save money by no longer making these payments to Apple.
Cue also testified that, given how rapidly AI is advancing, the antitrust threat that Google posed in the past is shrinking. For example, he testified that, for the first time in 22 years, Google searches in Safari actually declined last month as more people are running searches using AI tools like ChatGPT.
The portion of Cue’s testimony that particularly interested me—and the reason for today’s post—was his testimony about how things change in the world of technology. Lauren Feiner of The Verge reports that Cue explained the changes in the industry that he had seen so far as follows:
Cue cautioned the judge that tech is not like other industries, and giants often fall even without court intervention. “When I got to Silicon Valley, all of the best companies, or the most successful companies, either don’t exist today or are significantly smaller and less impactful,” Cue said, pointing to companies like HP, Sun Microsystems, and Intel. In the technology field, being an incumbent might not offer the same benefits it does in other markets. “We’re not an oil company, we’re not toothpaste. These are things that are going to last forever,” he said. “You may not need an iPhone 10 years from now.”
The idea that you may not “need” an iPhone in 10 years does not mean that there will not be an iPhone in ten years for those who prefer to use a smartphone. But it does mean that somethiing better would be available to use instead of an iPhone. We’ve seen this story in the past, even just in the context of Apple. The iPod debuted in 2001 and it went on to become widely regarded as the device that saved Apple, not only because of the revenue that Apple saw from the incredibly high number of iPod sales, but also because people who became fans of the iPod would often consider and then purchase other Apple products, like an Apple computer. This was called the iPod halo effect. But despite the success of the iPod, when the iPhone was introduced in 2007, the iPod became just one of many apps on the device. From that day forward, you no longer needed an iPod to have a great way to play music on a portable device.
So what did Eddy Cue have in mind when he testified that you may not need an iPhone ten years from now? It’s an interesting question that I’ve been thinking about since last week. I’m a big fan of my Apple Vision Pro, and so I think—and hope—that Apple will be selling a similar device ten years from now that is much lighter and much less expensive. Just a few days ago, Mark Gurman of Bloomberg reported that Apple is making progress on a new computer chip that will allow Apple to make something as powerful as the Apple Vision Pro that will fit in a pair of smart glasses that are similar to the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which look like this:
Perhaps Cue was thinking of something like this, which would include a “virtual” iPhone-like device that you would see through the glasses but that nobody else would be able to see. (That would certainly be useful for privacy.) Or maybe he had something else in mind that I’m just not creative enough to think about right now. Some of the original devices created by companies to incorporate something like an iPod into a smartphone certainly exhibited a lack of creativity, most notably the ROKR developed by Motorola, which was released in 2005 and looked like the other mobile phones already in the market and nothing like the iPhone that Apple would release two years later:
I look forward to the day when we have something even better than the iPhone that will cause me to no longer need an iPhone. I’ll mark my calendar for the year 2025 to come up with a new name for this website.
This week, Brett Burney and I celebrate the fourth anniversary of the In the News podcast. It started as what I originally thought was a crazy idea when Brett reached out to me, and it has turned into one of the best parts of my week. Thanks to all of you who have listened, and a special thank you to those of you who have reached out to us over the years to talk about the podcast. In this week’s episode—which was a great one—we start by discussing two Apple firsts that continue to have an impact today: the first iMac, and the first iPad mini. Next, we look to the future to discuss iOS 18.5 and why it might be released on Monday or Tuesday. We also talk about the changes to in-app purchases, using your iPad as a monitor, using a MagSafe wallet with an iPhone, AI, and more.
In our In the Vision segment, we discuss Apple’s latest tear-jerker. In our Where Y’at segment, we discuss yet another life that was saved thanks to the Apple Watch. And in our In the Show segment, we discuss promising programming coming to Apple TV+.
In our In the Know segment, Brett shares a tip for using Siri to make decisions for you, and I discuss different steps you can take when apps behave badly.
