Uncategorized

Yesterday, Apple introduced the next versions of the operating systems for all of its platforms, which will be released this Fall. For the first time ever, there will be not only a consistent theme across all of these operating systems—including a look at that Apple calls Liquid Glass—but also a consistent numbering system, one based upon a year. Thus, we will see iOS 26, watchOS 26, tvOS 26, macOS 26, visionOS 26, and iPadOS 26. It is a good thing that we have until Fall before the final versions are released because it is going to take until then just to wrap our heads around all of the improvements. In today’s post, I’m focusing on the features for the iPhone and iPad that lawyers and other professional users will appreciate the most when they are using their devices to get work done. But note that there are lots of other great features I’m not discussing in this post that you can use when you are not billing hours, such as nice improvements to the Camera and Music apps. I’ll start by focusing on iOS 26 for the iPhone, in part because virtually all of the big changes for the iPhone in iOS 26 are also included in iPadOS 26. However, I do so at the risk of burying the lede because professional users of the iPad will have quite a bit to love about the improvements in iPad OS 26.

Liquid Glass

When Apple introduced iOS 7, one of the major new features was a clean, flat interface. It’s now twelve years later, so Apple has decided that it is time for a new interface, and it is called Liquid Glass. The “glass” part of Liquid Glass refers to the fact that many interface features are translucent, so they partially show what is underneath. It looks interesting, and it is also functional because it means that you can see more of whatever is underneath: the app contents, the webpage, the document, etc. But it is more than that; the new design also seems to bend and reflect light as you move your iPhone and based upon what is happening on your iPhone. Here is a picture of the new Phone app in iOS 26. If you look at the buttons at the bottom of the screen, you can see what is underneath.

The “liquid” part of Liquid Glass refers to a number of things. First, these shapes are not fixed. They can grow bigger or smaller as necessary. If you own an iPhone with the Dynamic Island at the top, you already have an idea of how this works; the island changes shape depending upon what is being shown, and it dynamically responds to touch. But now, this will occur across the interface. And as you interact with the new interface—such as when you touch a button—it responds as if it is an illuminated gel that changes size and becomes brighter. It is a beautiful effect, and it is also functional because it provides more visual clues of what the iPhone is doing. Moreover, it can give you more options. As John Gruber of Daring Fireball noted yesterday, contextual menus can now expand vertically to show lots of options, reducing your need to swipe multiple times to get to what you need. Note that all of this is only possible because modern iPhones have incredible power that give Apple the luxury of devoting processor cycles to something like this.

Liquid Glass looks great in either light or dark mode, and there is also a new clear look, which removes the color so you can more easily see through to whatever is underneath:

If you want to learn more about Liquid Glass, here is a video that Apple created for developers. The first half does an excellent job of showing off the new design and the amazing things that it does. (The second half provides advice for developers working with the new interface, so you may want to skip that part.)

Reduce unnecessary communication distractions

I hate it when I am trying to get work done and I am interrupted because my iPhone rings for a call or beeps from a new text message and it turns out that it is a solicitation call or something else that holds no interest for me. I currently use the iPhone feature that lets me tap the voicemail button to send a call directly to voicemail, and it is nice that I can see a transcription of the voicemail as it is being left so that it is turns out that if it is someone that I want to talk to, I can answer the call while the voicemail is being left. But this is all still an interruption.

iOS 26 features a Call Screening function. When enabled, if a call comes from an unknown caller, your iPhone answers the call without alerting you and asks the caller to share their name and reason for the call. Only then does the iPhone ring so that you can decide if you want to answer the call—and of course, many unwanted callers won’t even provide this information, so your phone will never ring at all. It is nice to have a virtual receptionist built-in to the iPhone.

What if you initiated the call and you are put on a long hold? The iPhone can help you here as well. Hold Assist detects that you have been placed on hold (for example, by noticing the hold music) and will offer to hold the call for you. You can then go back to your work and when a person finally comes back, your iPhone will ask that person to wait a moment and your iPhone will alert you to return to the call. All of us know how frustrating it is to suffer through long hold waits when seeking customer service, so this sounds like a great new feature.

Unwanted text messages can be just as annoying as unwanted calls, and iOS 26 can help with this, too. Screening tools will detect spam messages and let you decide what appears in the Messages app—and in recent calls in the Phone and FaceTime apps.

Messages improvements

In addition to blocking or filtering unwanted messages, the messages that you do want to see are improved in numerous ways in the Messages app in iOS 26. One improvement is that you can select partial text in a text message. Currently, if you want to copy a word or a phrase that someone texts to you, your only option is to copy all of the words in the text message bubble. In iOS 26, you can copy just the word that matters so that you can more easily paste just that word into an email, the Safari web browser, etc.

If you are texting with multiple people in a group chat, iOS 26 will provide typing indicators so that you can see who is about to say something—the same feature we have long had when you are texting with just one other person. And if there is someone that you don’t know in the group chat, iOS 26 will include a button so that you can add that person to Contacts.

Maximize battery power

If you have used more battery than normal at a given point during the day, an iPhone running iOS 26 can alert you and even identify the apps that are sucking most of your battery power.

Juli Clover of MacRumors notes a number of interesting changes to the battery interface. For example, when you are charging your iPhone, iOS 26 shows you how much time is remaining until a full charge. That’s often very useful to know.

Say what?

Every immigration lawyer that I know is busier now than any other point in their life due to the Trump administration. But no matter what your reason for doing so is, if you need to communicate with someone who speaks another language, iOS 26 can translate for you. This is done using Apple Intelligence on your iPhone, so your confidential communications remain confidential.

For example, the Messages app can automatically translate texts so that each party can simply type using their preferred language, and the iPhone takes care of the rest.

This also works in a FaceTime call. As each person speaks, your iPhone displays live captions and then translates the text in the captions.

This also works in a phone call. You say something, and then when you pause, the iPhone speaks the same words that you just said in the foreign language. When they respond, you can then immediately hear and see a spoken translation of what they said. This even works if the other person isn’t using an iPhone.

Apple showed off these new translation features in Apple’s own apps, but Apple also announced that third-party developers can incorporate these translation tools into their own apps as well. Not only does this make things easier for other developers, but it also helps to protect the privacy and confidentiality of your communications since the translation is done on your own device.

CarPlay

CarPlay may be something on the screen in your car, but it is driven by the iPhone so it is part of iOS. In iOS 26, when you receive a phone call, the call notification no longer takes over the entire screen but instead appears in a compact pop-up overlay. That way, you can decide whether to take the call but still see what CarPlay was doing before the call—such as showing you the map and the upcoming turn that you don’t want to miss.

CarPlay in iOS 26 also supports widgets, and they look similar to what an iPhone can currently show you in StandBy mode. I believe that traditional CarPlay screens will only show one widget at a time, but if you have a car with a wide screen for CarPlay, you can show two widgets at once.

Another improvement is that Live Activities, a feature that already exists on the iPhone today, will show up in CarPlay in iOS 26. For example, if you are driving to an airport to pick someone up, you can see a Live Activity that counts down the arrival time and then shows when the plane has landed.

And of course, if you are in the car, some of the distraction-reducing features discussed above, such as Call Screening, will be very welcome.

An iPad that is more like a computer

Many of the features discussed above come to the iPad as well: Liquid Glass, Messages improvements, translation options, and even a new Phone app for the iPad. But some of the biggest changes in iPadOS 26 are new features that make an iPad more like a computer.

For many years, Apple has tried out different ways to support multiple windows at the same time on the iPad. First, there was the split screen mode and slide over. Then, there was the first version of Stage Manager, which gave you a little more flexibility on where to place windows, but not complete flexibility. In iPadOS 26, you can now place windows wherever you want—just like you have been able to do on a computer for many years now. And you will be able to have even more windows open at once. Sure, this can sometimes cause a little chaos, but we have all learned to deal with this on the computer, so I think we will have no trouble doing the same thing on an iPad.

When you want to close, minimize, or maximize a window, you can use the red, yellow, and green buttons—just like windows on a Mac.

When you are using an iPad with an external pointing device such as a trackpad, the cursor can now change to an arrow to be more precise: again, much like a cursor on a computer. And one of the new things that you can point to with that cursor is a menu bar at the top of the window—yes, just like we have been doing on computers since the Macintosh debuted in 1984. The menu bar appears when you swipe down from the top of the screen.

These are changes that many professional iPad users have been requesting for years. I’ll have to try this to see how it works, but my expectation is that it will make it easier to get work done on an iPad.

Files app

The Files app is more powerful in iPadOS 26. The list view includes resizable columns, making it easier to work with your files. Folders will be collapsible in the list view. And folders can be given custom colors and icons, making it easier to identify a specific folder.

When you are ready to open up a specific document, you can select which app will open that type of document. And you can change the default app for a file type so that a certain type of file is opened in the app that you prefer to use.

You can also drag a folder from the Files app onto the Dock. This gives you easy access to the folder. And it also makes it easier to quickly open items that are within the folder, even when you are not in the Files app.

When it comes time to work with files that are in PDF format, there is a new Preview app on the iPad. This gives you simple options for viewing and editing a PDF file without having to use a more full-featured program like PDF Expert from Readdle when you just want to do something simple, like quickly look at the document.

Conclusion

I believe that these and the other improvements in iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 will make a big difference for attorneys and other professional users of the iPhone and iPad. Kudos to Apple for these new features. As always, the new operating systems will be released this Fall. A public beta will be available in July, but I discourage installing beta software on any device that you depend on to get your work done.

Today marks the anniversary of D-Day, the beginning of the end of World War II and the liberation of the world from fascism. Eighty-one years later, modern technology offers us new ways to revisit and understand the events of D-Day. Jason Snell of Six Colors reports that the $5 app D-Day: The Camera Soldier is now available for the Apple Vision Pro. This interactive experience tells the story of Richard Taylor, an American who landed on the beaches of Normandy not with a weapon, but with cameras, documenting the Allied invasion on June 6, 1944. I plan to check it out this weekend. Today also marks the 25th anniversary of the National WWII Museum. Originally opened as the “National D-Day Museum” on June 6, 2000, it has since become a world-renowned destination, and I highly recommend it as a must-see and one of many reasons to visit New Orleans. The museum holds special meaning for me personally—my grandmother, Lorraine Taix McCaslin, volunteered her time at the museum from before the doors first opened until shortly before she died. When she passed away at age 93 in 2017, the museum honored her with a touching tribute that discussed that remarkable woman and highlighted my family’s connection to World War II. Recently, my son and I watched the excellent Apple TV+ series Masters of the Air and then visited the WWII Museum to see some of the very planes featured in the show, along with exhibits that bring to life the real stories that inspired the series. On this anniversary, let’s raise a glass to all those who contributed to the end of Hitler’s reign of terror—whether they were soldiers or photographers on the front lines, future grandmothers collecting scrap metal, or courageous individuals in Germany working to reclaim their country. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• There is no episode of the In the News podcast today, but Brett and I will be recording our big 200th episode one week from today, so stay tuned for that one.
• Matthew Burgess of the Australian website Lawyers Weekly describes an interesting recent decision involving an iPhone from the Supreme Court of New South Wales. Colin Laurence Peek, a wealthy property developer in Sydney, wrote a will in the Notes app on his iPhone explaining how he wanted his assets distributed after his death. He identified specific gifts for specific people, with one person getting over $10 million, and then said that “Brad Wheatley,” his friend and a solicitor, would get “the remaining balance of the accounts”—which was over $300,000. Peek died two weeks later, and Wheatley then attempted to enforce that note on the iPhone as Peek’s will. Peek’s family—which stood to inherit if the will was invalid—challenged the will. The Court held that the evidence did not establish that the iPhone note was intended to be a final will. The decision turned less on the fact that it was written in the Notes app on the iPhone and more on a number of other issues that related to the actual intent of Mr. Peek, such as Wheatley’s conflict of interest, which made his testimony about the facts suspect, and Wheatley’s refusal to release follow-up text messages between the deceased and the solicitor after the purported will was written. It is an interesting case at the intersection of technology and the law.
• On Monday, Apple kicks off its annual WWDC conference with a keynote address at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern, and we will learn lots of details about what Apple has planned for the future. Jason Snell of Six Colors wrote a great article on the importance of WWDC in general and this year’s event in particular.
• Taylor Leamey of CNet reports on research from the University of Mississippi that explains what the Apple Watch is good at measuring (things like heart rate and step count) and the things that are less precise (calories burned), although the readings can still be helpful.
• Tim Hardwick of MacRumors notes that the next version of the Qi wireless charging standard (2.2) will support up to 50W charging. Hardwick speculates that the next version of the iPhone might support this standard, making the speed of wireless charging much closer to charging with a wire.
• Speaking of MagSafe, John Gruber of Daring Fireball argues that Apple should release a new version of the now-discontinued MagSafe Battery Pack for the iPhone. I agree 100% for the reasons I noted in this post. That battery is so well-designed and easy to carry around and use that I carry it around whenever I know that I may need some extra power for my iPhone.
• The Fantastical app for the iPhone has a great new feature that is described in another post by Gruber. When you receive an email from someone discussing an upcoming event, you can simply forward that email to email@fantastical.app and then, about 20 seconds later, you will see a notice in Fantastical that there is an event that you can tap to add it to your calendar. In my tests, the AI used by Fantastical does a fantastic job of creating these events, understanding what is the important information about the event from your email and then turning that into a well-crated calendar entry. It reminds me of another service that I use and love, TripIt. You just forward an email with any travel info—the airline email, hotel reservation confirmation, etc.—and TripIt knows how to parse the message and turn that into an itinerary for your trip.
• Leila Fadel and Olivia Hampton of NPR discuss how the iPad Pro allowed the renowned concert pianist Simone Dinnerstein to overcome her stage fright panic attacks.
• Jonathan Landrum of AP wrote a great article discussing how the Apple Vision Pro releases Bono: Stories of Surrender and Metalica and the Sphere in Las Vegas are examples of a new way to experience music.
• The Theater app for the Vision Pro will offer a live immersive 3D version of the The Talk Show Live event, which will occur on Tuesday, June 10, at 7pm Pacific. I’m sure that the event will offer an interesting discussion of Apple’s WWDC announcements. But I’m particularly interested to see how the Theater app pushes the envelope on what a live immersive experience can be.
• Apple’s big summer movie, F1, debuts in theaters at the end of this month, but the early reviews are in, and according to Zack Sharf of Variety, the movie is great.
• And finally, the new show The Wild Ones, debuts on Apple TV+ on July 11, 2025. This is a nature documentary, but it looks more like an adventure series than National Geographic. And it should be pretty stunning to watch. Apple says: “By deploying over 350 custom-built remote cameras, thermal drones, wearable underwater tags and AI-powered imaging technology, the team is breaking new ground in wildlife filmmaking, capturing intimate animal behavior never seen before while supporting active conservation missions on the ground.” Here is the trailer:

WWDC is just around the corner. Wouldn’t it be nice if Apple used the occasion to introduce uniformity in the way it numbers its operating systems for different platforms? That is the first topic that Brett Burney and I discuss in this week’s episode of the In the News podcast. We also discuss the very difficult job that Apple—and Tim Cook in particular—has working with an administration that threatens to make iPhones more expensive for consumers if Apple doesn’t do something that is impossible. We also have a follow-up discussion on the new venture between Jony Ive and Sam Altman and discuss some great hidden Apple Watch tips, a great app for folks with multiple Apple Watch bands, Instagram, and more.

In our In the Show segment, we discuss the fascinating new Apple TV+ show featuring Bono and the fan favorite Severance.

In our In the Know segment, Brett shares an Apple Watch tip, and I explain why anyone who enjoys watching TV and movies should check out the Callsheet app.

Finally, a quick programming note: there will be no podcast next week due to vacation schedules, but we will be back in two weeks—on Friday the 13th of June—to discuss everything announced at WWDC during our 200th episode.

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:

On June 9, Apple will begin its annual developer conference called WWDC. We are close enough that there is lots of speculation and rumors about what Apple might announce, and Mark Gurman of Bloomberg says that he has heard that Apple is going to announce a change in how it numbers its operating systems. Right now, we are using iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 for the iPhone and iPad, watchOS 12 for the Apple Watch, macOS 15 for the Mac, visionOS 2 for the Vision Pro, and tvOS 18 for the Apple TV. With all of those different numbers, it is difficult to remember which release number is the current one. Gurman says that Apple is going to instead adopt the typical approach used by car manufacturers: use a year number. So instead of iOS 19 being announced in 10 days and released this Fall, it will be iOS 26—an indication that this is the current iPhone operating system until the year 2026. I hope that this prediction is true. As John Gruber of Daring Fireball notes, this would make a lot of sense and would “certainly be helpful to anyone trying to figure out what’s up-to-date or not.” Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac argues that if Apple is going to do this, the number ought to be the year that the operating system comes out (so the next one would be iOS 25) instead of the year in which that version ends. I disagree. While the next version of iOS is likely to come out three months before the end of 2025, it will remain the current version for much longer, nine months, in 2026 (assuming that Apple holds to its traditional schedule). And we also use this numbering convention in other contexts, not just cars. My daughter is about to start her Senior year of high school, but we don’t call that the class of 2025 (when she starts becoming a Senior) but instead it is the class of 2026 (when she finishes). Of course, maybe none of this will happen, but I hope that Gurman is correct and that Apple does make this change. We will all find out in only 10 days. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• A big story in the news this past week was that upcoming iPhones might become much more expensive because President Trump said that he would impose a 25% tariff unless Apple starts making them in the United States, even though that is about as realistic as Trump demanding that Apple start making them on the moon. Lisa Eadicicco of CNN explains the numerous reasons that it is impossible for Apple to start making iPhones in the United States.
• Tripp Mickle of the New York Times reports that the real reason for that announcement was simply that Trump was throwing a hissy fit because he invited Apple CEO Tim Cook to join him on a recent trip to the Middle East, but Cook declined. Whatever the reason, it is clear that Cook (once again) faces the delicate task of navigating the landmines.
• The courts may provide Apple with a solution. The U.S. Court of International Trade ruled this week that Trump overstepped his authority when he asserted that there was any national emergency that justified invoking the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act. But as reported by Tony Romm of the New York Times, just hours ago as I type this, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit stayed that ruling while it considers the merits.
• If the courts don’t resolve this, the crack reporters at America’s Finest News Source, the Onion, have come up with another solution to Apple’s dilemma. As has Joy of Tech.
• iPhone apps can do lots of different things, and one of those is promoting mental and physical health. Law Technology Today surveyed a large number of folks to get their recommendations for the best of these apps—Alan Klevan, Debra Bruce, Michael Goler, Allison Johs, Michele Carney, Sarah Gold, Mark Rosch, Michael Eisenberg, and my podcast co-host Brett Burney—and it resulted in this article.
• Last week, I noted that Jony Ive and a bunch of other former Apple employees (mostly designers) have teamed up with Sam Altman and OpenAI to work on a new product that is different from the iPhone and uses AI. I was excited by the announcement because whether they release something great or a flop, I’m sure that it will be interesting given the folks involved. But Jason Snell of Six Colors explained why he thinks it highly unlikely that this will result in a good product. We will see.
• Adam Davidson of How-To Geek shares hidden features of the Apple Watch Control Center, many of which I didn’t know.
• If you have a lot of Apple’s watch bands for the Apple Watch, or if you just lust over them, the best app for managing your collection and seeing what else has been released is the Bandbreite app. Joe Rossignol of MacRumors notes that the app was recently updated to version 2.0 and has lots of new features.
• Marcus Mendes of 9to5Mac reports that the Instagram app now supports the iPhone’s native 3:4 aspect ratio for photos, meaning that you no longer have to crop a picture that you post.
• Joe Rossignol of MacRumors reports that you can now buy a cute, tiny, working replica of the first Macintosh. Or, at least, you can get on the waiting list as there is a backlog of orders.
• The movie Bono: Stories of Surrender is now available on Apple TV+, and I watched it last night. It is a fascinating one-man show in which Bono tells stories from his life and weaves into those stories some of the most famous songs from U2. I recommend it. But if you have an Apple Vision Pro, the immersive version of the movie is so much better that it is a must see. Parts of it feature immersive video, mostly the songs. Other parts feature the normal 2D movie, but there is 3D animation on top of and around the 2D movie, and the animation is really incredible and adds a lot to the experience. I was surprised to look at the regular version afterwards and see that there is virtually none of that animation because the animation is such a big part of what makes the show so interesting. I am so glad to have experienced this in the Vision Pro, and I hope that Apple gives us lots more like this.
• Ethan Shanfeld of Variety interviews Ben Stiller and Adam Scott to discuss the show Severance. Stiller notes how happy he is that Apple was the only studio that showed interest in the project when he first tried to sell the idea.
• And finally, the month of June starts on Sunday. Here is a preview of what is coming to Apple TV+ next month.

One of the best things to experience on the Apple Vision Pro is an immersive video, such as the impressive collection of videos created by Apple. You sit in a single spot, you look around, and thanks to the 180º video and the spatial sound, you feel as if you have been transported somewhere else. It is incredibly realistic and impressive. Some of these immersive videos feature musicians playing music, and one of the very best examples of that is notable becuase it was not produced by Apple. The Prima Immersive app currently includes one episode of the Sessions immersive video series from The Spatialists, and it features bluegrass band AJ Lee & Blue Summit. When you watch that episode, you feel as if you are sitting in the room with the band as they perform live, just for you.

If there is a downside to an immersive video musical performance, it is that you must stay in one place. You cannot walk around the band. Of course, there is nothing unusual about that limitation—when I attend a live concert or other performance, I typically have to stay in my seat. However, when listening to Episode 42 of the fantastic Vision Pros podcast hosted by Tim Chaten, I learned about a new Apple Vision Pro app called Mahler Chamber Orchestra that removes this limitation. The app allows you to experience a classical music performance, and while you are free to sit in a chair and join the musicians in a circle as they play music, what makes this app stand out is that you can stand up and walk around. For example, if you want to really hear the cello, just walk up in front of the musician playing the cello to get close to that instrument. That is almost certainly something that you would never be able to do in a live performance (unless you are really good friends with the musicians), but in a virtual performance, you can feel free to do so.

The app indicates that more music is coming in the future, but for now, there is just a single performance (which costs $6.99 to purchase): a performance of Mozart’s Quintet in G minor. The musicians are members of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, which is based in Berlin. The app was created by Reflekt Music, a company that consists of Henrik Oppermann (an expert in 3D sound) and Timothy Summers (a graduate of Harvard and Julliard who plays violin and is one of the musicians in the quintet).

I started by putting on my Vision Pro while I sat in a chair in the room in my house that has my piano and some other instruments, which seemed like the appropriate place in my house for a performance. Once I started the app, I felt like I was witnessing a private concert at my home.

The artists are represented by dots in space. It reminds me of the traditional Wall Street Journal Hedcut representation of a person that is created by dots, except that these dots are in color and the life-size musicians are animated in real-time to reproduce an actual performance. I can turn to one side or the other to face different musicians.

The representation of the artists with dots may be a technical limitation, but it also serves an artistic purpose: this app is not about what the artists look like but instead about the sound of the music that they create. And the spatial sound is really good. Oppermann says that the app uses “point clouds, offering a fully immersive experience with 6 degrees of freedom and spatial audio with precise acoustic modelling.”

What is most impressive is that as I move around the room, I can pay even closer attention to the music coming from each specific instrument. I could even place my head inside of the violin or cello or viola to better hear—and, in some ways, feel—that particular instrument and get a deeper understanding of each specific performance that is a part of the whole. The spatial music adapts in real time to your movements so that no matter where you are positioned, the sound comes from the correct location.

I used this app both using the built-in speakers on the Vision Pro and using my AirPods Pro. I didn’t notice much of a difference; they were both excellent.

Here is a video that, while in 2D, approximates what the experience is like:

Although using the Vision Pro to experience this performance is new, the performance was recorded a few years ago, and there has been an installation that has traveled to different locations in Europe where people could wear earlier VR headsets to experience the performance. This video shows both the original performance that was recorded (along with other performances that have not yet been released for the Apple Vision Pro) and attendees experiencing virtual performances:

After experiencing this quintet performing a composition by Mozart, I now want to hear more. In the podcast episode, Oppermann and Summers talk about recording a full orchestra using spatial sound. I’m not sure how that would work with a Vision Pro—I guess I would have to be standing in a huge room that is big enough to fit an orchestra?—but it would be fascinating to walk around and pay closer attention to individual instruments in a huge orchestra. I would also love a similar experience with other genres of music: perhaps Dixieland jazz, traditional jazz, bluegrass, folk music, or any other type of acoustic music where each instrument or singer provides unique contributions.

I’m still a fan of the immersive videos that Apple and others have been creating for the Apple Vision Pro. But now that I have tried this app, I am eager to see where this type of technology goes in the future as headsets get smaller, lighter, and more powerful, thus making it easier to walk around the virtual musicians.

Click here to get Mahler Chamber Orchestra on the App Store (free, but you must pay to download a performance)

Thank you to SaneBox for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month. I’ve explained in the past what the service does, so this month, I thought I would talk about a typical day of using the service for one of my inboxes. For the same reason that the service works well for me, I think it could work well for you.

The inbox that I use for iPhone J.D. (jeff@iphonejd.com) receives lots of emails from lots of different sources. Many emails come from readers, and I always want to read those. Others have something to do with running this website or the podcast. Others come from vendors who want to tell me about a new product or service, and maybe 5% of those are of interest to me. Others are essentially spam emails that I never wanted to receive but they were not caught by the regular spam filter. And there are others too, but that gives you a sense of it.

SaneBox is a service that works in the background at the server level, and it acts like a traffic cop. Within seconds of an email arriving in my Inbox, SaneBox decides whether the email should stay in the Inbox, move to my @SaneNews subfolder (becuase it looks like a newsletter to which I subscribe), move to my @SaneLater folder (becuase it is of questionable importance, but still could be important), or move to another SaneBox folder such as @SaneAutoReplyiJD or @SaneBlackHole—more on those in a moment.

I try to check my Inbox every day, and whenever I do so, I typically see only a handful of new emails, and they are virtually all emails that I care about reading right away, such as emails from readers of iPhone J.D. I deal with them and then go back to my day. A few times a week, I look at the @SaneLater folder. Maybe two-thirds of the emails in there are either true spam or things like marketing emails from legitimate companies that just don’t happen to interest me. I can triage those very quickly. Then I read the emails in that subfolder that I care about. If the email happens to come from someone who matters to me, I drag the email from my subfolder back to my Inbox. The SaneBox service notices that I did that, and it interprets that as an instruction to keep future emails from that sender in the Inbox. After using SaneBox for many years, it has become increasingly rare for me to need to do this, but it still happens maybe once or twice a month.

When I have time to look at my newsletters—typically at night when I’m on my couch at home—I’ll look at the @SaneNews folder. I don’t subscribe to many newsletters, but I enjoy receiving them. However, I don’t want them clogging up my Inbox during the day when I need to get work done, so I love that they are moved to @SaneLater folder.

I pay for a service called FeedBlitz that sends out a free-to-you newsletter in the morning whenever there is a new post on iPhone J.D. If you want to sign up for that, just use the form on the right side of this website. The return address on those emails is my own email address, and I sometimes receive an out-of-office auto-reply from people who get that newsletter. For example, I received 14 of those emails this past Friday. The last thing that I would want is for those emails to clog up my Inbox, but thanks to SaneBox, that never happens. I created a rule on SaneBox that automatically moves those emails into a subfolder that I called @SaneAutoReplyiJD. It is pretty rare for me to have a need to look at those emails, but occasionally, someone asks me a question about getting those newsletters and I might find it useful to look at that subfolder. Otherwise, I just let them sit in there and delete them all once every few months.

If an email makes its way to my Inbox and I know that I never want to see an email from that recipient again, I move that email into the subfolder called @SaneBlackHole. Any future emails will go into that folder, and I never need to worry about that sender again. I take a quick look at that folder once every few months just to make sure that it is not making any mistakes, but in my many years of using SaneBox, I have yet to find a mistake.

There are other specialized features of SaneBox that I also use, but what I’ve described above is my core use of the service. Once a week, SaneBox sends me an email that tells me how much time I saved each week by using the service. My most recent one says that I saved 38 minutes last week. Who knows if that number is accurate, but it is definitely true that I was in and out of my Inbox far more quickly thanks to the traffic cop function performed by SaneBox. Those emails also contain useful tips for using SaneBox, and it is nice to be reminded of features that I might enjoy but haven’t explored in a while.

Because I work for a large law firm and I don’t have access rights to our mailserver, I cannot use SaneBox with my work email. But depending upon your work situation, you might be able to use it with yours. The SaneBox server never reads the contents of any emails, only things like the subject line and who it comes from, which is a nice privacy feature. However, I do use SaneBox with anoterh email account: my personal Gmail account. That works really well. Because I use my Gmail account when I purchase items online and have done so for decades, there are tons of emails that go to my Gmail account that I really don’t care about, and it is great that SaneBox keeps that Inbox tidy for me. SaneBox tells me that I saved 2.7 hours last week by using SaneBox with my Gmail account:

Although that statistic is too high—it’s not like I would have opened each of those irrelevant emails—it is undeniable that SaneBox did a great job of making that a far more useful email account. There is no question that I saved time using my Gmail account last week, and that is great.

If what I have just described sounds like something that would help you, click here to get a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. If you appreciate having a better way of working with email, using this link in this post will give you a generous $25 credit for when you pick a plan—and there are lots of different plans offered so that you can choose the one that gives you just what you want.

Thanks again to SaneBox for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month and for giving all of us a more efficient way to work with email.

This week’s episode of the In the News podcast addresses Apple over the decades. We talk about what it used to be like to purchase Apple products and how that changed substantially for the better 24 years ago when Apple opened the first Apple Store. We also discuss how Apple’s new announcement regarding Emory University in Atlanta is just the latest in a long history of Apple’s connection with that university. Then we talk about Apple’s need to fix the CarPlay of the past at the same time that it prepares for the CarPlay of the future. We also discuss new requirements for using batteries on Southwest Airlines flights, the latest Apple TV+ news, using an AirTag to track down a lost dog, and more.

In our In the Know segment, Brett shares a cool Apple Watch tip about showing your step count on your watch face, and I provide some tips for using an iPhone as a clock next to your bed by adjusting the settings for StandBy mode.

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:

Twenty-four years ago this week, on May 19, 2001, Apple opened its first retail store. That original store was at Tysons Corner Center in Virginia. Tim Hardwick of MacRumors relives that day and shares a video of Steve Jobs showing off the store. John Gruber of Daring Fireball points out that, at the time, there were some who thought that the stores were a dumb idea. Of course, the Apple Store eventually became the most successful store in the United States in terms of sales per square foot, twice as much as the #2 store (Tiffany’s). And the Apple executive in charge of the Apple Store, Deirdre O’Brien, is on Fortune‘s 2025 list of the Most Powerful Women in Business. I’ve seen the Apple Store in the New Orleans area move to larger locations in the Lakeside Shopping Center multiple times, and no matter how big that store gets, it always seems packed with people. If you live in a place that has access to an Apple Store, you know how useful and convenient these stores are. Long before the first iPhone and even before the first iPod, Apple did a great job executing on this idea. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• In an article for Six Colors, Joe Rosensteel explains that while CarPlay Ultra sounds great, Apple ought to also focus on improving and fixing the regular CarPlay. As much as I love CarPlay and use it every day, I agree 100% with this.
• John Voorhees of MacStories reports that with the new version of the Airbnb app, you can not only book a place to stay but also “a chef, personal trainer, hair stylist, manicurist, photographer, and more,” even if you are in your own hometown and not staying at an Airbnb.
• HomeKit News reports that new projectors from Epson have built-in support for AirPlay 2 and the Apple Home app. AirPlay support seems like an obvious and useful feature for a projector.
• Joe Hernandez of NPR reports that starting on May 28, if you use a portable battery to charge a device such as an iPhone during a flight on Southwest Airlines, the charging device will need to remain visible at all times. No putting the charger in a bag or the back of the seat compartment and having a cord snake out to your device. This is being implemented as a safety measure to help crew members respond more quickly if a lithium-ion battery overheats and catches fire.
• Juli Clover of MacStories reviews Satechi’s OntheGo Foldable 3-in-1 Charger, a portable charger that she says is great for travel. It is $99.99 on Amazon.
• Joe Rossignol of MacRumors reports that Amazon will soon be using drones to deliver iPhones, AirPods, and AirTags. The service will only be available in Phoenix, Arizona, and College Station, Texas, at first, but the idea is that Amazon can deliver to a specified location, such as your backyard, in less than an hour.
• I first spent any significant time using a Mac was when I was freshman in college at Emory University in Atlanta. The computer labs had Macs and Apple LaserWriter printers, making it easy to produce documents that looked great. I used the money I earned from a summer job to purchase a Mac Plus from the Emory bookstore at the beginning of my Sophomore year, and I’ve been a Mac user—at my home, at least—ever since then. So I was happy to see Apple announce yesterday its deep relationship with Emory Hospital, including the extensive use of Macs, iPhones, and iPads at the Emory Hillandale Hospital in Lithonia, Georgia. I also see on the Emory website that the computer lab in Cox Hall is still full of Macs.
• Apple also recently announced a collaboration between Apple Music and Universal Music Group to introduce Sound Therapy, a collection of playlists designed to promote clearer focus, deeper relaxation, or better sleep. These are special versions of songs that embed “special sound waves designed to enhance users’ daily routines, while retaining the artist’s original vision” based on “scientific research” to harness “the power of sound waves, psychoacoustics, and cognitive science to help listeners relax or focus the mind.” Does it work? I’m not sure myself, but Devon Deundee of MacStories says that he thinks it does.
• Kevin Purdy of Ars Technica explains how an AirTag on a lost dog—combined with Purdy having an extra battery on hand—helped man’s best friend to get back to his home.
• If you are considering purchasing a refurbished iPhone from a company other than Apple, Dave Gershgorn of Wirecutter shares some helpful advice.
• Jennifer Ouellette of Ars Technica interviews the creators of the new Apple TV+ show Murderbot to discuss that quirky and entertaining show.
• As the Peanuts characters are celebrating their 75th anniversary this year, Apple announced this week that on July 18, 2025, it will air the first Peanuts musical in over 35 years. (I believe that the last one was the TV version of the 1975 stage musical Snoopy! The Musical, which aired on CBS on January 29, 1988, and can be found on YouTube.) The new show is called Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical, and it features original music from one of my favorite artists, Ben Folds.
• And finally, John Gruber of Daring Fireball notes that Jony Ive—the former design chief at Apple—has assembled an incredible team of former Apple designers, and they have joined with Sam Altman and OpenAI (creator of ChatGPT) to create a new company that will create … well, they haven’t quite told us yet, but it will be a brand new product in 2026 that, if you believe them, will be as great as the iPhone. Will this be a dud or the next big thing? I have no idea, but it will be fun to watch and find out. I agree with this take from Adam Engst of TidBITS: “Years of hearing overblown promises have made me inherently skeptical, but Jony Ive and his team have done important work in the past, and OpenAI has the resources and the chutzpah to bring a product to the mainstream market.” Here is the slick and interesting video released in which Ive and Altman explain why they are so excited to be working together:

There were a surprisingly large number of Apple announcements this week, and we have lots to say about them in this week’s episode of the In the News podcast. We start by discussing CarPlay Ultra. It looks like a big step forward, and the only downside is that most of us will need to wait before it is in a car that we are ready to buy. But hey, if you are in the market to purchase an Aston Martin car right now, this is your lucky day. Next, we discuss the numerous announcements of upcoming new features that Apple made on Global Accessibility Awareness Day. These features will be useful for lots of folks, and they also paint a picture of future improvements that are even more exciting. We also discuss the multiple ways that FindMy works on an Apple Watch, an iPad productivity tip, the next version of Bluetooth, the Dogcow, the first letter of the alphabet, and more.

In our In the Show segment, we discuss Murderbot, the newest show on Apple TV+. We also discuss Trying, the next season of Shrinking, and more.

In our In the Know segment, we provide some Apple Watch watch face tips designed for Pope Leo, but even those of us who don’t drive around in the popemobile can use them as well.

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:

It made the news this week that the new Pope, Pope Leo XIV, wears an Apple Watch. He even did so during his first Holy Mass. If he uses an Apple Watch, that must mean that he uses an iPhone as well. (We also know that his brother John uses an iPad to talk to Pope Leo.) However, I still haven’t seen an answer to the heavenly question that we are all wondering: since Pope Francis had asked for his popemobile be turned into a health clinic for the children of Gaza, will the next popemobile for Pope Leo have CarPlay? Talia Lakritz of Business Insider reported that it is likely to be a custom Mercedes-Benz G-class electric vehicle, and that vehicle does come standard with CarPlay. But if only it had been an Aston Martin, Pope Leo might have been among the first to experience CarPlay Ultra, which Apple unveiled yesterday. As Jason Snell of Six Colors explains, this next generation of CarPlay, which comes first to Aston Martin vehicles and then to other brands, will “provide deeper integration with the car experience, taking over all of the vehicle’s screens, including providing real-time information in the instrument cluster.” CarPlay Ultra will not look the same in every car, in part because different cars may have different types and sizes of screens, and in part because different automakers will work with Apple to create different designs for CarPlay Ultra that reflect the style of each car. Top Gear has a video with a hands on review. Apple has been talking about the next generation of CarPlay for a while now, and it is nice that it is now here—for a few cars, at least. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Yesterday was Global Accessibility Awareness Day, and as Apple has done for many years now, Apple announced a ton of new accessibility features that will be coming in iOS 19 later this year. For example, Accessibility Nutrition Labels for apps will let people know whether an app will be accessible before they even download the app. But the feature that impressed me the most is the new Magnifier feature. Using the Continuity Camera feature, your iPhone and Mac will be able to work together so that the iPhone’s camera can zoom in on surroundings to see things more easily—such as the screen in the front of a classroom. I have poor vision, even when I wear glasses, so I sometimes found it difficult to read the chalk board when I was a student, and I sometimes have trouble today reading a screen, such as when I attend a CLE presentation. This new Magnifier feature looks impressive, and I included a video preview of this feature at the bottom of today’s post. There is also a similar Enhanced View feature coming to the Apple Vision Pro, which will allow you to zoom your surroundings—such as zooming in on a sign across the room so that you can read it. Very cool.
• Another new accessibility feature coming later this year is an enhancement to Live Captions. Live Captions is currently available on the iPhone, and it provides you with a real-time transcription of spoken audio. Later this year, you will be able to see on your Apple Watch the live captions that your iPhone hears. You will also be able to use an Apple Watch to control the Live Listen feature of an iPhone paired with AirPods.
• An amazing article by Rolfe Winkler of the Wall Street Journal describes how Apple is working with a company that installs a brain implant that allows a person to control an iPhone, iPad, or Vision Pro using brain waves. The article explains how Matt Jackson, a patient with ALS, is able to control and use the immersive video feature of the Apple Vision Pro to experience what it is like to be in different parts of the world.
• Matthew Cassinelli describes the new “Hold That Thought” shortcut released for Global Accessibility Awareness Day.
• How does an Apple Watch without the cellular feature update your location in the Find My app? To answer that question, Glenn Fleishman of Six Colors wrote a fantastic, detailed description of all of the different ways that items can provide a location to the Find My service. This is a wonderful deep dive into this feature.
• Mahmoud Itani of Macworld shares some Apple Watch tips.
• I’m a huge fan of the Anker Laptop Power Bank for the reasons I explained in this review. Michael Burkhardt of 9to5Mac likes it as well, as he explains in his review.
• The Spotlight Search feature on the iPad is a lot more powerful than you might realize, as Matthew Daley of the iPad Productivity website explains.
• Tim Hardwick of MacRumors discusses the new Bluetooth 6.1 standard, which will enhance privacy and improve power efficiency. Hardwick thinks we may see this in the next version of the iPhone that Apple will announce later this year.
• If you know what I mean when I say “Dogcow,” then you will want to read this article from Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac to learn about the new stickers that come with the Apple Developer app.
• Nathan Ingraham of Engadget explains why he wants to see a change to the “a” in Apple’s Notes app. Before I saw this, I can’t say that I paid much attention to the distinction between a “single storey a” such as the one that you probably use in your handwriting and which Apple used in its logo in the late 1970s and the 1980s and the “double storey a” used in most fonts (including the one I use on this website).
• There is a new show on Apple TV+: Murderbot, starring Alexander Skarsgård. Ryan Christoffel reports that the early reviews are excellent. I watched the first two episodes last night, and I really enjoyed them. I’ve never seen a show like this before, and Skarsgård is excellent.
• Just in case I needed a reason to love the Apple TV+ show Shrinking even more, Selome Hailu of Variety reports that Michael J. Fox will appear in Season 3. It will be the first time that Fox has acted since 2020. Fox and Bill Lawrence, the co-creator of Shrinking, worked together on the sitcom Spin City.
• The Baltimore Ravens released their 2025 game schedule and teamed up with Apple to do so Severance style. The joke gets a little old in this video, but the idea of what they did is still cute. If you are a Ravens fan, I suspect that you will especially enjoy the video.
• If you were not able to make it to the South of France for the Cannes Film Festival, then you will not be able to see the debut of the documentary Bono: Stories of Surrender. Ne désespérez pas, tout va bien; you will still be able to see the film on Apple TV+ on May 30. And if you own an Apple Vision Pro, you will be glad that you skipped Cannes because it will also be available that day in a special immersive version for the Apple Vision Pro. I first read this interview of Bono by Mike Fleming, Jr., of Deadline because I wanted to see what Bono had to say about how the immersive version of this film provides what Bono calls “radical intimacy.” But I was delighted to discover that the entire interview is incredibly interesting, and it makes me really want to see this documentary—regardless of whether it is in 2D or 3D.
• Speaking of 3D movies on the Apple Vision Pro, it used to be rather difficult to find all of them in the TV app. But as Juli Clover of MacRumors notes, visionOS 2.5 came out this week, and it includes a new “Vision” tab in the app to make it easier to see all of the 3D content in one place.
• By the way, I continue to update a curated list of every Apple Immersive Video that has been released for the Apple Vision Pro. You can find it at iPhoneJD.com/AppleImmersive.
• The blockbuster summer movie coming from Apple this year is F1, starring Brad Pitt. John Voorhees of MacStories describes a number of new features recently added to Apple’s Maps app, such as integration with Michelin ratings. One of the new features is the addition of a Detailed City Experience—which I described just a few weeks ago—for Monaco. That’s just in time for the Formula 1 TAG Heuer Grand Prix de Monaco 2025, which starts in a few days. The new details make it easy to see the course, the grandstands, iconic buildings such as the Monte Carlo Casino and the Hôtel de Paris, and even representations of the racecars. (If you want to see the cars, open the Maps app and search for “Formula 1 Pit Garages” in Monaco.)
• And finally, here is the video released by Apple yesterday that I mentioned above. It shows off the upcoming Magnifier feature of the Mac and iPhone. This is going to be very useful for a lot of people.