The first episode of the In the News podcast for 2022 is now available. After talking about Apple’s 15 years of supporting PRODUCT(RED), Brett and I discuss one of the big themes from CES this past week: new home automation products, including products that work with the new Matter and Thread protocols. Brett and I look forward to a day (hopefully soon!) when all of your home devices can talk to each other regardless of whether they are part of the Apple, Amazon, Google, or Samsung world. We also discuss the latest news on Find My with new ways to find lost AirPods, backpacks, and wallets. We then discuss Apple’s latest video, showing that an Apple Watch can help you call 911 in an emergency. And we also discuss a brand new feature for the Readdle’s PDF Expert: conversion from PDF to Word and other formats.
In our In the Know segment, Brett shares a tip for sending a PDF file via the Messages app. I share a tip for quick access to the most important folders and mailboxes in the Mail app.
Apple has now been working with PRODUCT(RED) for 15 years, making special versions of its products that are red. When you buy these products, a portion of what you pay goes to fight AIDS. According to this page, Apple has raised nearly $270 million for (RED) during the past 15 years. A new short video celebrates that partnership and notes that part of fighting AIDS today is fighting COVID, which I suppose makes perfect sense when you are trying to treat people around the world. And now, the news of note from the past week
Mobile, Alabama attorney Carter Hale wrote an excellent article on using technology to give presentations at trial in the Winter 2021 edition of the Tennessee Defense Lawyers Association Journal, and his article is packed with tips for using TrialPad on an iPad. You can click here to see an electronic version of the issue, and the article starts on page 8.
I often link to articles written by California attorney David Sparks of the MacSparky website. In this post, David explains that he has decided to stop practicing law so that he can devote 100% of his time to helping people use technology, through his MacSparky site, his video field guides, etc. That should mean that there are even more interesting articles written by David for me to mention here on iPhone J.D. Good luck to David as he begins this new chapter of his life.
Federico Viticci of MacStories reviews Remind Me Faster, an app that helps you to very quickly add an entry to the built-in Reminders app.
At the CES convention this week, Belkin announced that its upcoming smart home products would work with Matter and the Thread mesh protocol, a new smart home standard that Apple created with Amazon, Google, and Samsung to eventually replace Apple’s HomeKit and other technologies. Michael Potuck of 9to5Mac shares some of the details.
I’m typically a big fan of Apple’s Memories feature. It almost always shows me pictures and videos that bring a smile to my face, and thanks to the Photos widget, I don’t even have to open the Photos app to know that there is something new to see. But as Stephen Hackett of 512 Pixels notes, sometimes Memories can be less desirable, such as when it resurfaces a painful event such as January 6, 2021, or when it shows pictures of someone who you no longer want to see.
I’ve heard of some people placing an Apple AirTag in a wallet to find it if you lose it. I understand the desire to do that, but the AirTag is rather large for that purpose. Chance Miller of 9to5Mac discusses the new Chipolo Card Spot, a thin card that works like an AirTag (including Find My compatibility) but is easier to fit in a wallet.
Speaking of Find My, Glenn Fleishman explains in an article for Macworld that if Find My indicates that a device is in one location but that seems wrong, it may be because a Wi-Fi router was relocated.
Patrick McGee of Ars Technica notes that this past week, Apple became the first company to ever hit a market capitalization of $3 trillion (the price of a stock multiplied by the number of outstanding shares). Just as impressive, Apple’s value rose by $1 trillion in less than 16 months. Even if you don’t own Apple stock (I don’t), this matters to users of Apple products because it helps Apple to retain its best employees, who receive a significant portion of their income through stock options that vest over time. Thus, this milestone is indirectly responsible for us getting even better products from Apple.
Dave Mark of The Loop shares a video from Apple with advice for finding lost AirPods. As he notes, there are lots of details in that video that you probably didn’t know about.
And finally, here is a powerful ad produced by Apple called 911 about three people who were able to get critical help during an emergency because they called 911 using their Apple Watch. Federico Viticci’s tongue-in-cheek proposed title for this video is “you’re gonna die if you don’t buy an Apple Watch.” Of course, we all hope that none of us ever need to call 911, but the reality is that if you do, there are circumstances in which having an Apple Watch makes that much easier.
Weather apps are great when you want to know the forecast, but only if you will remain in the same location. What if you are driving across the country on a road trip? To find out what the weather will be like in a few hours, you need to know where you will be in a few hours. And while you could do all of this manually—guessing at the city where you will be and then looking up the forecast for the hour that you think you will be there—that is a lot of work. The Weather on the Way app does all of this work for you.
I mentioned this app about 18 months ago in an In the News post, noting that I would use the app the next time that my family takes a road trip. Because of COVID and a number of other reasons, my wife and I decided to drive from New Orleans to New York to visit family for Christmas instead of flying, and it was a perfect reason to use this app because of the dramatic change in temperature along the way.
When you start using the app, it works like a map app. Your current location is listed in “A” (change that if you want) and then you place an ending location in “B”. The app shows the most direct path from A to B along with the weather at selected locations along the map and the approximate time you will be in each location.
You can tap an icon to choose whether the map shows you the temperature, amount of precipitation, wind speed, or wind gusts at each location.
What if you have multiple stops? That works too. Just enter another stop as “C,” “D,” etc., and that will be added to your route.
If you want more details about the weather on the way, tap the Show Timeline button.
An icon at the top left of the map lets you update the radar so you can see where the bad weather is located in relation to your route.
If you have flexibility on when you leave, you can use this app to plan the best time/day to leave to get the best weather along the way, up to seven days in advance. Simply tap the departure time just above the map and then a slider appears at the bottom of the screen. Slide to adjust your departure time and you can see what impact that has on the weather at the different locations on the route.
The Weather on the Way app is free to download, and for your first five trips, you get all of the PRO features of the app for free—features like changing the departure time and alternate routes. After that, you pay either $2.99/month or $16.99/year for the PRO features. This generous pricing model makes it easy for you to try out the app for a number of different road trips before paying anything at all. And then when you do want to use the app, you only need to pay $3 for each of the months in which you will be on a road trip, or $17 for a full year if you plan to take lots of trips. You can also pay $39.99 for a lifetime subscription.
I’m very impressed by the Weather on the Way app and I found it useful during my recent road trip. I’ve tried out lots of different weather apps on my iPhone, but I haven’t seen any other app that does with this app does. The next time that you take a road trip, I encourage you to try this one out.
To help ring in the new year, Brett Burney and I released a new episode of the In the News podcast, one in which we look back and look forward. We look back 25 years to when Apple first acquired NeXT … although in retrospect, it was almost like NeXT acquired Apple. We also discuss the rise and fall of BlackBerry. Looking forward, we talk about what might be coming to AirPods in the future, improvements to Apple Maps, and issues related to COVID.
In our In the Know segment, Brett shares a tip for the Microsoft To Do app that you can probably use with any task manager. I provide tips for using the text replacement feature of the iPhone and iPad.
Just about 25 years ago, on December 20, 1996, Apple purchased NeXT, a company that made computer hardware and software. In retrospect, Apple didn’t get NeXT as much as it got the founder of NeXT, Steve Jobs. As the headline for an article by Dawn Kawamoto of CNet accurately stated at the time: “Apple acquires Next, Jobs.” Joe Rossignol of MacRumors recently discussed the significance of that acquisition with the benefit of hindsight. It is no exaggeration to say that this acquisition saved Apple from bankruptcy and led to the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and the iOS, iPadOS, and MacOS operating systems. Who knows what kind of smartphones and other portable technology we would be using today if things had turned out differently 25 years ago. And now, the news of note for the end of 2021:
New York attorney Nicole Black discusses the top five legal technology stories of 2021 in an article for ABA Journal. Perhaps obviously, the remote work revolution is #1 on her list.
Tom Parsons of What Hi-Fi? interviewed Gary Geaves, VP of Acoustics at Apple, to discuss Spatial Audio for the AirPods and related topics. It is an interesting interview. For example, Geaves explains that Spatial Audio works differently when you are listening to an Apple TV than when you are listening to an iPhone so that the virtual speakers seem further away on an Apple TV but closer on an iPhone.
Throughout this pandemic, one of the ways to keep track of the seriousness of the spread of COVID is to look at what local Apple Stores are doing. Filipe Espósito of 9to5Mac reports that Apple has closed all of its stores in New York City because of COVID.
Mark Gurman of Bloomberg reported other Apple Store closings on Twitter. For example, here in New Orleans where I live, Gurman reports that our local Apple Store is closing temporarily starting today because of nearly 30 employees with COVID. Gurman also reported that two Florida Apple Stores closed because of potentially hundreds of positive tests or exposures.
COVID isn’t the only thing that we need to be concerned about. Hacking remains a constant problem for all of us—I just heard yesterday about a major law firm being hacked—and nothing is more scary that hackers breaking into a password manager. But as Michael Simon of Macworld reports, hackers were able to access some part of the LastPass password manager system, although LastPass believes that no individual accounts were compromised.
Have you ever typed 20 on your iPhone or iPad and had the device automatically change that to 2.0? It has happened to me, and I could never figure out why. John Gruber of Daring Fireball figured out what is going on and provides a workaround.
And finally (for this past week), Apple recently released three short videos to show off the iPhone 13 Pro’s video capabilities. One called Pavel addresses the 3x optical zoom. One called Basement addresses taking video in low light. But my favorite is called Detectives and it addresses Cinematic Mode in a very humorous way:
And finally (for this past year), Apple TV+ created a new Peanuts holiday special, this one for New Year’s Eve. And to celebrate that new movie, you can now have a For Auld Lang Syne sing-along with your favorite Peanuts characters:
As we start to get deep into the holiday season, it is time to gather your family around the fire and listen to the latest episode of the In the News podcast. Brett and I start with a deep dive on iOS 15.2 and iPadOS 15.2. There is more in there than you might think. Then we discuss the new Pixelmator Photo app for the iPhone and why you should strongly considering using it, along with some other topics.
In our In the Know segment, we both have photo-related tips. Brett recommends an app called Stitch It! to create very long screenshot pictures, such as a string of text messages. I discuss the ML Super Resolution feature on Pixelmator Photo.
With the holidays approaching, many of us will be using an iPhone to take a lot more pictures of friends and family. And if you need to touch up some of those pictures, I have good news. This week, the fabulous Pixelmator Photo app came to the iPhone. I’ve been using this app on the iPad for a while now, and it is great. John Voorhees of MacStories shows off how the app works on the iPhone. And despite the small screen, it works quite well. For example, as Jason Snell of Six Colors points out, Pixelmator Photo has a particularly good retouch tool, a tool that doesn’t exist in the Photos app on the iPhone (although it does exist in the Photos app on the Mac). If you need to quickly fix a blemish on a face or remove a distracting object from the background, Pixelmator Photo’s eraser feature is what you need. The app is currently on sale for $4 (50% off the normal price), and if you already own the iPad app, you won’t get charged for the iPhone app. If you use your iPhone to take photos, I highly recommend the new iPhone version of Pixelmator Photo. And now, the news of note from the past week:
California attorney David Sparks discusses the new features that are in iOS 15.2 and iPadOS 15.2, which were released earlier this week. One new iPad feature David noted that I missed is that you can now set separate actions for a swipe from the lower-right and lower-left corners of the iPad screen. On my iPad, the lower-left swipe only works when I’m using my Apple Pencil, not with my finger, but perhaps I have more to figure out on that.
Jordan Hobbs of Uptime Legal Systems shares tips on creating legal symbols—such as ¶, §, Π, Δ, and more—using the iPhone, PC, and Mac. I’ve addressed this topic in the past, but I now see that it was back in 2014. Time flies.
Readdle updated Scanner Pro this week to add a Magic Eraser feature, perfect for removing your finger or other marks that you don’t want to appear on your scans. In my tests, the new feature works well, and this tool for PDFs is similar to the tool I discussed above for photos in Pixelmator Photo.
Apple created an AirTags app for Android. The app is called Tracker Detect, and it is designed to be used by someone with an Android phone to check and see if they are being tracked, without their knowledge, by an AirTag. (iPhone users already get those alerts automatically.) Ian Sherr of CNet describes the Tracker Detect app—one of the rare Android apps developed by Apple.
Before there was an iPhone, there was the Palm and Handspring—pioneers of what would become the smartphone. I thoroughly enjoyed watching this high-quality 30-minute video on the history of Handspring by Dieter Bohn of The Verge. I especially recommend this to folks who, like me, used a Treo before using an iPhone.
And finally, Apple released a new episode of Ted Lasso this week! Well, a new short at least, featuring claymation versions of your favorite Ted Lasso characters. It is called The Missing Christmas Mustache. Enjoy:
Apple updated many of its operating systems yesterday, including iOS 15.2 and iPadOS 15.2. There are some nice new features in this update. I’ll start with the one that wll be the most significant for some people: Legacy Contacts.
If you pass away and a family member or close friend knows your iCloud username and password, then they can access lots of information from your account such as photos, notes, email, and more. But what if they don’t? With the new Legacy Contacts feature, you can identify up to five people as your Legacy Contacts. When you die, once they establish that fact to Apple by providing a death certificate, then the person you designate will be able to access your iCloud data. Apple explains on this webpage what can be accessed.
To use this feature, both you and the other person must update to iOS 15.2 (or later). Then, in the Settings app on your iPhone, tap your name (very top of the Settings app) and then Password & Security. Then tap Legacy Contact. On the next screen, tap Add Legacy Contact.
You will need to provide that person with an access key that they will use, along with your death certificate, to get access. You can print that out, useful if you want to place it in a secure place like a safe. Or you can send it via text message, in which case your iPhone automatically drafts the message for you.
That’s just one of the new features added yesterday. Some of the others:
Apple Music Voice Plan. If you don’t want to pay for a full Apple Music subscription for $9.99/month, you can now purchase a $4.99/month plan that only works when you ask Siri to play songs. For most folks, I think that the full plan is well worth the extra money, but I guess it is nice to have options.
Communication Safety in Messages. For children in your family, you can optionally turn on a feature that blurs incoming text messages containing nudity and provides a warning, although the child can decide to view the picture anyway. When Apple originally announced this feature, it said that parents could also be notified if the child is under 13, but Apple decided against adding that in favor of privacy.
App Privacy Report. In Settings, go to Privacy, then App Privacy Report to see how apps are accessing private information such as your location, photos, camera, microphone, and contacts.
Track the Trackers. In the Find My app, tap Items. If there are nearby items (like AirTags) belonging to someone else that could be used to track you, you’ll see an option called Items That Can Track Me. Tap that to learn more.
Five More Hours to Find. If you lose your iPhone and the battery runs down to zero, the iPhone will go into Power Reserve mode. In iOS 15.2, even when in that mode, you can still use Find My on another device to find your iPhone for up to five hours.
Security Improvements. Every time Apple releases an update, they always enhance security, and I presume they have done the same this time.
The latest episode of the In the News podcast is now available. This is a really fun episode because Brett Burney and I discuss lots of interesting topics. First, we discuss the lawsuit between Epic and Apple and the impact of the stay that was just granted by the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal. Next, we talk about using your iPhone or Apple Watch as a hotel key. We then discuss the great pictures and information in this article by Jonathan Bell of Wallpaper, with photos by Jason Schmidt, regarding how Apple designs new products at its Apple Park campus.
Next, we discuss third-party tips for the Apple AirPods Pro, a new stylus from Adonit that works for the iPad and iPhone, putting a digital fireplace on your Apple TV, and the unexpected Razer Phone Cooler Chroma ($59.99 on Amazon).
In our In the Know segment, we focus on the web browser. Brett shares a tip for hiding your IP address when using the Safari browser on the iPhone and iPad. I discuss the first stand-alone web browser for the Apple Watch: the µBrowser (“Micro Browser”).
If you are looking for a present idea for anyone who has an Apple Watch (a growing population), I recommend finding a way to give someone an Apple Watch band—or, perhaps an Apple gift card so that they can pick out a specific color. Which band should you give? I recommend the Solo Loop, which I reviewed earlier this year. At $50, it is one of the least-expensive bands made by Apple, but it is also one of the best. I love wearing my Milanese Loop band at work and when I want to dress up, but after work and on the weekends, the Solo Loop is my go-to band because it is so comfortable. This week, Eric Brain of Hypebeast released an article based on his interview of Stan Ng (Apple’s VP of Product Marketing) and Evans Hankey (Apple’s VP of Industrial Design) to discuss Apple Watch bands. Hankey specifically praises the Solo Loop, saying that it is “without a doubt the most simple and most ambitious watch band we have made” because “[f]or possibly the first time in the history of watchmaking, we have eliminated all buckles, clasps, and the excess material necessary for size adjustment” and thus it is “the most comfortable band we’ve made.” I agree with this 100%. I love how comfortable this band is, and because there is no clasp, it feels incredibly secure on my arm. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Although Apple has been winning most aspects of the lawsuit filed against it by Epic arising out of Epic’s bait-and-switch (the company secretly added in-app payment options in violation of Apple’s rules), there was one aspect on which Epic prevailed, and because the trial court declined to grant a stay, there was a risk that Apple was going to have to change certain aspects of its in-app payment system this month. But as John Gruber of Daring Fireball reports, the federal Ninth Circuit granted a stay until the merits of that part of the trial court’s ruling are reviewed on appeal. if you haven’t been following this lawsuit closely, all that you need to know is that, for now, nothing is changing.
This one is really just for the appellate lawyer nerds like me, and this one has nothing to do with the iPhone (except that I learned the news while reading this tweet by Prof. David Ziff in the Tweetbot app), but Ziff reports in that tweet that the West publication Federal Appendix ceased publication this year after a 20-year run, with 861 being the final volume. Whether you cited it as F. App’x or Fed. Appx., it was nice to have a short and official-looking citation for those unpublished federal opinions. On well, now we have to use the long WL and LEXIS cites. (As Ziff also tweets, it doesn’t appear that West published an official announcement of this. So yes, that means that the decision to end the F. App’x is, ahem, unpublished.)
Speaking of Twitter and appellate nerds, I can’t stop laughing at this video by Alexis Gay praising the em dash.
OK, let’s get back to the iPhone. One of the features that Apple announced for iOS 15 is the ability to use your iPhone or Apple Watch as a room key at a hotel. Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac reports that the feature is now starting to rollout at a few Hyatt Hotels. This reminds me of the early days of Apple Pay, and I look forward to this feature being widely available.
Alan Sepinwall of Rolling Stone picks the 20 best TV shows of 2021, and it made me smile to see For All Mankind Season 2 grab the #1 slot. Ted Lasso gets all of the (well-deserved) acclaim on Apple TV+, but For All Mankind is truly excellent. There are lots of other good shows on his list, plus quite a few that were not previously on my radar screen.
Jonathan Bell of Wallpaper wrote an interesting article—featuring great photographs by Jason Schmidt—of the inside of Apple Park and some of the design folks who work there.
Ed Hardy of Cult of Mac reviews the Adonit Dash 4, a stylus that works with both the iPad and the iPhone.
Nicole Nguyen of the Wall Street Journal (Apple News link) compares the Apple Watch to other wearable devices to track your body’s trends over time.
The iPhone J.D. award for the craziest MagSafe-compatible accessory goes to the Razer Phone Cooler Chroma ($59.99 on Amazon), which adds a 7-blade fan to the back of your iPhone to keep it cooler even as you push the iPhone’s processor to the limits, plus 12 colorful LED lights to give your iPhone some bling. Thanks to Michael Simon of Macworld for noticing this critical product.
And finally, I love using asking Siri to perform certain functions in my house, such as turning on the lights on my Christmas tree. But I never expected to see Siri control a VCR. However, Siri can do that too, as this video from the Will It Work? channel demonstrates.
