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.
- Matthew Cassinelli describes the new “Hold That Thought” shortcut released for Global Accessibility Awareness Day.
- How does an Apple Watch without the cellular feature update your location in the Find My app? To answer that question, Glenn Fleishman of Six Colors wrote a fantastic, detailed description of all of the different ways that items can provide a location to the Find My service. This is a wonderful deep dive into this feature.
- Mahmoud Itani of Macworld shares some Apple Watch tips.
- 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.
- The Spotlight Search feature on the iPad is a lot more powerful than you might realize, as Matthew Daley of the iPad Productivity website explains.
- 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.