Steve Jobs gets all of the attention when people talk about the history of Apple, but there were two men in the garage who started the company, and the other founder was Steve Wozniak, who everyone calls Woz. John Gruber of Daring Fireball reports that Wox turned 75 years old this week. He also explains how Woz has tried to devote his entire life to the simple concept of making people happy. We can use more of that in this world, so Happy Birthday to Woz. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- It was just last week that Apple released iOS 18.6.1. Nevertheless, as reported by Juli Clover of MacRumors, this week Apple released iOS 18.6.2 and iPadOS 18.6.2. Apple says that these updates provide important security fixes and are recommended for all users.
- William Gallagher of AppleInsider shares the tale of a woman in the UK whose Apple Watch kept reporting a low heart rate. That led her to seek medical attention and discover that her heart was having ectopic beats, perhaps as a result of stress. And then subsequent tests discovered a brain tumor. No sensor on the Apple Watch discovered the tumor, but the fact that it encouraged her to seek medical attention turned out to be important for multiple reasons.
- Do you use AirPods but find that they sometimes fall out of your ears? (I’m talking about AirPods, not AirPods Pro.) If so, Amber Neely of AppleInsider recommends trying silicone covers ($8.99 on Amazon) to see if that keeps them from falling out.
- Do you wonder how AirPods work? A new video from Real Engineering does a great job of explaining the technology.
- In an article for Six Colors, Glenn Fleishman does a great job of explaining why passkeys are better than passwords. He also recommends using Apple’s own Passwords app to store passkeys if you primarily use Apple devices and to use 1Password if you want to use passkeys on multiple platforms. (I’ll add: if you already use 1Password, it makes sense to also use that app for your passkeys.)
- When the Apple Vision Pro was released last year, the HBO Max app included an immersive environment that made you feel like you were in the Iron Throne room from Game of Thrones. This week, HBO Max added another immersive environment: Hogwarts Great Hall from Harry Potter. As Chance Miller of 9to5Mac notes, there is both a day and a night mode, and it features floating candles and ambient sound effects. This makes sense because HBO Max recently started filming a new TV series based on the books, but since that new series does not debut until 2027, I’m a little surprised that this immersive environment was released now.
- Malcolm Owen of AppleInsider notes that Disney+ has a new immersive environment for the Vision Pro based on content from the new show Alien: Earth.
- If you like the Apple TV+ show Severance, there is a video episode of the Severance Podcast out this week. It features most of the cast members playing a silly game and trading jokes, and I enjoyed seeing the actors have fun.
- Apple TV+ is getting more expensive if you get it as a stand-alone service and pay monthly. As Joe Rossignol of MacRumors notes, when the service launched in 2019 (with very few shows), the monthly cost was $4.99. In 2022, Apple increased the price to $6.99. In 2023, the price increased to $9.99. This week, Apple announced that the monthly price is going up to $12.99. (The annual price remains the same at $99.99.) Virtually every other streaming service has also had price hikes, and I still think that Apple TV+ is a great value. Indeed, if you get Apple TV+ through the Apple One bundle, the price is staying the same—even though Apple did increase the price of Apple One back in 2023 at the same time that it last raised the price of the Apple TV+ service.
- John Gruber of Daring Fireball believes that the change in the monthly, but not the annual, price for Apple TV+ and other streaming services reflects the rise in short-term customers.
- Ryan Christoffel notes that the Apple One service is becoming more worthwhile for two reasons. First, the price increase of Apple TV+ means that the price difference between that service and Apple One (which starts at $19.99) is even less. Second, another part of Apple One—the Apple Music service—is about to get much better in iOS 26 with cool new features like AutoMix, full-screen animated artwork on the lock screen, and much more.
- Speaking of Apple One, I’ll note that if you get the Premier package ($37.95 a month), you can share with five other people, plus you get Fitness+ and News+, two services that I use frequently and really enjoy. Plus, you get 2TB of iCloud storage for your family, which is really useful. (I see that my iCloud Photos library alone is over 800 GB right now.)
- And finally, in 2022, Apple released Action Mode, a way to reduce shakiness in handheld videos, which is especially handy if you are moving around a lot while you take a video. This week, Apple released an uplifting and tear-jerking video called No Frame Missed to show how the Action mode on an iPhone is also a great feature for people who have hands that shake because of Parkinson’s. Very cool.