Apple released the first public beta versions of iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 this week. If you are curious to get a preview of the new features coming this Fall but don’t want something that is quite as buggy as the beta releases aimed at developers, the public beta may be the sweet spot for you. Jason Snell and Dan Moren used the release of the first public beta versions as a good excuse to provide a hands-on preview of many of the new features that are coming—at least, those that are available in the beta version. This excludes, for example, Apple Intelligence, which is not coming out until later this year. Here is Dan Moren’s look at the iOS 18 public beta and Jason Snell’s look at the iPadOS 18 public beta. Even if you don’t plan on installing any beta software this summer, these articles provide a nice preview of what is coming for everyone soon. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Christopher Lawley has an interesting video interview with two Apple executives, Jenny Chen and Ty Jordan, to discuss Smart Script and Math Notes—two incredible things that you can do with an iPad and an Apple Pencil in iPadOS 18.
• My favorite smart home devices are my Lutron Caséta switches, which are available on Amazon. I last wrote about them eight months ago when I reviewed the new Lutron Caséta Diva Smart Dimmer Switch and Claro Smart Switch, both of which were great for me. Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reports that Lutron has expanded the line to announce a smart dimmer with ELV+ support (which means it works with lots of low voltage configurations, and thus works with nearly all residential lighting types and loads) and new colors for the simple Pico Paddle Remotes.
• I’ve written before about making a portable version of the HomePod mini by connecting an external battery so that I can take it outside. I don’t do this very often—just a few times a year—but it works well for me when I do so. Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reviews a battery that is made to work with a HomePod mini from a company called PlusAcc, and he says that this approach gets the job done. It is $44 on Amazon.
• Speaking of the HomePod mini, if you haven’t gotten one yet because the space gray option wasn’t quite doing it for you, Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac reports you can now get the very similar but slightly bluer color called midnight. But chances are, most people will just call them both black.
• My favorite app for listening to podcasts is Overcast. To celebrate the app turning 10 years old, the developer, Marco Arment, rewrote most of the app in Swift, Apple’s modern programming language. As a result, the app is much faster and more responsible. Better yet, it has a great new look and lots of new improvements, all of which are described in this post. I’ve been using the new version for a few days, and I absolutely love it.
• At the beginning, the iPhone was only available on AT&T, and there are still tons of iPhone owners who use AT&T. So it was unfortunate to see the recent news that AT&T was hacked, with the bad guys getting access to information on who users called during a certain period of time. John Gruber of Daring Fireball argues that this is a reason why Apple should have declined to support RCS—the new standard that will make it easier to send text messages to non-iPhone users because of better picture and video support and more—because while RCS has more features than traditional SMS, it doesn’t support end-to-end encryption. Thus, there is a real risk of future successful hacks. Gruber presents an interesting argument.
• The Emmy nominations came out this week, and Apple TV+ earned 72 nominations, the most ever for the streaming service. Sixteen shows were honored, including The Morning Show, Palm Royale, Lessons in Chemistry, Slow Horses, Loot, Hijack, The Reluctant Traveller With Eugene Levy, and more. The winners will be announced on Sunday, September 15.
• The quality of Apple TV+’s original programming is outstanding, but I also like it when Apple brings a select set of older movies to Apple TV+ for a limited time. Lucas Shaw and Thomas Buckley of Bloomberg report that Apple is talking to major studios to explore doing even more of that.
• When watchOS 11 comes out in a few months, Apple will encourage people to sleep with an Apple Watch to feed data into the new Vitals app. Jessica Rendall of CNet interviewed Apple’s VP of Health, Dr. Sumbul Desai, to learn more about this app.
• If you own an Apple Vision Pro, it is always great when Apple releases new immersive content. Yesterday, Apple released the first episode of a new series called Boundless, a six-minute movie in which you take a hot-air balloon ride over Turkey. It’s stunning; I only wish it were longer. Apple also announced this week that other new content is coming in August and September with even more coming later this year. As Jason Snell of Six Colors notes: “This is good. I want more, the more the better, and I’m glad Apple is announcing this stuff in advance instead of leaving us to wait and wonder why there isn’t more content available for the Vision Pro.”
• Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac notes that the AirPods Pro 2 will get even better in a few months with iOS 18 because they will gain new features such as nodding or shaking your head to respond to Siri and voice isolation to improve phone call audio quality in a noisy environment.
• A swimmer in Australia realized that he was being carried out to sea and could not swim back to shore. Fortunately, he was wearing an Apple Watch, and as Hannah Ross of ABC North Coast reports, he managed to call emergency services. It took a rescue helicopter an hour to get to him, but he was able to stay on the line and talk to someone the entire time until he was rescued.
• Charles Martin of Apple Insider writes about a man who lost his Apple Watch in the British Virgin Islands while swimming. Eighteen months later, someone found his watch and it was still working and displayed information on the owner, and as a result, the owner recovered his watch when someone sent it back to him.
• Juli Clover of MacRumors reviews the Bird Buddy, a bird feeder that sends pictures and videos of birds to your iPhone. The version with a solar roof is $239 on Amazon. This looks really fun, but I don’t think that I have a location in my yard to put it where it wouldn’t attract squirrels.
• I no longer have a need for an iPod in my life because of the other Apple products that I use, but the idea of a small and powerful device is still intriguing. That is the thinking behind tinyPod, a small device that surrounds an Apple Watch and adds a scroll wheel to create a product that seems similar to an iPod. I don’t know how well it works, but they get points for creativity.
• My father is an architect, so I grew up reading magazines like Architectural Digest that featured amazing pictures of stunning houses. William Gallagher of Apple Insider reports that Laureen Powell Jobs, widow of Steve Jobs, recently paid $70 million to purchase a home in the Pacific Heights region of San Francisco that was first built in 1916 and extensively renovated in the 2010s. Architectural Digest called it the most beautiful house in America. For example, one side of the house has four stories of glass that present an incredible view of San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. It also has a pretty amazing interior courtyard.
• And finally, in 2019, Apple released a video called The Underdogs that told the story of a scrappy team of office workers with a chance to sell their great idea. The point of the video is to show off how the iPad and other Apple products can be used to get work done. Apple followed up in 2020 with a sequel in which the same characters used Apple technology to work from home during the pandemic. The third installment came in 2022 to coincide with workers returning to their offices after the pandemic. (Apple has removed the first three videos from YouTube, but someone put them together into this video.) In 2023, Apple released the fourth video, Swiped Mac, in which the characters worked together to find a stolen Mac. And now, the team is back with a fifth video called OOO (Out of Office) in which they travel to Thailand and use all sorts of Apple technology to get the project done—even the new Apple Vision Pro. Here is the video:

Amazon is having its Prime Day sale on July 16 and 17, and there is a big and rare discount on iPads. If you are in the market, this is a great time to buy.

First, you can get the 11" model of the brand-new iPad Pro M4 for only $929, a discount from $999. If you want the larger 13" model of the iPad Pro M4 it is only $1198, a discount from $1299. I own the new iPad Pro M4 (I prefer the larger 13" model) and my review is here. This is by far the best iPad that Apple has ever made, and it is so advanced (for example, it is the first Apple product of any kind to use the M4) that this is a product that you can buy now and use for many, many years and it will still be a powerful machine.

Second, if you want to go the other extreme and get the cheapest iPad, the iPad (10th generation) is only $299, down from $349. I don’t recommend this model if you are looking to get real work done in your legal practice, but for anyone who wants a simple device to watch videos, check emails, and do basic web surfing. Also, this model has the camera is on the long side of the iPad instead of the short side. This makes so much more sense for video conferencing. This is the model that Apple first released in late 2022. This model will not be able to use the upcoming Apple Intelligence, but for basic iPad features for basic users, it is fine. Perfect for younger kids.

Third, if you want the middle of the road iPad, the iPad Air, you can currently get it for $739 instead of $799. That lowest price is for the model with only 128GB, you get a similar discount if you pay $100 more for the 512GB model, and I think you’ll be happier with the extra space.

There are other good deals on Apple items too, such as $50 discounts on many models of the Apple Watch. The newest, top-of-the-line AirPods Pro (2nd generation) are only $169, down from $249.

All of the above links have my Amazon affiliate links in them, so if you use them, you are supporting iPhone J.D. as you take advantage of rare discounts.

We begin this week’s episode of the podcast discussing the possibility that Apple is designing a HomePod with a screen attached. What might that be used for, how much would it cost, and do we want it? We next discuss the upcoming InSight feature for Apple TV+, the next version of the Photos app for the iPhone and iPad, the blockbuster movie from Apple TV+ being released next summer, and more.

In this week’s Where Y’At? segment, we discuss AirTags in cars and campaign signs and the reason that a HomePod might be able to save your life if you have a dog.

In our In the Know segment, Brett discusses sharing an AirTag with someone else. I discuss Recovery Contacts and Recovery Keys.

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, there has been a rumor that Apple was working on a new product that was similar to a HomePod with a screen attached to it. This week, Filipe Espósito of 9to5Mac noted that the beta version of tvOS 18 has a new hidden interface that supports a touchscreen that the code refers to as “PlasterBoard.” Nobody has a TV set in their living room with a touchscreen on it, so this code suggests that Apple is working on a device that will have an interface similar to tvOS but which has a touchscreen—matching the old rumors of a HomePod with a screen attached to it. On top of that, Mark Gurman of Bloomberg has reported that Apple is working on a table-top robot with a screen, which would seem to match this product if the screen is attached by an arm so that it can move around perhaps so that it always faces you in a kitchen. The combination of the rumors and the code in the beta software makes me think that this might be a real product that Apple is planning to release. Dan Moren of Six Colors has the same thought, and he writes about it in an article for Macworld. Do I need a HomePod with a screen in my life? I’m not sure, but I’m definitely starting to think about it now. And now, the other news of note from the past week:

• One of the things that I am looking forward to in tvOS 18 is Apple’s new InSight feature which will show you information about the show you are watching. The feature is now working in the beta software, and Filipe Espósito shows what it currently looks like. Apparently, for whatever actors are on the screen, you can see a picture of the actor’s face, the real name and the character name, and the music being played during the scene (if any). That looks great.
• Federico Viticci of MacStories says that while the Photos app has a new interface in iOS 18, it is growing on him as he uses the beta software and he likes how it improves the app.
• It was just last week that I mentioned that you could get Apple’s AirPods Max over-the-ear headphones from Amazon for $100 off, selling for only $449. This week, if you select the green or pink model, they are only $398, a substantial discount from the $549 that you will pay at an Apple Store.
• It’s been a frequent topic on iPhone J.D. of late that there are a large number of great shows on Apple TV+. But there are a small number of shows on Apple TV+ that are truly amazing, some of the best of the best. Ted Lasso is certainly on that list, and so is Severance. Thus, I’m excited that Apple announced this week in a new trailer on YouTube that Severance Season 2 will premiere on January 17, 2025. If the sophomore season is as good as the first season was, this will be awesome.
• Severance demonstrates a genre that Applt TV+ has been especially good at: sci-fi. For All Mankind, Foundation, Severance, Silo, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and Dark Matter have all been excellent science fiction series. Constellation was perhaps not as good, but it kept me interested enough to watch it to the end, and Hello Tomorrow! was the only one that I started and never finished. I was thinking about Apple’s excellent job with science fiction shows last night when I watched the first two episodes of Apple’s newest science fiction show: Sunny. It has a great cast, features interesting technology, and it is clear from just a few minutes into the first episode that there seems to be something going on that we may not know about for many episodes (much like Severance). If you enjoy watching science fiction, I recommend that you start watching Sunny and catch up on any of those prior sci-fi shows that you might have missed.
• One thing that Apple TV+ has not yet done is produce a big, summer blockbuster movie. That will change next year when Apple releases in theaters and IMAX the movie F1 starring Brad Pitt and brought to you by Jerry Bruckheimer and Joseph Kosinski who did Top Gun: Maverick. Stewart Clarke of Deadline interviewed Bruckheimer and Kosinski to discuss the movie. Based on their obvious enthusiasm, this could be a very exciting film.
• James Fanelli of the Wall Street Journal reports that a candidate running for a county position in Florida got frustrated when his campaign signs kept getting stolen from an intersection so he put a replacement sign there with an AirTag on it. (It’s unclear how he attached it.) Sure enough, that sign was stolen as well, but he was able to call the police who tracked it to a home where teenagers had been stealing signs.
• William Gallagher of AppleInsider reports that a man in Malaysia had his car stolen after it had been valet parked at a shopping mall. Fortunately, he had an AirTag in the car and was able to track it down and the thief was arrested.
• Juli Clover of MacRumors shares the story of a family in Colorado whose life was saved by a HomePod after their dog started a fire. The dog accidentally started the stove at night, and because some boxes were on the stovetop at the time, they caught fire, triggering a fire alarm. Apparently, that alarm wasn’t loud enough to wake them up, but the HomePod heard the alarm and then sent an alert that did get the attention of the homewoners.
• Eddy Cue is the executive at Apple in charge of most of its services: Apple Music, Apple News, Apple Podcasts, the Apple TV app, Apple TV+, Apple Pay, Apple Card, Maps, Search Ads, Apple’s iCloud services, and Apple’s productivity and creativity apps. He doesn’t do a lot of interviews, but he recently talked to Safwan AhmedMia of the SuperSaf YouTube channel to talk about what he does for Apple. It’s a fun interview with lots of information that I had not heard before, such as the fact Find My started as an idea of an intern at Apple. And like me, Eddy says that he is also really looking forward to Season 2 of Severance.
• And finally, the Apple Vision Pro is going on sale in Australia, so Trevor Long of EFTM (which calls itself “an online Men’s Lifestyle Magazine”) came to Cupertino, California to talk to Apple CEO Tim Cook about the Apple Vision Pro. In the video, Cook does a good job talking about why the Apple Vision Pro is an exciting product, and Cook discusses what he does with his own Vision Pro:

It’s often comforting to hear a familiar voice, and thanks to AI, the voices that we know very well may be around us all of the time even when the owner of that voice is not. In this week’s episode of the In the News podcast, Brett and I start by discussing AI celebrity voices on your iPhone and on TV. Next, we discuss external keyboards for the iPhone, AirPods improvements that are just around the corner, the perennial question of whether you should spend the additional money to purchase AppleCare+, and more.

In our Where Y’at? segment, we discuss the ability of the Apple Watch to tell you that where you are at is on the precipice of a heart attack.

In our In the Know segment, Brett provides advice for selecting text on an iPhone by using Trackpad mode. I recommend three shortcuts for the Notes app that you should learn if you use an iPhone or iPad with an external keyboard.

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:

ElevenLabs, a company that creates realistic-sounding voices using AI, released a new iPhone app this week called Reader. You can give it any text and it will read the text out loud. We’ve seen this technology for a long time, but what caught my attention is that the app includes four voices that the app calls Iconic Voices: the (licensed) AI voices of Sir Laurence Olivier, James Dean, Burt Reynolds, and Judy Garland. So if you want the app to read you the Wizard of Oz using Judy Garland’s voice, it can do that. In a similar vein, I saw this article in Vanity Fair in which Tom Kludt explains how NBC convinced legendary sportscaster Al Michaels to let the network digitize his voice to use during the upcoming Olympic coverage. The network will offer recaps tailored to your favorite events and it will sound like Al Michaels is providing the narration. The text will be created by an AI that will analyze subtitles and metadata to produce a summary of what happened. NBC says that this could result in millions of different versions of customized recaps. All of this sounds interesting and fun, but of course, the line between appropriate use of this technology and malicious deep fakes is thin. Photoshop has been around for so long that we are way past the days of thinking that you can believe something just because you see what appears to be a picture of it, so perhaps we are ready for this next step forward in the use of AI. I hope so. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Apple recently announced a relationship with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. I think that is a good idea, but the OpenAI company has been the subject of controversy. Thus, I was interested to see the report from Chance Miller of 9to5Mac that Phil Schiller of Apple will have an observer role on OpenAI’s board of directors.
• Fernando Silva of 9to5Mac reviews the Clicks Keyboard, an external keyboard that attaches just below the iPhone.
• Cory Bohon of Gadget Hacks provides a helpful and large list of keyboard shortcuts that you can use when you connect an external keyboard to an iPhone.
• A Dutch cardiologist believes that an Apple Watch can detect heart blockage, a leading cause of heart attacks, as reported by Leander Kahney of Cult of Mac.
• The Apple Vision Pro is now available in China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore. There is a page on the Apple website that shows interesting pictures of people at Apple stores in those countries trying on the device on Day 1.
• Tammy Rogers of iMore reports that an upcoming firmware improvement to the AirPods, now in beta, will vastly improve the microphone audio quality when connected to a Mac.
• In an article for Six Colors and Macworld, Jason Snell points out that when Apple Intelligence is available for the iPhone, we will live in a world in which Siri is much more powerful on some Apple devices than on others, and he shares some thoughts on how that might work. It’s an interesting dilemma.
• Apple’s AirPods Max over-the-ear headphones are currently $100 off at Amazon, selling for only $449. There have been a few rare occasions when I’ve seen the price go a little lower than that, but that’s a great price on this device. I don’t see many people using an AirPods Max, but when I do talk to people who use the product, they consistently tell me that they really like it.
• When you buy an Apple Product, should you purchase Apple Care+? John-Anthony Disotto of iMore used to work at an Apple Genius Bar and he offers his advice. I purchased AppleCare+ for my Apple Vision Pro because it was so expensive and seemed relatively easy to drop and break, and I purchased it for my new iPad Pro M4 13" for similar reasons. But I typically don’t purchase AppleCare+ when I get a new iPhone each year. It’s not an easy decision, but it is an important one that Apple users need to make all the time.
• Life in Seven Songs is a new podcast from the San Francisco Standard that asks people to identify seven significant signs from their lives, and Episode 3 is an interview with Jony Ive, the former chief designer at Apple. I enjoyed listening to this episode. He describes meeting Steve Jobs for the first time and also talks about his work on the Pixar movie Wall-E.
• For every product that Apple releases, there are many more that never make it out of the labs. D. Griffin Jones of Cult of Mac shows off some interesting prototypes from Apple’s history.
• Will Apple ever make a ring? Malcolm Owen of Apple Insider discusses two decades of rumors and speculation about an Apple ring.
• If you have fond memories of playing Minesweeper on a now-ancient PC, Anna Washenko of Engadget reports that there is a modern version of the game now available for the iPhone from Netflix. The game is free to play (with no ads) if you have a Netflix account. I tried it, and I thought it was fun to play the game again after all of these years.
• Apple TV+ doesn’t disclose the number of subscribers, but Devesh Beri of the Mac Observer reports that JustWatch has come up with its own estimates for all of the streaming services. It believes that Apple TV+ recently surpassed Paramount+ to become the sixth-biggest streaming service in the United States. JustWatch estimates Prime Video and Netflix have over 20% market share, Max around 14%, Disney+ around 11%, Hulu around 10%, and Apple TV+ at 9% and growing.
• And finally, the Notes app from Apple was not very impressive when Apple first released it, but over the years it has gotten better and better, and today it is a fantastic app that I use daily. Stephen Hackett of the 512 Pixels website and many podcasts including Mac Power Users recorded a presentation about the Notes app that he gave to a user group in Texas and it is full of interesting information. I love the subtitle of the presentation: From a Joke App to a Superstar. If you want to go deep on the Notes app, check this one out:

There are lots of tips and tricks in this week’s episode of the In the News podcast, as Brett Burney and I start the episode discussing some tips related to the Settings app and then we discuss tips for using the iPhone keyboard. We next discuss the present and future of visionOS, tons of great shows on and coming to Apple TV+, the future of CarPlay, and much more.

In our In the Know segment, Brett shares a very useful tip for sharing your contact information via LinkedIn instead of using business cards—a tip that I would have been using for years if I had known about it. I share a tip and a historical curiosity related to the Calendar 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:

One of the nice things about the Summer is that sometimes things slow down enough that you can take a break and watch some good things on TV. Apple TV+ has lots of good things on right now and even more coming out soon. I’m currently enjoying Dark Matter and Trying. I haven’t even started watching Presumed Innocent yet, but it is getting good reviews, and it has special appeal for me because I loved reading the book and then watching the movie just before I started law school. I’m also interested in two movies being released soon by Apple TV+: Fly Me to the Moon starring Scarlett Johansson, which is a comedy-drama about NASA in the 1960s, and Wolfs, an action-comedy starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt. But those are both going to the theater first, and there is no current release date for the home theater. Fortunately, other promising shows are coming to the TV soon, and Macworld has a helpful page devoted to upcoming Apple TV+ shows. Here are some that I am looking forward to that have release dates. July 19: Lady in the Lake (starring Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram). July 24: Time Bandits (based on the quirky movie of the 1980s, stars Lisa Kudrow, created by and appearances by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi). July 31: Women in Blue (Mexico’s first female police force). August 9: The Instigators (Matt Damon and Casey Affleck). August 14: Bad Monkey (produced by Bill Lawrence, starring Vince Vaughn). Two others that look interesting and that will come out later this year: (1) Sept. 4: Slow Horses Season 4 and (2) Oct. 11: Disclaimer (Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline). That could be a whole lot of great things to watch on TV. And now, here is the news of notes from the past week.

• Nelson Aguilar of CNet has a list of 22 things that you might want to change in the iPhone Settings app. You probably know about many of these, but I doubt that you know about all of them.
• Cory Bohon of Gadget Hacks shares tips for doing more with iPhone keyboard.
• Chance Miller of 9to5Mac notes that a new feature coming to Apple Maps in iOS 18 is a “search here” button. That sounds useful.
• iPadOS 18 will add support for formatting external drives, according to Federico Viticci of MacStories. Is that a feature that most people need? Probably not, but it is an example of an advanced iPad feature, and I love seeing the iPad get more powerful. I often use my iPad to get work done when I don’t have a computer nearby, and it is frustrating to hit the limits of an iPad when it ought to be able to do a task that a computer can do.
• Apple is rolling out a firmware update for all AirPods. There is nothing that you need to do, eventually, it will install on its own, but according to Chance Miller of 9to5Mac, it fixes a Bluetooth vulnerability that a hacker could use to gain access to your AirPods (or Beats headphones). Yikes. If you want to determine if your model is updated yet, go to the Settings app on your iPhone -> Bluetooth -> click the info button next to your AirPods / AirPods Pro -> Version to learn what firmware version number you are running. Miller’s post has a list of all of the latest versions. For example, for my AirPods Pro (2nd generation), the new version is 6F8.
• If your Apple Watch is having difficulty detecting your pulse or other vitals, take a look to see if you happen to have a tattoo on your arm. If you do, it can interfere with the sensors, and you may have to remove the tattoo as explained in this post by Malcolm Owen for AppleInsider.
• One day, Apple may give us the ability to purchase and install custom watch faces. But until that day comes, you need to customize the limited faces provided by Apple if you want a different look. I find that using the Stripes fact is one way to change the look; I have a version of Stripes with Green and White that I wear to support my daughter’s high school basketball team, a version with Purple, Green, and Gold that I wear for Mardi Gras, etc. Zac Hall of 9to5Mac shows a way to create a very minimal watch face using the Photos face and a black image as the photo.
• Dan Moren of Six Colors speculates on what changes Apple might make to the next device that runs visionOS.
• There is currently no native YouTube app for the Apple Vision Pro, but Juno is a $5 third-party app that tries to be the next best thing. The app was updated yesterday to support 360º videos on YouTube, as reported by Flilpe Espósito of 9to5Mac. The good news is that there are lots of 360º videos that you can watch on YouTube, so this greatly increases the amount of 3D immersive content for the Vision Pro. The bad news is that the stuff on YouTube doesn’t seem to be very good. I don’t just mean the critical quality of the videos is lacking, although there is a lot of that. I mean the technical quality. The videos on YouTube are noticeably inferior to the 8K immersive videos released by Apple and, more recently, Disney/Marvel. Even when a video surrounds you, that grainy quality removes any sense that you are really there. Having said that, there are still some interesting things to watch if you want to try. Here are two to start with. (1) Teleportaled is a very short Sci-Fi comedy that is cute. (2) This is a view from the cockpit of a Swiss Air Force fighter jet. Note that even if you don’t have a Vision Pro you can click on those links and watch a 2D video, and you can click and drag to change your view, but that completely removes you from the feeling of 3D.
• Apple TV+ is expanding from movies and TV shows to original podcasts with a show called My Divo premiering on July 1, 2024, as noted in this press release.
• And finally, one of the features of the next version of CarPlay is that the interface can control all aspects of a car. The folks at Blackbox Infinite played around with the software to see if they could imitate some of the most iconic car dashboards of all time, and they did an amazing job. It makes me think that this version of CarPlay could be really cool. Now we just need cars that support it. You can view their work on this webpage and in this video:

Details are emerging about the upcoming iOS 18 now that beta versions are in the hands of developers. Brett Burney and I start this week’s episode of the In the News podcast by discussing some of the more hidden features in iOS 18 that you might want to use. We also discuss the new features coming to Maps in iOS 18. Next, we took about new tools for creating immersive videos for the Apple Vision Pro, the end of Apple’s Buy Now Pay Later program, and more. 

In our Where Y’At? segment, we discuss the happy tale of a firefighter who may owe his life to his Apple Watch and the strange tale of Steve Spielberg’s Apple Watch.

In our In the Know segment, Brett shares a great tip for using YouTube on an iPhone or iPad. I explain why you may want to ditch the camera button whenever you upgrade to iOS 18.

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:

Thirty years ago yesterday, on June 20, 1994, at a time when most people had no idea what the World Wide Web or the Internet was (Netscape Navigator did not come out until late 1994), Apple opened the doors to eWorld, an online service that was a Mac-oriented competitor to AOL. I used eWorld during the two years that it was around. and I liked it. Nevertheless, it was always clear to me and others that so much more was coming from the Internet. Fast forward to today and the iPhone and other Apple products act as the front door to the Internet for many people, whether they are browsing the web in Safari or using Internet-based apps to pay for coffee, communicate with friends, work remotely, and so much more. As we now look to the future, beta versions (at least, the developer beta versions) of iOS 18 and other upcoming operating systems are now available for those who want to try things out early. You definitely won’t see me put an early beta on my iPhone or iPad because I need those devices to get work done, and I cannot have them quit randomly, overheat, or run out of battery. But if you have an extra device, or if you don’t mind living with the crazy ups and downs of the beta cycle just to be the first to try something new (for example, my son falls in that category), you can register yourself as an Apple developer for free and download the new software now. Or, you can sign up for the free Apple Beta Software Program to access the early beta versions when they are somewhat more polished. Michael Potuck of 9to5Mac speculates that the first public beta will be available in a few weeks. Or, perhaps best of all, you can let others be the guinea pigs and just read what they have to say. That’s the approach that I plan to take for the next few months, with the possible exception of my Apple Vision Pro—which is inherently a beta device so I might try the beta software on it. We’ll see. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Rajesh Pandey of Cult of Mac identifies 11 hidden iOS 18 features that Apple did not tell you about. I’ve already mentioned a few of them last week, like the ability to adjust the flashlight width and the screen bezel expanding when you press a side key on the iPhone, but there are some other good ones on that list.
• Patrick Holland of CNet shares lots of details about how text messaging via satellite will work in iOS 18. No pictures or videos, but you can send and receive text messages, emoji, tap backs, and even iMessage bubble and screen effects.
• Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac previews what is coming to Apple Maps in iOS 18.
• We all have an Apple ID, and if you used the earliest versions of iTunes, you may even have two of them. Adam Engst of TidBITS reports that in iOS 18, Apple is changing the name to Apple Account.
• David Price of Macworld reveals that in watchOS 11, Apple is removing the Siri watch face, presumably because you will be able to get a similar feature from any watch face by just swiping up.
• I’m a big fan of the podcast transcripts feature now in Apple Podcasts. Ari Saperstein of The Guardian interviewed folks from Apple about the feature and learned that Apple has been working on this since 2018.
• As I’ve mentioned before, immersive content on the Apple Vision Pro is truly incredible, and I wish we had more of it. That is now starting to become more possible. Jeff Benjamin of 9to5Mac explains how you can purchase an Insta360 X4 ($499.99 on Amazon) and then convert the video so it will play on the Vision Pro. We also need to have a good website or app to watch immersive videos taken by others.
• In a post for Six Colors, Joe Rosensteel reveals how Sandwich Video pulled off the first live 3D stream for the Apple Vision Pro last week.
• If you use 1Password as your password manager and you are worried that you may one day forget your master password, you can now (optionally) create a recovery code that you can print out and store in a secure location that can be used, in connection with access to your email account. to get back into 1Password. Ryan Christofel of 9to5Mac explains how it works.
• Mitchell Bailey of Global News (Canada) reports that a firefighter in Canada started to have a headache when his Apple Watch warned him that he may be having atrial fibrillation. That led him to go to the hospital where he learned that he was having a heart attack. The man and his wife credit the Apple Watch for helping to save his life.
• On the other hand, sometimes the Apple Watch makes mistakes. Lexi Carson of Variety reports that Steven Spielberg was giving a talk on stage during the Tribeca Festival when his Apple Watch mistakenly told him that he had taken a hard fall. He responded by taking off his watch and throwing it on the ground—which wasn’t the best idea because that triggered the watch to begin to call 911.
• Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac reports on a new feature coming to Apple TV+. If you start watching a live MLS game after it has already started, you can watch a series of highlights, generated automatically using AI, to get caught up before you start watching live. I love this.
• Last year, Apple launched a buy now, pay later program. It was somewhat controversial since it seemed to encourage people to spend beyond their means. And this week, Chance Miller of 9to4Mac reports that Apple is discontinuing the program.
• Ben Lovejoy of 9to5 speculates that Apple may be discontinuing the program to avoid having to deal with regulations that date back to 1968.
• And finally, I enjoyed watching this 15-minute video in which Marquest Brownlee interviews Apple CEO Tim Cook. It begins with interesting Qs and As on Apple Intelligence and then ends with Cook discussing some of the greatest products in Apple history.