Month: November 2025

If you don’t currently subscribe to Apple TV, today is a great day to sign up. Apple TV is offering a Black Friday special: Apple TV is only $5.99/month for six months. It will take you a good six months to make a dent in all of the great shows. Just over a year ago, I shared a list of my Top 30 favorite shows on Apple TV. The top five on that list were (1) Ted Lasso, (2) For All Mankind, (3) Severance, (4) Slow Horses, (5) Silo, all of which are shows that I still highly recommend. But in the past year, there have been at least nine other shows that I would add to my list of all-time best shows on Apple TV: Pluribus, Your Friends & Neighbors, The Studio, The Last Frontier, Bad Monkey, Chief of War, Stick, Murderbot, and Down Cemetery Road. And as reported by Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac, in just a few weeks, Apple TV will add F1 The Movie and other new content. It is great to have so many great shows to choose from. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• One show that you won’t be able watch on Apple TV right now is The Hunt. As I reported last week, Apple was about to debut the show when it abruptly pulled it. And now, we may know the reason why. Tim Hardwick of MacRumors reports that the creator and director of the show, Cédric Anger, is accused of copying the plot from a novel and movie by the late Douglas Fairbairn. I’m amazed that the show got so close to airing before this issue arose.
• Here are a few noteworthy Black Friday deals on Amazon. First, I’m a big fan of the HiRise 3 Deluxe Wireless Charging Station from Twelve South. I gave it a great review two years ago, and I continue to use it every single night. It lives on my nightstand, and it works great. I paid $150 for it, but you can get it today on Amazon for only $59.99. If you want something just as good but more versatile because it is portable, the UGREEN 3-in-1 Foldable MagFlow Wireless Charger is now only $89.99 on Amazon. I use a 3-in-1 charger at my desk at work, at my desk at home, and next to my bed, because these devices are so incredibly useful. If you haven’t tried one yet, today is a fantastic day to pick one up.
• Amazon also has some great deals on iPads. An 11" iPad Air is 25% off, starting at only $449.00. If you want a really simple entry-level iPad—perfect for a child or a loved one who wants something basic—I’m astonished to see that you can get one today for only $274.00. Less than $300 for an iPad? Wow. You can also save about $100 on most models of the iPad Pro. And finally, you can get the Apple Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro 13" (M4 or M5 model) for only $279.00, a 20% discount off the $349.00 that you would have to pay at an Apple Store.
• Amazon is also selling the Apple Watch Ultra 2 for only $599, a 23% drop from the typical $779 price.
• At the other end of the price scale, Mahmoud Itani of Macworld created a list of what he calls the 12 most ridiculously overpriced Apple products of all time.
• PhoneBuff is a company that tests technologies and creates great videos to show off the tests. This week, they released this video to show the speed differences of the iPhone 17 Pro Max, iPhone 16 Pro Max, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 14 Pro Max, iPhone 13 Pro Max, and iPhone 12 Pro Max. It’s a dramatic video, and the results are interesting.
• Joe Rosensteel wrote an interesting opinion piece about CarPlay for Six Colors.
• Guillermo Rai and Nnamdi Onyeagwara of The Athletic (part of The New York Times) report that Real Madrid, the successful football club in Spain, is working with Apple to create an immersive video documentary for the Apple Vision Pro. As a reminder, I maintain a list of all of the current and upcoming immersive content on this page.
• With Thanksgiving behind us, now we can get ready for the holiday season. Jason Snell of Six Colors discusses Festivitas, a fun app for the Mac that lets you put holiday lights on your Mac’s menu bar and more. And thanks to a recent update, you can also make it snow on your desktop. As I type this, I’m looking at the blinking lights and watching the snow fall on my screen.
• M.G. Siegler says that the Apple TV show Pluribus reminds him of AI. Me too.
• And finally, every year around this time, Apple releases a special video for the holidays. This year’s video is called A Critter Carol, and you can click here to watch it on YouTube. It is cute, and you should watch it. But after you are done, make sure you watch the video that I’m embedding below and at this link: the making of video. I enjoyed the making of video even more than the actual video.

Thirteen years ago, Apple released the first version of the iPad mini. I bought one, and I really liked it. As I noted in my review, sometimes less is more, and it was delightful to have the functionality of a regular iPad in a smaller package. Three years later, in 2015, I started using the 12.9" version of the iPad Pro. After using that device for a decade, the iPad Pro is definitely the best iPad for me. Whether I am looking at documents while doing work, enjoying pictures, or just studying my busy calendar, the larger screen is fantastic. And I love that the iPad Pro is the fastest, most powerful iPad. This has often made me wonder: does an iPad mini still have a place in my life?

For the last few weeks, I’ve had an opportunity to answer that question. My law firm purchased a number of iPad minis to use for a project, and before they were all put into use, I was able to borrow one of them and see what it is like to use an iPad in 2025, from the perspective of someone who uses a 13" iPad Pro. I have been using it for both work during the day and for entertainment at night. My conclusion? As Thomas Wolfe wrote, you can’t go home again. The iPad mini is still cute as a button, but as someone who has become accustomed to using a fast and large 13" iPad Pro, this slower 8.3" device has too many compromises.

The size

At 5.3" x 7.69", the iPad mini is less than half the size of my 13" iPad Pro, which is 8.48" x 11.09". It feels like I cut my iPad Pro in half.

This small size makes the iPad mini small and light, and sometimes that is a good thing. There is no risk of my hand becoming tired from holding it for a long period of time. But the small size means that the edges of my fingers cover even more of the screen when I am holding it, which is sometimes annoying and distracts from the otherwise nice experience of holding something that is small and light.

The more important problem for me is that with so much less screen real estate, everything is cramped. For example, when I look at emails, I cannot even see the full names of people in the list of emails on the right side of the screen.

When I look at documents, the type is so small that I find myself either squinting or panning left and right to read everything.

When I use my iPad Pro, I almost always use it in landscape mode. For the iPad mini, everything is so cramped in landscape mode that I often found myself using it in portrait mode. In this orientation, it works almost like a larger iPhone. And for certain types of apps, that can work reasonably well, such as scrolling through Instagram, Reddit, or Ivory (my Mastodon client). But for just about all of my work tasks, the small size of the iPad mini was too small for me to be productive.

In other words, the iPad mini worked best when I used it, in portrait orientation, as if it were a larger iPhone. And it was sort of nice to have a screen that is larger than an iPhone. But for the same reason that I don’t use my iPhone to do the things I do on my iPad—such as reading and annotating documents—I didn’t enjoy using an iPad mini for those tasks.

The speed

The other thing that I don’t like about this device is the speed. The A17 Pro chip is not that old; it was used just two years ago in the iPhone 15 Pro, and it seemed like a fast processor when I used that device. But every time I opened an app or tried to do anything even remotely intensive, I found myself frustrated by the noticeable decrease in responsiveness. To be fair, I’m probably just spoiled by the speed of an iPad Pro, but I’m sure that an iPad Air with its M3 processor also feels a lot faster than this iPad mini with an A17 Pro chip.

The screen

Like the iPad Air and the iPad, the iPad mini uses a Liquid Retina display. The iPad Pro uses an Ultra Retina XDR display with ProMotion technology. The iPad mini’s peak brightness is 500 nits. The iPad Pro’s peak brightness is 1000 nits, and HDR content can reach 1600 nits. What this means is that when nothing is moving on the screen, everything looks much better on the iPad Pro. And when something is moving—for example, when I am scrolling through a document, a social media app, emails, etc.—it is much harder to read the screen. As a result, I find myself waiting until I pause scrolling before I start to pay attention to words, which slows me down even more.

The price

One very nice thing about the iPad mini is the price. The full retail price is $499, and you can currently get it on Amazon for only $399. That is the version with only 128GB, which doesn’t give you a lot of space for larger documents and videos. However, if you are primarily using this device to browse the Internet and stream files, 128GB may be enough.

The future

There is, however, one thing about the iPad mini that intrigues me. I mentioned above that the iPad mini worked best for me when I thought of it as a larger iPhone, not a smaller iPad. It is rumored that Apple is working on an iPhone with a screen that can unfold, opening up like a book. That rumored device would unfold into something with a screen size that is not that different from the size of an iPad mini. If I put my iPhone on top of the iPad mini, I can imagine how that might look when an iPhone screen unfolds.

An iPhone with a screen that unfolds would still be too small to use as an iPad substitute. But using the iPad mini for the last few weeks has shown me the appeal of having an iPhone with an even larger screen. So in a way, the iPad mini is interesting because it is a peek into a possible future of the iPhone.

Conclusion

Any time I review a product, I provide my personal opinion, cognizant that others may disagree. I feel that is more true for the iPad mini than for any other product that I have tried in a long time. The most important reason that the iPad mini is not for me is that I have grown to appreciate everything that makes the 13" iPad Pro so special: the huge and beautiful screen, and the speed. If you currently use an older version of the 11" iPad Air, I suspect that the switch to an iPad mini will be far less jarring for you. When I discussed the iPad mini (A17 Pro) without having had a chance to use it back on October 16, 2024, I thought that is might be the right device for some lawyers. I suppose I still think that, but only for some folks. For most lawyers, I think that the compromises are too great for this to be your one-and-only iPad.

If Apple were to upgrade the iPad mini to give it a better screen and a faster processor, that would make a difference to me. The considerably smaller screen would still be too cramped for me to use this device as my main iPad for work, but it would erase some of the other annoyances. The iPad mini (A17 Pro) is already a year old, and there are rumors that an improved iPad mini will be released in 2026. We’ll see.

I loved having an opportunity to try out an iPad mini again, after all of these years. But I can now say that it is not the device for me. Moreover, I think that the screen is so small that I suspect that many others who are looking to use this device to get work done will find it to be unsatisfactory. On the other hand, if you want something small and light for casual, one-handed use—something similar to an iPhone, just a little bigger—that is where the iPad mini makes much more sense. And of course, for kids, or for people looking for a portable entertainment device, this may be the best version of the iPad.

Click here to get the Apple iPad mini (A17 Pro) from Amazon ($399).

On Friday night, especially at the end of a long week, I love to celebrate the TGIF by watching a great show on Apple TV. Right now, that means watching the fantastic show Pluribus. But in the United States this week, the work week ends for many of us on Wednesday because of Thanksgiving. Fortunately, Apple has adjusted its schedule, so you won’t have to wait an extra two days to see what Carol is up to in the fifth episode of Pluribus.

As reported by Zac Hall of 9to5Mac, Apple normally releases new episodes of Pluribus at 9pm Eastern on Thursday so that they are available to watch on Friday—or Thursday night, for people who watch as soon as the episode drops. But this week, the episode will be released at 9pm Eastern on Tuesday—later today!—so that everyone can watch it on Wednesday. Apple even released a cheeky announcement on X:

pic.twitter.com/iaAyBE9pTg

— Apple TV (@AppleTV) November 24, 2025

It is not just Pluribus that will be available early. The penultimate episode of the first season of The Last Frontier, Episode 9, will also be available, this week only, two days early. Moreover, the shows that Apple normally debuts on Wednesday—Down Cemetery Road, Palm Royale, and Loot—will also be available, so you have lots to choose from.

Pluribus is definitely a show that people like to discuss, so whether you are ready for Episode 5 or you haven’t started the series yet, I recommend that you catch up before Thursday to avoid any Thanksgiving spoilers.

After a week off, Brett Burney and I are back with Episode 222 of the In the News podcast. We start by talking about Apple’s Black Friday special and when it makes sense to take advantage of it. Next, we talk about Apple’s 2025 App Store Awards. After that, I have a surprise show-and-tell segment featuring three products—you may want to watch the video for that part of the podcast—followed by a discussion of the Apple Vision Pro, a digital ID in your Apple Wallet, the show Pluribus (with no spoilers), the iPhone Pocket, and much more.

In our In the Know segment, Brett has figured out how to download music from the Apple Music Classical app, and I recommend a great tripod.

Click here to listen to the audio podcast, or just listen using your podcast player of choice. You can also watch the episode on YouTube:

Next week is Thanksgiving, and that means Black Friday events. Apple announced that this year (like in recent years), Apple will be giving out Apple gift cards when you purchase certain products from November 28 to December 1. For example, if you purchase an iPhone 16 or iPhone 16e (but not any of the newer models), you can get a gift card for up to $75. For certain Mac models, you can get up to $250. My wife recently upgraded to an iPhone 17, and when I went to pick it up from our local Apple Store, I was amazed at the activity. A very large number of people are buying a new iPhone right now! And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Apple announced the finalists for the 2025 App Store awards. Every year, I find this list interesting because Apple tends to honor a lot of apps that were not on my radar screen. This year, there is only a single app on the list that I currently use: the Explore POV app for the Apple Vision Pro.
• Speaking of the Vision Pro, Vincent Nguen of The Gadgeteer says that if you haven’t tried an Apple Vision Pro yet, you should find some time to do a 30-minute demo at an Apple Store because the device is so impressive. I agree, and I love showing mine off to friends who haven’t tried it yet.
• Apple has been moving away from the HomeKit standard that it developed towards the open Matter standard. I think that is a good thing because it opens the door to even more compatible devices, but the Matter standard was, in some ways, not as good as HomeKit. Andrew O’Hara of AppleInsider reports that the Connectivity Standards Alliance has announced Matter 1.5, which adds support for cameras (finally!) and other devices.
• I use the titanium version of the Apple Watch Series 10. It is more expensive, but I love the way it looks, and since my Apple Watch is the only jewelry-type item that I wear other than my wedding ring, I feel that it is OK to splurge. Apple announced this week that for the titanium version of the Apple Watch Series 11 and all versions of the Apple Watch Ultra 3, Apple 3D-prints each case with 100% recycled titanium powder. Apple says that this is better for the planet because there is less wasted titanium. It is also pretty neat; I didn’t know that you could 3D print a substance like titanium.
• Ed Hardy of Cult of Mac reports that Illinois is the 14th U.S. state to support Apple’s digital ID program, so if you live in Chicago or other cities in the Prairie State, you can now put your driver’s license in your Apple Wallet.
• if you live in Arkansas or Virginia, you can already use a special app to store a digital version of your driver’s license, but Oliver Haslam of AppleInsider reports that you will be able to use Apple’s Wallet app too.
• Riley Hill of SlatePad posted a detailed review of the 11" version of the iPad Pro M5.
• Nellie Andreeva of Deadline reports that Apple announced that its new show Pluribus “broke the record previously held by Severance Season 2 for the biggest global drama series launch” on Apple TV. I love watching this show, and it is one of those shows that I find myself continuing to think about during the week. Episode 4 debuts today.
• Apple TV givieth and Apple TV taketh away. Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac reports that, for the second time this year, Apple TV pulled a show that it had been advertising shortly before it was supposed to debut. This time, the show is a French-language show called The Hunt that I was thinking about watching. Apple hasn’t provided a reason.
• Last week, I mentioned that Apple released the iPhone Pocket. I was astonished by the price, but as William Gallagher of AppleInsider notes, Apple clearly has a better handle on its business than I do because the luxury product sold out almost immediately. I guess they could have charged even more. If anyone wants to purchase a very limited edition sock from me, suitable for either an iPhone or or, say, a foot, let me know and I’ll quote you a very high price.
• And finally, I virtually never discuss iPhone games on this website, but I’m not even sure that this one is a game. I’m not sure what it is. Pools is a—I guess it is an experience for the iPhone? You go from room to room and swim in pools. The graphics and sound are very impressive, and it is free to download and try the first chapter, which is more than enough to get a sense of it. It is interesting. Here is a preview:

Seventeen years ago today, I started this website with a post about why I used the iPhone. Today, that seems like an odd thing to explain, but back in 2008, only a tiny percentage of lawyers were using an iPhone. If a lawyer was using a smartphone back then, it was most likely to be Blackberry. Every year since then, I have taken advantage of this website’s anniversary to share some information about this website that might be interesting to readers. If you want to travel back in time, here are my prior posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16.

The top 10 posts. As always, we start by looking at which posts over the prior twelve months were read by the most people. The fact that these posts were popular sheds some light on what has been on the minds of attorneys and other folks using iPhones or iPads. Here are the top ten most viewed posts published in the last year:

1. Review: iPhone 17 Pro Max. Apple announced a few weeks ago that it believed that its revenue during the quarter that we are in right now—which includes all of the holiday sales—will be the best quarter in the history of Apple. Clearly, that is because Apple believes that there is a lot of interest in the 2025 versions of the iPhone. My data point to confirm that is that my review of the iPhone 17 Pro Max wasn’t just the #1 post of this year. It is one of the most-read posts in the history of this website.
2. Review: AirPods Pro 3. AirPods are a fantastic accessory for the iPhone. AirPods Pro are the best version of the AirPods, and when Apple released the new AirPods Pro 3 this year, it had been three years since the AirPods Pro 2 came out. I suspect that sales of the AirPods Pro 3 will be very impressive this quarter.
3. Apple’s generous 14-day return policy. It was just over a year ago that I wrote that post, but I’m still including it in this year’s list because it saw so much traffic over the past twelve months. I guess that folks thinking about buying Apple products were also thinking about whether they could return a product if it wasn’t right for them.
4. Review: Kodak Slide N Scan Digital Film Scanner — bring your past into the future. One of my personal projects this past year has been digitizing old photos and videos. This Kodak scanner made it easy to digitize hundreds of old slides that my parents had taken in the 1980s. Thanks to this scanner, some of those old photos now show up on the home screens of my iPad and iPhone (using the Photos widget), and it always makes me smile to see them.
5. Why lawyers will love the 2025 Apple Watch models. The first version of the Apple Watch went on sale on April 24, 2015, and I reviewed it a few days later. Starting in 2016, Apple has released new versions of the Apple Watch every September. My guess is that most iPhone J.D. readers already own an Apple Watch, so the question for iPhone J.D. readers every September is whether it is a good year to upgrade. My post on the 2025 Apple Watch models provided some advice on whether it was worth upgrading to the Apple Watch Ultra 3, Apple Watch Series 11, or Apple Watch SE 3.
6. All of Apple’s Immersive Video content for the Apple Vision Pro. Perhaps the best thing to watch on the Apple Vision Pro is the immersive video content released by Apple. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t maintain a single, up-to-date, list of all of its immersive content. So I made one, and I update that post when new content is released—such as last week, when Apple released the video Flight Ready on Veterans Day. I even created a special URL for that page because I know that it is accessed so often: https://iPhoneJD.com/AppleImmersive.
7. Review: Happy Scale — track and predict your weight loss. If you are trying to lose weight, you can track your progress using the built-in Health app from Apple. But if you want more options, there are countless third-party apps in the App Store to choose from, and Happy Scale is one of the very best. It has a great interface, offers tons of insights, and—perhaps best of all—it shows your progress on a graph that smooths out the data. Thus, instead of seeing the inevitable ups and downs along the way, you focus on the overall progress over time.
8. Review: Anker Laptop Power Bank — portable power, smart design. I gave this product a very positive review earlier this year, and I love it even more now than I did then. It has a fantastic design, it holds a ton of power, it charges multiple devices at once, it has a useful display, and the built-in cords are incredibly convenient. It works great with a laptop computer, but I primarily use mine with my iPad, iPhone, and Vision Pro. This device also makes a great gift, especially right now, because it is currently only $91.99 on Amazon. That is an amazing price (32% off) and less than I paid for mine.
9. Why lawyers will love iOS 26 and iPadOS 26. Apple updates its operating systems every year, but some years, the updates are even bigger than others. This was a big year, and I discussed why in the post that is #9 on this list.
10. Why lawyers will love the new iPad Air. As much as I love using my iPad Pro, I know that most lawyers don’t need an iPad with all of the bells and whistles—not to mention a higher price. The 2025 version of the iPad Air is an excellent device that is perfect for most lawyers, as I explained in this post.

Visitors to iPhone J.D. The other thing I do this time every year is share some statistical information about iPhone J.D. visitors, to the extent that I can figure it out using the tools at my disposal—specifically, the Google Analytics service.

Google Analytics reports that, over the past 12 months, about 37% of iPhone J.D. readers used an iPhone, about 19% used a Mac, about 15% used a computer running Windows, and less than 5% used an iPad. Those numbers didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me was that about 18% of iPhone J.D. readers during the past twelve months were using an Android device. In past years, that percentage has been 10% or less, sometimes less than 5%. I certainly discuss and review lots of products that work with any smartphone, so maybe that explains it, or perhaps there have been a lot of Android users thinking about making the switch to an iPhone.

Just looking at browsers (regardless of platform), there was another notable change this year. In the past, the #1 browser used to read this website has been Safari. For example, last year, 59% of the people reading iPhone J.D. used Safari. But this year, the #1 browser was Chrome, which accounted for 49% of all readers. About one-third of those Chrome users were using Android, just under one-third of the Chrome users were using Windows, and just about all of the other Chrome users were using a Mac or Linux device. The #2 browser used to read iPhone J.D. was Safari, with 46% of users. That left about 5% of readers using Edge, Firefox, or another browser.

Of course, the iPhone, iPad, and related Apple technologies are of interest to lawyers and others around the world. About 45% of iPhone J.D. readers during the past year were in the U.S., 6% were from the UK, 5% were from Norway, 5% were from Canada, and the other countries with a significant percentage of readers were India, Australia, Singapore, China, Russia, and Germany.

Every year, I also look at the top cities for the folks who visit iPhone J.D. London was the #1 city four times (2015, 2020, 2021, and 2023), but every other year, New York has been #1. Just like in 2024, the Big Apple was on top again in 2025:

1. New York
2. London
3. Chicago
4. Singapore
5. Los Angeles
6. Chicago
7. Ashburn
8. San Jose
9. Dallas
10. Toronto

Note that I believe that Ashburn shows up in this list because it is a major hub for internet traffic. If you ignore Ashburn, then that would make San Jose #7, Dallas #8, Toronto #9, and Boston would become #10—just barely beating out Atlanta.

Besides Atlanta, other cities that just missed being in the Top 10 this year include Sydney, Miami, Seattle, Des Moines, Phoenix, Melbourne, and Houston. My hometown of New Orleans was #105 this year, a big drop from its #56 position last year. The #100 position was Zurich. The #200 position was Belgrade. Syracuse was #300. The city of Roswell, New Mexico, had only 12 unique visitors to iPhone J.D. during the past twelve months, and Google Analytics doesn’t tell me how many of them were aliens living on a UFO at Area 51.

One particularly nice change for iPhone J.D. that occurred during the last twelve months was that, in early 2025, I switched from hosting this website on TypePad to using the WordPress platform. There were a lot of other behind-the-scenes changes that took place at the same time, and one of the end results is that this website now loads much faster than ever before: a welcome change for everyone, no matter what device you are using and where in the world you are located.

Finally, and most importantly, whether you read every single post on this website or you just check in from time to time, I’m thrilled to have you here, and I’m already looking forward to the next twelve months.

On June 11, 2012, Apple announced that the upcoming iOS 6 would include a new app for the iPhone called Passbook. Apple said that you could use the app to store boarding passes, store cards, movie tickets, and other similar items. On October 20, 2014, Apple introduced Apple Pay, along with the ability to store digital versions of your credit cards in the Passbook app. The following year, Apple released iOS 9 and changed the name from Passport to Wallet, which is still what the app is called today. In 2021, iOS 15 added the ability to store the digital version of a government-issued ID in the Wallet app—which is a useful feature, but four years later, only 13 of the 50 states support it. This week, Apple updated the Wallet app yet again to allow any U.S. citizen to store a government-issued ID in the Wallet app, assuming that you have a U.S. Passport. I added mine last night, and the process of doing so is fascinating. First, the Wallet app scans your passport. Then, to make sure it is your real passport and not just a picture of it, your iPhone reads the chip embedded in the back of the passport. Next, to make sure that you are you, the iPhone scans your face, using a process similar to setting up Face ID. After that, to make sure that you are really you and not just a person holding up a picture or mask of you, your iPhone prompts you to complete a series of specific facial and head movements until the iPhone shakes in your hand. Finally, the app does some sort of verification process to match your face to the face on your passport. I’m making it sound more complicated than it really is—you just follow along with the directions—but it is the most verification that I’ve ever seen my iPhone perform. And for good reason! I should now be able to use my iPhone as my identification for TSA for a domestic flight—or, as Chance Miller of 9to5Mac notes, at some other locations. It is nice to know that if my wallet is stolen while I travel (or if I leave it at home by mistake), I should still be able to prove my identity at the airport. And now, the other news of note from the past week:

• There are many Apple products that have a special place in my life. My iPhone is with me all the time. My Apple Vision Pro amazes and delights me every time I use it. But the workhorse in my law practice is my iPad Pro. It is a key part of my productivity as a lawyer, and I cannot imagine practicing law without it. Jason Snell of Six Colors reports that the first generation of the iPad Pro went on sale ten years ago this week. As I noted in my review from ten years ago, it is a fundamentally different type of iPad. Happy birthday, iPad Pro!
• Ed Hardy of Cult of Mac reports that your iPhone can now automatically install security patches without requiring you to do anything.
• Did you ever finish a workout only to realize that your iPhone didn’t give you credit on your Activity Rings because you forgot to tell your Apple Watch that you were working out? Ryan Christoffel reports that you can now manually log workouts in the Fitness app to close Activity rings. And if you want to cheat and tell your iPhone that you ran a marathon over lunch, I promise not to rat you out to any of the Apple Fitness+ instructors.
• Akshay Kumar of The Mac Observer explains what every icon in the iPhone’s Camera app means.
• If you frequently use a Mac for videoconferences and you want to look your best, John Voorhees reports that the next version of macOS, macOS Tahoe 26.2, will add a feature called Edge Light. It uses the edge of your screen to create a virtual ring light. Interesting idea.
• The next version of iOS 26 will be iOS 26.2. Joe Rossignol of MacRumors reports that it will add a new feature to CarPlay: the the ability to remove pinned conversations in the Messages app, which is something that was just recently added by iOS 26.
• I’m in the market for a new car in the near future, and it may be an electric car. (If you own an EV that you like and recommend, I’d love to hear from you.) One EV car model that I have had no intention of purchasing was a Tesla. There are a number of reasons for that, but one of them was the lack of CarPlay support. I know I’m not alone; many people tell me that they would never purchase a car unless it supported CarPlay. This is just a rumor, but as noted by Jason Snell of Six Colors, Mark Gurman of Bloomberg believes that Tesla is working to add CarPlay support to its cars in the coming months, presumably in an attempt to respond to the sharp drop in Tesla sales. It will be interesting to see if this happens.
• Notwithstanding an article by Patrick George in The Atlantic predicting that CarPlay’s days are numbered, John Gruber of Daring Fireball disagrees, and even predicts that GM’s CEO will be fired after deciding to abandon CarPlay. I don’t know about that, but I certainly hope that CarPlay has a long future.
• Amy Skorheim of Engadget reviews the Anker Laptop Bank and says that it is great. I agree 100%. I reviewed it earlier this year, and I continue to use it multiple times a week. It holds a ton of power, charges multiple devices at once, has a useful display, and the built-in cords are incredibly convenient. Even though the word “Laptop” is in the name, I virtually never use it with a laptop computer. I use it with my iPad, iPhone, Vision Pro, and more. The other day, I took a HomePod mini outside to listen to some music while enjoying the nice weather, and I used this device to provide power. This makes a great gift for yourself and a wonderful holiday present if you are looking for something useful for anyone who enjoys technology. Best of all, it is currently only $91.99 on Amazon, which is an amazing price (32% off) and less than I paid for mine.
• When I bought my iPhone 17 Pro Max, I traded in my iPhone 16 Pro Max and got $700 back from Apple. David Snow of Cult of Mac reports that Apple recently decreased many of its trade-in prices. (The iPhone 16 Pro Max is now down to $670.) His post lists all of the other trade-in values if you want to see them all.
• Houston attorney and author Marc Grossberg was driving his car when, all of a sudden, he passed out. Yikes! Fortunately, he was wearing his Apple Watch. Click here to watch a short video on Facebook where he shares what happened next. And thanks to Houston attorney Reginald Hirsch for sharing this story with me.
• Apple has brought the Detailed City Experience—its more detailed version of Apple Maps—to Kansas City, as reported by Marcus Mendes of 9to5Mac. Gone to Kansas City, Kansas City here I come…
• Jason Snell of Six Colors reports that, next season, anyone who subscribes to Apple TV will be able to watch all MLS soccer games without purchasing a separate $99 subscription.
• Matthew Cassinelli reports that the icon for the App Store is made up of three app icons supporting each other. I’ve never noticed that before.
• Brett Burney is taking a vacation, so there will be no episode of the In the News podcast this week. It will return next week.
• And finally, I’m going to end today’s post with a picture instead of a video. This week, Apple announced a new iPhone accessory: the iPhone Pocket, a piece of cloth that costs, ahem, $149.95 or $229.95. I’m with Stephen Hackett on this one, who remarked: “I’m a professional writer, but I have no words for this.”

