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.
One year ago, the Apple Vision Pro went on sale. I was at my local Apple Store when the doors opened to pick mine up, and a few hours later, I recorded a podcast episode to share some initial thoughts. Given the occasion, a number of folks who have also been using this product since Day 1 shared their thoughts this week. I thought Jason Snell of Six Colors did a very nice job with his article, and since I stood in line with Zac Hall of 9to5Mac, I’ll also share a link to his article. Looking back at the past year, it is easy to say something negative. This first version of this product is expensive, and that high price is only worth it for a small number of people right now. And because so few people own one, few developers have spent time creating apps for the Vision Pro (and I doubt that these apps are currently earning much money for those early developers). Moreover, while I hoped to use this as a productivity device, that has been limited for various reasons during this first year. For example, a big reason that I can use my iPhone and iPad to get so much work done is that they work with my law firm’s email, document management system, contacts, etc. Because the Microsoft Intune MDM software is not yet available for the Vision Pro (it is coming in “early 2025"), I cannot yet do the same thing on my Vision Pro. Despite all that, I love using my Vision Pro. It is an amazing device for watching TV shows and movies. The immersive videos created by Apple are stunningly lifelike and a joy to watch. Using the FaceTime persona feature to have a videoconference with other Vision Pro users is leaps and bounds better than using Zoom or Microsoft Teams. And there is so much more that is fantastic, such as the Mac Virtual Display mode that I am using right now as I type this post. Remember that the first year of the iPhone was also quite limited—no App Store, no cut and paste, the Edge cellular network was crazy slow, iPhone J.D. had not even launched yet (ahem)—and I have no doubt that we will one day look back at this first year of the Vision Pro the same way. Even so, it has been thrilling to be a part of the early stages of the next big thing, so Happy First Birthday to the Vision Pro. I look forward to watching you grow up. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Apple doesn’t introduce new apps very often, but it happened this week. You can now download the Apple Invites app for free from the App Store, as noted by John Voorhees of MacStories. The app lets you plan an event, like a party, invite others, and track who is coming. The app even makes it easy to create a shared album associated with the event. Many websites do something similar, but they are typically full of obnoxious ads, and I’m sure that they collect and sell all of the email addresses you provide. You have to pay for iCloud+ to use the app, but you can send invitations to anyone, even if they don’t use an iPhone or have an Apple Account.
Juli Clover of MacRumors reports that a few developers were able to get apps on the App Store that could use screen reading malware to look for information in your Photos, but Apple pulled the apps and banned the developers as soon as it found out. Yikes.
I’m a big fan of the Anker MagSafe Charger Stand (my review). I use it daily in my office, and I see that it is currently on sale on Amazon for about $100. (I paid $150 for mine.) But Simon Jary of Macworld notes a new charging stand from ESR, the Qi2 3-in-1 Wireless Charging Station with CryoBoost, that costs only $69.99 on Amazon. Moreover, because it uses a fan to keep the Qi charger cool, it can apparently charge your iPhone almost twice as fast. Plus, the Apple Watch charger is detachable, so you can carry it when you are on the go. Because I keep my iPhone on my Anker device throughout the day to keep it in the handy StandBy mode, wireless charging speed doesn’t make much difference to me. Even so, I cannot help but be intrigued by this ESR device.
USB-C cables are useful. An Apple Watch charger is useful. Are these two great tastes that taste great together? Andrew O’Hara describes the new Nomad Universal Apple Watch cable, a $100 USB-C cable with a built-in Apple Watch charger.
Apple recently updated Find My so that if you lose luggage with an AirTag attached while traveling, you can now share the tracking information with your airline to recover your bag more quickly. A number of airlines offered that feature from the start, and more have been adding support since then. As William Gallagher of AppleInsider notes, it was amusing to see Lufthansa add support this week because not that long ago, that airline had actually banned the use of AirTags.
If you are a fan of the Apple TV+ show Severance, I think that you will enjoy this interview of Ben Stiller by Rebecca Keegan of The Hollywood Reporter. If you are not a fan of the Apple TV+ show Severance, then I can only imagine that means that you haven’t started watching it yet, and boy is there a treat waiting for you.
And finally, whenever I use my Apple Vision Pro, I feel like I am getting a peek into the future. But here’s a video with another glimpse into the future of Apple products that is simply outstanding. I’m surprised Apple is letting its researchers show off the experimental work. I am so excited to see what product eventually emerges from this research. With no further ado, I present to you: ELEGNT.
A few days ago, Apple released the results for its 2025 fiscal first quarter (which ran from September 29, 2024, to December 28, 2024, and did not actually include any days from calendar year 2025) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results. The fiscal first quarter is always Apple’s best quarter of the year because it includes holiday sales. This time, the fiscal first quarter was also Apple’s best fiscal quarter of all time, with a record revenue of $124.3 billion. That’s up 4% from a year ago, and it beats the previous all-time record set three years ago. As always, I’m not all that interested in the financial details. What interests me is that this is one of four times a year when Apple provides some indication of how well its products are selling and answers questions from a bunch of analysts, so I’m always curious to see what Apple has to say about the iPhone and iPad and related technologies. If you want to get all of the nitty-gritty details, you can listen to the audio from the announcement conference call on the Apple website, or you can read a transcript of the call prepared by Jason Snell of Six Colors. Snell also created a number of useful charts that put Apple’s financial announcements in perspective over time. Apple’s official press release is here. Here are the items that stood out to me.
iPhone
iPhone revenue was $69.1 billion. This was the third-best iPhone quarter ever. iPhone revenue was $71.6 billion three years ago (that one was the record), and it was $69.7 billion one year ago.
Although Apple always declines to discuss upcoming and unannounced products during these financial calls, sometimes, the analysts try anyway. This time, one analyst asked Apple CEO Tim Cook if there was any room left for innovation on the “form-factor” of the iPhone or if Apple planned to stay consistent with the current lineup. This was a not-so-subtle attempt to get Cook to say whether we would see a radical new design, such as an iPhone that is super-thin and/or foldable. Cook’s response was: “I think there’s a lot more to come, and I could not feel more optimistic about our product pipeline. So I think there’s a lot of innovation left on the smartphone.” I guess perhaps that indicates that something new might be coming, but that language is certainly pretty vague.
Cook said that an all-time record number of people upgraded their iPhone in the last quarter and noted that there were “compelling reasons to upgrade” for many folks.
iPad
iPad revenue was $8.1 billion. The record was set two years ago ($9.4 billion). One year ago, the number was down to $7 billion, but I thought that was still an impressive number considering that Apple didn’t introduce any new iPad models in 2023. In 2024, there were some great new iPads introduced, so there were lots of good choices during the holiday buying season.
Why was iPad revenue higher this year? Some people thought it might be because of the new iPad Pro with an M4 processor, but Cook said that it was more driven by the iPad Air and the entry-level iPad. That doesn’t surprise me. Although I love my M4 iPad Pro, for most of the people who ask me for buying advice, I think that the iPad Air is the sweet spot: it is cheaper than the Pro, but still a powerful device that includes many of the features that used to only come with the Pro model.
Other
Cook was asked what effect the Trump administration’s tariffs would have on Apple. His answer: “We are monitoring the situation and don’t have anything more to add than that.”
Once again, profit in Apple’s services sector (which includes Apple TV+, but also a whole lot more) was at an all-time high of $26.3 billion. And I’m sure that was part of the reason that Apple’s gross margin was also at an all-time high of 46.9%.
Fifteen years ago, Apple introduced the iPad. We begin this episode of the In the News podcast by looking back at that announcement and by discussing how far the iPad has come. We also discuss iOS 18.3, why this might be the perfect time for Apple to introduce new devices for the home, the latest watch face for the Apple Watch, how Grammarly compares to Apple Intelligence writing tools, the upcoming Super Bowl, going bananas, and much more.
In our In the Show segment, we discuss the Apple TV+ shows Silo and Mythic Quest.
In our In the Know segment, Brett explains the best way to slip an iPhone out of the clear MagSafe case, and I share a tip for doing math in the Messages app.
The actions and statements of President Trump and those in his administration aimed at undermining equal opportunity and anti-discrimination efforts have increased daily since Inauguration Day, culminating yesterday—as reported by Erica Green of the New York Times and countless others—in the president’s bizarre, baseless, and insulting suggestion that the devastating plane crash into the Potomac River this week was somehow caused by diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. Ariana Baio of the Independent reports that these actions will result in the U.S. State Department significantly downplaying Black History Month when it begins tomorrow. I’m sure that other federal agencies will follow suit. [UPDATE: And less than 12 hours after I wrote that sentence, NBC News is reporting Federal agencies bar Black History Month and other ‘special observances’] Nevertheless, Apple is still recognizing Black History Month, and Apple debuted its 2025 Black Unity Collection this week. The part of that collection that intrigued me the most was the new watch face now available to all Apple Watch owners. It is called Unity Rhythm, and it features custom numerals formed by intertwined threads of red, green, and yellow. The design is impressive. The new watch face uses the watch’s gyroscope so that the colors change as you move your wrist. The design also moves when you touch the watch face. It is a bold and interesting watch face that I encourage you to check out. Sure, you can enable it to show that you support diversity, but it is also just fun to play around with. The only downside is that it reminds me that I wish that Apple would release new watch faces far more frequently and/or allow third parties to create watch faces. This new watch face demonstrates that there is so much potential for watch face creativity. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Apple released iOS 18.3 this past Monday. Juli Clover of MacRumors explains everything that is new—which isn’t much, but there are some tweaks to Apple Intelligence. There are also some critical security updates, including a fix for one actively exploited vulnerability.
Rumor has it that at some point in 2025, Apple will introduce a new smart home product, something similar to a HomePod with a screen. Jason Snell of Six Colors explains in an article for Macworld that while perhaps it would have been nicer for Apple to have introduced a product like this long ago, this may actually be the perfect time for such a product from Apple because there is no clear leader in the market and a lot of the technology, like the Matter and Thread standards, seems to be maturing.
Apple released a new immersive video for the Apple Vision Pro today called Man vs. Beast. It is a 10-minute short film about rodeo bull riders. I was afraid that it might include shots taken by people actually riding the bulls, which would have been nauseating. Instead, the film provides a better-than-front-row seat to the action guaranteed to get your heart beating. It’s worth watching if you have access to an Apple Vision Pro.
As Samsung has done many times in the past when Apple releases a product, Samsung is now copying the Apple Vision Pro. The product, which is still in development, is called Project Moohan, and Samsung has worked closely with Google to develop the product using the upcoming Android XR operating system. According to a video by tech reviewer Marques Brownlee and a related article by Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac, the headset is very similar to an Apple Vision Pro with only minor changes, and much of the user interface is a direct copy of what Apple came up with. That is disappointing. One feature that Samsung is showing off that is not currently a part of the Apple Vision Pro: the ability to press the Gemini button and talk to the AI. This includes asking the AI about something that you are currently looking at. Of course, Apple already has a similar feature for the iPhone 16—you can hold down the Camera Control button and then ask the iPhone to tell you about the places and objects around you—and so I suspect that Apple plans to add this and other Apple Intelligence features to the Vision Pro. Samsung predicts that it will have a product on sale at some point in 2025, but no price has been announced.
The Super Bowl will occur in my hometown of New Orleans in about a week on February 9. The halftime performer will be Kendrick Lamar, and Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reports that starting on February 6, you will be able to play a special version of the Apple Vision Pro game Synth Riders that lets you move through one of his songs.
You can also watch the Super Bowl in 4K for free on any Apple device, including the Apple TV, by using the Tubi app, as reported by David Snow of Cult of Mac.
Amber Neely of AppleInsider reports that an update to the Netflix app for the iPhone and iPad now lets you download an entire season of a show by pressing one button.
Abner Li of 9to5Google reports that the Gmail app for the iPhone and iPad has been updated with a new design. I like it.
Season 4 of the comedy Mythic Quest is now streaming on Apple TV+. The first two episodes came out this week, and I thought they were very funny. I’m happy to see that even though a lot has changed about the story since Season 1, there are still lots of big laughs. Kelly Woo of Tom’s Guide says that it looks like this will be a good season of the show.
I haven’t started watching it yet, but Lucy Mangan of The Guardian says that the new Apple TV+ show Prime Target is “like Good Will Hunting meets The Bourne Identity” and is both “utterly preposterous and brilliant fun.” It’s on my list.
And finally, 15 years ago this week, Apple launched the iPad. The Apple keynote during which Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone may have been the best one ever, but I think that this was the second best. Steve Jobs was noticeably frail from his health problems, but his enthusiasm for what Apple was introducing was palpable. The video is also interesting to watch because as Jobs shows off the very first iPad interface and apps, you cannot help but think about how far we have come. Steve Jobs asked during that presentation: “Is there room for a third category of device in the middle, something that is between a laptop and a smartphone?” Clearly, the answer is yes, and I use my iPad virtually every day. Here is that introduction video:
Thank you to SaneBox for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month. SaneBox is a service that changes your relationship with email. Looking at your Inbox no longer means having to weed through tons of messages that you don’t need right and now may not want at all. Instead, when you open your Inbox, you essentially see just the good stuff that matters.
How does SaneBox do this? Less important emails, such as newsletters, are moved to subfolders so that you can deal with them when you have time, and it is often faster to deal with all of those at once. And if you tell SaneBox that there is an email sender from which you never want to see email again, those go to the Black Hole folder.
If this general approach sounds familiar, it should. Apple started doing something sort of similar in iOS 18.2, where it tries to manage your mailbox by sorting messages. However, the way that SaneBox does this is infinitely better than what you get in iOS—just like many other third-party apps for things like calendars, podcasts, reminders, passwords, etc., are much more sophisticated than Apple’s built-in apps.
First, the mail sorting feature introduced iOS 18.2 only applies to the iPhone, so when you use a Mac or an iPad, you don’t see it at all. SaneBox works at the mail server level so it works no matter what you use to read your email—iPhone, iPad, Mac, PC, Apple Watch, etc.
Second, SaneBox gives you complete control over how the sorting takes place, and as I’ve explained in the past, that makes all of the difference. For example, if SaneBox moves a newsletter into its @SaneLater folder, but you know that this one particular newsletter is important to you and that you want it to always stay in the Inbox so that you see it right away, simply drag an email containing the newsletter from @SaneLater to your Inbox. That’s it. That teaches SaneBox that you want future issues of that newsletter to go to your Inbox.
The end result is that SaneBox lets you avoid the distraction of dozens of non-essential emails in your Inbox. Instead, your Inbox just contains the few messages that really matter, the ones that you want to know about and/or need to act upon. When you have more time, you can click the sub-folder in your Inbox into which SaneBox stores items like email newsletters—things that you want to see at some point, but there is no urgency to read right away. Or you can click the sub-folder in your Inbox into which SaneBox filters items to be read later. For me, these are mostly junk messages missed by my email’s built-in spam filter. For unwanted items, you can drag them over into your @SaneBlackHole folder, which teaches SaneBox’s brain that you never want to see items from that sender ever again.
SaneBox offers much more than what I’ve just described. For example, it can remind you when you haven’t received a response to an email, and it can filter emails in countless other ways. But those core features make the process of reading your email so much faster and so much less annoying.
I’ve been paying for and using SaneBox for over two years, and I find the service well worth it. For my iPhone J.D. emails, when I look at the Inbox, I can quickly focus on the messages that matter the most to me, such as a reader sending in a suggestion with a news story for my Friday In the News post or interactions with someone who matters to me. From time to time, I look at the other folders used by SaneBox, and I can quickly deal with those emails, but they are virtually always the emails that don’t really matter to me. For my Gmail account, SaneBox has been a lifesaver. I use Gmail when I make purchases from websites, stores, services, etc., and as a result, there is so much in there that I don’t really care about. But I don’t want to miss my Gmail emails that do matter. Before I started using SaneBox, I would open up Gmail and see over a hundred messages, most of which didn’t really matter to me. Now, I often see less than 10 messages in my Inbox. Every few days, I’ll take the time to look at the folders used by SaneBox, and I can easily read things that I want to see or quickly delete all of them that I don’t care about. It has made a huge difference in my life, and it saves me so much time.
If you want to try out SaneBox to see what a huge difference it can make in your life, click here to get a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. If you don’t like having a clean and tidy Inbox and decide to return back to how you had it before, no sweat. But if you appreciate having a better way of working with email, using this link in this post will give you a generous $25 credit 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.
