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.
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.
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.
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.
If you were to ask Old McDonald what was in the Apple news this past week, his answer would be A-I-A-I-Oh! Of course, AI is nothing new for Apple. It has been a part of the Memories feature of Photos for a long time, it is used extensively in the current iOS 17 to power features such as creating a Personal Voice that (sort of) sounds like your real voice and the greatly improved AutoCorrect feature, it is responsible for the excellent transcripts created with the Podcasts app, and much more. But Apple CEO Tim Cook announced last month that AI was going to be an even bigger topic for Apple later this year. And we started to get a hint at what might be behind that when Mark Gurman of Bloomberg reported this week that Apple may license Google’s generative large-language models to power some AI features in iOS 18. For a number of reasons, including privacy and security, Apple likes to run things “on device” and I’m sure that some of iOS 18 will utilize AI that runs right on the iPhone. But just like your iPhone currently uses the online Google search service to search the web, perhaps iOS 18 will utilize some server-based AI to enhance what you can do on an iPhone. What will this AI do? It could be transformative, as Dan Moren discusses in an article this week for Six Colors and Macworld. All of this is making me very excited for what we will learn when Apple previews iOS 18 at its WWDC conference this Summer and when Apple released the 2024 models of the iPhone this Fall. And now, the other news of note from the past week:
Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a large antitrust lawsuit against Apple in federal court in New Jersey. I’m not an antitrust lawyer, so I’m not providing any legal analysis, but I did very much appreciate reading the non-legal analysis from Jason Snell of Six Colors. He does a good job of explaining what the lawsuit alleges and where the DOJ seems to be taking some liberties.
Apple released iOS 17.4.1 yesterday. It fixes some bugs and provides security updates, with no new features. Apple also released iPadOS 17.4.1 and visionOS 1.1.1, presumably for the same fixes.
John Voorhees of MacStories reports that the part of the App Store that shows what you have previously purchased has been updated to provide additional details and more organization.
Nvidia had a big conference this week, and one of its announcements was that companies will be able to use Nvidia’s products to bring immersive 3D experiences to the Apple Vision Pro. Harry McCracken of Fast Company got a demo of what this might look like when he was able to wear a Vision Pro to check out an “uncannily realistic virtual” model of the upcoming 2024 Nissan Z sports coupe. Stories like this remind me that we are at only the beginning stages of Apple’s Vision platform and I am so excited to see how the technology develops over time. (And on a side note, Apple and Nvidia have seemed to have a chilly relationship over the last few years, so it is great to see them working together.)
Speaking of the Apple Vision Pro, Bennedict Evans has been using one for about a month and offers some incredibly insightful thoughts on what works, what doesn’t, and what this all may mean for the future.
If your complaint about the Apple Vision Pro is that it isn’t expensive enough, Samantha Wiley of iLounge reports that Caviar will sell 24 versions of the Apple Vision Pro in 2025 that will cost $40,000 and up and will be covered with 18-karat gold.
One of my biggest regrets in the history of Apple is that the company stopped making its AirPort line of wireless routers. If only Apple had purchased Eero instead of Amazon, it could have done some incredible things with home networking while keeping complicated technology easy to use. Joe Rosensteel agrees with me and believes that it is not too late for Apple to do something in this arena as he explains in an article for Six Colors entitled It’s time for a new AirPort.
If you have HomeKit devices that have batteries that need to be occasionally recharged or replaced, HomeBatteries is a new app that focuses on tracking the battery life and notifying you when you need more battery power. Brent Dirks reviews the app for AppAdvice, and it looks like a great idea for an app.
If you are a fan of the Apple AirTag, like I am, you might be interested to know that, as reported by Eric Slivka of MacRumors, Apple is once again updating the firmware, this time to version 2.0.73. It’s the first update since last October, but Apple hasn’t yet explained what is new—so my guess is that it is just some bug fixes or something like that. There is nothing you can do to force an update; AirTags just update on their own eventually.
I’ve written in the past about how it is useful to occasionally connect a HomePod mini to a portable battery to turn it into a portable speaker. Niléane of MacStories discusses using the PlusAcc for HomePod Mini Battery Base ($40 on Amazon) to make it easier to switch a HomePod mini from being plugged-in to the wall to being portable. This does look like a more elegant solution than what I have been doing, and if I did it more than once every few months, I would consider getting one of these.
This week, Brian Tong released an amazing video that gets my highest recommendation for numerous reasons. First, he talks to lots of Apple employees about the iPhone, photography, AI, and other Apple technology. Second, he does so on Apple’s campus. And third, he does so while riding around Apple’s campus in a golf cart, so at the same time that you are listening to the interesting video, you see the beautiful Apple Park campus in a way that you have never seen before. The video is 40 minutes long, and when I started it I figured I would just watch the first few minutes … and then 40 minutes later, I was upset that there wasn’t more. Check it out.
And finally, Apple wants you to believe that there is so much space available on your iPhone that you don’t need to worry about deleting old photos just to save some space. And thus, the company released this humorous video titled Don’t Let Me Go:
Here comes the sun … except for when it disappears for a few minutes. Brett and I start this week’s episode of the In the News podcast by discussing the upcoming solar eclipse. Brett’s house in Ohio is in the zone of totality, and I’ll be traveling to the Dallas area to see the eclipse on April 8. And while that is a few weeks away, now is the time to make plans and get filters, such as a solar filter for the iPhone. In yesterday’s post, I mentioned a Wirecutter recommendation for an iPhone filter that I will be trying out, and in the podcast, Brett and I also discuss Jamie Carter’s good article on Space.com with tips for photographing a solar eclipse with a smartphone. Next, we discuss the Apple Vision Pro, what Apple has learned about who in the United States is exercising with an Apple Watch, the best options for premium streaming services on an Apple TV, and more.
In this week’s Where Y’at? segment, we discuss the story of a man in England who left his keys on the dashboard of his SUV (d’oh!) but fortunately, he also had an AirTag in his vehicle.
Brett’s tip of the week revolves around the Astronomy watch face for the Apple Watch. I share a tip for dealing with unexpected and unwanted widgets that start showing up on your iPhone or iPad.
When I was in Sixth Grade, my English teacher had our class memorize an Emily Dickinson poem, and somehow the whole thing is still in my brain all these years later. It begins: “There is no Frigate like a Book / To take us Lands away …” Perhaps I remember the words because I love to read books for pleasure; a good book really can transport you to a different place. And yet, I never seem to have time to do it, so thank goodness for audiobooks which allow me to fit in the time to read a book while I am doing something else. I mention this because I just finished an audiobook that I loved: All Souls Lost by Dan Moren. I link to Dan Moren’s tech stories frequently in these Friday posts—Dan is part of the Six Colors website (along with Jason Snell)—so it won’t surprise you that this book has a technology angle. But primarily, the book is a noir private eye tale set in our modern world except that the supernatural is real. Yes, that is a bizarre mashup, but it works well in this book, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. There is even quite a bit of humor in this book. As you think about your next book to read or listen to, I recommend that you give this one a try. And now, the news of note from the past week:
The big solar eclipse is coming up in a few weeks on April 8, 2024. My son and I are planning to travel to Dallas to see the total eclipse. Phil Ryan of Wirecutter offers advice for taking a photograph of the eclipse, and he recommends getting an inexpensive camera filter for the iPhone called the Solar Snap Eclipse App Kit (Amazon link). I ordered one, and hopefully, it will be fun to use.
As I am thinking of ways to enhance my legal practice with an Apple Vision Pro, doctors are doing the same thing. Hiyah Zaidi of Metro reports that the device was used during a recent surgery in London. A scrub nurse wore a Vision Pro so that she could assist the surgeons and ensure that they were using the right tools. She told the reporter that the device was a “gamechanger” because it “eliminates human error. It eliminates the guesswork.” The app used by the nurse compared the surgery to similar procedures performed in the past by other surgeons, and as a result, it was like the nurse had tons of experience with the surgical procedure.
Hugo Barra, former head of Oculus at Meta, knows what he is talking about when it comes to AR/VR headsets, so it is not surprising that he offers an interesting and in-depth analysis of the Apple Vision Pro. I disagree with some of what he says, but he definitely has a well-informed perspective.
Speaking of Apple and health, Apple and others have been running a heart and movement study using the Apple Watch and, as reported by Laura Rosenberg of 9to5Mac, recently revealed which states in the U.S. exercise the most and the least. The best states for staying active are Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut. The worst states are Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Mississippi. OK, I get the message Apple, and I’ll get back on my treadmill.
If you are looking for a good show to watch on Apple TV+, this week I started watching Constellation and it is really good. The story starts on the International Space Station and then tells the story of an astronaut for whom some bizarre things start happening.
I used to subscribe to HBO (now Max) through my TV service provider (DirecTV) because of a promotion that made the service free. But then Max removed the ability to watch shows in 4K, which defeated some of the purpose of my Apple TV 4K and my 4K television, so I started subscribing to the $20/month package directly through Max. Amy Skorheim reports that Max is currently running a big discount if you subscribe for a year instead of a month, and both new and some current customers can take advantage of it. I just did. With the discount, I’ll pay $140 for a year, which works out to less than $12 a month, a 40% discount off of the $20 per month that I had been paying. If you are also interested in HBO/Max, consider taking advantage of this deal while you can.
If you want to watch some soccer games this weekend, Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac reports that all matches this weekend will be free—no MLS Season Pass required. There are fourteen games this weekend. Saturday’s match between D.C. United and Inter Miami should have been a good opportunity to see Lionel Messi in action, but I see that Michelle Kaufman of the Miami Herald is reporting that Messi may miss the game on Saturday due to a hamstring injury. Well, good news if you are a fan of D.C. United.
William Gallagher of AppleInsider shares the tale of a man whose SUV in England was stolen after he left his keys on the dash (yikes!) but because there was an AirTag in it, the police were able to help him recover his car.
And finally, Apple released a funny video last month called New Driver. I had intended to link to it here, but apparently, I forgot, and I didn’t realize the omission until Brett Burney mentioned it during last week’s episode of the In the News podcast. As someone with a daughter who will soon be getting her driver’s license, this one hits pretty close to home for me.
I’ve been a very happy user of the CARROT Weather app for as long as I can remember, so much so that I had been paying for the top-of-the-line $30/year “Premium Ultra” subscription, and then I changed that to the $50/year “Premium Family” level to share it with others in my household. I also like, and sometimes use, the built-in Apple Weather app. So when I heard about a recent update to yet another weather app, an app called Weather Up, I figured that I would look at it briefly out of curiosity but then go back to my favorites. To my surprise, I’ve been really impressed by Weather Up because it does one thing better than any other app. It has a fantastic widget on the iPad and iPhone, and a corresponding fantastic complication on the Apple Watch.
When I put a widget on my iPhone or iPad, my goal is to get the information that I want as fast as possible. CARROT Weather has always done a very nice job with its weather widgets. The widget that I have been using on my iPad shows both the next few hours and the next few days, using numbers to give me the temperature and placing those numbers at different heights so it is easy to see changes without even reading the exact numbers. And icons on the CARROT Weather widget provide further information about the type of weather:
It’s a nice widget.
The Weather Up widget takes a different approach, both in the way that the graphics are displayed and also in the way that you can interact with the widget. First, the Weather Up widget uses a line that shows you the change from high to low, every day, over a couple of days. I find that I prefer using graphics that make it easier to see both the high and low every day. When rain is in the forecast, the widget indicates that by using blue lines to tell you the point in the day when rain will occur. For example, in the following picture, I can see some rain is coming in the middle of the day on Friday when it will get up to 78º:
Better yet, this is an interactive widget. If I tap on the part of the widget that shows me Friday, the widget changes to concentrate on Friday’s weather. With this view, I can see more clearly that the rain starts a little before Noon and then continues for a few hours. Looks like a bad day to make plans to walk somewhere for lunch:
In addition to tapping on a specific day, you can tap on the arrow at the right to advance to the next few days. Doing so, I can see that the current forecast calls for even more rain all day on Sunday:
I love having an interactive weather widget on the iPad. It means that I never have to even launch the app itself to get the weather information that I need, which saves time. (With the CARROT Weather widget, tapping the widget launches the app.) And I also like the graphics used in the icons in the app for sunny, partly sunny, rainy, etc. I find that the graphics really pop.
I’m not currently using Weather Up on my iPhone, but I have tested it and it works well. The weather icons are a little larger than they are on an iPad. And if you own a Mac, you can also put the Weather Up widget on your Mac’s desktop, which I have done.
The iPhone screen is more cramped, but Weather Up has a nice complication that shows almost as much information as the iPhone/iPad widget:
An Apple Watch complication cannot be interactive, so tapping the Weather Up widget merely launches the app, where you can see more specific information for each hour of the day and upcoming days. But just looking at the complication typically tells me everything that I need. Indeed, this is one of my all-time favorite Apple Watch complications in terms of how good it looks on the Apple Watch.
When you launch the Weather Up app on the iPhone or iPad, it shows you a weather map with radar showing you where it is raining (or showing).
Weather maps are very useful when it is raining, especially when the map is in motion, because you can get a good sense of what rain is coming your way. But the built-in Weather app made by Apple already does a fine job showing a weather map, and it is free. My CARROT Weather app also has a great weather map. The Weather Up weather map is certainly pretty, but I don’t find it to be better in any meaningful way.
Weather Up costs $4/month or $40/year. As noted above, when I first installed the app, I had zero intention of keeping it on my devices for longer than 24 hours. But once I started using the widget on my iPad and the complication on my Apple Watch, I got sort of hooked. Both do an amazing job of communicating, in the most succinct way possible, the weather forecast, and they do so using fantastic graphics. And for now, at least, that is worth $4 a month to me. After a few months, if I find that I’m still enjoying the app as much as I do now, I’ll probably switch to the annual plan.
Conclusion
It seems counterintuitive, but Weather Up is a fantastic app precisely because you never need to open up the app. I encourage you to check it out.
Updates, updates, and more updates! Brett and I begin this week’s action-packed episode of the In the News podcast by discussing Apple’s numerous latest updates to the operating systems for just about all of its products. Even if you don’t live in the EU, there are lots of changes on the iPhone, including Apple’s impressive and helpful feature in the Apple Podcasts app that lets you work with (and search) a transcript of a podcast. Plus, there are new Emoji including the 🍋🟩 lime Emjoi (which will look like a lemon + green square if you haven’t updated yet).
The Vision Pro operating system was updated to version 1.1, and one of the new features is improvements to Persona. If you are wearing your Vision Pro during a videoconference, the avatar version of you looks a little more like the real you than it did before. This is tough to describe in an audio podcast, but if you watch the video of this week’s podcast on YouTube (which is embedded below) and jump to the chapter called “Jeff’s Improved Vision Pro Persona,” you can see a comparison of the prior version and this new update thanks to Brett doing such a good job in creating this week’s video.
But that’s not all. We also discuss a fun new version of the Apple Pencil, tips for taking panoramic photos, new movies on Apple TV+, new videos created by Apple, and more.
Brett’s tip of the week involves the always helpful ESC key. My tip of the week is to check out a weather app called Weather Up, not because of the app itself, but instead because of the amazing widget and Apple Watch complication.