When Apple announced the new M5 version of the Vision Pro last month, it noted that it made two big changes to the device: (1) Apple replaced the M2 processor with a faster M5 processor, and (2) Apple replaced the two bands that shipped with the original model (the Solo Knit Band and the Dual Loop Band) with a single new band: the Dual Knit Band. If you have the original version of the Vision Pro, you cannot upgrade the processor in your device, but you can upgrade your band by purchasing the new Dual Knit Band. This new band costs $99, and it is absolutely, positively worth paying for.

The original Solo Knit Band is a comfortable band with soft, breathable straps. However, it only goes around the back of your head; there is nothing on top of your head to help support the weight of the Vision Pro. If you wanted a band made by Apple that went on top of the head, you had to use the Dual Loop Band, but its straps are not nearly as comfortable as the Solo Knit Band. Fortunately, Belkin created the Belkin Head Strap for Apple Vision Pro, a $50 strap that goes over your head and works with the Solo Knit Band. I reviewed the Belkin product almost a year ago, and I’ve been using it ever since. It improved the Solo Knit Band experience. I liked it.

And now, I will never use that Belkin product again.

The new Dual Knit Band from Apple is a vast improvement over the Solo Knit Band. In part, that is because it includes two straps, one of which is over your head. But unlike the Belkin product, which was just a simple strap, Apple’s new band uses a soft, breathable strap for the top and back of the head. The Dual Knit Band comes in three different sizes, and when you place an online order through Apple, your iPhone scans your head shape to determine the appropriate size. (For me, it was a Large.)

If adding a second band to the top was the only thing that changed, that would have been great. But that is just the beginning of the improvements.

The band that goes around the back of your head is substantially different than the Solo Knit Band. First, it is heavier. The Solo Knit Band weighs 1.35 ounces; the Dual Knit Band weighs 6.9 ounces. Some of that weight is because there are two bands, not one, but most of the weight comes from tungsten inserts inside of the part of the band that goes around the back of your head. At first, you might think that making the band heavier defeats the purpose because the point of a better band is to reduce the heaviness of the Vision Pro on the front of your face. However, these weights actually make the Vision Pro feel lighter because the ones in the back counterbalance the weight. Thank you, laws of physics.

Second, the Dual Knit Band is different because the strap on the back is smaller and sits much lower than the Solo Knit Band. More on that change in a minute.

The third change is the dial. The Solo Knit Band has a dial on the right side that lets you tighten or loosen the band around the back of your head. The Dual Knit band also has a dial, but you can pull it out to switch between tightening/loosening the back band or the top band. For many years, some watches have featured a dial that performed a different function depending upon the crown position. This is a clever design that works really well for this band. It is fast and easy to adjust the fit. And it is much better than the Belkin product or the original Dual Loop Band because you can make the adjustment while you are wearing the device.

Add up these three improvements, and the end result is that the Dual Knit Band makes it much more comfortable to wear a Vision Pro as compared to the Solo Knit Band (either on its own or with the Belkin Head Strap) or the Dual Loop Band. The Vision Pro seems lighter than ever with the Dual Knit Band—so much so that when I first started wearing it, it was as if Apple had done something to the body of the Vision Pro itself to reduce the weight. It is a nice improvement.

Again, all of that would be enough for me to recommend this product. But there is one more thing, and this is my favorite part. Not only do the two breathable straps, one on top of my head and one low on the back of my head, make the Vision Pro seem lighter than ever, but they also make the experience of having something on my head feel incredibly comfortable. Wearing the Vision Pro with this new band feels really good. You know how sometimes, a certain article of clothing can just make you feel better when you wear it? Maybe it is a soft, comfortable pair of jeans, or a comfy sweater in the winter. The Dual Knit Band feels really comfortable on my head, like I’m wearing a comfy hat or a nice, soft pillow just below the back of my head. I’ve never felt that before with any other band for the Vision Pro, and it is wonderful.

I should note the obvious: these are my subjective opinions about how the Dual Knit Band feels for me based on the shape of my head. Your own mileage may vary. But the Dual Knit Band is a dramatic improvement for me, and I say that as someone who was comfortable with the Solo Loop Band, especially with the Belkin Head Strap. I understand why Apple is no longer shipping the Vision Pro with either of the prior two straps and is now shipping only this new Dual Knit Band. It is a substantial improvement, and I love that it also works with the original Vision Pro. If you own the original Apple Vision Pro, I strongly encourage you to purchase this strap.

Click here to get the Dual Knit Band from Apple ($99.00).

I enjoy practicing law, but like many professions, it can consume as much time as you allow. For example, this past Saturday, I worked on an appellate brief to avoid the Monday–Friday distractions of meetings, calls, and emails. I am proud of how the brief turned out, but after working for most of a Saturday, the last thing that I wanted to do was waste the remaining weekend time. Whether you practice law or work in another field, I suspect that you can relate. One way to reclaim time is to reduce tasks that needlessly erode your day. Managing a crowded inbox is one of those tasks, and this is where Sanebox can make a difference.

Although I use SaneBox across multiple accounts, I’ll focus today on my primary personal email account: Gmail. Over the years, I’ve used my Gmail address for countless purchases and subscriptions, so it receives a high volume of marketing messages and newsletters in addition to personal correspondence. Many of these messages are not spam; many are from vendors I actually use, and timely promotions can be useful. However, before adopting SaneBox, the sheer number of incoming emails was often overwhelming, making it difficult to know where to begin. I would sometimes dread looking at my Gmail inbox because it was going to suck up so much of my time.

With SaneBox, that inbox overload is largely a thing of the past. My inbox typically contains fewer than ten messages when I check it, which makes it simple to identify priority items, take action, and move on. The resulting efficiency gains are significant.

Periodically, I review my @SaneNews folder, where SaneBox automatically routes less time-sensitive messages such as newsletters and bulk communications. I do want to see many of these messages—just not immediately. Because SaneBox moves them to @SaneNews, I can review them when I’m ready. Gmail’s bulk-selection tools let me click one button to select them all, then I can unclick selected emails to retain the few I want and remove the rest by tapping the trash can icon. This process would be far more burdensome if these messages were mixed with all of the messages that matter to me in my main inbox, so acting on them this way in my @SaneNews folder is a huge help.

Less frequently, I review the @SaneLater folder, which generally contains lower-priority items: often marketing messages that aren’t spam but are close. I use the same triage approach that I just described with my @SaneNews. In mere seconds, I have eliminated the emails I don’t want, leaving just the ones that I want to keep.

The end result is a materially easier workflow in Gmail. Priority items are easy to locate, and nonessential messages are simple to dismiss.

All of this works because SaneBox classifies messages. It does so without reading the content of the messages; it is all done based on the sender and the subject line (which is great for privacy). In my experience, SaneBox generally classifies messages accurately. On the rare occuasion when it misfiles something—placing a message in @SaneLater that belongs in @SaneNews or the main inbox—simply drag that email to the correct folder. That action trains SaneBox to handle future messages from the same sender appropriately.

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 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 when you pick a plan—and there are lots of different plans to chose from, so can select the one that gives you just what you want.

Thanks to SaneBox for sponsoring iPhone J.D. And a special thanks to SaneBox for creating more time in my day.

We have a special guest for this week’s episode of the podcast: Stephen Embry of the TechLaw Crossroads website, who you may also know from his frequent contributions to the Above the Law website. We discuss how Steve uses technology to get his job done, including his newest purchase, the Ray-Ban Meta Glasses. We also have an extensive discussion of AI and what it means for the future of the law practice. And we touch on other topics as well, from travel tips to taking a break from technology.

Click here to listen to the audio podcast, or just listen using your podcast player of choice. You can also watch the episode on YouTube: