If you had “Apple allows emulator apps in the App Store” on your Bingo card for this month, then you have a better Bingo card supplier than I do. That announcement caught both me and Brett by surprise, so we start this week’s episode of the podcast by discussing what you can do with these apps and what this new announcement means for Apple and the App Store in general. We then talk about larger companies (such as big law firms) using Apple devices, an early precursor to Google Maps and Apple Maps, some great shows that are now on Apple TV+ or coming soon, and much more.

In our Where Y’at? segment, we discuss two recent stories in which Apple’s crash detection technology was used to alert authorities to accidents: one tragic, the other with a happier ending.

In our In the Know segment, we recommend some oldies but goodies as Brett discusses the Compass app and I discuss the Level function in the Measure app.

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:

 

Well this was unexpected. As John Gruber of Daring Fireball reports, Apple changed the App Store rules to allow apps that can emulate classic gaming devices. As a result, a free app by Riley Testut called Delta that emulates an NES, SNES, N64, Nintendo DS, Game Boy, and Game Boy Advance and that has been in development for years but used to require work-arounds to get it on an iPhone, is now on the App Store and in the #1 spot. Not the #1 games spot; the #1 overall spot. There are a lot of legal questions surrounding these emulators because people typically use them with ROM files that they find on the Internet without paying for them, but of course, sometimes the developer has been gone for decades. And although using an emulator is at least at the edge of legality, Dan Moren of Six Colors notes, ironically, that Apple is probably allowing these apps because of the fear of more government regulation. If you still own your old game cartridge, there are sometimes ways to create a backup of the cartridge and then load that in Delta, and John Voorhees of MacStories explains how to do that for Game Boy games. Federicco Viticci of MacStories noted on Mastodon that he just continued playing on his iPhone a saved game from 21 years ago. That’s a long snack break before returning to your game. I’ve tried out some of these emulators in the past, and it can be fun to relive an experience from decades ago even though the sophistication of the old games pale in comparison to modern games. I have fond memories of playing Atari 2600 games late into the night with my friends in the early 1980s, and almost 13 years ago, I had great fun playing a few of them again in a device called the iCade, which turned an iPad into an arcade game. It’s nice to know that we will be seeing more like this on the iPhone and iPad in the future. And now, the other news of note from the past week:

• How is Apple doing in large businesses and other large organizations? Jason Snell of Six Colors takes the pulse every year, and the 2024 version of Apple in the Enterprise is now out. In addition to overall scores, he also shares brief comments from lots of different folks, including a few from me.
• I mentioned this in passing yesterday, but Microsoft announced this week that its popular OneNote software is now available for the Apple Vision Pro.
• I love to use the Glif and its hand grip to keep my iPhone steady in my hand when I record video. Unfortunately, the Glif has been back-ordered for months. Malcolm Ower of AppleInsider reports that Rode released two hardware accessories to improve smartphone photography, and if you want to step it up a notch, they look great.
• If you enjoy having maps on a screen in your car via CarPlay, you might be interested in this great story about the first company to offer a similar product: the Etak device that was available in the 1980s. It’s a fascinating article.
• There is a tragic story by David Willimas of The New Zealand Herald about two teenage girls who were killed while off-roading when their vehicle went down a steep bank. But the article reports that the crash detection feature on the iPhone was the reason that police could locate the crash site.
• In happier news, Ben Crust of the New York Post shares the tale of a man who was riding home on his bike when he hit a water-filled pothole and took a horrible fall. When he came to, his watch had already called 911, so an emergency worker was already talking to him to send help. He credits his Apple Watch with saving his life.
• The team behind MacStories recommends their favorite indoor gadgets that work with HomeKit. It’s a good article, but it omits what I consider the best of these products, although you pay a little more for the quality: Lutron light switches.
• Megan Wollerton of Wirecutter has other good recommendations for using smart lighting in the kitchen.
• One of my all-time favorite Apple TV+ shows is For All Mankind, so I’m so excited to see the report by Joe Otterson in Variety that it has been renewed for a fifth season. In addition, the article reports that there will be a spin-off series focusing on the Soviet space program called Star City. I can’t wait!
• And finally, my wife and I have been enjoying watching Palm Royale on Apple TV+. Here is a short behind-the-scenes featurette that doesn’t contain much in the way of spoilers but shows off how the show captures the glamour of Pam Beach in 1969.

If you work for a law firm or other corporate environment that uses Microsoft software for Mobile Device Management, then I suspect that you use the Microsoft Authenticator app for two-factor authentication and Microsoft Intune MDM on your iPhone to provide a secure connection to your firm resources. The current lack of this support for the Apple Vision Pro limits how much real work you can do with an Apple Vision Pro: you don’t have full support for email, you can receive text messages but you see phone numbers instead of sender names (because that is a part of the Contacts app, which you likely sync with Microsoft Exchange), etc. Thus, I look forward to Microsoft updating this software to support the Apple Vision Pro.

Yesterday, I was reading an announcement from Microsoft that OneNote is now available for the Apple Vision Pro. That’s great news because I know a lot of attorneys who love that product. For now, however, Microsoft says that the app “only supports personal accounts and work accounts that are not managed by your organization.” That makes sense because you need the software I just mentioned to use a work account managed by an organization. But it also limits the usefulness of OneNote because so many people use it for work.

Fortunately, Microsoft also says in the same announcement that it is working on bringing Microsoft Authenticator to the Apple Vision Pro for two-factor authentication. The full statement is: “Microsoft Authenticator is not currently available for the Apple Vision Pro. We’re working on it, though, so check back for updates soon.” That’s good to hear.

I still have yet to see an official Microsoft announcement about Intune support for the Apple Vision Pro, but surely Microsoft is working on this. Hopefully, Microsoft will say something about this soon.

[UPDATE: On November 20, 2024, Microsoft announced: “Microsoft plans to introduce mobile device management (MDM) for visionOS and tvOS early next year. This will mark an important step in ensuring that devices that run these systems can be seamlessly managed within Intune. By extending this approach to Apple’s specialty devices, Intune helps ensure your workers—wherever they are—have the tools they need to stay productive and secure, all from a single, unified platform.”]

I loved recording this week’s episode of the In the News podcast, and I highly encourage you to check it out. In fact, you should consider watching at least the first few minutes on YouTube so that you can see the fantastic pictures and video of the eclipse that we discuss in our first segment. We also talk about the Apple Vision Pro and the brutal reviews of the Humane AI pin along with the fact that there are some interesting ideas in there. We then discuss security threats for the iPhone: the incentive for hackers to come up with ways to make you unsafe, and Apple’s recent alert telling some specific users that they had been the target of a sophisticated hacker campaign. Yikes.

In light of those last few stories, our tips of the week are focused on security. I explain Lockdown Mode and who should use it, Brett discusses locking down your iPhone screen, and as a bonus tip we discuss Apple’s safety check feature.

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:

My son and I traveled from New Orleans to Dallas to see  the eclipse earlier this week, and I’m so glad that we made the trip. The time leading up to (and after) the eclipse was fascinating, with the sun forming a crescent that you normally associate with the moon, the temperature dropping noticeably and quickly, and the light dimming in a bizarre way that is very different from dawn or dusk. And then the total eclipse was just crazy. Seeing a black hole in the sky made me feel like I was in the middle of some science fiction movie with big-budget special effects. I took a few pictures and videos with my iPhone that I liked, but my son took some truly incredible pictures with his telescope connected to an SLR camera. (I posted a few to my Mastodon account that are worth checking out.) It was a special way to start the week and something that I will never forget. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Mark your calendar: the next eclipse that will cross much of the United States will be Saturday, August 12, 2045. It starts in northern California and ends up in Florida, with most of Florida in the path of totality (I cannot even imagine how many people will be packed into Disney World since Orlando is right in the middle of the path). I hope to be there.
• The Humane AI Pin, developed by former Apple engineers, is being marketed as a device to replace your iPhone. But David Pierce of The Verge used it for two weeks and was not impressed, finding a few impressive moments in a sea of lots of frustration. But the video that he created as a part of his review is interesting to watch. My main takeaway is that the Apple Watch solves the same problem and does it much better (an observation that David also makes in this video).
• The Apple Vision Pro also has lots of room for improvement, but it can do many things incredibly well. Jason Snell of Six Colors calls it an ongoing experiment.
• John Voorhees of MacStories reviews Seasons, a weather app for the Apple Vision Pro that takes advantage of spatial computing.
• If you want to watch Netflix programming on an Apple Vision Pro, Zac Hall of 9to5Mac recommends the Supercut app, which costs $5 and includes 4K video and Doby Atmos multichannel audio.
• Lumafield took some X-ray CT images of the Apple Vision Pro that show just how sophisticated the hardware is.
• If you are looking for a hub for your iPad Pro (or MacBook), I see that the Anker 555 USB-C Hub is on sale on Amazon for only $39.95. It includes Ethernet, HDMI, USB-C PD (input), USB-C 3.1 10Gbps (output), two USB-A 3.1 Gen 2 ports, and an SD card (or microSD).
• If you use your iPhone and other Apple devices to get work done, it is critical that you do what you can to keep the device secure, such as installing software updates from Apple. As one data point showing what we are up against, Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai of TechCrunch reports that companies are now paying $5 to $7 million for zero-day iPhone hacks. That’s a lot of incentive for hackers to look for the next way to break into your device.
• Of course, the one thing scarier than hackers trying to hack the type of phone that you use is hackers trying to hack your specific iPhone. Manish Singh of TechCrunch reports that Apple spent alerts to specific people in 92 countries on Wednesday that said: “Apple detected that you are being targeted by a mercenary spyware attack that is trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID [specific ID]. This attack is likely targeting you specifically because of who you are or what you do. Although it’s never possible to achieve absolute certainty when detecting such attacks, Apple has high confidence in this warning — please take it seriously.”
• If you ever get a warning like that from Apple, or you are afraid that you might be the sort of target who could get such a warning in the future, you should consider turning on Lockdown mode on your iPhone. That special mode is made for people like you.
• A new series called Dark Matter is coming to Apple TV+ on May 8, and Oliver Haslam of iMore says that this is good news because it was one of the best sci-fi books of the last decade.
• And finally, Apple TV+ released the first trailer for the movie Fly Me to the Moon starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum. It is a comedy-drama that takes place around the Apollo 11 mission, and it looks like a lot of fun. It releases in theaters this July and then I’m sure on Apple TV+ a little after that. Here is the trailer:

The Apple Vision Pro is mostly just a prototype for what future headsets will do—headsets that I expect to be cheaper, lighter, thinner, etc. Nevertheless, it is fun to get a preview of the future. Since Day 1, it has been clear that immersive videos on an Apple Vision Pro were something special and unlike any other medium. You can look up, down, and side-to-side and you really feel like you are there. In this week’s episode of the In the News podcast, Brett Burney and I discuss a second example of something truly new with the Apple Vision Pro, a new feature just activated this week called immersive Persona. In this mode, you see floating heads and hands from your friends in the same room that you are in  (or, in a shared virtual world). It is the next step forward in videoconferencing, but at the same time, it is unlike any prior videoconference experience, far less like Zoom or Teams or FaceTime and more like something futuristic that you would see in a Star Wars movie. We also discuss a new arcade basketball game for the Vision Pro, a new charger that looks great for Standby mode, and more.

Brett’s tip of the week concerns notifications on the Apple Watch. I also share an Apple Watch tip: the best watch face for when you are outside in the bright sunlight.

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:

For a while now, if you wanted a good wireless charging stand for the iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods that worked with standby mode, you had two options that were both $150: the Anker 3-in-1 Cube with MagSafe and the Twelve South HiRise 3 Deluxe. I own them both, and I use them both every day. But now that the Qi2 standard can offer features similar to MagSafe without Apple’s MagSafe certification, there is a cheaper option that looks quite good: the Anker MagGo 3-in-1 Wireless Charging Station, and it is only $89.99 on Amazon. Anker has a good reputation for making high-quality products, so this looks like a fantastic and less expensive alternative. And I mention all of this today because Standby Mode is perhaps my favorite feature of iOS 17, so if you don’t yet have a MagSafe (or MagSafe compatible) stand yet, you are in for a real treat when you get one. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Zac Hall of 9to5Mac discusses two games for the Apple Vision Pro that let you play arcade basketball wherever you are.
• Raymond Wong of Inverse reports that the new spatial Persona feature for the Apple Vision Pro launched this week. You can use it to take your avatar out of the traditional FaceTime rectangle so that your Persona can appear to float in a space when you are communicating with someone else using an Apple Vision Pro.
• Jason Snell of Six Colors also writes about the spatial Persona feature and explains that it makes it seem like the other person is sitting in the room with you. I had a chance to try out the feature with someone else last night, and I found the feature to be incredibly impressive. I could see the other person and their hand motions, and we could have a conversation just like we were in the same room. If I got up and moved to a different chair, the spatial audio made it sound like the other person was talking from the same spot. And like Jason shows off in that article, we tried the Game Room app (which is part of an Apple Arcade subscription) and played a game of battleship. Spatial Persona works particularly well for this sort of game because I could see the other person’s face as I looked around the battleship board. Much like watching immersive video on the Apple Vision Pro is unlike anything that I’ve ever seen before, interacting with another person using the new spatial Persona feature is completely unlike any other video chat that I’ve done before. I honestly feel like the two of us hung out in the same room together, even though my brain knows that it was only virtual.
• I haven’t tried spatial Persona with more than one person at the same time, but Stephen Hackett of 512 Pixels did, and he shares some photos of what it looks like. This is another one of the Apple Vision Pro features that has incredible potential.
• Dan Moren of Six Colors writes that the Apple TV hardware is being held back by shortcomings in tvOS.
• Ed Hardy of Cult of Mac reports that Apple TV+ just added a new batch of over two dozen movies to its limited-time collection including the three John Wick films, Forrest Gump, Ghostbusters, The Godfather, The Italian Job, Clueless, and more.
• And finally, Apple occasionally produces videos shot using an iPhone to show off how good the video camera is. In this short film, Japanese director Takashi Miike takes a manga called Midnight and converts it into a live-action film. It is amazing how much this film truly conveys the feeling of reading a comic book. And the bright colors and interesting camera shots really shows off what you can do with an iPhone:

This week’s episode of the In the News podcast is primarily about video. We start by discussing the absolutely amazing video that Apple released on Thursday for the Apple Vision Pro, an immersive highlights video that makes you feel like you are right there on the sidelines. We wonder why Apple doesn’t have more immersive videos available, but at the same time, we toast Apple TV+ for celebrating its five-year anniversary this week: a service with an incredible number of high-quality videos right now even though there were just a handful of shows at the start, much like the immersive videos for the Apple Vision Pro right now. We also talk about AI at Dub Dub, Qi2 charging, and Apple’s Nice Try video.

In this week’s Where Y’At? segment, we discuss SWAT and rescue.

Brett’s tip of the week provides tips for auto-lock on an iPhone or iPad, and my tip concerns Live Voicemail.

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:

Apple TV+, which was announced on March 25, 2019, turned five years old this past week. On the day of the announcement, nobody really knew what it would ultimately become, as evidenced by a cute video in which Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Garner, and Rashida Jones stood on the Apple campus and wondered if they were now Apple Girls. Indeed, in the beginning, there were far more questions than there were shows. But now, five years later, I think that Apple TV+ has the highest quality content of any streaming video service. Others seem to agree with me; Filipe Espósito of 9to5Mac reported this week that Apple TV+ is the streaming platform with the highest rated content on IMDb. New content is coming out all the time, and most of it is very good. For example, my wife and I just started watching Palm Royal and it seems great, my son and I are about to finish up Masters of the Air which has been fabulous, and I’m loving the bizarre story in Constellation. So let’s raise a glass to Apple TV+ for bringing us high-quality shows, shows that look great on our Apple devices such as an Apple TV or an iPad or an Apple Vision Pro. And now, the rest of the news of note from the past week:

• When Apple CEO Tim Cook said earlier this year that Apple would have some AI announcements later this year, I figured that would mean that we would see something about AI at Apple’s WWDC developer conference. This week, Apple announced that the conference will be held on June 10, and Apple executive Greg Joswiak noted that it’s going to be Absolutely Incredible. Yep, there is going to be an AI announcement at WWDC for sure.
• When Apple executive Phil Schiller exchanged his marketing responsibilities for simply being an Apple Fellow, I thought that would mean that his work at the company would begin to fade away. To the contrary, Aaron Tilley of the Wall Street Journal reports that Phil Schiller is still working 80-hour weeks and is heavily involved in Apple’s defense against the new DOJ antitrust lawsuit.
• Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac reports that one of the surprise new features of iOS 17.4 is that it brings 15W Qi2 charging to the iPhone 12, allowing that phone to charge twice as fast.
• Federico Viticci of MacStories made some interesting modifications to his Apple Vision Pro that he likes. First, he is now using a second Solo Knit Band on top of his head for comfortable support. Second, he has removed the light shield and replaced it with something called an Air Cover that he says is an improvement because he can see things in his peripheral vision.
• Jason Snell of Six Colors reports that Apple has released its first sports film show in Immersive Video format, one that includes highlights from the 2023 Major League Soccer Cup playoffs. I watched this five-minute video on my Apple Vision Pro last night, and it is perhaps the single most impressive video that I have ever seen in my entire life. You feel like you are standing right there on the soccer field watching plays take place a few feet in front of you. And when the camera is placed in the stands, you feel like you are in the stands with the other fans. If you own an Apple Vision Pro, watch this video immediately. If you don’t own one, I hope that you can find a friend and borrow their device for five minutes so that you can experience how amazing this looks. My only complaint is that it went too fast. I want a 30-minute version of that same video so that I can enjoy each of the dozens of camera angles for even longer.
• John Gruber of Daring Fireball notes that perhaps the only problem with that immersive MLS video for the Apple Vision Pro is that we have so little of it. It took Apple four months to create this one short highlight video, and they need a way to cut the production time down to four hours so that we can have much, much more of this content. As Gruber says: “Perhaps the single most surprising aspect of Apple’s launch plan for Vision Pro is the relative dearth of original immersive content. It’s the most compelling experience with the product but there’s hardly any of it. I would have thought Apple would drop new immersive content at least a few times per month, if not weekly, but this MLS Cup highlight film is the first new one since launch.”
• Last week, we wondered what fixes were in iOS 17.4.1. Michael Potuck of 9to5Mac reports this week that it addresses two specific security flaws which do not appear to have been exploited yet.
• I often report on good and interesting uses of Find My, but sometimes they are a problem, not a solution. Ambert Neely of Apple Insider reports that a SWAT team busted down a front door—the wrong front door—based on a tip from Find My.
• Chance Miller of 9to5 reports that the emergency satellite feature on an iPhone helped to save stranded hikers in Mt. Hood National Forrest.
• And finally, Apple shows how the Face ID feature on an iPhone can keep things secret on your iPhone in a new video called Nice Try:

Brett Burney and I start this week’s episode of the In the News podcast by discussing what Apple may be planning to announce later this year about how it is using AI to improve its products. There are lots of possibilities, and all of them are exciting. We also talk about the new antitrust lawsuit filed by the DOJ against Apple. We then talk about how to pay even more money to buy an Apple Vision Pro, whether Apple should bring back its AirPort products, the minor Apple software updates from this past week, and much more.

Brett’s tip of the week addresses what your iPhone can do even when it is turned off. I share a tip for making the Apple TV remote even more useful by giving it the ability to turn on and off subtitles.

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: