Cancer is horrible. We all know it, we have all dealt with it with our friends and families at some point, and I have no doubt that many of you reading this are dealing with it right now, in one way or the other. And as bad as all forms of cancer are, children’s cancer is particularly devastating.

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and a leader in the fight against childhood cancer is St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Did you know that since St. Jude opened its doors in 1962, the treatments developed at St. Jude have helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20% to more than 80%? That is an amazing statistic. And they have so much more that they can do, from helping individual patients that they are treating at their facility in Memphis to developing techniques that can be used to treat children around the world.

For the second year in a row, iPhone J.D. is part of the community that is working with the Relay FM podcast network to raise money for St. Jude. You may already know about Relay FM: it is the network behind some fantastic tech-related podcasts, such as Upgrade, Mac Power Users, Connected, Clockwise, Automators, and so many more. By working together, the end result can be pretty amazing. Since 2019, the Relay FM community has raised over $2.2 million for St. Jude, and with your help, I have no doubt that it will cross the $2.5 million mark this year.

The process of making a donation is super easy, which I know first-hand because I just did it a few minutes before I wrote this post. Simply go to the page, click the big green DONATE button, and donate any amount. Just a few seconds later, I guarantee that you will feel so much better knowing that you are part of the solution for families that are directly affected by childhood cancer now and those that will be dealing with it in the future.

A special thanks to those of you who contributed last year and will contribute again this year. Y’all are the best!

Click here to donate!

We are barely more than a week way from Apple’s introduction of the 2023 version of the iPhone, presumably to be called the iPhone 15. Thus, Brett and I begin this week’s episode of the In the News podcast by discussing what we may see, such as perhaps the transition from a Lightning port to a USB-C port and a switch from stainless steel to titanium on the Pro models. And while we don’t expect an iPad announcement this month, Brett and I also discuss the state of the iPad and what changes may come in the future. We also discuss the New York MTA privacy concerns—including one that was fixed just before we started recording, thank goodness—and other topics.

In our Where Y’at segment, we talk about how Find My technology is supposed to work, how it works best, and some good news for when it doesn’t seem to work at all. 

In our In the Know segment, Brett and I both discuss touching and holding on an app icon to access quick actions—something that is certainly not a new tip, but well worth repeating because it is so easy to forget that this hidden functionality is even there.

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:

I hesitate to start today’s post with this story because it leaves me with so many unanswered questions, and I hope that we will get the answers from Apple and the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) soon, but Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac shares a disturbing report from Joseph Cox of 404Media. On the New York subway, you can use Apple Pay Express on your iPhone or Apple Watch to quickly pay the fare for public transit. The system has been in place for years, and I hear that it is easy to use. But the report raises two security concerns. First, a person who knows your credit card number and expiration date—which is obviously not that hard to learn for a stalker—can could use the MTA website to see realtime information that can reveal when and where you are getting on and off the subway. That’s an obvious stalking risk, and hopefully MTA will fix it soon. [UPDATE: MTA now says that they have fixed this.] But even more troubling is this: how does the MTA even know your real credit card number? When using Apple Pay, I thought that a merchant was provided with a single-use code instead of your actual credit card number. But obviously that is wrong if the MTA was learning everyone’s credit card number, unless MTA gets the credit card number from another source and then learns how to associate it with a specific customer using Apple Pay? Apple has a page on its website to address Apple Pay and privacy, but it doesn’t specifically address whether the merchant is provided with your credit card number. I love Apple Pay because of the convenience, and I have long thought that it was also more secure than providing my credit card number to a merchant, but now I want to know more. I’ll be tracking this story, and I hope that we see answers soon. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• The big news of the week is the confirmation that Apple will introduce a new iPhone on September 12. The event logo has an interesting version of the Apple logo, and the tagline is “Wonderlust.” Wanderlust means a love of wandering around, so “wonderlust” must mean … um … what exactly? Michael Simon of Macworld tries to decipher the clues.
• Instead of an iPhone 15 Pro Max, will Apple announce an iPhone Ultra? Jason Snell of Six Colors considers this possibility.
• It seems likely that the new iPhone will use USB-C instead of Lightning. In another article on Six Colors, Snell discusses the possibility of a backlash by users who prefer to stick with Lightning.
• One last interesting article by Jason Snell this week is this article he wrote speculating about what the new iPad Magic Keyboard might look like. This article relates to a rumor that Apple release a new iPad Pro in 2024 with a new design.
• Speaking of a new iPad, as much as I love my iPad Pro, I do wish that it could do more. Harry McCracken of Fast Company feels the same way, as he discusses in depth in this article.
• David Sparks of MacSparky similarly weighs in with his thoughts on the state of the iPad.
• If you have an older stereo system or amplifier with coaxial, optical, or RCA inputs, the upcoming Eve Play (shipping Nov. 14) can bring AirPlay 2 support to your older system so that you can play music, wirelessly, from your Apple devices as reported by Romain Dillet of TechCrunch.
• Speaking of playing music, if you prefer to play full albums instead of specific songs, John Voorhees of MacStories reviews the 2.0 version of the app Longplay, which specializes in that feature.
• If you prefer to listen to a podcast instead of music, of course my #1 suggestion is the In the News podcast. But that one podcast won’t get you through the entire three-day weekend, so if you are a fan of late night shows, you might be interested in listening to Strike Force Five, a podcast featuring talk show hosts Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver. Even without the aid of their writing staffs, they are all very funny, and the proceeds raised from the podcast are used to support the folks who work on their shows and are currently out of work.
• Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reports that police in Nashville were able to, relatively quickly, track and arrest a thief who stole a car because there was an AirTag in the car.
• William Gallagher of AppleInsider reports on a woman who was hiking in Utah when she needed help because of flooding and used the Emergency SOS feature of her iPhone 14. Even though the message did not seem to go through, rescuers did receive the message, and they were able to find her—covered in mud from head to toe after her shoes had been lost.
• Gallagher also reports on a man who tracked the AirPods he left on a plane to the home of an airline worker, and he almost went to that home on his own until his wife smartly convinced him to call the cops instead.
• And finally, Apple released two videos this week to show how a company is using an iPhone to take a 3D pictures of dogs missing a limb to build custom pet prostheses. The longer video is the better one—it isn’t too long, under three minutes—but below, I am linking to the quick 30-second version called The Invincibles:

California attorney David Sparks has been producing great educational content for an incredibly long time. His iPad at Work book was groundbreaking when it came out over a decade ago, and he then moved on to electronic publications in iBooks and then more recently to online Field Guide courses. This latest iteration is the best format yet. Each Field Guide features incredibly well-produced videos in which David explains and shows you exactly how to use an app or service. His Field Guides always come with fantastic examples, and you get a transcript along with the video which makes it easy to find exactly what you need. I highly recommend his Shortcuts Field Guide and his more recent Shortcuts for Mac Field Guide for anyone looking to take better advantage of Shortcuts, regardless of whether you are an absolute beginner or a power user looking to do even more.

Now that David has given up his law practice to focus on creating tech-related content, he has been releasing so much great and helpful stuff. Yesterday, David released his latest Field Guide, this time focusing on the powerful app Obsidian. It is called, as you might expect, the Obsidian Field Guide. Obsidian is primarily used on a Mac or PC, but it also works on the iPad and even the iPhone. It is a note-taking app, but unlike many other note-taking apps, it makes it fast and easy to have your notes cross-reference each other. With Obsidian, you can jot down lots of different ideas and then the app can help you to organize and make sense of it all. If you have heard of Roam Research, Craft, DEVONthink, or Notion, they are all somewhat similar, but Obsidian is noteworthy for the comprehensive set of tools that it gives you to work with, including plug-ins.

I’ve heard about Obsidian many times, but I haven’t yet used Obsidian myself. In part, this has been because I was a little intimidated by the app, and in part, this has been because I wasn’t sure how the app might be a good fit for one of my projects. I suspect that many of you would fall in the same camp. David’s new Field Guide is perfect for people like us because it does a fantastic job of explaining the projects for which an app like Obsidian excels and then providing great advice for using this app. This includes not only using the basic app but also how to work with tons of different plug-ins that bring advanced functions to the app. Follow along with David’s examples and before you know it, you will be a power user.

David gave me a free preview version of this new Field Guide a few days ago, and I’ve enjoyed starting the course. The quality of his videos is excellent, and the Field Guide is well organized. There are 78 video tutorials, about six total hours of content, and tons of workflows and usage samples.

Want even more? David is also selling a “plus” version of his Field Guide that gives you access to live online webinars with David that you can attend and/or re-watch later.

The cost of the Field Guide is $49, or $99 if you want the “plus” version. However, for a limited time you can use the discount code OBSIDIANLAUNCH to get 10% off.

If keeping track of information, organizing information, and using information is a part of your life, then Obsidian may be for you, and David’s new Obsidian Field Guide is the perfect accessory to the Obsidian software.

Click here to get the Obsidian Field Guide by David Sparks ($44 with discount)

Apple announced yesterday that it will hold an event on September 12, 2023, at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, every year since 2012 (except for 2020 due to COVID), Apple has held an event in early September to announce the new iPhone, so I am quite sure that Apple will use the September 12 event to introduce the world to the 2023 versions of the iPhone, presumably the iPhone 15 line. One change that seems likely to come is a switch from Lightning to USB-C on the iPhone, which John Gruber of Daring Fireball discusses in this post. I suspect that we will also see updates to the Apple Watch, but beyond that, I don’t know what Apple has planned.

The page on the Apple website for the event features an interesting version of the Apple logo with metallic (titanium?) dust coming off of it to announce the event. It sort of reminds of of the opening credits of the Apple TV+ show Foundation. It’s a pretty neat animation. Do those colors have anything to do with the colors in the next iPhone? We’ll see.

Select members of the press received invitations to go to Apple’s campus to watch the (presumably) prerecorded announcement, and the tagline on those invitations said: Wonderlust. Read into that single word what you will.

The Messages app on the iPhone, like other apps, can provide you with a notification when you have a new message. Use the Notifications section of the Settings app to control what types of notifications you get, including, as we all know, a red badge on the app itself to show you the number of unread messages.

Sometimes my app shows me that I have a few unread messages. I suppose at some point over the years I may have had as many as a dozen or so unread messages, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than that.

My daughter recently spent about two weeks at summer camp. When we picked her up at camp (in another state), I brought her iPhone because I figured that she would be eager to catch up on text messages etc. in the car ride home. But what I did not expect to see was this:

How is it even possible to have 1,800 unread messages? I’m not sure that I have ever received that many messages in my entire life. My daughter informed me that most of it was from large group texts where there can be dozens of new texts every minute. When I told her that I cannot even imagine taking the time to catch up on that many messages, she told me that all she would need to do is a quick skim to get a sense of whether she missed anything important.

So anyway, my public service announcement for today is that—in case you were curious—yes, the Messages notifications badge does support numbers that are four digits long. I hope that I never have a reason to see that it can support five digits too.

When is it a good time to purchase a new Apple product and when should you wait? That’s the question that Brett and I address first in this week’s episode of the In the News podcast. We also address the Apple Vision Pro, potentially getting 5% Apple Cash using the Apple Card, the large number of features in the Notes app, and cleaning and charging an Apple Watch. 

This episode is sponsored by SaneBox, so Brett explained some neat things that SaneBox lets you do with attachments, and I talked about how to get SaneBox working on one or two email accounts. Go to sanebox.com/inthenews to sign up for a free trial and get a $25 credit toward a SaneBox subscription.

In our In the Know segment, Brett discussed managing shared notes, and I provide an 18-month later update on Wordle and similar word games that are free and fun to play.

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:

I saw lots of buzz this week on a study published in the June 2023 issue of the journal Advances in Infectious Diseases. Just in case that one is still waiting for you on your coffee table, the authors discuss bacteria that can build up on wristbands. The article doesn’t mention the Apple Watch, but that didn’t prevent headlines like this one: Apple Watch bands harbor dangerous bacteria — because no one cleans them. As a reminder, Apple has a helpful page on its website for cleaning both the Apple Watch and Apple Watch bands. And now, here is the news of note from the past week:

• If you are interested in Apple’s upcoming Vision Pro headset—like I am—then you are probably especially interested in what app developers will come up with to take advantage of this new device. Apple is letting developers who are working on upcoming apps try out their apps on prototype versions of the hardware, and Apple published a story on its website in which a few developers describe the experience of developing for the Apple Vision Pro.
• How long has Apple been working on the Vision Pro? Patently Apple reports that Apple just had a patent granted that it applied for back in 2007—the same year that the original iPhone launched—describing a Virtual Reality Headset that could present users with 3D environments. I wouldn’t have guessed that Apple has had folks working on the project for that long.
• Michael Potuck of 9to5Mac reports that select users of the Apple Card credit card can get up to $1,300 Daily Cash on travel and dining expenses thanks to a 5% Cash Back promotion. I haven’t seen this offer in my email Inbox, but I would definitely use it if Apple tells me that I’m selected.
• Josh Ginter of The Sweet Setup explains all of the different things that you can do with Apple’s Notes app.
• Ed Hardy of Cult of Mac reviews the qCharge 2.0 ($59 on Amazon), a tiny Apple Watch charger that can recharge an Apple Watch two or three times.
• MacRumors has a buyer’s guide that typically does a good job of letting you know whether an Apple product seems to be new enough that you should be safe to get it while minimizing buyer’s remorse whenever the next version comes along. Joe Rossignol of MacRumors identifies the five oldest products that Apple is still selling today, and they include the AirPods Max, the HomePod mini, and the Apple Pencil. I’d love to see a new Apple Pencil with more features, but as Rossignol notes, there are no credible rumors of a new Apple Pencil yet.
• And finally, when Apple TV+ first started, there were four main shows: Dickinson and See (two shows that are now finished), and For All Mankind and The Morning Show. There were also some kid shows, like Snoopy in Space. For All Mankind was my favorite, and indeed it is one of my all-time favorite shows from any network. But it always seemed that The Morning Show was Apple’s favorite, the one that it hoped would put Apple TV+ on the map, long before people were thinking about Ted Lasso. So for that reason, it is notable that The Morning Show is about to start Season 3 on September 13. Perhaps also notable is that Apple previously ran a series of funny ads with the tagline Everyone But Jon Hamm, and of course, Hamm will be on the upcoming Season 3. This week, Apple released the official trailer:

If there is a theme to this week’s episode of the In the News podcast, it is the future of the streaming video industry. We dig deep into the rumors that Apple might buy Disney. Yes, it’s crazy, and we ultimately don’t think it will happen, and yet just maybe it could for lots of different reasons. We also talk about why cutting the cord is not what it used to be anymore. And we talk about future Apple TV+ shows that may include a 3D component made especially for the upcoming Apple Vision Pro. We also take the time to say Happy Birthday to the iMac, which went on sale 25 years ago. Oh yeah, and it also helped to save Apple from destruction and led to the name for the iPhone. And we discuss other interesting topics such as the latest version of Goodnotes.

In this week’s Where Y’at? segment, we talk about how an AirPod will only help you to recover a stolen item if the thief doesn’t know about it.

This episode is sponsored by SaneBox, and Brett and I explained two great features of the service: the Daily Digest and the @SaneNoReplies folder—a great reminder for when someone was supposed to reply to your email but has not done so yet. Go to sanebox.com/inthenews to sign up for a free trial and get a $25 credit toward a SaneBox subscription.

In our In the Know segment, Brett discussed preserving settings in Camera mode to make it faster to take a picture or video. I discussed an easy way to find links, pictures, documents, etc. that you have shared with another person in the Messages app—a great tip that can save you a ton of time.

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:

Will Apple buy Disney? The idea would have been ridiculous 10 years ago, 20 years ago, etc. But the idea has been kicked around quite a bit recently. John Gruber of Daring Fireball writes a persuasive piece on why Apple doesn’t seem to have the interest and Disney will want to stay independent. On the other hand, Jason Snell of Six Colors thinks the idea isn’t that crazy. Large technology companies are trying to purchase content companies more and more, and Disney itself faces an uncertain future. If any tech company is going to buy Disney, Apple seems like the best fit. As Snell notes, Disney CEO Bob Iger suggested in his memoir that had Steve Jobs lived, the two companies might have combined. I have no idea what will happen, but if at some point soon my monthly Apple One subscription also gets me a Fast Pass to Space Mountain, I’d be fine with that. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Why is the iPhone called the iPhone? Back in 2009, I provided the answer in a post called Why the “i” in iPhone? That post still gets a lot of readers to this day. In short, the answer is that Apple first used the “i” when Apple introduced the iMac in 1998. As Jason Snell writes in an article for the Verge, it was 25 years ago this week that Apple released the iMac—a cute but powerful computer that saved Apple from bankruptcy. If Apple had not made it through that period in its history, there would have been no iPod, no iPhone, no iPad, etc. Thank goodness for the iMac.
• John Voorhees of MacStories reviews Mercury Weather, which looks like a great weather app for the iPhone and iPad.
• Jonny Evans of Computerworld suggests a few iPhone features that you may not know about. For example, as my In the News podcast co-host Brett Burney pointed out all the way back on Episode 23 in 2021, if you hold down the mute button for a few seconds you can place the rest of the call on hold—which means you cannot hear the other person, and if there are multiple people on the phone, they cannot talk to each other.
• John Gruber of Daring Fireball explains how, in the Messages app on the iPhone, you can pin a website link that someone sends you to make it easier to find again later.
• Bradley Chambers of 9to5Mac reviews the Aqara light strip, which works with HomeKit (if you have an Aqara hub).
• If you use a third-party app on your Apple Watch to monitor for common symptoms of Parkinson’s (Tremors and Dyskinesia), there was a bug in watchOS 9.6 that prevented those apps from working. Apple fixed the bug in watchOS 9.6.1 released this week, as explained by Chance Miller of 9to5Mac.
• A woman in the Netherlands was able to recover a stolen bike because she had hidden an AirTag in it, as reported by Filipe Espósito of 9to5Mac.
• A woman in Vancouver was not able to recover her stolen car, even though it had an AirTag, because the thief found the AirTag and attached it to an Evo Car Share vehicle, as reported by Malcolm Owen of AppleInsider. So when the woman traced the AirTag to a winery, she was disappointed to find out that her car was not there.
• Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac reports that as the monthly fees for streaming video services have increased, subscribing to the popular streaming services is now more expensive than cable, even though many people “cut the cord” on their cable provider to save money by moving to streaming services.
• One upcoming streaming video show on Apple TV+ is a Godzilla TV series. Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac reports that parts of the show are being filmed in Apple’s Immersive Video format, which means that you will be able to watch them in spatial 3D using the upcoming Apple Vision Pro.
• And finally, while excessive heat has made life difficult for many of us lately, don’t forget that heat makes it tough for your iPhone, too. Joann Stern of the Wall Street Journal has a helpful video showing why heat is bad for your iPhone’s batteries, and she also provides hints for preserving battery life: