We are only a month away from a brand new iPhone model and the new iOS 17, so Brett and I spend much of this week’s episode of the In the News podcast talking about that. We also discuss why you should not trust companies that purport to list the top apps in the App Store, the new Callsheet app that you can use to look up information about actors, movies, and shows, the bizarre temperatures that some folks are seeking when then use Foreca as a weather source, and more.
In this week’s Where Y’at? segment, we talk about using an iPhone to escape from the fire in Hawaii and using an AirTag to track down luggage lost by an airline.
This episode is sponsored by SaneBox, and Brett and I explained two features of that service that we love: the @SaneNews folder and the @SaneBlackhole folder. Go to sanebox.com/inthenews to sign up for a free trial and get a $25 credit toward a SaneBox subscription.
In our In the Know segment, Brett discussed why you may or may not want to use the Offload Unused Apps function. And I explained why you should be using the Shortcuts app on the iPhone.
When will Apple announce the 2023 version of the iPhone? Apple has previously announced new iPhones on the Wednesday after Labor Day in 2022, 2016, 2015, and 2014. The announcement was the Tuesday of the week after Labor Day in 2021, 2019, 2017, and 2013. In 2018 and 2012, it was the Wednesday of the week after Labor Day. (The 2020 introduction was in October because of delays due to COVID.) Given that history, I would expect Apple to announce the iPhone 15 line on Wednesday, September 6, Tuesday, September 12, or Wednesday, September 13. Mark Gurman of Bloomberg, who has a good track record with rumors, tweeted earlier this week that he is hearing that it will likely be on September 12. I mention all of that today because it means that we are likely only a month away from the announcement of a new iPhone. Woo-hoo! So now is the time to start to get excited about what new features will be included in the different models. And now is NOT the time to buy a new iPhone, so try to avoid dropping your phone in the toilet for the next few weeks—and if you do, try these tips before you rush out to buy a replacement. And now, the news of note from the past week:
I love this article title by Stephen Hackett of 512 Pixels: According to Foreca’s Weather Data, Everyone in Memphis is Dead. The issue is that when an app like Carrot Weather uses Foreca as a weather source to estimate the feels like temperature, the Foreca estimates can be crazy high. Because it has been so hot this Summer, I’ve been checking out the feels like temperatures, and because I was also using Foreca, I saw some crazy high numbers in New Orleans too. Don’t get me wrong, it was seriously hot down here, but not THAT hot. After reading that article, I switched my weather source to Apple Weather and I’ll see what I think of it after using it for a while—but so far, so good.
When you see reports about how popular different apps are, you should always remember that nobody but Apple knows all of the data, and the ways that others come up with estimates are highly questionable. John Gruber of Daring Fireball wrote a great analysis of one such company, Sensor Tower, and after reading his article, I doubt you will ever trust these supposed statistics again.
The wildfires in Maui have been horrible, and my thoughts are with everyone affected. In any tragedy, it is nice to see any good news, so I was pleased to see Felipe Espósito of 9to5Mac report this week that one family in Maui was rescued thanks to the iPhone Emergency SOS via Satellite feature. The picture of the chat between the people rescued and the conversation via Satellite with emergency services brings the story to life.
We’ve seen lots of stories of people reclaiming lost luggage after a flight thanks to an AirTag, but this story from Julia Buckley of CNN is particularly interesting. When United Airlines was of no help, the owner took matters into her own hands when she could see that her bag was at baggage claim in Chicago O’Hare: she took a day off of work, booked a ticket to Chicago (using miles), and once there, found her bag in 30 seconds. As the article explains, that someone dramatic solution wasn’t just because the bag had $2,000 in lacrosse equipment, but because it was impossible to get a replacement for her daughter before the next tournament.
Dawn Gilbertson of the Wall Street Journal recommends five good travel apps you should consider using.
When you are watching a movie or TV show, do you ever pause so that you can look up an actor or actress to figure out what you know them from? If so, you may do so using the IMDB app, but this week, Casey Liss released a much nicer app called Callsheet (great name) that taps into The Movie Database (a competitor to IMDB). You can try out the app for free, and if you like it after 20 free searches, it costs $9 a year. Not only is the app well-designed, it has some great features. For example, you can avoid spoilers by hiding certain information such as character names, episode counts, episode titles, or episode thumbnails. What a great idea. I didn’t even wait until I had done 20 searches; I paid for the app right away. Jason Snell of Six Colors wrote a positive review, as did John Voorhees of MacStories.
And finally, with new iPhones coming next month, that means that iOS 17 is coming soon too. Marques Brownlee has a good video showing off and explaining some of the top features coming in iOS 17:
The other day, my teenage son, who now has a driver’s license and his own car, showed me an interesting shortcut that he created on his iPhone. With essentially one tap, he can alert me and my wife that he is in trouble and let us know exactly where he is located. He gave me permission to share his shortcut here because it might be something that you want to put on your own iPhone or the iPhone of one of your family members.
Once my son triggers this shortcut, here is what it does. First, it sends a text message to me and my wife that says “In trouble and I’m at:” Next, after determining the current location, the shortcut sends that location in a number of different ways: (1) as a street address, (2) as a very precise Latitude and Longitude, and (3) as a map picture that can be tapped to open up the precise location in the Maps app. Sure, it is a little duplicative to send all three, but in an emergency situation, we may not be using all of our wits, so why not be as clear as possible.
The shortcut has just a few, simple steps, so you can create it yourself in the Shortcuts app on your iPhone in just a few minutes or less. Here are the specific steps that he used in the Shortcuts app. (I redacted my wife’s name):
Note that for each Send command in this shortcut, you will see at the end a circle with a > in it. Tap that circle on each command and you will see “Show When Run” with an on/off switch. Turn that switch OFF for each Send command in the shortcut. That way, all of the messages will be sent without even opening up the Messages app and without waiting for you to confirm each send, which is critical to make this quick and efficient.
If you are in an emergency, you don’t want to have to open up the Shortcuts app to trigger this shortcut. Thus, my son created a small Shortcuts widget that triggers this shortcut when you press it and he placed that widget at the top right of the widgets screen that you access by swiping from left to right on the front of an iPhone. I like that location. First, the widget is in a location that you are unlikely to hit accidentally, Second, it is easily accessible, even if the iPhone is locked.
Thanks to this widget, if my son senses that he is in an emergency, he can swipe to the right and press one button. That’s it. That alerts me and my wife that something is wrong and tells us where he is located. And if someone dangerous is near my son, he won’t have to say anything.
Will my son ever need to use this shortcut? I certainly hope not. But just like I hope that I never have to use crash detection or Satellite SOS on my iPhone 14 Pro, I’m very glad that he has this shortcut, just in case. Consider whether you want to create something similar.
A few days ago, Apple released the results for its 2023 fiscal third quarter (which ran from April 2, 2023, to July 1, 2023) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results. This is typically not a big fiscal quarter for Apple, but Apple had a very good one this time last year with record revenue of $83 billion. This year, the revenue for the quarter was $81.8 billion, down about 1% from last year, but that is still better than two years ago which was a record for the fiscal third quarter. Apple makes so much money that even when it is a little down from the prior year, it still does very, very, well. If you want to get all of the nitty-gritty details, you can listen to the audio from the announcement conference call on the Apple website, or you can read a transcript of the call prepared by Jason Snell of Six Colors. Apple’s official press release is here. Here are the items that stood out to me.
iPhone
Apple’s iPhone revenue for the quarter was $39.67 billion, down 2% compared to the record $40.67 billion this time last year.
Apple CFO Luca Maestri said that well over 50% of all iPhones are sold using some sort of a program that helps to reduce the price: trade-in, installment payments, financing, carrier promotion, etc. Maestri said: “We want to do more of that because we think it really helps reduce the affordability threshold for our products and we think it is also one of the reasons why our product mix has been has been very strong during the last couple of cycles.”
iPad
iPad revenue was $5.79 billion, down from $7.22 billion this time last year.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said that revenue was down compared to last year in part because this time last year Apple was seeing lots of sales from the launch of the new iPad Air.
Other
On April 30, 2020, Apple announced that it had over 515 million paid subscriptions across all of its services. Over half a billion subscriptions seemed pretty impressive. But now, just over three years later, Apple has announced over a billion paid subscriptions. That cuts across lots of different services—not only Apple Music and Apple TV+ but also third-party apps in which people pay money to Apple for a subscription. Nevertheless, that is a lot of people paying money to Apple every single month, and I’m sure that for Apple it helps to both increase overall revenue and even out revenue that otherwise has highs and lows as new products are released.
Maestri noted that there are over 2 billion Apple devices in active use, a number that continues to grow.
As for Apple TV+, Cook specifically mentioned that some of the particularly popular shows right now are the new shows Hijack and Silo and the returning shows Foundation and The Afterparty. I enjoyed and can recommend all four of those shows.
So many people are talking about AI nowadays that it comes as no surprise that one analyst asked Cook about AI. Here is how Cook responded: “If you take a step back, we view AI and machine learning as core fundamental technologies that are integral to virtually every product that we build. And so if you think about WWDC in June, we announced some features that will be coming in iOS 17 this fall, like personal voice and live voicemail. Previously, we had announced life-saving features like fall detection and crash detection and ECG. None of these features that I just mentioned and many, many more would be possible without AI and machine learning. And so it’s absolutely critical to us. And of course, we’ve been doing research across a wide range of AI technologies, including generative AI for years. We’re going to continue investing and innovating and responsibly advancing our products with these technologies with the goal of enriching people’s lives.”
Cook said that he is using a prototype of the Apple Vision Pro “daily.”
Cook finished up his introductory remarks with this interesting statement: “Apple remains a champion of innovation, a company fueled by boundless creativity, driven by a deep sense of mission, and guided by the unshakable belief that a great idea can change the world. Looking ahead, we’ll continue to manage for the long term, always pushing the limits of what’s possible and always putting the customer at the center of everything we do.” That sounds good to me.
It’s time for episode 108 of the In the News podcast, and what a fun show we had this week. We discuss Apple TV+, the smartphone market, how Apple is doing with iPhone sales, HomeKit and CarPlay hardware, and why spatial audio is a good idea in Microsoft Teams meetings—but unfortunately, it seems like you need use a wired headphone for now, not Bluetooth. Boo.
In this week’s Where Y’at? segment, we talk about tracking house plants.
This episode is sponsored by SaneBox, so Brett and I explained why that service makes you so much more efficient when you deal with emails. Go to sanebox.com/inthenews to sign up for a free trial and get a $25 credit toward a SaneBox subscription.
In our In the Know segment, Brett explained how to filter messages in the Mail app, and I shared a tip for having your iPhone remind you at a later time/date that you need to take care of a specific email.
When Apple first started producing TV shows and its first original show was Planet of the Apps, I had my doubts about what might come next. But ever since the start of Apple TV+ with just a few shows on November 1, 2019, the quality of the programming has steadily improved to the point where Apple TV+ is now perhaps my favorite streaming network. Case in point: this week, Apple aired the seventh and final episode of the show Hijack, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, just as I have every other episode of this suspenseful show. What is great is that the star of the show, played by Idris Elba (Stringer Bell in The Wire) is not an action hero but a professional negotiator, so he uses his words and psychology, not weapons, to battle the bad guys. If you haven’t watched Hijack yet, I urge you to do so. And when you do so, good luck resisting binging the whole thing at once. I’m not sure that I would have had the patience to wait very long if all episodes had been available when I started. Will there be a second season? The star of the show, Idris Elba, told K.J. Yossman of Variety back in June that he was “open to that character coming back” but he didn’t want it to be yet another hijack plot, which makes sense. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Air Canada announced this week that you can now watch Apple TV+ shows on Air Canada flights. As much as I just raved about Hijack, that might not be the best show to watch while you are actually on an airplane.
Why are smartphone sales down while the iPhone’s market share is increasing? David Sparks of MacSparky has some theories.
Users of AirPods know that Spatial Audio can make a big difference when you are watching a video or listening to music. and Spatial Audio in the FaceTime app has been able to make voices sound more spread out for a while. A post by Hong Sodoma on the Microsoft Teams blog this week reports that Microsoft has now also added spatial audio to Microsoft Teams so that people on the left side of the screen appear to be talking from that direction, etc. Watch the video in that post starting around the 60-second mark to see it in action.
Shortcuts expert Matthew Cassinelli—he was part of the team that invented the app Workflow, which Apple purchased and renamed Shortcuts—reports that there are new shortcuts in iOS 17 that let you open up the camera in a specific mode, such as selfie of video. Sometimes, I want to start taking a video or a photo right away, and hopefully this will help to make that a reality.
Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac reviews the Philips Hue Enrave, a ceiling fan light that has a very simple design so you won’t really notice it but it works with HomeKit. It doesn’t have all the colors in the spectrum like some Hue products, but it does let you adjust the color temperature of the white light. There are different sizes and prices, but it looks like a solid product for a smart home.
Julia Buckley of CNN reports that a man traveling from the United States to Zurich via London landed in Zurich only to discover that his bike was missing. And considering that this was a biking trip, that was a problem. But he had an AirTag on the bike, which allowed him to confirm that his bike never made it out of London, and eventually, the airline got his bike to him thanks to the AirTag—even though it was about halfway through his time in Europe.
Using an AirTag to track a bike doesn’t seem unusual. What seems unusual is using an AirTag to track a plant. But as reported by Fox29 Philadelphia, that is what one person did after being annoyed about potted plants disappearing from the front of her house.
Last week, I reported that a four-pack of AirTags was on sale on Amazon for under $85, a great price. This week they are a little higher at $88.99, but that is still a discount over Apple’s $99 price.
Leander Kahiney of Cult of Mac says that if you want an inexpensive way to add wireless CarPlay to your car, you can use an Amazon Fire tablet.
And finally, Apple has launched a new campaign called Pay the Apple Way to show how much easier and safer it is to pay for items using Apple Pay. Here is one of the new, funny videos in that campaign called Everyday Captcha:
Brett and I start this week’s episode of the In the News podcast by discussing the security updates issued by Apple for virtually all of its hardware this week. We next discuss how Apple’s built-in apps for Maps, Notes, Reminders, and Podcasts have come a long way and are now the preferred apps of their genre for many folks. We also talk about Belkin’s newest charging product and explain why it looks great but Belkon really has to come up with better names.
This week’s Where Y’at? segment is the largest ever. We talk about how Apple’s location technology can save lives, and we also note that not all Find My stories have happy endings.
In our In the Know segment, Brett recommends the Weber iGrill, and I recommend using Apple News+ to read articles from publications to which you do not subscribe.
As reported by Michael Simon of Macworld and many others, Apple rolled out updates this week for the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, and Apple TV. This is a full .1 update (for example, the new version for the iPhone is iOS 16.6), but it looks like this is primarily a security update. And as Simon notes, Apple deems these to be critical updates to address high-risk vulnerabilities, including at least one that is actively being exploited. I updated my iPhone, iPad, and Mac right away, and all was good. Thursday morning, my Apple Watch (a Series 7) alerted me that it had been updated to watchOS 9.6, and I was happy to see that it was also more secure. But around Noon on Thursday, I received an alert that my watch battery was almost dead. That seemed strange, but I thought that maybe my Apple Watch had not been properly based on the charging stand the night before, so I used the charger at my office desk to recharge my Apple Watch to 90% and then put it back on. But then around 5pm, I received another notice that my Apple Watch battery was almost dead. At that point, I shut down my Apple Watch and started it up again because something was obviously wrong. As I type this, it seems that the restart was a solution for me, but I’ll be keeping an eye on this. Hopefully, the large majority of folks were able to install the important update on all of their devices with no problems. And now, the news of note from the past week:
One of my favorite travel apps is Flighty. Felipe Espósito of 9to5Mac reports that the app was updated this week to version 3.0, which now makes it even easier to keep track of your friends’ flights.
If you have trouble hearing, you may be able to use AirPods instead of a hearing aid. John Gruber of Daring Fireball linked to a Mastodon post by Gary Knight, who explains that hearing loss has made him partially deaf, but he was able to use the accessibility settings on his iPhone to tweak his AirPods so that he can hear much better. He notes that he “literally gasped out loud at hearing the birds I’d been missing for some years!”. As Gruber notes, Apple doesn’t advertise AirPods as hearing aids for regulatory reasons, but they work wonders for many people. I followed the steps identified by Gary Knight to see if there was anything to tweak in my AirPods for my hearing, and after running through tests for just a few minutes, my iPhone reported that I didn’t need to change anything. But it is neat that the iPhone can walk you through the steps to see if AirPods can help you to hear better.
Rikka Altland of 9to5Toys reviews the Belkin BoostCharge Pro and is a fan. This $100 device has a 10,000mAh battery and 20W USB-C to recharge your devices, plus it features a built-in fast charger for the Apple Watch, all in a nice design. If you want something portable to recharge an Apple Watch without having to worry about a cord, this looks like a good option.
Federico Viticci of MacStories, who has written extensively about the Stage Manager improvements in iPadOS 17, shares a few additional thoughts.
Apple’s location technology came to the rescue for many folks this week. Amber Neely of AppleInsider reports that two tourists got lost while hiking in the Apennine Mountains in Italy in an area with no cellphone service. Fortunately, they were able to use an iPhone 14 to send for help via a satellite test message.
CBS News in Las Angeles reports that a man drove over a cliff and his car fell down 400 feet. The car was totaled but the driver was alive, although he was bleeding from the head so he could have died soon. Fortunately, his iPhone 14 detected the crash. According to the report, his iPhone automatically used the Emergency SOS via Satellite feature because there was no cellphone service in the location. (I knew that a person could manually enable the SOS via Satellite feature, but I didn’t know that the iPhone could do it on its own.) The GPS coordinates were sent Apple’s communication center and then relayed to local law enforcement who were able to recuse the man using a helicopter. The article quotes Steve Goldsworthy, the Rescue Operations Leader, as saying that “[h]e was 400 feet down in a canyon with virtually no way out … So, who knows when, or if, we would’ve located him” without that GPS information.
Caroline Williams of The Sun News in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, reports that a man had successfully burglarized several bars and restaurants, including stealing $15,000 from the Sneaky Beagle restaurant, when the employees decided to … well … be sneaky. They put an AirTag inside of a stuffed animal and put that inside of a decoy safe. Soon thereafter, the criminal stole the decoy safe from the Sneaky Beagle, and thanks to the AirTag, he has now been arrested.
Vi Nguyen of NBC 5 in Chicago reports a frustrating AirTag story. A man who kept an Apple AirTag hidden under the seat of his Honda motorcycle recently discovered that the motorcycle had been stolen. Using the FindMy app on his iPhone, he discovered where his motorcycle is apparently located—in a box truck in an alley—and he told the police, but the police said that if the motorcycle could not be seen in plain sight, they would not help him. The man is heeding advice from the police not to take matters into your own hands, so he decided not to knock on nearby doors to investigate, but that left him with no solution other than to file an insurance claim.
Speaking of AirTags, they usually cost $99 for a 4-pack, and occasionally they cost a little bit less. But right now, they are under $85 on Amazon. That’s a great price. There have been very few times in the past when you could get them for as little as $80, but those times are extremely rare.
And finally, Apple released a short movie (13 minutes) shot entirely on the iPhone called Huracán Ramírez vs. La Piñata Enchilada. It’s fun and full of color—not to mention pinatas and Mexican wrestlers. The making of video is also fun to watch. Here is the short film:
For over a dozen years, law practice consultant Adriana Linares has been hosting a podcast called the New Solo podcast. I’m a big fan of Adriana, and she and I have given numerous presentations together over the years. Her New Solo podcast addresses a diverse range of topics including transitioning from a law firm to a solo practice, rainmaking, law practice management, networking, job searching, technology, and much more. I was a guest back in 2016 to discuss using an iPhone and iPad in a law practice.
Adriana decided to devote the latest episode of the podcast to the topic of choosing a Mac instead of a PC, and she invited Brett Burney and me to discuss the topic with her. It gave us the opportunity to discuss the plusses and minuses of using Macs and provide recommendations on which Mac and other Apple technology to use if you are a lawyer or other professional trying to get work done.
We had a great time recording this podcast, so if the topic is of any interest to you, I encourage you to check it out. You can subscribe to the podcast using your podcast player of choice, or you can just click below to listen to the episode:
When Brett and I started this week’s episode of the In the News podcast by talking about fonts—a discussion prompted by Microsoft’s recent decision to change the default font in its apps like Microsoft Word—I didn’t expect to spend much time on that topic. But once we got talking, there was quite a bit to nerd out about on the topic of fonts, and not just the best way to pronounce “sans serif.” After that, we talk about lots of new details on the StandBy mode of iOS 17, stands for the HomePod mini, the Eve Flare, the new Beats Studio Pro, and more.
In this week’s Where Y’at? segment, we discuss a magician who caused his lost luggage to reappear thanks to AirTags and Apple’s new video from The Underdogs.
In our In the Know segment, we both share tips for using Apple Maps (and Google Maps). Brett explains how to get a route that avoids toll roads, and I explain how to plan a route for a trip that you will be taking in the future.
