This week’s episode of the In the News podcast starts with a discussion of the very practical uses of AI: using it to fix items, thanks to the new app from iFixit, and Apple’s approach to AI which seems to be focused on the slow and steady as opposed to the announcement-of-the-day. Next, we talk about Apple Fitness+: why it it such a nice service, and how it is expanding. We also discuss about tweaking the Messages app, Anker batteries, vapor cooling the iPhone 17 Pro, and more.
In our In the Show segment, we discuss some of the great dramas on Apple, especially the fantastic show Pluribus.
In our In the Know segment, Brett shares a tip for reducing the size of a PDF file on the iPhone or iPad, and I discuss using HomeKit (or Matter) devices to control your holiday lights.
There are some areas of life where I feel confident that I know what I’m doing. There are other areas where I know that I am far from an expert. Fixing things falls in the second category, so it is a good thing that I’m a lawyer, not a handyman. But thanks to a new app, maybe I can fake it. For over two decades, the folks behind the iFixit website have been helping people fix things. I sometimes link to a story on iFixit because they frequently post interesting videos and pictures in which they take apart new Apple products, providing some insight into how they work. But the company has guides and sells tools not only for fixing iPhones and Macs but also for fixing appliances, cars, power tools, medical devices, and more. I mention all of that today because, as reported by Boone Ashworth of Wired and Juli Clover of MacRumors, iFixit released a new iPhone app this week (App Store link). The app provides lots of great advice for fixing items, but perhaps most impressively, it has an AI-powered chatbot that is trained on iFixit’s vast knowledge base of how to fix things. Just explain what you are trying to fix—you can even take a picture of an item in question—and the AI offers helpful advice on what is wrong and what you can do. The service is free, but Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac reports that a paid version is coming soon, which will add step-by-step voice guides. This app looks to be a great use of AI. And now, the news of note from the past week:
I like to use Apple Fitness+ to do workouts at home. I’ve seen some recent speculation about the future of the service, but I hope that Apple keeps it going, and there is new evidence that it will. This week, Apple announced that it is expanding Apple Fitness+ to 28 new markets around the world. What struck me as particularly interesting about that announcement is that Apple is now dubbing the instructors in Spanish, German, and Japanese, using AI to create a voice that is based on the actual voice of each of the 28 Fitness+ instructors. In theory, Apple could do this for any spoken language in the world.
One of the improvements to the Messages app in iOS 26 is the ability to screen unknown senders. It has vastly reduced the number of spam texts that bother me. I’ve noticed that, by default, it allows texts that seem to be time sensitive to come through, which I like, but I didn’t realize that you can toggle that on or off in the Settings app. Moreover, Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac recommends turning on “Personal” (which is turned off by default) so that unknown text messages will come through if they don’t seem to be from businesses or organizations. I’m going to try that for a while to see what I think.
I frequently use the Shazam service on my iPhone all the time to identify a song—often a good song that I discover while watching something on TV. I’ve never paid much attention to the Shazam.com website, but now there is an interesting reason to do so. Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac reports that not only does the website reveal the top songs that drove Shazam activity within the past week, but it also identifies the popular segments—i.e., the moment in the song that led the most people to trigger Shazam in the first place to identify the song. It comes as no surprise that as I type this, a song featured during the last episode of the Apple TV show Pluribus is on the Top 10 list for the past week.
Speaking of Shazam, did you know that you can have the app continuously recognize songs in the background for you? Ankur Thakur of iDownloadBlog explains how the Auto Shazam feature works.
If you are thinking of getting an Apple Watch as a gift for the holidays, the Apple Watch Series 11 is currently selling on Amazon for an all-time low price of $299 for the 42mm version, and the 46mm version is only $30 more.
This week, the American Film Institute announced the 2025 Top 10"outstanding television programs deemed culturally and artistically representative of this year’s most significant achievements in the art of the moving image,” and three shows from Apple TV are on the list: Pluribus, Severance, and The Studio. Those are all fantastic shows, and it is impressive that 30% of the list comes from Apple TV. Other shows on that Top 10 list that I loved include The Diplomat (Netflix), Andor (Disney), and The Pitt (HBO).
And finally, when Apple first announced that the iPhone 17 Pro would have a vapor chamber so that the processor could work faster without the device getting too hot, I linked to a video from Aldo of Know Art studios in which he showed how vapor chambers on smartphones work. Apple recently released its own video—and a rather dramatic one—to celebrate the vapor chamber. It is called Peak Performance:
The podcast is break after a break for Thanksgiving, and there is lots to talk about. We start by discussing all of the executive shuffles at Apple. With senior executives announcing that they are retiring, what does that mean for the future of the company and—more importantly—for the products that we all use? Next, we talk about the iPad mini, a product that I have been trying out for the last month and which I reviewed just before Thanksgiving. We also talk about a new, tiny version fo the Time Capsule for AirTag, troubleshooting problems with Wi-Fi on an iPhone, and two new videos from Apple.
In our In the Know segment, Brett shares a useful tip for sharing a Wi-Fi password with someon using a QR code, and I share a tip about correctly arranging your displays when you use the very useful Universal Control feature to share a keyboard and mouse between multiple Apple devices.
I’ve always thought that working as a lawyer for Apple has to be a fascinating way to practice law, and the top General Counsel position has to be the most interesting—and difficult—job of all. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1996 and started the modern era of the company, he made Nancy Heinen the General Counsel—a job that she had performed at NeXT before Apple purchased the company to bring Jobs back to Apple. Heinen held the position until May of 2006, when she resigned shortly before Apple admitted to some irregularities in the backdating of stock options. It took Apple six months to replace Heinen, and the next two replacements did not last as long as Heinen. First, Apple hired Donald Rosenberg in November of 2007, who had previously been general counsel at IBM, but he only lasted ten months before he left Apple to become general counsel at Qualcomm. In September of 2007, Daniel Cooperman, former general counsel at Oracle, was given the position, but he left Apple after two years to return to private practice and to teach. In September of 2009, Apple hired Bruce Sewell. During the eight years that Sewell led the legal department at Apple, Apple became the largest company in the world thanks to the iPhone. Sewell oversaw numerous complex legal issues, including litigation with Samsung for copying the iPhone, efforts to get back a prototype iPhone 4 that an Apple employee left in a bar, and numerous consumer privacy issues including negotiations with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies around the world eager to access confidential information on iPhones. Sewell retired at the end of 2017. He was replaced by Kate Adams, who was previously general counsel at Honeywell. I mention all of this today because Apple announced this week that Adams is retiring after eight years at Apple. It seems like Apple has faced more lawsuits and regulations by countries around the world during the last eight years than ever before, and I can only imagine how busy her plate has been. Adams will be replaced on March 1, 2026, by Jennifer Newstead. Newstead has served as general counsel at Facebook since 2019, and she has a very impressive resume before that, including serving as the Legal Adviser to the United States Department of State and teaching at my alma mater, Georgetown University Law Center. Apple needs good lawyers now more than ever, and Newstead certainly has a track record of working on important and complicated legal matters. I wish her well in this important and difficult job. And now, the other news of note from the past week.
Apple also announced that another very senior executive is retiring: Lisa Jackson, Vice President for Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives. Jackson grew up in my hometown of New Orleans and was the head of the EPA from 2009 to 2013. Apple CEO Tim Cook praised Jackson for “helping us reduce our global greenhouse emissions by more than 60 percent compared to 2015 levels.”
Another transition at Apple is that Steve Lemay is replacing Alan Dye as the head of UI design at Apple—a critical position for a company that for decades has been perhaps the best design company in the world. Leander Kagney of Cult of Mac provides background on Lemay, including the funny story of how he got the nickname “Margaret” from Steve Jobs.
There are rumors that Tim Cook is also planning to retire, perhaps in 2026, and the rumor is that the CEO position will go to John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering. I don’t mean to suggest that all of these executive transitions were part of some master plan for Apple, but if Apple is planning a transition from Cook to Ternus, maybe it is a good thing to bring in younger talent to these critical positions in the company.
Apple announced its 2025 App Store Award winners, and Joe Rossignol of MacRumors reports on who won. For example, the iPhone app of the year is Tiimo, a task and planning assistant.
Amazon is selling Apple’s iPhone cases for about 50% off right now. For example, the Clear Case is $25 instead of $49, and the Silicone Case is also $25 instead of $49. I don’t currently use a case for my iPhone 17 Pro Max, but at these prices, I’m thinking about getting one for the rare occasions when I might decide to use a case.
FaceTime communications are encrypted, and I guess Russia has figured that out. Juli Clover of MacRumors reports that Russia is now blocking FaceTime video calls, asserting that it is a tool used for terrorist attacks.
India is ordering Apple to pre-load on every iPhone in that country an app that can be used to track an iPhone and, somehow, prevent them from being misused. John Gruber of Daring Fireball reports that Apple responded by saying that it does not plan to comply. The initial report was that India was going to mandate that the app could not be removed from an iPhone, but a follow-up report from Marcus Mendes of 9to5Mac says that India is now saying that the app has to be installed, but that it can be removed by a user. It will be interesting to see how this all pans out.
Earlier this year, I reviewed the TimeCapsule by Elevation Lab. It’s a cool device that allows an AirTag to last ten years. I put one in my car, and now I never need to worry about the battery dying. But to be honest, ten years is a crazy long time, and the device would be just as useful to me if it lasted five years—at which time we will probably have a better version of the AirTag that I want to use. Elevation Lab is now selling a compact version of the Time Capsule that is smaller and lasts five years. On Amazon, the price is $19.99 for one, or $39.99 for four. Like the larger model, this new version is waterproof, and it hides the AirTag itself, making it far less obvious to a thief what it is.
Apple is once again projecting video onto the Battersea Power Station Apple Store in London. This year, as reported by Marcus Mendes of 9to5Mac, Apple is projecting designs by iPad users. It looks fun.
Samuel Axon of Ars Technica reviews the new M5 version of the Apple Vision Pro, and at the same time provides his thoughts on the present and future of the platform as a whole. I don’t agree with all of his opinions, but I did enjoy reading his perspective.
John Voorhees of MacStories reports on some of the shows coming to Apple TV this month, including the F1 movie and A Charlie Brown Christmas, and some of the games coming to Apple Arcade.
I’ve been waiting for Apple TV to show Season 3 of the excellent show Tehran. It has been a year since Season 3 debuted in Israel, but because of events in the world, Apple delayed the release in the United States. Zac Ntim of Deadline reports that Season 3 will finally debut in the United States on January 9, 2026, and Season 4 is now in production.
I wish that the next season of Severance could come to Apple TV in 2026, but Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac explains why it will more likely be June or September of 2027.
And finally, December 3 was the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, and Apple used that occasion to release a fantastic video called I’m Not Remarkable that celebrates college students with disabilities using Apple products. As Shelly Brisbin notes in an article for Six Colors, the tools featured in the video include the Magnifier app for the Mac, Braille access, an accessibility reader, sound recognition, live captions, and assistive touch.
If you don’t currently subscribe to Apple TV, today is a great day to sign up. Apple TV is offering a Black Friday special: Apple TV is only $5.99/month for six months. It will take you a good six months to make a dent in all of the great shows. Just over a year ago, I shared a list of my Top 30 favorite shows on Apple TV. The top five on that list were (1) Ted Lasso, (2) For All Mankind, (3) Severance, (4) Slow Horses, (5) Silo, all of which are shows that I still highly recommend. But in the past year, there have been at least nine other shows that I would add to my list of all-time best shows on Apple TV: Pluribus, Your Friends & Neighbors, The Studio, The Last Frontier, Bad Monkey, Chief of War, Stick, Murderbot, and Down Cemetery Road. And as reported by Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac, in just a few weeks, Apple TV will add F1 The Movie and other new content. It is great to have so many great shows to choose from. And now, the news of note from the past week:
Here are a few noteworthy Black Friday deals on Amazon. First, I’m a big fan of the HiRise 3 Deluxe Wireless Charging Station from Twelve South. I gave it a great review two years ago, and I continue to use it every single night. It lives on my nightstand, and it works great. I paid $150 for it, but you can get it today on Amazon for only $59.99. If you want something just as good but more versatile because it is portable, the UGREEN 3-in-1 Foldable MagFlow Wireless Charger is now only $89.99 on Amazon. I use a 3-in-1 charger at my desk at work, at my desk at home, and next to my bed, because these devices are so incredibly useful. If you haven’t tried one yet, today is a fantastic day to pick one up.
PhoneBuff is a company that tests technologies and creates great videos to show off the tests. This week, they released this video to show the speed differences of the iPhone 17 Pro Max, iPhone 16 Pro Max, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 14 Pro Max, iPhone 13 Pro Max, and iPhone 12 Pro Max. It’s a dramatic video, and the results are interesting.
Guillermo Rai and Nnamdi Onyeagwara of The Athletic (part of The New York Times) report that Real Madrid, the successful football club in Spain, is working with Apple to create an immersive video documentary for the Apple Vision Pro. As a reminder, I maintain a list of all of the current and upcoming immersive content on this page.
With Thanksgiving behind us, now we can get ready for the holiday season. Jason Snell of Six Colors discusses Festivitas, a fun app for the Mac that lets you put holiday lights on your Mac’s menu bar and more. And thanks to a recent update, you can also make it snow on your desktop. As I type this, I’m looking at the blinking lights and watching the snow fall on my screen.
And finally, every year around this time, Apple releases a special video for the holidays. This year’s video is called A Critter Carol, and you can click here to watch it on YouTube. It is cute, and you should watch it. But after you are done, make sure you watch the video that I’m embedding below and at this link: the making of video. I enjoyed the making of video even more than the actual video.
Thirteen years ago, Apple released the first version of the iPad mini. I bought one, and I really liked it. As I noted in my review, sometimes less is more, and it was delightful to have the functionality of a regular iPad in a smaller package. Three years later, in 2015, I started using the 12.9" version of the iPad Pro. After using that device for a decade, the iPad Pro is definitely the best iPad for me. Whether I am looking at documents while doing work, enjoying pictures, or just studying my busy calendar, the larger screen is fantastic. And I love that the iPad Pro is the fastest, most powerful iPad. This has often made me wonder: does an iPad mini still have a place in my life?
For the last few weeks, I’ve had an opportunity to answer that question. My law firm purchased a number of iPad minis to use for a project, and before they were all put into use, I was able to borrow one of them and see what it is like to use an iPad in 2025, from the perspective of someone who uses a 13" iPad Pro. I have been using it for both work during the day and for entertainment at night. My conclusion? As Thomas Wolfe wrote, you can’t go home again. The iPad mini is still cute as a button, but as someone who has become accustomed to using a fast and large 13" iPad Pro, this slower 8.3" device has too many compromises.
The size
At 5.3" x 7.69", the iPad mini is less than half the size of my 13" iPad Pro, which is 8.48" x 11.09". It feels like I cut my iPad Pro in half.
This small size makes the iPad mini small and light, and sometimes that is a good thing. There is no risk of my hand becoming tired from holding it for a long period of time. But the small size means that the edges of my fingers cover even more of the screen when I am holding it, which is sometimes annoying and distracts from the otherwise nice experience of holding something that is small and light.
The more important problem for me is that with so much less screen real estate, everything is cramped. For example, when I look at emails, I cannot even see the full names of people in the list of emails on the right side of the screen.
When I look at documents, the type is so small that I find myself either squinting or panning left and right to read everything.
When I use my iPad Pro, I almost always use it in landscape mode. For the iPad mini, everything is so cramped in landscape mode that I often found myself using it in portrait mode. In this orientation, it works almost like a larger iPhone. And for certain types of apps, that can work reasonably well, such as scrolling through Instagram, Reddit, or Ivory (my Mastodon client). But for just about all of my work tasks, the small size of the iPad mini was too small for me to be productive.
In other words, the iPad mini worked best when I used it, in portrait orientation, as if it were a larger iPhone. And it was sort of nice to have a screen that is larger than an iPhone. But for the same reason that I don’t use my iPhone to do the things I do on my iPad—such as reading and annotating documents—I didn’t enjoy using an iPad mini for those tasks.
The speed
The other thing that I don’t like about this device is the speed. The A17 Pro chip is not that old; it was used just two years ago in the iPhone 15 Pro, and it seemed like a fast processor when I used that device. But every time I opened an app or tried to do anything even remotely intensive, I found myself frustrated by the noticeable decrease in responsiveness. To be fair, I’m probably just spoiled by the speed of an iPad Pro, but I’m sure that an iPad Air with its M3 processor also feels a lot faster than this iPad mini with an A17 Pro chip.
The screen
Like the iPad Air and the iPad, the iPad mini uses a Liquid Retina display. The iPad Pro uses an Ultra Retina XDR display with ProMotion technology. The iPad mini’s peak brightness is 500 nits. The iPad Pro’s peak brightness is 1000 nits, and HDR content can reach 1600 nits. What this means is that when nothing is moving on the screen, everything looks much better on the iPad Pro. And when something is moving—for example, when I am scrolling through a document, a social media app, emails, etc.—it is much harder to read the screen. As a result, I find myself waiting until I pause scrolling before I start to pay attention to words, which slows me down even more.
The price
One very nice thing about the iPad mini is the price. The full retail price is $499, and you can currently get it on Amazon for only $399. That is the version with only 128GB, which doesn’t give you a lot of space for larger documents and videos. However, if you are primarily using this device to browse the Internet and stream files, 128GB may be enough.
The future
There is, however, one thing about the iPad mini that intrigues me. I mentioned above that the iPad mini worked best for me when I thought of it as a larger iPhone, not a smaller iPad. It is rumored that Apple is working on an iPhone with a screen that can unfold, opening up like a book. That rumored device would unfold into something with a screen size that is not that different from the size of an iPad mini. If I put my iPhone on top of the iPad mini, I can imagine how that might look when an iPhone screen unfolds.
An iPhone with a screen that unfolds would still be too small to use as an iPad substitute. But using the iPad mini for the last few weeks has shown me the appeal of having an iPhone with an even larger screen. So in a way, the iPad mini is interesting because it is a peek into a possible future of the iPhone.
Conclusion
Any time I review a product, I provide my personal opinion, cognizant that others may disagree. I feel that is more true for the iPad mini than for any other product that I have tried in a long time. The most important reason that the iPad mini is not for me is that I have grown to appreciate everything that makes the 13" iPad Pro so special: the huge and beautiful screen, and the speed. If you currently use an older version of the 11" iPad Air, I suspect that the switch to an iPad mini will be far less jarring for you. When I discussed the iPad mini (A17 Pro) without having had a chance to use it back on October 16, 2024, I thought that is might be the right device for some lawyers. I suppose I still think that, but only for some folks. For most lawyers, I think that the compromises are too great for this to be your one-and-only iPad.
If Apple were to upgrade the iPad mini to give it a better screen and a faster processor, that would make a difference to me. The considerably smaller screen would still be too cramped for me to use this device as my main iPad for work, but it would erase some of the other annoyances. The iPad mini (A17 Pro) is already a year old, and there are rumors that an improved iPad mini will be released in 2026. We’ll see.
I loved having an opportunity to try out an iPad mini again, after all of these years. But I can now say that it is not the device for me. Moreover, I think that the screen is so small that I suspect that many others who are looking to use this device to get work done will find it to be unsatisfactory. On the other hand, if you want something small and light for casual, one-handed use—something similar to an iPhone, just a little bigger—that is where the iPad mini makes much more sense. And of course, for kids, or for people looking for a portable entertainment device, this may be the best version of the iPad.
On Friday night, especially at the end of a long week, I love to celebrate the TGIF by watching a great show on Apple TV. Right now, that means watching the fantastic show Pluribus. But in the United States this week, the work week ends for many of us on Wednesday because of Thanksgiving. Fortunately, Apple has adjusted its schedule, so you won’t have to wait an extra two days to see what Carol is up to in the fifth episode of Pluribus.
As reported by Zac Hall of 9to5Mac, Apple normally releases new episodes of Pluribus at 9pm Eastern on Thursday so that they are available to watch on Friday—or Thursday night, for people who watch as soon as the episode drops. But this week, the episode will be released at 9pm Eastern on Tuesday—later today!—so that everyone can watch it on Wednesday. Apple even released a cheeky announcement on X:
It is not just Pluribus that will be available early. The penultimate episode of the first season of The Last Frontier, Episode 9, will also be available, this week only, two days early. Moreover, the shows that Apple normally debuts on Wednesday—Down Cemetery Road, Palm Royale, and Loot—will also be available, so you have lots to choose from.
Pluribus is definitely a show that people like to discuss, so whether you are ready for Episode 5 or you haven’t started the series yet, I recommend that you catch up before Thursday to avoid any Thanksgiving spoilers.
After a week off, Brett Burney and I are back with Episode 222 of the In the News podcast. We start by talking about Apple’s Black Friday special and when it makes sense to take advantage of it. Next, we talk about Apple’s 2025 App Store Awards. After that, I have a surprise show-and-tell segment featuring three products—you may want to watch the video for that part of the podcast—followed by a discussion of the Apple Vision Pro, a digital ID in your Apple Wallet, the show Pluribus (with no spoilers), the iPhone Pocket, and much more.
In our In the Know segment, Brett has figured out how to download music from the Apple Music Classical app, and I recommend a great tripod.
Next week is Thanksgiving, and that means Black Friday events. Apple announced that this year (like in recent years), Apple will be giving out Apple gift cards when you purchase certain products from November 28 to December 1. For example, if you purchase an iPhone 16 or iPhone 16e (but not any of the newer models), you can get a gift card for up to $75. For certain Mac models, you can get up to $250. My wife recently upgraded to an iPhone 17, and when I went to pick it up from our local Apple Store, I was amazed at the activity. A very large number of people are buying a new iPhone right now! And now, the news of note from the past week:
Apple announced the finalists for the 2025 App Store awards. Every year, I find this list interesting because Apple tends to honor a lot of apps that were not on my radar screen. This year, there is only a single app on the list that I currently use: the Explore POV app for the Apple Vision Pro.
Speaking of the Vision Pro, Vincent Nguen of The Gadgeteer says that if you haven’t tried an Apple Vision Pro yet, you should find some time to do a 30-minute demo at an Apple Store because the device is so impressive. I agree, and I love showing mine off to friends who haven’t tried it yet.
Apple has been moving away from the HomeKit standard that it developed towards the open Matter standard. I think that is a good thing because it opens the door to even more compatible devices, but the Matter standard was, in some ways, not as good as HomeKit. Andrew O’Hara of AppleInsider reports that the Connectivity Standards Alliance has announced Matter 1.5, which adds support for cameras (finally!) and other devices.
I use the titanium version of the Apple Watch Series 10. It is more expensive, but I love the way it looks, and since my Apple Watch is the only jewelry-type item that I wear other than my wedding ring, I feel that it is OK to splurge. Apple announced this week that for the titanium version of the Apple Watch Series 11 and all versions of the Apple Watch Ultra 3, Apple 3D-prints each case with 100% recycled titanium powder. Apple says that this is better for the planet because there is less wasted titanium. It is also pretty neat; I didn’t know that you could 3D print a substance like titanium.
Ed Hardy of Cult of Mac reports that Illinois is the 14th U.S. state to support Apple’s digital ID program, so if you live in Chicago or other cities in the Prairie State, you can now put your driver’s license in your Apple Wallet.
if you live in Arkansas or Virginia, you can already use a special app to store a digital version of your driver’s license, but Oliver Haslam of AppleInsider reports that you will be able to use Apple’s Wallet app too.
Nellie Andreeva of Deadline reports that Apple announced that its new show Pluribus “broke the record previously held by Severance Season 2 for the biggest global drama series launch” on Apple TV. I love watching this show, and it is one of those shows that I find myself continuing to think about during the week. Episode 4 debuts today.
Apple TV givieth and Apple TV taketh away. Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac reports that, for the second time this year, Apple TV pulled a show that it had been advertising shortly before it was supposed to debut. This time, the show is a French-language show called The Hunt that I was thinking about watching. Apple hasn’t provided a reason.
Last week, I mentioned that Apple released the iPhone Pocket. I was astonished by the price, but as William Gallagher of AppleInsider notes, Apple clearly has a better handle on its business than I do because the luxury product sold out almost immediately. I guess they could have charged even more. If anyone wants to purchase a very limited edition sock from me, suitable for either an iPhone or or, say, a foot, let me know and I’ll quote you a very high price.
And finally, I virtually never discuss iPhone games on this website, but I’m not even sure that this one is a game. I’m not sure what it is. Pools is a—I guess it is an experience for the iPhone? You go from room to room and swim in pools. The graphics and sound are very impressive, and it is free to download and try the first chapter, which is more than enough to get a sense of it. It is interesting. Here is a preview:
Seventeen years ago today, I started this website with a post about why I used the iPhone. Today, that seems like an odd thing to explain, but back in 2008, only a tiny percentage of lawyers were using an iPhone. If a lawyer was using a smartphone back then, it was most likely to be Blackberry. Every year since then, I have taken advantage of this website’s anniversary to share some information about this website that might be interesting to readers. If you want to travel back in time, here are my prior posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16.
The top 10 posts. As always, we start by looking at which posts over the prior twelve months were read by the most people. The fact that these posts were popular sheds some light on what has been on the minds of attorneys and other folks using iPhones or iPads. Here are the top ten most viewed posts published in the last year:
Review: iPhone 17 Pro Max. Apple announced a few weeks ago that it believed that its revenue during the quarter that we are in right now—which includes all of the holiday sales—will be the best quarter in the history of Apple. Clearly, that is because Apple believes that there is a lot of interest in the 2025 versions of the iPhone. My data point to confirm that is that my review of the iPhone 17 Pro Max wasn’t just the #1 post of this year. It is one of the most-read posts in the history of this website.
Review: AirPods Pro 3. AirPods are a fantastic accessory for the iPhone. AirPods Pro are the best version of the AirPods, and when Apple released the new AirPods Pro 3 this year, it had been three years since the AirPods Pro 2 came out. I suspect that sales of the AirPods Pro 3 will be very impressive this quarter.
Apple’s generous 14-day return policy. It was just over a year ago that I wrote that post, but I’m still including it in this year’s list because it saw so much traffic over the past twelve months. I guess that folks thinking about buying Apple products were also thinking about whether they could return a product if it wasn’t right for them.
Review: Kodak Slide N Scan Digital Film Scanner — bring your past into the future. One of my personal projects this past year has been digitizing old photos and videos. This Kodak scanner made it easy to digitize hundreds of old slides that my parents had taken in the 1980s. Thanks to this scanner, some of those old photos now show up on the home screens of my iPad and iPhone (using the Photos widget), and it always makes me smile to see them.
Why lawyers will love the 2025 Apple Watch models. The first version of the Apple Watch went on sale on April 24, 2015, and I reviewed it a few days later. Starting in 2016, Apple has released new versions of the Apple Watch every September. My guess is that most iPhone J.D. readers already own an Apple Watch, so the question for iPhone J.D. readers every September is whether it is a good year to upgrade. My post on the 2025 Apple Watch models provided some advice on whether it was worth upgrading to the Apple Watch Ultra 3, Apple Watch Series 11, or Apple Watch SE 3.
All of Apple’s Immersive Video content for the Apple Vision Pro. Perhaps the best thing to watch on the Apple Vision Pro is the immersive video content released by Apple. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t maintain a single, up-to-date, list of all of its immersive content. So I made one, and I update that post when new content is released—such as last week, when Apple released the video Flight Ready on Veterans Day. I even created a special URL for that page because I know that it is accessed so often: https://iPhoneJD.com/AppleImmersive.
Review: Happy Scale — track and predict your weight loss. If you are trying to lose weight, you can track your progress using the built-in Health app from Apple. But if you want more options, there are countless third-party apps in the App Store to choose from, and Happy Scale is one of the very best. It has a great interface, offers tons of insights, and—perhaps best of all—it shows your progress on a graph that smooths out the data. Thus, instead of seeing the inevitable ups and downs along the way, you focus on the overall progress over time.
Review: Anker Laptop Power Bank — portable power, smart design. I gave this product a very positive review earlier this year, and I love it even more now than I did then. It has a fantastic design, it holds a ton of power, it charges multiple devices at once, it has a useful display, and the built-in cords are incredibly convenient. It works great with a laptop computer, but I primarily use mine with my iPad, iPhone, and Vision Pro. This device also makes a great gift, especially right now, because it is currently only $91.99 on Amazon. That is an amazing price (32% off) and less than I paid for mine.
Why lawyers will love iOS 26 and iPadOS 26. Apple updates its operating systems every year, but some years, the updates are even bigger than others. This was a big year, and I discussed why in the post that is #9 on this list.
Why lawyers will love the new iPad Air. As much as I love using my iPad Pro, I know that most lawyers don’t need an iPad with all of the bells and whistles—not to mention a higher price. The 2025 version of the iPad Air is an excellent device that is perfect for most lawyers, as I explained in this post.
Visitors to iPhone J.D. The other thing I do this time every year is share some statistical information about iPhone J.D. visitors, to the extent that I can figure it out using the tools at my disposal—specifically, the Google Analytics service.
Google Analytics reports that, over the past 12 months, about 37% of iPhone J.D. readers used an iPhone, about 19% used a Mac, about 15% used a computer running Windows, and less than 5% used an iPad. Those numbers didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me was that about 18% of iPhone J.D. readers during the past twelve months were using an Android device. In past years, that percentage has been 10% or less, sometimes less than 5%. I certainly discuss and review lots of products that work with any smartphone, so maybe that explains it, or perhaps there have been a lot of Android users thinking about making the switch to an iPhone.
Just looking at browsers (regardless of platform), there was another notable change this year. In the past, the #1 browser used to read this website has been Safari. For example, last year, 59% of the people reading iPhone J.D. used Safari. But this year, the #1 browser was Chrome, which accounted for 49% of all readers. About one-third of those Chrome users were using Android, just under one-third of the Chrome users were using Windows, and just about all of the other Chrome users were using a Mac or Linux device. The #2 browser used to read iPhone J.D. was Safari, with 46% of users. That left about 5% of readers using Edge, Firefox, or another browser.
Of course, the iPhone, iPad, and related Apple technologies are of interest to lawyers and others around the world. About 45% of iPhone J.D. readers during the past year were in the U.S., 6% were from the UK, 5% were from Norway, 5% were from Canada, and the other countries with a significant percentage of readers were India, Australia, Singapore, China, Russia, and Germany.
Every year, I also look at the top cities for the folks who visit iPhone J.D. London was the #1 city four times (2015, 2020, 2021, and 2023), but every other year, New York has been #1. Just like in 2024, the Big Apple was on top again in 2025:
New York
London
Chicago
Singapore
Los Angeles
Chicago
Ashburn
San Jose
Dallas
Toronto
Note that I believe that Ashburn shows up in this list because it is a major hub for internet traffic. If you ignore Ashburn, then that would make San Jose #7, Dallas #8, Toronto #9, and Boston would become #10—just barely beating out Atlanta.
Besides Atlanta, other cities that just missed being in the Top 10 this year include Sydney, Miami, Seattle, Des Moines, Phoenix, Melbourne, and Houston. My hometown of New Orleans was #105 this year, a big drop from its #56 position last year. The #100 position was Zurich. The #200 position was Belgrade. Syracuse was #300. The city of Roswell, New Mexico, had only 12 unique visitors to iPhone J.D. during the past twelve months, and Google Analytics doesn’t tell me how many of them were aliens living on a UFO at Area 51.
One particularly nice change for iPhone J.D. that occurred during the last twelve months was that, in early 2025, I switched from hosting this website on TypePad to using the WordPress platform. There were a lot of other behind-the-scenes changes that took place at the same time, and one of the end results is that this website now loads much faster than ever before: a welcome change for everyone, no matter what device you are using and where in the world you are located.
Finally, and most importantly, whether you read every single post on this website or you just check in from time to time, I’m thrilled to have you here, and I’m already looking forward to the next twelve months.
