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.