Thank you to SaneBox for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month. SaneBox is a service that sorts emails based on who the email is coming from and the subject line of the email. That sounds so simple, but it makes such a difference. Using SaneBox can vastly reduce the number of interruptions in your day.
Whether you are drafting a brief, doing legal research, or preparing a contract, you need uninterrupted focus time to do your best work. But of course, getting uninterrupted time is a luxory, and email is often one of the biggest obsticles. Even if you can deal with each email quickly, every time you do so, you need to take the the time to return focus to what you were working on.
You cannot get rid of interruptions completely. But you can minimize them by using SaneBox. I’ve written in the past about how SaneBox can improve your relationship with email by automatically filing your less emails into different folders. For example, by turning on the SaneLater feature, messages that are likely to be less important automatically go into a separate folder. And every email that doesn’t show up in your Inbox is one less interruptinos to your day. By turning on the SaneNews feature, newsletters—which you almost certainly don’t want to take the time to read while you are focusing on a project—automatically go into the @SaneNews folder. SaneBox keeps these less important emails out of sight and out of mind, until a later point in the day when you are ready to take the time to look at them. Meanwhile, important emails still go straight to your Inbox.
What if SaneBox makes a mistake, putting an email into your @SaneLater folder when it is the type of email that you normally want to see right away? You can fix this without fiddling with any control panels or settings. Simply drag the email from the @SaneLater folder into your Inbox. That’s it. That will train the SaneBox AI so it does what you want in the future.
There are other SaneBox features that you can also use to minimize interruptions such as the Snooze feature. You can enable folders such as @SaneTomorrow, @SaneNextWeek, and @SaneNextMonth. (Or you can configure any other time period.) Move an email into the @SaneTomorrow folder and it will disappear from your Inbox until sunrise the next day, keeping your Inbox clean for today. If you want, you can enable auto-replies for snoozed emails to let the sender know that you will get back to them soon.
You can also free up your headspace by setting reminders right from your Inbox. Just forward a message to a reminder address like 1day@sanebox.com and you’ll get a reminder in your chosen time frame.
With SaneBox automatically organizing your emails, you can spend much less time in your Inbox, which means more time getting your important work done with fewer interruptions.
If this sounds interesting to you, click here to get a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. If you decide that you prefer getting all of the intrruptinos, then just don’t sign up. But if you appreciate having more time to focus on getting your work done, using this link in this post will give you a generous $25 credit for when you pick a plan. I’ve been using SaneBox since 2022, and I really like the service, so perhaps you will too.
Thanks again to SaneBox for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month.
Apple does not introduce a new iPhone very often, especially one that has a new type of name. But a few days ago, Apple announced the iPhone 16e, and that is what we focus on in this week’s episode of the In the News podcast. We talk about what the “e” might stand for, what features are included and which are missing, and what the iPhone 16e might tell us about future iPhone models. We also talk about how to store multiple Apple Watch bands, the latest immersive video for the Apple Vision Pro called Arctic Surfing, the Severance show on Apple TV+, and more.
In our In the Know segment, Brett shares a tip for changing the size of app icons on your iPhone. And I remind you that if your speaker or microphone on your Apple Watch isn’t working as intended, then it may be time for it to take a shower.
For a long time, Ted Lasso was the most popular show on Apple TV+. Nellie Andreeva of Deadline reports that Severance is now the #1 show on Apple TV+. My podcast co-host Brett Burney revealed last week that he finally started watching Severance, so perhaps Brett was the one that put the show over the top. As one sign of the show’s popularity, there is a new commercial for State Farm Insurance set in the Severance universe. Yes, you heard that correctly. It’s pretty funny, actually, and what a bizarre juxtaposition to see Mark S. next to Jake. I’m excited to watch this week’s new episode tonight. And now, the news of note from the past week:
The transition of iPhone J.D. to the WordPress platform is now complete, and to my knowledge, I fixed everything that broke along the way … at least, everything that I came across. If you see something that doesn’t seem right, I’d appreciate it if you posted a comment on this website or sent me an email. You should notice that this website loads MUCH faster now, and everything is far more stable. Thanks again for your patience during the last 48 hours.
Apple introduced the iPhone 16e this week, the replacement to the iPhone SE (third generation). One of the best articles I saw about the new iPhone 16e came from John Gruber of Daring Fireball. Worth reading if you are interested in this device—even if you are not interested in buying one for yourself.
The only new feature in the iPhone 16e is the first cellular modem made by Apple, which it calls the C1 chip. Stephen Nellis of Reuters interviewed a number of folks from Apple to discuss what makes the C1 special and what it means for the future. For example, Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware technologies, said: “We build a platform for generations. … C1 is the start, and we’re going to keep improving that technology each generation, so that it becomes a platform for us that will be used to truly differentiate this technology for our products.” Srouji noted that Apple has an advantage over Qualcomm, the company that has traditionally made the modem for the iPhone and many other smartphones, because Apple can design its modem to meet the specific needs of the iPhone and can integrate it with other processes on the iPhone.
In an article for Six Colors and Macworld, Dan Moren discusses what the iPhone SE meant for users and Apple and how the new iPhone 16e fits into that.
William Gallagher of AppleInsider argues that one of the features missing from the iPhone 16e that Apple should have found a way to include is MagSafe. I understand his point; I love StandBy mode and use it every day that I am in my office by placing my iPhone on my Anker MagSafe Charger Stand. And there are lots of other useful things that you can attach to an iPhone that has MagSafe. Nevertheless, in my opinion, it is still a “nice to have” not a “need to have” feature, and I presume that Apple had a good reason for not including it, even if it was just to keep the cost lower.
If you have a lot of bands for your Apple Watch (yep, that’s me), you need a place to store them. Back in 2023, I mentioned a new watch band storage solution called the TimePorter from a company called Twelve South that makes lots of great products. Andrew O’Hara of AppleInsider posted a review of the TimePorter, and he likes it. If I had an appropriate wall space for a TimePorter, I would definiteily get one of these. I instead keep the watch bands that I use most often in the large white box that used to come with some of the early premium Apple Watch models (like the ones with stainless steel).
Apple released a new immersive video for the Apple Vision Pro last night, and it is really impressive. It is the second episode of the Boundless series, which lets you explore new locations and trips, and it is called Arctic Surfing. We have all seen people surfing next to sandy beaches and perhaps some sand dunes. In this video, people surf in icy waters in Norway surrounded by snow-covered mountains. It is beautiful, but it made me cold to watch it.
Apple TV+ is unquestionably a great service if you like Sci-FI. Severance is amazing, and so is For All Mankind, Dark Matter, and Foundation. And Apple just announced its next one, a Sci-Fi/thriller/comedy called Murderbot. But Apple TV+ is not just for Sci-Fi. Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac says that Apple TV+ is also becoming a great destination for crime thrillers thanks to the upcoming show Dope Thief and existing titles like Hijack, Presumed Innocent, Black Bird, and Criminal Record.
And finally, here is the video released by Apple to introduce the iPhone 16e:
Yesterday, Apple announced the successor to the iPhone SE (third generation), which was released three years ago. Instead of calling it the iPhone SE (fourth generation), we have a brand-new name: the iPhone 16e. Given the number of changes, I think that this new device earns a new name. For example, the iPhone SE was the last iPhone that still had a button on the front (used for Touch ID); the new iPhone 16e removes the button to have more usable screen space and uses Face ID like every other modern iPhone. The iPhone SE was also the last iPhone to have a Lightning port; the new iPhone 16e has a USB-C port like every other modern iPhone. But the primary purpose remains the same: just like the iPhone SE, the iPhone 16e is the least expensive iPhone. It is the device to get if you want something new but don’t want to pay more than you have to.
Like an iPhone 16, minus a few features
I suspect that most people considering the purchase of an iPhone 16e will be comparing it to the iPhone 16, which was announced on September 9, 2024. The iPhone 16 starts at $799 but the new iPhone 16e starts at $599, so you save $200. The two devices are virtually the same physical size. (The iPhone 16 is .03 inches taller and weighs .12 ounces more, and I doubt you would notice the difference unless you held them close to each other.) Both have a 6.1" screen. Both devices have an Action button on the left side. Both devices use the A18 chip. Both devices start at a 128GB capacity, or you can pay more for 256GB or 512GB. Both devices use USB-C instead of Lightning.
So what is different? The camera system is very different, and this is immediately apparent when you look at the back because the iPhone 16e has only a single camera whereas the iPhone 16 has two cameras (and the iPhone 16 Pro has three cameras).
The iPhone 16e has the 48MP Fusion camera, which is a big improvement over the iPhone SE’s 12MP camera. But you don’t get the second lens, the 12MP Ultra Wide lens that is used for wide-angle photography and for macro photography. Having only a single camera means that you cannot take spatial photos or videos for viewing on a device like the Apple Vision Pro. The iPhone 16e also lacks the Camera button on the right side that is on the iPhone 16.
The iPhone 16 also lacks the Dynamic Island, a useful feature introduced with the iPhone 15 that allows you to use one app on most of the screen but get updates from another app at the top of the screen.
The iPhone 16e also lacks true MagSafe support. It does support Qi charging up to 7.5W, so you can do wireless charging. But the charger won’t attach to the back of the iPhone (nor can you use other devices that take advantage of the magnet part of MagSafe to attach to the back of an iPhone) and you don’t get the faster 15W charging of MagSafe and Qi 2.
Those are all of the big things that you miss when you save $200. There are also some very minor additional differences, but they are things that most folks won’t notice. For example, the iPhone 16 has an A18 chip with a 5-core GPU; the iPhone 16e has an A18 chip with a 4-core GPU, so it will be a little bit slower on some tasks. But again, I doubt you will really notice this. There are also some other minor differences regarding photographs and videos, how dim the screen can get, color choices (the iPhone 16e only comes in black or white), etc. But the big omissions are one camera lens versus two, no Camera Control, no Dynamic Island, and Qi instead of MagSafe. For a lot of people, those features will not be worth an extra $200.
A different modem that might be better
Another big difference is that the iPhone 16e is the first iPhone to use a modem designed and built by Apple instead of Qualcomm. Apple calls this the C1. It is more power-efficient than a Qualcomm modem, and Apple says that this translates into better battery life. For example, Apple says that you get up to 26 hours of video playback, compared to 22 hours on the iPhone 16.
What remains to be seen is how the C1 modem performs as a modem. There is a reason that Qualcomm has been the leader in the cellular modem business for so long. Its modems are really good. I hope that we soon see reports that the C1 modem is as good (or better?) than a Qualcomm modem. But we could see just the opposite since this is Apple’s first effort. When we start to see Apple-built modems in the high-end iPhones, then we will know that Apple is confident that its modems are better. For now, the jury is out.
A more modern budget iPhone
In the past, when Apple has introduced a new generation of the iPhone SE, it has included many (although not all) of the features from the high-end iPhones. Each generation of the iPhone SE would remain on sale for several years, so near the end of the product cycle, the device would be noticeably behind the latest-and-greatest iPhones, but it would remain a good model. Both my wife and my daughter use the iPhone SE (third generation), and it remains a good, functional iPhone for them.
But the new iPhone 16e is much closer to the top-of-the-line iPhone models. If you just plan to use the “regular” iPhone camera lens, now you have a really good one. USB-C support means that your iPhone will now have the same connector as your other devices (and if that is not yet true for you right now, it will be soon because Apple done with using the Lightning port in its products). It supports Apple Intelligence, and to enable that support, it starts at 128GB of capacity, which is a perfect size for most people. And while some people may miss the button on the front, Apple decided long ago—and I certainly agree—that it is better to have more usable space on the screen.
At $599, the iPhone 16e is more expensive than the $429 iPhone SE, but it is still the cheapest iPhone in the lineup, and yet you get a lot of modern features for $599. Will the iPhone 16e remain for sale for two, three, or four years as was the norm for the iPhone SE? Or does the fact that “16" is in the name mean that we will see a new model every year: iPhone 17e, iPhone 18e, etc.? Time will tell.
Conclusion
There is nothing exciting about the iPhone 16e, unless you have been on the edge of your seat waiting to use a modem made by Apple. But that’s not the point. This is a very good iPhone and it is cheaper than the alternatives. If you compare the iPhone 16e to an iPhone 16 and decide that the missing features are important to you, then Apple would be delighted for you to spend an extra $200. But if those few missing features don’t matter, it is good news for you that you can now get a modern iPhone for $200 less.
UPDATE 8/27/2025: I see that today, TypePad announced that the service is shutting down on September 30, 2025. I am astonished that the service gave only one month notice to TypePad users. When I moved my website to WordPress earlier this year, it took me months to select a new host and move all of my content, and I had to hire someone to help me with a lot of the complicated details. I feel for anyone who is now trying to scramble, especially if they have been using TypePad for a long time. (I started using the service in 2008.) What follows is my original post that I published a few months ago when I was (finally!) just hours away from my final switch from TypePad to WordPress:
We interrupt this website’s regular broadcast schedule to alert you that this website is about to change. When I started this website in 2008, I used a website platform called TypePad. It was a good option at the time. But now, over 16 years later, it is no longer the best option for a website like this one. TypePad no longer keeps up with the latest website technology, and I’ve had many problems with things breaking behind the scenes. For example, have you ever noticed that a post seems to be missing a picture? Yeah, me too. Indeed, if you try to create a new website using TypePad, you are alerted that Typepad no longer accepts new customers. The service is simply servicing its existing customers until they move elsewhere.
So I am moving elsewhere. I’m changing to a web platform called WordPress. You may have heard of it before. WordPress is used to create almost half of the websites on the Internet. That’s a lot. WordPress offers numerous advantages over TypePad and is much more stable. However, it is also more complicated to use, and I’ve faced a steep learning curve over the last few months as I’ve been making the transition and getting all of the old posts moved over to the new digs.
If all goes well, once I make the move official, everything should be mostly the same for you as a reader. You will still be able to go to www.iPhoneJD.com to visit this website and see new posts. All of the old posts should still be there. And all of the old pictures in those old posts should still be there … with the exception of some that I’m sure I will need to fix, once I find them, which will take some time.
It will be obvious to you when the switch to WordPress takes place because instead of this being a website with a sidebar on both the left and the right, there will only be a single sidebar on the right. Here is what the website has looked like on TypePad for the last 16 years:
Here is a preview of what it will look like in WordPress:
It’s not just a new look on a computer or iPad; when you access this website from an iPad or iPhone, the page layout will be better than ever.
Many of you read iPhone J.D. when it shows up (at no charge to you) in your email Inbox thanks to a service I use called FeedBlitz. Others read iPhone J.D. using RSS and a newsreader. When the change occurs, it may take some time for those services to start working again. If you need to change anything on your end, I’ll let you know, and I appreciate your patience during the transition. You will always be able to visit the website in any browser, such as Safari, to see the new posts.
Once I move to the WordPress platform, I hope to never have to make a move like this again. At the very least, I hope this new platform will take us through the next sixteen years. Will we still even be using iPhones at that point? Will “iPhone J.D.” sound as antiquated as “Telegraph J.D.” or “Atari 2600 J.D.”? Let’s all plan to trade notes in the year 2041 and see where we are.
Thanks in advance for your understanding during the upcoming transition. Unless I encounter an unanticipated stumbling block, the change will happen soon.
This week’s episode of the In the News podcast showed up in your podcast player a few hours late due to Brett’s busy travel schedule, but to make up for it, we have a jam-packed episode given all of the news of note this past week. We start with a very brief discussion of the so-called red version of Apple’s Solo Loop band for the Apple Watch, and then we then discuss what Apple will include in the next generation of the iPhone SE, which we expect Apple to announce in just a few days. We then discuss the reports of a truly inane decision by a part of the UK government that would help the bad guys and decrease security and privacy for everyone else; hopefully, sanity will prevail, but that cannot be taken for granted in today’s world. We also discuss T-Mobile’s new program for getting the internet on your iPhone using satellites, my recent review of the Kodak Slide N Scan, the brand new Powerbeats Pro 2 (which looks to be a worthy alternative to the AirPods Pro 2), the new Apple Health Study and what it might mean for future Apple products, a new way to deal with having two Apple Accounts when you really want to have just one, an unexpected place to wear an Apple Watch and the relatively new Titanium Milanese Apple Watch Band, and more.
In our In the Show segment, we discuss the fantastic Apple TV+ show Severance and the new Apple TV+ app for Android.
In our In the Know segment, we provide tips for helping a friend or family member with their iPhone when they are not in the same room as you. Brett discusses the numerous features you can use in FaceTime screen sharing, and I provide a tip for sending someone an annotated screenshot.
Apple introduces its flagship iPhone models every year in September. Additionally, Apple announces a new version of the iPhone SE every few years in the Spring. The original iPhone SE was announced on March 21, 2016. Four years later, the second generation was announced on April 15, 2020. Two years later, the third generation was announced on March 8, 2022. It has now been three years since the last generation of the iPhone SE was released, and there have been rumors for many months that a fourth generation would be announced in Spring 2025. Well, as reported by John Voorhees of MacStories and countless others, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed yesterday that Apple would reveal “the newest member of the family” on Wednesday, February 19. I suppose that could be anything, but it is widely expected that this will be the announcement of the fourth generation of the iPhone SE. The first two SE models started at $399, the third one started at $429, so the iPhone SE has always cost about half of what the flagship models cost. With that lower cost, you get fewer features, but even so, the iPhone SE has always been a nice iPhone, especially if you get one during the first year of its release. Until now, the iPhone SE has also been the only way to get an iPhone with a button at the bottom—a feature that was an iconic part of the iPhone for its first decade until the iPhone X introduced Face ID in 2017. However, there are rumors that the button will disappear in the fourth generation of the iPhone SE. It will be interesting to see what Apple announces in a few days. And now, the other news of note from the past week:
Apple released iOS 18.3.1 and related updates this week, and Malcolm Owen of AppleInsider reports that the updates fix some bugs and provide security updates.
Apple cannot improve the security of the iPhone if a government orders it to break encryption. But last week, the Washington Post reported that the UK issued a secret order that Apple must break the security of its end-to-end encryption for all users worldwide (not just UK citizens) by creating a backdoor and also prohibited Apple from talking about it. This is shortsighted. Once a backdoor is created for one government, Apple will have to give it to every government, plus the backdoor will inevitably end up in the hands of the bad guys. At that point, the only people who will have secure communications are the criminals who use programs that continue to utilize encryption, notwithstanding any government prohibitions. As Dan Moren of Six Colors says: This is red alert, five-alarm-fire kind of stuff. Tim Hardwick of MacRumors notes that members of key U.S. congressional oversight committees are seeking to get the UK government to back down from its demand.
Apple released the Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 this week. They are the same cost as and a worthy competitor to the AirPods Pro 2, especially for people who like the way that Beats products traditionally sound. One big advantage of Powerbeats is that they wrap around your ear, so you don’t have to worry about an AirPod falling out of your ear. That’s why my daughter prefers her first-generation Powerbeats Pro to AirPods. As Malcolm Owen of AppleInsider notes, the second generation has active noise cancellation and many of the other features of the AirPods Pro 2. You don’t get the hearing aid features, but you do get heart rate monitoring—although you already have rate monitoring if you wear an Apple Watch.
Chance Miller of 9to5Mac has been using the Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 for the past two weeks, and he posted this review. He says that they are especially great for fitness enthusiasts.
As I noted in my recent review of the Kodak Slide N Scan Digital Film Scanner, I’m a big fan of the Photomator app for the iPad. Apple announced last November that it had purchased Pixelmator, the company that makes that app, and as William Gallagher of AppleInsider notes, the first sign of that acquisition is a new splash screen when you open the app. I’ll be interested to see what substantive changes come next, including whether Apple renames the app and/or does something to better integrate it with the Photos app.
If you have a new iPhone and you are in an emergency situation outside of the range of a cellular network, you can communicate with a satellite to get help. T-Mobile partnered with Starlink (the Elon Musk company) so that you can also use satellites for text messages (and, in the future, picture messages, data, and voice calls). And as Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reports, you don’t have to be a T-Mobile customer to use the service, and it is free for now before the official launch in July, at which time it will cost $15/month (or $20/month if you don’t use T-Mobile for your cellphone service). If you frequently use your iPhone when you are off of the grid, this might appeal to you.
If you want to help advance medical research, the Research app from Apple on the iPhone lets you participate in select research studies. As reported by Dan Moren of Six Colors, Apple announced a new one this week, and it is a big one. It is called the Apple Health Study, and Apple says that this study is being done in collaboration with Brigham and Women’s Hospital and it “aims to further understand how technology—including iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods—can play a role in advancing and improving physical health, mental health, and overall wellbeing.” So, by participating in this study, you should help Apple and the medical community better understand how products from companies like Apple can be used to help you. That sounds good to me, so I signed up.
If you have been an Apple customer for a long time, you may have two Apple accounts, one that you created back when iTunes was first introduced and another one that you use for things like iCloud. This week, Apple introduced a way to migrate all of your purchases from one account to the other one so that you can just use a single account for everything. That’s great news (and long overdue), but I’ve heard about a few hiccups from people who tried it out this week, and I don’t want to do anything that might mess up my Apple Account that I share with my family members for things like app purchases. So I’m going to wait a while before I try this myself.
I have been a big fan of the Milanese Loop band for the Apple Watch since I first purchased one ten years ago. Last Fall, Apple released a new version of that band, the Titanium Milanese Loop. The color better matches the Apple Watch Ultra, but you can use it with any of the larger Apple Watch models, including the Apple Watch Series 10. It also has a different type of clasp. Andrew O’Hara of AppleInsider wrote a review of the Titanium Milanese Loop.
It has never occurred to me to put that Milanese Loop band on anything other than my wrist, but Scott Cacciola of the New York Times reports that, apparently, some people are wearing an Apple Watch on an ankle. (Gift link)
Bogdan Popa of AutoEvolution describes new features in the Waze app for CarPlay, including the ability to navigate to home or work with the press of one button.
One of the best features of the Apple Vision Pro is the ability to watch immersive videos created by Apple. They are so lifelike that you feel like you are really there, and for the past year, nobody else has released immersive content as good as what Apple has released. That changed this week with the release of the Prima Immersive app for the Vision Pro, created by Immersive Company. The first video available for that app is the first episode of a series called Sessions, produced by a company called The Spatialists. This episode gives you a front-row seat for an intimate performance by the bluegrass group AJ Lee and Blue Summit. The quality of this streaming video is excellent. The sound is also fantastic, although I did hear a tiny bit of distortion. The sound is good if you just wear the Vision Pro; the sound is better if you put on your AirPods Pro, especially for the sound coming from the upright bass. (The built-in speakers for the Vision Pro are only so-so for low bass sounds.) Between this app and the upcoming Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive camera, I expect that we will see a lot more immersive content for the Vision Pro in 2025.
By the way, I had never heard of AJ Lee and the Blue Summit before I downloaded that app this week, but they are really good. I particularly like their song City of Glass (Apple Music link).
If you have $50,000, you can bid on a Steve Jobs business card signed by Steve Jobs, as reported by Joe Rossignol of MacRumors. If you have $0.50, I’m happy to mail you one of my business cards, and I’ll sign any name that you want on it.
Apple TV+ may have fewer subscribers than other services, but the show Severance is such a hit that it managed to reach #4 on the Nielsen streaming charts, as reported by Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac.
And finally, Apple continues to expand the reach of Apple TV+, and this week released an app for the Android platform. I’m sure that iPhone J.D. readers use the iPhone, not Android, but this news is still relevant for us because as the number of Apple TV+ subscribers increases, Apple will have even more incentive to release new great content. So welcome to the party, Android users. We’re glad that you are here. Here is a fun video released by Apple to announce the new Android app:
Apple CEO Tim Cook grew up in Robertsdale, Alabama, which is just a few hours from New Orleans. In 2019, he came to New Orleans to give the commencement address at Tulane University. I created a transcript of his speech because nobody else made one, and I thought a transcript would make it easy for folks to quickly read what he had to say instead of taking the time to watch a video. (Back then, we could not use AI to do all the work of making transcripts.) In that commencement address, Cook quipped that for many people at Apple, New Orleans is “in our blood,” and he explained that he is part of that group too because when he attended college at Auburn, “the Big Easy was our favorite getaway” and a great place to enjoy a “weekend of beignets and beer.”
As I am sure you know, this past Sunday, New Orleans hosted the Super Bowl. Apple Music sponsored the halftime show, bringing Cook and other Apple executives back to New Orleans. I’m not sure if Cook was able to get beignets or beer while he was here, but he did have a busy weekend.
Cook and Deirdre O’Brien (Apple’s Senior VP for Retail + People) visited the Apple Store at the Lakeside Shopping Center in Metairie, LA, a suburb next to New Orleans. There are some fantastic Apple employees at that store, and I’m sure that they enjoyed the visit. O’Brien shared some pictures on Instagram, such as this one:
Cook also took the time to talk to some customers in the store. One of them, Michael Harold, shared pictures on Instagram and had this to say:
My computer screen went out on me earlier this week and I made an appointment at Apple to meet with a computer expert. The guy was great. Helpful. Nice. Like most of the staff there. I was lamenting the fact that everyone and his/her mother had been running it into celebrities and big wigs. Not I! And I’m certainly not going to meet some famous person in the mall. So the tech says to me “Well that has changed. Take a look.” Sure enough. Tim Cook himself. No bodyguard. No entourage. Just Tim and his colleagues. He is here for Super Bowl and took time to see [his] Apple employees. Everyone was highly impressed. He took pics with the staff and customers. Finally I had to go and take a look. His director of communications, Kristin, says to me. Tim is really genuine. (From Alabama by the way) “Would you like to meet him?” I’m thinking. Well. Yeah. But I don’t want to be too obnoxious. She said absolutely not. In seconds flat she goes up [him]. “Tim. I’d like you to meet Michael Harold.” So I get a photo with him and relate the fact that I had yet to see a big shot until now. He was so nice. “I can assure you I’m not a big shot.” He says. I go back to my computer and work on the issues. As Tim leaves I say goodbye to him and no lie. He says “Goodbye Michael.” He’s right. He’s not a big shot. He’s just a regular guy. A successful and extraordinarily kind regular guy.
Cook also met up with Odell Beckham, Jr. Before he played NFL football, Beckham attended my alma mater, Isidore Newman. (He was in the class of 2011.) Ever since I was a Newman student in the 1980s, the best place near campus to get a po-boy has been at Domilise’s, so it was no surprise to see that OBJ took Cook there. Others at the table included Eddy Cue, Apple’s Senior VP of Services who is in charge of Apple Music, and Lisa Jackson, Apple’s VP of Environment, Policy and Social Initiative who was previously Administrator of the EPA. Lisa Jackson is from New Orleans; in 1979, she graduated from and was the valedictorian of Dominican High School, another school close to Domilise’s. Jorge Alonso shared a video on TikTok showing them enjoying what looks like shrimp po-boys, which is also my go-to order at Domilise’s.
New Orleans native Harry Connick, Jr. posted on Instagram that he, Cook, and Jackson visited the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music (EMCM), a center in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans that uses music for children as its focal point to battle poverty and social injustice. Apple recently posted an article on its website about Apple’s partnership with EMCM. That article also mentions Apple’s partnership with the Young Artist Movement (YAM), a part of Arts New Orleans that works with teenagers and young adults. YAM artists recently used iPads to design a mural they painted outside the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office jail. It is a 6,600-square-foot art piece that is visible as you drive towards downtown New Orleans on I-10.
Cook, Eddy Cue, Oliver Schusser (Apple’s VP of Apple Music and Beats), and others were also seen on a balcony at a prime location in the French Quarter: the corner of Bourbon Street and Bienville Street at the Royal Sonesta Hotel, as shown in a TikTok video posted by DJ John Summit.
After his trip to New Orleans, Cook posted a video on Twitter/X about his trip to New Orleans. The video shows Cook at Domilise’s, the Super Bowl parade, Cook at EMCM, the YAM mural, Cook spending time with Saints legend and ALS advocate Steve Gleason, and more:
Spent an amazing weekend in New Orleans with students, team members, athletes, and some of the most impactful artists making music today. And it was all capped by a fantastic game and halftime show! Congratulations to the Philadelphia Eagles! pic.twitter.com/1dNZ7yykso
I have many photo albums created by my mother containing pictures from when I was young, but those albums contain very few pictures from the 1980s. I recently figured out why. It appears that from around 1980 to 1986, my parents had most of their pictures developed as slides. Indeed, I remember my family gathering in the living room where we would set up the projector to look at those slides on a screen so we could all enjoy them together. But nowadays, I don’t have access to a working projector, and even if I did, that’s not how I would want to look at the pictures: today we use the Apple TV to look at pictures on my large TV screen, or we look at pictures on the iPhone, iPad, or computer. Although I have used various methods to digitize pictures over the last 30 years, I no longer have a flatbed scanner with a film scanning feature. So I decided to purchase a Kodak Slide N Scan Digital Film Scanner on Amazon ($179.99). Thanks to that device, I now have well over 1,000 old pictures of family and friends, holidays, family trips, and more that are now readily available to me on my Apple TV and all of my devices. Plus, it is now easy to share them with others—no projector required.
Options for scanning pictures on film
If you have old slides or photo negatives to scan, you have many options at many price levels. To get the best possible scan, send your slides or negatives to a commercial service. Online services typically charge $0.40 to $0.90 per slide. If you don’t trust putting your precious photos in the mail, your local camera/photography store probably offers a similar service. One of the oldest and best camera and photography stores in the New Orleans area where I live, Lakeside Photoworks, charges between $1.50 and $5.00 per slide depending upon how many you are scanning, and negatives cost $1.50 per frame.
If you want to do the scanning yourself, some document scanners support film scanning. I used to own a printer/scanner that did this, but it was slow to scan each slide or negative. You can also purchase an expensive dedicated film scanner from a company like Plustek. Prices range from about $400 to well over $1,000. The Epson Perfection V850 Pro scanner gets good reviews, but it costs $1,299 on Amazon. Another high-end choice is the Plustek OpticFilm 8200i SE, which is $399 on Amazon, and the quality of its scans is reportedly very good, but each scan takes several minutes. There are also some complicated ways to scan pictures using a DSLR camera with a macro lens. For some people and some types of photos, one of these may be the best option.
The alternative is a less expensive scanner like the Kodak Slide N Scan Digital Film Scanner. The cost is much less, at around $180, and another significant advantage is that it takes barely more than a second to scan each image. This avoids the painstaking frustration of waiting for other devices to finish each scan. The pictures I was scanning were taken with simple snap-and-shoot cameras, so the quality was nothing special to begin with. And my only goal was to walk down memory lane, not to submit something to a publication. An inexpensive and fast scanner seemed like the best option for me, even though I did consider the other options.
I am happy with my choice. The price was right, it did not take me very long to scan well over 1,000 slides and a few film negatives, and it was great fun to convert each slide carousel that was, for all intents and purposes, unusable into digital pictures that I can see and share. It is especially nice to have lots of photos of loved ones who have passed away over the years.
How it works
The Kodak Digital Film Scanner takes a picture of the image on film and saves it to an SD card of up to 32GB capacity (which you must provide). You can use this device to adjust the brightness level when you scan (which I only rarely found helpful, but it did make a difference on a few photos) or the RGB levels (which I never found helpful and I recommend that you don’t touch; it is better to adjust the color after you take the picture). For the most part, you can ignore those controls. Instead, there is only one button to really worry about: the big button you press to scan a photo when you see it on the 5-inch screen.
One of the best features of this device is that it is fast and easy to scan multiple slides. To use the device, insert the slide holder from the right side of the device. Then, put the first slide in the holder. Then, put a second slide in the holder, which will push that first slide until it is centered on the 5-inch screen. Press the button to take a picture, and then push the third side in, which makes the second one move into the center. Repeat this process for each of your slides. Just keep sliding in the slides and pressing the button each time a picture is centered. It takes between one and two seconds per slide.
If you have film negatives, use the scan negative setting and add the film negative adapter to the slide holder. Finally, you push in the strip of negatives from the right side. As each image is centered on the screen, press the button to save the pictures to the SD card, then push the negative even more to get to the next image.
This device’s native resolution for scans is 14 megapixels, but you can choose either 14 or 22 megapixels. The larger images are created using software interpolation. I liked the idea of working with slightly larger pictures, so I typically used the 22 megapixel mode. The picture quality is the same for either mode.
When you are done scanning a set of negatives or a set of slides—which for me meant at the end of each slide carousel—remove the SD card from the Kodak device and use an SD card reader to load the scans on your computer. This device also comes with a cord to connect the Kodak device directly to your computer but I never saw a need to do that because it was so easy to work with an SD card.
In fact, I never even used a computer. I used an iPad for everything. The Kodak device uses a USB-C connector for charging, so I sat at my dining room table and connected a USB-C to USB-C cord from my iPad to the scanner to provide the scanner with power while I scanned a set of slides. Then, I imported the images from the SD card to my iPad using a HyperDrive 6-in-1 USB-C Hub that I’ve owned for many years. I’m sure you can use any SD reader for the iPad that supports USB-C. The Photos app on the iPad will detect an SD card and allow you to import the pictures and then delete them from the SD card after import.
You could be done at this point, but you will get much better results if you take the time to adjust the scans. Some pictures will need to be cropped and/or rotated from landscape to portrait orientation, and that is an easy fix you can make using the Photos app or just about any other photography app on the iPad. I also recommend that you adjust the colors to make every image look its best, especially since, after many decades, some colors on the film will start to fade more than others.
My tool of choice for fixing photos is a great iPad app called Photomator. I purchased that app so long ago that I no longer remember how much I paid. You can currently use the app with a $29.99 annual subscription or a $79.99 subscription, but note that this app is so good that Apple recently purchased it, and I don’t know what that will mean for the app’s price in the future. One thing I like about Photomator is that it has a one-button enhance button that often does just about everything you need to adjust things like colors. Also, this app makes it easy to adjust the red/green/blue levels, frequently changing a dull photo into something that really pops. I also like Photomator on the iPad because you can use an Apple Pencil and the Repair tool to quickly eliminate dust, hairs, or other blemishes that often show up in a picture when you scan slides or negatives.
My final step was to use the Photos app to adjust the date/time of the photo—which was often just an educated guess for these pictures taken decades ago—and to set the location where the photo was taken (if I knew it). The Photos app lets you adjust the location for a single image or for multiple images, but for more precise adjustments of metadata such as location, I recommend the Metapho app.
Quality of the scans
Although I’m sure that the quality of some of these photos would have been much better if I had used a commercial service or a slow-and-expensive high-end scanner, I was happy with the quality of the pictures I got from this Kodak scanner. Some individual photos were poor quality or even unusable, but I could see from just holding up the slide to a light that the quality of many of those slides had simply deteriorated over time. For example, some of the film was completely faded. On others, some chemical reactions took place over time, damaging some or all of the photos. I don’t see how even an expensive solution would have changed anything for those photos. Fortunately, most of the slides I worked with were in pretty good shape.
Here are some examples of scans of slides from the 1980s. I adjusted all of these images on my iPad using the methods outlined above:
Here are two images scanned from a film negative from the 1990s. The first scan was one that I did many years ago using a scanner that I no longer own:
Here are two more comparison photos. The picture was taken on my birthday in 1994 (the same year that I started practicing law). The first image was scanned from a film negative a very long time ago. It is grainy but has a little more detail. The second image was taken using the Kodak Slide N Scan. I prefer the second picture, but it is a little softer, which some could see as a disadvantage.
One minor drawback to this Kodak device is that there is some very slight cropping on the left and right side of images on a film negative. I usually didn’t even notice this, but it can make a difference in some images. For the few times that I wanted to ensure that I got the entire image, I scanned the negative twice, once with the negative a little more to the left in the Kodak scanner and once with the negative a little more to the right. Then I used Photoshop to merge the two photos to create a single, wider photo. I did that for the above photo, and in the wider version of the scan, you can see a second birthday card on the right:
How much better can a scan look when you pay more for a professional service? I didn’t test this myself, but when I was researching this device, I found this post by Audrie Storme in which she provided side-by-side examples of this Kodak scanner versus a professional service. The professional scans always seem to be a little better and, in some cases, are much better. But remember, you can do both. You can scan a large number of slides and negatives with this Kodak product, and then if any individual images are really special, you can send just those to a commercial service to get a better scan. When I started, I assumed that would be what I would do. But ultimately, I was happy enough with all of the pictures I created using this device, so I see no need to spend more money to get slightly better versions of any of these pictures.
Similar products
There are other slide and film scanners that are similar to the Kodak Slide N Scan Digital Film Scanner that I purchased. For example, Kodak itself sells a slightly less expensive product called the SCANZA (which is $149.99 on Amazon). When I was researching these products, I saw a number of complaints about the SCANZA because it lacks a protective door for the place where you slide the slides or film in, and as a result, it can easily collect dust. Dust is the big enemy of scanning slides and film; it is so tiny that you cannot see it on the film, but after you scan and look at the photo on a larger screen, it can be pronounced. That’s why I decided to spend just a tiny bit more on the Slide N Scan. The doors on the side of the Slide N Scan help to keep out dust, and the device comes with a cleaning tool that you can use to clean the glass inside of the device.
The Slide N Scan I purchased has a 5-inch screen. There is another version with a 7-inch screen, and that larger screen can even tilt. I recommend the 5-inch version. First, a 5-inch screen is more than big enough to see the image and press the button. Soon enough, you will see the pictures much larger once they are on your iPad or computer. Second, looking at pictures of the 7-inch device, it seems to me that the 7-inch screen is big enough that the buttons you press are somewhat awkwardly located behind the top lip of the screen. With the 5-inch version, the main button you press every time to create the scan is right at the top, not behind anything, and easy to reach.
A few other companies sell similar products for about the same price, and I cannot comment on their strengths and weaknesses. But I can say that I have no regrets about selecting this model.
Conclusion
If you don’t have many slides or negatives to scan, or if you have film from an event that is really important to you, like your wedding, you are probably better off paying for a commercial service. And if you want to do the scan yourself and don’t mind spending lots of time and money to maximize the quality, you’ll want to look at dedicated professional flat-bed scanners that handle film or dedicated products like the Epson or Plustek devices I referenced above.
But for an easy and simple solution that results in pretty good photos that are fun to view and share, the Kodak Slide N Scan Digital Film Scanner is a nice product. Now that I own it, when I discover more old slides or film negatives that I want to scan, I will already have what I need.
The Apple Vision Pro is celebrating its first birthday, so Brett Burney and I start today’s episode of the In the News podcast by discussing the state of that product. Then we discuss Apple’s newest baby, the Apple Invites app that launched this week. We then discuss apps with malware, Tubi, the coolest MagSafe charger ever, Apple’s attempt to bring Pixar characters to life, and much more.
In our In the Know segment, we discuss the Apple Watch. Brett explains how to mirror the watch screen to the iPhone, and I explain why you should turn off mute on the Apple Watch … at least, every once in a while.
